𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐂𝐊𝐇𝐎𝐋𝐌 𝐒𝐘𝐍𝐃𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐄 (𝐓𝐚𝐞𝐤𝐨𝐨𝐤)

//003.👠

HEMIMEGALENCEPHALY

Taehyung's thoughts began to wander as he departed the location.

He was twenty-two years old and had never had a partner. He had grown up in a tranquil, loving household and had become a wonderfully decent guy. Some compared him to untouched snow because he was well-mannered and pristine, while the majority insulted him, calling him Mister goody-two-shoes or tiny Miss Princess.

Taehyung had grown accustomed to others insulting him, but his grandparents constantly encouraged and urged him not to allow the water around him penetrate his ship, or he would sink. He had been raised to have a cheerful attitude, and he had made the decision that he would not let those kind of individuals overwhelm him.

He had a motive for never having a lover or girlfriend in his twenty-two years of life. When he was seventeen, he recognized he had created a trauma - he was frightened of falling in love with someone.

Taehyung had seen how much his father suffered on a daily basis, even years after his mother died. Even watching him was too much for him. His father loved his mother so much that even over two decades after her death, he still observed his father sobbing at night while staring at a photo of his wife. Through his father, he had witnessed the agony of losing someone you cared about - it was nothing short of anguish. He even heard his father express once that he didn't feel alive after his mother died. He was well aware that his father was just hanging on for him.

Taehyung was diagnosed with the same sickness that killed his mother years after her death. He seems to have inherited the condition from his father, and he'd been battling it ever since. He was just seventeen at the time, and he knew he only had five years to live, just like his mother.

That was why he constantly turned down lads and girls who expressed an interest in him. There were plenty of them, but his dread was constantly stirred, particularly when someone confessed to him. He could only say 'sorry' to them. As a result, Taehyung avoided them as much as possible. He even dressed in an unfashionable manner on purpose in order to appear less appealing.

However, as time went, Taehyung began to doubt himself. 'Will I die like this?'

He was losing control of the desires he had been resisting all these time. He had fantasized about what it might be like to be loved by someone. He wanted to know what it was like to have butterflies in your stomach and to kiss and embrace the person you loved with all your heart, passionately. He'd read a lot of books, and he couldn't help but wish he might at least feel this so-called love before he died. His main wish was to fall in love, to meet someone with whom he could fall in love.

But he was conflicted. He was terrified and ill with worry. He didn't want to leave anyone behind to suffer if he left. He didn't want anyone to go through what his father was going through till now.

He'd been thinking about it for years, and he thought he'd accepted his fate, but as his due date approached, the longing in his heart only became greater. So he determined to be bold and do everything he could to make his desire come true in the short time he had left.

He could only think of one method to achieve his wish: meet a man with whom he could fall in love but would never fall in love. He'd heard and read about one-sided love. He had heard and read that such love was brutally painful, yet he still desired it. If this was the only way for him to experience falling in love, he would do it even if it meant getting injured. He reasoned that the anguish of loving someone who didn't love him back was less painful than dying without knowing what love felt like at all. Perhaps he was recalling a quote he read when he was younger. 'It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,' he stated when he was eighteen.

Taehyung once anonymously posted his issue on the internet and sought for advice on what to do. His thread drew a lot of attention, and several contradictory replies arose.

"Since you don't want anyone to fall in love with you, why don't you go find a random bad guy?" There are a lot of jerks and cruel morons out there that only know how to crush people's hearts." One of the pieces of advise he wanted to attempt was this. But what if that ostensibly callous person eventually falls for him?

Taehyung still had a year left on the deal.

He was doing well for the time being. Except for his family, no one around him was aware that he was ill. But his mother was the same way back then. Taehyung had a premonition that his health will deteriorate in the fifth year - this year. He could even imagine himself having to travel back and forth from the hospital in the next month or two. He realized he didn't have much time left.

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