VMINKOOK / THE ART OF BEEKEEPING

08

― PART EIGHT.

The electric purple fairy lights that became the only producer of light amongst the disingenuous dark of Taehyung's room made him appear almost ethereal, as they seemed to spray across his skin in a manner that enabled heaven's glow to refract amongst the empty room.

Taehyung enjoys art and photography, just as his father does and just as his mother had, so it was no surprise he also inherited the obsessive gene from them, wherein the entirety of his mind was consumed by prospects of uniqueness and curiosity. He relished in viewing new forms of art that were coated in sheen layers of individuality and emotion, thus why he spent his time flittering amongst various social media pages, browsing through art pieces and occasionally posting his own.

Currently he sits among those fairy lights, beaming at the glow in the dark constellations he'd painted in a distemper across his ceiling when he'd first learned the concept of stars. A notebook is placed before him and he sketches yet another variation of planets, this picture depicting them as decrepit and melted, as if the sun had grown prostrated with the nebula's of ennui and the winding constellations of dynamism and combusted all her flames against her galaxy.

He often sought for a fitting end to the universe in his artwork, demanding it be something artistic and painful, something that would drown out any form of life mercilessly. Though, he'd just tell his dad they were harmless, and the man wouldn't question it.

Everything was ritualistic, nothing out of the ordinary for Taehyung ― just as he tended to like it, as ritual connotes to comfort and ease and that was the most splendid of all life's concepts. However, this standard would almost always be challenged when he was most in need of it to remain the same.

Considering the odd ways Taehyung's been spoken to recently (with immense kindness), he needed something normal, something he was used to. And Jeon Jeongguk turning up at his bedroom door certainly wasn't normal.

It wasn't as if he had even knocked the front door, he just somehow appeared in the doorway, with an open mouth and unblinking eyes; his school uniform was no longer paired with that peppermint tie and, instead, his top buttons were undone, displaying the teases of muscle and the tattoo, which was bleeding across his chest. The tattoo was something for the squealers to fawn over — something for acrylic nails to dream of scraping against, as acrylic girls make out the obsidian ink beneath his PE shirt. Taehyung was always curious as to what the tattoo was of.

Taehyung, though not intending to make such a sound, couldn't prevent the humiliating squeal that exemplified his shock, as he comprehended that Jeon Jeongguk was stood within the doorway to his bedroom.

It was as Jeongguk attempted to step into the room that Taehyung fully cognised that he was in nothing but a hoodie and shorts, accommodating for the ghastly summer's weather in his small and heat-compressed bedroom. Attempting to pull his duvet over himself, he spoke before Jeongguk could (which was rather surprising), "what the fuck."

"Sorry, sorry! I know I should've knocked! But your dad said you were upstairs and the door was open so I just went by my instincts and walked through! This is a total invasion of privacy, I know that, I'm sorry, I never really think through my actions until I fuck things up." It was peculiar how genuinely apologetic and remorseful he sounded ― quite a contrast to conversations with Jimin, who always seemed to be plotting something. It was rather funny that the one with a body-builder-sized archive of tattoos and a leather complex was the one who had a real sense of humanity, while the town's sweetheart was the one most terrifying.

"No, no, it's― it's okay, I just.. it's kind of weird to walk into someone's room unannounced."

"I'm technically not in your room though." Jeongguk quips, smiling softly, whilst gesturing to threshold, which makes Taehyung laugh, even though it wasn't all that funny.