Taehyung cursed himself for not having asked how he could directly join the commune instead of going through the intermediary step of the nature retreat. But he thought it would look suspicious if he appeared so interested in that after just one seminar, so he didn’t want to risk it.

However, going to the nature retreat brought him so many problems that he constantly cursed himself for not having taken the risk.

His boss wouldn’t allow a two-week long absence, so he had to quit his job earlier than expected. As such, he wouldn’t be able to pay next month’s rent and bills, so he had to inform his landlord that he would be moving out of the tiny apartment. This meant that, between the nature retreat and joining the commune he would constantly have to find someone to give him somewhere to sleep at least for a night. Since he would soon not have his own place and there was no one he fully trusted beside Namjoon, he would also have to find a place to keep a few of his personal belongings and the things he had taken from Namjoon’s apartment.

He also had to sell his laptop to pay for the nature retreat and now he was almost broke. So he gambled a little. He hitchhiked to the city where his mother lived and, as he was visiting her for the first time in several years, he stole some of her weed and sold it later on. Then he hitchhiked to the city where his father lived, waited for him to get out of work and straight up asked for a considerable sum of money. When the man got outraged and refused, Taehyung said:

T: “Give me the money or I’ll tell that five-year-old of yours her dad’s gonna leave her if she cries too much.”

Since the man really didn’t want someone like Taehyung getting near his five-year-old and he also didn’t want a shadow from his past disrupt his present, he eventually gave him the money and hoped it was a one-time thing.

Taehyung also hoped it was a one-time thing. He was somewhat worried because it felt like he was doing a lot and making a lot of moves but none of that was helping Namjoon. If Taehyung had been better off financially, getting into the cult would have been smooth sailing.

When he was on the bus with other participants and heading towards the nature retreat, Taehyung felt the need to rub his forehead with a lot of force as he thought about how much effort it took just to get there. And he was still so far away from helping Namjoon.

There were two large busses of around 60 people each going to the nature retreat. It took Taehyung by surprise to see that so many people were interested in paying for crap like this and he toyed around with the idea of starting his own cult once Namjoon was free from this one.

The middle-aged woman he sat next to on the bus was very talkative whenever there was a brief pause in the organizers telling them about the joys of working and living in the middle of nature, of producing your own food and your own other types of products, of living humbly and so on and so forth.

She told Taehyung about her situation, that her husband had been laid off and hadn’t been able to find work in over a year, that she had two children that only had school supplies because their teachers organized a fund-raiser in their classes, that one of these children had a handicap and that meant medical bills to pay, that they were living off of her meager salary, state funds and the support of those around them but it was getting unbearable and that she had to invest what little savings she had into what this New Life Initiative required because she was desperate and she didn’t see any other solution.

Taehyung was very unfamiliar with the emotion of sympathy, but he almost told the woman to ask for her money back, go back home and find some other solution, cause anything else would be better than spending her savings on making a cult rich, which would later just make her separate herself from her family or make her bring her whole family into an unfavorable situation. But then Taehyung thought that, if this woman will keep getting brainwashed, she might tell someone that he said those kinds of things, and that would put Taehyung and his plan at risk. So he just said:

T: “Hang in there.”

This whole thing reminded him of Jungkook, although he had resolved not to think about him anymore.

Even as a cult recruiter, Jungkook likely had more humanity in his pinky finger than Taehyung in his whole being. Jungkook was risking it a lot by telling people that weren’t the ones he was specifically made to target to not get close to the organization because it was bad. What if those people later on become cult members and snitch on him? What if cult members unfamiliar to Jungkook approached him in a mystery-shopper manner and it would be found out how unfaithful he was to the organization?

Regardless of how Jungkook was managing his risk taking, he was still taking risks most likely because he wanted to spare at least a few people who were already in ty situations of ending up in an even tier situation.

It was useless denying that Jungkook had some kindness within him but, even if he couldn’t deny it, Taehyung still countered it with the undeniable fact that Jungkook was bringing offenders and other types of criminals and dangerous people into communities such as the one Namjoon was trapped inside of and that pissed Taehyung off.

Before the busses arrived at their destination, the organizers informed them of the general schedule for the retreat and Taehyung felt like he was going to innerly cry tears of blood.

From dawn to beyond dusk they had to learn numerous things. They learned how to grow and preserve vegetables and fruit and, each day, they would eat the kinds of fruits and vegetables they had learned to grow and preserve during that day. They learned what mushrooms and other plants they could find growing freely in nature, how to look for and gather them and how to make them into a meal. They learned how to raise various types of animals and, each day, they would eat the types of eggs, milk and cheese that came from the animals they had learned about that day.

They also had to learn how to make a fire. They had to learn how to work with wood, clay and other materials to build various objects people needed around a simple household. Among these was the flax plant, sheep’s wool and the silk from silkworms, which they had to learn how to turn into fabric for various purposes.

All these tasks gave people the feeling that “it can be done”, that they could really live off of what they themselves would produce. It also made them feel accomplished, for having successfully learned new things and finished assigned tasks, feel enthusiastic about something for the first time in a while, feel a sense of community and feel grateful to the organizers.

Taehyung understood these people on a rational level, but he couldn’t relate to them at all.

When he had to sit on a small stool and grab the cow’s udder, then squeeze and pull to make milk come out into a bucket, his hands were shaking uncontrollably and he thought he might cry for the first time in over a decade. If he didn’t tell himself he had to do this to get to Namjoon, he would have definitely flipped something over, most likely the stool because it was unrealistic to flip the cow, and ran all the way to the nearest city, no matter how many kilometers there were to the nearest city.

He realized with horror that he had to squeeze and pull hard in order for milk to come out and he couldn’t do it with shaky hands. So he put more pressure into it and the cow suddenly slapped its tail over his face. It made people around him laugh and it made Taehyung mad, so mad that he felt his blood boiling and felt himself ready to hurt something or someone. But then the cow let out “Moo” in its very deep voice and Taehyung thought for a second that he heard Namjoon disapproving of his behavior in his deep voice. So he calmed down and carried on like nothing had happened. Even if mediated by a cow, Namjoon or even the idea of Namjoon acted as Taehyung’s conscience.

At night they slept on the ground in improvised sleeping bags, in large tents that fitted even 10 people, to make it seem like a camping trip. However, like Namjoon had said in his notes, this was so that potential recruits wouldn’t be left alone except for maybe when they went to the outdoor bathrooms.

The packed schedule served the purpose of making potential recruits too tired to keep up their mental guards and become more receptive to the indoctrination that was subtly or blatantly carried out throughout the day. The fact that they were living in these conditions, eating this kind of food, doing this kind of work, wearing rough clothing made out of flax plant and other such things was meant to condition potential recruits, making them likely to quickly adopt this lifestyle permanently later on.

The fact that they were wearing this new kind of clothing, the fact that they were doing other things than they would normally be doing and the fact that they weren’t allowed to use their phones in any way were used to start stripping potential recruits of their former identities, their former lifestyles and their relationships outside the organization.

Additionally, through all of these and much more, they were being trained to follow orders without questioning or hesitating. Namjoon had said in his notes that if, for example, a person gets you to repeatedly clap on their command, soon enough clapping on their command will be done out of reflex and that’s how following that person’s orders, even if they’re much harder or absurd orders, becomes automatic. If you perceive the person giving orders as someone with authority, you are even more likely to follow their orders, no matter how illogical or unethical these orders seem to you.

Here, Namjoon mentioned the Milgram experiment and, when Taehyung read about it, he thought it was impossible for people to follow orders that easily. But now he realized that he had planted seeds, fed pigs, hammered nails into wooden boards and did all kinds of things all day as he was told to simply because the organizers were telling him to do so.

So even a person like Taehyung could be easily turned into a sheep, a monkey or an obedient dog.

But this was not all of it.

During the evening, after a long day spent learning and working, when everybody sat around a large campfire and ate the dinner that never included meat, except for that one day when they learned how to fish and they ate the fish they caught, the organizers called out each one of them and they had to say what they learned that day and what they thought about it.

When someone would say positive things, they were met with a lot of approval, love, reinforcement etc. However, when someone would say things like “It was kinda hard…” or “I’m not sure if I’ll ever use this…”, they were met with disapproval and disappointment and replies such as “That is your addiction to the comfort of a consumerist lifestyle and your unwillingness to let it go in order to stop being a part of the problem and start becoming capable of ensuring your own survival.”

When someone would say things like “I miss my family…”, they would be met with replies such as “Have them join us with the very next occasion. We want to help save as many people as possible, because the world outside is snowballing into even bigger disasters and there is no salvation other than with us, here, at the New Life Initiative.”

Alternatively, they would get replies such as “The people outside do not understand what dangers the whole population is facing and will face in the near future. They refuse to open their eyes and see the truth because they are so addicted to the comfort of their consumerist lifestyle. And they will try to pull you back from changing your lifestyle for a better one, saying that it’s stupid and detrimental to you, because they are blinded by their addiction and they can’t see how a different lifestyle can be beneficial. If anyone here has ever tried quitting smoking but had a smoker friend that constantly pulled them back to the addiction, you know what we’re referring to. Misery loves company. Miserable people will try to also make you miserable so that they won’t feel that bad about themselves. Do not fall for it. Do not stray from a path that you’ve so bravely started on and will ultimately lead you to a life without struggles. The better life that you deserve.”

Besides all of this, throughout their time at the nature retreat, the organizers kept mentioning Leader Oh, the man who had foreseen this economic crisis coming and had worked to build the New Life Initiative from scratch, develop its complexity and create a safe haven for the common folk. It was occasionally implied and occasionally stated explicitly that Leader Oh was to be given the greatest respect, humbleness and gratitude, that questioning his vision and rules was a sign of disrespect and of an unhealthy ego, that disobedience was not accepted and whoever disrespects Leader Oh does not deserve to be helped by the New Life Initiative.

This sealed the deal. One very defining characteristic of a cult was the presence of a single charismatic leader who had a lot of authority and who did not allow any form of disobedience. The organizers had made Leader Oh seem like a superior being and a savior. He had been mentioned a bit during the seminar, but now he had been mentioned quite a lot. Namjoon had said in his notes that Leader Oh was referred to as Leader Oh to already frame him as a superior being and also to not reveal his real name in case potential recruits would do a background check on him with chances of finding something rotten.

The presence of a single charismatic leader was the cherry on top of this cult cake. Targeting vulnerable people, making grandiose promises, using manipulation techniques, portraying the outsiders as bad, framing the organization as superior in all ways and as the only true path to salvation, isolation of potential recruits on a physical level, trying to make potential recruits discard their former lives and identities and their personal relationships, shutting down any faint sign of opposition, asking for greater financial investment to get to the next step, deception, love bombing, dualistic thinking, strict hierarchy, shiny happy recruiters, apocalyptic overtones, rituals, orders and so many more. Namjoon had identified and explained in his notes all these aspects that made New Life Initiative a cult.

But, for Taehyung, most of it would have likely gone over his head. Even after memorizing Namjoon’s notes and constantly being aware of what was actually going on, he still felt his head being messed with.

For example, one night before falling asleep, Taehyung thought:

T: Well, I guess that, when this is all over, if I won’t be able to find another job, I’ll be able to live in the woods or something…

Then he realized:

T: Wait, what?! No! Hell no! I don’t wanna live in the woods! What the is wrong with me… Are they getting to me? Have they managed to influence the way I think even if I know they’re just deceiving me for their own benefit?

Taehyung put his hand over his eyes and became worried.

T: What am I gonna do, Joon? I’m not even half as smart as you are. Your notes don’t cover what goes on inside the commune. How will I handle that? What if I’ll get brain-washed within a week after I get there?

What would happen to him didn’t really matter that much to Taehyung, but he wouldn’t be any help to Namjoon if he got brain-washed and the idea of not being able to fulfill this goal scared him. If he got brain-washed, all he would accomplish would be getting stuck in the same situation as Namjoon’s just like Jungkook had said.

               T: “Wait… Jungkook doesn’t seem particularly brain-washed… How? How did he avoid it?”

The more Taehyung thought about it, the more it seemed to him like the other recruiters might not at all be brain-washed, they were just doing an exceptional job as actors and advertisers because they either had a goal to fulfill or consequences they wanted to avoid. If it was like that, if not everyone was a devout server of Leader Oh and his ideas, and some were just people serving their own selfish interests, then things would be more complicated but also more flexible. Taehyung would have a wider variety of elements to work with provided he would identify them correctly and knew the rules and shortcuts of working with them.

Thinking back on his time at the juvenile detention center, the way in which Namjoon taught him to view math equations helped him in figuring out how to handle various types of people and situations from the lower end of the power structure. His greatest weapons were wit and a kamikaze way of thinking – as long as the goal is met, it does not matter what happens to him or who else gets hurt and how. Taehyung forgot that without Namjoon there to provide hope, warmth and a conscience by proxy, Taehyung could throw someone else into the fire in his place without any shred of remorse.

T: Ah, right… I told Jungkook that, as long as Namjoon would be alive and safe, I don’t care if things end in mass-murder… It’s also so much easier to destroy and hurt than to create, save or heal… So why am I pissing my pants now? Never mind. As long as I don’t forget my goal, it doesn’t matter what else happens.

At the end of the nature retreat, Taehyung went up to the organizers and told them the truth about how he was out of a job now and how he wouldn’t have a place to stay in much longer, so he really wanted to join the commune as fast as possible and he was ready to do anything for that. Considering Taehyung’s situation and the fact that he had no sellable assets aside from his smartphone, he was told that arrangements would be made fast and he would be taken to the commune in 4 days.

Finally. The last phase of the 3-step initiation process.

Taehyung had given no one aside from Jungkook any reason to suspect he was not just a lost lamb that really believed New Life Initiative was his salvation and that he desperately wanted to be saved by it.

He had no one to inform of his departure so, before leaving, he sent Namjoon’s things to Namjoon’s parents along with a very thick envelope, containing the printed “Looking for Jin log” file, and a letter in which he simply stated: “This is Kim Taehyung. You might remember me as the troublemaker Namjoon hung out with during high school and also afterwards. I am going to join Namjoon where he is doing his research. I’ll make him drop his research and contact you. If he doesn’t contact you in the following months, please open the thick envelope you will find at the bottom of the package on September 12.”

Taehyung didn’t want to give Namjoon’s family reasons to worry because there was probably nothing much they could do, but he still wanted to ensure a small backup plan in case he wouldn’t be able to help Namjoon. He had set his friend’s birthdate as his deadline to getting Namjoon’s regular life back for him because it might help him to not lose sight of his goal and lose focus.

And so, on April 1 – April Fools’ day – Taehyung boarded the bus that left his city at midnight, with all its curtains pulled over the windows, to go join the New Life Initiative commune.

Of course, the curtains were pulled so that new recruits wouldn’t know the path to the commune, but they had been told that the curtains were pulled as a symbol for not looking back on the life they were leaving behind, peeking through the curtains being a sign lack of trust towards the organization and a sign of weak determination, which could be grounds for being forcibly removed from the bus and from the chance of salvation.

The air inside the bus was thick with the myriad of types of emotions people were feeling, Taehyung being as aware of them as if those emotions running around in the air were a bunch of noisy flies. He had expected himself to also feel in one way or another, but he was an emotional stone that only mimicked the emotions required by the situation and only when they were required.

However, there was still one persistent emotion generated by prayer that was on loop inside his head:

T: “Please be okay. Please be okay, Joon, please… I don’t care if you’re brain-washed or missing a limb or two, I don’t care if you forgot about me in the meantime, I don’t care if you turned into a monkey or a murderer while you’ve been there, just… please let me have a chance to save you.”

The bus ride to the commune took several hours and, even though it was night, nobody slept. It only now occurred to Taehyung that New Life Initiative might have more than one commune and that he might not be heading to the one where Namjoon is. But, even if this thought had occurred to him sooner, there would have been nothing he could have done without seeming suspicious.

T: It’s fine… I’ll learn about how things work there and I’ll find out where the other communes are. Then I’ll gain the favor of the leader or some higher-ups and ask to be transferred to another commune. If that fails, I’ll just escape and go to each commune and search until I find Joon.

Taehyung then remembered that Namjoon had also wondered if there might be several communes and if or not he would end up in the one where Seokjin was. But Namjoon assumed that, since there was a single charismatic leader, there would also be only one commune, because decentralized management wasn’t very cult-esque.

With Namjoon concluding that, Taehyung just took it as a fact and didn’t think about it at all. Namjoon could’ve also been wrong and, whether he had been wrong or not, was not mentioned in his notes, but it was still fine since Taehyung had formed a plan for the case in which there was more than one commune, no matter how vague and unrealistic that plan was. He knew he could adapt, think on his feet and implement whatever was needed. At the very least, Taehyung wasn’t the clueless kid from high school anymore.

---

Throughout the first year of high school, Namjoon, the class president, often scolded Taehyung, who was the troublemaker. A lot of people often scolded Taehyung, but Namjoon was different. He didn’t approach Taehyung with hate, anger, sense of superiority or a hidden agenda. He also never made Taehyung feel like he was bad or like, within a conversation, Namjoon was automatically right and Taehyung was automatically wrong.

N: “You shouldn’t cause trouble for other people.”

T: “Why?”

N: “Because, then, those other people will be troubled.” Namjoon said seriously, stunning Taehyung like he had just unexpectedly heard something stupid and senseless and making him counter with:

T: “Why should I care if other people are troubled?”

N: “Cause…” Namjoon started, but realized he only had clichés other people made up for answers, so he went silent for a bit, then said: “I don’t have an answer for that, but I’ll think about it till next recess.”

Things like that, the fact that Namjoon didn’t spit clichés, rules, threats and other bull without arguments at him and the fact that Namjoon took into consideration what Taehyung was saying to him without automatically dismissing his point of view as a valid point of view, made Taehyung feel like he was having genuine conversations with someone. Taehyung wasn’t aware that he just liked being acknowledged like that, so he just started messing with Namjoon more without knowing why he wanted to do that. He even sometimes suddenly pushed Namjoon’s things off his desk and just sat there with a growing grin to see what Namjoon would say.

N: “Come on! Seriously?!” Namjoon said one time as he started picking his things back up and placing them on his desk.

Namjoon missed one of the pens that fell out of his pencil case, so Taehyung picked it up and put it on his desk, making Namjoon smile.

T: “What?”

N: “Nothing. Thanks.”

Taehyung felt like he had been taken for a fool, so he frowned and walked away, bumping intentionally into Namjoon’s desk.

Namjoon didn’t just scold Taehyung, he also acknowledged him and showed appreciation whenever Taehyung avoided doing something bad or in the once in a blue moon situations in which he did something good. Taehyung just increasingly wanted to engage with him, although he still wasn’t aware of why he actually wanted that.

Eventually, Taehyung came to hang around Namjoon a lot and it was nice, but Taehyung was weary of labeling Namjoon in his mind as a friend. So he attempted a small test.

T: “I saw some people give you about being friends with the troublemaker.”

N: “People give me for other things too, like being a teachers’ pet. If I weren’t doing the things I’m currently doing, they’d give me for whatever else I’d be doing. Inevitably, some people will give you no matter what.”

T: “Finally we agree on something.” Taehyung said and both of them let out a laugh. “So?”

N: “So?”

T: “Why are you being friends with the troublemaker?”

N: “Why shouldn’t I?”

T: “Well… it’s not bringing you any benefit, that’s for sure…”

N: “So you’re telling me I should choose my friends based on what I can gain from the friendship?”

T: “If not that, then what are you basing it on?”

N: “How much fun I have interacting with that other person.”

T: “You know how to have fun?” Taehyung teased.

N: “I do. But there are many other things that I don’t know. That’s why I enjoy interacting with people that are very different from me. It broadens my view of the world. I learn about things I never even thought about. That, for me, is a lot of fun.”

T: “You need to get your head out of these books and go out more. Go to an arcade or something.”

N: “You wanna go to an arcade?”

T: “Uh, sure…” Taehyung said, taken aback that Namjoon proposed hanging out together outside of school. “I mean… someone’s gotta teach you how to have some genuine fun.”

N: “I like being friends with that someone.” Namjoon said smiling and stirring up a bunch of things for Taehyung.

---

As he thought of the past while the bus was reaching New Life Initiative’s commune, Taehyung pressed his hand on his chest because that warm ache was there again and he thought:

T: Thank you. For being the only person who was glad about me existing… I’ll make sure you go to an arcade again.

The sky was starting to light up but the sun was still far away from coming out of the horizon when the bus stopped and an organizer announced:

O: “We’re here! Welcome to your new life!”