Hana had Mrs. Kim's support now, and it showed.
She didn't knock. She never knocked. The door swung open with the kind of sharp, deliberate confidence that said I was here before you... the click of her heels against the floor a quiet declaration of war.
Jungkook looked up from where he sat on the edge of the couch, folding one of Taehyung's shirts with careful hands. His fingers stilled.
"You..?" He blinked, genuinely startled. In all the days he had been here, no one had entered this room uninvited. The space still carried the faint, grounding trace of Taehyung's scent - rain-kissed earth, steady and familiar - and it had always felt like a kind of invisible boundary. A warning from his alpha. Mine.
Hana, it seemed, had decided to ignore it.
"Yes," she said, her honeyed scent sharp at the edges, not sweet today, but soured by something brittle underneath. "What? Did you think I couldn't come back?"
"I didn't say that." Jungkook set the shirt down slowly and offered her a small, polite smile, the one he had learned to wear like armour, soft enough not to provoke, firm enough to hold. "Actually, I was there when Taehyung agreed to bring you back." He gestured toward the couch across from him. "Come, sit."
"If I want to sit, I will," she snapped. "I don't need your permission... or your offer." Her eyes swept the room with barely-concealed contempt. "This room belongs to Taehyung. Not you."
Jungkook tilted his head, his smile never wavering, though his fingers curled slightly into the fabric in his lap — a small, unconscious habit, grounding himself when the air felt too tight. His lavender scent stayed calm. Deliberately, carefully calm.
"Not just this room, Miss Hana," he said sweetly. "I belong to him too."
Her jaw tightened. "Taehyung is mine."
He let out a quiet breath... not a laugh, not quite. Something honest. "Well," he said gently, "just calling someone's home yours doesn't actually make it yours. Does it?"
It was unintentional but the words still held up a mirror to her. He hadn't meant it as cruelty. But the truth, even spoken softly, has a way of cutting deep.
"Shut up!" The words snapped out of her, sharp as glass. Her honeyed scent spiked, hurt badly masked as fury. She stepped closer, voice dropping low. "Don't get too comfortable. Tae might have rescued you from the gutter, but time is fickle. It can turn its back on you in an instant."
Jungkook's smile faltered.
Just slightly. Just for a breath.
"I'm very well aware of that," he said quietly. "Trust me."
She raised a finger — warning — but seemed to think better of whatever she was about to say. Instead, she spun on her heel and walked out, the door slamming behind her with a sound that rang through the room like a slap.
The silence that followed was immediate and suffocating.
A slow breath left him. His shoulders sagged under their own weight, the careful composure he'd held through the entire exchange finally loosening like a knot pulled too tight for too long. He stared at the closed door for a long moment.
Maybe he shouldn't have said anything.
Maybe he was making things worse for Taehyung without even realizing it.
But what was the point of second thoughts now?
Time is fickle.
The words snagged somewhere behind his ribs, hooking into something older than this room, older than this house. Unfocused, his gaze drifted, and so did his mind...
"Time is fickle, unnie…"
Jungkook had laughed as he said it, tucking his knees to his chest on the cold floor of their narrow hallway, his lavender scent light and unbothered despite the bruise yellowing along his forearm. "Just watch. One day, Appa will realize all the lies."
Wonji had looked at him the way she always did... like he was something too breakable to argue with and too stubborn to protect. Her eyes had dropped to his arms. To the new marks there.
"You are so naive," she had whispered. Not unkindly. But the disappointment in her voice had sat heavy between them, like an unsaid prayer.
Like many words unspoken.
After his mama died, Jungkook was truly alone in the world.
He had already lost his father long before that... lost him slowly, quietly, to Lee Ari.
His father, Jeon Hyun, had married her when his mama first fell ill. Someone needs to run the house, he had said, as if a home was simply a machine that needed managing. Ari had appeared like an answer — sharp and efficient and beautiful in the way expensive things are beautiful. Hyun had been proud of his choice. He called it wisdom.
He had pulled Jungkook out of school around that same time. Too naive, he said. The world outside will ruin you. And there was the money, too... more than half of everything going toward hospital bills, the rest stretched thin across a life that was quietly falling apart. Ari kept the house. She cooked and cleaned and smiled at Hyun with the kind of warmth that looked like love from a distance.
Jungkook knew, even then, that it was performance.
But his mama had still been alive. And her scent, warm, sweet, like sun-dried linen and something floral and soft, had still filled the corners of the house. Jungkook would find her in the evenings and press close, letting her warmth settle the anxious hum beneath his skin. Ari's coldness hadn't mattered as much back then. His mama was a buffer between him and the rest of the world.
And then the buffer was gone.
The house turned cold the way seasons do... not all at once, but gradually, steadily, until one morning Jungkook woke up and realized he was shivering, and had been for a long time.
Ari stopped pretending the moment the funeral was over.
The chores came first... quiet, accumulated tasks that seemed reasonable one by one and suffocating all together. Cooking, cleaning, scrubbing, fetching. His hands cracked from cold water and harsh soap until they bled.
And when that wasn't enough, when silence and labor weren't sufficient punishment for the simple crime of existing, she would find his father. Not with accusations. Never accusations. Just soft, worried sighs. A hand pressed to her chest.
"Hyun, I don't know what to do with him… he tries, he really does, but—" A helpless pause. A sad smile. "I just worry about him. The way people talk, you know how society is…"
She never finished the sentences. She never had to. His father filled in the rest himself, and whatever he imagined was always worse than anything she could have said outright.
Hyun believed her.
Every time.
Jungkook learned quickly that survival meant silence... that his omega instincts, already wired toward submission and endurance, were the only tools he had left. He swallowed it all. He held on to a fraying thread of hope, telling himself "one day. One day Appa will see."
But even hope gets tired eventually.
He just hadn't admitted that to himself.
yet.
One evening, he came home to find a stranger stepping out of their front gate.
He stopped walking.
The man was an alpha, that much was immediately, viscerally clear. His pheromones hung in the still air like something rotten sweetened over, and Jungkook's omega instincts recoiled before his mind even caught up, a cold prickling moving from the back of his neck down his spine.
The man looked at him and smiled. Slow. Deliberate.
"Ohhh… hello there."
His eyes moved over Jungkook in a way that made the younger want to fold into himself, to make his scent small and invisible. He stepped back instinctively.
"Who are you? What are you doing here?"
"I'm Byung-chul," the man said, voice thick and unhurried. "Hyun's… friend. Just dropping by."
Before Jungkook could process that, Ari appeared in the doorway, eyes snapping to him immediately.
"What are you doing standing outside, you impudent brat? Get in."
He went. Quietly. Quickly. Though the man's pheromones clung to the air behind him in a way that made his stomach turn.
Inside, he heard Byung-chul chuckle softly. "You didn't tell me you had such a good-looking boy at home."
"Don't look at him," Ari said sharply ... not protective, Jungkook realized.
Possessive.
Like he was something she wasn't ready to hand over yet.
She grabbed his arm roughly the moment the door shut behind them, her nails pressing into his wrist.
"One word to your father about this," she hissed, voice barely above a breath, "and I will be your worst nightmare."
Jungkook blinked at her, genuinely confused. Wasn't she already?
He said nothing. Just nodded. Just survived.
After that, Byung-chul came often.
Always when Hyun was away. Always with that same slow smile, that same gaze that lingered too long on Jungkook's face, his neck... the unmarked stretch of skin there that, in this society, announced him as unclaimed. Available. Unprotected.
He didn't understand it fully then. He only knew the feeling — that cold, crawling unease that settled in his chest every time the man was near, the way his lavender scent went sour and thin with anxiety, how his instincts screamed at him to lower his head, stay small, disappear.
He told Wonji.
Of course he told Wonji.
Not at home, though... never at home anymore.
Ari had seen to that. A few careful words in Hyun's ear about bad influences, about an omega friend who filled Jungkook's head with ideas above his station, and just like that, Wonji was banned from their doorstep.
So they met here instead — on the low wall outside the pharmacy where she worked part-time, sharing a convenience store rice ball between them, the autumn air cold enough to make their breath cloud.
"Okay, he is creepy," Wonji finally said it out loud, watching his face carefully. "I know you're all protective and everything, but he creeps me out. Especially the way he looks at you."
"He's not..." Jungkook ducked his head, immediately defensive.
"Jungkook." Her voice was flat.
"We don't even know anything for sure—"
"We both know how uncomfortable he makes you feel." She touched his shoulder. Warm, steady. The kind of touch that didn't demand anything. "And I think Ari has something going on here. Something fishy."
"She cares about Appa," he mumbled.
"I know, sweetheart." A pause. "But she only brings him around when your father isn't home. Have you noticed that?"
Jungkook turned a slow, reluctant shade of red. "I mean… they just talk. With the doors open. I've never seen anything… compromising."
Wonji looked at him for a long moment. Then, without warning, she smacked the back of his head.
"Ow..! Why?!"
"Because," she said patiently, "alpha and omega cannot just be friends. Not in this society. Not the way you're thinking. Whatever they're whispering about in that house... it is not friendship."
"Am not an idiot," he pouted, rubbing the back of his head.
"You are a little bit," she said, but her voice had gone soft. She looked at him seriously.
"Jungkookie. Promise me you'll be careful. The way that man looks at you," wonji sighed, "it's not right. It doesn't feel right."
He nodded along the way he always did when she got like this... earnest and dramatic and always somehow correct about things he didn't want to be true.
"Okay. I promise."
He hadn't really believed there was anything to promise about.
He didn't know that thought would be proved wrong so soon.
That night, he was alone in the cold kitchen, preparing dinner, the rhythmic sound of the knife against the cutting board the only thing filling the silence, when movement outside the window caught his eye.
Ari. Phone pressed to her ear, one hand gesturing lazily in the dark air, her voice too low to catch through the glass.
She had stepped just beyond the gate, half-swallowed by shadow and something about her posture stopped him cold. Loose. Unbothered.
The way she never looked inside the house. Like she had shed a costume the moment she thought no one was watching.
He edged closer to the glass. Heart beginning to knock painfully against his ribs.
He couldn't make out the words at first... just the murmur of them, too comfortable, too familiar. But then a shift in the wind carried her voice clearly through the gap in the window frame.
"You can have Jungkook," she was saying, laughing softly. "But I want double. Yes, yes... you can have your way with that poor soul. I knew he was doomed the moment your eyes fell on him."
The plate slipped in Jungkook's hands.
He caught it. Barely.
The room tilted. His lavender scent flooded the air in a sudden, bitter wave, fear, raw and uncontrollable , and his hands were shaking so hard he had to grip the edge of the sink to stay upright.
His stepmother was selling him.
Like an object. Like something that belonged to her to give away.
She was selling him.
He needed to tell his father. Tonight. Right now.
His Appa would protect him — he had promised Mama. Take care of him. Those had been her last words. Surely, surely he still had that in him somewhere. That thread of love, however buried.
The hope was small. Fragile as a paper lantern in the wind.
But it carried him through the rest of the evening.
He never got the chance.
Ari moved first.
She always moved first.
"Hyun," she said at dinner, her voice soft with performed concern, "I'm worried about Jungkook. I know I shouldn't say this… but the neighbours are starting to talk. He's been out all day again..."
"Gyemo, you sent me..." Jungkook started.
"Shut up, boy." His father's hand slammed the table. The dishes rattled. Jungkook flinched so hard his teeth clicked together. "Don't interrupt your elders."
Ari smiled sadly and reached over to pat Jungkook's head, the gesture so falsely gentle it made his stomach heave. "He's too young to understand right from wrong."
"He's twenty, Lee Ari," his father muttered, shooting Jungkook a look soaked in contempt. "Old enough to tarnish a family name."
Jungkook bit his tongue. He tasted blood. His hands, hidden below the table, were trembling so badly he pressed them flat against his thighs.
His father's eyes found him then... cold, disgusted, final.
"The main rule of this society is to keep it clean of shamelessness. I am a respected alpha. If you ever - ever - make me a laughingstock, I will kill you with my own bare hands." He leaned forward. "Do you hear me?"
Jungkook nodded. Once.
"I SAID — DO YOU HEAR ME?"
"Y-yes, Appa."
His own omega instincts, the ones wired since birth toward submission in the face of alpha dominance, were screaming at him to bow his head, to go still, to make himself as small and unthreatening as possible.
And he did.
He always did. Not because he wanted to... but because it was the only language his father had ever understood.
"Go to your room."
He ran.
He made it to his room before the first sob broke free... ugly, heaving, muffled against his own fist. He curled against the foot of the bed, knees drawn to his chest, and pressed his face into the fabric there. His lavender scent had gone mournful and dim, bleeding into the cold air of the small room like something slowly dying.
His omega, so present tonight. So painfully, humiliatingly present. How funny, he thought. How cruelly funny... that the same instincts Ari had whispered were broken, irregular, shameful… were the ones now drowning him alive.
He pulled out the photograph. The one he kept tucked under the corner of his mattress.
Mama.
She was smiling. She always smiled in photographs, like she was saving the expression somewhere safe.
Should I tell Appa the truth? His mind turned the question over and over in the dark. And be killed? Or stay silent... and be sold?
Sleep claimed him before he could choose.
The next morning arrived in silence.
Not the gentle kind. The kind that presses against your ribs, that turns your breathing shallow.
Jungkook stirred slowly, eyes still heavy with the sleep that comes after crying for hours... thin, unsatisfying, like a bandage over something that needed stitches. For one brief, merciful moment between sleep and waking, he didn't remember anything.
And then he did.
He lay still, staring at the ceiling, the faded photograph of his mama still loosely held in his fingers from the night before. Morning light crept in through the gap in the curtains... pale, thin, cold.
The house was quiet. His father had left before dawn for a three-day business trip. He had heard the door. He had not gotten up to say goodbye.
He wasn't sure his father would have wanted him to.
Then... a knock at the front gate.
Jungkook didn't move at first. Just listened.
Ari's footsteps crossed the floor, unhurried and purposeful. Then her voice, drifting down through the thin walls, soft and conversational, the way she always sounded when she thought no one who mattered was listening.
"Hyun left this morning. Three days." A pause. The faint smile in her voice unmistakable even through the walls. "So yes.. but be quick about it. I don't want any mess."
Something cold moved through Jungkook's chest.
He sat up.
And then the pheromones reached him.
Not suddenly but slowly.
Seeping under the door the way smoke fills a room you don't realise is burning until breathing becomes difficult. His omega instincts recognised it before his mind did. His body went rigid, the photograph crinkling in his suddenly tight fist.
He knew that scent.
He was on his feet without deciding to be. Moving to the door. His hand found the handle and pushed ... it swung open easily, no lock, nothing... and for one suspended, breathless moment he stood in the doorway of his own room, thankfully, the house was small.. fortunately, the main door was right across his room the hallway stretching out in front of him, the front door just there, unfortunately...
Byung-chul was already inside.
They looked at each other.
Jungkook's lavender scent flooded the air in a single, uncontrollable wave, not the sharp panic of someone who could still run. Something younger than that. Something that remembered being small, and calling for his mama, and being held.
Something that already knew.
"No..." The word came out barely above a whisper. Not a scream. Not yet. Just the last quiet protest of someone realising, with terrible clarity, that hope had finally run out.
He stumbled back. His shoulder hit the doorframe. His fingers found the wood and gripped it like it could hold him.
Byung-chul's hand found his face... not violent, not yet. Almost gentle. The way you'd handle something you'd paid for and didn't want damaged.
His thumb brushed Jungkook's cheek, tilting his face up slowly, and Jungkook felt his entire body recoil from the inside out.. his omega screaming, his scent curdling from lavender into something acrid and broken that no one would ever come to answer.
"GYEMO—" The scream finally broke free, ragged and cracking. "PLEASE — GYEMO, PLEASE—"
From near the front door, Ari's voice came back to him — light, almost fond, the way you'd say goodbye to a guest after a pleasant afternoon.
"Bye, Jungkook."
The door clicked shut.
"Shh," Byung-chul said softly. Like he was being kind.
And that — somehow — was the worst part.
The photograph of his mama fell from his open hand.
And no one came.