When The Tiger Lilies Bloom | Taekook

27. Chase The Time

"For the times they are a-changin' "

Taehyung remembers the line carved into the back of his head vaguely. It stays in him like that, like a blooming flower in the autumn. It stayed in his heart ever since he learned what life was, ever since he started accepting reality over painful delusions.

Taehyung remembers himself looking back at his past, a small smile on his lips as the song in the background faints slowly. Then he heard the drizzling of fresh rain, eyes diverted to the shady blue sky above, clouds huddled over at one place, precisely over his head, just like his mind.

He couldn't spot anything else but feel the wetness dropping down on his cheeks and surprisingly, it was the first rain of the season instead of his hot tears. The drops grew one by one, gathering an ocean inside him. He stood leaning on the tree behind, eyes focused on the lake in front of him. He doesn't remember the place but he does recall the feeling.

Solitude.

It felt good to be dripped down in the silence of the forest he was in, with no thoughts lingering on his mind for more than a few seconds, and the water body in front of him floated peacefully. The only annoying thing was the rain, mixing with the mud and making a hooded, musky scent linger around, suffocating him from the bottom of his heart. Taehyung hates rain.

He hates how it reaches him, the drops wetting his dress shirt, making him shiver, the chilly breeze gushing around felt like rubbing salt on his wounds that he never knew he had until it started hurting.

He hates how it made him take a walk back on the memory lane, seeing himself standing there under the moonlight, under the rain, trees covered but something was different. Maybe the air, maybe the season, or maybe he, himself.

There was slight thunder around, lightning too which broke the sky into two and landed right next to his feet. He, with the golden heart of a boy, stood in the middle as if so out of place yet felt comforted. It's ironic at times, how we could feel at peace with the things we thought were annoying.

Then there was a voice- maybe in him, or out in the forest, or from the sky. It was like a whisper but had the strength to shake his whole world. It reverberated in his heart like a mantra that he didn't want to chant along.

"Unfortunately, we both can't have him."

The fear shook him from the bottom and he trembled like a feather. The pain was shooting through his body and made him crumble to himself but not for so long. He clutched his heart before opening his eyes fast, snapping out to reality that scared him to the core.

He blinked twice before registering what was happening around him as his vision averted to scan the room he was in.

The library.

It looked so out of place for him. He looked like an alien, a foreigner there, unable to conclude the feelings overwhelming him at that moment. It's been days since he visited the library, it's been forever since he read something to sleep.

It felt nice to be back in the library again because he couldn't control the fascination in him before falling asleep to the lines in the book.

As soon as he slipped to the dreamland, everything shifted in him. He couldn't decipher the visuals that his subconscious mind was creating but he sure knew that everything was connected somehow and none of this was a coincidence. And maybe that's why he felt as if it happened right in front of him.

Things could have been different if he was someone who could sleep on it but Taehyung barely knows how to let things go.

Even in that shaken state, he stood up, collected his books and belongings from the desk, and took a deep breath, ready to go out. When he turned to look at the window side table, a habit that he couldn't fall out of yet, his heart skipped a beat knowing the table was empty and it was raining outside.