VMIN / THE GUTTER

5

"I would've given him worse. Maybe chopped the whole hand off for touching you like that."

Taehyung grins, slowly following his grandmother, as they traipse down the street on the way home, following an immensely jarring meeting with the headmaster, who'd, of course, scolded Taehyung heavily for leaving bite marks on his prized basketball player's hand.

It's hot, the late afternoon heat wrathful, the torrid hands of sunbeam clutching at their necks, strangling them, till their faces are spiced and permeating at red. A solitary bluebird chirps in the trees above them, and the street winds out, like a never-ending carpet of gregarious flower petals, preluding their tender footsteps. Like a lean meat, the concrete is hard beneath them, and the air makes their bodies sizzle.

"Mm, well, I didn't want to cause a scene." Taehyung tells her, and his tongue licks out at his strawberry ice cream. Despite being eighteen years old, Taehyung's grandmother still gave him rewards in the form of sweet treats when she believed he'd done something right; and, of course, sticking to what he believes in, certainly constitutes as doing right.

So, as they hobble back home together, she kindly tells him, "sounds like he's the one who caused the scene."

Taehyung gives a short sort of shrug. "I guess," and he licks at his ice cream, pondering, "but I didn't want it to get larger than necessary, you see?"

His grandmother, Paenji, with her lilac cardigan, stitched with embroidered white clouds, and her wild hair thats white at the edges, silver at the centre, like a snowflake blossoming with credence from each corner, shakes her head at him. "The size of the matter is unimportant." She informs him, and Taehyung listens to her mindlessly. "You stick to your guns, no matter what. If that requires kicking and screaming, then so be it."

And Taehyung just nods, smiling sublimely, as her thoughts twirl in his mind, like a monkey swinging through the thickset branches of a jungle; a jungle crawling with knowledge and uncertainty, wherein reasonable thoughts are granted the opportunity to sprout and grow and bloom.

They continue to walk, and, as they go, Paenji begins to sing a song — "the shadows I live with are numberless..." — and the breeze picks up her vocal, tugging on the crisp string of it, prying out her soul with the strength of her voice. "Angels have no thought of ever returning you..."

Taehyung grins and, as if he can hear the smooth tune awakening in his own mind, his feet begin to move in a subtle dance. Their arms link together, and Billie Holiday's voice reverberates in their minds, as they toddle down the street, informing the world of the gloomy sunday.

For as long as the blue-haired boy can recall, Paenji has preached the importance of tinging yourself with the tincture of your soul; for as long as his mind recalls, he'd been told to paint his body with the colours of his heart, and to never hide himself from the world. And so, as he skips along the streets of the quiet town, with his frail idol at his arm, he can think of nothing more than how comfortable he is in his own skin, as he regurgitates the songs his mother had used to sing to him, as she rocked him back forth and knitted jumpers over his naked pelt.

The sad saxophone had purred as she'd let him watch the world from the window — and Taehyung recalls, so distinctly, a memory of his childhood, where he'd first seen the grey people, out the window, dancing for him, with lavender bruises and blood splashes that spool like carnations. He had listened to this song, sitting in his mother's arms, and had watched the ghosts as they'd started to bang at their window, trying to get in.

And, now, he sings it with his grandmother, as they gallop down the street, and the ghosts sit on the curbs, and hang from the trees, with needles falling from their veins, and age pulling at the rind of their bones.