Taehyung was forced to lose Jungkook to love himself. To lose his best friend, his first love. To lose the pain of his casual cruelty. He had to lose everything, and leave it all behind to find himself.
All Jungkook ever wanted was music, and Taehyu...
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20 MAY 2018 - TAEHYUNG'S HOUSE, CALIFORNIA (the past)
Sometimes Taehyung felt like a piece of discarded art, left to collect dust in some forgotten corner and watch the world as it continued on around him.
Every day was just the same: he woke up to the sound of his alarm blaring that dull, repetitive sound for his shift at the cafe at 6 a.m. He was there by twenty-past, open and serving to the first and regular customers by quarter-to-seven, busy with the morning rush until just after nine. He finally took a small break, got off his feet, and had some breakfast with his cup of herbal tea. Being surrounded by coffee all day made him feel sick at the thought of drinking it. Tea had become his new habit, and somehow he felt better for it.
The town was home to less than five thousand people, and a lot of them worked out of town as farm labourers, or further away in the larger surrounding areas. So the cafe had its busy hours, but more of the hours he spent inside were dead. He sat behind the counter, alone and waiting, filling those hours with the only thing that brought him any sense of anything; art.
He did what little self-study he could since college was an unaffordable dream and art school was just ridiculous to consider. Wooshik had a friend doing an art course at his college in Colorado, and he would send over the syllabi, coursework, and textbooks so Taehyung could scavenge for materials to study, techniques to try, anything and everything he could find. He was grateful to Wooshik for doing this for him, despite them not being close.
He'd finish his shift by half past three most days, but he'd work overtime if he could, and double shifts whenever there was an opportunity, despite the exhaustion that made his bones feel like jelly. He wanted the savings, he needed to have that fallback for his own peace of mind. But mostly, Taehyung didn't want to go home. He didn't want to return to that cold, empty, quiet place where his thoughts echoed too loudly, and he was constantly reminded that he was alone.
It hadn't been so bad until last year, when Halmeoni had gotten sick and Jungkook moved her to a retirement village in Los Angeles - it was beautiful, he'd seen the brochures. It was secure with access to a gymnasium and pool, with exercise classes, and a medical centre with 24-hour care available. Apparently a lot of older celebrities or their family members lived there.
