Don't forget about why you're outside, a nagging voice inside of me said.
I could've escaped right then. I could've left at that moment and walked out of that door. I could've run away immediately.
But I didn't. I loved V, and it felt like my duty to check on him. I had to see if he was okay. A part of me wanted to speak to him him, just to convince him to live a normal life with me. It was delusional, but it was still there, underneath everything else. In the artificial light of the basement, certain dreams had festered in my mind, and they had all centered around V. He was the only thing I'd had in that basement.
So, with that in mind, I scaled the grand staircase, the mahogany banister cool to the touch. I didn't know where V was, but I believed that I would've heard him if he was downstairs. As my bare feet advanced the steps slowly, I gazed through all the numerous windows in sight, still awe-struck at the sight of Earth.
As soon as I got upstairs, I heard him.
Well, I didn't hear him, but I did hear a crashing noise, and I knew for a fact that V was rather destructive. With a frantic, thundering heartbeat, I rushed towards the sound, navigating the many twisting halls and corridors that made up the labyrinth of his second floor. I finally pressed open a white door that led to a large, spacious room filled with desks, cabinets, and important-looking papers in stacks--well, that used to be in stacks.
The room had become a flurry of white. Leafs of papers fluttered around the room, and on the floor lay ripped shreds, cracked solids, and shattered glass. This was all because of V's actions. He was screaming and pelting objects across the room, his voice the highest pitch I had ever heard it.
I picked up a broken picture frame by my feet, slipping out the glossy paper from underneath the glass webbed with cracks.
Kim Taehyung's 15th birthday, the back of the picture read. I turned it over in my hand.
In the picture was a family. I could only tell because the children resembled the parents, not because of the way they interacted with each other. Two children--a boy and a girl--wore polite expressions and had proper ballerina postures. Two stiff parents stared into the camera, not smiling, and they each had a firm hand on a shoulder of the boy in the middle, who I presumed was Taehyung. They all wore semi-formal wear, even the children, who couldn't have possibly been in high school yet.
Taehyung was a teenager and he had black hair that was styled down in a straight, side-swept fringe. His nose was like his mother's; it was on the thinner side and with a decently high nose bridge and ridge. He had plump, rosy lips that seemed like a combination of both his parents'-they were delicate like his mother's but wide like his father's. His eyes were sharp and unnerving, but they lacked a certain emotional component that I couldn't quite place. They had a wild, primal quality to them, as if he was a newly-anesthetized animal.
I recognized those crazed eyes, though. I recognized that tall nose, the plump lips. I recognized him.
Kim Taehyung was V.
I stared in shock, gaping at the thick picture paper. It was strange to realize that he had a real, normal name. I felt like I was violating his privacy, just finding a piece of his past like that. In that one moment, I had discovered his real name and what his family looked like. I had gotten to know Taehyung in one glance, as opposed to the time I had spent with V and still not knowing what he was like.
"Taehyung, stop!" I shouted, folding and tucking the picture into my pocket with one hand. Honestly, I just wanted to try saying his name. I wanted to feel it roll off my tongue, and I wanted to get used to it, because I felt like I could pretend that I had loved a normal boy named Taehyung that way.
Chapter Fourteen
Start from the beginning
