His Demons [Book Two]

Chapter Two

It was my first year of high school that I had met Kim Taehyung. The school year had already been halfway over when he transferred in. Everyone wanted to be friends with the tall, attractive kid who seemed too cool to give you the time of day. Just as luck would have it, or should I say fate, he chose me.

"Hey," his deep, soft voice called out from beside me.

When I looked over my eyes met his.

Here's the thing. For the longest time I had been the man at school that all the girls fawned over. It didn't take long for the girls at school to start spreading rumors about me, saying that they had dated me or been with me in other types of relationships. I didn't waste time denying the rumors because the last thing I needed was people finding out that I didn't like woman. I liked men. Specifically, I liked Taehyung.

"Hi," I responded with a nervous smile, wondering if he knew that my heart raced whenever he was next to me.

"Do you have any plans after school?" Why did this seem like an odd thing to ask a classmate of the same gender?

"I was going to go home and study. Why, what's up?"

"Just bored," he exclaimed.

I looked over at him and saw a forced smile. Cocking my head to the side I wondered why he was forcing it. Did he not want to hangout with me? Was I his only option? It didn't matter because within seconds of him saying he was bored my friends came over, their laughter filling the awkward space between Taehyung and me.

That's where our friendship began. After that day we became best friends, hanging out almost every day. Taehyung didn't seem to enjoy the company of Seokjin, the friend of mine who was known for his terrible dad jokes. While all of us encouraged the terrible jokes by laughing at them it seemed that Taehyung could care either way. Up until the day Seokjin had died Taehyung hadn't smiled, or laughed, once at one of his jokes.

God, I miss him.

The day Seokjin died was a day that would forever be etched in my memories, along with all the other deaths I had to mourn while knowing Taehyung. I remember it like it was yesterday. How I found out that Seokjin had died, I mean.

Seokjin was known for doing stupid things. If he wasn't telling jokes he was stuffing his face with food or trying to get us to laugh by acting weird. His antics ranged from pretending to flick a booger onto one of us all the way to doing a backflip off the roof and into the pool. As the most uncoordinated person out of our friends we always told him the way he acted was going to get him killed one day. He always laughed and told us it wasn't that serious.

But it was.

As a graduation present, Seokjin invited Taehyung to go rock climbing. Namjoon, who was Seokjin's best friend and the genius of the group, had told him it was a terrible idea. Seokjin had never gone rock climbing before and Namjoon had warned him that he should bring a guide. Typical of Seokjin, he didn't listen.

Jimin was the one who broke the news to me. Of all our friends, the one who cared the most about everyone was the one who became responsible for breaking the news to all of us. He showed up on my doorstep, crying, a complete mess. It took almost twenty minutes to get it out of him. When he finally told me, I felt destroyed.

"Seokjin is dead."

"What?"

While they were rock climbing Seokjin's rope had become loose. Though they had taken every precaution to climb safely something had still gone terribly wrong. When the rope came loose he tried to stay calm, but it started to slip, he started to slip. Before Taehyung could get to him he fell.

And just like that my friend who was more like a brother was dead. Gone. It was something I had never gotten over. I wish I could say it was the last friend I had to watch be buried too soon but I'd be lying if I did. He was the first.

Seokjin was the first friend of many.

That was when I really started noticing that something was off about Taehyung. I couldn't really explain what it was, but I knew it was something. At Seokjin's funeral, Taehyung was the only one who didn't cry. Did it bother me? Yes. Did I think it was strange? Not really. I had watched him closely over the years and had noticed long ago that he didn't really care about people. Most of the time.

There was one day that was different, though.

Taehyung and I were at his house, it was a few weeks before Seokjin had died, and he had just moved into the place. He had asked me if I was going to help him move in and I said yes. On moving day, after we had worked our butts off, we had taken a break to get something to eat. Without any dishes in his house we ordered Chinese food.

I don't know what made Taehyung lean in towards me. I don't know what made him stop only inches away from my face. When he raised his hand up and slowly slid his thumb across my lips, wiping the sauce from the noodles off, I expected him to wipe it on the napkins between us. But he didn't. Instead, he moved his hand towards his mouth, pressed his thumb against his lips, and licked the sauce off.

To say my heart was racing was an understatement. My palms instantly began to sweat, my heart began to race, and if I was standing I would have fallen over from how weak my legs became. For the first time I was feeling something that not even the girls who flirted with me at school could make me feel. I didn't know why it was him who was causing this change, but it was soon after that day that he started to change to.

For better and for worse.