ODDS OF SURVIVAL - TAEKOOK

CHAPTERTWENTYONE

The changing of the seasons was more subtle where they were now in the south than it had been up north where they'd started.

Despite knowledge to the contrary, Jungkook kept expecting the temperatures to plummet to the point where he woke up to find all their water frozen and a thick blanket of snow over everything.

He'd always lived in places where winter was pretty harsh, so this felt a little bit like being stuck in a perpetual autumn that might never end.

The temperatures hovered right at the edge where it was just cold enough to be uncomfortable, but just warm enough that a heavy coat to block out the chill would leave him sweating after a few minutes.

Eventually Jungkook lost track of the days and regretted that he hadn't thought to start keeping a calendar at some point when he still had a clue what month it was.

He guessed it was late February, or maybe early March, only because the daylight hours were getting noticeably longer now.

The temperature was also starting to get warmer again to where he could comfortably shed his jacket during peak hours of daylight even if he wasn't working up a sweat, though mornings and evenings were still colder than he liked.

Not knowing the date bothered him more than he thought it would. He'd never know for sure if it was a holiday, or even his own birthday, ever again.

Not that they had a whole lot to celebrate apart from the fact that they were both still alive somehow.

Still, he thought it would at least be nice to mark the passing of time and maybe do something on the anniversary of the day this started.

The day he'd made the decision not to let Taehyung die. The day he'd truly lost his family. It would be nice to do something to honor all they'd lost, and celebrate how far they'd come building new lives for themselves in this harsh, new world.

Maybe if he took up studying astronomy he could learn to calculate the date by the stars, but that seemed like a lot of time and effort to dedicate just so he could mark a date to throw a sad, two-person party.

Such indulgences still felt wasteful and inappropriate.

Wasteful and inappropriate like the sketchbook Taehyung had given him weeks ago after they'd found the bookstore.

He hadn't known how to respond when Taehyung hesitantly presented it to him, telling him there was more, too.

Pencils, pens, paints, and more books with different types of paper. Jungkook had itched to load the entire display of art supplies into the car when he'd found them, but a nagging sense of guilt knotted in his stomach at what a temptation it would be.

He shouldn't be spending valuable daylight hours drawing when there were so many other things that needed to be done.

But then he thought maybe he could take just one sketchbook and one set of pencils. He could draw at night, squinting in the dark when he couldn't sleep from the horrors parading behind his eyelids, and hide it away during the day so he wouldn't think about it. Taehyung wouldn't even need to know he was wasting time on something so frivolous.

The thought of hiding a sketchbook under his mattress the same way he used to hide porn from his parents is what finally put him off and he decided it would be best not to take any of it, not even a sketchbook. It would be a needless distraction when he needed to focus on staying alive.

But then Taehyung picked up a stack of supplies, anyway, and offered them like a mouthwatering bite of forbidden fruit when Jungkook had been starving for months.