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Chapter 3

As I unlocked my front door, I immediately accessed the damage. Ok, messy dresser, dirty laundry, art supplies strewn all over the floor, a week old pizza rotting in the fridge, empty bottles of mineral water and instant noodle packaging all over the kitchen counter... great.

I literally have no food in the house and all my stuff is all over the place and taehyung is coming over in like what? 10 minutes? I am in deep shit I don't clean up the mess and taehyung sees me like this. 

So I zoomed around the small tiny one-room apartment, with a surprisingly large amount of rubbish for one person, desperately trying to clean up before the dreadful ring of the doorbell. Just as I was about to get to my laundry, the doorbell rang.

SHIT, taehyung's here. With absolutely no choice, I chucked all my laundry into the washing machine. I swear I'll get those guys cleaned up later. Doing a last minute scan of the apartment and ensuring it doesn't look like a doghouse, I opened the door to let taehyung in.

"Wow, so this is your house huh. It's not as bad as I imagined, to be honest." Taehyung exclaimed while looking around, taking in the whole view.

"Ehhahahaha well its good that you didn't come in with me. I don't think you would ever want to see me again after that." I laughed nervously.

"Well, you did put in quite some effort to get it cleaned up. I mean you're drenched in sweat." Taehyung said while pointing and circling to his face.

" Oh my god." My eyes widened as I realised I probably looked like a freak right now, with my hair sprayed all over my face and sweat droplets down my face, neck and back.

"Crap, give me a sec to get changed. Just sit anywhere you're comfortable with." I said while half-running into my room to change into fresh clothes if I had any. 

As I emerged from my room in a cotton shirt from my high school days and comfortable long black leggings, I saw taehyung flipping through some of my older works that I kept at home.

"Oh, those are from high school and middle school. You know, mandatory art classes?" I mentioned as I stood in the hallway, observing taehyung. 

" Yea? Well, they look amazing. You are really talented." Taehyung muttered as he continued to flip. 

Immediately, I got absorbed into his features once again, with his long lashes that even creates shadows cast upon his face, his straight and structured nose and his pinkish and soft-looking lips...

"You know you're looking kinda perverted now?" Taehyung said while suppressing laughter. 

Immediately, my face boiled up and I whipped around, embarrassed to face him. "Well, all I can say is I got a great model." I uttered sheepishly. " Anyways, would you like anything to drink?"

"Water would be fine." He replied. 

As I poured the last of my water into two cups and made a mental note to buy more, I set the cups down on a small table and took out my art supplies from my bag.

"Ok, let's start."

After an hour or so of sketching and redrawing the draft to be reviewed by prof bang,  I stretched my back and was finally done. Picking up my phone, I realised it was almost 8:30 pm and looking up, I saw a grumpy taehyung staring right back at me. 

" Can we go eat nowwwwwwwwwwwww" taehyung lamented.

"Hahaha alright, go get your stuff, I'll treat you to stuff at the food stand." I picked up my wallet and threw on a thin cardigan as it was getting slightly chilly.

As we headed downstairs, I felt taehyung's large hand wrapped around mine. Surprised, I looked up only to see taehyung's eyes glinting with excitement and mouth watering as he rapidly pulled me to the various food stands.

Sometimes, taehyung seems like he knows everything I'm going through, my emotions towards him and how he's playing with me. But on the other hand, it feels like I'm overthinking and he's just being beagle-like, infecting me with his sporadic and mindless actions. Yea... I'm probably too sensitive about this, he's just treating me as a friend.

Throwing these thoughts to the back of my brain, I began to chow down on tteokbokki, satisfying my ravenous appetite. Suddenly thinking of my art project, I sneaked a peek at taehyung to find him smiling while eating his tteokbokki and fishcakes.

"T..taehyung ah, do you think we could meet up like this once every week until the final deadline? Because I think the art studio will seriously be packed with people from here on out, not only by us second years but also all the other years. Pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeee?" I requested with my best sad puppy eyes.

"Hahaha, oh alright. Who could resist those eyes?" Taehyung said as he lowered himself to my eye level.

"YES!" I exclaimed as I punched the air with one fist holding a stick while my other held onto the bowl of tteokbokki.

"Oh my god. You're so cute, WheeIn!" Taehyung said as he wiped off remaining sauce on my lips and licked his thumb, "just like my dog," he added.

Hearing that, I could only give a weak laugh. All along, I was being compared to a dog?! That means patting my head was like patting his dog and holding my hand was like pulling me on a leash... So much for having hopes. Now even the tiniest bit of my pride is crushed. I felt my soul leave my body and I was deflated.

We quickly said our goodbyes as it was getting late and I went back home, plopped onto my bed and laid there not moving while mulling over all the instances I blushed over skinship I thought was special but was nothing more than skinship for a dog. However, I still couldn't push taehyung out of my mind and took my sketch pad. Relying on my memory from just now, I tried to sketch that moment when taehyung was looking through my past works. After a while, I wasn't satisfied with the sketch and threw it on the floor, only to forget about it as I drifted to sleep... 

Over the next few weeks, I met up with taehyung regularly as we headed to the completion of my work. But nothing special happened and taehyung was same old same old, treating me as a pup.

Fast-forward to 2 weeks before the assignment is due.

It was 7 pm and it started raining heavily so I decided to cook some warm onion soup with kimchi and rice for dinner while watching goblin. Just as i was getting the ingredients from the fridge, i heard my doorbell ring.

Hwasa? Why would she come over at this timing? Did she leave anything behind from earlier today?

As I swung open the door and was about to greet hwasa, an abrupt image slapped me in the eyes.

"Taehyung..?" I whispered in disbelief as he stood at my door, wet hair plastered all over his face due to the rain and clothes soaked through and... it was stained with blood...

I looked up to see a grim look on taehyung's face and he uttered one sentence. "May I come in?"

A/N: That's it for this chapter! It's quite a short one but it is prepping for a huge plot point :) This has been a late release too, I'm sorry for that but I promise the next chapter will be on time! I hope you guys enjoyed reading this and feel free to give constructive criticism and whether you think this chapter has been a little boring or not! Hope you guys have an awesome day/night! Until next time :)