Taehyung watches as Sonha tucks a few stray strands of hair behind her ear before stretching, looking a bit cat-like. The two of them are sitting in the library and getting a head start on their homework which had just been assigned by their awful professor.
 

“Who assigns homework right after midterms?” Sonha grumbles, pouting at her book.

Taehyung just grins, flipping his pencil between his fingers before imitating the curmudgeon of the professor with poor diction, “Homework! Homework, because you probably failed the exam!”

Sonha’s jaw drops open before she laughs at the spot-on impression, if Taehyung could say so himself.

“Did you ever think about acting?”

“For a while.” Taehyung’s mouth flits up before turning back to his book. It wasn’t a conversation that he wanted to have with her, because how was he supposed to talk about his past?

She just hums, letting the subject go.

Jungkook and Jimin collapse into chairs at the table, probably because they had seen him and not Sonha. But their eyes flicker to the girl who is sitting across from him, not looking up as she crosses out another line of work with another sigh. When she finally looks up, there are two males staring at her and Taehyung shoots her a sheepish smile.

“Hi.” Her voice is soft and her smile is unsure, and Jimin and Jungkook raise their eyebrows before meaningfully looking at Taehyung. Taehyung wishes that the other two would have more sense and make excuses and leave, but slow, wide smiles spread over their faces as they settle into their seats.

“So, Sonha,” Jimin drags out the syllables as his eyes twinkle with mischief while Taehyung is shaking his head frantically. “How did you manage to catch Taehyung’s attention?”

“We’re research lab partners.” Her simple and brief answer makes Taehyung smile. She doesn’t bother to look up from her work, and he notices her tensed shoulders.

She is either nervous or uncomfortable. Maybe both.

Jungkook normally isn’t that comfortable around girls he doesn’t know well, but he doesn’t seem to be having too much of a problem at the moment as a predatory gleam takes over his eyes. “And nothing else?”

His implication gets her attention, and she looks up just as her phone begins to buzz. She frowns, swiping it unlocked and lifting it to her ear with a light smile.

“Hey, what’s—”

She falls silent, and Taehyung isn’t sure but he thinks that a flicker of uncertainty flashes across her face. She sits up a little straighter and then promptly starts slamming her books shut and shoving her stuff in her bag in a hurry.  

She practically runs out of the library, and the situation doesn’t escape Taehyung’s attention as being very odd. Jungkook shoots Taehyung a weird look and Jimin pushes Taehyung off his chair. “What are you doing? Go after her.”

Taehyung doesn’t need more encouragement and he hurries after her only to see her cradling her phone to her cheek, speedwalking away. He catches up quickly and wraps his fingers lightly around her wrist. She flinches and he lets go immediately, a bit out of shock.

“Sorry, I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

Her smile in response is strained, and instead of actually giving a verbal answer, she nods, never pulling her phone away from her ear. She mouthes she’s going to go, and pulls away, walking away at the same speed as before. The entire exchange is odd, and a bit unlike her.

But as she walks away, he notices her fingers are gripped tightly around her phone, and that’s when Taehyung knows that something is wrong.
 

She’s barely in control right now. In reality, she’s not in control at all, and she wants to scream as she wriggles in her chair.

When she heard that silky smooth voice with a light laugh on the other side of the line, she wanted to scream. It was Xiumin. She heard a scream that sounded a lot like Jackson, followed by Xiumin saying, “Come and get him.”

She couldn’t even respond. She was at the university. When Taehyung had grabbed her, her heart jumped because she thought someone had found her on campus. But her heart is still racing because every minute that goes by means that Jackson is being hurt.

Shira had no idea what to respond, so she listened. She listened as Xiumin told her where to find him. She listened as Jackson screamed for her not to come. She listened to it all as her tears welled in her eyes as she frantically drove home.

When Xiumin finally did hang up with a chilling, “I’ll be waiting,” she called Mark on the way and intending on suiting up and going after Xiumin herself. She didn’t really have a plan. The plan was, in all honesty, to get Jackson back or die trying.

She had put on her usual red wig, makeup, and mouth mask that went with the description that Xiumin was looking for. But Seungri and Daesung had other plans for her, and she now finds herself handcuffed to a chair with a blindfold covering her eyes, and a gag in under the mouth mask. She had tried screaming, but all she ended up doing was getting drool all over herself. She sits silently, fuming in the training room, where she had been caught when he was going to get her ammunition.

“It’s for your own good,” Seungri murmurs, patting her head, and she thinks that she would like nothing more at the moment to shove his old dirty socks in