Chapter 88: The Collector’s Game
It was silent when the envelope arrived.
No doorbell. No footsteps. No courier name. Just a matte
black square laid gently at the mansion’s front gate, as if it had materialized
there on its own.
V found it during his early walk through the garden, the
edges of dawn barely brushing the sky with cold lavender light. He crouched
slowly, fingertips brushing the strange seal. It was old, etched in silver, an
insignia they hadn’t seen in years.
Taehyung appeared beside him, barefoot, coffee still
steaming in his hand. His gaze narrowed the moment he saw it.
“That’s from the Collector,” he said quietly.
V didn’t respond. He simply stood and opened it.
Inside was a single photograph—grainy, taken at a distance.
Jungkook.
Alone.
Standing on a rooftop.
He looked… younger. Barefoot. Shoulders hunched. A shadow
curled beside him like a leash. And on the back of the photo, in looping
calligraphy:
“Return what was mine, or I will take what is yours.”
—The Collector
Back inside the house, the storm had already begun to rise.
V paced the length of the living room with sharp, calculated
steps. His hair was slightly tousled, his tie loosened in irritation. Taehyung
stood by the window, fingers tapping the glass. And Jungkook sat curled up on
the couch in the oversized hoodie V had draped over him earlier, small, quiet,
but watching.
Watching everything.
“You knew him?” Taehyung finally asked, not turning around.
Jungkook’s voice was soft. “He called himself my guardian.
Said I was the key.”
V stopped pacing. “To what?”
Jungkook shook his head, curls falling into his eyes. “I
don’t know. He had this… obsession. Like I was more valuable than the art. He
used to make me paint for days, and then burn it all, just to see if I could
replicate it again.”
Taehyung flinched. “That’s not guardianship. That’s
cruelty.”
“He said I wasn’t supposed to have favorites. That love
weakens the brush.” Jungkook's voice dropped, trembling. “But I always drew
hands. Always. I didn’t know why. Just… hands holding mine. I think it was a
memory. Or a dream.”
V slowly knelt in front of him, gently taking his hands in
his own. “And now?”
Jungkook blinked slowly, those doe eyes glossy and wide.
“Now they feel like yours.”
The Collector had once been a ghost story in the
underground—rumors of a man who acquired not just rare art, but rare artists.
Rumors that he bought souls, not canvases. He never showed his face. He never
left traces. But Koo had been his prized phantom once, the golden child raised
in shadows.
And now, he wanted him back.
They received the second message a day later. A live stream.
It wasn’t long—just twenty seconds.
A room. White. Empty. Sterile. At the center sat one of
Jungkook’s original paintings from his lost collection: a child crouched in a
dark alley, one eye missing, body curled in fear.
And behind it…
Another boy. Bound. Gagged. Barely more than a teenager.
But painted across his chest in thick black marker was one
word.
“Next.”
Jungkook stared at the screen, his heart slamming into his
ribs.
“I know him,” he whispered. “He was in the same facility as
me. He drew with chalk. On the floors. On the walls.”
Taehyung’s face turned to stone. “He’s still collecting.”
V’s voice was darker. “He’s making it personal.”
The three of them sat together that night in the library,
the fire low and the storm echoing faintly beyond the thick glass. Jungkook had
crawled into V’s lap, half-asleep, while Taehyung sat close, one hand tangled
gently in Jungkook’s hair.
“I don’t want to hide,” Jungkook mumbled into V’s chest. “I
want to protect the others. The ones he might take next.”
“You will,” V murmured against his forehead. “We’ll protect
them together.”
“Promise?” Jungkook whispered, eyes fluttering shut.
“Always,” Taehyung said softly, pressing a kiss to his
temple.
They activated every network they had. Sent quiet signals to
others who had once been touched by the Collector’s madness—former protégés,
silent victims, even gallery owners with guilt on their hands. One by one, a
web began to unfold.
And at its center was a private auction set to take place in
exactly nine days.
The prize?
Jungkook’s last original painting from the vault. The
original "Hands."
He had thought it was destroyed.
He had been wrong.
“We’ll end it there,” Taehyung said as they stared at the
map marked with red pins, satellite feeds, and coded transmissions. “We’ll
infiltrate the auction, identify every buyer, extract the Collector, and burn
the system he built from the inside.”
V’s voice was calm but lethal. “And if anyone touches Koo,
we end them.”
Jungkook stood quietly, arms crossed, dressed in black. For
once, not in oversized comfort, but sharp lines and steel rings. His expression
was unreadable.
“Then let’s paint his end,” he said, soft and low. “In blood
if we have to.”
The twins exchanged a glance.
And nodded.
Far away, in a hidden chamber of ivory and glass, the
Collector leaned back in his chair, watching the footage of them—his prodigy
and the twin kings beside him.
“Let’s see how deep your love runs,” he whispered, brushing
a fingertip along a preserved sketch Jungkook had once made of him as a child.
“Because I’m going to break it.”
And as he turned off the screen, he smiled.
The game had truly begun.
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