Roses // K;th

Twenty.

                                                                 Rose's POV.

When I got home from school that afternoon, the first thing I did was flop onto my bed, partly out of exhaustion, and partly from the weight of my emotions crushing my shoulders to nonexistent bone meal. I held the golden locket in my hand, absently caressing the heart shape with the tip of my thumb as I studied it and pondered what had occurred at school that day. I glance over to my left and see the large pile of Namjoon's work still resting, untouched, on my desk.

It wasn't like I didn't want to see him, if anything, I wanted to see him, ask him, and, although it felt extremely wrong and I hated myself with every fiber of my being for it, kiss him. My mind told me to just run away from it all and head over to his house, and when I got there, without hesitation, kiss him, run my hands through his hair. What would it be like? Would life be easier? But, then again, I could never leave Taehyung in the cold like that, it would only hurt him more than he already was, and I still held a fragment of my feelings for him in my heart, like a lone piece of green grass, not overtaken by the winter storm that was inevitably ahead, already having destroyed it's family and everything it knew.

That piece of grass soon shriveled and broke later that day.

I sigh. The smell of my herbal tea, still hot, wafts through my nose and leaves a scent through my room, my favorite kind of air freshener. Usually, herbal tea acted as a band-aid for anything that was wrong, drying the blood and covering the scar up, ensuring that I can live without worrying of it suddenly breaking and flapping in the wind. Right now, this band-aid was acting like it had been drenched in ocean water, and was now soggy and torn. Not a very useful healing tool.

The light pitter-patter of rain catches my ear and seems to soothe my nerves by a fraction. I had always appreciated the rain. While my classmates in elementary  complained that the rain prevented them from playing outside and splashing in the pool, I simply smiled and tugged my yellow rain coat down over my head, and patted my chest, making sure the flowers were still placed in the front pocket of my overalls. As a child I had what one would call a peculiar sense of style. I owned about six pairs of overalls, and, when the weather was right, picked bouquets of flowers of an array of colors to keep in the front pocket of them. Striped shirts and mustard yellow sweaters littered the racks of clothing I owned, along with black shorts and leggings, a white floppy hat, long strands of pearls hanging on chains, and a pair of light blue rain boots that never left my small size 9 in kids feet.

During recess time, when all the other children would scramble to the door, four-square balls in one hand, jump-ropes in the other, pushing for a good spot near the exit, I would hang back, clutching my sketchbook to my chest. A feather quill was tucked behind my ear, and a jar of ink was in a brown paper sack that was tied in a bow at the nape of my neck. As the door slowly opened and the students crammed through the doorway, eager to get outside, I still hung back, staring after them. The teacher was concerned and attempted to coax me to come join the other kids, saying that outside, one could free themselves and dance in the sunshine or splash in the puddles left from the previous night's rain shower. From the way she described it, any normal kid that liked eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the picnic tables and making mud pies in the dirt underneath the trees rather than sketching a meadow of flowers or reading a novel quietly in the abandoned corner of the school, would jump at the opportunity, thinking the outside world to be a wondrous and beautiful place, like a heaven on Earth.

My teacher was a rather frail woman who was about in her mid sixties. She had graying hair that was never seen loose from the tight bun that she wore on the top of her head like a sort of crown. Daisies were tucked into the strands of her hair, and she wore flowing dresses that had patterns of different splashes of color on the delicate silk fabric. Her intentions were good and well, but her executions were poorly planned.