The Long and Winding Road || A Vhope FF ||✔️

Chapter 13

When Taehyung made his way to where Hoseok was, Yeontan in his arms now as they had been walking a long time, he greeted the older woman, and complimented her wares, before turning to Hoseok. “Are you ready to move on?”

“Yes, let’s go,” he told Taehyung. “It was nice to meet you,” Hoseok said to to the owners of the radish stall before moving on, still digesting what he had been told.

Taehyung had never really talked about himself before. He talked about his friends, about his parents, about his siblings and Yeontan, but never about himself. How had Hoseok never noticed that before?

He wonder if Taehyung would tell him more, if he asked. But he decided to keep quiet instead, walking with Taehyung and Yeontan through the rest of the market until they had been through every inch of it twice over.

“Now we can go to the convenience store,” Taehyung said, once they were all back in the truck. “Unless there’s somewhere else that you’d rather go.”

“No, the convenience store sounds good. Will Jimin be there?”

Taehyung checked the time on his phone. “He should be. That’s what he text me this morning, anyway.”

“Then yeah, it would be good to see him again.”

As they drove the few blocks from the market to the corner store, Hoseok asked, “If I sent you some of my albums, would you listen to them?”

“I’d love to!” Taehyung said. “You know, I haven’t even watched any of your music videos? I have watched some of your stages with Jimin, though, I do know that for sure.”

“You haven’t?”

Taehyung shook his head. “I thought that you might find it weird, so I haven’t.”

“Well, if you want, we can try to watch and hope that the connection with last long enough to watch at least my last few.”

“How many do you have?”

Hoseok had to stop and take a moment to think about all of the music videos that he’d released. “Probably somewhere around...twenty-four.”

“Wow. That’s...a lot. More than I thought, I guess.”

“I’ve been doing this for a long time. This is my first break for longer than a few weeks.”

Taehyung mulled that over. “I’m glad. Working so much, all the time, has to be really draining. You looked really tired when we first met. Especially that first day.”

“I did?” Hoseok couldn’t imagine. He did his best, always, to hide that he was exhausted from fans, from his social media pages, all of it. The fact that Taehyung could pick on them confounded him a little, if only because he was sure that he’d been trying to hide that he was weary, after all of the netizen comments, and the weight of his CEO’s scolding, and the worry of his fans.

Taehyung nodded once. “That’s why I said that you could stay with me. You looked like having to drive all the way back to wherever you came from would be impossible.”

“Oh.” Hoseok frowned. “So this was all because you felt sorry for me?”

Taehyung really was a better person than Hoseok could comprehend. He wondered when he’d stop being surprised about that.

“Well, at first, maybe. But not anymore. Especially not lately, because lately you’ve been like the sun. You know, all shiny and bright and warm.” Taehyung smiled, and it looked like a private thing, just for himself, even as he went to park in the corner store’s tiny parking lot. He turned to Hoseok then, to bestow some of his luminance upon him. “But even the sun needs some rest, hyung. That’s why it goes to sleep every night.”