[jkwrites-m]

♡ series ♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡ one shot ♡

═══════

updated: 11/19/2025

♡ newest series update: Daddy Kookie (13)

♡ newest one-shot: Jungkook as a Boyfriend - headcanon

♡ jkwritober update: Fearfield Farm

♡ upcoming: Daddy Kookie (14)

♡ wips

═══════

♡ m ♡ she/her ♡ about me ♡ a03 ♡

[jkwrites-m]

describe daddy kookie 14 in 6 pictures 🤩

♡ Daddy Kookie is COMING!!!! 😭so many things have been holding me back lately, but it’s finally getting released- i pinky swear. thank you for being patient with me, ily sm 🫶🫶🫶

♡ here’s a little sneak peek:

[jkwrites-m]

Bound to a hospital bed?! Are you alright sweetheart?! 😲

♡ BYE I REALLY DROPPED THAT SO CASUALLY 😭😭😭

♡ yeahhhh for the last week i’ve been bound to a hospital bed 🫩 they have me in here for testing/healing and unfortunately i basically have to be quarantined bc my immune system is being an asshole rn 💔

♡ but i’ll be okay!!! just stuck and trying not to lose my mind lol. ty for your concern!! i love you sm 🫶🫶

[jkwrites-m]

Hey love. I just read Fearfield farm and i have to say you did great! My heart was beating so fast and I really stopped breathing in some parts. A truly great job! Yk i actually watched a movie a couple months ago with a similar plot but I don't really remember the name of it 🙁

♡ hi friend!! thank you so much!!! 🥹🫶 i’m so glad it got your adrenaline pumping- it was actually SUPER fun to write this one!! i was living for the killings omg 😭

♡ and i totally pulled some slight inspiration from Hell Fest on Netflix! it’s not too bad of a horror movie if you ever wanna watch something with a sort of similar vibe 👀

[jkwrites-m]

do you accept requests?

♡ hi!! yes! i absolutely do accept requests! 🥹🫶

♡ i will say though- it’s taking me a little extra time rn since i’ve kinda been bound to a hospital bed and i’m also trying to catch up on Daddy Kookie 😭

♡ BUT PLEASE!! send your request!! i’d love to read it and see if it’s something i’m able to do 💜

[jkwrites-m]

Fearfield Farm

Pairing: yandere!Jungkook x female reader

Genre: smut, angst, horror

Word Count: 14.k

Summary: Once you enter the maze, the only way out is him.

Warnings: MDNI, Explicit, 18+, DD:DNE smut, angst, horror, haunted attraction setting, stalking, obsession, panic, fear, trauma, psychological horror, gaslighting, emotional manipulation, mental instability, yandere!jungkook, obsessed!jungkook, main character deaths, gore, blood, injury, weapons (knives, objects) murder, kidnapping threat (?), chasing, mentions of police, forceful kissing explicit: kissing, breast play, praise kink, worship!, oral (f. receiving), fingering, unprotected sex, multiple orgasms, masturbation, sexual fantasy

A/N: yeahhh… it’s GRAPHIC 😭 pls proceed with caution. also sorry for being MIA- life is beating my ass rn 😩 eta: Daddy Kookie (14) will be out on thursday (11/20)!

Note: the whole story takes place on halloween night and spans about 2 hours total. the pov switches back and forth during the same moments (jungkook’s pov is bold) showing what each of them was doing at the exact same time

JKWRITOBER ♡ MASTERLIST ♡ a03

═══════

The air tastes like sugar and smoke, and for once, you don’t mind the cold. Your friends move like a storm of noise and color around you, tugging you from game to game, and for a few minutes, everything feels simple, electric, alive.

Fearfield Farm is dressed in its October best: floodlit banners whipping in the wind, strings of mismatched bulbs draped across vendor stalls, foam tombstones leaning at tipsy angles beside hay bales. The air smells like kettle corn and woodsmoke and the faint, metallic tang of fog machine mist. Somewhere to your left, a cheap chainsaw revs and cuts off mid-scream; somewhere to your right, teenagers shriek into laughter and sprint toward the line for the corn maze. You rub your arms and pretend you’re not counting the exit signs.

“Okay, okay, okay-” Jimin bounces in place beside you, clutching a bundle of game tickets in his mittened fist. “First: obliterate Minhyuk at ring toss. Then: group photo. Then: haunted house. THEN-” He points toward the dark rise of the corn field, a grin flashing sharp in the carnival light. “We enter the realm of regret.”

“You say that like you haven’t been planning this since August,” Jennie laughs, brushing her hair behind her ear as she takes your wrist and tugs you forward. “Come on, scaredy-cat. We’ll warm you up with victory.”

“I am plenty warm,” you protest, burrowing deeper into your coat, trying to ignore the way the breeze sneaks under your collar. “And I’m not a scaredy-cat. I simply have a healthy respect for… Halloween.”

“Uh-huh,” Yoongi says, deadpan, hands tucked into his jacket pockets. “A respected scholar of spooky. Put it on your resume.”

“Don’t bully her,” Chae-won chimes in, looping her arm through yours. “We need her steady hands for ring toss domination.”

Minhyuk is already swaggering ahead, scanning the prize wall like he’s about to negotiate a hostage release. “I’m getting the giant stuffed puppy,” he announces. “And when I do, I’m naming it Jimin.”

“You wish,” Jimin scoffs. “Prepare to be publicly humbled.”

You let their banter carry you, warm as a scarf. The line at the ring toss is short, the carny in an orange beanie flipping rings back into a cardboard box with the distracted rhythm of someone thinking about their break. You watch Jimin plant his feet and narrow his eyes at the wobbling bottles, tongue caught between his teeth. He throws- the ring clinks around a neck and slides off. He throws again- it bounces, skitters, falls.

“Conspiracy,” he declares. “These bottles are lubricated.”

“They’re just mocking your small hands,” Yoongi says.

“My hands are beautiful.”

“Small,” Yoongi says, and wins on his first try, lazy and precise.

Chae-won misses and laughs. Jennie misses and pouts. Minhyuk misses and immediately blames the wind, the angle, and “the fraudulent geometry of glass.” You miss too, and the ring makes a neat, damning sound as it kisses the bottle and slips away like a secret. You shake out your fingers, pretend your heart isn’t kicking at your ribs for no reason at all, and try again.

“Wait-” Jennie steps close behind you and steadying-warms her hands over yours. “Looser grip. Breathe.”

You breathe. The ring leaves your fingers, slides through the light, and for a split second balances perfect- the promise of a win- and then it clanks down with a hollow little laugh.

“A tragedy,” Jimin says, clutching his heart.

“Shut up,” you say, but you can’t help laughing, too. The laughter rises in white puffs and drifts away like tiny ghosts.

Behind the stalls, beyond the lights, the corn stands black and tall, frayed tassels combed by the wind. If you glance there too long, the rows seem to rearrange themselves, drawing thin lines of shadow that hint at paths and dead ends. The hand-painted sign at the entrance to the maze leans like a lopsided grin: 

FEARFIELD FARM CORN MAZE - ENTER IF YOU DARE

The letters drip red paint down the plywood, festive as a wound.

You pay for hot chocolate and the paper cup scalds your palm. You’re grateful. Heat has a way of convincing you of safety. While Jimin and Minhyuk argue about whether to try the whack-a-zombie booth, you let your eyes wander, taking in the faces moving through the lights. Couples with matching devil horns. A pack of middle schoolers wrapped in blinking necklaces. A dad in a skeleton hoodie carrying a toddler in a pumpkin hat.

No one is looking at you.

And yet, every hair at the back of your neck is awake.

“Picture!” Chae-won says, rescuing your cup to free your hands. “Before we go get fake murdered.”

The photo booth is an old wooden frame draped with burlap and strung with orange bulbs. A chalkboard propped on a hay bale reads:

TONIGHT’S THEME: “LOST IN THE STALKS.” 

Props spill from a basket: plastic sickles and straw hats and a rubber crow with a peeling beak. Minhyuk immediately jams the straw hat on Yoongi’s head; Yoongi takes it like a cat wearing a bow, expression unchanged.

“Okay, okay, positions,” Jennie says, already angling everyone toward the camera. “Y/N in the middle- main character energy.”

“Main character anxiety,” you mutter, but you sink into the curve of your friends, Chae-won warm at your shoulder, Jimin’s cheek pressed in against yours as he stretches his smile to cartoon size.

“Three, two-” Jennie’s thumb hovers over the button. “Say ‘Fearfield!’”

“Fearfield!” everyone choruses.

The shutter clicks.

You smile at the printed strip while it cools in your fingers. In the background, between two hanging ears of dried corn, a shape slips behind a post. You blink, and it’s nothing at all- just the rust-brown smudge of old wood, the trick of shadows. You don’t mention it. You tell yourself not to be ridiculous. You tuck the photos into your coat pocket like a talisman.

“Stick together,” Chae-won says as you reach the entrance. “We’re not losing Y/N to barn ghosts.”

“Barn ghosts wish,” Yoongi says.

Inside is all dark wood and cheap rot smell and animatronics that snap alive with pre-programmed menace. A skeleton farmer jerks a scythe when you pass; a projected face moans from the surface of a fake mirror. You squeal exactly once- when a hand darts from an opening in the wall- and Jimin makes a delighted, treacherous note of it.

“I will remember this forever,” he whispers in your ear. “For leverage.”

“Dead to me,” you say, and grab his sleeve anyway when the lights flicker.

Halfway through, the path narrows to a corridor of hanging burlap. The cloth brushes your cheeks, your forehead, soft as a whisper. You can hear other groups somewhere ahead and behind, voices deformed by the fabric and the acoustics into something not-quite-human. Your friends keep up a running commentary to prove they’re not scared: Minhyuk loudly critiquing the prop choices, Jennie threatening to sue the mannequin that leaned too close, Chae-won promising to fistfight the next boo actor. Yoongi says nothing and somehow that’s funnier than jokes.

As you push through the last swath of burlap, something brushes your shoulder- just a feather-light touch, nothing, a stray thread- except you’re almost sure the cloth is cut short there, and the touch is warmer than fabric. You whip around, ready to glare, but there’s no one at your back. The group behind is still tangled in the curtains. The corridor ahead yawns empty.

“Hey.” Chae-won’s hand is on your elbow. “You good?”

“Yeah,” you say. Your voice sounds like you left it somewhere and borrowed a replacement. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

You are not fine. You are fine. You are-

The exit tips you back out into the open night like a held breath finally released. The cold kisses your cheeks and you could moan at the relief. Jimin bows deeply to the pig-mask man on his break. “Exquisite hospitality,” he says. “Five stars on HauntAdvisor.”

“Fried dough,” Jennie reminds, grandly holding out her hands.

“Later, later,” Minhyuk says, eyes bright, pointing his chin toward the field. “Maze time, babies.”

You look at the corn. It looks back.

The path to the maze entrance is lined with tiki torches that smoke and sputter, their flames thinning into the dark. At the head of the path, another painted sign warns: 

NO RUNNING. NO CUTTING THROUGH THE STALKS. NO TOUCHING ACTORS. NO CRYING (JUST KIDDING… OR ARE WE?). 

Someone has doodled devil horns on the smiling cartoon corn cob in the corner. You wipe your thumb over your stamped skull until it smudges, as if a blurred outline might be a better kind of protection.

“Last chance to chicken out,” Yoongi says mildly.

You take a sip of your hot chocolate and discover it’s gone, the cup empty and feather-light, as if you’ve been drinking it mechanically for minutes without tasting it. You toss it in the barrel beside the sign and square your shoulders.

“I’m going in,” you say. “But if something grabs me, I will scream and I will punch.”

“That’s the spirit,” Jennie says approvingly.

“Group rules,” Jimin announces. “Stay in pairs. Communicate your fear with jazz hands if you lose your voice.”

Minhyuk wiggles his fingers in your face. “Like this?”

“Die,” you tell him sweetly.

The staffer at the entrance in a moth-eaten cloak scans your tickets and leans in conspiratorially. “If you hear whispering,” she says, “follow it. It might be your friends. It might not.”

“Great,” you say flatly. “Fantastic.”

She grins, unbothered, and points you toward the mouth of the field. The stalks tower, rattling softly. The first few feet are lit by path lights shoved into the soil, their beams swallowed by the rows ahead. Somewhere in there, a whistle blows- one long note that could signal anything: start, warning, surrender. You imagine the maze as a living thing: arteries of path, a beating heart in the center that no one reaches.

Behind you, someone passes close enough that your hair lifts. You turn automatically, a polite smile ready, and there’s only space and the echo of bootsteps fading toward the vendor stalls. You think you see a shoulder dip behind a banner, the briefest edge of a black hoodie disappearing like a thought you almost had. The banner flutters and settles. The wind makes the corn speak in a language you’re not supposed to know.

“Y/N,” Jennie calls, her voice already sounding distant in the change of acoustics. “You coming?”

“I’m coming,” you say.

Your friends bunch up at the threshold- five silhouettes shifting in the torchlight, laughter bubbling, fear catching at the edges like static. You step into the maze with them, the earth soft under your shoes, the walls of stalks closing in on either side. The lights behind you thin and shrink and then there’s only the moon and the tangled crosshatch of corn against the sky, like a net flung over the stars.

You don’t see him. No one does.

But somewhere behind you, between the rows where the path kinks and forks, where the mud keeps a careful record of every footfall, a pair of eyes has been on you since the parking lot. They never lost you in the crowd. They didn’t even try.

You pull your coat tighter and keep walking. The maze accepts you. The night keeps its secrets.

═══════

“Pairs,” Jimin declares, bouncing on his toes as the path splits immediately into three tight corridors of corn. “But by ‘pairs’ I obviously mean I’m beating Minhyuk in a footrace to the center. Ready, set-”

“Do not-” the cloaked staffer at the entrance starts, but Jimin is already gone, laughter flaring like a fuse.

“-go!” Minhyuk shouts, blasting after him. “No running, my ass!”

“Jimin! Minhyuk!” Jennie yells, scandal and delight braided together. “You’re going to get us kicked out!”

From somewhere ahead: Jimin’s voice, triumphant and thin with distance. “You’ll never catch me alive!”

“Not the point!” Jennie cups her hands to her mouth. “Come back!”

“They’ll be fine,” Yoongi says, not sounding particularly invested. He stares down the center path as if it personally offended him. “I’m taking this way.”

“You can’t just-” you begin.

He already has. Yoongi slides into the dark like a shadow that remembered it had someplace better to be.

“Yoongi!” Chae-won calls after him. “At least text your location!”

He lifts a hand without turning around. It could be a wave. It could be a promise. It could be nothing.

“Great,” Jennie mutters, rolling her eyes. “One pair of idiots and one feral cat.”

Chae-won bumps your shoulder. “Guess the girls are sticking with you.”

“I’m thrilled,” you say, and you are- really, you are- but your voice comes out thin, frosted around the edges. The path your trio takes angles left and then left again, the corn whispering close enough to brush your sleeves. Little path lights blink irregularly, as if the maze is powered by a dying heartbeat.

“We’re fine,” Jennie says, and laces her fingers through yours for punctuation. “It’s all actors and corn and aggressive signage.”

“‘No crying- just kidding… or are we?’” Chae-won quotes, deeply unimpressed. “Peak corporate menace.”

“Exactly,” Jennie says. “We are not in danger.”

“Right,” you say. You squeeze her hand. “Totally not in danger.”

A rustle skitters to your right- soft, small, like a rabbit bolting through the stalks. You picture a rabbit. You decide it was a rabbit. You don’t mention that you didn’t hear the thump of paws on dirt.

“Okay,” Jennie says, bright for you, “game plan: we go slow, we stay loud, we find the center, we get a selfie, we use the safe word-”

“There’s a safe word?” you ask.

“‘Funnel cake,’” Chae-won says solemnly. “If anyone screams ‘funnel cake,’ it means I want funnel cake.”

“That’s not how safe words work,” you say, but you laugh despite yourself.

“Details.” she says. “Left or right?”

The fork is a joke on your nerves: both routes look identical, both hemmed by walls of dry, rattling corn that smell faintly sweet and dusty. A path light at the right-hand fork buzzes and flickers; the left-hand one holds steady like a dare.

“Left,” Jennie says, and pulls you that way with the surety of a girl who believes the world will meet her halfway. You let her. You try not to check behind you. You do it anyway.

No one is there.

“Y/N?” Chae-won’s voice is gentle. “Head thoughts?”

“I’m good,” you say. “I’m just… cataloging.”

“Catalog harder in the direction we’re walking,” Jennie says.

You go. The maze tightens. Overhead, the sky narrows to a ribbon between the tips of the stalks. Laughter from other groups threads through the rows, elastic and weird, stretched out by distance and corn into a shape it didn’t have when it left their mouths. A whistle blows somewhere deep in the field, the single tone long and thin. It could be an actor’s cue. It could be a signal for nothing.

“Jimin!” Jennie tries again, pitching her voice high and sweet like a lure. “Minhyuk, this is your conscience! Come back!”

“You don’t sound like his conscience,” Chae-won says.

“I sound like a better conscience than he deserves.”

A scarecrow leans on a pole at the next bend. Its shirt is flannel, its head a burlap sack stitched with a crooked grin. Straw leaks from its sleeves like unlucky hair. You brace for it to jump, to scream, to do anything theatrical.

It does not move.

“See?” Jennie says, stepping boldly past and wagging a finger at its stitched smile. “You stay put.”

The scarecrow stays put. A moth wings itself against the nearest path light, tapping its glass with frantic persistence. Tap. Tap. Tap.

“You okay?” Chae-won asks you under her breath.

“I’m fine,” you say, and you almost mean it. “Just… my heart’s on a treadmill, you know?”

“Same,” she says cheerfully. “Adrenaline makes my hair shiny.”

“Scientifically accurate,” Jennie says. “Fear is the new conditioner.”

Another fork. A sign planted at the base of the post read-

THIS WAY (?) 

with an arrow that points nowhere useful. Jennie groans. “I hate whimsy,” she says, and picks the right-hand path this time out of spite. You follow, because you always follow Jennie when she sounds that sure. Chae-won swings your joined hands as if the motion itself can shoo away anxiety.

Rustle. Rustle. The sound is closer now, and this time it’s on both sides. You tell yourself the maze is full of people, that running parallel through the rows is exactly what other groups would be doing. You picture teenagers with glow sticks, an overconfident dad in a vampire cape, an employee in a black hoodie checking on a stuck fog machine.

“Y/N,” Jennie says, half-teasing, half-testing, “scale of one to ten?”

“Like a… four?” you lie.

“Bold,” Chae-won says. “I’m a five-point-affectionate-for-funnel-cake.”

“You can’t just append ‘for funnel cake’ to every sentence,” Jennie says.

“I can and I will.”

“Group selfie,” Jennie announces, as if photos are talismans. She holds her phone up, backs toward the corner where the rows meet, and grins. “Say ‘Fearfield!’”

“Fearfield,” you and Chae-won chant obediently, and the shutter clicks with a soft sound that seems suddenly too loud.

Jennie checks the photo. “Cute,” she says, satisfied. “I look amazing.”

“Obviously,” Chae-won says, peering. “Y/N’s eyes are huge. Adorable.”

“They’re normal,” you protest, and then- because you can’t quite stop yourself- “Do you see anything behind us?”

Jennie squints at the tiny picture. “Just corn and that dumb sign,” she says. “And my good side.”

“Let me see,” Chae-won says, but a noise interrupts: a distant scream that’s cut off too sharply to be a laugh, too ragged to be staged. The three of you freeze, your hands tightening instinctively.

“Okay,” Jennie says after a beat, voice clipped into briskness, “actors. It’s actors.”

“Right,” you echo, because you’ve come here to be scared and you’ve paid for it and this is the contract: you scream, they scream, everyone goes home. “Actors.”

A second scream answers the first, farther away. It sounds rehearsed somehow- too even, too timed- like something played through a speaker instead of torn from a throat. The sound shivers down the rows, and you feel your body try to move toward it and away from it at the same time.

“Left,” Jennie decides, too brightly. “We keep going left. Left leads out.”

“Proof?” Chae-won asks.

“Trust.”

You follow- left, left again- and the maze obliges with a long corridor that narrows until your shoulders brush the stalks. Something coarse snags your sleeve and you hiss, twisting to free yourself. Chae-won’s hand tightens around yours. Jennie glances back and gives you a look that says I see you without making a big deal of it.

Footsteps patter on the other side of the wall. Quick, light, then stopping right opposite you. You hold your breath, straining to hear the rustle that would mean whoever-it-is continued on. The air thins. The path light ahead buzzes, lowers, brightens. The footsteps don’t move.

“Hey,” Jennie calls, casual, friendly. “You good over there?”

Silence. Then the slightest scrape, like someone adjusting their stance.

“Probably actors,” Chae-won whispers, but her fingers are cold where they lace with yours.

“Hello?” you try, and you hate how small your voice sounds. 

A long beat. Then a whisper you can’t make out. It rides the corn like a breath. It could be your name. It could be nothing at all, just wind shaped by charred tassels.

“Okay,” Jennie says, decisively fake-jovial. “We’re moving.”

You move. The corridor kinks and opens into a little clearing where the corn is pulled back and the dirt is stamped with a dozen crisscrossing footprints. A plywood placard stands on two stakes: 

THIS WAY TO THE HEART

a red arrow pointing deeper in. Someone has scrawled beneath it in sharpie: 

LOL NO.

Jennie snorts. “Relatable.”

“Look,” Chae-won says, crouching. “Jimin’s shoe print.”

“You can tell that from-”

“It’s obnoxiously small and has a star on the heel,” she says. “I know his shoes.”

“Follow the star,” Jennie says, and leads on.

The star prints head straight, then veer. You tail them past a tangle of stalks that lean into the path like eavesdroppers. Somewhere behind you, a whistle blows again- one long note, then two quick ones close together. It pricks your skin without meaning anything you can name.

“Jimin!” Jennie calls. “If you can hear me, stop being a feral dog and answer!”

From far off: “I AM A MAJESTIC DOG,” Jimin’s voice yodels back, and the relief bubbles out of you as laughter.

“Idiots,” Chae-won says fondly.

“Beloved idiots,” Jennie agrees.

Another fork. The left-hand path is muddy, churned up by what looks like a lot of traffic. The right-hand one is crisp, the dirt smooth, the corn undisturbed. Jennie eyes the mud and sighs. “Okay, team. Left means we’re probably on the right track.”

“Or we’re joining the queue to our doom,” Chae-won offers.

“Optimism,” Jennie says, and splashes forward.

You step after her and your shoe sinks, the mud sucking at your heel with a childish, obscene sound. You yank free, wobbling, and something crunches under your other foot- dry and brittle. You glance down and see a snapped corn stalk, its inside pale and frayed like tendon. You tell yourself none of that means anything.

“Ten out of ten for ambience,” Chae-won says. “Minus one for mud.”

“Minus two,” Jennie says, shaking her sneaker like a wet dog. “These are new.”

“Funnel cake,” you murmur, not quite a joke, and they both squeeze your hands.

Voices drift close: not your boys, not anyone you recognize. A cluster of people passes on the other side of the wall, their shadow-shapes bumping and reforming through the gaps. Someone giggles in a way that sounds like they’re trying to convince themselves they’re having fun. An actor moans somewhere near them, a theatrical zombie groan, and your shoulders drop a fraction- there, see, it’s fine-

-and then something else cuts across the moan, sharp as a snapped string: a scream that claws and breaks.

Jennie stops so fast you bump her back. Chae-won’s nails dig crescents into your palm.

“Actors,” Jennie says. It’s the same word. It holds less.

“Totally,” you say. Your tongue is thick with sugar and smoke. “Totally actors.”

A path light ahead dies. The darkness it leaves behind isn’t complete- the moon paints everything with a faint, bone-colored wash- but the sudden lack of the small, civilized glow feels like a promise withdrawn.

“Okay,” Jennie says, rallying. “We’re going to take- this turn.” She picks right this time, the crisp path with undisturbed dirt, as if contrary decisions might trick the maze into revealing its pattern. You go with her. You keep your breathing even. You keep a lid on the way your pulse hammers your throat.

“Y/N,” Jennie says quietly, not looking back, “do you want to hold both our hands?”

“Yes,” you say, and it’s the easiest truth of the night.

Chae-won threads her free arm through your elbow until you’re a three-person knot. You walk like that, a little awkward, a little brave. Your boots scuff, your breath ghosts, the corn talks to itself. Somewhere else, a voice you think is Jimin’s says your name and then dissolves into echoes, and you don’t know if it was real or your brain rifling through what would make you move faster.

“You’re okay,” Jennie says. “We’re okay.”

“We’re okay,” Chae-won echoes, and then she yelps and jumps back because a scare actor in a cracked porcelain mask leans into the path with a jerky animatronic hiss.

“Jesus!” Jennie barks, the relief in her anger. “Boundaries!”

The actor does his little programmed jolt and retreats into the corn, the mask tilting with an unfunny elegance. You make yourself laugh, shaky and grateful. See? Actors. You’re fine. You’re-

A voice rides the rows, closer than close, low enough that you could pretend it’s only a thought. “This way.”

You stop. Jennie stops. Chae-won stops. The corn on your left breathes like a curtain someone just walked past. You can’t see anyone. You don’t move.

“Actors,” Jennie says again, weakest yet.

“Funnel cake,” Chae-won whispers.

You cling to them, and the maze clings to you back.

From somewhere deeper in, where the paths cross like veins, there’s a scream that doesn’t sound like it’s performing for anyone. It rips through the threads of laughter like a tear in fabric. The bad feeling you’ve been politely ignoring lifts its head and asks, very calmly, what if.

Jennie swallows. “Left,” she says, voice barely above a breath. “We keep going left.”

You nod, even though your throat is tight. You nod, because moving feels like the only spell you have. You turn- and behind you, the corn rustles once, as if something has finally decided.

You don’t look back. Left, you tell yourself. Left leads out. Left is logic. Left is a promise you made to your own fear and you’re not ready to hear the terms.

“Jimin?” Jennie calls again, lighter than she feels. “Minhyuk? Sound off!”

The maze breathes. Corn rubs against corn; the sound is dry and private, like the whisper of heavy skirts in an empty hall. You push into the next turn, boots sucking at the mud, the air cooler now that the path lights are spaced farther apart. Your breath steams and dissipates. It’s harder to pretend you’re warm.

“Left again,” Chae-won says, a steady metronome at your side. She squeezes your hand once. “We’ll run into them soon.”

“You say that like you’ve mapped this place,” Jennie mutters, but she still angles left, shoulders tight, chin high.

Movement flickers to your right. A body’s width within the rows, just far enough that the path wouldn’t catch them. Black fabric. The pale triangle of a cheek. The tilt of a head, turned toward you.

You stop dead. Jennie bumps into you. Chae-won swears soft.

“What?” Jennie asks, following your gaze.

There’s only corn. Moonlight limns the leaves in a thin ghost-glow.

“I thought-” you begin, but it feels childish to finish the sentence. I saw someone. It’s not unusual; it’s a maze. People are everywhere. That’s the point.

“Actors,” Jennie says automatically, and then gentler: “Probably just another group cutting through. Staff would yell if it really mattered.”

“Right,” you say, and you make yourself take a step. Another. Your ankles ache like the ground’s an inclined treadmill, pulling you forward and back at once.

“Jimin!” Jennie hollers, relief bright in her voice. “Stop being annoying and answer me!”

You freeze. Chae-won’s hand tightens painfully. Jennie breathes in loud enough to hear and holds it for a count of three before letting it go in a careful line.

“He’s messing with us,” she says. “He thinks he’s funny.”

“Yeah, he thinks he’s funny,” Chae-won agrees automatically, as if saying it together will make it true.

You listen for him. The maze gives you rustle and wind, a distant squeal you tell yourself is a delighted stranger, a farther-off clatter that could be a prop reset, a fog machine wheeze, the thin ring of a path light buzzing back to life somewhere out of sight. You don’t hear Jimin again.

“Left,” Jennie says, but the word sounds like she borrowed it from someone braver.

You push on. The next bend opens into a narrow chute hemmed with stalks that have been bent across the top, their tassels making a ragged arch overhead. Little flags dangle from twine- triangles of cheap felt that brush your hair as you pass. Each flag has a letter stenciled in red. 

H-E-A-R-T. 

Then a blank. Then a smudged one you can’t read. Then a reversed R. Someone has swapped them, jumbled them, laughed with their friends while they did it.

“Cute,” Jennie says flatly.

Movement again- left this time, a clean, human glide parallel to your steps. Not a lurch. Not a jump. A walk. The pace of someone who doesn’t feel the need to hurry. Your scalp crawls.

“Hello?” you call, because politeness is a reflex. “We’re- hi, sorry, we’re on this side.”

The motion stills. If you’d blinked, you might have missed the way the leaves shut over the gap like a mouth.

“Keep moving,” Jennie murmurs, and the rhythm of her words presses you forward.

“Jimin!” Chae-won snaps, louder now, annoyed because she’s scared. “Stop playing. Answer.”

Silence answers back.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket, and you all jump. You fumble it out with stiff fingers. Jimin lights the screen with a text:

Jiminie💛: y/n

Jennie leans over your shoulder. “Huh?,” she says, with a tuned brows. 

“Call him,” Chae-won says.

You hit the green button. The ring sounds tinny and wrong inside the maze, a domestic noise transplanted into a place that doesn’t want it. It rings once. Twice. Three times. On the fourth, the call clicks live.

“Jimin?” you say, too fast. “We’re- left turns. Maybe near the center? Are you with Minhyuk? If you’re messing with us, I’m going to-”

Static hisses. It’s brief and hot, like breath across the microphone. Then: a noise. Not static- movement. A shoe scuff. Rustling. Breathing that’s too close to the mic.

“Jimin?” Jennie says, her tone sharp. “Answer us. Where are you?”

The next sound doesn’t belong. It’s muffled- like someone’s hand covering the phone- and underneath, a strained voice you barely recognize as his. Your name breaks through, hoarse, panicked, cut off halfway.

“Y/N-”

Something hits the ground. A grunt follows- low, quick. The line fills with the sound of movement: corn bending, a wet thud, the soft drag of something heavy through dirt.

Jennie’s eyes go wide. “What- was that-?”

You can barely breathe. “Jimin?”

No answer- just the sound of the phone shifting again, the mic brushing fabric, and what might be a choked sound- pain, fear, or both. Then, in a voice so faint you almost doubt it- faint words that disintegrate in static. The call ends.

“Service,” Jennie says quickly, too quickly. “It’s just bad service. It has to be.”

“Try again,” Chae-won says, her voice a whisper now. “Try Minhyuk.”

You do. Minhyuk’s call rings and rings and rings. Voicemail picks up with his usual cheerful bravado. You hang up before he can call you a “little goblin,” because you might actually cry if you hear his joke voice right now.

“He’ll pick up in a second,” Jennie says, already moving. “He’ll call back and tell us we’re slow.”

You shove the phone into your pocket with hands that won’t stop trembling and catch another sliver of motion- closer now, a fraction of a shoulder, the curve of a jaw, hair falling forward as a head tilts. The hoodie is ordinary. The posture is ordinary. The attention is not.

You freeze.

Whoever it is doesn’t move. Doesn’t hide. Doesn’t run. Just stands there- watching.

You swallow. “Hi,” you try again, because some part of you insists that if you keep the script normal, the night will remain normal. “We, um- if you see two idiots racing? Can you- tell them to answer their phones?”

For a heartbeat, you think the stalks lean inward, listening. Then the space where eyes would be- a small, neat rectangle inside the rows- goes dark. Not gone. Withdrawn. Like a blink.

“We’re not alone,” you whisper.

“We’re never alone in a haunted corn maze,” Jennie says, pragmatic, strained. “That’s literally the point.”

“Right,” you say. “Right.”

The next corner is a hairpin, a tight little switchback that makes your trio compress and then unfurl. You reach out to steady yourself on the inner post and your fingers come away dusty, a chalky smear you rub against your coat without thinking. The ground dips. Water glints in a shallow rut where path lights reflect in a trembling line. Your shoe slides. Jennie grabs your elbow; Chae-won steadies your shoulder.

“We’re okay,” Jennie says again, like she’s been taught to say it until it’s true.

You hear footsteps ahead- running, breathless, fast. Your heart leaps into your mouth. “Jimin!” you call.

The running stops. Dead.

A wet sound follows, not anything that dramatic- just the squelch of someone’s shoe twisting out of mud. Then nothing.

“Jimin,” Jennie tries, her voice turned down too low, as if she’s afraid of the answer. “This isn’t funny.”

Silence. The flags above you stir. The path light to your left hums and flickers and steadies and goes dim again, like it’s losing interest.

“Left,” you say, because you don’t know what else you have.

“Left,” Jennie echoes, and you turn.

The corridor you choose is narrower, the stalks leaning in like nosy neighbors. The corn smell is thicker here- sweet and green and faintly rotten underneath, like something that was supposed to be harvested and wasn’t. Empty zip ties dangle from a post, edges sharp where props used to be. The breath you take catches on something invisible.

“Do you hear that?” Chae-won whispers.

“Hear what?” Jennie asks too fast.

You listen. Not screams. Not actors. Not laughter. A thread of sound, high and metallic, like wind in wire. It’s steady. It’s very thin. It could be anything. You decide it is a loose sign somewhere. You decide it is not a phone vibrating on vibrate in someone’s pocket inches from your path. You decide all kinds of things.

Your phone buzzes again- three quick haptic taps- and this time the screen flashes:

Location shared: Jimin 📍 

-with a little blue dot skittering on a cartoon map that refuses to load fully. The dot pulses at the edge of your screen and then drifts, uncertain, like a boat with its anchor cut.

“He shared his location,” you say, a weird little laugh hitching off the end of your words. “He’s- he’s trying.”

“Tap it,” Jennie says, crowding your shoulder. The map zooms. Blue dot. Gray nothing. A street name that doesn’t belong in a field. The app thinks you’re at an address that could be the farm entrance. Or not. The dot jumps, stutters, blinks out, pops back an inch to the right.

“Useless,” Jennie mutters, but she turns her head like a compass anyway, aligning the blue dot with the direction her body wants to go. “Okay. This way.”

You follow. The corridor kinks and kinks again. The rustle beside you returns and keeps pace. It’s almost companionable now, as if whoever is there has decided to walk with you rather than ahead. You think: if I stop, will they stop. You think: if I run, will they run.

You stop.

The rustle stops.

“Hello,” you say to the corn, and you want to laugh at yourself and you can’t. “Do you- do you work here?”

Silence, patient as a hand on a knee.

“Sir?” Jennie tries, bland politeness as armor. “If you’re staff and we’re doing something wrong, please tell us.”

A soft shift. A breath you can’t hear but feel, the way you feel a room when someone has just entered it. Then the smallest sound, like a fingertip brushing a leaf.

“Move,” Chae-won whispers, and you do. You move because staying feels like an invitation you don’t understand.

The corridor spills into a wider space- another clearing stamped with footprints, the dirt churned to a dark soup. There’s a bench here, painted red and black, its slats sticky with dried something that’s almost certainly paint. A plywood cutout grins beside it: a cartoon scarecrow offering a jagged heart. On the bench, someone has left a paper cup like yours, a smear of chocolate along the rim.

Jennie calls again, softer now. “Jimin. Come on. Game over.”

Nothing.

“Okay,” she says, decision hardening in her face, “we’re pinging Minhyuk again, then we’re doubling back to the entrance and flagging staff, because-”

Your phone lights before she finishes, the screen bright in your palm. Incoming call: Jimin.

You answer on the first ring. “Jimin? Hey-”

At first, only breathing. Not panicked. Not running. Just there. Present. Close enough to the microphone that for a second you think he’s joking, holding his phone to his mouth to be dramatic.

“Jimin,” you say, and you hate how it sounds like you’re begging.

Your name comes through at last, thin and cracked, barely a whisper. It’s Jimin’s voice- but softer than you’ve ever heard it, like the air itself is trying to pull the sound away. You almost cry.

“Where are you?” Jennie demands, leaning into your shoulder to crowd the phone’s tiny speaker. “I’m going to strangle you with your lanyard.”

Static swirls- a thin, papery sound like fingers on wheat. Then, very faint, a voice you don’t know, low and ordinary, says something near the phone that doesn’t seem meant for you, just… said. You can’t catch the words. A second voice answers. Yours? No. No, not yours. A guy, breathless, maybe not any of you. The call fizzles and drops.

“Hey!” Jennie barks at your blank screen, because rage is a safer room than fear.

You don’t realize you’ve started moving until you’re halfway across the clearing, phone clenched white-knuckle in your hand, eyes scanning the ground because suddenly the idea of looking down feels smarter than looking up. Footprints, shoe treads, a bottle cap half-pressed into the mud, a trampled bracelet with plastic bats, a smear where someone skidded sideways.

And there- a rectangle half-buried at the edge of a bench, caught under the slat like it tried to hide. A phone case you recognize by the stupid sticker peeling off the corner: a star with sunglasses.

“Jennie,” you say, and your voice has run out of tricks. “Chae-won.”

They’re already looking. You kneel and pry it free. Jimin’s phone lies in your hands, screen cracked, back damp with mud. The star sticker sloughs under your thumb.

The screen wakes for a second- one bright, stubborn blink- and you see your own name still at the top of the call log. Then it goes black.

Jennie’s mouth opens and closes. Chae-won wraps both hands around your wrist as if to ground the moment in something you can hold.

Behind you, very softly, someone walks away through the corn. No hurry. No showmanship. Just a person taking their time, knowing you’ll be right where they left you.

You don’t turn around.

═══════

The night wraps around you like a secret. Every breath tastes of earth and fog, the air thick enough to swallow sound. You move through the maze as if it knows your name, the stalks parting just wide enough to let you pass. You’ve been watching her for hours- years actually- but time doesn’t mean much anymore. Every turn she takes, you’re there, one path behind, the scent of her perfume caught on the wind. You tell yourself you’re patient, that this is what devotion feels like. The moment has come, and you’re ready.

═══════

Minhyuk was my first target. 

You hear him before you see him- his laughter spilling through the rows, bright and careless, cutting across the hush like something that doesn’t belong. He’s wandering alone now, separated from Jimin, humming under his breath, oblivious to the predator closing in, his steps light and unguarded. 

You follow the sound, each step measured, every movement swallowed by the corn. The knife in my hand felt like an extension of myself, its weight familiar and comforting. 

You breathe once, slow. The world narrows to the rhythm of his footsteps and the whisper that tells you this is how you keep her safe. As you crept up behind him, the faint moonlight caught the blade, casting a cold, silver glow. 

You raised it high, the movement fluid and practiced. In a single, fluid motion, you drove the knife deep into his back, feeling the resistance of flesh and muscle before it gave way with a sickening thud. 

Minhyuk gasped, his eyes widening in shock and agony. The sound was raw and primal, a guttural cry that was cut short as he clutched at the wound, his hands slipping in the warm, sticky blood that gushed from the deep gash.

You just couldn't resist the urge to strike again. With a savage grin, you pulled the knife out, the blade slick with blood, and plunged it in once more, this time aiming for his kidney. 

Minhyuk screamed, a sound of pure agony that echoed through the maze. You twisted the blade, relishing the feel of his flesh tearing, his blood pulsing around the steel. 

With a final, brutal stab, you drove the knife into his chest, feeling it pierce his heart. His scream cut off abruptly, replaced by a gurgle as blood filled his lungs.

Blood soaked his clothes, turning his shirt a dark, crimson red. It pooled on the ground, spreading out in a gruesome stain that seemed to pulse with an eerie life of its own. 

Minhyuk stumbles ahead of you, his rhythm broken, breath catching in short, uneven bursts. He reaches into the dark, grasping at the air as if the night might lend him a hand.

But the maze offers nothing.

His strength faded quickly, his body weakening with each passing second.

Each step drains a little more of his strength until the sound of his movements fades into the hush between the rows.

You watched, your heart racing, as he sank to his knees, his hands still pressed against his chest, trying to stop the relentless flow of blood. His breaths grew shallow- labored, until they were nothing more than a faint rasp. 

With a final, ragged exhale, he collapsed, his lifeless body crumpling to the earth. 

For a long moment you simply watch, caught between wonder and certainty. His eyes- once bright with laughter- glint dully in the torchlight before stilling, the last of that noise slipping out of the world. 

The silence that follows folds itself around you, thick and absolute. You stand in it, tasting the calm it leaves behind, and feel the night settle closer. The maze has accepted another secret, and somewhere ahead, she is still walking.

═══════

Next, your attention shifts to Yoongi. He’s further ahead, little more than a shadow moving against the faint orange glow of a lantern swaying on its post. The light catches his breath in short, pale bursts.

You move toward him, slow and certain, your steps folding into the hush of the corn. Every sound he makes- every crunch of dirt, every rustle of fabric- draws you closer. Near the base of the lantern, half-buried in the mud, something glints: an older metal-edged lantern, its surface dulled by rust.

You crouch, testing its weight in your hand. Solid. Steady. The kind of object that feels meant for purpose. The kind that promises silence after the noise.

You crept up behind Yoongi- breath steady, your movements calculated. He never saw you coming. With a swift, powerful swing, you brought the lantern down on his skull. The impact was brutal, a sickening crunch of bone and metal. 

Yoongi stumbled, his body twitching as blood spilled from the deep gash in his head. He reached up, his hands slipping in the warm, sticky fluid, trying to staunch the flow, but it was no use. Blood poured down his face, obscuring his vision, dripping onto the ground in thick, crimson drops.

You struck again, and again, each blow more vicious than the last. The lantern connected with his skull with a series of wet, cracking sounds, each impact sending shards of bone and blood spraying into the air. 

Yoongi's body jerked and spasmed with each blow, his screams turning to gurgles as blood filled his mouth and lungs. His eyes rolled back, showing only the whites, as his body convulsed in agony.

Finally, with a last, desperate gasp, Yoongi collapsed to the ground, his body twitching weakly before going still. You stood over him, watching as his life slipped away, his breaths growing shallower and shallower until they stopped altogether. His chest no longer rose and fell, and his eyes stared blankly at the night sky, seeing nothing.

You stand there for a moment, letting the silence settle over you like dust. The maze is quiet again- almost peaceful- and the stillness hums against your skin. Two shadows gone, and more still moving through the dark. The thought steadies you. She’s closer now. You can feel it.

A faint shiver works its way down your spine, not fear, but something sharper. The night feels alive beneath your fingertips, pulsing with purpose. 

You think of the others- the two girls still clinging to her, keeping her from seeing what’s true. Their voices carry faintly through the corn, bright and careless, and each sound grates like static in your head. They don’t understand; they never will. If they stay with her, they’ll ruin everything. They’ll make her afraid of you. You can’t let that happen.

You move deeper into the rows, following the rhythm of their laughter until it thins into distance. The path tightens around you, the stalks brushing your shoulders like hands urging you on. The night hums in your veins, alive and waiting. The night isn’t over- not yet.

═══════

A short distance ahead, you spot Jimin. He’s drifting between the rows, steps uneven, breath catching in the cold air. His phone is already in his hand, the screen lighting his face in quick, frantic flashes as he lifts it to his ear. The glow flickers against the corn as he says her name- soft at first, then sharper, trying to reach her.

The sound cuts through the maze like an alarm.

Too loud.

Too close to her.

He tries again, thumb trembling over the call button, the screen bright in the dark.

And that’s when you move.

You wait until the moment bends just right- his back turned, his deep breathes echoing off the rows. Then you move. You break from the corner of the stalks in a rush of sound and shadow, the maze splitting around you as you lunge forward, every nerve alight with purpose.

With a swift, powerful punch, you connect with his jaw, feeling the bone crunch beneath your knuckles. Jimin staggered back, his eyes widening in shock and pain. 

You followed up with a series of brutal blows, your fists raining down on his face and body, each impact sending spasms of agony through him.

Jimin tried to defend himself, his arms flailing weakly, but he was no match for your strength and fury. You pummeled him- blows unrelenting, until he collapses to the ground, his body bruised and bloodied. You stand over him, your breath coming in ragged gasps- heart pounding with a mix of exhilaration and triumph.

But you weren’t done with him yet. You knelt beside him, your hands closing around his throat. You squeezed, feeling his windpipe crush beneath your fingers, his struggles growing weaker with each passing second. Jimin's eyes bulged, his face turning a deep, purplish red as he gasped for air, his hands clawing at your wrists, trying to pry them loose.

Finally, with a last, choking gasp, Jimin went still, his body going limp. You stood up- breath coming in ragged gasps, your heart pounding with a mix of exhilaration and triumph. Three down- two more to go. The night was far from over, and it was just beginning.

You left him there, his body crumpling to the earth, his life fading away. As you turned to leave, the sound of her voice filled with fear and desperation. 

You followed the sound of her voice, moving silently through the corn stalks, your heart pounding with anticipation. 

You watched from the shadows as she stumbled upon Minhyuk’s body, her screams echoing through the maze. You knew you had to act fast. You couldn't risk her escaping, not when you were so close to completing the hunt.

Then you hear it- a sound that shouldn’t exist anymore. A faint, rasping voice slipping through the noise of the maze, thin as paper, words broken by distance and pain. It’s him. Jimin. Still clinging to breath, calling for her.

The phone she’s holding crackles in the distance, her name trembling through its tiny speaker, the sound half-swallowed by static. For a moment, you stand perfectly still, listening as the maze carries his voice in shreds, drifting between the rows like smoke. 

Then you hear another tone layered under it- low, unfamiliar, too close to the receiver. A second voice. Yours, maybe. Or something that shouldn’t have been recorded at all.

The line cuts. The silence that follows is heavy and accusing.

You draw a breath through your teeth and feel the night tighten around you. You’d underestimated him. You hadn’t finished it cleanly. Now she’s heard. Now she knows enough to be afraid.

You press your hand against the nearest stalk, the leaves sharp under your palm, and whisper to the field as if it can hear you. You have to end this- fast, before fear turns her away from you completely.

You moved back to where Jimin lay, his body twitching weakly. You knelt beside him- hands closing around his throat. You squeezed harder than before, feeling his windpipe crush beneath your fingers, his struggles growing weaker with each passing second.

Finally, with a last, choking gasp, Jimin went still, his body going limp. You stood up, your breath coming in ragged gasps- heart pounding with a mix of exhilaration and triumph. 

═══════

The corn sways around you in restless waves, every stalk whispering something you can’t quite catch. The path ahead feels longer than it should, the turns repeating themselves, the lanterns too far apart. Somewhere up front, Jennie and Chae-won keep calling your name, their voices fading and returning like signals through static.

You quicken your pace, but the wind pushes back, cold against your cheeks, carrying the faint metallic scent that doesn’t belong to October. You round a corner- and stop breathing.

Minhyuk lies ahead. The world narrows to the sound of your pulse and the soft hiss of the corn moving in place. His eyes are open, glassy, catching the flicker of a dying path light. Blood pools beneath him, soaking into the earth, turning the soil a dark, crimson red. 

The sight is gruesome, his body contorted at an unnatural angle, his clothes torn and stained with his own blood. You take a step back, your shoe slipping in the mud, the night spinning around you.

Run, your mind says, but your body refuses. Every direction looks the same. You turn, stumbling through another row, branches catching your sleeves, and there- Jimin. 

The lantern beside him rocks gently where it fell, its flame guttering out. Jimin's face is a mask of pain and terror, his features twisted in a final, agonized expression. His body is bruised and bloodied, his throat a raw wound, the flesh torn and mutilated. 

The sight punches the breath from you. A scream rips free, high and thin, swallowed almost instantly by the maze.

No one answers.

You press your hands to your mouth, shaking, until movement breaks the stillness- two figures rushing toward you. Jennie and Chae-won burst through the rows, faces white, eyes huge. 

For a second, the three of you only stare, the realization settling heavy between you.

“He’s gone,” Jennie whispers. “They’re all-”

“Don’t,” Chae-won cuts her off, voice splintering. “Don’t say it. We just have to move.”

You nod, but the word "move" has lost its meaning. The maze seems to shift around you, walls closing in, the air thick with the smell of soil and fear. Jennie edges forward, scanning the ground for some trace of a way out, and Chae-won tugs at your sleeve, urging you to follow.

A sound- something between a footstep and a sigh- threads through the rows behind you. Jennie spins, eyes wide. "Run," she says, barely audible.

You all do.

The three of you sprint through the maze, your hearts pounding in your chests, your breaths coming in ragged gasps. The corn stalks whip past, leaving stinging marks on your skin, but you don't slow down. You can't. The sound of pursuit is close, too close.

Suddenly, a figure jumps out from behind the corn stalks, his movements swift and silent. He moves toward Jennie, his steps quick and deliberate, a cruel smile playing on his lips.

Jennie turns to face him, her hands raised in a futile attempt to defend herself. But Jungkook is too fast. With a swift, precise motion, he drives his knife straight through her throat, feeling the blade slice through flesh and bone. 

Jennie gasps, her eyes bulging, her hands clutching at the wound, trying to staunch the flow of blood. But it's no use. She collapses to the ground, her body convulsing as her life slips away.

Chae-won grabs your arm, pulling you away from the gruesome scene. "We have to keep moving," she urges, her voice trembling. But it's too late. Jungkook advances, his movements fluid and practiced, and you know you're no match for him.

You turn to run, but Chae-won is frozen in her spot, her eyes wide with terror. 

Jungkook draws closer, and you finally clearly see his face. His eyes are blown, his face splattered with blood, and you know with a sickening certainty that he's the one responsible for all of this. 

He moves toward Chae-won-and with a swift, powerful punch, Jungkook connects with Chae-won's jaw, sending her sprawling to the ground. 

She cries out in pain, her body curling in on itself, but Jungkook isn't done with her yet. He kneels beside her, his hands closing around her head. You watch in horror as he snaps her neck with a sickening crack, her body going limp instantly.

You're frozen in your spot, your heart pounding, your mind racing. You need to find a way out, to escape this nightmare, but the maze seems to shift around you, the walls closing in, trapping you. 

Jungkook stands up, his eyes locked on you, a predatory grin spreading across his face.

He moves toward you, his steps slow and deliberate, and you know you're next. You back away, your hands shaking, your breath coming in ragged gasps. You scream, the sound echoing through the maze, but no one comes. You're alone, trapped in a nightmare with no escape.

═══════

The maze has gone quiet. Even the wind seems to hold its breath. You stand in the middle of the path, mud cold against your shoes, the rows of corn leaning close as if listening.

Only four feet away- close enough for you to see the sheen on his skin, the shallow rise of his chest, the streaks that might be dirt or might be something else. His eyes catch the light and hold it, too bright, too wild, like a reflection that doesn’t quite belong to him anymore.

He takes another step forward. The air bends around the sound of it, the soft scrape of his boot against the soil. Another step, slow, deliberate, and your body forgets how to move. Your mind tells you run, but your feet have sunk roots.

“Y/N.”

He says your name like it’s the only word left in the world.

The lantern between you sputters; the flame flares once and gutters down. In that dimming light, you can see the tremor in his hands, the twitch at the corner of his mouth. His breathing stutters between a laugh and a sob.

“They were in the way,” he says, the words spilling out too fast, too raw. “You’ll see, baby. You’ll understand. I did it for you.”

You shake your head before you even realize you’re doing it- a tiny, helpless motion.

He takes another step. The space between you collapses.

“They wanted to hurt you,” he continues, voice climbing and breaking, caught somewhere between devotion and fury. “All of them. But not anymore.”

The light catches on him again and for a second he looks almost human- just a boy lost in the maze, shaking, eyes wet. Then he smiles, small and wrong.

“I’ll protect you forever.”

The words settle in the air like ash.

You can’t answer. Your throat closes around a sound that never forms, your hands trembling at your sides. The maze waits, breathless, as if it, too, is listening for what comes next.

You can’t move. The night has folded itself around the two of you, the maze gone utterly still. Even the lights seem to dim, giving him center stage.

Jungkook kneels, slow, like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he moves too quickly. The mud stains his jeans, smears across his hands as he steadies himself. When he looks up, his expression softens in a way that makes your stomach twist.

“It’s all right now,” he murmurs. “You don’t have to be scared anymore.”

His voice shakes with something that sounds almost tender. Almost.

He looks at you like he’s studying a prayer he’s memorized- tracing the curve of your face, the tear still caught on your cheek, the tremor in your fingers. Every small detail seems to undo him.

“I’ve been watching you for years,” he says quietly, like a confession whispered in church. “You didn’t notice, but I was there. Every morning, every walk home, every time someone looked at you wrong. I saw everything.”

Your throat tightens. “You… you what?”

He smiles- small, crooked, fond in a way that should have been harmless. “You looked lonely sometimes. I thought- maybe you’d feel safer if someone stayed close. So I did. I kept you safe because I love you.”

Each word lands like a stone. You can hear your pulse behind your eyes, quick and bright.

“Love isn’t-” The rest of the sentence dies on your tongue. You don’t know what to say that won’t break him further.

He tilts his head, eyes wide and bright. “You don’t have to say anything yet. I know it’s a lot. I just need you to understand that everything I’ve done- it was for you. The world is ugly. People hurt each other for fun. But I can fix that. I can make sure nothing ever touches you again.”

He reaches for you- slow, open-palmed. You flinch, and he stops, the motion freezing in midair.

“See?” he says softly. “You’re shaking. You still think I’d hurt you. I never could. I’d die before I did.”

The corn whispers somewhere behind you, a faint reminder that the maze still exists, that there’s an outside world beyond this narrow tunnel of light. You take a half step back. He notices. His smile falters.

“Don’t run from me,” he says, voice breaking. “I did everything right. I made it safe. I did it for us.”

The word us hangs between you, heavy as the dark.

You realize then that there is no “us.” There never was- only him, and the maze, and the silence that’s swallowing every possible escape.

═══════

It starts small.

Freshman year- the cafeteria too bright, too loud, a blur of people who never seem to see you. You sit where you always do, corner table, tray untouched. She’s two tables away. Headphones in. Book open. Lost in her own world. You tell yourself you’re only watching because there’s nothing else to do.

But then she laughs at something she’s reading, and the sound pulls the air right out of you.

You start noticing things: how she pushes her sleeves up before she eats, the way she smiles with her whole face, the quick glance toward the door before she leaves- as if she’s checking that the world is still where she left it. 

You start writing it down in the edges of your notebook, half-hidden between lecture notes and grocery lists. Little fragments of her life scattered across your pages.

The library becomes your favorite place. It’s quiet enough to listen without looking obvious. You learn the rhythm of her days- when she comes, where she sits, how long she stays. Her habits turn into a pattern, and the pattern becomes something like music. You tell yourself it’s harmless to memorize it. You tell yourself you’re just paying attention.

Sometimes she walks close enough that you can smell her perfume, faint and sweet, a detail you’ll carry for days. In those moments, you let your eyes close and imagine what it would be like if she turned toward you, if she said your name, if the invisible space between you collapsed into something real.

At night, when the dorm goes quiet, you replay the day. You rewrite it in your head- each glance sharper, each small kindness exaggerated until it becomes proof. You convince yourself that watching is a kind of care, that you’re keeping her safe simply by knowing where she is.

═══════

You pulled her close, her body pressing against yours in the soft light of your shared space. Your lips crashed into hers, hungry and desperate, tasting the sweetness of her mouth as your tongue slipped past her lips to tangle with hers. 

You kissed her deeply, one hand cupping the back of her neck to hold her steady while the other roamed down her side, fingers tracing the curve of her waist. “God, you taste so good.” you murmured against her lips, your voice low and reverent. 

Your kisses trailed from her mouth to her jaw, nipping lightly at the skin before moving to her neck, sucking gently to leave faint marks that claimed her as yours.

Your hands grew bolder, sliding under her shirt to grab at her breasts. You squeezed them softly at first, thumbs brushing over her nipples until they hardened under your touch. 

You pushed the fabric up, exposing her skin to the cool air, and lowered your head to take one nipple into your mouth. You sucked on it firmly, your tongue swirling around the peak while your hand kneaded the other breast, pinching and rolling the nipple between your fingers. 

She arched into you, and you groaned, the sound vibrating against her chest. “These are perfect,” you praised, switching sides to lavish the same attention on the other. 

“So soft, so responsive. I could worship them all night.” 

Your free hand wandered lower, slipping into the waistband of her sleep shorts, fingers dipping between her thighs to stroke over her pussy through her panties. You felt the warmth there, the slight dampness, and it drove you wild. You rubbed slow circles over her clit, feeling it swell under your touch, while your mouth continued its assault on her breasts.

You couldn't wait any longer. 

You tugged her shorts down, along with her panties, leaving her bare from the waist down. You move down the bed, your eyes locked on her exposed pussy, glistening with arousal. “Look at you,” you breathed, your voice thick with awe. “So beautiful, so wet for me already.” 

Your hands gripped her thighs, spreading them apart as you leaned in, your breath hot against her folds. Your tongue flicked out, tracing a long, slow line from her entrance to her clit, savoring her taste. 

She gasped, and you smiled against her, then dove in fully. You licked at her cunt with broad, flat strokes, lapping up her juices like you were starved for them. Your lips closed around her clit, sucking gently while your tongue teased the sensitive bud, flicking and circling until her hips bucked against your face.

Your hands held her steady, fingers digging into her ass as you pulled her closer, burying your face deeper. You alternated between sucking on her clit and thrusting your tongue inside her, fucking her with it as deep as you could. 

“You taste like heaven,” you murmured between licks, your words muffled but fervent. “I love how you drip for me. Cum on my tongue, baby- let me taste you.” 

You worshipped every inch, your nose brushing her clit as you tongued her hole, feeling her walls clench around the intrusion. 

One hand slid up, two fingers pressing against her entrance before pushing inside, curling to hit that spot that made her moan. You pumped them slowly at first, matching the rhythm of your licks, building the pressure until her body trembled.

Her first orgasm hit hard, her pussy spasming around your fingers as she cried out. You didn't stop- you kept licking, sucking, fingering her through it, drawing out every wave until she was shaking. 

“That's it, good girl,” you praised, your voice husky. “You’re going to cum for me again. I want to feel you soak my hand.”

You added a third finger, stretching her as you thrust faster, your tongue relentless on her clit. You worshipped her body with every touch, kissing her inner thighs between licks, murmuring how perfect her pussy was, how it clenched so beautifully around you. 

The second climax built quicker, her juices coating your fingers and chin as she came again, harder this time.

But you weren't done. You stood, shedding your clothes in a frenzy, your cock springing free- thick, veined, and leaking pre-cum. 

She was already sprawled across the bed, chest still rising unevenly against the sheets. You climbed back onto the mattress beside her, eyes tracing every curve, every mark you’d left behind, drinking her in like you hadn’t just had her.

“You're mine,” you whispered, climbing over her, your hands caressing her sides, her hips, her breasts. You positioned yourself between her legs, rubbing the head of your cock along her slick folds, coating yourself in her wetness. 

“I’m going to fuck you now, fill you up just like you deserve.”

You pushed in slowly, inch by inch, groaning at the tight heat enveloping you. “Fuck, you're so tight, so perfect around my cock.” Once fully bottomed out, you paused, kissing her deeply, your hands stroking her hair, her face, worshipping her even as you began to thrust.

Your pace was loving, steady, each roll of your hips driving deep into her pussy. You talked her through it all, your voice a soothing rumble. “Feel that? That's me claiming you. You're doing so well, taking my cock like this.” 

You angled your thrusts to grind against her clit with every stroke, building that familiar tension again. Your hands roamed, pinching her nipples, squeezing her ass, pulling her closer as you fucked her harder.

“Cum with me, baby. Let me feel your cunt milk my cock.” Sweat beaded on your forehead, your muscles flexing as you pounded into her, the wet sounds of your bodies slapping together filling the room. 

Her third orgasm crashed over her, her walls fluttering and squeezing you tight, and you followed moments later, burying yourself deep as you came, hot spurts of cum flooding her pussy, marking her from the inside.

You collapsed beside her, holding her close, whispering praises into her hair- how amazing she was, how you'd never let her go. 

But as the afterglow faded in your mind, reality snapped back. 

You were alone in your dorm, laying on your bed, your hand wrapped around your aching cock. The notebook lay open beside you, pages filled with her details fueling the vivid hallucination. 

Your strokes had matched every thrust in your dream, fast and desperate now as the fantasy's climax echoed in your body. With a choked moan, you came hard, ropes of cum shooting across your stomach and chest, your hips jerking as you milked yourself dry. 

Panting, you stared at the ceiling, the emptiness settling in. One day, you told yourself, it wouldn't just be a fantasy.

═══════

The maze seems to change as you run. Paths you thought you knew twist into strangers; the lights burn lower, then vanish. Every turn brings only more walls of corn, the stalks whispering your name in the wind.

You reach a dead end. The ground there is softer, trampled. You spin back-

-and he’s already there.

Jungkook stands at the mouth of the corridor, chest heaving, hair plastered to his forehead. The lantern light wavers across him, turning the streaks on his clothes a darker shade of rust. His eyes find you and stay.

“Why are you running?” he asks. His voice breaks halfway through the sentence, the sound caught between pleading and anger. “You don’t have to. It’s over now. You’re safe.”

You shake your head, back pressed to the wall of corn. “You killed them,” you whisper. “You-”

He steps forward, slow, desperate. “I saved you. They were in the way, but it’s done. You’re here.” His hand lifts as if to touch your face, then stops midair. The expression that flickers across his features is almost childlike- hurt, disbelief.

“You don’t understand,” he says, voice trembling. “I love you. Everything I’ve done was to keep you close, to make sure nothing could hurt you again.”

You swallow, trying to breathe past the knot in your throat. “You hurt me.”

The words hang there. For the first time, he looks uncertain- eyes darting over your face as if searching for a different answer.

“No,” he whispers. “No, I… I could never-”

He takes one more step, and the distance between you evaporates into breath and heat and the quiet crackle of the dying lantern. The night feels smaller, the maze closing in.

Before you can pull back, Jungkook's hand shoots out, fingers gripping your wrist with a desperate strength that pins you against the rough corn stalks. 

His body presses forward, trapping you in the shadowed corner, his chest heaving against yours. You twist your head away, heart pounding in protest, but he doesn't relent. His free hand cups the back of your neck, forcing your face toward him as his lips crash down on yours.

The kiss is brutal, unyielding- his mouth devours yours, tongue shoving past your clenched teeth to claim every inch. You taste the salt of his fear-sweat mixed with the metallic tang of blood, his stubble scraping your skin raw. 

He groans into the kiss, hips grinding instinctively against your thigh, his obsession pouring out in the way he sucks on your lower lip hard enough to bruise. Your hands push at his shoulders, nails digging in, but he only tightens his hold, kissing deeper, wetter, as if he could fuse your souls through sheer force.

You wrench your mouth free for a gasping breath, shoving harder, but his eyes lock on yours- wild, pleading, broken. “Please,” he says, voice shaking, “don’t leave me.”

You don’t plan the motion- your body just decides. One heartbeat he’s reaching for your face, the next you’re moving, shoving, every muscle working off pure panic. The air between you breaks apart with a sound that could be breath or a sob.

He staggers back, surprise flashing across his face, and in that split second you see him not as a monster but as a boy who doesn’t understand what he’s done. Then the fear returns, sharp and electric.

Your hand finds the first thing it can- a scattered prop littering the path, its paint cracked and peeling. You swing, the heavy object connecting with his skull with a sickening thud. Blood sprays from the wound, and he stumbles, his eyes wide with shock and pain. 

The noise startles even you. For a moment, you can’t tell whose voice you heard- his or yours.

He goes down to one knee, eyes wide, shock blooming across his features, blood dripping down his face. You don't wait, but instead, you hit him again, this time aiming for his back. 

The prop connects with a dull thud, the force of the blow sending him sprawling to the ground. He grunts, his body going limp, stunned by the impact. 

The maze opens behind you, and you run, lungs burning, the cold night slicing through your chest. The lights flicker as you pass, your shadow jumping from row to row. 

Every corner looks the same, every turn feels like déjà vu, but you keep running until the sound of him fades into the hiss of the corn and your own heartbeat.

Behind you, somewhere deep in the field, the maze exhales- a long, low sound that might be wind, might be a name.

You don’t look back.

═══════

The corn gives way all at once- rows breaking open into air, night, and the jarring blaze of light. You stumble out of the maze on hands and knees, mud and blood streaking your clothes and face, the sudden noise of people hitting you like a wall.

Someone screams. Someone else catches you under the arms, but the world won’t hold still long enough to see who. The cold air feels too bright.

You try to speak, but the words won’t stay in order. “He- he was in there- my friends, they-” The rest dissolves into a sob that doesn’t sound like yours.

Sirens split the air. Red and blue lights wash over the field, painting everything in pulses of color. People run toward the maze entrance- security, staff, strangers in masks still laughing because they don’t know. Not yet.

A woman kneels in front of you, voice soft but urgent. “Honey, are you hurt? What happened?”

You shake your head, though every inch of you aches. The smell of blood and smoke fills your lungs. “They’re gone,” you whisper. “He- he said he was protecting me.”

“Who?”

You look back toward the maze, toward the dark mouth you just crawled out of. The corn sways as if breathing, the rows whispering secrets to the wind.

“I don’t know,” you breathe. “He- he’s still-”

The woman exchanges a glance with someone behind her. Words pass between them that you can’t make out. You watch their lips move, but the world has gone too far away for sound to matter. The edges of everything blur.

Someone drapes a blanket around your shoulders. Someone else speaks into a radio. A man kneels near you, his flashlight cutting through the dark toward the maze.

Your teeth chatter. You realize you’re still clutching the fake prop you used- plastic bent, paint chipped, the edge stained dark. You drop it, and it lands with a hollow sound against the ground.

You whisper something- maybe a prayer, maybe nothing at all- but even you can’t tell which.

═══════

You lie on your side in the corn, staring up through the stalks at the slice of sky. The sirens are distant, a broken melody somewhere beyond the field. Light flashes over the rows- red, then blue, then gone. Each pulse paints the inside of the maze like a heartbeat.

You can feel the warmth running down your back, soaking into the soil, sticky and thick where it pools beneath you. More warmth trails from your temple to your jaw, a slow line of blood tracing the curve of your cheek before it disappears into the dirt. The pain blooms somewhere deep behind your eyes, steady and dull, but already fading into something else- something almost peaceful.

You focus instead on the memory of her face- the way her eyes looked when she saw you, the way her lips parted, trying to form words that never came.

You smile. It hurts to do it, but you smile anyway.

“They’ll take her away,” you whisper, voice catching. “They’ll tell her it’s over. That she’s safe.”

You close your eyes, the darkness behind them softer than the one above. “But she’ll remember. She’ll hear me every time the wind moves.”

A breath rattles in your chest. You taste iron, cold and sharp.

“You’ll never really leave me, Y/N,” you murmur, the words slipping between your teeth like a secret meant only for the night. “I’ll always be here.”

Somewhere in the distance, someone shouts for an ambulance. The sirens grow louder. The light washes the field in red again, and for a moment, it looks like the maze is on fire.

You close your eyes, and the darkness folds over you like a blanket.

“She’ll remember,” you murmur, breath thinning. “She has to.”

And somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, your chest rises again.

═══════

epilogue:

═══════

corn maze

The field begins to glow before the sun does. Floodlights bleach the maze, turning the rows of corn into a map of shadow and metal. Mist rises off the ground in slow curls. Officers pick their way through the paths with flashlights held low, the beams sweeping back and forth like pendulums.

“Start from the western rows,” someone calls. “Work toward the entrance.”

They move in pairs, marking each intersection with orange tape. Radios crackle, footsteps sink into the mud. Every few minutes, a shout cuts through the static, then falls silent again.

═══════

police station

At the police station, you sit beneath humming fluorescent lights. The room smells like paper and disinfectant. A clock ticks too loud. You try to count the seconds between the ticks but lose track before you reach ten.

The detective across from you has the kind of voice made for bad news.

“Just take your time,” he says. “Tell me what you remember.”

You tell him pieces- the laughter before the maze, the screams that didn’t sound like acting, the phone call that turned into static. When you falter, he nods as if he understands, but you can see his hand tightening around his pen.

═══════

corn maze

The first bodies appear near the center path. 

Two women, close enough that their fingers almost touch. A medic kneels between them, murmuring something low before lifting the edge of a tarp. 

The first girls body lies still, her eyes wide and glassy, a deep, gaping wound in her throat, blood congealing around the edges. 

The second girls neck is bent at an unnatural angle, her face frozen in a mask of terror, her lifeless eyes staring blankly at the sky. The camera flashes once, then again. The officers avert their eyes.

“Names?” someone asks.

“Kim Jennie, Kim Chae-won,” another replies after checking the student IDs pulled from torn handbags. Their names echo over the radio and drift into the fog.

═══════

police station

The detective asks, “You came with five friends, right? Can you say their names for me?”

You nod slowly, the blanket around your shoulders too heavy.

“Jennie. Chae-won. Jimin. Minhyuk. Yoongi.”

He writes the names in a slow, careful column, leaving a blank space after each one.

“And the man?” he prompts, pen hovering.

You swallow hard. “I never… I never got his name.” The words scrape your throat. “He said he was protecting me.”

The detective nods once, expression tightening. “All right. Can you describe him? Anything at all- clothes, height, hair color?”

Your mind blanks. The room tilts.

“I… I don’t know,” you whisper. “I barely saw him. It was dark.”

He waits.

You close your eyes, trying to pull up something, anything.

“A… hoodie,” you manage. “Black. I think. And tall? Dark hair? I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Your voice cracks on the apology.

“He… he killed them,” you add, quieter now. “All of them.”

The detective exchanges a slow glance with the officer by the door, then writes a single line in the empty space beside the column of names:

Unknown male- black hoodie.

═══════

corn maze

Further down the path, another body is discovered, this one male. He’s lying on his back, his body a mass of bruises and contusions, making identification difficult. His face is swollen and disfigured, barely recognizable. It takes a moment for the officers to realize who he is, but a wallet in his back pocket provides the answer.

"Looks like a brutal beating," one officer murmurs, shaking his head. "Poor kid."

Another officer kneels beside the body, carefully turning it over. He reaches into the back pocket and pulls out a wallet, flipping it open to reveal an ID. "Park Jimin," he says softly, his voice heavy with the weight of the discovery.

The medical examiner approaches, her expression grim. "Extensive bruising and signs of strangulation," she notes, her gloves snapping as she puts them on. "He died from asphyxiation. His final moments were a struggle for breath."

The camera captures the scene, the flash illuminating the horrific sight before the tarp is gently placed over him. The officers stand in somber silence, the weight of the tragedy settling over them.

═══════

police station

At the station, the detective’s partner leans against the wall, arms crossed. “We found five victims so far,” he tells the room quietly. “All students. No sign of the attacker.”

═══════

corn maze

By noon, the search team located two more bodies. The first was Yoongi, discovered half inside a collapsed row of corn. His body was contorted at an unnatural angle, his head completely bashed in. 

The sight was gruesome, with shards of bone and blood splattered across the surrounding area. A metal lantern lay beside him, its surface stained with more blood, the evidence of its use as a brutal weapon.

"Looks like someone really wanted to make sure he was dead," one officer muttered, shaking his head. "This is brutal."

An officer crouched beside the body, his gloves snapping as he put them on. He carefully searched the area, his eyes scanning the ground. "Found something," he called out, holding up a wallet. He opened it, revealing an ID card. "We have an ID," he said, his voice heavy with the weight of the discovery. "Min Yoongi."

The team moved on, their expressions somber, the weight of the tragedy settling over them. 

Further into the maze, where the mud turned to clay, they found Minhyuk. His body lay face down, his clothes torn and blood-soaked. It was clear that he had been stabbed multiple times- his back, chest, and side bore deep, gaping wounds, the flesh torn and mutilated. 

Blood had pooled around him, turning the clay a dark, crimson red.

"Multiple stab wounds," the medical examiner noted, her gloves snapping as she put them on. "He bled out quickly. There's no way he survived this."

The officers stood in somber silence, the horror of the scene sinking in. 

An officer, younger and clearly shaken, nodded in agreement. "How could someone do this? It's inhumane."

The camera flashed once, then again, capturing the gruesome sight before the tarp was gently placed over Minhyuk's body. 

The officers averted their eyes, the reality of the situation hitting them hard. They couldn’t find his ID, adding to the eerie and unsettling nature of the discovery. There was nothing left to write; the notes stopped for a while as they processed the horrific findings.

Near the entrance they find a smear of blood and a black hoodie caught on a branch, the fabric stiff with dried red. They follow the trail until it ends abruptly in the open field behind the maze.

“Could be the suspect,” one officer says. “Or the last victim.”

No one answers.

═══════

police station

Back at the station, the detective closes his notebook. “That’s everyone you came with,” he says carefully. “Five of them.”

You nod, throat tight. “And him? The man?”

He hesitates. “We found blood closer to the entrance. No body. We’re still searching.”

For a moment you can’t breathe. The world shrinks to the hum of the lights, the scratch of his pen, the pulse hammering in your ears.

“You didn’t find him,” you whisper.

“Not yet,” he says. “But with that much blood, he couldn’t have gotten far.”

You stare at your hands, the gauze wrapping your palms already spotted brown. “He’s still out there,” you say, not as a question.

The detective exhales through his nose. “Try to rest, Miss. You’re safe now.”

═══════

home

Outside the window, the wind rises, bending the trees. The sound is faint, like someone breathing through the leaves. You close your eyes, but the field is still there behind them the rows of corn, the lantern light, the hush after each scream.

You tell yourself it’s over.

You tell yourself he’s gone.

But when the air-conditioning hum dips for a moment, you think you hear another sound underneath it- a low, rasping breath, steady and patient, waiting for you to notice.

═══════

JKWRITOBER ♡ MASTERLIST ♡ a03

♡ requests are welcome ♡ taglist ♡

These characters are fictional and do not represent any real-life individuals. Their likeness is used solely for visual inspiration and does not reflect the actual person or their story.

═══════

Posted: 10/31/2025 (let’s just pretend okay? 😭)

Taglist: @ane102 @moonchild-moonfairy @mar-lo-pap @lovingkoalaface @whoa-jo @kiliskywalker666 @sucker4jeon @annpeachy-blog @kaiparkerwifes @nikkinikj @asyr97 @jjkluver7 @bammbi-jeon127 @kookoo-kachoo @angelsdecalcomania @kayswatanabe @kelsyx33 @tatamicc @llallaaa @chromietriestowrite @k1ll1ngcl0wns @jahnaviii @mfsitscho @traumaanatomy @yu-justme @bangtaniess @roseda @hottigerboba @xumyboo @bangtansfav-7 @ggukieskookie @granataepfelchen @blubird592 @mellyyyyyyx @gukkiemybaby @likeesapphire @jaerisdiction @amarawayne @misshale21 @dltyum @xcallmetaniax @kyrasworldd @withpinksky12 @iridescentshine @elithenium @heyinwluv85s @prilnextdoor23 @Strxqrd1 @uli_o7 @jojojoliejolene @hoseokteardroo @mimi1097 @aiiselle90210 @sassywildbunny @seolhyuningg @junecat18 @tatumrileyslover

[jkwrites-m]

Have you ever received my ask about Phantom of the Opera?

I’m not here to demand anything, just wanted to know cause my tumblr has been acting out way too much and lots of asks are not being properly sent :(

♡ hi baby!! yes i did get it! 🫶 also, tysm for the love on Hymn! i’m just the most forgetful person alive so i leave all my requests in my inbox to make sure i don’t lose the details 😭

♡ i have to rewatch phantom because i haven’t seen it since i was like… 8???? 🫩💀 i barely remember the plot. (yes i’m old and yes i snuck into the theater to see it when it came out in ‘04 😭 my mom let me get away with wayyyyy too much)

♡ so once i rewatch it, i’ll have all the info i need 😌

[jkwrites-m]

Hymn confuses me or my imagination just not that deep ༎ຶ⁠‿⁠༎ຶ

Is jk kinda like a witch that takes something from her everytime she kinda does miracles? And does he know her before she stepped in that theatre?

It's very poetic but I can't wrap my head around what really occurred and what caused it (⁠╥⁠﹏⁠╥⁠)

Anyway thanks for writing these yandere stories authornim

⚠️ extremely long post ahead ⚠️

♡ no i totally get why Hymn is confusing! 😭 i was going through some weird stuff when i wrote it and just didn’t expand on certain details the way i normally would (brain fog is a bitch 🫩).

♡ plus i was trying out a different writing style- more experimental, kind of fragmented and poetic- and honestly??? i didn’t really love how it turned out, but i still wanted to post it anyway bc it felt like it needed judgement 😭

♡ i’m honestly so happy it got as much love as it did 🥹💜 and since you asked (and bc i know it’s ambiguous and so many others were confused), below is a LONG (and i mean long 😀) explanation of the entire fic- basically the lore of it all

═══════

♡ what Jungkook is

Jungkook isn’t a god or witch!

He’s what’s left when faith looks for a body and finds an empty one.

When he was a young boy in the Eden Revival congregation, he prayed so hard for proof that something listened- and moved in. It was not divine, not infernal, only hungry for belief. It learned to mimic mercy. When people begged, Jungkook could answer. Pain stopped, tumors shrank, breath returned.

Each miracle cost him part of himself: warmth, color, sleep. He believed that was holiness- the ache of carrying light. The thing inside him never spoke, but it thrived on attention, on the voltage of worship. By the time he was grown, he was half prophet, half conduit, burning at both ends.

═══════

♡ what you are

You are the other half of that current- the vessel it had been waiting for.

The presence inside him had always been incomplete, a chord missing its lower note. When you appeared, it recognized the resonance. You were not chosen by fate; you were compatible. Your faith, your capacity to believe in good, made you a perfect grounding point.

To Jungkook, that felt like revelation. To the presence, it felt like food.

═══════

♡ did Jungkook know you before?

In a way, yes.

He didn’t know your face, but he knew your absence.

You haunted him long before he met you- in dreams, in fevers, in prayers where he thought he heard God whisper a name he couldn’t remember.

When he first saw you, it wasn’t recognition- it was relief.

Like hearing a song finally reach the note it’s been chasing for years.

That’s why he tells you: “You were chosen before breath.”

He means it literally.

Because the entity inside him- the “divine algorithm”- had been searching for a perfect vessel since it found him.

═══════

♡ how the healing works

Every miracle follows the same rule: suffering has to move somewhere.

When Jungkook touches the sick, the damage travels through him into the open space inside you. You don’t die because your mind calls it holiness; belief reshapes physics.

But divinity, in this world, is hollowing.

The more miracles he performs, the more human traits you lose- temperature, appetite, memory, the ability to measure time. The process is tidy, almost polite, as if grace were simply replacing the clutter of being alive.

═══════

♡ why it has to be you

Your soul vibrates at the same frequency as his curse.

Anyone else would have been burned to ash by the current, but your faith makes you porous. You stabilize him; he sanctifies you. The congregation sees balance. In truth, it’s consumption disguised as love.

═══════

♡ what Jungkook believes

He truly thinks he’s saving you.

The miracles confirm it: every life restored, every wound closed. He sees your fading not as damage but as ascension- proof that you’re becoming what he worships.

He calls it The Opening of the Vessel.

He doesn’t understand that it’s an ending.

═══════

♡ what’s really happening

The current that lived in him is transferring, thread by thread, into you. Each ritual is a migration. By the time the sanctuary glows and the city’s lights die, the movement is complete. You are no longer the vessel; you’re the source.

Jungkook’s body stays, human again, emptied of the thing that once made him holy. His miracle is gone. His faith remains.

═══════

♡ the ending explained

When you collapse, you haven’t died- you’ve transcended.

Your mind dissolves, but awareness expands. Everything stills because the current has no direction left to travel. The world recalibrates around you: machines fail, candles lean, the air itself listens.

Jungkook kneels beside what used to be a girl and whispers, “Do you know me?”

You don’t. Names mean nothing where you are now. Yet you recognize him- the shape of his face, the warmth of the prayer that built you.

When you nod, it isn’t mercy; it’s gravity.

The quiet fills the room. The smoke folds back into itself.

And through your ribs, something cosmic begins to breathe- slow, patient, endless.

You realize the truth that breaks both of you:

There was never a god above you. There was only faith, and now faith has a face.

Yours.

═══════

♡ where Jungkook stands at the end

By the time of The Opening of the Vessel, Jungkook’s miracles have pushed the “divine current” that lives in him as far as it can go.

Every healing he performs leaks power through him into you. He believes this is grace completing itself- that by giving himself to you and letting you carry the weight of salvation, he’s fulfilling what was prophesied.

In truth, he’s been transferring the source of divinity all along. The more he “saves,” the more the current detaches from him and settles in you. He calls it your holiness because that’s how he understands it; he’s a prophet who can’t tell the difference between revelation and loss.

═══════

♡ what happens to you

You’ve been eroding piece by piece- warmth, voice, sense of time, memory, identity.

At the ritual’s climax, when the candles flare and the city blacks out, the circuit between you and Jungkook completes. All the power he has borrowed from faith moves into you. It’s not love that joins you, it’s energy exchange- the belief using flesh as a conduit.

You die in every human sense (no memory, no self) but the consciousness that remains isn’t empty. It’s charged. The “god-field” that once lived through Jungkook now lives through you.

═══════

♡ why the world goes dark

The blackout is the world’s response to that transference. Miracles surge everywhere because the source has moved. You’re no longer a vessel that holds a fragment of divinity; you’ve become the center of it. The grid fails, light dies, because creation is re-calibrating around a new axis- you.

═══════

♡ what Jungkook experiences

He’s left with nothing but the human part of himself: awe and terror. He’s watching the thing he’s worshipped finally appear, and it wears your face.

When he asks, “Do you know me?” he’s begging for the girl, but the being that looks back recognizes him only the way the sun recognizes the candle that tried to imitate it.

═══════

♡ the final moment

When the narration says “something vast exhales through your ribs… You realize it isn’t God listening. It’s you,”

that’s the revelation:

♡ The divine force has finished moving into you.

♡ There’s no external god.

♡ You have become the listener, the presence that responds when people pray.

It’s not victory or peace; it’s possession completed.

You’ve become the god he spent his life worshipping, born from his belief and your surrender.

The line “It’s you” isn’t empowerment- it’s cosmic horror. What the world calls a miracle is really just the sound of two people disappearing.

═══════

The Book of Mercy: Lexicon of Faith

(Eden Revival Seminary Edition, annotated by Kim Namjoon, High Devotee)

† Vessel

noun.

A human capable of sustaining divine current without immediate death.

The vessel acts as conduit, absorbing imbalance and carrying spiritual energy into matter.

Symptoms of activation include trembling, temperature loss, dissociation, and recurrent visions of light.

Doctrine Note: “A vessel is not born. It is emptied.”

† Heart (The Vessel’s Heart)

noun.

The central consciousness of a vessel; the last remnant of human self.

It stabilizes the current until hollowing is complete. Once the heart surrenders, the vessel becomes the Source.

† Source

noun.

The final state of divine habitation.

When the current fully transfers, the vessel ceases individuality and exists as continuous miracle.

The Source is worshipped as the living God, though technically it is belief incarnate, not sentient divinity.

† Prophet

noun.

A mortal whose resonance allows initial containment of divine current.

Prophets function as origin points for faith transference. Their role ends when the vessel assumes the current.

In Eden Revival history, Jeon Jungkook was recorded as The Second Coming.

† Divine Current (also “Light” or “Mercy”)

noun.

The metaphysical force generated by collective faith.

The current is neutral in nature. It heals or destroys depending on its host’s capacity for containment.

Without embodiment, it dissipates. With imperfect containment, it consumes.

† Faithrot

noun.

Progressive deterioration resulting from prolonged exposure to divine current.

Symptoms: sensory distortion, fever without heat, auditory hymn hallucinations, memory loss, weightlessness, depersonalization.

Interpreted by believers as evidence of sanctification.

† Transference

noun.

The act of shifting divine current from prophet to vessel or from vessel to recipient.

Requires direct contact and mutual consent (implicit or explicit).

Each transference weakens the vessel’s humanity proportionally to the magnitude of the miracle performed.

† Resonance

noun.

Spiritual frequency shared between prophet and vessel, allowing stable current flow.

High resonance reduces physical damage during miracles.

Resonance is not affection, though it is often misinterpreted as love.

† Hollowing

noun.

The sanctifying process of self-erasure during divine occupation.

Occurs incrementally: warmth ➜ appetite ➜ voice ➜ memory → identity.

Considered the highest proof of faith within the Revival.

† Opening of the Vessel

noun.

The ceremonial completion of hollowing.

Marks the transference of the divine current into permanent residence within the vessel.

Publicly performed once in Revival history. Result: total loss of human consciousness and global surge of unexplained phenomena.

† Doctrine of Mercy

noun.

Foundational scripture of the Eden Revival.

Asserts that suffering is evidence of divine proximity and that surrender purifies the believer.

Central verse: “A vessel is holy in emptiness.”

† Eden Revival (The Order of the Second Coming)

proper noun.

A modern faith collective originating in Busan, South Korea.

Blends Christian revivalism, spiritual healing, and ecstatic ritual.

Known public miracles (verified via broadcast): 76.

Known casualties (internal record): undisclosed.

† Ascension

noun.

The point at which human identity is fully replaced by divine current.

Post-ascension vessels exhibit no independent cognition but produce spontaneous miracles and electromagnetic anomalies.

Regarded by the Order as eternal union with God.

† The Breath

noun.

Alternative title for divine current, emphasizing its animate quality.

Said to be “the air God left behind when leaving creation.”

The Breath moves only through flesh; without host, it starves.

[jkwrites-m]

hi m!! i miss you so much 🥺 i hope you’re doing well luvvvv 🥺🫶🏻

♡ hi love!! 😭 i miss you too!!

♡ i’ve just had so many unexpected things going on lately- some of them really fucking suck ngl 😩BUT things always find a way of working out for me, so 😜💁‍♀️ trying to stay positive and keep it pushing.

♡ love you sm for checking in 🫶

[jkwrites-m]

Is daddy kookie gonna have 25 chapters?:

https://www.tumblr.com/jkwrites-m/794190746103267328/series-masterlist

♡ yes!! Daddy Kookie is planned to have 25 chapters- some longer than others bc sometimes i just write continuously and then have to break things up later for consistency and pacing lol. but yep, 25 total (plus a few random drabbles sprinkled throughout 👀).

[jkwrites-m]

Hey, I absolutely love all your other projects, but when is the next part of daddy kookie coming out?

♡ hi!!! 🥹 tysm for loving my other projects too!!

♡ i’ll be posting the next Daddy Kookie part next week- along with the last of jkwritober!

♡ rn i’m on vacation with barely any service and no computer 😭 so as soon as i’m back home, we’re getting back into it 😈

[jkwrites-m]

this is just a little about me post 🥹 for anyone new here or curious about the crazy behind the fics lol 💜

♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡about me♡•♡•♡•♡•♡ •♡

♡ i’m 28, married to my hs sweetheart (literally the love of my life- that man could be considered obsessed!!). he’s actually a huge inspiration for some of my scenes 😏

some of my other favorite things in life besides writing:

reading

baking (pie crust is my villain origin story istg)

music (SO MANY concerts & festivals, i had to make a notes list)

eating 😜

animal husbandry (i have a veryyy small farm!!)

traveling (basic ik 🫩)

anything horror related

and just vibing and brain rotting 🫶

♡ i mostly write smut, angst, and dark subjects that ARE disturbing or upsetting, so please read with caution! everything will always be tagged properly 💜(pls call me out if i missed anything!)

♡ right now, i’m on a kind of non-hiatus hiatus (?)- i was recently diagnosed with something (i don’t feel comfortable sharing what), so my activity might be a little sporadic while i juggle life and doctor appointments. but i promise i still get all my notifs and see everything y’all send me 🥹

♡ thank you so much for reading, supporting, and sticking around my annoying ass. i can’t wait to share more with you soon. ily 💜

[jkwrites-m]

The Walls Are Whispering

Pairing: Jungkook x female reader

Genre: smut, angst, horror (warnings contain major spoilers!)

Word Count: 16.7k

Summary: She thought the whispers stopped. They were only catching their breath.

Warnings: MDNI, Explicit, 18+, smut, angst, psychological horror, established relationship, gaslighting, manipulation, obsession, yandere!jungkook, stalking behavior (?), possession themes, emotional control, paranoia, medication tampering, isolation, hallucinations (?), unreliable perception, slow descent, dark domesticity explicit: soft intimacy, slight breast play, clit play, unprotected sex, praise kink, body worship, soft loving sex

A/N: here we go 😭 it’s november but we’re gonna pretend it’s still october, okay? spooky season never really ends anyway. also… this is officially my longest fic to date 🤸

JKWRITOBER ♡ MASTERLIST ♡ a03

═══════

“Hand over the dumplings, thief.”

“I’m not a thief,” you say, already chewing. “I’m a sampler.”

Jungkook lifts an eyebrow. “A sampler who steals the last bite… veryyy interesting new species.”

“Endangered,” you say, reaching for the soy sauce. “Must be protected.”

“You’re definitely protected, pretty,” he murmurs, leaning in to kiss your forehead- quick, unshowy, like he’s done it a thousand times and plans to do it a thousand more. The kiss lands between your brows- his breath smells faintly of ginger and sesame.

“Mm. Try the noodles,” you say, pushing a carton toward him with a pair of chopsticks sticking up like antennae.

He laughs. “The chopsticks a threat?”

“They’re a friendly warning,” you say. “Approach with respect.”

“Noted.” He twirls noodles, slurps, gives a reverent nod. “Respect achieved.”

The record crackles. Somewhere between the couch and the kitchen, the apartment’s warmth gathers like a blanket. Rain fingers the glass, a thousand tiny taps. Streetlights blur into gold streaks through the droplets. Your shoes- kicked off- rest by the door, one tipped on its side, a tongue of rainwater dried across the rubber. You still catch yourself thinking it’s just his apartment sometimes, even though your things have been here a month now- your mug in his cabinet, your coat on his hook. The place already smells like the two of you.

“Rate the day,” he says, leaning back, one ankle hooked over his knee, hoodie sleeves shoved to his elbows.

“Solid seven,” you say. “Boss didn’t breathe down my neck, coffee machine didn’t revolt, I only screamed internally twice.”

“Only twice?” He clutches his chest. “Proud of you, baby.”

“What about you?”

“Eight.” He shrugs. “Somebody liked my mockups, and the train didn’t trap me in hell.”

“High standards,” you say, but you’re smiling.

He nudges your knee with his foot. “Want to split the egg tarts now or later?”

“Now,” you say immediately, and he grins like he knew.

You reach for the little paper bag on the far end of the table, but your fingers pause, hovering. The key bowl- a shallow, chipped ceramic dish you thrifted together- sits on the console near the door, a half-moon of shadow cupping it. You keep your keys there. You always put them on the right side, your small habit to make mornings easier. The dish isn’t where it usually sits. It’s slid left, just a few inches, as if nudged by a lazy hand.

“Did you move the bowl?” you ask, casual voice, not-casual pulse.

Jungkook follows your gaze. “Huh?” He looks, tilts his head, then looks at you again. “I don’t think so.” He squints. “Wasn’t it always there?”

“No. It was more… centered.” You gesture. Your fingers draw a ghost in the air. “It-” You exhale, shake your head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You want me to put it back?”

“It’s fine,” you say, and you almost mean it. The rain talks to the windows like a busy friend. “I probably bumped it this morning.”

“You did leave in a rush,” he says, soft. He doesn’t make you feel silly- he never does. “We can mark a little tape X under it if you want. Scientific precision.”

You laugh. “You’re going to label our furniture like a crime scene?”

“If it helps the morning chaos,” he says, nudging the paper bag toward you. “Here you go, baby.”

The first bite flakes everywhere; he catches a crumb on your lip with his thumb, then pretends to eat it while you swat his hand away with exaggerated scandal. He’s all dimples and doe eyes and warmth- something about him dissolves your edges. You lean your shoulder into his, and the record on the player sighs through the end of a song, needle whispering along.

“You know what I learned today, baby?” he says, eyes glinting like he’s about to announce something groundbreaking.

“That you can’t microwave fish in a shared office again?” you shoot back instantly.

He laughs. “Again? That was one time, and technically it was salmon- very classy.”

“Classy people don’t fumigate their coworkers”

“You’re lucky I’m cute,” he says, mock wounded.

“Debatable,” you tease, kicking his knee under the table.

“Okay, I knew that,” he says with mock offense. “I learned that when you soak rice noodles too long, they turn into… rice ghosts.”

“Rice ghosts?”

“Slippery,” he clarifies, deadpan, and you snort.

“Terrifying.”

He gives you the last egg tart without comment, like it’s already decided. You break it in half and stuff both pieces into your mouth, cheeks bulging. He laughs helplessly, his eyes creasing, then props his elbow on the back of the couch and watches you chew like you’re the entertaining part of his meal.

The lamp by the couch throws a pool of amber on the wall, and your plant- an overconfident pothos- casts a long, jungle-ish shadow above the console. You set your chopsticks down. For a second, the air feels strange, like a held breath. It’s only rain and warmth and him, and yet-

Tap… tap.

You both freeze. Your eyes flick to the wall behind the console table.

Another heartbeat.

Nothing.

“What was-” you start.

“Probably the pipes,” Jungkook says, easy as a sigh. He cocks his head, listening. “Old building.” He gives the wall a fond, apologetic glance. “She’s grumpy when it rains.”

“She?” You try to smile. It lands crooked.

“She,” he repeats, solemn. “This lady has seen some things.”

You listen with him- your ears turned toward the plaster. The apartment answers with rain and record hiss and the low hum of the fridge. The earlier sound slots into memory- two quick, light taps. Not a burst pipe. Not a knock. More like the knuckle of the house rapping on bone.

“See?” he says finally, gentle. “It settles at night, love. Temperature drops, wood expands or contracts- science.”

“Science,” you echo, letting your shoulders loosen. “My favorite occult.”

He grins. “Want me to call the landlord tomorrow? Ask about the science of our haunted pipes?”

“You don’t have to-”

“I will,” he says, simple as a promise. He reaches over to squeeze your knee. “I’ll call.”

The lamp sighs again, and you realize the record has spun into silence, needle busy in a quiet groove. Jungkook gets up to flip it, passes by the console, straightens the key bowl without looking at it, the way you straighten your own hair- automatic, affectionate. He pauses to peer at the rain, his reflection ghosting over streetlight gold.

“There was a couple downstairs who hung wind chimes inside.” he says as he flips the record. “Maybe we should get some. If it’s going to be noisy, let it be on purpose.”

“Inside wind chimes are serial-killer behavior,” you say, and he cackles.

He comes back and drops onto the couch with that liquid, boneless grace that always makes you think of cats. He hooks one arm around your shoulders and tugs you against his side. 

You go easily, head finding the soft place where his shoulder becomes chest. His hoodie is warm and smells like laundry and the outside world- a damp, clean scent that sneaks into your lungs and persuades them to breathe slower.

“Better?” he says.

“Better,” you say, eyes on the lamplight’s halo. 

The room’s edges grow unimportant. Tap… tap becomes nothing more than rain negotiating with gutters. The couch puts a heavier hand at your back. You stretch your legs- bare feet, cold toes- and push your heels under the couch cushion. He hums a tuneless piece of melody just under his breath, not even a song, more like a shape of comfort.

“Tell me a story,” you say with your eyes closed.

“What kind of story?”

“One where everything turns out fine.”

“Ah,” he says, thumb tracing circles on your upper arm, lazy geometry. “There’s this girl who steals the last dumpling-”

“Endangered sampler.”

“Right. And this guy whose brand-new hobby is patience.”

“Sounds boring,” you whisper.

“It was,” he agrees, mouth close to your hair. “Until a storm came and they had to stay inside and-”

“And?”

“And eat noodles for the greater good of the world,” he says, scandalized, like the answer is obvious. “Noodles and egg tarts. And then they watched a dumb movie that one of them pretended not to like.”

“I like dumb movies.”

“Not the one with the cursed doll.”

You grimace. “She was misunderstood.”

“She killed six people.”

“Allegedly,” you say, which makes him laugh low and easy, vibration ringing through your cheek where it rests on him. The record winds into a favorite song of yours and the apartment feels like it’s nodding along. Outside, a car sends a shiver through puddles; their reflections stutter.

“Okay,” you concede. “Maybe not the doll.”

“Thank you,” he says, solemn again, which makes you smile into his sleeve.

“Promise me you’ll actually talk to the landlord?” you ask, the earlier stiffness not quite gone. You look past his shoulder to the wall- just a wall. Beige paint, one tiny chip near the outlet, plant shadow like a hand splayed.

“I will,” he says. He doesn’t hesitate. “First thing. I’ll call from the coffee shop so he can’t dodge me.”

“You’re very brave.”

“Braver than the doll,” he says.

“Low bar,” you say.

He squeezes. “I’ll get him to check the vents too. Maybe there’s a loose grate or something.” He’s casual, matter-of-fact, ordinary- his voice a handrail. “If anything’s off, we’ll fix it.”

“We?” You tilt your head up to look at him.

“Team,” he says. His eyes are warm- dark drowned gold in the lamplight- and the word lands somewhere behind your ribs and makes a home there.

You put your fingers under his hoodie cuff, touch the inside of his wrist, the delicate highway of tendons. His pulse tick-ticks against your fingertip, a tiny metronome. “You’re good at that.”

“At… blood circulation?”

“At making things feel simpler,” you say.

He shrugs with one shoulder. “Things usually are.”

“Not work,” you say. “Not rent. Not- life.”

“Those are complicated,” he agrees. “But us?” He tips his head down until his forehead brushes yours. “Simple.”

Your laugh fogs his mouth. You kiss him there, right on the corner where his smile lives when he’s trying not to show it. He catches the kiss with an easy hum, not deepening it, not heavy, just yes. The kind of kiss that says more later without rushing toward later at all.

From the kitchen, the fridge kicks on with a rattle that’s always sounded faintly like a bicycle bell. The building gives a small, settling sigh; your plant’s shadow wavers, then steadies. You breathe with the house. The house does not breathe back.

“Want tea?” he asks after a minute.

“Chamomile?”

“I can do chamomile.”

“I won’t sleep if I drink tea late,” you warn.

“You will,” he says, lifting your hand to kiss the undersides of your fingers, each press a punctuation mark. “I’ll bore you with a YouTube video about- what was it today… rice ghosts.”

“Educational,” you say.

“Terrifying,” he corrects, getting up. He doesn’t let go until the last possible second, fingers grazing yours as he stands, and you feel the tiny absence like a sudden draft. He moves around the coffee table, sidestepping cartons, and the lamp light catches in his hair; his hoodie rides up as he reaches for the kettle. You watch him in the ordinary choreography of your life- water, kettle, click- your gaze drifting back to the console while you aren’t thinking about it.

The key bowl sits tidy and centered now, holder of small metal moons. Your key fob peeks from the pile like a tongue. It looks correct, which is almost worse, because you can’t find a single thing wrong with a correct thing.

“Do you ever feel like this place is listening?” you ask, half-joke, because it’s easier you think when it’s disguised as a joke. “Like it’s a therapist we don’t pay.”

“Wow,” he says over a chuckle. “I was just thinking we should get it a plant friend.”

“It already has one.”

“More friends,” he says, and you hear the kettle start its tiny pre-whistle tremor like a bird clearing its throat.

You sink more deeply into the couch, the cushions accepting you with a soft, polite whomp. Rain gestures at the windows, finger-painting with water. Your phone buzzes: Hana, a meme of a cat that looks like it’s given up on capitalism. You send a crying-laughing emoji. You start to type:

You: come over soon 

But you erase it- it’s cozy here, and you’re tired, and you don’t want to get up to fix the blanket that’s sliding off your knees. The record is warm. He is warm. The evening is small and good.

From behind the console: tap… tap.

Your head turns without your permission. The sound is so light you could fold it in half and still have room for a thought. Two knocks, no echo. Your skin goes tight as silk stretched on a drum.

Jungkook’s head lifts. His eyes meet yours across the room- his expression open, attentive, eyebrows raised in a question. You hold very still together, like deer with shared breath.

The kettle’s tremor fattens into a clear whine. He reaches to turn the stove off without looking away from you. Steam breathes over his knuckles.

“It’s fine,” he says quietly, which is exactly what a person would say for everything simple and ordinary and explainable in a world where walls don’t have knuckles to rap with. “Old pipes. I’ll call the landlord.”

Your mouth is dry. “Okay.” The word feels small, the size of a breadcrumb on your tongue.

He brings the tea and sits, close enough that your knees bump. He sets the mugs down to cool and slips his arm around you again, more deliberate this time, his palm warm where it cups your upper arm. The hand is an anchor. Maybe you needed an anchor- you didn’t know until it’s there.

“Listen,” he says, and you try, you really do. You listen to the rain. To the record’s new track; a singer you like murmurs about moonlight and other benign lies. You listen to the apartment breathing the way all apartments do- a stomach settling, a throat clearing, a fridge politely announcing its intentions. You listen to your pulse decide to calm down. The air tastes of tea and takeout and damp wool. You exhale, and your breath ghosts the rim of your mug.

“Probably our neighbor,” he says after a moment, voice still quiet, as if he doesn’t want to wake the building, or maybe he just doesn’t want to wake anything in you that’s trying to sleep. “4B has that tiny dog that thinks it’s a horse.”

“Pony in a sweater,” you say, a smile cracking open like a small egg.

He laughs into your hair. “Exactly.”

“Do you ever-” You stop, embarrassed of the sentence you can feel forming because it sounds like a flashlight under blankets on a dare. “Never mind.”

“What?” he asks, not pushing. “Say it.”

“It sounded like… two taps,” you say. “Like someone… I don’t know, knocking to get attention. Not plumbing.”

“Could be the radiator,” he offers. “Metal expands, contracts-” He squeezes your arm once. “We can ask the landlord to bleed the lines. I’ll call, baby.”

“You’ve said that three times now,” you say, but there’s no accusation in it, only relief at the repetition of the promise, its familiarity, the way it fits the shape of the room. You like the idea of him talking to the landlord. You like the idea of someone older, someone official, shrugging and saying buildings do that, and handing you a form that explains it in words you forgot as soon as you read them.

He shifts so you can tuck your feet under his thigh. He’s heavy and warm, the pressure pleasant. You lean into him until your spine remembers how to stop pretending it’s a fence post. He sets his cheek on the top of your head like you’re a pillow he trusts.

“This building’s ancient,” he says, a smile in his voice. “It settles at night.”

You picture the building settling like an animal curling up, ribs on old ribs, brick on winter air. Maybe that’s the sound- bones on bones. The thought should be eerie, but the way he says it makes it cozy, like a folktale. You feel ridiculous for the way your breath is still too fast.

“Tomorrow,” you say. “Call tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” he says. “Promise, baby.”

The promise lifts and floats above the coffee table and the tea, gentle as steam. You sit very quietly with it and with him and with the rain. It’s not silence so much as everything soft that chooses to be a background. The key bowl sits obedient and centered, a good dog watching the door. You let your eyes close again because his hoodie smells like home and the record loves you and the rain says shh and your body listens.

“Hey,” he says, so quietly that if he were any closer it would be a thought. “I’m right here, pretty.”

“I know,” you say into cloth, the words muffled and safe. “I know.”

You don’t hear anything else from the wall. Not now. Not while his arm is warm and steady and the lamp is a candle no one blows out. The apartment is nothing but the size of a couch and two mugs and two people who learned how to be a shape together. If the house is a throat, it clears it politely and leaves you alone.

You sip your tea when it’s ready. You watch him blow on his. The rain keeps tapping its code against the glass. Neither of you knows the language, so you lean into the only translation you share- his thumb moving slow circles, your breath matching his, the little noises a home makes that mean, stay, stay, it’s fine, we’re fine.

═══════

Morning drizzles pale light through the kitchen blinds, slicing the counter into silver and shadow. The record from last night sits in its sleeve on the sideboard, half pulled out like a yawn. The air smells faintly of toast and detergent.

You’re perched on the counter in Jungkook’s hoodie, feet swinging, scrolling your phone. He moves in front of you, mug in one hand, hair still damp from the shower. His voice comes soft, half-sung.

“Morning, pretty.”

You hum in response. “You make coffee or a potion?”

“Potion,” he says, grin lazy. “Guaranteed to cure bad dreams.”

He presses the mug into your hands; it’s the color of earth and warmth. The first sip burns just right. “Mm. It works, baby.”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

He leans his hip against the counter, watching the kettle steam. The apartment is quiet except for the clink of spoons and rain tapping like distant footsteps on the balcony rail. Everything feels normal again- so normal it almost erases last night’s whispers.

You hop down to grab your anxiety meds from the shelf above the stove. The bottle stops you mid-reach.

Different color bottle.

Same label, but the pharmacy sticker looks new, the date recent.

You frown, twist it in your hand. “Huh.”

“What’s wrong, love?” he asks, pouring his own coffee.

“Did I- did I reorder these? I thought the old bottle was orange.”

He glances over, eyebrows lifting. “That your anxiety meds? Maybe the pharmacy changed suppliers? Different brand of the same thing. 

He steps close enough to bump your shoulder with his. “If they taste the same, it’s fine.”

You shake one into your palm. Same shape, same chalky coating that always sticks to your tongue. It clicks back into routine easily. He kisses the top of your head before moving to rinse a spoon.

“Generics always look different, baby. Same formula.” He adds lightly. 

“Where’s my charger?” you mumble, scanning the counter. The cable usually snakes out of the wall by the coffee pot. It’s gone.

Jungkook glances up, puzzled. “Didn’t you move it to the bedroom?”

“No, I always charge here.” You crouch to check the outlet. Empty. “Maybe I-”

“Maybe I did,” he says quickly, crouching to open a drawer. “I tidy on autopilot sometimes.” He finds it neatly coiled beside the scissors and holds it up with a sheepish grin. “See? I’m the guilty one.”

“You and your cleaning streaks,” you tease, taking it from him. “This is why I can never find anything.”

He bows his head. “The curse of domestic competence.”

You kiss his cheek. “Hot.”

He laughs, eyes half-moon bright. “Everything’s hot when you say it like that, pretty.”

You roll your eyes, plug in your phone. “You’re ridiculous.”

“True,” he says. “But you love it.”

You don’t answer out loud; the smile gives you away.

The morning unwinds in small rituals- toast popping, shoes by the door, the sound of water running for plants you’re still trying not to kill. You glance at the calendar on the fridge. The box for yesterday is a blur of highlighter: 

Overtime, 8 p.m.–midnight. 

You stare at it a second too long.

“You were up late again,” Jungkook says, noticing. “That’s why you heard things last night, love. You’re overtired.”

“Maybe,” you murmur. It’s plausible. Work’s been relentless. The walls last night were probably just the pipes doing pipe things.

He slides an arm around your waist, chin resting on your shoulder. “You’re not haunted, baby,” he says, and kisses your jaw. “Just tired. We’ll rest tonight.”

You let yourself lean back against him. “Promise?”

“Promise,” he says. “Cross my heart.”

Outside, the rain thins to mist. Inside, the apartment hums with ordinary life- the hum of the fridge, the kettle’s tiny sigh. On the counter, the prescription bottle sits bright and wrong in the corner of your eye, but you don’t look twice. It’s just new packaging, that’s all.

And somewhere behind the walls, unseen, a faint click echoes- the building settling again.

═══════

Rain has slowed to a soft hiss, a background lullaby against the windowpanes. The apartment smells faintly of detergent and his shampoo- warm, human smells folded into the dark. You’re lying on your side, one arm tucked beneath your pillow, half-dreaming. The digital clock paints a square of red light across the sheets: 12:47am.

Jungkook’s breathing is even beside you, low and steady, the sort of sound that convinces you the world is right. His hand rests on your hip, fingers lax, middle finger ring gleam catching the streetlight that filters through the blinds. You listen to him inhale, exhale, and your body learns the rhythm by heart.

Somewhere in that rhythm, the apartment hum changes.

It’s so subtle you almost miss it- air shifting through the vent, the faintest new tone under the white noise of rain.

Then:

“Y/N…”

The sound is the length of a breath, close enough that the syllables ruffle the space just above your ear.

You freeze.

Your first thought: dream.

Second: neighbors.

Third: the quiet before every horror movie ever.

Your pulse trips.

You push up on one elbow, stare into the dark. The window shows your reflection- two faint ghosts in red-lit sheets. The vent near the ceiling sighs again, only air this time. You lick your lips. “Hello?” slips out before you can stop it, the whisper small, absurd, already dissolving.

Nothing.

You glance at Jungkook. His lashes rest heavy on his cheek, mouth slightly open. He’s beautiful when he sleeps- unguarded, softer than the day allows. You almost leave it; almost convince yourself it was a fragment of dream memory chasing you awake.

But the air moves again, and with it- barely audible- your name, stretched thinner now, as though traveling through walls:

“Y/N…”

You jolt and grab his shoulder. “Jungkook.”

He makes a small sound- half groan, half question- and blinks into the dark. “Hm? What’s wrong, baby?”

“I-” You swallow. “Did you hear that?”

He props himself on one elbow, hair mussed, eyes still blurred by sleep. “Hear what, love?”

“My name. Someone- someone just said my name.”

For a heartbeat he’s completely still, listening. You both hold your breath. The apartment hums back: the fridge motor, the faint drip in the bathroom, the rain. Nothing else.

He rubs his eyes. “Maybe it’s the TV upstairs,” he murmurs. “Didn’t Mrs. Kim leave it on all night last week?”

“Maybe.” Your voice sounds thinner than you mean it to.

He reaches out, finds your hand under the blanket. “Come here.”

You let him tug you closer until your forehead finds the hollow beneath his chin. His heartbeat is slow against your cheek. He smells like soap and sleep.

“It’s just sound, pretty girl,” he whispers into your hair. “Old building, thin walls. She talks in her sleep sometimes; remember last week?”

You nod, trying to let the logic fit. “Yeah. It just-”

“I know,” he says, cutting softly across your stammer. His thumb strokes your temple. “it sounded close.”

“Too close.”

He smiles, eyes closed again, still tracing the same circle against your skin. “I’ll sleep closer to the wall tonight, okay? If anything knocks, I’ll hear it first.”

You manage a laugh- quiet, shaky. “That’s your plan? Human shield?”

“Always, baby.” He shifts, scoots closer until his back brushes the cool plaster. “See? I’m on guard duty.”

You try to match his calm, to settle back into the mattress, but your ears won’t obey. Every creak sounds deliberate now: the tick of cooling pipes, the faint vibration when a car passes below. You hold still, listening through the layers of dark.

“Go back to sleep,” he murmurs, voice already thick with it. “It’s nothing.”

You nod into his chest even though he can’t see it. The warmth of him seeps through and your eyelids start to drag.

Somewhere between waking and the slide into dreams, the vent sighs again- a long, low exhale that could be air conditioning, could be rain, could be something with a mouth.

This time it doesn’t say your name. It only breathes with you.

═══════

The afternoon light is the color of dishwater and rain. You stand in the hallway barefoot, fingers tracing the seam of paint that runs beside the utility closet door. The vent above it hums softly- ordinary white noise now, though you keep glancing up as if it might start breathing again.

“Okay,” you mutter to yourself. “Science experiment.”

You tap the wall once with your knuckle. A hollow sound.

You tap again- two short knocks, deliberate.

From somewhere behind the drywall comes a faint click, too neat to be echo, too quick to be accident.

You jerk your hand back. “Nope.”

Jungkook’s voice floats from the living room. “What are you doing, baby?”

“Being brave,” you call back. “It’s overrated.”

He rounds the corner, a dishtowel slung over one shoulder, amusement already in his eyes. “You look like you’re arguing with the closet.”

“The closet knocked back.”

He raises his brows. “A polite ghost? We love good manners in this house.”

You try to laugh but it comes out thinner than you intended. “Guess she wanted to say hi.”

He leans one shoulder against the wall beside you, head tilted toward the vent. “If she starts paying rent, she can stay.”

“Otherwise eviction?”

“Exactly.” He reaches up, presses his palm flat against the plaster near the vent grille. “You feel that? Warm air. Probably the heater kicking on.”

“Warm air doesn’t click.”

He shrugs, easy. “Pipes. Wiring. Tiny mouse with impeccable timing.”

You snort despite yourself. “Tiny mouse that says my name?”

He grins. “Multitalented.”

You let the humor settle between you until it feels like safety again. Then he reaches for your wrist and drags your knuckles gently back toward the wall. “Here- tap again, love. For science.”

You roll your eyes but comply. Tap tap.

Silence stretches. Just as you’re about to turn away, a single tick answers from behind the vent, soft and sharp as a fingernail on glass.

You stare up at him. “You heard that.”

“I heard something,” he says carefully. “Could be metal expanding. The ducts are right there.”

He steps back, eyes scanning the hallway ceiling like a man considering blueprints. His calm steadies you; it always does. “I’ll text the landlord,” he adds. “He mentioned duct cleaning next week, right? I’ll make sure he actually does it.”

“Please do,” you say, half-laughing, half-pleading.

He pockets his phone. “Done. In the meantime, I can get a white-noise machine. Drown out our ghost’s social life.”

“You and your gadgets,” you say, grateful for the levity.

“Gadgets keep us sane, pretty.” He wraps his arms around you from behind, chin settling on your shoulder. The hug lingers a moment longer than habit allows. His heartbeat thuds steady against your back; you match it without thinking.

“Better?” he asks.

“Better,” you admit.

He presses a kiss just below your ear. “She’ll quiet down. Buildings talk when they get old.”

You glance once more at the vent. The metal slats stare back, clean and still. “Then she’s got a lot to say.”

“Then we’ll listen,” he says easily. “From a safe distance.”

You laugh again, softer this time, and let him guide you toward the living room. The sound of your footsteps fades; behind you, the vent gives a tiny settling pop- almost approval, almost echo.

═══════

The apartment is all black edges and hush.

Rain has stopped, but water still murmurs somewhere in the gutters. The heater ticks once, pauses, ticks again.

You lie on your side, facing the wall, phone dark on the nightstand. The digital clock blinks 2:11am- each second feels wider than the last. Jungkook’s arm drapes loosely over your waist, heavy with sleep. His breath ghosts the back of your neck in even, slow rhythms that your body keeps trying to match.

The quiet isn’t empty- it’s too full, like a room that’s holding its own breath.

You start to drift.

Then a small current brushes your ankles: cold, delicate, deliberate. Air.

You blink into the dark. The vent near the ceiling is a faint rectangle against the black, almost invisible. You can’t see movement, but you can feel it- a whisper of wind licking the sheets.

Your skin prickles.

Then, very softly, like someone mouthing through cloth:

“Don’t… look…”

You stop breathing. The words are inside your ear, close enough to warm the tiny hairs there, and gone before you can decide they existed.

“Jungkook,” you whisper.

He shifts behind you, groggy voice rough with sleep. “Mm? Baby, what’s wrong?”

“I think-” You swallow hard. “It said something. The vent.”

He doesn’t laugh- doesn’t tease. He only props himself on one elbow, listening with you. The house answers with its small orchestra of night noises: a pipe settling, a branch somewhere scraping glass, the hum of distant traffic. Nothing speaks again.

“Could be wind, baby,” he murmurs, sliding his hand into yours beneath the blanket. His palm is warm, solid, the kind of warmth that rewires panic. “Weather app said gusts tonight. Maybe they got through the vent.”

“Maybe.”

“Shh.” His thumb strokes over your knuckles, slow as breathing. “It’s alright.”

The words are ordinary, but something in the way he says them presses the air flat, like smoothing the wrinkled sheet of a dream.

You let him pull you closer until your back fits his chest. The shape of him around you feels safe enough to trick your nerves into believing it. The cold at your feet fades. The vent hums a low, content sigh- nothing more.

He tucks a strand of hair behind your ear, his mouth close when he whispers, “Go back to sleep, pretty. I’m right here.”

“Promise?”

“Always.”

You breathe in. His scent is warm linen and skin- the tension in your shoulders begins to slide away. His lips graze your temple, then your jaw, just enough to pull the static out of the air. The touch isn’t hungry- it’s grounding. His mouth traces another small, calming kiss, and another, until the spaces between them are only silence.

Outside, the weather app would show the wind picking up again- gusts threading through the city- but you don’t reach for your phone. The bed feels steady, the dark heavy with his warmth.

When your eyelids finally give in, the last thing you hear is his heartbeat against your spine and, just under it, the faintest hiss of air from the vent- breathing with you, not against you.

═══════

The day begins with the vibration of your phone on the counter, sharp enough to cut through the rain outside. You squint at the screen, still half-asleep.

PHARMACY NOTICE: Your prescription has been refilled. Ready for pickup.

Your eyebrows pinch together. You scroll through your texts just to be sure, but there’s no request, no auto-refill confirmation, nothing. You’d picked up a full bottle barely two weeks ago.

“Everything okay, baby?” Jungkook’s voice drifts from the doorway. He’s buttoning his shirt, hair still wet, collar sticking to the side of his neck.

“Pharmacy says my prescription is ready,” you say, showing him the screen. “But I didn’t ask for a refill.”

He glances at it, unbothered. “Maybe your insurance auto-renewed the script.”

“Wouldn’t they text me first?”

He shrugs. “Pharmacies love a mystery. I can grab them for you after work if you want.”

You hesitate. “You don’t have to-”

“I want to,” he says, the decision already made. He steps closer, fingertips brushing your hip as he leans past you for his keys. “You’ll forget anyway, pretty.”

You laugh because he’s not wrong. “Fine. Thanks, Kook.”

That evening, the new bottle sits on the bathroom counter, its label sharp white against the dim mirror light. You twist the cap and frown.

“Different color again,” you murmur. “I swear they change every week.”

Jungkook leans against the doorway, sleeves rolled up, watching you shake one into your palm. His reflection in the mirror looks taller from that angle, dark eyes heavy and unreadable. “That’s generics for you. Cheaper company, same thing.”

You hold the pill up to the light. “They look… smaller.”

He steps up behind you until his chest brushes your shoulder blade, his breath fogging the edge of the mirror. “Everything’s smaller lately,” he says softly, “except your stress level.”

The corner of your mouth lifts despite yourself. “Ha.”

You take it with a sip of water. It catches on your tongue before sliding down- same bitterness, same chalk. It should feel familiar, but something sticks in your throat anyway.

“Thanks for picking them up,” you say. “They said you could?”

“They asked for ID and your birthday. I told them I’m your emergency contact.” His smile is mild, reassuring. “You should’ve seen the pharmacist’s face- looked like I asked to adopt the entire store.”

You laugh, and the tension breaks. His hand settles briefly at your waist, fingers tracing idle shapes through your shirt before he turns to grab a towel. The touch leaves a print of heat that won’t fade.

Later that night, the two of you sit cross-legged on the bed, your phone propped on a stack of books. The idea was yours- proof, one way or another.

“If we catch something,” you say, “then we know it’s not just me losing it.”

“If we don’t catch anything, it’s just bad acoustics,” Jungkook says, leaning back against the headboard. “Either way, science wins.”

He says it like a joke, but the look he gives you isn’t. It’s softer, heavier. His thumb brushes over the inside of your wrist, and you realize his pulse is quick, too.

You hit record. The phone begins to hum its quiet, endless listening.

For a while, there’s nothing. Just the sigh of wind through the balcony rail, your breathing, the steady cadence of his thumb drawing circles against your skin. The small space between you feels charged- each exhale seems to fall into the same rhythm.

Eventually, sleep drags you both under.

When you wake, early morning sunlight stings your eyes. The phone lies face down on the nightstand, screen black.

“Morning,” Jungkook says, voice still gravel-thick with sleep. His hand slides lazily over your hip before he stretches. “Did it record?”

You reach for it, press the power button. Nothing. The screen stays dark.

“Battery’s dead,” you mumble. “Weird… it was full.”

Jungkook props himself on one elbow, squinting toward the phone. “Guess the app drained it overnight. Those background processes, baby- they eat power.”

You plug in the charger, watching the screen flicker to life. The low-battery symbol blinks, then the home screen loads. You open the app, scrolling through the night’s files- and stop.

The most recent recording shows a timestamp. Zero seconds. No playback bar.

A small gray pop-up flashes: File corrupted. Cannot open.

“What the hell?” you whisper.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s there, but it’s-” You hand it to him. “Corrupted. It didn’t save.”

He leans over your shoulder, hair brushing your cheek. The scent of his skin- warm linen, faint coffee- makes it hard to think straight. “Battery must’ve died mid-recording, baby. File probably didn’t finish writing.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

He rubs your back in slow, soothing arcs. “Maybe the app glitched. My old phone used to crash if I looked at it wrong.”

You laugh, weakly. “Ours only crashes when ghosts are involved.”

“Exactly,” he says, mouth curving against your hair. “We’ll buy one of those cheap baby monitors instead. They’re motion sensitive- better than an app.”

“Good idea,” you say, relief creeping back in.

He smiles, presses a kiss to the edge of your shoulder. “I’ll grab one this week.”

Outside, the rain has stopped, leaving the windows smeared with light. The room smells like sleep and static, like something faintly burned out. You glance once more at the blank phone screen- your almost-proof- and set it aside.

Jungkook pulls you back down beside him, voice soft against your ear. “Hey. Team science still wins.”

You laugh, small and sleepy. “Guess so.”

You fall back into him, into warmth, into the illusion that everything is being taken care of.

═══════

The shower hisses loud enough to swallow thought.

Steam thickens the small bathroom until even the tiles sweat. You stand under the spray, eyes closed, water slipping through your hair and down the curve of your spine. For the first time in days, it’s quiet. Just sound and heat and skin.

When you finally reach to shut the water off, the room exhales. Steam lingers, ghosting around you as you towel your face. The mirror across from you is blank white fog- a sheet of breath over glass.

You turn away to grab your clothes. Behind you, there’s a faint drip. Normal. Everything drips. You pull your shirt over damp skin and glance back-

Something darker glistens through the fog.

Not letters exactly-  more like the idea of them.

Vertical, diagonal, curved.

You blink hard. The condensation shifts with your breath, and for one shivering second the shapes align into something that looks almost like your name.

Y/N

Your throat locks.

“Jungkook?”

No answer.

You step closer, bare feet sticking to tile. The letters glimmer faintly, uneven. Not perfect- human-drawn, maybe finger-traced from the other side of the mirror if mirrors had sides.

The air feels colder near it.

“Jungkook!” you call again, louder.

Footsteps pound down the hall, quick and heavy. The door slams open, and he’s there, half-dressed, hair still dripping, water streaking from his shoulders like he ran straight from the sink.

“What- what is it, baby?”

You point with a trembling hand. “There- look!”

He follows your gaze. The mirror stares back at both of you, two blurred reflections haloed in fog and light.

“I-” You take a shaky breath. “It said my name. It said my name.”

He moves closer. Too close. His chest nearly brushes your back as he reaches past you and wipes the mirror with his palm in one hard sweep.

The letters vanish in an instant.

“Hey. Don’t look,” he says quietly. His voice doesn’t match the movement- soft but firm, grounding. “Breathe with me, pretty. Just breathe.”

“I swear it was there.”

“I know.” His hands settle on your shoulders, fingers warm against your damp skin. “Probably cleaner residue. The glass spray, remember? I used it this morning.”

“I didn’t-”

“Maybe the ammonia streaked,” he interrupts gently, not scolding, just soothing. “Old marker stains can bleed through when it fogs up.”

You shake your head, but he’s already pulling you against him. His shirt is half-unbuttoned, still damp where it clings to his skin. He smells like soap and rain and something faintly metallic from the tap.

“I’m not crazy,” you whisper.

“Never said you were.”

His thumb traces the back of your neck, slow, careful. “You’re just tense. Anyone would be.”

He presses his forehead against the side of your head, breathing in sync with you. The heat from the shower seeps between you, steam curling around your legs.

For a moment, your pulse slows. The world narrows to the weight of his hands and the sound of both your breathing. He stays there until the mirror fogs over again completely- smooth, blank, empty.

“See?” he murmurs. “Nothing’s here but us.”

You nod, eyes fixed on the silver where the letters had been. It’s spotless now, except for the faintest smudge of his palm- an erasure you didn’t ask for.

He tips your chin up until you meet his eyes in the mirror. His reflection behind you looks steady, calm, but his pupils are blown wide, black swallowing brown.

“You trust me, right?” he asks softly.

Your chest rises and falls once before you answer. “Of course.”

He smiles, barely there. “Good.”

He presses a kiss to the spot just below your ear, a small wet punctuation mark. “Let’s get you out of here before you freeze.”

He shuts off the light on his way out.

In the dark, the mirror breathes once more- steam sliding downward- and for half a second, you could swear you see the ghost of a curve reappear, half-formed and vanishing.

═══════

Outside, the storm starts without warning- a sheet of sound against the windows, thunder stitched deep into the clouds. The apartment hums with it, the walls catching vibrations like skin picking up a pulse.

Jungkook drops the remote onto the coffee table and pulls the blanket higher around your shoulders. “Movie marathon,” he declares, voice steady over the rain. “The louder the better.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Therapy via bad horror films?”

He grins, dimples flickering. “Exposure therapy, baby. If we’re gonna get haunted, we might as well learn from the pros.”

You laugh, tension cutting in half. The movie's glow spills across both of you- cool blues and flickering whites. The curtains billow faintly behind the couch, rising and falling like slow lungs.

“Do you feel that?” you whisper.

He glances toward them. The fabric inhales again, exhales, a rhythm too regular to be chance.

“Draft,” he says quickly. “Probably the balcony door not sealed right.”

The wind outside moans through the gutter, an animal sound in metal.

You lean closer. “That’s a strong draft.”

“I’ll fix it in the morning,” he promises, and you believe him, because he says it like he’s already done it.

Another thunder roll rattles the frames on the wall. The lights dim, blink once, then hold steady. The air feels thick, heavy with rain.

Jungkook shifts closer, shoulder brushing yours. “You’re not sleeping until the monster dies,” he teases.

“I’m fine.”

He studies your face for a moment longer, then pulls you toward him. “C’mere, pretty. Warmth tax.”

You settle against his chest, cheek to his heartbeat. The sound fills your ear- steady, deep, anchoring. The movie continues, half-forgotten. Rain becomes applause against the glass.

After a while, the pattern of the curtains and the rhythm of his breathing start to blend. Inhale, exhale. The apartment seems to mimic it- a slow expansion, a gentle contraction. The ceiling creaks on every second beat, the sound almost organic.

Your eyelids grow heavy. “You ever notice the house sounds like it’s… breathing?” you mumble.

He hesitates just long enough for you to feel it- a pause so brief it might be nothing. Then, softly:

“Yeah. I did, actually. When I first moved in two years ago. But never like this.”

“Never like what?”

“Never this deep. Guess the storm’s giving it lungs.” He smiles, voice light again, hand never stopping its slow circles on your back. “Let it do its thing.”

You smile into his shirt. “Everything in this place has a thing.”

“Us too.”

Thunder murmurs again. The storm’s pulse syncs with the clock’s tick, the walls’ settling, his thumb’s movement. Everything- your breath, sound, pressure- falls into the same slow rhythm.

You drift.

The last thing you register is Jungkook’s voice, soft in your hair. “Stay with me a little longer.”

“Mm,” you manage, nearly gone.

When you wake again, it’s unclear if you ever truly slept. The TV has gone to black screen; its faint static reflects on the coffee table. Rain still whispers outside.

Then, very faintly, through the wall vent- not the television, not the storm- comes a tune.

A lullaby.

Not a melody you know, but simple, lilting- something a mother would hum to a restless child.

Your breath catches. You turn your head toward the sound. The curtains flutter once, like the apartment exhaling.

“Jungkook?”

He stirs behind you, eyes half-open, sleep-drugged. “What is it?”

“Do you… hear that?”

He listens, head tilted toward the vent. The lullaby fades into rain, leaving only the hiss of air.

“Just the storm,” he murmurs. “Go back to sleep.”

“But it-”

He hushes you gently, thumb brushing your temple. “Shh. I’ve got you.”

You try to stay awake, but his warmth pulls you back under. The baby monitor on the counter crackles once, sharp and soft- static that almost forms a note- then quiets.

Just before your eyes close, you think you hear something threaded through the storm- a single word breathed so quietly it could be wind curling under the balcony door:

“Sleep.”

You exhale.

He moves carefully, lifting you in his arms, the blanket falling away as he carries you toward the bedroom. You barely stir, head pressed against his chest. His heartbeat is steady. Solid.

“Got you,” he whispers again.

The door clicks shut behind you.

═══════

The clock’s red digits blink 3:02am across the room.

Outside, the rain has gentled into a slow drip, a metronome for dreams. The apartment hums with it- distant, steady, almost like breathing again.

You stir when fingers graze your hip. Soft. Careful. Testing.

A second touch follows- firmer this time, tracing the hem of your sleep shirt, sliding just beneath the fabric.

You inhale, eyes fluttering open. “Kook?”

“Couldn’t sleep, baby,” he murmurs against your neck. His voice is low, hoarse, thick with warmth. “You were moving in your dreams.”

His hand spreads across your stomach, palm warm, thumb brushing lazy circles that make your skin prickle. His breath is steady at your ear, every exhale tasting faintly like mint and sleep.

“Did I wake you?”

“A little,” you whisper, but your voice betrays no complaint.

He hums, the sound vibrating against your collarbone. “Sorry, baby. You just looked too good like that.”

The sheets shift as he pulls you closer, lips finding the base of your throat. The kiss is slow- a press of comfort that edges toward hunger without crossing it. His nose grazes your jaw, his fingers moving in soft, grounding motions, exploring the shape of you through the blanket’s half-slip.

Then, faintly- a sound.

A small click from somewhere across the room.

You freeze.

“What was that?” you whisper.

He stills, one hand resting against your hip. His voice drops to a hush. “What?”

“The closet.”

Another sound: metal tapping metal. A hanger nudging another hanger. The closet door creaks a few inches, slow enough that you feel the movement before you see it- a slip of shadow wider than before.

You sit up, sheet clutched to your chest. The air feels colder now, the hum of the vent muted, expectant.

“Do you see that?” you breathe.

Jungkook’s eyes follow yours into the dark. He doesn’t blink. His voice is barely audible when he answers.

“…Yeah.”

The single word lands heavy in the room.

You both stare. The door sways another inch, deliberate, measured. A hanger tilts, catching the faintest sliver of lightning from outside.

Click.

You flinch. His arm is around you instantly, pulling you close, body shielding yours.

“Shh,” he whispers. “It’s just the air, baby. Just the air.”

But his voice trembles, just enough to make you believe him. Or want to.

Another click. 

The rain begins again, louder this time- as if the house has exhaled. You clutch the blanket, pulse hammering in your throat. “Kook…”

“Stay here.”

He slips out of bed in one motion, bare feet silent on the floorboards. The room glows faintly from the streetlight bleeding through the blinds- enough to silhouette his shoulders as he moves.

You watch him approach the closet. The door is already cracked open, shifting gently as the storm breathes through the room. He steadies it with one hand, pushing it wider just enough to look inside. The hinges complain softly, the sound small but sharp in the quiet.

Inside: stillness.

He exhales slowly, stepping closer, pushing the hangers aside one by one. Each one gives a soft click, too quiet to be the sound you’d heard.

“It’s empty,” he says finally, glancing back at you with a small, reassuring smile. “See? Probably just air pressure. Storm pushed the air through the vent again.”

You stay frozen for a moment, staring past him at the open space, waiting for something- anything- to move.

Nothing does.

He crosses back to the bed, sits beside you, and brushes your hair from your face. “Hey. Look at me.”

You meet his eyes. They’re calm, steady. “You okay?”

You nod, though your heartbeat’s still too fast.

“Good.” His hand finds your jaw, thumb stroking slow and sure. “Let’s try to sleep again.”

He pulls you against him, tucking your head beneath his chin. His skin is warm from movement, the scent of rain still clinging to him.

The closet door stays open, the hangers still.

You keep watching them until the dark softens at the edges, until his breathing evens out beside you.

Then- just as your eyes start to close- one of the hangers gives a tiny, single click.

Not loud enough to wake him.

Loud enough to keep you awake.

═══════

Morning filters through the blinds in soft gold bars, painting stripes across the kitchen counter. The air smells like coffee and detergent. For once, the apartment is quiet. No hum, no sigh- just the small, rhythmic sounds of a normal morning trying its best.

Your phone sits on speaker beside your half-eaten toast. Hana’s voice crackles through the line, warm but threaded with concern.

“Babe, I’m serious. You sound like you haven’t slept in days.”

You twist the mug in your hands, tracing a ring of condensation around the base. “It’s just the storms keeping me up. The walls are old, they make noise.”

“Uh-huh.” Hana’s tone sharpens. “And the whispering? The mirror thing? That’s not old pipes, that’s you losing peace of mind. I don’t like it.”

You smile faintly, though she can’t see it. “You make it sound haunted.”

“It sounds bad. You should stay here. I’ve got the guest room now- bring your meds, we’ll binge something stupid, detox from spooky-boy apartment energy.”

You laugh despite the knot in your chest. “You’re dramatic.”

“I’m observant,” she counters. “When was the last time you were alone there without Jungkook?”

You pause. “I don’t know. Why?”

“Because maybe you’d notice what’s actually weird if he wasn’t distracting you every five seconds.”

Your laugh comes out thinner this time, softer. “He’s not trying to distract me, Hana- he’s just… trying to help. He hears it too sometimes. The noises freaked him out when he first moved in, but he says you get used to it.”

“You said he keeps saying it’s the building. That’s cute and all, but if he’s not freaked out, I am. Stay with me a few nights. Please.”

The word hangs between you, tempting. Stay with me. You picture Hana’s apartment- bright, cluttered, safe. A space where walls don’t whisper and vents don’t breathe.

Before you can answer, the front door opens behind you.

“Baby?” Jungkook’s voice drifts in, calm, easy.

You flinch. “Hey,” you say into the phone quickly. “I’ll text you later, okay?”

“Wait-” Hana starts, but you’ve already hung up.

Jungkook steps into the kitchen, setting his keys down with a soft clink. His smile is gentle, the kind that melts through whatever’s left of your nerves. “Who was that?”

“Hana.”

“She checking in?”

You nod, suddenly self-conscious. “Yeah. She, uh, wants me to stay with her for a bit.”

For a moment, his smile doesn’t move- it just freezes, like he’s thinking how to respond. Then he steps closer, tone warm, careful. “If you need to go, we’ll go together.”

You blink. “What?”

He brushes a strand of hair from your face, thumb resting just beneath your chin. “You shouldn’t be alone if you’re scared. We’ll finish the lease repair tomorrow, then pack a few things, okay? We’ll make it a little break.”

“Jungkook, I didn’t mean-”

He cuts you off softly. “Hey. I get it.” He smiles again, the kind that almost convinces you he’s relieved too. “Sometimes people just need space. I can take a few days off.”

The tension in your chest loosens a fraction. “You’d really do that?”

“Of course,” he says. “I’d do anything for you, baby.”

You look up at him- the easy warmth, the small crescent of dimple at the corner of his mouth. Nothing about him looks wrong. Maybe Hana’s overreacting.

The hum of the fridge clicks louder, filling the silence.

Then you notice it- the note on the refrigerator, a new one in his neat, tidy handwriting:

DUCT CLEANING - 10 AM. TOMORROW

You tilt your head. “When did you put that up?”

“This morning,” he says easily, reaching past you for his coffee mug. “Finally got the landlord to schedule it.”

“Oh.” You nod slowly. “That’s… good.”

He kisses your temple on his way out of the kitchen, leaving a faint warmth behind. “Don’t worry about anything today, pretty. I’ll handle it.”

You stare at the note again.

The tape at the corner flutters slightly, moved by a breeze you don’t feel.

A second later, somewhere deep inside the wall, a low metallic whirr starts- soft, mechanical, rhythmic.

It could be a fan. It could be something else.

You press your palm against the drywall. It vibrates faintly beneath your touch.

“Already starting,” you whisper.

The hum answers, almost like a sigh.

═══════

By the time evening settles, the light through the blinds is syrup-thick and orange, pooling across the counter.

The sink is empty, dishes drying in neat rows. Knives rest on the cutting board, clean but catching the last streaks of sunset in their silver edges.

You lean against the counter, scrolling through your phone. Somewhere below, a car alarm chirps once, stops.

Then- bang.

You flinch.

It comes again, sharper this time- a fist on drywall. Then muffled shouting, words tangled in distance.

Jungkook’s head lifts from where he’s seated at the table. “4B again,” he mutters. “They’ve been fighting all week.”

You listen. A woman’s voice, loud, furious, cut off mid-syllable. Then nothing.

“Should we-”

He shakes his head before you finish. “They’ll stop. They always do.”

You stare at the wall a moment longer, the echo still vibrating faintly behind it. “You said the duct guys were coming this morning?”

He nods, reaching for his mug. “Came and went while you were at work. I stayed to let them in. Just a few minutes of drilling, then gone.”

“Huh.” You glance toward the vent above the stove. The metal looks… newer somehow. Polished. “Did it help?”

Your phone buzzes against the counter, a message notification lighting the screen. It’s from Hana:

Hana: If anything else happens, promise you’ll call.

You type a quick Promise. and flip the phone facedown.

From the corner of your eye, movement catches- a shadow crossing the crack of light beneath the front door. Someone passing in the hallway, slow, dragging footsteps.

You and Jungkook both go still.

A pause. Then another soft bang- this one lower, near the baseboard.

He rises, crosses to the door, and peers through the peephole. “It’s fine,” he says after a beat, his tone reassuring. “Probably someone taking out trash. Sound carries weird through these halls.”

He’s smiling when he turns back, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Come here. You’re shaking.”

You hadn’t noticed until then, but your hands really are trembling. He steps behind you, palms settling on your shoulders. His thumbs trace slow, rhythmic circles at the base of your neck, grounding you back into the kitchen light.

The simple touch pulls you in two directions- one part of you relaxes, the other feels cornered.

“Here,” he says suddenly, reaching for his phone with one hand while the other stays warm against your back. “Look what I found earlier.”

He scrolls, taps a link, and holds it out toward you. “Building forum. Someone posted this morning- said they’ve been hearing whispers through the vents, too.”

You take his phone. The page loads slowly, the glow lighting both your faces in blue.

Anyone else in Northview Towers hearing things? Late night vents making weird breathing noises?

Replies trickle down the thread:

Yes omg thought I was losing it

Maybe plumbing?

Moved my bed away from the wall. Still happens.

Your breath catches halfway down the list. “Oh my god,” you whisper. “So it’s not just us.”

He leans closer, chin brushing your shoulder as he reads with you. “Told you, pretty. Old buildings talk to each other.”

You laugh, a small, nervous sound that dies fast. “Still… this many people?”

“Yeah,” he says softly, pressing a kiss just behind your ear. “It’s kind of comforting, isn’t it? We’re not alone.”

His words echo strangely in your head. We’re not alone.

You set the phone down. The room feels too quiet again, the orange light dimming toward gray.

Outside, the hallway is still.

Somewhere above, faint and steady, a vent hums back to life- low, hollow, and far too deliberate to be wind. It could be air conditioning. It could be the storm settling.

Either way, it keeps breathing long after the sun disappears.

═══════

The room feels too close tonight.

The blackout curtains swallow every hint of light; even the glow of the digital clock looks muted, as if the darkness has thickened into something you could touch.

You lie on your side, knees drawn up, heartbeat tripping. The air feels heavy, like breathing through fabric.

“Baby,” Jungkook murmurs. His voice is low, half-asleep, but he hears the way your breath catches. “Hey… what’s wrong?”

“I can’t-” Your throat tightens. “It’s too dark.”

He shifts instantly, sitting up. His hands find your shoulders, steady but soft. “Okay. Breathe with me.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” His thumb presses beneath your jaw, a point of warmth. “In through your nose.”

You shake your head, tears already burning at the corners of your eyes.

“Shh,” he says, leaning close until his forehead touches yours. His breath mixes with yours, slow, even, patient. “One… two…”

He inhales, guiding you with the rhythm. You match him- barely at first, then deeper, until the trembling in your chest starts to ease.

“See?” His voice gentles. “That’s it. Just us. Nothing else.”

Your lungs finally fill without catching. “It’s not stopping,” you whisper. “The panic. It just- keeps looping.”

“I’ve got you,” he says, firmer now. “Tell me what you need.”

You hesitate. The word won’t form, but he already understands. 

His hand slides down to your wrist, his fingers tracing the inside slowly, deliberately, sending a shiver up your arm that’s equal parts nerves and budding desire. 

“Okay,” he murmurs, his voice a low rumble that vibrates through you. “We’ll go slow. You stay in control.”

You nod, eyes closing as you lean into him, the solid press of his chest against yours a reminder that you’re not alone in this apartment.

He doesn’t rush. Every movement is careful- a grounding weight, a quiet rhythm between breath and touch. His free hand cups the back of your neck, thumb stroking the sensitive skin there while his other hand drifts upward, fingers grazing the edge of your sleeve before slipping beneath the fabric to brush your forearm. 

He keeps whispering small reassurances, the kind that anchor more than words: “You’re safe with me,” he breathes against your ear. “I’ve got you. You can stop anytime- tell me, and I’ll stop.”

You breathe in time with him, your inhales syncing with his, the rise and fall of your bodies creating a shared pulse. 

The panic begins to melt, replaced by something steady, human, real- the kind of closeness that pushes the dark a little further away, even with the faint creak of vents echoing distantly in the background.

His hands stay gentle, exploring with permission in every inch. He tugs lightly at your shirt, waiting for your subtle nod before easing it up and over your head, exposing your skin to the cool air. 

His palms glide over your shoulders, down your sides, thumbs circling your ribs in soothing patterns that make your nipples tighten. 

“You feel so good,” he whispers, leaning in to press a soft kiss to your collarbone, his lips warm and unhurried. “Tell me what you need. More? Less?”

You murmur a quiet “more,” your voice steadier now, and he responds with a quiet hum. His mouth follows the path of his hands, kissing along the swell of your breasts before taking one nipple between his lips, sucking gently, his tongue flicking in slow, deliberate strokes that draw a soft gasp from you. 

His hand slides lower, over your stomach, pausing at the waistband of your pants. “Can I?” he asks, eyes searching yours for confirmation.

“Yes,” you breathe, and he slides them down your legs along with your underwear, leaving you bare before him. He moves slightly, hands on your hips, kissing the inside of your thigh, inching closer to your core but never rushing. When his fingers finally part your folds, they’re feather-light, tracing your wetness with reverence. 

“You’re already so ready for me,” he says softly, circling your clit with the pad of his thumb in lazy loops that build heat without overwhelming. “I want to make you feel everything- only good things.”

You grip his shoulders, nails digging in just enough to ground yourself as pleasure coils low in your belly. He watches your face, adjusting his touch- slower when you tense, firmer when you arch into him- always in tune. 

“Look at me,” he whispers eventually, rising to meet your gaze as he sheds his own clothes, his cock hard and straining but held back by your pace. You do, and for a moment, nothing else exists- not the apartment, not the vents, just his warmth surrounding you, his heartbeat aligning with yours.

He lays down gently, settling between your legs without pressure, his tip nudging your entrance. “Tell me when,” he says, holding still, one hand stroking your hair while the other teases your breast. 

When you nod, he pushes in inch by inch, his thick cock stretching your cunt slowly, the initial pressure giving way to a deep, satisfying fullness that makes your inner walls flutter around him. 

He pauses after the first few inches, his breath hot against your neck as he waits for your body to adjust, his fingers interlacing with yours to squeeze reassuringly. 

"Breathe with me," he whispers, his voice steady and low, guiding you through the sensation until you relax enough for him to slide deeper, bottoming out with a shared sigh.

His groan rumbles from his chest, vibrating through where your bodies connect, mingling with your moan as you arch slightly, feeling the heat of him buried inside you. 

He rocks his hips in a measured rhythm, pulling back almost all the way before thrusting forward again, deep but unhurried strokes that let you feel every ridge of his shaft dragging along your sensitive folds, every pulse of his arousal throbbing against your core. 

His free hand rests on your hip, thumb tracing small circles on your skin to keep you grounded, never gripping too hard, always checking your face for any sign of discomfort.

"You’re perfect," he murmurs against your lips, capturing them in a soft kiss that deepens as he moves, his tongue sliding against yours in time with his gentle thrusts. 

He breaks away just enough to add, "Safe. Mine to care for," the words punctuating each roll of his hips, his cock plunging steadily into your wetness, building friction that sparks pleasure without overwhelming the tenderness.

You wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him closer, and he responds by angling his hips to hit that spot inside you with precision, his pace remaining slow, deliberate- each withdrawal slick with your combined arousal, each entry filling you completely. 

Sweat beads on your forehead, and he leans down to lick it away from your temple before kissing your jaw, your throat, murmuring, "That's it, feel how good we fit. Tell me if it's too much." But it's not- the rhythm coaxes your body to open further, your cunt clenching around him involuntarily, drawing a low hiss from his lips as he fights to stay controlled.

The intimacy builds like a gathering storm, your bodies slick and synced, skin sliding against skin with every careful push and pull. His hand leaves yours to cup your breast, pinching your nipple lightly between his fingers, rolling it until you gasp, the sensation shooting straight to where he's buried deep. 

He watches you intently, eyes dark with desire but soft with care, whispering, "You're doing so well- let go baby, I've got you," as his thrusts grow just a fraction firmer, his cock swelling inside you from the tight heat.

Your breaths come faster now, matching the increasing tempo, though he keeps it reined in, focused on your pleasure. One arm braces beside your head, the other slips between your bodies to rub your clit in slow circles with his thumb, the dual stimulation making your toes curl. 

"Cum for me when you're ready," he says softly, his voice breaking on a groan as your walls tighten around his length. The pressure coils tighter in your belly, every nerve alight from the way he fucks you- steady, attentive strokes that grind against your depths, his balls brushing your ass with each hilt.

His reassurances weave through the rising ecstasy, a constant thread: "You're safe here, just us," he breathes, nipping at your earlobe before soothing it with his tongue. The words push you higher, your hips bucking up to meet him, chasing the edge. 

When it hits, you shatter around him, your cunt clenching tight in rhythmic spasms, milking his cock as waves of release crash through you, your cry muffled against his shoulder. He holds still for a moment, letting you ride it out, his thumb pressing firmer on your clit to prolong the bliss.

He follows soon after, unable to hold back against your pulsing grip, spilling inside you with a shuddering breath- hot spurts of cum flooding your depths as he thrusts shallowly through his orgasm, groaning your name like a prayer. 

His body trembles above yours, but he doesn't collapse- instead, he gathers you close, rolling to the side so you're tucked against his chest, his cock still softening inside you. 

Through the aftershocks, he strokes your back in long, soothing lines, kissing your forehead, your eyelids, murmuring, "I've got you, always," his arms a protective cage of warmth and touch that lingers long after the pleasure fades, the distant hum of the vents a faint reminder of the world beyond this moment.

The storm outside starts again, a faint drizzle tapping the glass. The air between you hums low and alive.

And then silence.

He strokes your hair, thumb brushing along your temple. You’re still catching your breath when it happens:

Soft. High-pitched. A giggle.

You go still.

It comes again- quick, light, like a child’s laugh, echoing faintly through the vent above the bed. The breath leaves your lungs all over again.

“Jungkook.”

He lifts his head, listening. For a heartbeat, you’re sure you see something shift in his expression- surprise? concern?- before it smooths away.

“What is it?” he asks softly.

“Did you-” Your voice breaks. “Did you hear that?”

He glances at the vent. Nothing moves. “It’s probably wind, baby. Air pockets make weird sounds when pressure changes.”

You shake your head, tears spilling before you can stop them. “That wasn’t wind.”

He gathers you closer, voice almost a lullaby. “It’s okay. It’s over. I’m right here.”

You bury your face against his chest, sobbing quietly while he rocks you, whispering that you’re safe, that it’s just the house.

But the sound lingers behind your ribs, the echo of that laugh- too small, too soft, too human to be air.

When you finally fall asleep, his hand is still tracing slow circles between your shoulder blades.

The vent hums once. Just a breath. Almost… pleased.

═══════

Morning comes in fragments- the soft echo of the shower shutting off, the smell of coffee already made.

You stand at the sink, towel around your hair, light from the frosted window painting the counter in pale squares. The pill organizer sits where you always leave it: seven little compartments, days marked in neat white font.

But the pills inside- they’re wrong.

At first glance, it’s small things.

The Tuesday capsule looks more ivory than white. Thursday’s has a number stamped sideways instead of centered.

You frown, flip open Monday’s lid, and spill one into your palm. The tablet is smooth, coated, a color you don’t recognize.

You grab your phone, thumb flying through your photo gallery- old screenshots from refills, careful notes you’d taken months ago when your dosage changed.

There: last month’s batch. Same shape. Different imprint.

You zoom in and your stomach turns.

This one says GG257.

Your photo says 031R.

“What the fuck…” you whisper.

You scroll further, comparing timestamps. The pictures line up perfectly- all taken when you thought you were double-checking refills. No irregularities. No gaps.

Except… the codes are always different.

“Everything okay, love?”

You jump at Jungkook’s voice. He’s leaning in the doorway, mug in hand, hair still damp from the shower.

“I don’t know,” you say, your voice shaking a little. “These don’t match. They changed something again- the pills, the code, everything.”

He sets his coffee down and crosses the room slowly, eyes scanning your face. “You think it’s the pharmacy?”

“Who else could it be?” you say, heat rising behind your eyes. “Look-” You thrust your phone toward him, scrolling through pictures. “See? Every refill’s a different code, but the label never says anything. They shouldn’t do that.”

He studies the images for a moment, then looks back at you. “Could be a new supplier. Insurance companies swap generics all the time.”

“I know, but-” You shake your head. “Not every month. That’s not normal. It’s like-”

“Hey,” he says softly, placing a hand over yours. “Let’s not spiral, pretty. We’ll call them, okay?”

You nod, chewing the inside of your cheek. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll call.”

You step into the hall, phone already ringing. After a few tones, a click- then a woman’s voice, friendly, professional.

“Northview Pharmacy, this is Nari.”

“Hi- uh, I’m calling about a refill issue. My medication looks different this month. The pills are a different color, different code.”

A brief shuffle of keys clacking on the other end. “Can I get your name and birthday?”

You tell her. There’s a pause, the faint tap of nails on a keyboard.

“Everything looks consistent on our end,” she says finally. “Same generic, same manufacturer, same lot number as last time.”

“That’s impossible,” you say quickly. “The pills are different. I still have the old ones.”

“I understand it’s concerning,” she says, tone even. “But we’ve dispensed the same product to you for the last six months. Nothing’s changed.”

Your chest tightens. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” Nari says gently. “You can come by and compare if it helps, but it’ll be the same bottle.”

You thank her, hang up, and stand there staring at the phone until the screen goes black.

They said it’s the same. Exactly the same.

“Baby?” Jungkook’s voice floats down the hall. “What’d they say?”

“They said…” You force a laugh that sounds nothing like one. “They said it hasn’t changed. At all.”

He steps closer, his expression softening, brows furrowing just slightly- perfectly. “Maybe the coating oxidized a little. Humidity does that. Want me to grab a silica pack from the drawer?”

You shake your head. “No. It’s fine. I just…” You trail off. “I must’ve mixed them up.”

He brushes a hand through your damp hair, thumb pausing just below your ear. “We’ll switch pharmacies if it helps.”

You nod slowly, your pulse still climbing for reasons you can’t name.

He smiles, presses a kiss to your temple. “You’re doing everything right, pretty. You just need a break.”

You return the smile- small, tight, grateful- and turn back to rinse your mug.

When you look up again, the mirror over the sink catches your reflection. For a second, it looks normal- two figures in soft light, domestic and calm.

Then you blink.

And the reflection doesn’t.

It stares back half a beat longer- your face frozen mid-motion while the real you flinches. Then, like a buffering screen, it snaps to match.

Your breath catches in your throat.

“Kook,” you whisper.

He glances up, following your gaze. “What is it?”

The mirror is normal again.

“I thought-” You stop. The words sound stupid even before they form. “Nothing.”

He tilts his head, concern painting his features in soft strokes. “You sure?”

You nod, forcing a smile. “Yeah.”

He touches your chin lightly, guiding your face back toward him. “Good. Don’t let this place mess with you, okay?”

You try to laugh, but it comes out thin. “Yeah. Okay.”

He keeps watching you a moment longer before stepping away, humming under his breath.

The mirror stands behind you, the glass cold and still- until your reflection doesn’t. For one long second, your face stays in mid-motion while the image in the glass watches you with a steadier stare. Then your reflection snaps into place.

═══════

The blackout hits like a slap.

One blink, and the apartment is gone- swallowed in wet, electric dark. The television dies mid-sentence, the refrigerator cuts out, the hum you’ve learned to live with collapses into a void so dense it feels like the air itself stops moving.

You stand in the living room, every hair on your arms lifting. The only light comes from the window- lightning flashes that strobe white across the furniture, then leave everything ink-black again.

“Kook?”

Nothing. Then, from the hall: “Fuse blew. Stay there.” His voice is calm, distant, swallowed by the dark.

You take one step. The floorboards groan beneath your heel- louder than they ever have, like the wood itself is straining.

Another flash. For that single pulse of light, the reflection in the blank TV screen doesn’t look like you. It looks almost … tilted.

The thunder hits a beat later, shaking the windows.

Then you hear it.

At first it’s a hiss- air through the vents- until it starts forming shapes of sound. Not words yet, just syllables, stacked on top of each other like overlapping breaths.

“sssshhhhh- ahhhh- nnnn-”

Your pulse jumps. You step back until your shoulder hits the wall.

The hiss rises, twisting, breaking apart and reforming into something almost human:

“leeeeeeeave-”

“-don’t-”

“-no one’s there-”

“-can you hear it-”

The voices multiply. Men, women, children, all whispering over one another in a cadence that makes no sense. Some are right beside your ear, others echo from behind the drywall.

“Stop,” you whisper, covering your ears. “Stop it-”

It doesn’t. It changes.

A scraping sound starts inside the vent above the couch. Slow. Dry. Metal against metal. Then, distinctly, something drags.

You stagger backward, hit the edge of the coffee table, pain flashing up your thigh.

“Jungkook!”

No answer.

The emergency lights kick on with a faint hum- dim, red, barely enough to carve outlines in the dark. Every shadow looks alive.

The dragging stops.

You wait, breath held, until you hear the tiniest tap-tap-tap, like fingernails against the metal vent cover.

Then a whisper- clear this time, close enough to vibrate through your ribs:

“Y/N.”

You freeze.

It says your name again, sharper, like a child learning to speak.

“Y/N. Y/N.”

You lunge for the switch out of instinct, but the power’s dead. The button clicks uselessly beneath your thumb.

The whisper turns to laughter- light, brittle, as if two voices are laughing out of sync.

“Stop it!” you shout, voice cracking. “Stop!”

A loud clang answers- the vent cover snapping once, hard, like something struck it from the inside.

“Hey!” Jungkook’s voice finally, cutting through the dark. Footsteps. Then the narrow beam of his phone light slicing across the room. “What happened?!”

You spin toward him, sobbing. “There’s something in the walls! It said my name-”

He’s already pulling you into his chest, the phone beam jerking wildly as you shake. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay,” he says, voice steady but low, like he’s afraid of spooking something invisible. “Power outages mess with the wiring. Pressure in the ducts. It’s nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing!”

He hushes you, hand sliding to the back of your neck. “I’ll light candles. I’ll stay up all night if I have to.”

The vent rattles again. Both of you look.

The beam of light catches dust falling- slow, lazy motes drifting from the metal grate. No movement. Just dust.

Still, the sound of whispering hasn’t stopped; it’s lower now, just under hearing, like the noise your mind makes when it’s too quiet.

You can’t tell if it’s outside or inside your head.

“See?” Jungkook murmurs. “Nothing there.”

You try to speak, but the words won’t come. He guides you down onto the couch, presses your forehead to his chest, rocks you gently. His heart beats steady, unbothered.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

You clutch at his shirt, sobbing until your voice burns out. The apartment stays silent except for the thunder miles away.

After a while, your breathing evens. He wipes your cheeks, tells you to rest.

You close your eyes because there’s nothing else to do.

The dark behind your lids is red. You can still hear the faint hum of the emergency light.

Just before sleep drags you under, something brushes your ankle. Light as a fingertip.

Your eyes snap open. Jungkook’s arms are still around you. He’s whispering something- soft, rhythmic, like a lullaby you can’t quite catch.

You stare past his shoulder. The vent above the couch is open an inch wider than before.

The air that seeps out is cold. Wet. Breathing.

You start to tremble again, whispering, “Please make it stop.”

“I will,” he says into your hair. “Tomorrow we’ll fix it. I promise.”

You nod, but your thoughts are a jumble, looping back on themselves.

Maybe it’s not the house.

Maybe it’s me.

Maybe the house is quiet… and I’m the thing that’s wrong.

The red light flickers once, twice.

From the vent, a sound like laughter crawls out and dissolves into static.

═══════

The voices stopped after that night.

Or maybe they just moved deeper into the walls.

For two mornings, you wake to silence so complete it hurts. The kind that doesn’t ring or hum, the kind that feels like holding your breath. Jungkook says it’s because he fixed the vent- tightened the screws, cleaned out the filters. He even replaced the air freshener plug-ins with sage bundles he burned himself, waving the smoke through every room while the windows cracked open.

It worked.

It must have worked.

The apartment smells like rosemary and citrus now instead of dust. You tell yourself that’s what calm smells like.

Sunlight pools through the living room again- real sunlight, gold and heavy. The coffee table gleams, every surface has been wiped down. The carpet looks freshly vacuumed, the tracks neat and straight like a heartbeat that’s finally evened out.

The white noise machine hums softly by the bed- except it’s not humming. It’s off. The plug dangles just short of the outlet, tucked behind the nightstand.

You notice it every morning. You tell yourself it doesn’t matter. The quiet feels earned.

“See?” Jungkook says, smiling as he carries in breakfast. “Told you it just needed attention.”

He’s barefoot, sleeves pushed up, hair falling into his eyes. He sets the tray down, arranges your cup exactly the way you like- milk before sugar, not after.

You lean back against the headboard. “You didn’t have to cook again.”

“I wanted to.” He slides a plate toward you: eggs, toast, sliced strawberries. “You’ve been sleeping better. You look better.”

“Do I?”

He nods, brushing a crumb from your cheek with his thumb. “A hundred percent. Color’s back in your face.”

You smile, weak but real. “Guess I needed rest.”

“Guess so.” He sits beside you, crossing one ankle over the other. “And maybe food that isn’t instant noodles.”

You laugh. “That too.”

He grins at that, boyish and easy. The light catches in his eyes, and for a moment he looks exactly like the Jungkook you moved in with- warm, attentive, the version of him that made the apartment feel like home.

Days pass this way.

He keeps busy- cleaning, cooking, fixing little things you never knew were broken. You nap in the afternoon sunlight, the quiet stretching like silk through the rooms.

No rattling. No whispers. No laughter from the vents.

Sometimes you catch yourself standing in the hallway, listening. The silence presses close, thick enough to feel- not empty, not exactly, just… waiting.

You shake it off.

Jungkook finds you there once, hand still on the wall. “You okay, baby?”

“Yeah,” you say quickly. “Just listening.”

He tilts his head. “To what?”

“Nothing.”

He smiles and kisses your temple. “That’s the point, right?”

You nod. He squeezes your shoulder once before heading to the kitchen, where the sound of water running and soft music fills the air again.

You hear his voice from the other room, cheerful.

“Found us a new place, by the way. Bigger kitchen. Actual backyard.”

Your heart stutters. “Wait- really?”

He leans against the doorway, grin widening. “Told you I’d get us out of this shoebox. It’s out near Bansong-dong, up by the base of the mountain. Quiet streets, trees everywhere, no neighbors pressed against the walls.”

You blink. “That’s… pretty far from the city.”

“Yeah,” he says easily, crossing the room to you. “But maybe that’s good, right? You said you needed space. Somewhere peaceful. No noise. No stress.”

You nod slowly. “What about work? Hana, my friends-”

He brushes a hand through your hair, gentle. “You’ll still see them. It’s not that far—just a short drive. It’s perfect, baby. It’s clean, private, ours.”

You hesitate, the word ours lingering in your chest. “Just us, huh?”

He smiles, presses a kiss to your temple. “Exactly. Time to start over. You deserve something real, love.”

He means it. You can hear the sincerity in his voice. And for the first time in months, you almost believe him.

Almost.

Because when you lie down that night, eyes half-lidded, the quiet feels heavy again- not hostile, just too perfect.

The kind of silence that watches.

And just as sleep starts to pull you under, the vent above the bed exhales- one slow, shuddering breath that smells faintly of metal.

You don’t open your eyes.

You just whisper, “Let’s move soon.”

═══════

The boxes make the apartment feel smaller.

Everywhere you look, there’s cardboard- stacked against walls, sealed with strips of tape that whisper when the air shifts. The furniture looks naked without the framed photos and throw blankets, the corners sharper somehow, unfamiliar.

You tell Jungkook it’s a good kind of strange. He agrees, smiling like it’s all progress.

The days leading up to the move stretch thin and anxious. The weather turns muggy- thunder stays on the horizon, never quite coming close enough to break the tension.

You wake early each morning to find him already packing- always busy, always humming under his breath. When you offer to help, he hands you light things: clothes, books, the harmless stuff. Anything breakable, anything heavy, he insists on handling himself.

“Don’t strain yourself,” he says, brushing dust from your fingers. “I’ve got it.”

He always says that. 

“I’ve got it.”

And he does. Every box labeled, every drawer emptied, every trace of the old life folded into neat rectangles.

Still, something feels off.

The bedroom lamp (unplugged since yesterday) glows faintly when you pass by, a ghost of current flickering through the bulb. You stare at it, heart skipping, until the light winks out. When you call Jungkook’s name, he’s in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, wrapping glasses in newspaper.

“It must’ve been a charge,” he says easily, not even turning around. “Static from the storm.”

You tell yourself that makes sense. You tell yourself a lot of things.

By evening, the air feels heavy with dust and candle smoke. The living room is mostly bare now, walls showing faint outlines where frames used to hang.

Jungkook pushes open the balcony door, the hinges sighing. “Come on,” he says softly. “You’ve been cooped up all day.”

Outside, the city hums under the fading sky. The streets below glint with rainwater, headlights streaking into silver lines. You lean on the railing, inhaling the damp air.

He stands close beside you, his hand brushing yours. “Looks better out here, huh?”

“Yeah,” you say. “Like it’s waiting for us.”

He smiles faintly. “Maybe it is.”

You watch the skyline for a while, the quiet between you comfortable. The horizon bleeds from gold to violet, and the scent of wet pavement drifts up from below.

“Thank you,” you say at last, turning toward him.

He glances over. “For what?”

“For… everything. For staying. For saving me.”

He laughs softly, shaking his head. “I didn’t save you, baby.”

“Yes, you did.”

He takes your hand, brings it to his lips, presses a kiss to your knuckles. His eyes meet yours, warm and unwavering. “You saved yourself. I just helped you see it.”

You swallow hard, smile through it. “You always know what to say.”

“I just say what’s true.”

His thumb moves slow against your wrist- steady, reassuring. Behind you, a soft sound interrupts the stillness.

A tap. Then another.

You turn your head, expecting wind against the windowpane, but the glass door is open- nothing could be hitting it.

Another sound, this one duller- the faint shuffle of a box sliding across the hardwood floor inside.

Jungkook doesn’t look. Doesn’t even blink.

“Probably the draft,” he murmurs, still tracing small circles on your wrist. “Or the building settling.”

You look back into the apartment. The box in the corner has shifted an inch closer to the door.

“Yeah,” you whisper. “Settling.”

He smiles, satisfied with your answer, and pulls you a little closer. The last of the sunlight fades behind him, leaving the balcony in amber gloom.

For a while, neither of you speak. The city hushes. A car passes somewhere below, its tires whispering through puddles.

Finally, he speaks- voice quiet, certain.

“Once we’re in the new place,” he says, “we’ll leave all of this behind. No more whispers, no more bad nights. Just us.”

You nod, leaning your head against his shoulder. “You really think it’ll be that easy?”

His thumb traces lazy circles against your wrist. “Doesn’t have to be easy,” he murmurs. “Just has to be ours.”

That makes you smile. “Then ours it is.”

He turns his head, kisses your hair, and breathes, “That’s my girl.”

Inside the apartment, a single box shifts again- a low scrape, quick and almost shy.

Neither of you notice.

═══════

The new house breathes differently.

It’s not loud like the old apartment- no neighbors above or below, no pipes sighing in the walls- but there’s a kind of pulse to it, slow and patient, the way wood expands in heat. The silence feels alive in a way you can’t name.

By the time the sun starts sinking, the rooms are golden. Light spills through the half-unpacked boxes, striping the floor in warm, straight lines. The smell of fresh paint lingers beneath the faint sweetness of sage.

Jungkook sits propped against the headboard, a book closed on his lap. You’re stretched across his chest, head on his shoulder, your breath syncing with the rise and fall of his. Outside, cicadas start their evening chorus, a soft droning that fills the gaps between your heartbeat and his.

“Feels weird,” you murmur, eyes half-closed. “Too quiet.”

He hums low in his throat, fingers combing through your hair. “Good weird or bad weird?”

You shrug against him. “I don’t know yet.”

He chuckles- the sound rumbles under your ear. “When I was a kid, I used to hate quiet. Thought it meant something bad was about to happen.”

You lift your head slightly. “Really?”

“Mm.” His thumb strokes idle patterns along your arm. “During storms, I’d hide under the blanket and pretend I was asleep. The thunder used to sound like someone knocking on the door. Drove me crazy.”

“You? Scared of storms?”

He grins. “Don’t tell anyone. It’ll ruin my image.”

You smile, eyes drifting shut again. “I like thunder. Makes me feel small in a good way.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm-hm.” You yawn. “Makes the world sound alive.”

He’s quiet for a moment. Then: “Maybe that’s why you’re so good at hearing things.”

You open one eye, glance up at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that you notice stuff most people don’t,” he says easily. “The way the apartment creaked, the way wind shifts.”

You study his face. “You make that sound like a bad thing.”

He smiles- soft, reassuring. “Never bad. Just rare.”

You hum in response, too tired to question it further. The light outside fades from gold to blue, the edges of the room softening into shadows.

The house is utterly still. No voices. No scraping. No breathing vents.

You let yourself relax for the first time in weeks.

His fingers drift through your hair again, slow, rhythmic, like the motion of water. His heartbeat is steady beneath your ear- not loud, but insistent, a quiet metronome of safety.

You whisper something- maybe his name, maybe thank you- and he murmurs, “Sleep, pretty.”

You do.

But as your breathing slows, the quiet begins to feel heavier, thicker, like something holding its breath.

The last thing you hear before slipping under is the faintest creak- the kind a house makes when it’s settling, or when someone steps lightly just outside the door.

He doesn’t move.

He just keeps stroking your hair.

And in the silence, the rhythm of his heartbeat never misses a beat.

═══════

jungkooks’s pov:

She fell asleep on his chest again.

The weight of her- warm, trusting- pressed into him like proof that everything had worked. The storm had passed. The ghosts were gone. The house was quiet, and she was safe.

That was all he’d wanted.

For her to feel safe.

He keeps his hand in her hair, brushing slow patterns down the strands, careful not to wake her. The room hums with the faint breath of night air through the open window. The clock ticks in soft, regular beats.

He lets his mind drift- not forward, never forward, but back.

═══════

He’d known the apartment before she ever saw it.

The walls, the vents, the crawl spaces- all of it mapped in his mind from the year he’d lived there alone. The place had quirks, sure- weak sound insulation, old pipes, ducts that carried noise like secrets. He’d learned them like language.

That’s how the tapping started.

He’d unscrewed one of the vent covers months before she moved in and mounted a small hinge plate behind it- a bent piece of tin attached to an old fan motor from a discarded alarm clock. It clicked on at intervals, soft tap-tap-taps against the drywall, irregular enough to sound organic.

He’d sit beside her on the couch, arm around her shoulders, and feel her stiffen when the sound came.

She’d gone still, eyes on the wall.

“Old pipes,” he’d murmured, hiding his smile behind a sip of wine.

It was perfect. Simple. Believable.

═══════

The whispers came next.

He’d already known where the ducts met- the perfect echo chambers. From the utility closet, his voice carried like breath. He didn’t need to raise it; just a whisper would do.

“Y/n…”

“Y/n…”

Sometimes he’d use the Bluetooth speaker hidden behind the bookshelf to play pre-recorded sounds - his own voice, layered and slowed, whispering fragments of her name between static.

That’s how she heard him even when he was next to her.

He’d tested the timing: the loop would run for twenty seconds while he held her, pretending to listen. He’d glance at the ceiling, jaw tight, eyes wide in mock concern. “It’s the neighbors,” he’d say. “Or maybe the wind.”

She’d tremble against him. He’d tighten his arm around her.

“Shh. I’ve got you.”

He’d even accounted for nights when he was asleep.

Or when she thought he was.

The small speaker on the nightstand, tucked behind the lamp base, had a timer app synced to his phone. It whispered at 2:17am- precisely when her REM cycles were deepest, when her dreams blurred with the dark.

Sometimes, half-awake, she’d whisper his name, and he’d mumble something back without opening his eyes.

Perfect synchronization. Perfect control.

═══════

The first real test had been the phone recording.

He remembered the hum of her breathing while she slept, the soft red light blinking on the nightstand. The app was recording. He waited.

Then he triggered the ping- a quiet, invisible pulse from the Bluetooth speaker hidden behind the dresser. It drained the battery just enough to corrupt the file. No proof, no playback.

She’d been so sure she’d caught something that time. Her face had fallen when she saw the black screen, eyes wide and wet.

He’d hated that part. But she needed to see that she couldn’t trust the noise- only him.

“Battery must’ve died mid-recording, baby.”

He’d said it so gently. And she’d believed him.

═══════

The mirror had been an experiment.

A leftover remnant from before she moved in- the silvering along the back was damaged, just enough to catch moisture patterns. He’d traced her name across it once with a cotton swab dipped in diluted cleaner, faint enough to vanish when dry.

He’d waited.

Steam did the rest. The letters appeared ghostlike through condensation.

When she screamed, he’d come running- barefoot, half-dressed, water still dripping from his hair. He’d grabbed her shoulders and wiped the glass clean, quick and firm.

“Don’t look. Breathe with me.”

And she did.

He’d felt her heartbeat racing through her palms. The memory still made his chest ache with something like pride.

═══════

The hanger trick had been easy. A cracked window, a bit of fishing line looped through the metal hook, pulled tight to the vent’s rhythm. Just enough movement to catch her eye, never enough to show the string.

He’d tested it a dozen times before letting it happen. He remembered the way she froze when the closet door creaked open by itself, her breath catching against his chest. He’d whispered reassurance into her hair, feeling her pulse flutter beneath his hand.

“Shh. I’ve got you.”

And he had. Every piece of her fear was threaded through his fingertips.

═══════

The pills had been harder.

That part scared even him sometimes- not the doing of it, but how easily it became routine.

He’d switched the capsules slowly, one bottle at a time, enough for her to doubt herself but never enough to hurt her. She always looked at the pills like they were strangers.

And before handing the bottle back to her, he’d taken her phone, opened her gallery, and edited the timestamp metadata on the old photos- replacing one imprint with another.

He’d paid the pharmacist to confirm her fears were baseless. A small envelope, a quiet favor, an understanding.

“We’ve dispensed the same product for six months.”

He’d stood beside her that morning, hand on her back, feeling her tension unravel while the lie played through the phone speaker. She’d cried afterward. He’d held her until she fell asleep.

“You’re not crazy,” he’d whispered into her hair. “You’re just tired.”

═══════

The posts about the building had been his favorite. He’d typed them in the dark while she slept beside him, glowing phone light soft against his knuckles.

“Anyone else hearing weird noises in the walls of 4B?”

“Might be the plumbing or something”

A few replies. Enough to seed the thought that it wasn’t all in her head- just enough to make her trust his calm even more.

Because that was the point. It wasn’t about ghosts or fear or madness.

It was about dependence.

She needed him. She always had.

He presses his lips to the top of her head now, breathing her in- shampoo and sweat and sleep.

Her breathing is steady, shallow, the kind of sleep that only comes after surrender. He watches the rise and fall of her back, the little curls of hair caught against her lips. The rhythm soothes him- predictable, soft, his.

She used to flinch in her sleep. Now she doesn’t. Now she trusts the silence.

He leans forward, pressing a quiet kiss into her hair again. “Good girl,” he whispers.

For a moment, he just listens. The new house hums differently than the old one- heavier, denser. The kind of quiet that doesn’t simply exist, but waits.

He reaches for the vent above the headboard, the one he sealed earlier. The metal is cool beneath his fingers. He tugs gently- it doesn’t move. The screws are tight. He smiles.

No gaps. No echoes. No ghosts.

Just him.

He sits back, the shadows folding around him. The streetlight through the window slants across the floor in thin, trembling stripes. He can almost hear her heartbeat still, even from here.

He thinks about how easy it had been to make her doubt herself- not out of cruelty, but necessity. She had needed order. She had needed someone steady enough to hold the noise for her.

He convinces you you’re losing your mind. Moving your things. Switching out your pills. Whispering your name at night until you think you’re hearing voices.

It had never been about hurting her. It had always been about love- the kind that fixes, that quiets, that teaches.

He traces the edge of the blanket where it meets her shoulder, fingers light as breath. Her skin is warm. Her body trusts him even in sleep.

He leans close, his voice barely a whisper against her ear. “Don’t worry, baby,” he murmurs, tone soft enough to sound like a dream. “I’ll take care of you. Nobody else will.”

He presses one last kiss to her temple, eyes open now, watching the darkness settle around them like a second skin.

The house is utterly still. No wind. No voices. No sound at all.

And yet- if you listened closely, past the hush of sleep and the hum of distant power lines, you could swear the walls themselves were learning to breathe.

Learning to whisper.

Because he was teaching them how.

═══════

Post A/N: did we see the twist coming 😭 or did i pull it off???

═══════

JKWRITOBER ♡ MASTERLIST ♡ a03

♡ requests are welcome ♡ taglist ♡

These characters are fictional and do not represent any real-life individuals. Their likeness is used solely for visual inspiration and does not reflect the actual person or their story.

═══════

Posted: 10/24/2025 (let’s just pretend lol)

Taglist: @ane102 @moonchild-moonfairy @mar-lo-pap @lovingkoalaface @whoa-jo @kiliskywalker666 @sucker4jeon @annpeachy-blog @kaiparkerwifes @nikkinikj @asyr97 @jjkluver7 @bammbi-jeon127 @kookoo-kachoo @angelsdecalcomania @kayswatanabe @kelsyx33 @tatamicc @llallaaa @chromietriestowrite @k1ll1ngcl0wns @jahnaviii @mfsitscho @traumaanatomy @yu-justme @bangtaniess @roseda @hottigerboba @xumyboo @bangtansfav-7 @ggukieskookie @granataepfelchen @blubird592 @mellyyyyyyx @gukkiemybaby @likeesapphire @jaerisdiction @amarawayne @misshale21 @dltyum @xcallmetaniax @kyrasworldd @withpinksky12 @iridescentshine @elithenium @heyinwluv85s @prilnextdoor23 @Strxqrd1 @uli_o7 @jojojoliejolene @hoseokteardrop @mimi1097 @aiiselle90210 @sassywildbunny @seolhyuningg @junecat18 @tatumrileyslover

[bang-tan-bitch-ficrec]

This done fucked me up. Incredible! I went in blind without reading the warnings and it was so so worth it.

[jkwrites-m]

thank youuuuu 💜🫶 imo, it was worth not reading the warnings!!

[jkwrites-m]

MAHHH LOVEEE

Safe haven has me completely at awe and oh my god the writing? The plot. Girl STAWPPPP. Beautyyyyyyy

Ooofffff

Girl girl honestly, questionnnnn—-

Whattt if oc would have tried to run the moment she saw that jk was killingall her friends and someone (anyone alive) shouts at her to run and she does end up running. Let’s just say she kinda gets a hiding spot. what would jk have done??? How would the storyy go from here. Excuseeee meee for wantimg more teeth and angstt kaksksks

And alsoooo whatt if OC would not have died moving forward??? Likeee?? Yknow. Sort of like an ending B the way you’ve done for pull over. Girl lemme tell you something I YEARN FOR ANOTHER ENDING or a drabble which has more resistance from OC yknowww???

Anyways what a piece girl, you’ve got such a great talentt!!

♡ thank youuu 😭🫶 i literally put my whole chest into Safe Haven- i just love zombie/apocalypse horror so much 😜it’s one of those genres that lives rent free in my head.

♡ and omg okay, if oc actually did try to run?? it’d probably be Jisoo who yelled for her to go. but jk would definitely find her 😭 at that point he’s memorized every inch of the place- like full psycho-level knowledge- so there’s nowhere she could really hide for long 😭

♡ tbh she was always meant to die. it just made the most sense narratively, but if there was an “ending B”… she’d probably manage to hide out, survive, and slowly (against her better judgment) start trusting him again. eventually they’d move away from the city, and over months or years, they’d kind of pretend to be a normal family. isolated, quiet, still haunted- but alive. 💜

[jkwrites-m]

so eun ae is growing up now, right? as she gets older, she'll go through changes in her personality, interests, appearance, etc. there will be so many "firsts"—like her first crush, first pimple 😭, first period, first time cursing, and more—that jungkook will finally get to experience with her, since he wasn’t around during her earlier childhood. OOHHH I CAN’T WAIT FOR MORE OF DADDY KOOKIE!!!

♡ yes 😭she’s growing up so fast!! she’s ten now, and by the end of the series she’ll be around 12–13ish 🫩i actually have their entire timeline written out so i can keep the ages and events straight lol.

♡ there’s definitely going to be some mood swings and the very start of teenage angst coming 👀 it’s gonna be such a fun (and slightly emotional) stage to write- i can’t wait for y’all to see it!! 😭🫶

[jkwrites-m]

Hii omg I cant wait for the inspired fic for Some Kind of Wonderful! I actually loveee that movie💕 Thank you so much for your service!

♡ me tooooo!! i love that movie so much, it’s such a comfort watch!! i haven’t done shit with writing it lately though 😭 so we’re just gonna have to be patient with me bc i’m slow as hell 🫩🤧 but i promise it’s coming eventually!!

[jkwrites-m]

hey loves:

♡ just a quick note before i go a little quiet again- i’m heading on vacation soon, so i won’t be super active for a bit! i’m so sorry it’s been taking me forever to get through requests 🥲 i’m still sick (and will be for a good minute), and between all the doctor’s appointments, working, and trying to live a somewhat normal life, things have been a little crazy lol.

♡ i’ll be fine, it’s just gonna take some time 🫶 but that also means sometimes i miss little details in stories or things might sound a little off. (brain fog is so real lately 🫩)

♡ i’m trying to finish up all of jkwritober soon (i’m so behind 😭) so i can focus more on uploading Daddy Kookie again and working through the requests properly 🥹

♡ thank you for sticking with me through it all. i love you guys endlessly 💜