3000 Stars

Feeling Isolated

If Taehyung's parents thought sending him to a therapist would make him less likely to withdraw from them, they were mistaken.

Taehyung kicked at a rock outside the fight club, starily angrily at the closed doors of the arena. He had trained for long enough. He wanted to enter and get a few fights in before school. He missed the days when fights could take place any time of day people wanted. It had been much easier to work around his parents, then.

He sighed, shaking his head. He would have to leave for school in five minutes. It wasn't worth the wait. But he stayed, staring at the doors as if he could make them open, until his time was up. Only when the alarm on his phone began to ring did he turn and walk toward the train station.

He missed Seokjin.

Taehyung stepped onto the train right as Yoongi stepped off, but neither of them acknowledged the other. Taehyung watched through the window of the closing door as Yoongi walked off, toward the arena. He wondered if Yoongi was going to wait until it opened. Didn't he know they would be late?

Did it even matter?

He leaned against the door, wondering if Yoongi and Seokjin were more similar than they looked. Yoongi was laid-back enough, but that didn't mean he wasn't hurting. What kinds of things would hurt Yoongi? Taehyung's lies? Losing his dream? Realizing V wasn't actually V?

Pain sparked in Taehyung's chest, and he placed a hand over his heart, drawing the fabric into his fist. This was all his fault. If only he hadn't reacted so badly to Yoongi saying V was an amazing person. If only he had ignored Yoongi and walked away that first day instead of going back to retrieve his phone from him. If only... If only...

If only Seokjin were still alive.

The tears caught Taehyung off guard. He rubbed them away with his sleeve, but they just came back. He would have turned off his hack, but there were other people on the train, people who might know Yoongi or one of his friends. He didn't need people knowing that he came here every morning, hoping he might find something different than every other day.

He wished the arena opened earlier. If it did, he could have worked off all this excess emotion and gone to school with a higher ability to control himself. He was already dreading Hoseok's questions. His parents told Hoseok everything. He was beginning to think Hoseok wasn't as good of a friend as he had assumed when he first looked for friends outside of his circle. Hoseok had wanted him to join the arena, but... did he, really? Or did he just want to be the one who reported Taehyung to his parents for the second time?

He didn't know.

He wished Seokjin were with him. Seokjin would have known what to do. Even if he hadn't, they could have sat together on the train and felt the solidity of each other and known they would be alright in the end.

Why had he had to lose Seokjin right when he needed him most?

The train pulled to a stop at his station, and he stepped out, wandering in the direction of the school without much thought. He didn't want to go. He didn't want to go, but Hoseok would call his parents and ask where he had been, and he would be subjected to interrogation and possible restriction of what little freedom he had left.

These things never stopped him, but they made him feel guilty. He wanted to hurry up and graduate so he could run away, stay someplace no one would ever find him. But he got the feeling that Yoongi would clear their bet before that happened.

Yoongi was the determined type, after all.

Just like Taehyung had been.

Taehyung sighed, shaking himself and looking up. The sun was rising over the streets, painting everything in pale blue light. The cold seeped into his shirt and under his skin. Walking didn't do much to help, but something about the cold felt different than usual, as if his shivering weren't just a reaction to his environment.

Was he... excited?

He didn't know.

He wished he did.