AFFINITY.

part 07 | lentinula edodes | twenty-three

Taehyung scuffed along the road, his hand trailing along the wall of the garden. His fingers tingled with that familiar old wild magic as it reached out to touch him. It zapped at his fingers, making his muscles twitch. It was almost like the energy was wilder today, trying to lure him closer. It had been like this before, but not as insistent as it was today.

Perhaps it was because he now actually knew there was a garden behind the wall.

Taehyung couldn't help but look up, seeing some of the branches that reached out over the wall. It seemed so obvious. The wall circled around, never reaching an end or a point. Of course, I had been there to keep something inside, something huge and mysterious. Taehyung should have guessed that the rumors were true. There had been so many and the evidence had all been right here, dangling over Taehyung's head and tingling at his fingers.

Because of course the biggest private botanical garden in the world was in fact in the middle of Seoul and of course it belonged to none other than Yoongi.

His Yoongi.

The Elemental Water Witch.

Taehyung was still baffled.

It had been a few weeks, but Taehyung hadn't really gotten over the shock. He knew he had been in such a state of panic as they returned from the greenhouses that he had barely noticed anything. All he had been able to think about what he was supposed to do with the leftovers of his hard work packed inside Yoongi's car. Yoongi had said something about green houses, but Taehyung had just expected it to be tiny ones in Yoongi backyard, not four huge greenhouses that was easily bigger than his own dorm room.

Taehyung personally though that he was excused for missing the obvious. The fact that he had been so fixated on the conflicting feeling of his heart breaking over his lost plants and the swooping feeling in his stomach from holding Yoongi's hand for more than an hour really should be enough to explain how he had walked into the garden and not even noticed how much extra garden there had been. Like he had still been in awe that the greenhouses had even been real.

That whole day had really just been a mess, first the burned plants, the whole run to the apothecary where Taehyung honestly thought he would have gotten lost because he was crying so hard he couldn't see anything. And then there had been Yoongi...

Taehyung stopped, pulling his hand from the wall, leaving it tingling with leftovers of magic. The apothecary being just within his line of sight, just a few more steps really. The sight of the building was so familiar, but so new and strange at the same time. It was like he had suddenly realized his child hood home had a secret basement or something. The whole place seemed so much bigger now he knew what it was truly hiding.

Taehyung wouldn't lie, not to himself at least. It hurt that not even Jungkook had told him what was really going on. It only made Taehyung feel like more of an idiot. He couldn't understand how he could have missed it, it was so obvious that there was a huge garden right smack in the middle of the city. Taehyung seemingly was the only one who didn't know.

Taehyung couldn't help but wonder if Yoongi would ever have showed him the garden if he hadn't been more or less forced to by circumstances.

Taehyung kicked at a loose rock, eyes dull as he watched it skitter along the front walk. He felt silly because he was getting all worked up about visiting the shop. Yoongi wasn't even there. He had some sort of formal meeting at some place. Not that Taehyung understood what it was Yoongi was going to, because when Taehyung was finally ready to leave the day before Yoongi had already been on his way to bed, only half coherently telling Taehyung that he would be out the next day. According to the more lucid Namjoon, Yoongi apparently went to bed really early so he could get up in the middle of the night and tend to the garden before leaving.