Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Taehyung was in fact a private investigator, and he did have his own seedy little office in which he was sitting with his feet up on the desk, but still nothing could have prepared him for a breathtakingly handsome older woman to come through his door in a pantsuit that could have been purchased from “Boutique Femme Fatale” to tell him she needed his help. Taehyung couldn’t stop himself from glancing down at the corner of his computer screen to confirm that the year was still 2025.

“Sure, what kind of service do you need?” Taehyung asked, hastily lowering his feet and standing up respectfully.

“My grandson is missing,” she said, her eyes dry but a deep sadness in her voice nonetheless.

“Ma’am, that’s a job for the police,” Taehyung said, finally sitting back down once she had taken the guest chair in front of his desk.

She shook her head determinedly.

“He’s been missing for twenty-eight years,” she said heavily. “The police gave up on helping me a long time ago.”

Taehyung sat in silence while he digested this bit of information - a cold case indeed. 

“I know what you’re going to say,” she said with steely determination. “I’ve heard it from ten other P.I.’s already. It’s been too long, he’s almost certainly dead, it’s an impossible task. But I refuse to give up. I should have pressed more at the time he vanished, but I was so overcome with grief…”

She paused then and looked down, putting her fingertips genteely on her lips.

“I won’t say no immediately, but I am going to need a lot more information. What makes you think he’s alive?” Taehyung asked, intrigued despite himself.

“Because I saw him,” she said, raising her head back up defiantly. 

There were tears glistening in her eyes now.

“I was in a conference room on the second floor of the Gongjag building, you know, on Wolbae road, discussing the upcoming - well, that doesn’t matter.”

She flapped her hand to dismiss the digression, and took a deep breath and got herself back on track.

“I looked out the window down at the street, just idly, as one does when listening, and I saw a face…just so you understand, he was my only daughter’s only child. I saw him every day when he was a baby and a toddler. And that man I saw last week walking down Wolbae road, he had that child’s nose, and my daughter’s eyes, and my son-in-law’s chin - and everything! It all screamed to me, that was my grandbaby! I ran out of there like I was possessed and tried to chase him down, but of course it was impossible - by the time I made it down to the sidewalk he had vanished into the crowd and I never caught sight of him again no matter how hard I ran and screamed his name.”

Taehyung couldn’t help but be moved by this impassioned speech. 

“What w- is his name?” he asked softly.

“Yoongi,” she replied, wiping her eyes. “Will you help me find him?”

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“What on earth is this?” Jimin asked when he came in an hour later, squinting at the article Taehyung had pulled up on his computer screen.

“I’ve got a new case for us,” Taehyung informed him. “Missing person. Min Yoongi, vanished at the age of four right here in Daegu in 1997. His parents were found dead in a manner that suggested they’d fallen out of a building, but Yoongi wasn’t with them. There was a search at the time, but they never found a single trace of the kid. Now his grandmother is convinced she saw someone just last week that was the spitting image of that long-lost four-year-old, but all grown up.”

Jimin, still leaning over his desk, gave him a skeptical look.

“Here’s the twist - you know the fashion label Spoon Tiger?” Taehyung went on. 

“Yeah, I see their billboards around town all the time. Pricey stuff, out of my range for sure.”

“Their CEO, Lee Myungsook, is the grandmother in question. And this is the good-faith amount she deposited up front for us to take on the investigation.”

Taehyung opened up a different window, showing his business partner the figure in question. Jimin widened his eyes and looked impressed.

“Well, I guess they must make a tidy profit on all those bags and necklaces after all,” he said with a wry shake of his head.

“She’s given me digital copies of some family photos - I’ll send them over to Jungkook to create a digital age-progression of what he might look like now, and our main contact for anything else we might need from her is her executive assistant. His name is Jung Hoseok.” 

“Twenty-eight years,” Jimin mused as he walked over to his own desk. “You know we’re not going to find anything, right?”

“I know,” Taehyung said stubbornly, still remembering the haunting look on Ms. Lee’s face when she recalled seeing the mysterious stranger’s face in the crowd, “but we can at least give it a shot.”

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They threw themselves into the work over the next week. Taehyung focused on tracking down things in the present day, whereas Jimin focused on the original disappearance itself. So while Jimin was visiting the alley where Ms. Lee’s daughter and son-in-law had been found, Taehyung was searching adoption records from 1997 and 1998. Jimin went through all the news reports and requested the police records for the investigation. (He’d gotten a thumb drive of many such files from Hoseok, who’d compiled them on behalf of Ms. Lee, but he wanted to do his own research.) Taehyung looked through the local news from the nineties through the present, looking for any reports of school activities, awards, business openings, or any other stories involving someone named “Yoongi” of the right age.

Taehyung and Jimin more usually worked on drier stuff: fact-finding for civil lawsuits, or sometimes digging up evidence of infidelity. Taehyung felt oddly energized by the idea that he got to work on something that could actually have a happy ending. Ms. Lee had spent almost thirty years mourning her only child and grandchild, something that surely no amount of the luxuries she had acquired could truly offset. But now there was this chance that her grandchild could be returned to her. And that Yoongi could reconnect with his grandmother, no matter how he had been raised or whether he realized he’d been missing in the first place. This was something that truly could be very impactful - and profitable. Their contract with Ms. Lee involved a very large reward if Yoongi were successfully found and reunited with her.

They got a few tiny hits, but nothing that panned out. There was a Yoongi who got in the news for being on a championship-winning high school basketball team, but he was ten years too old. They found records of five different adoptions occurring in the few months after the disappearance, but four were girls and the lone boy had been only a year old. Jimin tried to get in contact with a witness from the original incident who claimed he’d seen a toddler near the scene an hour before the supposed time of death, but he had passed seven years ago. But they scraped onwards, determined to live up to the very large and motivating fee they’d been given.

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Their next big step forward came when Jungkook finished his digital wizardry and had some age-progressed pictures he wanted to show to Ms. Lee. He had taken the pictures of the missing toddler and his parents and generated a few possible faces, and now he wanted to get some direct feedback from Ms. Lee, to see how they matched up with the man she’d glimpsed. With her stamp of approval, Taehyung could make use of the picture to try to find him. Through Hoseok, Jungkook and Taehyung made an appointment to come to her office and go through it there.

The Spoon Tiger headquarters were even more impressive than Taehyung was prepared for. The architecture was all gleaming white, with aggressive jutting shapes and cutouts in every wall, and huge mysterious objets d’art lurking in every corner and on every shelf-like niche and protrusion. But Taehyung couldn’t feel too intimidated when Hoseok, full of sunny smiles, was the one to escort them up to the glass-walled elevator and then into Ms. Lee’s office. There, at least, were more human-friendly touches: chairs that were actually comfortable to sit in, and several enormous rolling pinboards absolutely crammed with photos, swatches in every color and texture imaginable, and anything else flat enough to get pinned in place. Her desk was, of course, an enormous white expanse shaped somewhat like a jelly bean, with a floor-to-ceiling window backing it that looked out on downtown Daegu. The CEO herself was in a sharp navy suit with giant shoulder pads and an aggressively tailored waist, her hair impeccably styled in an equally-sharp bob.

“Thank you for making time for us,” Taehyung started off. “This is my colleague Jungkook, who does reconstructions and age progressions and so forth.”

“Thank you for your efforts so far, I appreciate it,” Myungsook said warmly. “Hoseok has been keeping me up-to-date with all the avenues you and Mr. Park have been pursuing.”

Taehyung nodded politely and gestured to Jungkook.

“I’ll let you take it from here.”

“Thank you. I’m going to show you some possible faces - but first, let’s get his hair to look like the man you saw, just for comparison. Can you describe it to me?” Jungkook said.

“Of course,” she agreed.

Jungkook pulled out his tablet and stylus, and listened carefully as she described a fairly standard hairstyle for men (short on the sides and back, a little bit of length to frame the forehead). He swiped back and forth through something on his tablet, using his stylus to make adjustments of some kind as she answered. 

“Okay, thank you for all that. Now, I’m going to show you four different versions. I want you to look carefully and tell me which one looked most like the man you saw.”

She nodded and sat up even straighter than she had been. Jungkook turned the tablet around so it was facing her. Taehyung and Hoseok shifted around so they could more easily see it as well. 

The first face was somewhat rounded, with a large mouth and a nose that looked like Myungsook’s. She looked at it and then shook her head.

“No, not really…” she said, sounding regretful.

Jungkook swiped to the next picture. This one had the same roundness to the face, but a larger nose and stronger eyebrows.

“No, definitely not.”

Jungkook swiped to the third, and Myungsook gasped.

“That’s him! That’s Yoongi, exactly the way I saw him!” she cried, leaping out of her seat.

Taehyung leaned in to see it himself, noting the sharpness of the eyes and roundedness of the nose. 

“Please look closely, and let me know if you can see anything that should be adjusted,” Jungkook said politely, handing her the tablet. Myungsook didn’t have eyes for anyone or anything else in the room, extending a trembling hand for the tablet and holding it right in front of herself on the desk. 

“That’s him,” she whispered again, sounding awed. 

She rested her chin in her other hand so she could gaze at it in contemplation. Taehyung marveled at the way the years seemed to flow off of her face, and she well could be a woman barely into middle-age, looking tenderly at the baby that had made her a brand-new grandmother. Her finger tips rested on the side of her cheek, with the pinky especially curled. Taehyung could definitely see the resemblance with the digital recreation Jungkook had made - the curves of her face and the shape of her eyes made them believable relatives. 

“Thanks for making time for this,” Taehyung said. “We’ll take it from here and let you know if we find anyone who matches.”

“Of course,” Ms. Lee finally replied.

She took a deep breath and collected herself, reluctantly handing the tablet back to Jungkook.

“I’ll send this file to Hoseok too,” Jungkook assured her.

She nodded gratefully, and then with more thanks Taehyung and Jungkook were taken back out again by Hoseok. 

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Taehyung thought the next part was going to be the most frustrating and lengthy part of the whole investigation, because even once you had a likeness of someone, it still didn’t make them that easy to find. Their target wasn’t a wanted criminal, after all, so a certain level of discretion was necessary. The mystery man had been spotted in the heart of Daegu’s fashion district, however, so that seemed like the best place to start.

Fortunately, even though he wasn’t very knowledgeable about said industry’s workings, he at least had a friend who was. Seokjin was a computer programmer now, but he’d had a brief stint as a model in his younger days, and still kept in contact with a number of casting directors and other insiders. It was mostly for the purpose of his current job - lots of fashion companies needed short-term help with website updates and one-time events, after all, and word-of-mouth was still as key for steady employment as it always had been. Taehyung usually talked to Seokjin if he needed help trying to unlock a lost email account or decrypt a file, but this time he asked him for the use of his network.

“Ok, so here’s what I think we can do,” Seokjin said, staring at the age-progression picture. “I’ll contact a few casting agents and let them know there’s a client that has a very specific look in mind.”

“Will that sound too strange?” Taehyung wondered.

“Mmm, not really - these things happen. Like trying to find a model that looks exactly like someone from a specific painting for an ad campaign, I know I’ve seen things like that before,” Seokjin assured him.

Taehyung decided to trust his judgement, transferred him the money to put in the “casting” requests on his behalf, and added it to the list of expenses for which to get reimbursement from Hoseok.

At that point, things moved much more quickly than Taehyung thought they would. As it turned out, the very first director that Seokjin approached recognized him right off the bat.

“Oh, yeah, that’s Yoongi!” the man had said, according to Seokjin’s report to Taehyung.. “Kang Yoongi. Small-time designer, he’s been putting out, like, t-shirts and little bags and stuff for a few years.”

“His name really is Yoongi?” Taehyung asked, somewhat gobsmacked they’d hit a bullseye already. 

He’dl been operating under the assumption that, if the missing Yoongi really were out there, he would still be going by that name. A child of four was quite old enough to know his own name and resist being renamed, even after being ripped away from his birth family. Taehyung knew he’d have a very hard time from getting his hopes up at this point, but he still tried to stay calm. Finding out the man’s supposed age would be the next critical piece of information.

“Yup, really, genuinely a Yoongi!” Seokjin confirmed with a laugh.

He’d come to Taehyung and Jimin’s office in person - Taehyung suspected he was getting much more enjoyment out of delivering the good news this way rather than over a dry text message. So now he was slouched in one of their guest chairs, glowing with triumph. 

“What else were you able to find out about him?” Taehyung prompted him.

“Quite a bit, actually - first of all, here’s his business’ instagram. And apparently he stuck in the director’s mind so much because of how respectful he was of the models he’d hired. ‘Always so polite, always making sure they were comfortable, paid way more than the going rate, and gave them freebies to boot,’ that’s what he said. Apparently all of that was rare enough that it really stuck in his mind.” Seokjin explained, as he sent a link to the account in question.

Taehyung opened it up. This Yoongi’s operation was called Lotus Lab, apparently, and the feed indeed featured a lot of shirts with graphic designs on them and some little bags in various finishes. Seemed pretty cute and nicely made, from what Taehyung knew of such things. The pictures were mostly just product shots and various promotions, but with enough scrolling he did come across a few pictures of the man himself. He certainly did resemble the picture - and Ms. Lee.

But, the fact that he was a fashion designer! Taehyung marveled at the coincidence. Assuming it was the right Yoongi, it was a pretty amazing coincidence that he’d gotten into the same line of work as his grandmother and mother, completely unknowingly.

“I don’t know his exact age, but he certainly looks like he could be thirty-two,” Seokjin went on.

Taehyung had to agree. There wasn’t anything about his appearance that could rule him out as being the one Ms. Lee had seen - or, more to the point, actually being Min Yoongi.

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Taehyung thought long and hard about how to approach the next stage. Being potentially reunited with a rich grandmother was one thing, but learning that your parents had died under unclear circumstances (most likely brutally murdered) was another thing entirely. Taken as a whole it would be a terrible shock to anyone. Taehyung hoped that at least Yoongi was aware he had been raised by adoptive parents, to not add yet another layer of turmoil to the whole thing. 

He decided the key thing was to not give any hope that his birth parents were alive - that would be the worst order to reveal things in. So as unpleasant as it was, he decided that had to be the first thing he mentioned once they were actually talking in person. So first, he sent an email, using the contact information that was so helpfully available via the Lotus Lab instagram.

To Kang Yoongi: 

My name is Kim Taehyung. I’m investigating a missing persons case. I believe you might have information about this case, and I’d like to meet in person to discuss it. To be clear, you are not under any kind of suspicion, and I would be very grateful for your help. My goal is to give a grandmother closure on what happened to her dear grandson.

Thank you,

Kim Taehyung, P.I.

He included a link to their agency website, which featured himself and Jimin, all their contact information, and quite a few testimonials. He did not get a reply. Three days later, however, he did get a phone call.

“Hello, this is Kim Taehyung of the Kim-Park Detective Agency, how can I help you?”

“Hello, my name is Yoongi. You sent me an email a few days ago.”

Taehyung sat up straight, electrified. Yoongi’s voice was quite deep and a little raspy, not at all what he’d been expecting.

“Ah, yes, thank you for your call! I’m so glad we could get in touch!”

“Sure…but can you clarify what exactly you think I might know? I can’t ever remember seeing anything that could have to do with someone’s disappearance.”

He did sound suspicious, and rightfully so, Taehyung had to admit.

“I very much want to clarify for you, but some of the details of this case are disturbing and upsetting. I didn’t want to just share them up front, or so suddenly, without giving you a chance to prepare yourself.”

He thought he heard a little sigh on the line.

“What time would work for you to come to my office to talk about it? Or we could meet at a restaurant or somewhere else. You can bring any one you want for support, of course.”

“Listen, I’m trusting you not to be messing with me, right? Do you promise this is really to help a grandmother?” he asked, sounding exasperated.

“I promise,” Taehyung assured him. “Look, I’m a working man too, I don’t want to spend my time messing with people either.”

“Alright,” Yoongi agreed with a slightly put-upon grumble.

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They met at a cafe. Taehyung made sure to get there first, and seat himself such that Yoongi got the spot closest to the door. He recognized Yoongi as soon as he got through the door, having pored through the few photos of him on instagram. Another man came in right behind Yoongi, a bit taller and broader, and with a somewhat more steely look in his eyes.

Taehyung stood up and waved to them.

“Kim Taehyung?” Yoongi asked once he’d walked over.

“Yes, that’s me,” he confirmed.

“I’m Kang Yoongi and this is Kim Namjoon. He’s going to stay nearby,” Yoongi explained gravely as Taehyung and Namjoon nodded to each other.

“Great, that’s a very smart precaution,” he said agreeably.

Namjoon looked like he was stopping himself from rolling his eyes. Taehyung didn’t care too much - he didn’t have any bad intentions, so he didn’t have much to fear from this muscly friend.

“Good luck,” Namjoon said, clearly not including Taehyung in his blessing.

Then he took his leave to lurk just out of easy earshot.

Yoongi sighed and rolled his shoulders as if shaking off nerves, and then he and Taehyung sat down across from each other. Taehyung had spent quite a bit of time by that point looking at Yoongi’s baby pictures, and he didn’t think he was imagining a very close resemblance to them - closer even than the reconstructed face, especially seeing him living and breathing.

“First off, thank you for your time, I really do deeply appreciate it,” Taehyung started off.

“I do want to help, if I can,” Yoongi replied politely. “So, let’s hear it then.”

Taehyung had already spent a while deciding exactly what he was going to say, so he was more than ready to launch right into it.

“The woman who hired me lost her daughter, son-in-law, and their child - her grandson - all at the same time. The daughter and the son-in-law were found dead, but the grandson, who was only four at the time, was not found with them. And in fact, he was never seen again. This happened right here in Daegu,” he said.

“That’s awful,” Yoongi said quietly. “What do you think I might know about it?”

“This happened back in 1997,” Taehyung went on. 

“Well, nothing, then,” Yoongi replied with a slightly nervous, breathy little chuckle.

“Yoongi, there’s a chance you are the missing child.”

Taehyung bit his lip - he’d never had to do anything quite like this. Yes, he’d told people he’d found evidence of their spouses cheating, but they’d all suspected it anyway. He wasn’t even sure how he’d feel finding out this kind of information if he were in Yoongi’s place, so he couldn’t imagine what Yoongi might be going through.

“Nah,” Yoongi said, crinkling up his nose and forehead. “C’mon.”

“Do you have any memories of when you were very small? Three or four years old?” Taehyung asked.

“Not really,” Yoongi said slowly, smoothing out his face into a closed-off expression.

Taehyung waited, giving Yoongi a chance to elaborate, but he didn’t say anything else. He did look like he was deep in thought.

“These are the Mins in 1997: Sungjin, Hyunjung, and Yoongi,” Taehyung said gently, pulling the family photo out of the top of his folder of documents and sliding it over to Yoongi.

He didn’t touch it, but he did peer down at it. A happy family, in dated clothes and hair, with their little round-faced toddler looking a little impatient sandwiched between the two adults.

“And you think that’s me,” Yoongi said flatly. “Just because I’m the right age and also named Yoongi?”

“I had a digital artist do an age progression based on photos of Min Yoongi, and this was the result,” Taehyung went on, this time pulling out the picture Jungkook had made (and Ms. Lee had approved).

Yoongi stared at it, and looked back and forth between the two pictures intently. 

“Well,” he finally said reluctantly, “I guess that does look like me. But how did you find me?”

“Sure, I’d be happy to tell you the whole thing. First of all, the woman who hired me is named Lee Myungsook, and-”

“Hold on, the CEO of Spoon Tiger?” Yoongi interrupted him incredulously.

“Oh, yes, you know her?” Taehyung asked in mild surprise.

“I know of her, of course, everyone in the fashion business in Daegu knows her!” Yoongi explained impatiently. “I mean, I wouldn’t know her face but of course I know her name. Wait wait wait.”

He paused and looked down at the table.

“You’re trying to tell me that you think Lee Myungsook is my grandmother, and that my biological parents are her dead daughter and daughter’s husband,” he stated flatly.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Taehyung replied softly. “I am sorry, I know it’s a lot to process at once.”

Yoongi made a grimacing face, but stayed silent. So Taehyung continued on and told him the main arc of things: how Ms. Lee had spotted someone (possibly him, or possibly some other similarly-featured man) out the window one day, and kicked everything off. And then how Taehyung’s team had created the reconstructed image, and then a casting agent had recognized him from it and passed on his contact info. Yoongi listened intently, mostly staring off into space, sometimes chewing his lips. Taehyung let the silence sit when he’d finished, wanting Yoongi to have a chance to lead the conversation.

“I was adopted in 1997. When I was four,” he finally said, his voice quiet and his face unreadable.

Taehyung nodded and remained quiet. A wrinkle of consternation appeared in Yoongi’s forehead.

“Okay, but-” he suddenly blurted out in protest, ”that story of yours actually makes me less convinced. Age progression is very unscientific, and besides, she saw me at the start of all this! Obviously the mockup was going to end up looking like me! And, assuming I’m not the right Yoongi, now she’s biased it against looking like the real one.”

“Mmm, the artist did all of his work on the face off the photos, and only used Ms. Lee’s input for the hair. Plus, in times past we’d be stuck here, but we have DNA tests now,” Taehyung reminded him.

“Doesn’t this all seem a little too convenient?” Yoongi grilled him. “Spoon Tiger sales have been flat for a good few years, and now they’re trying to turn it around with their big seventy-fifth anniversary celebration - among other things - and the CEO just so happens to choose this year to find her long-lost grandson, and lo-and-behold he’s a designer too!”

“She’d have no way of knowing that though,” Taehyung pointed out.

“Unless she set you up!” Yoongi insisted. “The fashion scene in Daegu is not that big. I can easily imagine she’d have heard of someone named Yoongi trying to do a little t-shirt line, and she concocted the whole scheme from there. That building she said she spotted me from overlooks four of the ten most popular lunch spots in downtown. She could say she’d seen anybody and of course they’d have been there at some point!”

“You do make some valid points,” Taehyung reluctantly agreed, more to pacify him than out of being convinced. 

(He did think to himself, though, that he should have done a little more background research on Spoon Tiger - he did so hate to be surprised by little facts like those Yoongi had brought up.)

“How much is she paying you?”

Taehyung stared off into space, trying to decide whether he should be honest or not.

“It’s a lot, isn’t it? More than you’d normally get paid for something like this?” he went on, sounding almost mocking.

“You’re a very suspicious man,” Taehyung said, trying to keep any trace of sulking out of his tone.

“You’re a private detective! Aren’t you supposed to be suspicious of everything?” Yoongi argued back with a wry chuckle.

Taehyung just looked at him, feeling rather woebegone. He had known that there was a good chance that Yoongi wasn’t going to like the news he was trying to deliver, but he hated the feeling that he’d wasted everyone’s time most of all.

“Ah, c’mon, don’t make that face - aren’t you also supposed to be, I don’t know, all hard-boiled or something?” Yoongi grumbled, his cheeks a little pinker than they had been. 

“Over easy,” Taehyung quipped, forcing himself to smile at least a little. “These days the job is more tracking down people’s secret social media accounts or trying to undelete files from discarded hard drives. It pays more to be friendly!”

“Look, I’m not trying to be difficult - uh, I mean, I guess I am, actually - but you have to see that this looks like a scam to me, even if I’m not seeing what your angle is. These sorts of things just don’t happen in real life, you know?” Yoongi said, sounding somewhat apologetic.

“No, I get it,” Taehyung assured him. “But a DNA test would give all of us a definitive answer.”

“I’ll have to think about it. I’m not sure I even want to be involved in all of this,” Yoongi replied, his face going back to the guardedness he’d had before.

Then he sighed and put his chin in his hand. Taehyung saw the way his fingers curled and the tips touched his cheek. And his pinky was especially curved, causing a frisson of recognition that made the hairs on Taehyung’s arms stand up.

Lee Myungsook had made the exact same unconscious pose. Taehyung was sure, then, that this was worth going for.

Chapter Text

Yoongi decided he’d had enough, so he took his leave from Taehyung - polite, but insistent. His mind was whirling and buzzing unpleasantly, full of sad and uncomfortable thoughts. He found Namjoon around the corner, who quickly stood up and fell in with him as they walked back to Yoongi’s car. 

“How did it go? Did he seem like he was pulling some kind of scam?” Namjoon asked him. “Are you okay? You look…deep in thought.”

Yoongi stayed silent for a moment longer, trying to make some sense of of it all.

“I don’t think it’s a scam,” he finally replied slowly. “But I don’t fully trust him.”

“What did he want?” Namjoon asked curiously.

“I told you I was adopted, didn’t I?” Yoongi asked him back softly.

It was Namjoon’s turn to pause, and they walked on in silence for several paces.

“Yes,” Namjoon finally said, clearly mystified by Yoongi’s apparent change of subject.

“He’s reaching out on behalf of someone who might be a member of my birth family,” Yoongi said. 

He wasn’t willing to go delve into any of the other details yet. Dead parents. Rich grandmother. Too much, too much, too much. He had a hard time holding the thought in his mind, much less putting it into words.

“Oh,” Namjoon said softly.

He didn’t probe any further, leaving Yoongi to his inward thoughts. He was well aware that Yoongi’s childhood was a touchy subject for him already. Yoongi was doubly grateful for his company - not only to have his back in case Taehyung had ended up being a dicey character, but also as a grounding presence now. Yoongi knew he could talk it over with him, or stay silent - Namjoon would stoutly keep him company either way.

For now, Yoongi had nothing else he wanted to share. 

“Thanks for coming with me,” Yoongi finally said some time later, once he was dropping Namjoon off and about to head back to his own studio to finish out the day,

“Of course, any time,” Namjoon said with a cautious smile. “I’m happy to be your backup for anything you want. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.”

Yoongi patted his arm gratefully and went on his way. The bills didn’t pay themselves, after all, no matter how much Yoongi might be feeling overwhelmed by such a strange encounter. So he tucked himself back into his studio for the afternoon, working on a few of his own designs plus a little freelance work.

But even as he tweaked color profiles, he couldn’t help but think about everything Taehyung had dredged up in his mind. Memory was treacherous, he knew - science had shown that the more time you spend recalling your memories, the more susceptible they are to getting changed over time. So while he did have a few fleeting memories from when he was small - before he had been adopted - he had never been sure how much to trust them. It was possible they weren’t real at all, but he’d merely tricked himself into thinking they were.

He remembered a kindly face smiling down at him. He remembered elegant hands smoothing and folding piles upon piles of rainbow-hued fabrics. He remembered walking somewhere, with tall people on either side of him, people he trusted, holding each of his hands. He’d spent many nights lying awake when he had been younger, silently begging those people in his memory to look down at him so he could see their faces. He knew they were his mother and father, but he couldn’t remember what they looked like. Surely if he ever came across them in person, he’d recognize them, wouldn’t he? But even the picture Taehyung had shown him hadn’t jogged any memories. Those three people were just flat colors on a glossy paper, no more special or recognizable to him than any random strangers on the street.

So maybe that meant that there was nothing to this whole “investigation” in the first place. That was that.

Once he decided he’d done as much productive work for the day as he reasonably could, and he was home by himself in his tiny little apartment, Yoongi searched up for information on Lee Myungsook. He had had a vague recollection that he’d heard that she had once had a daughter who unfortunately passed away, but it wasn’t talked about much. He hadn’t had any reason to know about it particularly, beyond being (heart-rending) trivia about a local celebrity. And after looking it up specifically he found that he and Taehyung were indeed correctly informed: Ms. Lee’s daughter and son-in-law had died in the year Yoongi had turned four. And chillingly, all evidence pointed to them having been pushed out of a window. Horrible.

Yoongi hadn’t ever heard about there being a child involved in their deaths, though. But the news reports did mention it: first, in pleas to contact the police with any leads, and then with notes that the assumption of law enforcement was that the toddler had died too, and they merely needed to find a body. Yoongi couldn’t find any articles mentioning that they had. For a moment, he almost wished that he was this missing child - it hurt his heart to think of this poor baby, dead in some lonely forgotten place for all these years, nobody ever knowing for sure what had happened to him. If Yoongi took the DNA test, and he was Lee Myungsook’s grandson, that meant that that part of the whole tragedy had never happened. A real-life happy ending.

But Yoongi doubted that it could be that easy. There were too many moving parts - too many people who could be doing this for their own benefit, even if Yoongi hadn’t figured out how yet. He already felt precarious enough in his life, barely making ends meet since he’d chosen a profession based on his interests rather than what was financially sound. He didn’t need to get scammed and humiliated. He could just hear how people would mock him after it all went wrong: wait, you didn’t really think you had a secret rich grandma, did you? You let yourself get preyed on because of greed? I mean, come on, what a stupid story!

Yoongi sighed and tried to put Lee Myungsook and Kim Taehyung out of his mind. He needed to look after himself first, and help them only if he was sure it wouldn’t harm him. But that was easier said than done - the kicked-puppy look that had appeared on Taehyung’s face when Yoongi pressed him about his suspicions kept popping into his mind unbidden. 

Was he being manipulated, or was the dashingly handsome private investigator really as earnest and straightforward as he seemed?

Or was even Taehyung himself being played, and both of them were going to lose in the end?

🗁🗁🗁🗁🗁🗁🗁

Yoongi had horrible nightmares that night. He dreamed he was walking between his biological parents again, but they were afraid of something, and started running. He tried to keep up with them, but his legs were short and his round little hands slipped out of theirs, and no matter how he screamed and cried they just kept running until they were out of sight. Then he was in a maze, running alone in what was something like an empty building, but it was just endless empty rooms and dark windows. All the doorknobs were at eye level, and it got harder and harder for Yoongi to turn them, until finally both his legs and arms were worn out and he laid down on the floor. Then, from many rooms away, he heard a bloodcurdling scream - and then he woke up.

It was still early, the sky just barely starting to lighten. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep, though. Yoongi sighed and rubbed his eyes. He tried to shake off the dream and think instead about his real memories from being so small - those few tiny frayed scraps he did have. Sitting somewhere and coloring happily on what must have been an easel. A sunny day in the back seat of a car, surrounded by boxes and bags piled high. Those big hands holding his own on either side as they all walked together, three in a row. 

He sighed again. He couldn’t even be sure those moments were real - most people didn’t have any memories from that age, so those fleeting impressions he clung to could be things he’d simply invented. Or dreamed. And there wasn’t any way for him to confirm they were based on anything real, either. 

Well, he supposed if he really were Min Yoongi, then Lee Myungsook would be able to corroborate some of them. Everything else was lost with the death of Sungjin and Hyunjung.

Well, considering it again…not everything. Yoongi still had his parents, the ones who’d raised him. They’d never tried to keep his adoption a secret - he supposed it wouldn’t have been possible. He couldn’t remember meeting his parents for the first time, but obviously at the age of four he would have still remembered his biological parents and they would have had to work with that. His parents hadn’t ever said much about it - he could remember asking questions when he was older, but they’d clearly preferred not to get into any details. 

Yoongi hadn’t pushed then, when he was ten or fifteen or even twenty. But things had changed, and he wanted to know every possible bit of information they had. If there were any discrepancies between what they said and what the life of Min Yoongi would need to have been, then he could simply write the whole thing off with no further worries.

Taehyung’s face flashed through his mind - he was pretty sure he could picture the man’s disappointed face if he came and told him that. But Yoongi shook himself. That wasn’t his concern - Taehyung could take care of himself.

On the other hand, there was no reason to burn any bridges with him either. Yoongi sighed at himself again. He needed to focus on the day ahead - and then this weekend he was determined to go visit his parents and bring the whole matter up.

🗁🗁🗁🗁🗁🗁🗁

Saturday late morning found him already parked at the dinged-up old dining table at his childhood home, face still warm from the hugs, being given a cup of tea and the fifth degree about his latest sales numbers.

“It does sound like your business is growing,” his father remarked stolidly. “How much more expansion do you think you need to do before you’d bring on someone to be a second employee?”

“I don’t know that I’d ever get to that point,” Yoongi admitted. “If this venture ever became more about running the business than creating, I’d quit!”

“But that’s the point, isn’t it?” his mother echoed, “You’d hire someone to do all the business stuff and take yourself back to just the creating!”

Yoongi wondered if every designer who’d been cursed with success had told themselves the same thing: that surely if they just found the right trustworthy person, they’d magically be able to do just the parts of the job they liked. He’d never yet seen a case where that had worked out as planned. Look at Lee Myungsook, for instance: based on the articles he’d read, Spoon Tiger had grown so much that she spent only a tiny fraction of her time on the creative direction of the company. 

Right. Myungsook. Yoongi had things he wanted to ask. 

“Finding that ‘someone’ isn’t as simple as it sounds,” Yoongi said gently. “But actually, there’s something I wanted to ask you guys.”

He took a deep breath and spun the mug in his hands.

“I know you don’t particularly enjoy talking about it…but I was hoping you could tell me more about how I was adopted.”

He stared down at the table, feeling slightly ashamed of himself somehow. He didn’t want them to think he didn’t want them as parents.

“Oh, of course,” his mother said, though a bit sadly and reluctantly. “Yoongi, we never wanted to keep secrets from you - we just wanted to protect you.”

Yoongi felt even more worried at that - what did they think they were protecting him from?

“It’s just that I was contacted by someone who thinks they might be my…biological grandparent,” he said carefully. “And before I decide whether to reach out or not, I wanted to know as much of the truth as possible.”

“Grandparent!” he father muttered, sounding amazed.

Yoongi looked up and saw his parents exchanging a look.

“Even if they are, it doesn’t change anything,” he whispered. “You’re my parents. I love you.”

They looked at him and smiled. His mother reached for his hand and clasped it for a moment.

“And we love you too,” she said. “Well, I suppose it only makes sense to give you all the information we have - which isn’t much, I warn you.”

Yoongi nodded, heart in his throat. 

“You were dropped off at an emergency clinic in the middle of the night, fast asleep. The police report said you’d been given a big dose of cough syrup - certainly to keep you unconscious, and you were perfectly healthy once it wore off. Nobody caught even the slightest glimpse of whoever left you there,” his mother stated.

“The police of course made a few inquires but no children matching your description were reported missing here,” his father added.

“It was considered better not to look too deeply,” his mother said, sounding almost apologetic. “The assumption at the time was that…well, to give up a child that way meant some kind of serious family scandal. And you were such a perfect sweet angel - you were so quiet at first, but once you warmed up you were such a sunny little chatterbox.”

Yoongi couldn’t help but smile and duck his head at the praise. Even so, he felt a pang of grief for his past self. Even though he didn’t remember it, the idea of being ripped from one home so young, never having a chance to go back or know how or why, had always haunted him: like a cold draft coming from some hidden crack in the back door of his brain.

“It could have just been economic, couldn’t it?” Yoongi suggested. “Maybe they were poor, and decided they simply couldn’t care for me any more.”

But his father frowned and shook his head. 

“You were dressed very nicely, though.”

The hairs on Yoongi’s arms raised up.

“Nicely how?”

“Custom made, it seemed - your coat, your overalls, your little shirt - they had no tags and they all looked hand-made. Nice fabrics, very sturdy and colorful.”

Like how an up-and-coming fashion designer would dress their child.

“We still have it, actually!” his mother said.

“What?” Yoongi asked, feeling stunned.

“The clothes you were wearing…the police didn’t need to hold on to it as evidence so it was given to us. I’ve kept it up in the attic all this time.”

Yoongi’s father sprung up to get it, so within moments Yoongi was breathlessly examining the contents of a dusty old cardboard shirt-box. A little bright blue corduroy coat, bright red denim overalls with a big fuzzy cat appliqued on the front, and a yellow shirt with red stars all over it. Despite the bright colors, they were balanced and carefully coordinated. Someone had made this for him – someone with a discerning eye. Yoongi touched it with one fingertip and then burst into tears.

“Oh, sweetheart,” his mother said, coming around the table to wrap him up in a hug.

It took just a few squeezes and pats on the back for Yoongi to get a grip on himself. 

“You were very loved,” his mother said, sliding away and sitting down, though she kept a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry I didn’t show you this sooner, but I just wasn’t sure what the right time was.”

“I still am loved,” Yoongi muttered determinedly as he wiped his face.

She smiled and squeezed his arm.

“My theory has always been…well, I’m just going to go and say it. Maybe you were the product of an affair, and it wasn’t discovered until you were a few years old. So the family dropped you off here to prevent you from being raised under the shadow of a scandal. That’s the only scenario I could think of where you were so cared for, but given away anyway.”

Even as Yoongi considered this, his father scoffed.

“Whatever it was, I don’t think they deserve you now,” he muttered into his own up of tea. “Like your mother said, you were a sweet, innocent kid, and nothing in my mind justifies them giving you up like that.”

“Yeobo, hush, it’s his decision,” his mother said quietly.

Maybe they didn’t give me up, Yoongi thought. Maybe I was taken from them. And they weren’t given the chance to live long enough to get me back. But there was no reason to upset his parents with that theory - at least not yet.

“It’s okay though,” Yoongi told them. “You both…you’ve given me a happy life. Maybe we’ll never find out why things happened they way they did. But no matter what, I wouldn’t change anything. I’m glad I’m your son.”

And then his parents cried too, and there were more hugs all around. Yoongi stayed for a late lunch before he headed back, feeling emotionally exhausted.

He couldn’t help but mull it all over repetitively as he drove. He knew that if he decided to take the test, if it came back positive as a match with Lee Myungsook, things would never be the same. Despite what he told his parents, things would never be quite the same again knowing what had happened to his family of origin. 

The little outfit from all those years ago had been placed carefully in the back seat of his car. His now to keep. A very nice outfit, custom made by someone who was clearly an expert seamstress with an eye for color and material. 

In fact, things were already not the same.

🗁🗁🗁🗁🗁🗁🗁

Jimin walked briskly through the gleaming white corridors of Spoon Tiger headquarters, side-by-side with Hoseok. This was already his fourth time coming by in his ongoing research, so he was well familiar with how to navigate the building by now, but Hoseok always met him at the front desk nonetheless, full to the brim of smiles. Jimin couldn’t deny that he enjoyed spending time with Hoseok - and that perhaps, at this point, he was stretching any excuse to come to Spoon Tiger to see him even for things that could have been handled with just an email or phone call. Hoseok had only ever encouraged him, however - and Jimin didn’t think he was imagining that Hoseok seemed to have the same feelings of recognition of a kindred spirit.

“What can I help you with today?” Hoseok asked brightly as soon as they stepped into his office.

Hoseok was in a deconstructed suit today, in a subtle cool brown striped wool, with an enormous artificial boutonniere that exploded off his chest like a miniature frozen firework. Jimin was in his usual working attire of blazer, polo shirt, and slacks. (He had taken care that the creamy hue of the shirt and the blue shade of the blazer were just right to accentuate the peachy highlights of his face. He might not have been a designer, but he knew how to work with what he had.)

“Well, I’m just following up a few pieces of information,” Jimin replied, taking a seat across from him. “The building that was the site of…the deaths of the Mins - it was at one point occupied by Spoon Tiger offices?”

“Yessss, that’s right, if I recall what I’ve heard correctly, back in the nineties it was the primary space leased for our admin work. Then for some years it was used for storage, and then we sub-let it before finally getting rid of it once we were able to afford a more desirable location. But all that was long before I started working here,” Hoseok confirmed, drumming his elegant fingers on his desk thoughtfully.

“I don’t suppose the company has any old records that would corroborate that?” Jimin asked. “Would it have been vacant in 1997, or could the Mins have been there on company business?”

Jimin had already read what the police report at the time had concluded. He wanted to see what Hoseok knew.

Hoseok blew out a thoughtful breath.

“Let me check,” he said, and then turned to his computer.

Jimin waited patiently while Hoseok frowned at his large, expensive monitor and typed a number of things.

“We don’t have records going that far back,” he finally concluded. “But I know somebody who would know! Ms. Lee’s assistant at the time, Park Sangchul, is still around. He still comes by the office pretty regularly, in fact. I’m sure he’d be happy to answer our questions.”

Jimin perked up. Mr. Park’s name had been in the files - the police had interviewed him, though he’d known nothing that helped them directly with the case. Surely it couldn't hurt to ask. 

🗁🗁🗁🗁🗁🗁🗁

“Ohhhh, Sungjin and Hyunjung and Yoongi,” Sangchul sighed, lowering himself onto his couch, “not a day goes by that I don’t think about them. Such a tragedy. And poor Myungsook who’s had to carry on all these years without them, with all of her dreams of a happy family and an heir to hand over the business to ruined.”

He looked off into the distance sadly. Jimin and Hoseok sat down on the couch across from him, in the man’s airy, modern loft. Jimin thought the whole place looked quite classy and expensive: lots of marble and silk everywhere. He’d clearly done well for himself. Sangchul himself wasn’t quite what he’d expected: unlike the willowy Hoseok, he was tall and burly. If he were in a dark t-shirt and jeans, he’d make a creditable bouncer. As it was, he was wearing a loose silk-blend hanbok-inspired loungewear set, in a mottled mauve. 

“I wish I had more I could tell you. Can I ask, though, what prompted all this?” he said, settling himself further down.

“Ms. Lee has hired the Kim-Park Detective Agency to make another effort to find out what happened to Yoongi,” Hoseok said, gesturing to Jimin.

“Poor little kid,” Sangchul murmured. “Well, I hope you do manage to get some answers, even all these years later. But I told the police everything I knew back then, so I don’t know how I could possibly help.”

“We actually have a possible lead already,” Hoseok told him eagerly.

Sangchul glanced at him sharply, tension visible in his shoulders.

“What?” he barked. 

“It’s nothing certain,” Jimin added quickly, not wanting to get the man’s hopes up. “We found a match on someone who might be Yoongi. He’s here in Daegu, and he’s the right age - but nothing’s confirmed.”

Sangchul stared at him.

“Here in Daegu?” he whispered. “I- I mean, he’s alive?”

“Nothing confirmed,” Jimin repeated firmly. 

“It might not be him,” Hoseok said apologetically. “If it pans out, I’m sure Myungsook will be shouting it from the rooftops.”

Sangchul swallowed and managed a weak chuckle.

“That would be incredible,” he managed to say, shifting restlessly where he sat. “Well, I’m even less sure how I could help you, if you already might have found Yoongi!”

“The more information the better,” Jimin said with a shrug. “You never know what you might find if you keep digging.”

Sangchul raised his eyebrows and nodded his head, patting his hand on his thigh distractedly.

“So, back in 1997 - what do you think the Mins were doing in the building that night?” Jimin prompted him gently.

Sangchul kept up his absent nodding and patting for a moment before he answered.

“We still had two years left on our lease for the fifth and sixth floors, but we’d moved all the offices by then. There were still boxes being stored in the middle part, but we’d been moving those too. There were maybe, hmm, three rooms worth of boxes left when…when it happened,” he said slowly. “I’ve always thought that Hyunjung must have thought of something she wanted that was stored there, and was too impatient to wait for it to get moved over. Before you ask, I have no idea what. She didn’t send any messages about it. She just…went.”

Jimin nodded to himself. Nearly verbatim what he’d said back then, according to the report. And the description of the scene matched - two floors of office buildings nearly devoid of furnishings, but with boxes.

“And then I’m guessing they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time - there must have been a burglar prowling around,” he mused sorrowfully.

“The police seemed to think an accident was more likely - nothing was found to have been stolen, I thought?” Jimin queried delicately.

“They were probably scouting for something to steal, and they would have taken something if they thought it was worth it. I don’t buy the accident theory - how could it have been both of them that fell?” Sangchul argued. “And why would their son have disappeared?”

Jimin couldn’t help but agree.

“What was in the boxes?” he asked - something that hadn’t been reported on before.

“Oh, pfff, just files really - financial records, copies of contracts, that sort of thing,” Sangchul said dismissively.

“I thought a large part of it was the company’s archives?” Hoseok asked curiously. “The old vision boards and samples from past years.”

“Oh, no, all that got moved first,” Sangchul said firmly. “None of that was left in the old building by then - Myungsook has always kept very close track of all of those materials.”

Hoseok chuckled wryly in agreement and turned to Jimin.

“Now, that’s very true! We joke sometimes that she treats it like a dragon would her hoard. Do you remember the door on the back wall of her office? It actually leads to a vault that stores all those materials now, and she’s the only one with the code,” he said.

Jimin made a little impressed noise.

“Oh! That reminds me,” Hoseok went on, turning back to Sangchul. “She’s actually going to be bringing out a selection of those things for the seventy-fifth anniversary. I just booked the gallery space for it. It’s going to be amazing - the company and our devoted fans will get to see things that have been locked away for almost thirty years.”

“I thought she swore she’d never look at those things again - anything that was created with- with Hyunjung. She said she was locking it away forever,” Sangchul commented quietly.

Hoseok nodded.

“She did mention saying that. But certainly we can make allowances for grief. I hope it helps her - going through all those boxes with fresh eyes. She feels such a sense of responsibility - you know this well, of course - and she doesn’t want to leave a huge problem for whoever takes over after she’s gone. She’s the last person who knows the context of all those things, you know?”

Sangchul chewed his lips and stayed silent. Jimin suddenly wondered if he might have been feeling insulted at being left out - after all, he had been her employee for so long, and stayed at her side for those terrible years when she lost her family. He was part of the history of the company too, even if only behind the scenes.

“Well, that sounds like a great idea,” he finally said, a gentle smile on his face. “I hope she finds the healing and inspiration she’s in search of.”

🗁🗁🗁🗁🗁🗁🗁

Yoongi realized he’d made up his mind to take the test long before he got back home, so by the time he could finally act on it, he was impatient to just have it over with. If he didn’t find out, he’d never be able to forget it, or to stop himself from wondering - so better to just do it. He texted Taehyung as soon as he parked, and got an immediate, enthusiastic reply: he was out of his office but if Yoongi wanted he could meet him there.

He hadn’t quite made it back, apparently, by the time Yoongi had arrived, but there were two men there when he knocked on the door.

“You must be Yoongi!” the one in the blazer said brightly. “I’m Park Jimin, his partner here at our little agency. He should be just a minute or two behind you.”

Yoongi nodded to him and glanced over at the other man in the room, who was wearing a loose suit and a truly wild accessory through his his buttonhole. He was looking back at Yoongi very intently.

“Yoongi, this is Jung Hoseok - he’s, well, the assistant to Lee Myungsook,” Jimin said, making a little gesture towards him.

Hoseok gave a cute smile and a wave.

“It’s very nice to meet you!” he chirped.

Yoongi immediately felt wary. He definitely got the vibe he’d interrupted something between the two of them. Why were the P.I and the assistant so chummy? Did they already know each other? Was this a conflict of interest?

“Ah, well, it’s- I’m not quite sure what to think of all this,” Yoongi muttered, feeling a bit awkward.

Hoseok’s face took on a sympathetic cast.

“Yes, of course, I’m sorry,” he said.

Just then the door swung open energetically just behind Yoongi, startling him and making him stumble forward.

“Hello, Jiminie, I’ve arrived-” Taehyung’s voice called out, cheerful and sing-song-y.

“Oh! Ha! You’re all here,” he interrupted himself with a little chuckle, coming to a stop just inside the door.

Taehyung’s eyes swept around the room and lighted on Yoongi, who had turned around.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Kang,” he said, clearly forcing himself to assume a more formal tone.

Yoongi had to smile to himself. He murmured a polite nothing in reply.

“It’s…pretty crowded in here!” Taehyung remarked as he shuffled in, taking his coat off. 

Jimin and Hoseok looked a little flustered. Yoongi felt a little flustered. The office was very small, and he was already feeling rather emotional about everything, and he wasn’t sure what Hoseok’s perspective on everything was, and so he thought he could be forgiven for being overwhelmed.

“I want to take the test, so I know for sure whether I’m related or not,” he said awkwardly. “What do I need to do?”

Taehyung knew this already, and thus Taehyung assumed Jimin had been informed as well - but he saw Hoseok brighten up as if this was new information to him.

“Yes, great - first of all, I can’t think you enough for your cooperation,” Taehyung said, opening up his computer.

“It might end up that it’s not me,” Yoongi couldn’t stop himself from emphasizing.

“And your cooperation will still be appreciated in either case,” Taehyung replied easily as he typed. “I’ve used this company before - you’ll each get shipped a cheek swab and the materials to ship it back in, and you’ll each get mailed the results within a few days.”

“Ah, ok,” Yoongi said.

So he would still need to wait. He took a deep breath.

“Well, in the meantime, I want to see everything else you’ve turned up,” Yoongi said, determined to get more information.

He knew something that everyone else in the room didn’t yet - he knew about the clothes he’d been found in. He felt more sure of the result of that genetic test than anyone else could. The full force of it had yet to him him, he knew: that his parents had been killed, and he’d been taken from them. The grief would strike him. But he hungered for knowledge, and this was his chance to get it as neutrally as possible, before the truth was confirmed.

“Of course, of course!” Taehyung agreed easily. “Come, sit here, I’ll review our files with you.”

So Yoongi came and perched on the visitor’s chair next to Taehyung, while Jimin went to sit on top of his own desk so that he could see over their heads. Hoseok stayed - which Yoongi didn’t know whether that was an odd occurrence or not. (He did see Taehyung shoot a little glance at Hoseok, and a sharper little glance at Jimin - who nodded back. Interesting.)

But then he put Jimin and Hoseok out of his mind and paid attention only to Taehyung, who was giving an animated walk-through of all the notes he and Jimin had put on the computer. Yoongi - despite the emotionally charged subject matter - found himself drawn in by Taehyung’s voice and face. He could see why Taehyung had gotten involved in this kind of work: he was very good at presenting himself, and was probably an expert at winning people’s trust and confidence. Surely it was necessary to be on good terms with all sorts of people from all sorts of walks of life in the private investigation business - and Yoongi could easily imagine Taehyung that way.

Maybe Yoongi’s confidence in his connection to the matter of Ms. Lee and the Mins was misplaced. Maybe the test would come back negative. If it was a match, it opened up a whole new world of changes to his life. If it wasn’t, well, he’d still have met Taehyung at least.