Author's Note: Brace yourselves. 

And people thought BTS was crazy. This group of howling lunatics was insane, Taehyung decided as he held onto the handle of the door with a death grip. The Ferrari he, Hoseok, and Jeongguk were in was speeding through the city streets of Seoul/Tokyo at a rate that could not be safe.

The other boys didn’t seem bothered by the speed at all. Next to him, Hoseok pulled out his phone and scrolled down an app that looked a bit like Twitter. In front of him, Seokjin hummed softly. Jeongguk’s face was covered with shadows.

“Um, aren’t we going a little fast?” Taehyung asked, hoping his voice didn’t sound as shaky to the others as it did to him. “What if there are cops around?”

Seokjin laughed. “Where have you been living the last decade? There haven’t been police pulling over people in years.”

Well, okay.

“So,” he started nervously. “Where do you guys come from? What do your parents do?”

Hoseok turned the screen of his phone off, which was nice. The glow it had been giving his face was creepy. “I’m from Aomori,” he said. “My parents were store owners.”

“Were?”

“Were.”

“Way to say it gently,  Hobi,” Seokjin said with a scoff. “I’m from Omotesando, so not too far from here. I was born into money, technically, but then my parents got scammed and we lost pretty much everything, which is how I ended up here.”

There was a moment of silence before Jeongguk spoke up. Taehyung hadn’t been expecting him to. “Chiba,” he stuttered out. The car went into a brightly-lit tunnel, and only then did Taehyung notice that the younger boy had a white-knuckled grip on the black leather steering wheel. Whatever that meant, it couldn’t be good. “My parents were fish merchants, just like everyone else, for a while.” He paused, and Taehyung heard as his wrists cracked when he moved them. “But then they decided to try their hand at a new business… farming.”

“Farming?” Taehyung repeated.

“But only one type of plant - poppies.”

Hoseok sighed. “He means they sold opium on the black market,” he whispered.

Well, holy ing .

“Problem was,” Jeongguk continued. “While they were great the production of the plant, they weren’t very good at selling it in secret. So a few years into what they were doing, our house got some cops knocking on the door. Which is why I shall be wearing this until I die,” he said, raising his right wrist, revealing what appeared to be a bracelet, but had a small flashing light on it.

“Is that a tracker?” Taehyung asked.

Jeongguk nodded and put both hands back on the wheel before hitting the gas pedal and making the car go impossibly faster, bolting the Ferrari out of the tunnel and back into darkness and shadows.

Taehyung triple-checked that his seatbelt was fastened. “What about the others?”

“Jiminie’s also from Chiba,” Hoseok said. “But his story is the typical backstory there. Fishing, poverty, etcetera, etcetera.”  

Seokjin took up the next person. “Yoongs, as you already know, is from Kanagawa. His parents were just regular laborers, so he wasn’t incredibly poor or anything like that, there just wasn’t anything for him there, so he came to Tokyo in hopes of finding something. But, for being so smart, the guy’s really quite often an idiot, and when he got here, decided to gamble with some guys that he didn’t know would rob him blind. So, like most of us, he signed the contract out of desperation.”

“And Joon,” Hoseok started. “Is complicated. He was raised in Shibuya with some other boys by an all-male Yakuza group.”

Taehyung blanched. “Yakuza?!”

“Crazy, isn’t it? Anyway. They didn’t raise him too bad, believe it or not, but then a rival group ratted them out to the police after some feud. The men were killed, the boys were arrested.”

“We don’t know much about it, to be honest,” Seokjin spoke up. “It’s the only thing in the Universe that Joon doesn’t want to talk about.”

“Stay with us a little longer, you’ll learn how truly incredible of a thing that is,” Hoseok muttered. A quiet laugh was heard from the driver’s seat.

“And so now we’re all here,” Seokjin said, raising his arms to touch the ceiling of the car. “For better or for worse. Probably for worse.”

“That’s optimistic,” Hoseok snorted.

Seokjin shrugged and lowered his arms. “I’m a realist, baby.”

Without warning, Taehyung’s body was jerked forward as Jeongguk slammed on the brakes. The tires screamed in protest to the abuse, and Taehyung clenched his eyes shut as the car flew sideways, because he knew it was unsafe to be going so fast, and now he was gonna die, and -

“What are you waiting for, Taehyung?” Hoseok asked him. Taehyung opened his eyes and looked up. Hoseok had opened Taehyung's door. The car was turned off, and he was the only one still in the vehicle. Seokjin and Jeongguk were a few feet behind Hoseok, looking both concerned and amused.

“That’s how you guys drive?!” he shouted. “I thought we were gonna die!”

“Yeah,” Hoseok said like it was nothing. “What about it? Now c’mon, we shouldn’t be late.” He reached out his hand to the younger boy, pulling him out of the car. The four boys walked to the nearest building, which looked like a modern palace. Standing next to the gold-trimmed doors were Yoongi, Jimin, and Namjoon staring at the phone in Jimin’s hand. When the group approached, they looked up.

“What took you guys so long?” Yoongi asked, the light of the phone hitting his opal eyes in such a way that they glowed like a cat’s. “We’ve been waiting forever.”

“Kookie drove slower than usual. For Tae,” Hoseok said.

That was slower than usual? Taehyung glanced at the youngest boy, who didn't seem to notice as he practically glued himself to Namjoon, whining, oddly enough, “I want a drink.”

The older boy muttered back, “You always want a drink,” and slowly undid the elastic on Jeongguk’s hair braid and ran his fingers through the dark hair. Jeongguk practically purred in response. Seokjin glared at Namjoon, who just shrugged.

Did these guys recognize just how creepy they were? It didn't seem like it.

The group went through the doors, and Taehyung was immediately choked by the strong smell of burning incense and heavy humidity. The rest of the boys didn’t seem bothered by it. “Give it a few minutes,” Jimin whispered to Taehyung, obviously noticing his discomfort. “You’ll get used to it.”

Slowly but surely, Taehyung did become accustomed to the odd scent and suffocating humidity, so he began to pay attention to his surroundings. The walls of the hallways they were walking through were covered in a red fabric that looked like silk. Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceilings, and gold embellished all of the doorways. It was beautiful, really.

But so terribly false that it choked him more than the scent did.

There were people in the larger hallways - men with hair at about their shoulders and women with shaved heads. Some of them would stare at the boys, occasionally glaring at Jeongguk, who lowered his head like he was ashamed, or they would stare quizzically at Taehyung, but most of the people blatantly ignored them.

Just when they had been walking so long that Taehyung wondered if they were even in the same building, the group walked through a doorway that led to a huge room made of stone, which several hallways of the same manner stretching from it. In it, a man was waiting. Taehyung actually felt Seokjin tense up. This must be the man that Seokjin had been less than enthused about talking on the phone with. “Really,” Seokjin said, stopping near the man with his arms crossed. “Why tonight? We just got people over being sick.”

The man shrugged. “Once a week. That’s the rule.” He sighed. “Come on, I don’t want to have to do this any more than you do.” His eyes suddenly landed on Taehyung. “Who the hell are you?”

“He’s a friend,” Jimin said, far more lightly than Seokjin had been while speaking.

“He can’t-”

“He stays,” Seokjin snapped.

The man seemed to debate with himself for a moment before he shrugged. “It’s your choice, I guess. So long as he doesn’t cause a problem.” He gestured to all of the boys except Taehyung. “Go to your rooms to get ready. Be ready by 12:30 at the latest.”

They nodded, but to Taehyung’s amazement, didn’t bow before turning away and going down several hallways. Why didn’t they bow? Everyone bowed, as far as Taehyung was concerned.

“Hey, Tae!” someone called. Taehyung turned to see Jimin standing in the doorway to one of the rooms connected to the larger one, pulling the braid out of his hair. “Do you wanna go anywhere while we’re getting ready? We could give you the keys to one of the cars if you’d like.”

Taehyung shook his head and began walking to Jimin, seeing as he had nowhere else to be. “No, I’ll stay. I’m curious as to how you guys get ready, anyway.” He paused, rethinking what Jimin had said. “You trust me enough to give me the keys to one of those cars?”

Jimin shrugged. “They’re not ours, technically. So sure. Anyway, stay, if you’d like. Nothing exciting will happen though.” He snapped his fingers. “Except, perhaps, Jin getting pissy. Which, I’ll readily admit, is entertaining.” He pointed down the hallway. “His room is at the end of the hallway. It’s the largest out of all of them. Hang out there for a bit, I’m sure something funny will happen eventually.” With that, Taehyung began following the hallway, stopping when he saw Seokjin talking to someone at the entryway to the room. When the two finished their conversation, Seokjin looked at Taehyung and smiled, waving him over. “C’mon in,” he said. “Your oddly-short hair looks like it could use a good conditioning anyway.”

Seokjin turned, and the two walked into the room. The room was large, mostly empty, and extremely warm and even more humid than the rest of the building had been. There were two older-looking women with, shockingly enough, shaved heads in the room, fussing around with a bunch of multicolored bottles on a metal cart. Taehyung had seen the women in the hallway with shaved heads, but they were young. These women were old. Why would an old woman shave her head?

Seokjin said something to one of the women, and they looked at Taehyung before handing Seo