Lovely | BTS ✓

16

Another restless night.

It's like the house - or maybe something within it - doesn't want him to feel comfortable here. No matter how badly he wishes to make this place feel like home, something here won't let him.

Like eyes he can't see watching him, or voices he can't hear telling him to leave.

The discomfort is shifting into fear, and Taehyung doesn't know how much longer he can live here if he feels like the walls themselves are staring at him, waiting for him to crack.

Taehyung doesn't believe in paranormal things; he's always been a skeptic that spirits can go on in the physical world long after their bodies have decayed in the twisted roots of their graves.

But something is wrong with this house, and he can't find a reasonable explanation for why he feels so uneasy all the time. In the beginning, he chalked it up to being in a new environment with a person he doesn't know - that it would ease once he got into a good routine and settled into it.

It's only worsening, though; whatever secrets are held within these walls are seeping through the cracks. The house is bleeding and Taehyung is terrified that whatever consumed the light of this house feels him here - and wants him to leave.

One way or another.

He can't lay in bed any longer. The walls are staring and bleeding, and he doesn't know what staying in one place for too long could do - what could seep into his own veins if he lets the darkness draw too close.

His feet slide onto the coolness of the floor where his slippers wait just next to him. After putting them on, Taehyung gets out of bed, not caring about the floor creaking beneath him anymore. It's become a ritual; for the third night in a row, he's been unable to sleep and found himself wandering through the house instead.

And he always ends up in the same place.

Amelia watches on, her eyes barely visible in the darkness, but it's as if the painter glued real sapphires within her irises, the brilliance not at all affected by the shadows that loom and threaten to swallow the entire estate down their greedy throats.

Hands so delicate rest on her lap, forever idle in their position. She is stuck, forever staring ahead, shoulders straight and chin held high - perfection, just as August sees her.

A chill sweeps across Taehyung's body, his exposed arms erupting in goosebumps as a shiver trails down its spine, ice reaching its frozen fingertips until it touches him to his very bones.

With the sudden temperature drop comes a strong smell that has Taehyung staggering backwards.

As he's noticed, he smells the scent of flowers when he is near the painting. He's always figured that maybe August sprays the painting with his sister's perfume to further make her feel real to him.

But after seeing August lose his mind over a few bits of light hitting the canvas, Taehyung knows there is no way he would risk spraying something onto it.

So where is the smell coming from? And why can he only smell it when he is close to Amelia's painting?

There is not a single flower in the entire house; even if there was, it would quickly die out with the lack of sunlight and love that goes into caring for such a delicate beauty.

Along with the scent of the flowers that grows stronger every night is an undertone of something that threatens to have Taehyung's dinner make a reappearance.

Mixed with the flowers is the smell of death.