Chapter Text
The night after the shower, Jimin locked his door. He locked it three times.
It didn’t matter.
In Eden, locks were paper walls.
When he woke up, there was a tray of food on the floor.
Hot rice. A soft-boiled egg. Miso soup, steam curling in the air like someone had set it down just seconds before.
And a note:
Eat. Don’t make me come in. – J
He wanted to throw it away. He didn’t.
It started slow , Jungkook knocking on the door, every morning.
Jungkook waiting on the stairs, silent, when Jimin came home.
Jungkook’s shadow in the convenience store window, in the reflection of the bus glass, in the alleyways he cut through to avoid the long walk back.
And little by little, without realizing, Jimin’s world shrank.
Calls from coworkers went unanswered. He stopped walking with his head up in the street. He didn’t talk to the other residents. By the time he noticed, he was only talking to Jungkook.
One night, he tried to push back.
“You can’t keep following me,” Jimin said, standing in the hall, hands shaking. “I’m not— I can’t breathe like this.”
Jungkook’s expression barely shifted. “Do you think I’m doing this for me?”
“You said you wanted everything. You’re just—”
Jungkook moved so fast that Jimin was against the wall before he knew it, Jungkook’s arm braced beside his head.
“Do you think I would let them have you?” Jungkook whispered. His eyes were so close that Jimin could see the flecks of gold in the black.
“Do you even know what they think about when they look at you? What they whisper? You think I’m the one you need to be scared of?”
Jimin froze.
“They watch you like prey, Jimin. And you just… walk right into it.”
Jungkook leaned in, voice barely audible.
“You’ve already chosen me,” he said. “Even if you don’t know it yet. That’s why I stay.”
He tilted his head, lips brushing Jimin’s ear.
“I’ll keep you safe. No matter what I have to do.”
The next morning, there was someone waiting for Jimin outside the bathroom.
Not Jungkook.
A man he had never seen before, with yellowed teeth and a smile too wide.
And that was when everything began to fracture.
The man started appearing everywhere after that.
In the stairwell. In the kitchen when Jimin made tea. Always smiling, his eyes crawling over him like greasy hands.
⸻
“You don’t talk much, do you?” the man said one night, standing far too close in the hallway.
“You should be careful. Pretty faces don’t last long here.”
Jimin ducked away, saying nothing. But that night, he heard something outside his door—a sound like fingernails dragging down the wood. Slow. Deliberate.
When he opened it the next morning, there was a folded piece of paper on the floor.
Four words in crooked writing:
I want your smile.
It happened three nights later.
The power went out again. Jimin left his room only because the air inside felt too thin, like it was pressing the walls closer.
The hall was black. He barely saw the shape move behind him before hands clamped around his mouth and arms.
“You think you’re better than us?” the man hissed, breath hot against Jimin’s neck. “Pretty little thing like you, walking around like you don’t smell of fear. You belong here.”
The knife glinted once in the faint light, and Jimin struggled, panic clawing up his throat. Then another shadow appeared.
A hand closed around the man’s wrist so fast the knife clattered to the floor.
“What did I say,” Jungkook said, voice low and terrible, “about touching what’s mine?”
The man barely had time to turn before Jungkook’s fist met his face.
It wasn’t a fight. It was a dismantling. Jungkook didn’t stop when the man hit the floor. He kept going, each hit slow and deliberate, until there was only the wet sound of bone against tile.
Jungkook stood, breath steady, blood dripping from his knuckles.
He turned to Jimin, whose back was against the wall, shaking.
“Are you hurt?”
Jimin shook his head. His breath came in uneven gasps.
Jungkook stepped closer, taking his face in his bloody hands.
“Do you see now?” he whispered. “Why I don’t let you walk alone?”
Jimin’s lips parted, but no sound came out.
Jungkook’s thumbs brushed the tears from his face, leaving faint streaks of red on his cheeks.
“You’re mine,” Jungkook said softly. “From now on, you stay with me. You sleep when I tell you. You eat when I tell you. You don’t breathe without me.”
The man on the floor groaned once. Jungkook didn’t even look at him.
⸻
Jimin didn’t fight when Jungkook guided him back to his room that night.
He didn’t lock the door.
And when Jungkook sat down on the floor outside and stayed there until dawn, Jimin opened the door and sat with him, shoulder to shoulder in the dark.
Because the truth was this:
In Eden, Jungkook wasn’t the danger Jimin feared most anymore.