Falling || Taejin

Chapter 13 [Final][M]

When Taehyung set foot outside the prison, the world was painted in autumn colours. The trees were ablaze with orange leaves, the streets were blanketed by red leaves and people were drifting around in their earthy toned jackets and coats. The hustling and bustling of summer had dampened as if the world was slowly being meandered into a deep sleep. As Taehyung ambled over the crisp leaves, he wondered how many springs he had missed. Time was never a headache for immortal beings like them, so nobody really kept a calendar with them.

He had nobody standing at the exit of prison, had nothing to leave with either except a set of fresh clothes well suited for the cold, which the prison had provided, and a letter in the chest pocket of his coat. He really wanted to know how long it had been because nobody really stopped to point at his face, the face of a wanted criminal, but rather just stared at his wings for some time before moving on with their lives.

Taehyung never realized how different the Light realm looked from the ground. Just strolling through the place, Taehyung got to see his homeland through a different lens. Towering white buildings that pierced through the clouds, hundreds of white wings just fluttering around tirelessly, grandiose statues of their ancestors glaring down at him and not a single soul on the ground. Even the entrances to the buildings were situated at least fifteen feet above the ground. There was nothing that made him stop and gawk at it. Maybe because he had seen them a thousand times. Maybe because he was searching for something else.

He wondered if people from his previous life remembered him- neighbours and colleagues. If they did, they didn't care enough to visit him in prison. Maybe they were just appalled by what he had become.

It made him wonder if Seokjin's friends felt the same. Yes, they weren't as important to him as Seokjin himself but they had been very kind to him from the very beginning. Namjoon had even tried to help him despite knowing Taehyung was a thief and a liar.

He didn't receive any letters from Seokjin after that, so he just wrote one last letter to his mate before just simply waiting for his punishment to end because he figured out that the more he wrote to Seokjin, the more restless he would feel.

He followed a very familiar path- the one he had taken when he first travelled to Seokjin's place. This time he didn't have anybody chasing him, his life wasn't at stake but still he felt a sense of urgency when he entered the forest. Even though he didn't have any bruises on his body, he still felt like some wound would burst open any moment and he would be cocooned with agony. He kept throwing glances over his shoulder and kept stopping every now and then to listen carefully to his surroundings.

It had taken him a couple of days the first time he took this path but that was because he had to constantly change course in order to make it more difficult for the guards to catch him. But that day he just followed one single, faster route.

Whenever he would feel lost, he would politely knock on a tree and ask some dryad for directions. Some of the nymphs were courteous enough to help him whereas others just made their trees hit Taehyung with their branch with such force that he went flying for a few metres before he landed on the right path. He tried to remember the berries that were not poisonous- something he had learned from Seokjin when taking care of his shop. He recollected how he was about to pop a dangerous white berry into his mouth from a jar, that Seokjin had left opened on the table, (thinking those were the berries Seokjin was referring to earlier for making a smoothie) when Seokjin slapped his hand very hard and yelled at him for the next ten minutes before showering him with kisses.

The memory alone gave him enough energy to go on.

The sun was yawning when Taehyung reached the end of the forest and found himself staring at an oh so familiar road with silhouettes of little houses at the end.