SHOOT YOUR SHOT ;; TAEKOOK

31

There is a point in everybody's life where some things become routine.

You learn to hold certain expectations, you develop certain prejudices and you can almost begin to distinguish how situations will unfold.

On occasion, you may find yourself pleasantly surprised, or perhaps even shocked or saddened, when something doesn't quite pan out the way you had initially thought.

And then there are those times where everything happens just as you had originally anticipated.

There are times in this life where we all expect the worst to happen.

We observe a person or a situation and we immediately judge and criticise, for we have often seen many a tale spin the same old story with the same beginning and the same ending and they believe so vehemently that we know the outcome — and that outcome will not be a good one.

Like watching a car crash waiting to happen, there is often very little you can do to stop it, but you know in your heart of hearts that naught will end happily for anybody involved.

But then every once in a while, almost as if there really is a God 'up there' trying to reaffirm people's faith in humanity, something happens that completely blows all of your preconceptions right out of the water.

Taehyung's own expectations, prejudices and foresight were really not that much different from any other ordinary person's.

As a child he knew that taking candy from a stranger was a definite NO. As a young teen he knew never to accept a ride from a strange man in a van. And as a young adult, he knew that registering with a Sugar Daddy website would probably land him in hot water with a repulsive, sweaty, balding old man.

And yet he did it anyway.

Taehyung ignored every stigma, every screaming ounce of common sense and every right and wrong that he been brought up with and he went ahead with his search.

Taehyung's expectations were tuition money in exchange for sex.

Taehyung's prejudices led him to envisage a creep with halitosis.

And his foresight told him that it would work out, because it would be nothing more than a detached arrangement for four years, that while it may not be ideal, would highly benefit his future prospects.

Before he continued, he would like to submerge you all in one tiny little picture.

Thursday 2nd September.

Jungkook was called into his office early in the morning for an emergency meeting. Something had gone wrong whilst attempting to fit the glass panels into a new all glass structure his company were currently overseeing, and he had needed to sort the problem out quickly before the project deadline was jeopardised.

Finding himself all alone, Taehyung had dressed, downloaded a transit map application of New York onto his iPhone via Jungkook's pervious instructions, and left for the day.

Taehyung had heard of a fantastic bookstore called The Strand, and he wanted to investigate.

He'd strolled happily and without any wrong turns up to 8th Avenue, where he had hopped onto the subway heading towards Rockaway Parkway.

He had clambered off at the Union Square 14th Street station and made a quick journey down Broadway towards the bright red hooded hangovers of his target.

And my God, what a place!

Taehyung must have spent hours in there just trawling through the shelves of books. They had everything, new, used, rare – they even had Curated Collections.