Chapter 90: Bare Walls

 

The rain in Paris had long stopped, yet something about the overcast sky felt fitting—as if the world itself knew that the storm was no longer weather but memory. The fire beneath the opera house had been doused, the news silenced by money and fear, and the Collector’s empire buried under a concrete tomb.

 

Yet Jungkook hadn’t painted since.

 

Not one stroke.

 

His fingers twitched around pencils but never moved. Canvases stared back at him, untouched, white, almost mocking in their emptiness. The brush that once felt like an extension of his own blood felt foreign now.

 

He stood in the center of the new private studio—gifted by the Kim twins, protected under a false name, hidden from the public. It was all his. All for him.

 

Yet the walls remained bare.

 

“I thought I’d feel free,” Jungkook whispered, his voice barely audible over the soft hum of music playing from the vintage gramophone. He was barefoot, wrapped in an oversized sweater that reached his thighs, pale legs curling over a velvet settee. “But it just feels… quiet.”

 

Taehyung leaned against the doorway, arms folded, gaze fixed not on the blank walls but on Jungkook himself. “Quiet isn’t always empty, Koo.”

 

V crossed the room, crouching before him. He reached out, slowly, reverently, placing his gloved hand over Jungkook’s. “Do you want us to help you start again?”

 

Jungkook blinked, doe eyes shimmering with the hesitation of someone caught between fear and craving. “I don’t know what to paint anymore.”

 

“Then don’t think about it,” Taehyung said, walking in and sitting beside him, drawing him gently into his side. “Just feel.”

 

That night, the studio remained dim.

 

There were no overhead lights—just tall candles set in brass sconces, their flames flickering shadows across the canvas. Jungkook sat in the center, legs folded beneath him, brush held loosely between his fingers.

 

He was naked from the waist up, his skin kissed with the softest warmth of waxlight, his chest rising and falling slowly. Behind him, V and Taehyung watched in silence, sitting on the couch with wine untouched, like guardians in a chapel.

 

Then, without a word, Jungkook pressed the brush to canvas.

 

A single line. Fluid. Wild.

 

Then another.

 

And another.

 

It wasn’t a figure. Not yet. It wasn’t a place or a portrait.

 

It was movement.

 

It was sound.

 

It was them.

 

Hours passed unnoticed. Time bent and stretched as colors bled together under his hands. Reds too deep to be roses, blues so dark they pulled the eye into dreams. He painted with his body, with the tremble of his lips and the bite of his lower lip caught between his teeth.

 

Sweat dampened the curls at his neck.

 

“Daddy,” he mumbled, eyes glossy, “more red…”

 

V stood slowly, walked over to the tray, and handed him the tube of crimson oil.

 

Jungkook smeared it over the canvas with his fingers.

 

A soft gasp left him.

 

It was addictive again.

 

It was home.

 

Later, much later, he fell asleep between them, paint still streaked over his wrists, his cheek resting against Taehyung’s bare chest. His sweater had fallen somewhere behind the couch, and one of V’s scarves now wrapped around his waist, barely holding his modesty.

 

V kissed the top of his curls, eyes heavy with pride and something softer.

 

“He’s back,” he whispered.

 

Taehyung nodded, brushing a thumb beneath Jungkook’s lip where a smudge of color still clung. “No,” he corrected gently, “he’s becoming.”

 

The next morning, the first painting was complete.

 

It was faceless, unframed, untitled.

 

But it was real.

 

Jungkook titled it simply: Us.

 

Back at the estate, the media began to churn.

 

Mystery surrounded the sudden disappearance of key figures in the illegal art underworld. More surprisingly, a new rumor surfaced—someone claimed to have seen Koo, the infamous ghost artist, at a private gallery in Paris.

 

Panic began to brew in elite circles. Collectors who owned Koo’s paintings scrambled to confirm authenticity. Others feared they had bought forgeries.

 

But the real question lingered.

 

Had Koo returned?

 

Meanwhile, Niki Park was knocking at the estate’s front door, holding a pastry box in one hand and a folder in the other.

 

“I really need to speak with Jungkook,” she said when the butler opened the door. “And no, I won’t leave until I do.”

 

Inside, Jungkook was curled on the floor of his art room, humming softly to himself, a streak of yellow on his cheek, unaware that the next chapter of his life had just arrived.

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