Dance to This [kth]

t w e n t y • o n e

ACT III
ミ★
twenty-one
❝confined distractions❞
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Taehyung's soft breaths from beside me fill the otherwise silent night air. Although I am secure in the comfort of his bed, sleep does not threaten me yet again; my aching insides and sore inner-muscles are a lulling sensation of awareness for me. This pain I feel reminds me of what I'm capable of, and warns me against the girl who once had control over me. No longer, I tell myself. Never again.

The moon's illuminance gives my unsettled settling thoughts an ambience to thrive in. I hug my knees to my chest, leaning my chin on my leg, as I stare through the crack where the dark gray curtain fails to meet the windowpane. My fingertips smooth over the marks on the back of my palm from Hana's wrath, and pellets of rain begin to erupt slowly against the windows. I sigh lightly to myself: a woman whose inner-thoughts of anxiety and apprehension have suddenly vanished.

I feel different. My body feels renounced, but I haven't given anything away. I didn't give myself away in order to gain this control of myself; I took what was rightfully mine, and I created my own masterpiece. This silence that now follows me is because I am finally in the place in which I have been searching for. I hold my paintbrush. I hold my camera. The subject of my own media is me. . . not anyone else.

I gave into the temptation because it made me stronger.

I glance at Taehyung who is still sleeping quietly to my right. Although his bare back is to me, I can imagine the soft expression and heated skin of his cheeks. I bite a smile to myself thinking about him; his body. . . the two of us. I can't imagine how I could have possibly fallen into his intimidation for so long. My body feels hot remembering his touches against my skin; the way he held me was a side of him that I didn't think existed. I don't want to break you, he said. I shake my head to myself at the foolish thought. My behavior has convinced him that I'm fragile, even to the touch. The touch I crave from him has exceeded the boundaries I once had.

It's 4:17AM when I blink out of my stare and hear my phone buzz from my jacket in the kitchen. I glance at my sleeping boyfriend, but he doesn't stir from the sound. The rain is beginning to hit harder against the windows, and the sound masks my movement out of the bed.

My legs feel numb and my core is stinging as I push open the bedroom door. Shadows drag beyond every object in the room from the moonlight, and causes a blue haze to film over the apartment. Streaks of raindrops project onto the walls from the windows' reflection as my body adds yet another shadow to the floor. I wince with every step I take. Each pinch of my nerves is as if Taehyung is inside me again, and again, and again. I walk though the thrilling sensation, taking shallow breaths of endurance.