Breath.
Just breath.
...
Once you got back to your apartment after parting ways with your masked 'Genius' for the night, you were in a daze.
What even just happened?
It was as if the floor was removed from right beneath you.
All your simple mind wanted was some late-night cup ramen and ice-cream from the convenience store.
You definitely weren't asking for murderous chases down any dark alleys, or anticipating Mr. 742 to suddenly end his days-long disappearance and kiss you like that.
Heck.
Kiss...
Your head was near spinning, and what you could only describe as the stupidest grin was plastered all across your face.
You stood in your front doorway with your back up against the door for ages, subconsciously touching your lips as you replayed everything over.
The softness of 'not Yoongi''s kiss making your cheeks blush.
As a drawn out sigh escaped you, your phone vibrated in your pocket, pulling you back down to earth and out of your daydream.
-
[21:42] Yoongi 💜sent a picture.
-
Tapping onto his notification and opening up the attachment he sent, your heart sank.
You were mortified to find that Mr. 742 had managed to snap a picture of you just as you were waving goodbye to him earlier, standing right in the middle of the lit up entrance to your apartment complex.
And it was until now that you had completely forgotten about what you were wearing.
Your pale and and washed-out face contrasting harshly with the odd colors of the khaki coat that was carelessly flung across your BT21 pajamas and..
Are my pants inside out?
F*cking hell.
-
[21:43] Yoongi 💜: I liked your outfit tonight.
-
Oh my f*cking god, could he just let me enjoy this moment a little longer before completely roasting me like this?!
Tapping out your reply and hitting send, another sigh escaped you.
But despite being totally destroyed like that, you still couldn't manage to pull that stupid smile from your face.
-
[21:44] Yoongi's Girl💜:
Cool thanks for that. I'll just go and die now...
[21:45] Yoongi 💜: Don't do that...
[21:45] Yoongi 💜: I need you alive.
-
A small laugh quickly left you as you read his reply, still trying to adjust your head to the sudden turn of events from this evening.
It was almost hilarious that only an hour earlier, you were miserable and alone, and completely convinced your masked 'Genius' would never see you again.
And that all it took was for him to chase you down the streets in the dark, almost scare the literal crap out of you and explain the entire misunderstanding, to make you as smitten as ever again.
Although it definitely would have been nicer if I didn't think I was about to become another true crime victim..
Finally leaving your doorway and setting your bag down on the kitchen bench, you were quickly reminded of the ice-cream you bought at the convenience store, which had surely turned to liquid now.
Sigh.
I Guess I can't have my ice cream and eat it too..
But it was okay..
Your masked 'Genius' in exchange for a little melted ice cream seemed like a fair trade off.
-
Once the next day rolled around, you woke up late, after having your first full night of peaceful sleep in days.
You felt so well rested for once and decided to put it to good use by getting straight to work with trying to finish the rest of your snack-bars.
But I swear this pile keeps getting bigger...
In the last few days you must have stuffed your face with at least 40 of those god-forsaken snack-bars, but from all of that, you still hadn't found any codes that allowed you to enter the competition as a finalist.
Ji-eun and Hana were at least making slightly better progress, with Ji-eun managing to find two finalist codes, and Hana finding one.
So that gave you a combined total of three entries in the competition for now.
Ugh.
Only three??
Sighing defeatedly, this was a lot harder than what you had first imagined.
The chances of winning seemed to be dwindling, and morale between the group was getting low.
-
[11:47] Jimin's Hoe💋: ISTG if we don't win, I'm going on a hunger strike out the front of HYBE building...
[11:47] Jimin's Hoe💋: How else am I supposed to meet my future husband?!
[11:55] Mic Drop💜:
lmaoo
[11:55] Mic Drop💜:
Don't worry girl. If anyone can do it, it's definitely you!
[11:56] Mic Drop💜:
And if we don't win this time, we'll definitely find a way next time!
[11:58] Jimin's Hoe💋: Well someone's in a better mood today 😏
[11:58] Jimin's Hoe💋: Weren't you only saying yesterday that you'd simply die if we didn't win?
-
There was no denying it, Ji-eun was right.
Despite the apparent hopelessness of winning the competition, you were in a much better mood today.
You might even go as far as saying you felt positively uplifted.
And of course, you could only attribute that to the sudden reappearance of Mr. 742.
I seriously wish I wasn't this basic...
At first you were a little hesitant to admit all of this to your best friend, knowing just how protective she could be about you sometimes.
So you were a little anxious that she wouldn't approve of 'not Yoongi' being back in the picture, especially given how depressed you had been over the last few days.
But it seemed you had worked yourself up all over nothing.
She basically gave the same reaction as you did from when your masked 'Genius' was explaining everything to you, even going as far as asking if he was okay.
At her show of support, you couldn't help but breath a sigh of relief.
She really just wanted you to be happy.
But you might have omitted the part about him kissing you, because even you couldn't quite wrap your brain around that one yet..
Were you happy?
Sure.
But confused?
Even more so..
In all your years, you'd never liked or kissed a person where you didn't know their name or what they looked like.
Just the idea of it seemed absurd.
Even more so when trying to explain it to another person.
So for now at least, that would be your little secret.
-
As the evening began to settle in, you counted the number of snack-bars consumed throughout the day, disappointed that you still had a long way to go and that you hadn't found a single finalist code in any of their wrappers.
You now only had until tomorrow evening to get through everything before the winners would be announced at 7pm, which made you nervous.
The more this dragged on, the more hopeless it seemed of you actually being able to attend BTS's fan-meet next week, on the same day as your birthday.
You felt so lethargic being stuck inside all day eating the same repetitive junk, eventually deciding that a bath might help to give you the reset you needed, even going on to apply a sheet mask afterwards.
You knew that it wouldn't fix everything, but considering your poor diet recently, a little self care was long overdue.
It was now 20 minutes to 8pm and you only had a few minutes left before your sheet mask needed to come off, when you heard the doorbell ring.
Huh??
Your first instinct was to ignore it, thinking it was just one of your neighbors coming to pester you about the volume of your music again, but you quickly realized you weren't even blasting your music that loudly tonight and it was still considered 'early' for a Saturday night.
Curious to see who it could be, you were careful not to make any noise as you crept over to the front door to take a look through the peephole, but the person standing on the other side of the door made your jaw drop.
What the hell is he doing here?!
You had to do a double take, now practically slamming your head into your door to get another peek and make sure that your eyes weren't just playing tricks on you, because the sudden appearance of your masked 'Genius' was unexpected to say the least.
And after being so surprised to see him last night, you certainly weren't expecting to see him again so soon.
F*ck f*ck f*ck!
Remembering you had a sheet mask on your face still, you sprinted to the bathroom, whipping it cleanly off your face and desperately patted the leftover residue away.
As you caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, panic seeped in.
Sure, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as how you looked last night, but the majority of that interaction was thankfully in pitch-black darkness.
Had he got a close up look of me in full lighting, I'm certain that kiss would have never happened...
Tripping over your feet searching for an oversized jumper to throw on, you pulled your hood up in an attempt at covering everything, when the doorbell rang out again.
Okay, okay!
Chill!
You took a deep breath in, feeling defeated that you couldn't do anything else in this moment to save your appearance, before scurrying over to your front door again.
Swinging the door open, your voice had seemingly abandoned you as you nearly choked while trying to force out any words.
"-Uhh-hi," he awkwardly uttered out, beating you to the punch.
"H-Hi," you stuttered back, your body turning stiff as your eyes met with his through his thick rimmed glasses.
But something about him was different tonight.
He was a hell of a lot more covered up than normal, hiding just about any of his distinguishable features behind a gigantic hoodie, face-mask, glasses and beanie.
And had you not grown accustomed to his general demeanor, you might not even be able to recognize him.
But there was something else...
His usual swagger was gone, and instead he was sheepishly hovering in your doorway, almost like he wasn't sure why he was even there.
The audacious and sh*t-talking Mr. 742 that you had grown so accustomed to, appeared to be nothing more than a shy boy in this moment.
Cute..
As a short time of silence passed, he cleared his throat awkwardly before handing something out for you to take.
"Here."
Looking down, you saw that he had handed you one of the same BTS snack-bars that you had been strictly living off for the past 3 days.
The sight of yet another snack-bar to consume making you involuntarily recoil.
"D-don't you like these?" he asked, confusion clear in his voice.
"Well.. I uhh...-" You trailed off, trying your hardest not to appear ungrateful, yet failing miserably in the process.
But before you could say anything more, he had already cut you off.
"-I pulled like 5 of these wrappers out of my hood as soon as I got home last night, after you tried to beat me up in the streets!" he barked, the sass and boldness in his voice coming back to him tenfold.
"H-Hey! I didn't try to beat you up!" you pouted back in defense. "I thought you were going to murder me!"
At your short outburst, a laugh escaped him, making him look away to try and compose himself again.
Awesome.
Scaring me like that must have been so funny for you..
Ass...
"So then..." He began, now leaning his body lazily against the side of your doorframe. "If you don't like them, why did you have so many of these in your bag last night?"
Unprepared for his suddenly pointed question, you quickly shut your mouth.
"No.. don't tell me.." he laughed, taking the snack-bar from out of your hands and inspecting the wrapper, before staring back at you accusingly. "Don't tell me it's all for that competition."
Crap.
As he waited for your reply, you could feel your face turning bright red at his mention of the competition.
"I- I mean, I wanted to go because it's my birthday..." you mumbled back stupidly, totally embarrassed to admit it in front of your masked 'Genius'.
You could feel his eyes burning into you after saying this, the intensity of his stare making you hold your breath in.
"So it's your birthday then, hmm..? I'm not sure how I should feel about you going out to flirt with 6 other guys all day.." he scoffed, the audacity in his tone so thick it could have slapped you in the face.
"Well.. there's actually 7 of them..." your voice came out as nothing but a whisper as you tried to correct him, timidly averting your gaze away like it could somehow save you. "But they don't even know I exist... so I wouldn't even worry...."
"Right.." he grumbled flatly. "Well I better get going anyways."
"Huh? Did you really come all the way here just to give me this?" you asked, taken aback in slight shock.
"No.. I was already driving through the area. I just happened to have one of these lying around and thought you might like it.." he lazily answered, his raspy voice not giving any hints away to his emotions.
"Oh-okay. Uh- I do like it.. thanks-"
Just as you were about to say goodbye, some of your neighbors had come up from the stairs below, interrupting you from what could possibly be the most awkward attempt ever at a 'thank you'.
But it was strange because at the sight of them, Mr. 742 quickly ducked his head into his jacket, refusing to face any of them as they walked past the two of you.
Huh?
What's he trying to hide from?
Once they were out of sight, you sent him a look of confusion, which he immediately brushed off as if it never happened.
"Hmm, I guess I'll talk to you later.." he spoke as he placed his hand endearingly on the top of your head. "I might not be able to come into the café for a while... But I'll try to work something out."
"Ooh, okay," you hummed in response, a stupid smile forcing its way onto your face.
And just like that, he turned around and left.
You felt a little spaced out as you stood at your now empty front entrance, still holding the door open.
He had came and left so quickly, that you couldn't quite keep up with everything.
And you wished you could have done something to savor the moment a little longer.
But you couldn't stop yourself from smiling, his sweet gesture to drop by and gift you something he thought you would like making the butterflies in your stomach jump all over the place.
You were low-key cringing at yourself over just how hopelessly pathetic you must look in this moment, or how such a small thing could generate such a big reaction out of you.
After closing your door and walking back inside, you thought it would only be rude to not eat and appreciate the snack-bar your masked 'Genius' had taken the effort to hand deliver to you, wasting no time in ripping open the wrapper and munching down on it.
And despite being bored to death from eating the same repetitive snack-bar for the last few days, this one tasted so much better than all the rest.
And I wonder why that is...
After completely finishing it, you scanned its wrapper for a code and entered it into the website, not anticipating anything to come from it.
Your eyes were already beginning to roll from disappointment, expecting to be taken the same old 'Code Unsuccessful' screen again, but to your utter surprise you were redirected to a new screen.
"Congratulations! You're a finalist!"
Omg.
-----
Hi angels!
How is everyone?
I'm back from the dead again!
Let me tell you... these past few months have been damn hell lmao. I've been so buried in stress and so overly busy with a multitude of things, both work and personal that I honestly don't know how I've been functioning. And to top everything all off, I've just finished moving into a new apartment, which has been SO crazy.
So.. I'm very sorry for disappearing, yet again. I know the apologies are sounding repetitive now, but it doesn't make it any less heartfelt from me, or any better. I'm really sorry for leaving everyone hanging, and for making a number of you worry. I'll try my hardest to do better.
What I will say now, is that for once I'm feeling a little optimistic. I've managed to accomplish a few small victories this year, which will hopefully make life a bit easier going forward. And I'm looking forward to the new year! (Please hope this optimism doesn't backfire on me lmaoo).
Anyways... I hope you liked the new update!(?) I'm curious to hear what you all think might happen next! As always, feel free to leave any suggestions or feedbacks in the comments. I always look forward to reading your hilarious reactions!
I hope everyone has been doing well! It's now so close to Christmas and the new year! It's crazy hot here in Australia, but I know it's winter for a lot of you as well.. What I would give to be in snow right now...
Wishing you all a happy holiday season, where ever you are in the world! Hope you're all staying safe and healthy, and that we can all go into the new year as better versions of ourselves 💜
Sending all my love,
❤❤❤ Katie