Chapter 75: A Canvas Signed in Blood and Love

The early morning light filtered through sheer curtains, casting soft golden streaks across the polished wood floors of the private mansion nestled atop the hill. The world had moved on from the stormy nights and hidden names. The name "Koo" no longer lingered only in hushed gallery whispers or under veils of anonymity—it had become a sensation. An enigma revealed yet still cloaked in enough mystery to leave the public gasping for more.

 

Yet beyond the newspapers, the headlines, the whispers of "the boy behind the brush," lay the world within the mansion. A world not for the public eye. One built of threads far stronger than canvas or oil: love, pain, possessiveness, and the fragile promise of healing.

 

Jungkook, now known by both his public pseudonym and real name to those he trusted, stood on the balcony barefoot, one of Taehyung’s oversized sweaters swallowing his frame, the sleeves long enough to cover his fingers. His doe-eyes followed a slow-moving bird tracing the sky. A strange calm lingered in his chest, so foreign after years of chaos, silence, and secrets. For once, his little world had become louder, warmer, fuller.

 

And they were still asleep.

 

He smiled to himself, soft and knowing, one hand resting on the railing, the other fiddling with the hem of the sweater. Behind the doors, tangled in silk sheets, lay two men who once ruled empires of steel and silence—who now allowed themselves to sleep late, wrapped around each other and around him.

 

The sound of a soft knock—barely a tap—startled him.

 

“Baby? You out here?”

 

It was Taehyung’s voice, a sleepy whisper.

 

Jungkook’s heart fluttered. He turned, biting his lip as he padded back inside. “Mornin’, Dada,” he whispered in his littlest voice, eyes sparkling.

 

Taehyung, with his sleep-mussed hair and wrinkled t-shirt, opened his arms without a word. Jungkook launched into them, burying his face in his chest, inhaling that familiar scent—sandalwood, warmth, and something uniquely his.

 

"Y'r hands’re cold," Taehyung murmured, rubbing them gently. “Didn’t I tell you to wait for us before running off?”

 

Jungkook giggled softly. “Didn’t run. Jus’ float'd…” he whispered. “The sky looked like a painting.”

 

“Of course it did,” Taehyung said with a low chuckle. “Everything looks like a painting when you’re the one looking at it.”

 

Behind them, V stirred, his voice thick and low. “Koo… Come back to bed. It’s too early to be poetic.”

 

“I wasn’t poetic,” Jungkook pouted, already crawling across the bed toward him.

 

“You breathe and it’s poetry,” V replied, wrapping a hand possessively around Jungkook’s waist and tugging him down between them.

 

The room quieted, the world still for a moment—until the phone on the dresser vibrated once, then again, before falling silent.

 

Neither twin reached for it. But Jungkook did.

 

The moment his eyes read the message, something shifted in his expression. His body tensed subtly, almost imperceptibly. But both V and Taehyung noticed.

 

“Baby?”

 

“It’s from… Niki noona.” His voice was quieter now. “She said… someone’s been asking around. Not about Koo.” He looked up, jaw tightening. “About me.”

 

V was already sitting up, the blanket falling away from his toned chest. “What did the message say exactly?”

 

Taehyung reached for the phone, reading it over his shoulder.

 

"JK. Be careful. Not sure what this is, but someone came to the gallery yesterday. No one recognized them, but they asked if the artist had a connection to Seoul's underground auctions. They dropped your name—not Koo. Your name. I didn’t say anything, I swear. Just… be safe."

 

Jungkook’s lips parted. “Underground auctions?” he whispered.

 

Taehyung’s and V’s eyes met over his head.

 

In unison, their warmth dropped, replaced by something colder, older, and more familiar. The facade of civilian softness melted away.

 

V’s voice was like a blade. “It’s beginning.”

 

Taehyung nodded. “It’s time we talk to him about the past.”

 

Jungkook looked between them. “Talk about… what?”

 

The silence that followed wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t even heavy. It was inevitable.

 

V brushed a hand through Jungkook’s hair. “You know how to paint the dark, baby… because you were born in it.”

 

And Jungkook, somewhere deep inside, knew they were right.

 

The whispers of his past—the ones that came in flashes during sleep, in the flicker of a blade in his dreams, or the heavy silence of bloodied hands—were no longer willing to stay buried.

 

He sat up slowly, crawling into their laps like it was instinct. “Will it… hurt?” he asked, not like a child, but like someone who already knew pain intimately.

 

Taehyung cupped his cheek. “It already did. We just never told you why.”

 

Jungkook nodded slowly.

 

“I want to remember,” he whispered. “All of it. Even if it breaks me again.”

 

V’s voice cracked, just barely. “Then we’ll catch every broken piece.”

 

And as the sun lifted higher, pouring gold over the bed, over their tangled limbs and truths, the quiet was no longer empty.

 

It was full of promises.

 

Of revelations to come.

 

Of a second book waiting to be written—not on canvas, but in blood, memory, and the iron-willed love of three souls forever entwined.

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