a dream within a dream?

Can you trust me?

After the incident on the playground, nothing really changed. His mom returned to her long, unforgivable days at work and for the majority of his school days, he was alone. If he thinks back on it now, he's sure that day was the last morning he ever got to spend with his mother.

For the entirety of his primary school years known as the boy who pissed his pants, the teasing was constant and made it almost impossible to make any friends.

At the start of secondary school, Taehyung looks at it as a brand new start. Although the other students didn't seem to see it that way. At first, he tried sitting at different tables during lunch with the hope of joining in on his classmates' conversations or even a chance to introduce himself but whenever he tried to the other kids would mock him or say mean things about his mother.

The majority of the interactions left him exhausted and confused. He didn't understand why they were always so mean to him.

After a while, he submitted to his fate as the outcast and gave up on making friends altogether. He found a quiet spot in the hallway outside the cafeteria to eat his lunch. The year had come and gone; everyone had left him alone.

Taehyung didn't know what it was about him, or why he always ended up alone, deep down he blamed himself.

He was just too different, too sensitive... Maybe if he was better at hiding it he wouldn't stick out so much... then he'll be able to make a friend.

As they grew older the kids became more vicious; by his second year, his classmates from homeroom started to talk behind his back. They were always whispering and spreading rumors about him and his mother. Taehyung tried to pay it no mind, no one talked to him anyway, so he just let them assume.

After a while, his classmates got bored with rumors and gossip not getting the reaction they were expecting from him. That's when things started getting worse, they changed tactics and started to write mean things on his desk. From then on, big bold letters always greeted him in the morning. Sometimes they would even scratch things into his desk. The old pressed wood was easy to engrave, those never washed away.

He thinks the worst thing about it all wasn't the kids, but his teacher. He would always make him clean his desk in front of the whole class. Sometimes scolding him for it, his classmates would giggle and tease him as he cleaned. He found the whole ordeal humiliating; only If his teacher had paid a little more attention to what was really going on... then maybe he would understand, and put a stop to it.

Maybe his teacher didn't care enough to notice.

As the school year passed the kids seemed to get bolder, writing on his desk wasn't enough anymore. By then, the rumors and gossip had reached the third years, and they were the worst. They started stealing his things, ripping his notebooks and assignments apart, and scattering them in the fountain.

After the older students got involved that's when almost everyone started to avoid him. It was like he became a living curse, another one of the many stories the older generations passed down about their town.

He was something to be scared of, something to be avoided. His classmates would avert their gazes when he walked by, never handing him things, some even leaving the room whenever he walked into one.

Taehyung couldn't blame them, they didn't want to become targeted too.

He told himself he was used to this, being alone but it was hardly the truth. He had felt completely isolated, school being his only chance for a real connection, and friends. It was his only chance of not being alone.

Most days he came home to a dark, heartless apartment, the same one he's always lived in, the same one he shared with his mother.

Sometimes he wondered if his classmates could tell...