their childhoods were paved in such a way that they would end up being in power of the underground.
this is the 6/7 preview for Memento Mori.
also posted in ao3
It was the cherry of the cake, the whipped cream on dessert, the chocolate sauce over the ice-cream. Taehyung had dragged his finger across the surface, tasting only the compliments that went with the actual dish. Undoubtedly he craved for more, but Jimin did not allow it. That selfish bastard; Taehyung knew he wanted the glory to himself, knew that he and Jungkook were only luggage because it was at Jimin’s strongest point that he pried the opportunities away from them.
Did he think he was the only one that wanted to rise above his fucked up life?
Of course, to others, Taehyung’s life was filled with favourable circumstances. Because who wouldn’t want a family that could afford private education and foreign tutors? Who wouldn’t want a family that was powerful and rich and influential? Who wouldn’t want to live in a mansion, with butlers and maids and cooks? Who wouldn’t want to be forced to family traditions, and high demands, and extravagant expectations? Taehyung didn’t want to, that’s for sure.
It was logical and almost irresistible to blame the company he kept; Jimin had been his friend since the first day they met at the playground when they were 6, and once they met Jungkook, the boy never let go. Being raised by stiff, stoic parents that were only ever home to drill him to do better in school and to stop hanging around unworthy boys, only heightened Taehyung’s need to retaliate. There was no freedom of speech, no room for expression, so Taehyung’s sole outlet was spending time with his friends.
Most of his adolescent years consisted of being with Jimin. Jungkook, who was two years younger than them, was immediately welcomed because they thought he was cute—he had been cold and crying when they first saw him at the age of 8. He had run away from his orphanage but was soon convinced by them to return because they could not take care of him, not at that very moment. Often Jungkook would sneak out and meet them at the playground before dinner call. Those were their happiest moments, being able to release the frustrations they carried from their homes. Reckless pre-teens, running through the streets and screaming and doing petty crimes.
Taehyung’s caretaker, a near-blind fool of an uncle, only accepted his parents plead to ‘babysit’ him because he would get free lodging and meals. Taehyung could sneak in and out, not come home, slack from school… and all would be fine. Until he got carried away with hanging around Jimin’s new job and forgot that the private institution he attended had close ties with parents. His mother and father returned without notice, because Taehyung had missed a few weeks of school.
Taehyung’s parents never raised their hands, but their heartless eyes and empty touches were enough to make him grow spiteful. Since a pre-schooler, he remembered being compared and dissed and demeaned, mostly without reason. Love had always been absent, he probably didn’t even know what it was like to be loved, and support was inexistent. All the riches they had could not buy the desires that lay deep in his heart, the desires that were only fulfilled when he was with Jimin and Jungkook.
So, when Jimin, of all people, told him to fuck off from his life, Taehyung’s already decrepit reason to live crumbled away. More so he missed school, more so he denied his fear of loneliness and abandonment, more so his parents nagged and nagged and nagged. Jimin’s reasoning behind his renunciation was for him to not get sucked into gangsterism, because his future would be bright if he looked at it without hateful eyes; Taehyung was therefore unsure of why Jungkook was also denied the opportunity, seeing that the boy would be a lost cause if he, too, didn’t have Jimin. It didn’t matter, he didn’t care… not really at least, he had always been a selfish person anyway.
After a while of moping and cursing his best friend, he decided he didn’t want to climb on someone’s back to hike up the mountain.
Jungkook was all for it, his innocent eyes glistening. They were on their way to the city, to the nightclub that Jimin brought them to once in a while. There they had met a few gangsters that seemed friendly, that seemed to have their arms open genuinely. Taehyung, in his all his proud might, thought that they could walk in there and get to know them. What did these kids know anyway?
The night went on as planned; the environment did not change despite Jimin not being around, and Taehyung was in euphoria.
It wasn’t until Taehyung lost count of the drinks he had mixed that he realised something was wrong. Jungkook wasn’t pressing against his side, not anymore, and a shrill shock passed through his body. He wanted to get up to find the boy but there was a sudden hand on his shoulder and he was dragged out of the booth he was sitting in.
“Hey, what the fuck?”
A bag was thrown over his head, and he was knocked out.
their childhoods were paved in such a way that they would end up being in power of the underground.
this is 2/7 previews for Memento Mori.
also posted in ao3
Yoongi had been left on the doorstep of The Zoo, one of their bordello’s, when he was still pink and wailing. Black-Eyes had ordered for him to be sent to an orphanage, but his wife convinced him otherwise. Seokjin was only a few months older and the company of a younger brother was comforting to both him and his mother. She had secondary infertility, and her doctors never gave her a positive answer. So, the two had fed off the same breasts, played with the same toys, and held the same weapons.
Black-Eyes never adopted Yoongi or permitted him to call him his father, hardly treated him like a son, yet never sent him away. He figured it would be a good investment to train the two of them together—having already set their futures in his mind. Seokjin’s mother was a different story altogether, and she was, until now, the brightest star Yoongi sees. Surely, he knew Seokjin could feel the same way about his own biological mother, but it was an intense feeling to love Mother Kim as Yoongi did. He spent his life believing she was the only one he ever truly loved.
There came a time when Black-Eyes finally wanted Yoongi to leave his house, placing him under the club manager of Cosmos, Astro. Yoongi however, didn’t complain, couldn’t complain; he never said no to Black-Eyes, never stood up for himself. Seokjin’s hysteric rage had shocked even him; he had never known his true heart even after 15 years of being his brother. Secretly, he didn’t see a problem with going out to work but Seokjin’s words made him hang his head.
Yoongi suffocated in shame. He regretted his unconscious neglect for Seokjin and the tendency for him to save himself before anyone else. His constant consolation throughout the years was that it didn’t matter if he was raised by Black-Eyes, his fate had been decided the second he was found as a baby. The elderly man had always made it clear he would be a dog for the rest of his life while Seokjin was destined to take over the business.
With that schema in place, the never-ending reminders from his ‘father’, along with the wounds of abandonment, Yoongi vowed to keep his attachment to Seokjin close to non-existent. But wouldn’t he only suffer more, if he continued to cower from love?
Not wanting to desert Seokjin, like he had always done, Yoongi broke from Mother Kim’s arms to help his brother up from the blow. Black-Eyes laughed at the scrawny team; they didn’t have a fighting chance, but, oh God, they tried. At one point, Yoongi had fallen unconscious from the pain and when he woke, he was already on his way, alone in the car, to Cosmos.
That night, the brothers cried themselves to sleep. Seokjin could not see for a week and Yoongi’s bed was now a rotting wooden floor. Yoongi ached with familiar abandonment because Seokjin never came for him. As with all the other unnecessary emotions that circulated within him, Yoongi channelled them into his work. It had taken him no longer than 3 months to be tied with puppet strings; another year for him to realise his own potential; and in his 4th year of being Astro’s apprentice, he had beaten all the veterans of the business. His reward was a pat on the back, a spit in the face, and getting severely drunk.
Yoongi’s unacknowledged devotion for Seokjin grew with every step of the ladder; it was kept alive by knowing his brother kept tabs on his achievements. He wished he could have heard a peep of Seokjin’s life.
Finally, the day came when he did get the news of Black-Eyes death, and they were set to meet again. Yoongi thought his heart was going to fail on him. The years of indoctrination made him cold and the warmth of happiness burned. It hurt to look at Seokjin and feign indifference while his fingers trembled in his pockets. Yoongi was an expert at disguise, always had been, but it had to be the hardest thing he had done in the past six years.
Seokjin had then visited Yoongi the night after the funeral, wanting to make up the lost time.
“Yoongi,” Seokjin had said in a draggy tone, their faces were flushed and sweaty. “I’m… I’m… your boss.” Drunken laughter filled Yoongi’s small home.
“You’ve always been my boss, really.”
Seokjin smiled blissfully before declaring Yoongi his new right-hand man.
their childhoods were paved in such a way that they would end up being in power of the underground.
this is the 5/7 preview for Memento Mori.
also posted in ao3
Jimin only had his father and his older brother, Jihyun. From a young age, he always saw unknown ladies walking through their beaten down home, and none of them looked like his mother, none of them acted like a mother. He found knives and weapons and bags of powder scattered around carelessly. When he asked his dad what they were, he’d only get a beating. His childhood was watching them walk out the door before he got picked up for school by a friend’s mother, and returning late at night after his day-care centre had dropped him off.
Before his adolescence, he had bravely approached his father, not wanting to be left out from their little secret and because he did not like being alone. There was no consideration before his father put a heavy hand on his shoulder, and a forceful palm across his face. After that day though, his father made an attempt to introduce the kid to the basics. Cigarettes, first. Holding your drink, second. Posture, stance, fists. Then the knives, and then the drugs. He was only ten.
The focus intended for school was directed towards learning the trade his father specialised in: sex. Jimin’s puberty hadn’t even peeked through the curtains yet, but his boyhood was intrigued by the exposure of the opposite gender, and the thought of paying for something so mysterious fascinated him. His father was in charge of a back-alley prostitution business—his clients were cheap men, homeless men, men of class that came to the slums to escape the public eye.
As a business they were, of course, at the bottom of the hierarchy but his father never wanted anything more than the cut he earned. It had always been sufficient for his two boys and himself.
Jimin learned that there was a system, like any other business that operated, and his young brain evolved around how to run it. New girls come in, they’re screened, they’re tested, they’re put in for a trial. Customers come to the door, give their preferences, pay. His father kept the pressing matters like records and profits to himself and Jihyun while Jimin did his best to make his father proud—he was first assigned to watch the alley for suspicious characters, and the police. Then he was assigned to checking the clients at the front door.
After six years of being educated on the do’s and don’ts of the business, Jimin felt like he was a king of this tiny back-alley world. Which Taehyung and Jungkook, his only friends left, said they always envied. Throughout the years, Jimin’s father had allowed them to help out, offered them a cigarette or two. One coming from an orphanage, one from an oppressed home, both boys savoured the open rebellion, the taste of the underground life. But Jimin had grown wits, could sometimes see into the future. He knew this wasn’t the kind of thing innocent boys like them should do and so somewhere along the way he had forced them to turn around before it was too late. They never spoke again, although Jimin was never oblivious to their movements.
Once when the upper-class men came to collect their share, Jimin’s father was short. Their business had not been doing well—their girls were sick, some had run away, clients complained and never returned. Even after begging, there was no mercy. Even after years of being loyal and on time with payment, there was no tolerance. With a menacing message of stabbing Jihyun in the stomach, they demanded the money be ready by tomorrow. They couldn’t make it to the hospital before the boy closed his eyes for the last time.
Two weeks after the incident, a young boy a few years older than Jimin visited their brothel. His father’s polite manner made Jimin cringe, seeing respect and fear for a minor was something he had never seen before. They spent a good while talking in the office before Jimin was called in.
“This is my son, Jimin,” his father introduced in a proud voice.
“I’m sorry about what happened here,” was the reply. It was genuine, it was shameful, it was sad. Jimin did not understand who or what this person was; he didn’t know any person that still possessed emotion in this gang.
“It’s okay, Seokjin. I-I-It was my fault.” His father was a strong man to hold back his tears, but Jimin’s fury was building.
“My father sent me,” Seokjin started, suddenly staring at Jimin, “to apologise. We try to maintain a level of professionalism but some mongrels take for granted the amount of power they hold.”
Seokjin stands up, offers his hand to Jimin’s father. “I also hope you’ve considered our proposal?”
To that his father bowed his head and squeezed onto Jimin’s shoulder. “He is ready.”
their childhoods were paved in such a way that they would end up being in power of the underground.
this is 1/7 previews for Memento Mori.
also posted in ao3
The night his father passed, Seokjin was out running a job. It had been a hit and run, an assassination by a rival that was—obviously—jealous of their success. Ironically, it resulted in their business rocketing. When Seokjin gave the cue to destroy all remaining traces of that gang, there were three major families left that had their fingers in the underworld. Before doing so however, Seokjin made sure to grab all their assets—policemen, government officials, political candidates, and all the so called legal power that ran this country. Without it being said, Seokjin’s gang was at the top of the food chain and their future lay in his 22-year-old hands.
Saying they were a gang was really an understatement. Surely, they meddled with all the illegal affairs, without an area that they hadn’t stepped foot in. Their organisation worked more like a government than their actual government, always stringing their puppets as they made the big bucks. Seokjin closed his eyes to recall all his father’s elaborate explanations of their history, and how it was all possible because of three brothers—only one brother had stood to continue the legacy, building it on his own, and it had been a family business ever since. The classic, almost cliché, story of starting from the bottom to the top and really, they were at the top, and have been for the past two generations.
Seokjin sat at his father’s desk, uncomfortable, toying with the pen that had been used by all the men before him. He was never a nice man, his father, but he had tried his best to raise him and Yoongi for this life.
Seokjin’s father, known as Black-Eyes, was the head of their organisation. He also a board of other leaders that focused on different areas of business. There was an obvious need to have a structured hierarchy. When Seokjin became the immediate successor to his father’s position, the older men were not happy. Any attempt to take the seat however, would lead to their death. Seokjin’s inheritor had to be his offspring, and if unmarried, it was anyone Seokjin chose. The latter had never been done as tradition was vital. With the board members being as faithful as they were to his father, they knew not to dwell on something as inevitable as this and offered their advice willingly. It would turn out better for business, anyway, as Seokjin did have promising potential.
As dirty and dishonest and dangerous as it was, Black-Eyes had wanted his only son to be the man to run it after him. But when his wife had convinced him to keep the abandoned baby they found a few months after Seokjin was born, Black-Eyes needed to amend the plans he already made. Only now Seokjin had realised the workings of his father, as nasty and hurtful as they were to the both of them. Yoongi was not left unthought of after all.
He spun in the large chair now, replaying his moments of regret, feeling the weight of expectation and responsibility suddenly surround him. It was so much more than selling drugs, than checking the immigrants, than keeping the bribing constant and sufficient… so much more than taking another person’s life. It was so much more than just being in a gang, especially since he had been holding a knife before he could walk. Momentarily, he wondered if Yoongi had went through something similar over the past few years.
Seokjin’s memory soon fluttered out of his reach and his hands tightened around the pen. Black-Eyes’ funeral was being held today, and he was waiting for his driver to pull up. It wasn’t long before there came a honk from outside. The small house was Black-Eye’s abode, wanting to keep his docile wife happy as she preferred not to show off their riches. Seokjin walked downstairs to find his pale mother sobbing softly in Yoongi’s arms. He smiled at them and took her into his own grasp. Her touch chilled him. Yoongi tried to smile but didn’t know how to fake it. He hugged Seokjin tightly, not hanging on for long.
Yoongi walked out the door immediately after letting him go.
"Come on, ma,” he whispered to his mother. They held hands as they walked to the car.
