Within Him (BTS)

Chapter One- Beginnings

Tyler
Screaming. Crying. Laughing. They're all shows of emotion. And, over the years, I've learnt to fake things like that.
It took me a while.
My mom still laughs sometimes- when chatting with family- and says "Tyler always was an odd child."

I never really fit in at school. The other kids could always tell i was different. The fascination with death never served to help me make friends.
The first thing, creature, organism, whatever I ever killed was a small bird my old cat had managed to catch. I shooed him away and took the 'poor' creature up to my bedroom in the attic.
And killed it.
I still have the skull.
Min Yoongi never cared. He was always more popular than I, but every afternoon him and I could be found playing video games in my bedroom or at the old diner that used to be down the road from my house.
Min Yoongi had always ignored my "fake" skull collection.
I think he knows they're real.
•
I'm jerked back to the present by Yoongi standing in front of me holding up two Wii games. Mario Kart and Wii Sports.
I choose Mario Kart.
"God, you're such a child." Yoongi laughs. He puts the game in anyways.
Yoongi picks up his controller. He's first player. He's always first player.
A few races go by with silence except for some tasteful trash talk and both of us cursing the NPCs that manage to get in our way.
I win the round and earn a fist bump from the man next to me.
"So.... Ty." Yoongi looks over at me with an emotion I can't really decipher- which isn't out of the ordinary.
I don't understand emotions.
"Yeah?" I lean back against my bed and start flipping through the tracks we could play next.
"The skulls... you know- the ones that you have literally everywhere-" Yoongi cracks a smile. "-Are they real?"
I stiffen. One thing I've learnt over the years is that nobody reacts well to finding out their friend has real animal skulls in their bedroom.
"...why do you ask?" My eyes can be found anywhere except for Yoongi's.
"I've been wondering for a while now and they just look too real to be fake." He states with something that sounds like honesty in his voice.
"They are." My voice is small. I don't know if I should admit that I've killed them myself without being prompted to do so.
"Where'd you get them? That's so cool!" Yoongi grins crookedly at me and picks a race.
We start playing.
I don't respond.
I think Yoongi notices my hesitancy to answer, but he doesn't comment on it until we've finished another round. He won this set.
"Well? Where did you get them? I kind of want a few, myself."
"I... I killed them myself."
I look at the floor. When my dad found out they were real he didn't make me get rid of them, but he slapped me across the face and threw me to the floor.
He hadn't talked to me for days after out of pure disgust.
"Oh." Yoongi looks at me with a mixture of surprise- one of the emotions I can pick up just because it's so easy to spot- and something I can't place.
It is incredibly annoying sometimes to be the way I am.
"Why?" Is Yoongi's next question. "Why do you kill the animals, I mean?"
"I don't know," I reply quietly. "I've done it for as long as I can remember."
I realize then that I'm tense- and hunched over like I'm trying to hide.
I do my best to release the tension from my body, stretching my legs out in front of me.
Yoongi's phone buzzes, and he picks it up.
"Ah, shit. It's my mom- I gotta go." Yoongi grabs his backpack. "See you tomorrow?"
I nod quietly and Yoongi departs my bedroom. His footsteps can be heard as he goes down the stairs, and I can hear his voice clearly as he says goodbye to my mother.