Trust Issues //Vkook\\

Chapter Two

A Guilty Conscious

Taehyung is leaning over the kitchen bench, shovelling his evening bowl of cereal into his mouth. He packs the spoon too full, crumbs dropping with each mouthful. He doesn’t clean it up. Food for the ants that he watches trailing along the grout, he reasons. Maybe out of the kindness of his heart, maybe as an excuse not to do work.

He puts the bowl down in the sink. Runs the water and watches the milk splash over the stainless steel. Really, who drinks cereal milk? Only the most extremely impoverished college students, that’s who. Since he’s only moderately impoverished, he discards the soggy cereal juices and opens the fridge. He searches for a cold beer. Remembers with great bitterness that he had to skip beer on his shopping list due to their lack of toilet paper (Jeongguk had reacted very negatively to his suggestion that they use their dirty laundry during the mean time between grant payments). He is now stuck staring into the fridge with nothing to retrieve. He takes the moment to appraise the different foods stocking the right side of the shelving.

Jeongguk is apparently a health nut. It explains his lean, muscular body. (Yes, Taehyung had taken the opportunity to ogle him at dance practice, thank you very much.) What previously looked like a poor college boy’s fridge – and that’s exactly what it is – now resembles a fresh produce market. Bunches of bananas and an assortment of apples. A Tupperware container of cooked porridge that seems to diminish each morning. Taehyung knows that it will replenish itself, recalls spotting a whole sack of rolled oats shoved in the cupboard under the sink. The real surprise is the sheer amount of vegetables. Bags full of lettuce and piles of beets. Cauliflowers and capsicums, celery and carrots – a whole spectrum of colours overflows from the crisper that spreads through the shelves like some kind of nutritious mould. Taehyung doesn’t see Jeongguk around the dorm very much, for he avoids Taehyung most of the time, but when he does he always seems to have a vegetable of some sort in his hand. He has never known a college boy to eat so healthily. His mother would surely be proud of him.

Well, he’s here now. He might as well not leave empty-handed. He reaches forward, a carrot the target – he’s hungry and there’s about twenty of them so he’s not worried that Jeongguk will miss one single root vegetable. Two centimetres from touchdown, a hand wraps around his wrist.

His scream makes Jeongguk yelp, his fingers flying away from his skin as he jumps back.

“Geez!” Taehyung yells, an automatic reaction. Jeongguk shakes like a leaf in a hurricane where he has sprung to the other side of the kitchen. Taehyung, recalling Jimin’s advice, lowers his voice and softens his stance. “Sorry, sorry. You caught me by surprise, is all. Are you okay?”

Jeongguk takes a deep breath as he recovers. Lips downturned, frown deepening.

“No.” He glances at the fridge. “You broke a rule.”

“What?” Taehyung follows his gaze, realises that the door is ajar and moves over to right it. “No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, the rule was that I couldn’t touch your food.”

“Yeah, and-”

“I didn’t touch anything. You stopped me before I could.” A mischievous grin. It’s supposed to be the right amount of cheeky to make Jeongguk laugh.