Jungkook felt as though he had committed a murder that day. It was not the murder of a man—though the three boys lingering in the infirmary might have argued otherwise—but the cold-blooded execution of an idol. He had taken his ego, that towering, jagged monument he had called "Jeon Jungkook," and placed it upon the altar of a quiet, tired woman with ink-stained fingers. He had stood by and watched it burn to ash.

He understood, perhaps for the first time, what it meant when it's said that the heart is a battlefield where the devil and God contend. For years, Jungkook had believed the devil was winning because the devil offered him the heavy, cold armor of hatred. Hatred was easy. It was structured, it was silent, and it demanded nothing but his own isolation. But goodness? Goodness was a violent, terrifying light. It demanded a total, agonizing dismantling of the self.