50
Third Person Pov
Never in his life had Taehyung thought he would hurt someone. Not like this.
But tonight he had. He had poisoned his husband.
The thought should have torn him apart, should have splintered him into something unrecognizable but instead there was nothing. No grief. No fury. No triumph. Just silence. Deafening, suffocating silence.
He sat at the bus stop, hunched slightly on the chipped wooden bench. The flickering light above buzzed like a dying insect, casting shadows that twitched and vanished, but he didn’t flinch.
His eyes were fixed on the road ahead black, endless, swallowing every shape, every sound. As if the night itself wanted to erase him.
Gyubin slept curled into his stomach, his small head pressed gently against him.
The boy’s breaths were steady, warm, the only rhythm in a world that had gone utterly still.
Taehyung’s palm moved across his son’s back in slow, mechanical strokes muscle memory, not tenderness.
The warmth felt far away, like it belonged to someone else.
Because inside, he was hollow.
Jungkook’s face wouldn’t leave him. Not vivid, not sharp, but fractured like a broken film reel stuttering, skipping frames, looping half-scenes. Those eyes. Always polished glass, always impenetrable.
But tonight… a crack. Just for a breath, he’d seen pain there. Real pain.
And that glimpse branded itself deeper than every cruelty Jungkook had ever carved into him.
His chest should have clenched with guilt, or relief, or even horror. But it stayed empty, a pit swallowing everything before it could rise. His hands trembled faintly where they held Gyubin, though the tremor didn’t feel like his own.
No, it wasn’t only nerves. His throat burned faintly, bitter, metallic. His vision swayed at the edges. The poison. Not much, not lethal but enough to curl in his veins, to remind him he hadn’t escaped untouched. He had shared in it.
He had carried it inside his own mouth, passed it into Jungkook like a final intimacy. And now it lingered, a cruel reminder.
His stomach turned, and he pressed his lips together, breath shallow. He couldn’t collapse. Not with Gyubin in his arms. Not here.
But his body betrayed him dizzy spells pulsing like waves, muscles heavy as stone.
He forced himself still, clinging to the bench, to the warmth of the child sleeping against him, as though that alone kept him tethered to the world.
Jungkook’s voice echoed in his skull.
Run. No one will stop you.
The words circled endlessly. They weren’t freedom. They were a sentence. A leash disguised as mercy. A test he hadn’t asked for.
He looked down at Gyubin the boy’s smooth head glinting beneath the streetlight, his innocence untouched by the weight crushing his father. For Gyubin, Taehyung breathed. For Gyubin, he held on. But even then, it felt like breathing borrowed air. The night pressed closer, too quiet, too long.
The poison inside Jungkook was already tearing him apart. The poison inside Taehyung was slower, weaker, but just as cruel. It gnawed at him from within through guilt, through dizziness, through the absence of feeling.
He was free. And yet he had never felt more trapped.
And the worst part?
There had been no anger in Jungkook’s eyes. No flash of betrayal. No explosion of rage from the man who built his empire on punishing betrayal.
The CEO who slit throats for disloyalty. The man who had ended lives for less than a whispered lie. And yet when the poison slid down his throat, when he tasted it on Taehyung’s lips, he hadn’t flinched.
He had simply looked at him. Silent. Calm. Almost amused.
As if even death could not bend him.
Taehyung had wanted him to feel it, to choke, to writhe, to claw at the very power he thought he owned. He had wanted to see fear or fury, anything that proved Jungkook was human. Anything that proved he could be broken.
But Jungkook, even with venom crawling through his veins, had only smirked. He had whispered words that still rang in Taehyung’s skull, You finally made my heart beat faster.
Taehyung’s gaze fell to his hand, to the silver ring glinting faintly under the bus stop’s light. Poison-free now. Innocent again. But nothing about it was innocent.
It was the same ring that had chained him to Jungkook’s name, his house, his body.
A symbol that had once meant family but had turned into a shackle too tight to wear, too painful to remove.
It had dug into his skin with every breath he took beside Jungkook, cutting him deeper than any knife.
And it was that very same ring he had turned into a weapon. His freedom had come through the symbol of his cage.
He flexed his fingers slowly, the metal biting into the swelling on his knuckle. A bitter smile tugged at the corner of his lips... cold, hollow.
Taehyung would never have done this. Not the boy who once believed love could fix anything. Not the boy who endured silence, coldness, rejection, and thought one day it would change. But everything had a limit. And his had been torn to pieces.
All those months of cruelty. The bruises no one asked about.
The empty nights where he begged for warmth and was given only mockery.
And now, using Gyubin. Using his son. Jungkook had started pulling the child into his sick games, twisting innocence into another leash around Taehyung’s throat.
That was where it ended. That was where Taehyung shattered.
The bus stop was still. Gyubin’s small body pressed into his stomach, asleep and unaware, while Daisy’s absence ached faintly in the back of his mind. Taehyung’s eyes stayed hollow, fixed on the silver band, and the man it had bound him to.
And for the first time, he didn’t wonder whether Jungkook would follow. He knew. If Jungkook wanted him back, he would come. But if Jungkook chose to let him go… then it was over.
A car screeched to a halt in front of him, pulling Taehyung out of his haze. He didn’t flinch, didn’t move. The night air pressed heavy on his lungs as the door opened and a tall man stepped out.
Kim Seokjin.
His footsteps echoed on the empty road until he stood right before Taehyung. Slowly, Taehyung shifted Gyubin in his arms, lowering the boy’s head onto his bag to rest. He rose to his feet, bones heavy as stone.
“Thank y-you.”
Seokjin hummed low in his throat, gaze sharp as he studied Taehyung’s face.
“I—I never meant for him to die,” Taehyung said suddenly, words spilling out like broken glass. “I just… I just wanted to live in peace.”
His tone was flat, but beneath it was something desperate. Too soft to name, too raw to hide.
Seokjin’s jaw flexed. He had seen many faces after betrayal, but never one so drained, eyes stripped of fire, lips trembling not with grief but exhaustion.
Taehyung’s throat worked. He looked away, voice low. “You helped me kill your own brother.” His words cracked like ice. “Why would you do that? Why… when he was your only family?”
It was true... Seokjin had been the one. The one who delievered the poison to Taehyung.
The one who, when Taehyung had called from the bathroom with a voice shattered, eerie and unnervingly calm, hadn’t hung up. I need poison, Taehyung had said. Not begged, not pleaded, just stated. And that desperation, that quiet finality, had shaken Seokjin more than tears ever could.
He hadn’t wanted to agree. But he had. Because he could no longer bear watching Taehyung drown in Jungkook’s shadow, chained in a house that wasn’t a home.
And deep down, Seokjin knew only Jungkook’s death could cut the leash.
For the first time, Seokjin’s expression shifted. A flicker barely there of hesitation. His hand twitched before retreating into the darkness at his side.
“Because some things are meant to end,” Seokjin said at last, his tone flat, carrying the weight of betrayal and inevitability.
Seokjin broke the silence, voice lower now, almost coaxing. “Come with me. To my house. You can’t keep wandering like this. Not with the boy.”
Taehyung lifted his head, eyes blank as the night sky. He shook it slowly. “I don’t want to go. I’ll just… go wherever I find peace.”
Seokjin’s gaze dropped to Taehyung’s hand. His eyes lingered on the silver ring glinting under the streetlight, the very ring that had tied him to Jungkook like shackles.
“You can remove it now,” Seokjin said, low and deliberate. “You’re free.”
Taehyung’s fingers curled into a fist. He stared at the ring as though it mocked him, its grip still burning into his skin.
“Later,” he muttered.
“Why later?” Seokjin pressed. “That ring is nothing but chains.”
Taehyung’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Because it’s the same chain I used to kill him.”
Before Seokjin could reply, headlights washed over them, and a bus rolled to a stop.
Seokjin’s gaze lingered on him. His voice dropped, heavier than the night. “Jungkook won’t die.”
The words froze Taehyung. His head snapped up, eyes wide, the first crack in his numbness showing.
“You don’t know that,” Taehyung hissed, his voice shaking. “That poison... it was too strong. I felt it burn on my lips. I saw his throat tighten. No one survives that. Not him.”
Seokjin shoved his hands into his pockets, unmoved. "He can."
The words struck like stone, final and unyielding. Taehyung’s mind reeled, but he was too exhausted to chase the thought.
The bus hissed to a stop. Its doors creaked open. Seokjin moved without asking, lifting Taehyung’s bag and carrying it to the helper, who placed it into the compartment below.
Taehyung, holding Gyubin in his arms, stepped inside. The boy stirred, mumbling softly in his sleep, but didn’t wake. Taehyung sat near the window, pulling a thin blanket over him, tucking him close against his chest.
Seokjin remained outside, staring through the glass. Taehyung raised his head, their eyes locking. For a moment, neither moved. Then Seokjin’s jaw clenched hard enough to show the war he wasn’t voicing and he looked away.
The bus lurched forward. Taehyung exhaled, the sound slow, mechanical. His eyes dropped back to the silver ring glinting faintly in the dim light. His thumb brushed over the smooth surface once, twice.
A shackle. A weapon. A memory.
And still, he couldn’t take it off.
.
.
.
The room was heavy, suffocating in its silence. Jungkook lay on the edge of the bed, one arm bandaged, the other resting loosely at his side. His chest rose and fell in slow, even pulls, each breath deliberate, measured.
His dark eyes opened just enough to scan the room, taking in the team of doctors with a gaze that made them falter, hands hovering over instruments as if even their movements could provoke him.
The doctors worked quietly, almost reverently, their voices reduced to the softest whispers.
Gloves slid over skin, thermometers clicked, and IV dripped, but all motion felt weighted, controlled, subdued.
They were professionals, but the air itself reminded them they were in the presence of someone who could dismantle their confidence with a single glance.
Jungkook’s eyes lingered on a young doctor adjusting a syringe, unblinking, unflinching. The faint rise of his lips suggested amusement, but it wasn’t a smile.
Despite the poison coursing through his veins, despite the tight bandages on his arm, Jungkook remained utterly composed.
One of the older doctors hesitated, clearing his throat to speak, but Jungkook’s gaze fell on him. Not with anger, not with reproach, just calm observation, sharp and chilling. The older man swallowed, voice caught in his throat, and let the moment pass.
The youngest doctor’s hands shook as he adjusted the IV drip. Jungkook’s eyes followed every movement slowly, deliberately, making the doctor acutely aware of his own trembling.
Even as sweat beaded on his forehead and the poison burned through his veins, he remained composed, unyielding. He wasn’t struggling; he wasn’t weak. He simply observed, evaluated, as if the poison were an insignificant obstacle, something to endure because it was expected of others, not him.
The door clicked open.
Seokjin stepped inside, hands buried in his pockets, face unreadable. The doctors around Jungkook stiffened slightly, but said nothing their attention fixed on the slow drip, the faint beeps of the monitors.
“How is he?” Seokjin asked flatly, not looking at Jungkook yet.
One of the doctors spoke carefully. “The antidote was already present in his bloodstream before the toxin spread fully. That’s why he didn’t collapse instantly. Still… it was potent. His nervous system took damage, but we’ve managed to contain it. He’s stable now.”
Seokjin’s gaze flicked toward Jungkook’s arm. He moved closer, his fingers brushing lightly over the bandage on Jungkook's arm that was caused by a bullet “It’s healing,” he murmured, almost to himself.
Seokjin’s jaw clenched. “You knew he was going to do it. You knew he came to you with poison.”
“Of course,” Jungkook said smoothly, eyes shifting toward him now. The words were calm, effortless. “You told me.”
The air between them thickened, every word landing like glass shattering.
“Still you let him do it,” Seokjin said slowly, as if trying to fit the pieces together.
Jungkook let out a faint breath, his lips curling faintly. “I let him believe he’d won.”
Seokjin’s frown deepened. “Why?”
Jungkook’s gaze turned distant, though his tone stayed steady.
“Because it’s fascinating, isn’t it? The boy who couldn’t even crush a fly, the one who trembled at shadows…
finally baring his fangs at me. Finally daring to lift his hand against me.
” His voice dropped lower, silken, measured.
“Do you know how rare that is? To watch someone who was all softness and obedience… choose venom instead?”
Seokjin’s hands tightened in his pockets. “And if it killed you?”
At that, Jungkook’s eyes opened fully, fixing on him with unnerving clarity. There was no humor left, no warmth only that cutting stillness. “Nothing kills me unless I permit it. Not poison. Not betrayal. Not him.”
The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating.
“You freed him,” Seokjin muttered finally, his tone heavy. “You told him to run. Why?”
Jungkook tilted his head back against the pillow, his voice dropping into a whisper edged with something unreadable.
“Because I wanted to see his eyes when he thought he’d finally escaped. That was my gift to him the taste of victory. The kind that burns as sweet as it does bitter.” He paused, the corners of his mouth twitching upward. “He thinks it was his choice. But it was mine. All of it.”
The room went quiet again, the monitors ticking steadily. The doctors dared not speak.
Jungkook’s lips curved faintly. “So,” he said, voice even, deliberate, “you can never betray me after all.”
The words hung in the air like smoke.
“You’re the only family I have left,” he said at last. His tone carried no plea, only fact. “Blood doesn’t give me a choice.”
Jungkook’s eyes narrowed slightly, studying him. “Don’t you like him?” The question was asked with the same detached interest one might use discussing business but there was weight under it, a subtle tightening around his eyes that didn’t go unnoticed.
Seokjin’s jaw tightened. He held Jungkook’s gaze, then nodded once. “I do.” The honesty carried the weight of a man too old to waste words. “But I wouldn’t kill you for it.”
A quiet hum left Jungkook’s throat. He leaned back, lashes lowering, the faint curl of his lips still there. “That’s what I thought.”
Silence pressed between them.
Seokjin looked down at his brother’s bandaged arm, at the faint tremor that passed and stilled again in Jungkook’s fingers.
“Do you think he’ll come back?” he asked finally. His tone was low, even, as though they were discussing weather instead of betrayal and poison.
Jungkook closed his eyes, exhaling slow and steady. The room seemed to wait for his answer. Then, with a calmness that bordered on chilling, he said, “It doesn’t matter.” His lips curved again. “Whether he returns or not. Freedom was just another illusion I allowed him.”
Seokjin said nothing. His hand slipped from Jungkook’s shoulder, falling back to his side.
The doctors kept working in silence, the air heavy with the unspoken truth: whether Taehyung came back or not would remain a mystery one only Jungkook seemed certain about, even if he never said it aloud.
.
.
.
It was 7 a.m. when the bus finally came to a halt.
Taehyung exhaled slowly, his body aching, mind foggy. He reached over and gently shook Gyubin awake. The boy groaned, half-asleep, clinging tighter to him as if refusing to leave the warmth of his arms.
“Come on, Binnie,” Taehyung whispered, hoisting him up. His own legs felt like stone as he stepped off the bus.
He had promised himself he’d stay at his aunt’s for a week in Busan, just until he found a small place to rent. Something quiet, hidden away. Somewhere far from the chaos he had left behind.
The house was only a five-minute walk from the bus stop, yet every step dragged heavier than the last. His eyes stung, not from tears but from the sleepless night, hours spent staring into the dark, numb, replaying choices he could never undo.
Beside him, Gyubin trudged along, his little hand tucked into Taehyung’s. But when they reached the narrow lane where the house stood, something shifted. The boy rubbed his eyes, blinking at the unfamiliar street.
No more towering gates.
No guards at every turn.
No sprawling garden with peonies.
No daisy kitten meowing at his feet.
The realization struck him like lightning. He yanked his hand free from Taehyung’s grip, stumbling back.
Taehyung frowned. “What’s wrong, Binnie?”
Gyubin’s lips trembled, his small chest heaving as tears welled in his eyes. “A-Appa…” His voice cracked. “Wh-Where is… where is he…?”
Taehyung blinked, exhaustion pressing down on him harder. “Who, Binnie?”
The boy’s face crumpled. His voice was barely a whisper. “M-Mr. Jeon…”
And just like that, Taehyung’s stomach dropped. A cold weight settled deep in him, one he couldn’t shake.
The front door creaked open. His aunt appeared, surprise flashing across her face before it melted into a smile. “Taehyung-ah…”
He forced a weak smile, bowing his head slightly. He reached for Gyubin’s hand, but the boy jerked away, shaking his head furiously.
“He—He didn’t say g-goodbye,” Gyubin sobbed, stepping back, tears spilling hot down his cheeks. “He didn’t… he didn’t…”
Taehyung froze, throat tight, heart aching in ways he didn’t have words for. His aunt’s smile faltered as she looked from Taehyung’s hollow face to the crying child clinging to a ghost that wasn’t there.
Gyubin shook his head harder, as though refusing to believe. His tears streamed fast, breaths sharp and broken.
And then, before Taehyung could stop him, the boy sank down onto the cold stone steps of the porch, burying his face in his tiny hands.
“Y-You said…” His voice cracked, words tumbling out like shards. “…you said we w-would stay there f-forever.”
Taehyung blinked hard, lashes wet. He had never heard his son sound so broken.
“Y-You said Daisy would row old with me,” Gyubin whispered, shoulders shaking. “You said I c-could play in the big garden every day…” His voice broke, lips trembling as more sobs ripped out of him.
Taehyung’s chest constricted painfully, but Gyubin wasn’t done.
“He pr-promised, Appa… He promised h-he’d play with me f-forever. He said--he said he’d teach me to throw the ball b-better. He said I was his little man…” His words collapsed into sobs. “But he-he didn’t even s-say goodbye.
His small fists rubbed furiously at his eyes, but the tears kept streaming. “He lied, Appa… You...you lied too.”
The accusation sliced through Taehyung like a blade, quiet, unintentional, but merciless.
He swallowed down the lump in his throat and knelt beside his son. Without hesitation, he wrapped Gyubin up, pulling him against his chest.
Gyubin fought him at first, pounding tiny fists against his shirt. “Wh-Why didn’t he want me anymore? Why didn’t he want us? Was B-Binnie too naughty?” His sobs cracked with every word, raw and breathless. “Why did he let us go…”
The sound of his son’s heartbreak shattered Taehyung.
“Binnie…” Taehyung whispered, kissing his damp hair, “No, baby, no… You’re not naughty. You’re perfect. Stop crying now please?" Taehyung tried... really tried.
But the boy only sobbed harder against his chest, clutching Taehyung’s shirt in betrayal and desperate need all at once.
“I w-want Daisy… I want the garden… I want Mr. Jeon…” His words tumbled out between gasps. “I d-don’t want this house. I d-don’t want anything.”
Taehyung’s arms tightened, his own eyes burning. But he didn’t cry. He couldn’t. All he could do was hold on, while his aunt stood silently, tears brimming in her eyes.
Gyubin’s sobs grew smaller, broken hiccups that shook his whole body.
And in that moment, the world around them blurred away. There was only the sound of a child’s heart shattering.
Taehyung realized it then: in fighting for freedom, he had chained his son to grief.
Gyubin’s love had been so simple, so pure. He believed forever meant forever. He believed in kitten and gardens, in Mr. Jeon’s strong protective hands, in the safety of his father’s words.
But now, that innocence lay splintered in Taehyung’s arms. His son cried not for toys or places but because for the first time, he had learned the cruelest truth.
People could leave.
Even love could lie.
And nothing in this world was heavier than the sound of a child learning that.