☁︎ summary: having lived on the streets for almost all your life, you’ve gotten used to taking advantage of every penny you’ve ever gotten your hands on, as well as the people that you see everyday. Stealing had always been your life, ridding people of their money because they had too much. After all, at the end of the day, we’re all just trying to survive.
You realize that you have made a grave mistake when you accidentally steal from if not the most notorious mafia bosses of the century.
☁︎ genre: angst | tiny bit of fluff in the end | poly au | mafia au | dystopia au (?) | mafia!bts | street criminal!reader |
For every step you take as you walk through the filthy streets of Seoul, the city changes its appearance almost as though it’s natural. Each transition more dramatic than the last.
The is the reality for a lot of people. It’s reality for you. Having been abandoned in a small orphanage near the outskirts of the city, right near the exits where all the unfortunate souls ended up, you’ve been living in the streets almost all your life. You would know of all the lives that ended up in this miserable part of the city. You were familiar with each beggar, with failed business owners and children who were abandoned in the same place as you.
For each second that passes, the city changes on your journey back home.
As you walk through the streets, the wet pavement reflecting the beautiful city lights and massive advertisements, you saw the luxurious hotels and buildings that towered over the entire city. You are able to see the eye catching billboard signs and massive advertisements that stared down at the people in the streets, the streets of stores with luxurious doors and tinted windows with even more luxurious brands in fancy fonts, and inviting music in addition. One second, you’ll get a full view of all the stores where you can have everything you’ve ever wanted with a price worth a life, the types of places accented with gold and diamonds, sweet-scented and gratifying.
However, the next second, you took note of how the city changes from wealth and affluence to poverty and famine. You took a small turn and found yourself in the crowded parts of the city. Each block you walk through, you have witnessed it all. You can’t miss it. From the streets, you were able to see disabled beggars who lived and managed on the sides, possessing only a small, empty soup can that they use to collect change from strangers who were willing to spare coins that they found no more value in. The next moment, you’ve seen massive crowds of protestors either demanding for equality or demanding some company owner to step down because of corruption. People gathering as one, raising flags and signs in front of who seems to be an oblivious powerful man. Of course, a city won’t be complete without a news source standing nearby trying to catch a story because they are everywhere.
The city flickered between poverty and luxury.
You kept your head down most of the time. You can’t afford to look at the rich. Look down. At the end of the day, those bastards will take advantage rid the money of every single one, draining people of a life and a chance to make it up to themselves, and they won’t care if you were a mutt on the streets or some fellow rich bastard. If you look up, you might just see the misery in these streets. You’ll see how it is soaked in the pavement cracks, how it is embedded into the vandalized walls and wilting trees, how it is written on every face you’ll pass by the streets, those who have given up every penny for a passion and a dream that was long gone, those who have given up hopes for a better life if it meant surviving the cruel world that had them under its thumbs. You’ll see how people have resorted sleeping in the streets, on the bench, on worn out grocery carts with broken wheels, rather than in the homeless’ shelters where bed bugs resided, where ill people slept, where dying children were left and abandoned, where they offered disgusting scraps of food that had been there for over about a week, probably even a month. Each one becoming nothing but trash that resided on the streets as each second flew by painfully slow, feeding from the garbage cans and the food that the rich teenagers cruelly mock them with, then thrown away as though they were treats for the stray dogs.
Thousands of people competing for money and power while millions are left to pick up the scraps and crawl on their knees if it meant getting food to put on the table or at least a single penny to be added to the savings jar, if you were lucky enough to have one.
From your back pockets, you pulled out a card. A fake ID, one would call it. You called it your only chance of feeding the children in the orphanage, your only chance of feeding that one Christian family from around the corner who was nice to everyone, your only chance of actually finishing high school and finally getting to college to get a proper job, your only chance of climbing up the social ladder and helping your own people.
It is the only way out, you thought to yourself, clearing any doubts and making room for your fake personality that you needed to display to the people. You looked up at the massive building, it’s neon lights almost blinding you. It was impressive. You haven’t been to this area of the city before, and you were glad you haven’t. You watch all the people enter and exit the building. It seems as they were all the same. They were either filthy rich, or they were just like you. The only difference is that they were drinking and mindlessly gambling their own lives away, making deals they can never turn away from, temporarily erasing their reality with just one swig of alcohol. You, on the other hand, were here with a nothing but your determination to do anything for children who were just like you. You were here with a master plan, a back up plan even. You cannot afford to fail. Literally.
One night, it would be a dirty scam, and the next, you’d pickpocket from sleeping drunks. It went on and on and on. Night after night, a new trick to fool a few couple people to take even the slightest bit of money. You didn’t care. You needed it. At the end of the day, you’re just surviving the cruel reality of this world. At the end of the day, you’re just surviving just like any other person who walked in these filthy streets. Why can’t you? Why shouldn’t you be allowed to commit little crimes compared to all the major crimes and corruption in this damned city? Your crimes were so little compared to the large ones that don’t even get noticed by the authorities. Maybe it was because you look so different from everyone, disguised as an innocent, pure orphan trying to make it to the world. Your own face was a shield in and of itself.
But tonight was different.
Tonight, you have outcheated probably seven on the most dangerous men of the century. Tonight… you might have just encountered seven of the most dangerous entities to exist in time.
You are going to pay for it.
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