GREYSCALE WARMTH | TK

Chapter Nine

This chapter is a whole ass mess please bare with it

Hope you enjoy?? Sorry for any mistakes I just want to end this book it makes me sad and depressed lol

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Jeon Jeongguk thinks life isn't fair most of the time because there's always that balance between the good and the bad, between the things you so dearly adore even if they can hurt you. Just like the warmth of the sun or the soft petals of a poisonous flower. So enjoyable, astonishing, and yet so harmful.

He thinks humans are like that as well, an unbalanced amalgam of good and bad.

He thinks life is ironic because of that. It can offer you the greatest of things on a plate only to take them away later because — as it always happened — nothing came without a price.

His happiness, his happiness came with a price as well.

It happens a few months after they've started dating. Jeongguk isn't sure how he's managed to trick Taehyung into thinking he can still see colors — maybe it was the fact that he was so used to the world around him, to the way the sky used to look or to the colors of his own clothes. He's not sure how but, for months, they were both happy.

Until they weren't.

Jeongguk was supposed to pick up Taehyung for one of their dates. He did pick up his boyfriend, he even complimented his look and the little beret on his head, words which Taehyung had accepted with a smile and a blush.

Everything was normal until they arrived at the restaurant and they were sat at a table.

There were flowers on the table, decorations Jeongguk had assumed.

"Aren't they pretty?" Taehyung had asked, a smile on his face as he gently touched the petals with the tips of his fingers. "It's like they read my mind, putting my favorite flowers here."

See, irony is a thing Jeongguk had never understood. If he would've been more attentive then, more careful, maybe he would've read into Taehyung's look, into the way his brows slightly furrowed, into the worry and doubt present in his irises.

Still, Jeongguk was so far over his head, so happy, that he couldn't see any of those.

"They're beautiful, indeed." He has answered without even thinking.

With another bright smile, Taehyung has simply taken one from the vase, twirling it between his fingers. "I know, right? Such a pretty shade of red."

Ironically, Jeongguk had chuckled.

He hadn't seen the way Taehyung's fingers had tightened around the flower or the way his eyes had filled with tears.

Taehyung, surprisingly, hadn't said anything but Jeongguk could tell something was different, wrong, since his boyfriend kept silent for most of the night.

Only when they got in the car did Taehyung ask him to drive them somewhere quite — he needed some air, he had said.

Jeongguk drove them towards Han River, leaving the car in a nearby parking lot and walking side by side towards a bench with his boyfriend's hand clasped in his.

Taehyung still had that flower between his fingers. He stared at it continuously, even as they sat down under the moonlight and Jeongguk pressed his lips to his knuckles.

"Is something wrong, my love?"

An ironic smile had appeared on Taehyung's face at that — not one filled with happiness, but with sadness.