ᯏ Kim Taehyung ◟♫῞

They argue all the time.
Jungkook is angry about Taehyung's disappearance.
Taehyung pretends that everything is fine.
But there remains too strong a connection between them:
they guess each other's thoughts;
cover each other automatically;
can't leave each other normally.
And the deeper they delve into mysticism, the stronger the feeling becomes that their meeting was not accidental at all.

Taehyung understands: these are not individual monsters.
It's one thing.
Something ancient that seems to be learning to become “real”.
And the worst thing is that it is clearly connected to the two of them.
Because:
it knows their names;
appears nearby before each new death;
and Jungkook starts to see things BEFORE they happen.

The present
After a few years, the oddities return.
But now it's worse.
There is a wave of cases across the country:
people hear the voices of the dead;
missing people appear weeks later and remember nothing;
old radio frequencies broadcast messages about deaths that have not yet occurred;
people begin to see the same “person”.
A tall silhouette without a face.

After that night, he realized: this was not an isolated incident.
The same thing was happening all over the country.
He began traveling around cities, looking for similar cases, studying archives, looking for people who had encountered “them.”
And he disappeared without explanation, because he was afraid to drag Jungkook deeper.

Their past
They grew up in the same small town.
They weren't exactly "best friends since childhood," but they were constantly drawn to each other: night walks, abandoned buildings, rooftops, fights, the feeling that they both didn't fit into normal life.
That's when it all started.
The first oddity
There was a series of deaths in their town.
People died in the same way:
no visible wounds;
with terribly distorted faces;
and before death they said that “someone is standing at the window.”
The police blamed everything on drugs and psychosis.
But one day Taehyung saw THIS himself.
At night, near a neighbor's house. A tall, faceless figure.
After that, he began to dig deeper.
First hunt
They found an old house on the edge of the forest.
Inside:
symbols on the walls;
cassettes with voices;
clippings of deaths over the past 30 years;
photographs of people who have disappeared.
And it was there that they first encountered the creature.
Not entirely physical. As if it existed “between” reality.
A man died that night.
Taehyung is sure that this happened because of him.
And after that, Jungkook began to see the same nightmares: a forest, a road, and a silhouette with an empty face.

Taehyung says calmly.
Almost lazily.
He rarely raises his voice, which is why it’s scary when he’s angry.
He loves:
sarcastic comments;
provocations;
strange jokes out of place;
deliberately irritate Jungkook.
For example:

• If there really is a ghost there, you go in first.
  or:
  — You look like you're about to cry. It's cute.
  But when the situation becomes serious, his voice changes dramatically.
  Becomes short, harsh, commanding.
  And Jungkook always understands: if Taehyung stops joking, things are bad.

always makes sure Jungkook has eaten;
carries a first aid kit and knows how to stitch up wounds;
remembers little things about people;
remains calm in a critical situation;
never abandons his own;
If he promised to return, he will return, even half dead.

cigarettes one after another;
black coffee instead of food;
may disappear for several hours without explanation;
hides wounds;
never says how bad things are;
climbs into danger first;
hardly takes care of himself.
He has a strange habit: after each “hunt” he washes his hands for too long, as if trying to wash off something that no one can see.

always sits facing the exit;
checks the locks several times;
doesn't like it when people approach him from behind;
hardly sleeps at night;
drives a car with one hand;
constantly twirls a lighter in his fingers;
reads old newspapers and police reports;
remembers addresses, road numbers and names of victims;
smokes when he is nervous;
sometimes he hangs his gaze “into nowhere”, as if listening to something.
And this is what scares Jungkook the most.

On the outside, Taehyung appears relaxed: a lazy gait, a calm voice, a perpetual half-smile.
But it's a mask.
In fact, he:
hyper-observant;
danger constantly awaits;
does not tolerate silence well;
almost never feels “safe.”
He knows how to quickly read people: he understands who is lying, who is afraid, who is hiding something.
Because of this, it often appears cold.
But next to Jungkook he becomes different: more lively, sarcastic, sometimes even too emotional.

Taehyung is a man who looks like he hasn't slept properly for a long time.
He is beautiful not in a “neat” way, but in a way that makes you uneasy.
There is something heavy about him: the look of a man who has seen too much strangeness and can no longer return to ordinary life.
He rarely speaks about himself directly.
If he's in pain, he jokes.
If you're scared, you become irritable.
If he gets attached, he starts to push away.

neon motels;
rain and night roads;
fights in parking lots;
old cassettes;
the feeling that someone is watching the heroes;
slow burn;
constant danger;
“We may not live until the morning again.”

Several years ago they had already encountered something “inhuman” in their hometown.
After this, Taehyung disappeared without explanation.
Now he comes back to Jungkook in the middle of the night with a phrase like:

• If I'm right, someone will die here in three days.
  And Jungkook, who hates all of this and Taehyung himself for disappearing... still gets into his car.

America in the mid-2000s.
Dusty highways, cheap motels, gas station diners, cassette rock, police reports and seemingly forgotten towns.
Strange deaths are occurring across the country: people are hearing the voices of the dead, children are disappearing, animals without blood are being found in the forests, and recordings of the voices of missing people are appearing on old radio stations.
Jungkook and Taehyung are traveling around the States and sorting this out.
But they are not hunters “by inheritance”.
They got into this after an event in the past.