Strawberries & Dreams | Taekook |

Chapter Six 🔥

September and early October were the busiest months on the Kim farm. The strawberry fields had to be tended to, weeded and the newly formed plants cut off their mother plants and re-planted and made ready for winter. The orchards had to be harvested. So it was no surprise to find the young farmer in the orchard, overseeing and harvesting the late apples himself.

This September morning was already quite cold and the wind that came down from the hills was chilly. Nevertheless, most of the workers, Taehyung included, were working in shirtsleeves. But here the similarities already ended, while others wore hats or caps, he wore a bandana on his head to keep the bangs out of his eyes. A striped shirt and tight workman jeans that did not snag on branches and heavy boots completed his outfit. 

Taehyung was precariously balancing on an old cherry picker, making quick work on the top of the trees for the apples that had gotten the most sun. He really hated this kind of work. Even though he suffered from acrophobia, he also was the youngest and most able-bodied of the workers, so he had to suck it up. These apples would be sold especially as they were the sweetest and could be stored over Christmas and even New Year's and therefore would be worth the effort and the fear that sat like a fat frog inside his stomach.

This year had been a good year. Taehyung grinned and put another handful of apples into the big wicker basket right by his side. One of the elderly workers waved at him to lower the filled basket. Instead of moving the cherry picker up and down, they had installed a pulley system that lowered the baskets full of apples down to the ground while one of the workers flung up a new empty basket. Taehyung caught the big basket by its handle with ease and put it down by his feet, then he clipped in the full one and lifted it over and down the safety rail.

"Taehyung-ah," the old man currently working on the pulley system waved and grinned. "These are good apples."

"Yes, thank you, Lee Dong-Ha-ssi," Tae looked down and smiled. Lee Dong-Ha was an old friend of his grandfather's and for as long as he could remember he had always been around. It was as if he too belonged to the Kim family.

"Mind if I come with you later, to visit your granddad?" Mr. Lee asked and Tae shook his head.

"Be our guest, Lee Dong-Ha-ssi, I set up a Doenjang jjigae this morning and we will have more than enough," Taehyung replied and watched as the elderly man clapped his hands together and waved in a way that looked a lot like the dance moves of the farmer's dance that BTS had used for their IDOL choreography.

With a sigh, Tae turned back towards the tree and the harvest. Lately a lot of things reminded him of Jungkook and his band. Not that he was obsessed but Jungkook was never far from his mind, especially today, as he had yet to receive a text from him. Usually they texted each other at the beginning and the end of each day and anywhere in between if time permitted. Today, the idol was suspiciously quiet.

He was probably in transit, Tae thought. If he remembered the tour schedule correctly, they were about to finish the South East Asian part with Malaysia and Indonesia before returning to Korea for another set of concerts.

But he really wanted to see him. Since their remote date, they had squeezed in Skype calls here and there - they even had made out with each other again, a fact that Tae still could not think about without blushing deeply. But lately, he really wanted to see Jungkook for real, wanted to see if he was really this attracted to the young man. Perhaps this whole not seeing each other in the flesh thing had just highly romanticized and sublimated everything and in real life their feelings for each other could suck completely.

All during the day Taehyung worried about this like it was a painful tooth, it kept his mind occupied while his body went through muscle memory of the physical side of his work. So when he trudged back home later that day, he felt exhausted both mentally and physically.