Just As Promised

Prologue

There was a determined air about him as he swept his gaze over the room for the final time. The room looked bare and empty, completely stripped of the belongings that had once filled every nook and cranny.

It's never going to happen again. He told himself as he pulled the curtains closed, plunging the room into a silent darkness.

Never again. He'd leave this rotten country and all its filthy people behind. He'd run and run and run till his lungs run out of breath and he's far away in a place where every direction he turned to wouldn't suffocate him with bitter memories. He'd gotten rid of all of his belongings so that nothing, absolutely nothing followed him out of this pit of darkness.

It would be like he was born again, just like Taehyung had promised. Nothing would follow him out of here.

He swung the door closed behind him and clicked it shut.

It was over. It really was. Taehyung had said it so many times to him. Taehyung was always right, he wasn't like the rest of them.

He trusted Taehyung.

He made it down the stairs and into the outside air and inhaled deeply, taking in the smell of the air in Paris.

The faint moisture from the rain, the scent drifting out the entrance of the bakery across the street, the sight of the red brick building he had lived in.

He didn't let himself think about how he would miss this. Because he wouldn't.. couldn't remember the gray streets, the clear sky, not even the laughing baker with the round belly without thinking of her.

And he wanted to forget her, extinguish her light from the darkness of his mind.

So he set his jaw firmly and climbed into the taxi beside his friend, giving him a forced smile that looked more like a grimace and insisting that he was perfectly fine.

He felt a warm hand being placed on his shoulder and he turned to look into understanding brown eyes, curtained by wispy golden hair and smiled, genuinely this time.

"I'll be fine, just as promised."

He tucked his bright hair under a baseball cap and rested his head against the car window.

He'd be fine. Just as promised.

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