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ENTRY 2.I: TAEHYUNG
March 5, 2009: 16:18
Geochang, South Korea
Taehyung had fallen unconscious with barely any warning right in the middle of his bedroom. Feeling one single sliver of that sudden excruciating pain had made him collapse to the floor, his body unable to cope with its intensity. His vision blurred, all he could see when he tried to look around was white, as if he'd gone blind as the pain came to him. He laid there confused and afraid on his stomach, the pain still slightly lingering even after who knew how long it had been since he fell unconscious. Because of this, he was too scared to move, worried that if he did, the whole thing would spark back up again. Even if this was so, he felt like he had completely lost the ability to move, like he was being pinned down by something. He could smell blood along with the stench of his sweat, but he had no idea where it was coming from.

After a while of laying there, Taehyung finally began to regain his senses, his vision finally focusing and clearing some of the whiteness from before. Even as it continued to focus though, some of the whiteness still remained at his sides, unsure of what exactly he was seeing. His first assumption was that those were just spots in his vision that weren't quite ready to go away. He was still not quite in the loop, only gradually becoming more and more aware of himself and his surrounding. The ringing that had been in his ears this whole time was finally fading as well now, allowing him to yet again hear the rain outside the walls of his home pattering on the windows and roof.

The entire situation seemed like nothing but a mere dream to him. For the time being, Taehyung couldn't tell what parts of his experiences from just a few minutes ago were real or not. The gloominess of his room from the rain—especially at this time in the afternoon—had made the entire thing feel unreal in a way, as if this all were just simply an illusion meant to trip him up. Maybe he was still unconscious, stuck wandering inside the depths of his mind. He had no idea.

Finally, he decided to take an attempt to sit up. With his hands on the floor below him, Taehyung pushed himself up, the whiteness in the sides of his vision moving behind him. At that point, his vision was clear enough for him to be able to see what exactly those white spots were, but when he figured it out, he couldn't bring himself to believe it.

What he was seeing was the edges of a pair of wings behind him.

When he first realized it, he suddenly slipped into panic. Were those really his? Is that what that sudden pain had been for?

Taehyung relaxed his panicked tenseness out of curiosity, and sure enough, they had moved with him, bringing themselves to rest behind him on the floor. He could feel them touch the floor, too, telling him that what he was seeing were, in fact, his own wings. Now he was almost certain—or wishing to be certain—that everything from the past few minutes was a dream.

Closing his eyes, he pinched his arm, hoping that he would open his eyes and wake up in his bed. When he opened them, though, nothing had changed. He took a deep breath and did it again, harder and longer than the first time. Nothing.

It was all real.

Taehyung's past confusion and worries had suddenly shifted into overwhelming joy. He laughed aloud in his room at the thought of all of it not being a dream.

Figuring out all of this felt so unusual to him. He would've never been able to think that something like this could've happened to him so suddenly, so out of the blue, but there he was, sitting on his bedroom floor, realizing that it was all but impossible for all of that to have just happened.  Taehyung thought he would never be able to get used to it all, the feeling he felt whenever he moved his wings or relaxed them on the ground or their velvet-like texture whenever he managed to gather the courage to run his hands through them. All of these incredible new things simply left him bewildered. 

Through his few minutes of exploring all of the new things he was able to feel with his newly-formed wings, he also managed to find within himself a sensation of happiness, one that he would've never been able to find before everything happened.

He stood up slowly, still slightly worried that he would unintentionally inflict more pain. Taehyung knew that there was a mirror standing right next to him, and knowing this, he was suddenly anxious to look at himself. But he was worried to look, worried for a reason that didn't exist. Why was he so frightened when there was nothing to be afraid of?

"All you have to do is look..."

His gaze was faced downwards to the floor.

"Just one glance, Taehyung, that's all it is."

He closed his eyes and turned himself to a point where his gaze would be locked on the mirror when he opened them, feeling the tips of his wings trailing on the floor beneath him as he moved. Keeping his eyes shut, Taehyung lifted his head up to the mirror in front of him. He took a deep breath.

"Here we go."

His eyes slowly opened.

For the first time, Taehyung was finally able to see his wings in full without turning over his shoulder. They looked huge even in their dormant state behind his back, and one of them spread out, he estimated, was probably bigger than he was. Their color was an almost blinding shade of pure white that constantly gave off their own natural glow.

With this new addition to his figure, the sight in front of him was barely recognizable. How was that reflection in the mirror him? How was this all truly possible? Those were only a few of the many questions that remained unanswered in his head after repeatedly scaling the mirror.

By ear, it sounded like the rain had come to a halt during the time that had passed since he became conscious again, but when Taehyung looked out of his bedroom window to check, it seemed as if the rain had simply been stopped with time, the droplets stuck still in mid-air. Time itself had stopped on its own all just so that he could take in his first few moments outside with his new wings. Taehyung opened his window, tucking his wings up tight against his back so that he could get through the space without too much struggling, and dropped down to the ground. He stared at the still rain, suddenly in awe of the scenery around him.

After looking around for a few seconds, he'd decided to take things slowly, feeling that going too high up on his first try would be too risky.

In his mind, Taehyung tried to picture what he would have to do in order to get himself in the air, and he found that succeeding wouldn't be as difficult as he though it would be. He followed the picture he visualized in his head, and sure enough, within a mere few seconds, he felt both of his feet lift off of the ground. Though it was only a few centimeters, the feeling of being airborne all by himself sent a sudden wave of joy through him. The thrill of it triggered an adrenaline rush, giving him the urge to go higher. That he did until he was higher than the roof of his house. Taehyung smiled, laughing loudly and joyously through the empty silence around him.

He'd known right then and there that he would never be as happy as he just was ever again.

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