Choose Your Own BTS Adventure

PATH 1: TAEHYUNG - PART 2

Now fully dressed, you slipped out of your room quietly, hoping to make it all the way out of the apartment without being noticed. You had almost made it to the front door, your outstretched hand reaching for the knob, when you heard a deep voice sneak up on you from behind, giving your whole body a jolting shock.

"Where are you going?" Taehyung asked you with a playful note to his voice.

You turned around, a sheepish grin adorning your face. Fiddling nervously with your hands, you considered briefly telling him the truth. However, you didn't want him to think you were a loser for being bullied by the likes of Minji, so you ultimately decided against it.

"I just need some fresh air," you lied. Your voice sounded strange in your ears, almost foreign to you. "I'll be right back."

He looked at you, a small smile flirting with his lips, but his eyes told a different, more serious story. You felt yourself burning under his intense gaze. God, those eyes, you thought to yourself. It's like he's staring into my soul. You wanted him to look away, to let you leave, but at the same time, you wanted him to stare at you like that forever.

Finally, he said, "Let me grab my coat. I'll come with you."

You felt the icy cold rush of panic flowing through your veins, like ice water sipped through a long straw. "Oh, no! No, that's okay," you said hurriedly. "I just need a few minutes alone, if that's okay."

Taehyung kept his eyes locked on you. You felt him trying to dissect you with his mind, feeling more like some kind of frog used in a school science lab than an actual human at that moment. It made you nervous, but you also kind of liked it.

"Okay," he said, finally softening his gaze and letting you leave.

"Thanks," you said, relieved. "I'll be right back." You turned around and opened the door. Even as you walked away, you swore you could still feel his eyes on you, burning a hole through your back. You didn't relax until the door finally closed behind you.

At that same moment, you took off at a sprint, flying down the hall as fast as you could. When you came to the elevator, you repeatedly smashed the down arrow button, the light flicking on and off like a twinkling star in the night sky. You puffed up your cheeks in frustration. It felt like an eternity had passed before the doors finally opened with a sharp DING. In reality, it had only been a few moments, but in your anxious brain, hysterically racing lap after lap, everything around you felt too slow. Reality crawled along behind you like a forgotten toy, outgrown in your adulthood.

The ride down to the lobby was just as agonizingly slow. Thank God nobody entered the lift to ride down with you, because you were so jittery, they would have probably thought that you were there hired to assassinate someone or sell drugs to teenagers or something.

When the doors to the elevator finally parted to let you out on the ground floor, your whole body, stiff with tension, struggled to remain calm as you passed the receptionist at the front desk. You gave the doorman a tight-lipped smile, hoping to pass as normal when he opened the doors for you to let you out into the pale morning sky.

The second you were around the bend, you resumed your sprinting position, wanting to collect your things and get this over with as soon as possible. You snatched up as much as you could, as fast as you could, like a toddler climbing up onto the counter to greedily steal from the cookie jar when their parents weren't looking. When you had loaded as much into your arms as you could carry, you squatted to the ground, swiftly shoving the bundle of clothes into your opened suitcase. Just as you were about to rise, you felt a large hand clasp your shoulder. You squeezed your eyes shut tight with mortification. You wanted nothing more just then than to disappear.

"Here," a voice said, brushing his arm gently against yours as he slid past you to put a bundle of your clothes into your bag.

You opened your eyes. It was Taehyung.

Your eyes locked on his for a moment, but you quickly looked away, embarrassment slowly spreading through every cell in your body. "Thanks," you mumbled.

He got up and resumed helping you gather your things. After several awkward minutes, your cracked case was full to bursting with all your soiled and damp things. You fought with the zipper, now too busted to really close, and Taehyung tried to help you by propping a knee on top of your case, trying to hold it down so that you could close it.

"Let me," he said, gently pushing your hand aside to grab hold of the zipper. You leaned back in your knelt position, the knees of your pants now soaking with the damp morning dew. You noticed that Taehyung had gotten grass stains all over his pants and felt like literal garbage for it.

Eventually, Tae won the war against the faulty zipper, and you reached forward to collect your case, but Taehyung pulled the bag out of your reach with a small smile. "I've got it," he said.

You took a moment to study him in the soft lighting. His hair was still damp from the shower. He wore loose sweats and had hastily thrown a long, black jacket over top of a plain white tee. He caught you looking and his eyes danced playfully with yours. You were waiting for him to ask what your clothes were doing down here, scattered like trash on the side of a littered freeway, but he never did. Instead, he just smiled at you, before heaving your bag over his tapered shoulder, and nodding at you in understanding.

You felt extremely relieved and grateful that he didn't expect you to explain yourself. Something inside of you softened towards him just then, your heart going as soft as marshmallow fluff.

"Thank you," you said sincerely, your eyes never once leaving his for even a second. It felt like this small act of kindness had bonded the two of you, no matter how trivially. You smiled.

"You're welcome," he returned, before returning your smile with a wide, boxy one of his own. The two of you stood there for a spell, silently communicating your thoughts with one another. Words that couldn't easily be said in a language both of you could understand translated into the universal language of the heart.

Suddenly, the spell was broken, when a rude bird flew past, squawking loudly in your ear. You both laughed and looked at the bird, a small white thing with a bright blue chest, but your eyes both eventually returned to one another's though, like they were connected by a string and an invisible someone had kindly winded it closer together for the two of you.

Feeling suddenly shy, you looked down, tucking a fallen strand of hair behind your own ear before clearing your throat and saying, "We should probably get back inside."

Taehyung seemed to remember himself, and where he was. "Right," he agreed.

The two of you returned to the dorm, side by side. You tried to keep a respectable distance beside him, so as not to get too close. The whole time your heart pounded in your chest but you kept sternly reminding it to shut up.

You could not like him.

You would not like him.

As you came to the front door, Taehyung turned to you, his whole face lit up with a smile, before opening it and motioning for you to go ahead of him. You smiled back and stepped inside.

Crap. You liked him.