Desert • Flower | TaeJin || BOOK 3#

XXIX. Contact and necessary appreciation

"There was a huge honeycomb in that tree. I thought it was as simple as going and grabbing it and drinking the honey inside. That the bees wouldn't be bad...I was in bed for two weeks with my hands and face swollen worse than a watermelon." Jin tries not to laugh at Taehyung's story. It makes it hard for him. Who believes that at twelve years old? Taehyung was really innocent.

Or he just hadn't been stung by a bee before.

"Bees never sting me, they just flutter around me." comments Jin who braids Yune's hair.

"Really?"

"I'm a giant, moving flower to them."

"Jin oppa is a very pretty flower." opines Yune. Jin gives a snort with a faint smile. He's glad she already understands conversations so well. It's difficult for her at times, but she'll gradually get it. Jn is sure of that. Once he finishes braiding her hair Yune stands up, hugs him, gives him a kiss on the cheek and runs off.

"She's a very tender child" opines Taehyung sitting down next to Jin. "The servants have told me that she reminds them a lot of me."

"Are you Japanese too?" questions Jin curious and even confused. Taehyung shakes his head.

"No, just a very lucky boy to come to a place where affection was not lacking and there was room for whoever needed it" he explains and Jin nods softly. "You are also someone lucky" he takes his hand and outlines little by little. "You made it this far, to a place where you can be safe and free. Sometimes miracles come one step at a time."

Jin picks up the hand and looks away not knowing what to say about it.

~ * * * ~

"When Agust was really bad, I would stay at night with him, even though the emperor didn't like me to" he mumbles watching Yune sleep on the futon. "He was afraid of silence, so... I kept singing to him for a while. I remember Jungkook would come in almost every time... sometimes his face was so disfigured... And Jimin would only look into a corner..." He closes the door. "They were all children and I didn't know how to help them."

"You were a child suffering too. To blame you for that is unfair to yourself."

At every little thing Jin tells about his life in the palace, there is always a tinge of guilt mixed in. Where the helplessness of not having done more for those infants who accompanied him haunts him. However, Jin is also very young, also very wounded and helpless. They are a dying group unable to heal, because their damage is so immense that they do not know how to heal it.

Taehyung helps him to put on his sleeping clothes. Although he has almost no more poison in his system, it hurts to move. The worst is over and with that alone, he can breathe easier. He takes Jin's face between his hands and gives him a tender kiss on his forehead. Jin holds his hand.

"Can you... Can you promise me that... even if you don't like me... you won't... hurt me?"

It is a shy question that has been asked in his mind hundreds of times and today it finally managed to have a sound from his lips. Taehyung opens them eyes slightly, the joyful gleam standing out. He smiles square, tilting his head to the side before filling Jin's face with kisses.

"I promise."

~ * * * ~

"No need, really. Thank you so much for all your hard work."

Taehyung bids farewell to the Japanese who kept revering and thanking them for letting them live here with such freedom and good life. Until now, almost four months later, Taehyung can recover from the robbery caused by the Korean army that came. Partly thanks to what the Japanese have done on their own in the space he made for them. He came to thank them for it. He felt it necessary to do so personally.