September 1, 1997

Jikgam. Intuition. That was what Mrs. Min would have said had made her wake up that fateful evening, her eyes fluttering open as she stared up blankly at the darkness, feeling as though something was just...off. She couldn't exactly put it into words, couldn't explain why she would have woken up well before the sun was set to rise. But there was one thing she did know.

Something was wrong.

Climbing out of bed, the young woman padded down the quiet hallway to where her sons' bedroom lied at the other end of the hall. She felt a shiver run down her spine then, the temperature in the house seeming to have dropped a few degrees when she suddenly heard a noise from within the closet.

She felt her heart catch in her throat and steeled herself before slowly peering behind the door, only to find her eldest son, face pale as though all the color had been drained from it, staring back at her with wide eyes.

"E-eomma." The boy whimpered as he stood up and ran into her arms.

"Jun Ki. What's wrong? You're shaking like a leaf." She asked, eyebrows furrowing together with concern as she searched his body for injury. But the boy refused to speak, lip trembling with fear as he pointed a shaky finger to the room he shared with her youngest son.

Mrs. Min felt her blood run cold as she followed her son's gaze to where a faint green light was pouring from the open door of the bedroom.

Yoongi.

She ran to the room, heart beating in her chest as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Around the room, all the furniture and toys laid haphazardly overturned as though a tornado had spiraled through, and in the center of the room was the source of the chilling green light.

"Yoongi!" She called out, running over to where the small boy was seizing on the ground as she pulled him into her lap. "Yoongi! Eomma is here." She cried, cradling her son in her arms as she turned him to search his face for any response.

To her horror, the whites of his eyes had disappeared, replaced with pools of black as they stared unseeingly above him. His mouth hung agape, gurgling as though trying to say something.

"What is it, baby?" Mrs. Min asked, desperate as she cupped the side of her son's face. He was cold as ice. "Please, talk to Eomma."

"K-k…" The boy purled, as he continued to writhe. "K…"

The atmosphere grew even colder, the glowing green light seeping from him like tendrils as it began to fill every inch of the room, and from his mouth came a voice that was far too ancient, a voice that couldn't have possibly belonged of this time.

Mrs. Min swallowed hard, summoning all the courage she could muster not just for herself, but for her son, as the voice continued chanting loudly, boomingly, terrifyingly, and unmistakably the words:

Kim Namjoon…

Kim Seokjin…

Min Yoongi…

Jung Hoseok…

Park Jimin…

Kim Taehyung…

Jeon Jungkook…

And just as quickly as it had all begun, the voice and menacing light fell away, absorbing back into the young boy and leaving behind nothing but darkness and the sound of his mother's labored breathing as she held him helplessly in her lap.

18 years later...

3 sets of eyes silently watched a dark-haired boy through the window of a cafe as he worked, blissfully unaware of what was to come in just short of an hour. The boy with the mint hair shoved his hand inside of his jacket, pulling out a box of cigarettes as he continued following the other boy with his gaze.

"Yeah. That's him." Suga hummed, placing one of the sticks between his lips as he brought his hand up to light it.

Next to him, a taller boy nodded, glancing down at his watch to check the time. "Good. Now we wait."

It seemed like forever until the minute hand finally inched its way (painstakingly slow) to 7 o'clock. So when it did, Jungkook sighed in relief, happy that the day was over. The cafe had been short staffed - again, which meant that he had been the only one on the schedule that day. It wasn't an easy task by any means, but somehow his boss seemed to fully believe that anyone could manage greeting customers, taking their orders, making their orders, serving their orders, and cleaning them up all at the same time. He walked over to the door and clicked it shut, taking off the apron from around his neck as he began to clean up.

The routine went by relatively quickly, seeing as there was nothing to distract him and within 15 minutes, he had finished stacking the last of the chairs on top of the table. The one good thing about opening and closing by yourself was that you didn't have to talk to anyone. The bad thing about opening and closing by yourself was that you didn't have anyone to talk to. He wasn't sure which of the two he preferred more.

By the time Jungkook had stepped out of the shop, it was already dark outside. He pulled up the hood of his hoodie, feeling the cold night air against his face as he walked. But after a few minutes of walking, the dark-haired boy frowned, suddenly feeling uneasy. He couldn't explain what it was, but it was almost like a sinking feeling growing in the pit of his stomach, the kind of feeling you got right before something bad happened or before you were about to puke.

(He would later find out that that had been his gut instincts telling him to run and had Jungkook not been a complete idiot, he probably wouldn't have wound up where he did next.)

He barely heard it, the sound of silent footsteps trailing behind him as he padded through the empty streets of Mandeok-dong. So by the time Jungkook had turned his head to look behind him, he only had enough time to register a sharp stabbing sensation at the back of his leg before it went numb, causing him to lose his balance and stumble. He landed on his hands with a hiss, one hand moving to clutch his leg as he looked up at his assailant in pained surprise.

Jungkook wasn't exactly sure what he had expected to see, perhaps a thug holding a knife in his hands ready to rob him or a group of gangsters looking for an easy target to beat the living shit out of. But it certainly wasn't the pink-haired boy that stood before him, face as porcelain as a doll's, and looking not much older than Jungkook himself.

"H-huh?" Jungkook managed to stammer out as the other boy squatted down in front of him, dark eyes meeting his for a brief moment. It happened very quickly. He could've sworn that the boy even winked at him before he vanished in plain sight right before Jungkook's eyes. But before Jungkook could figure out where the boy had gone or what had happened, he felt another sharp stab, this time at the back of his neck.

Dizzy. He was dizzy.

The sound of other footsteps approaching and the blurry silhouettes of two other figures as they came to a stop in front of him was the last thing Jungkook saw before his body finally betrayed him.

"Well done, Jimin...Now get us out of here before someone sees us." He heard one of them say before the tendril of darkness pulled him under.

Then it all went black.

Author's Notes: Thank you for anyone who actually made it this far. I've had this story in my head for a while now and decided it was finally time to tell it. This is my very first BTS fanfiction, so apologies for any tags I may have missed. Will try to update the tags as the story progresses. - KookiesInTae