Taehyung looked around the room, noticing the result of his confession. The people in the clubroom were unable to move for a few seconds as their brains must have been processing the news. He understood them, he acted the way they did when he found out too. But he hoped they wouldn't be so quiet about it. The atmosphere was starting to feel a little awkward, no one was saying anything.

"Guys, could you all say something..." Taehyung cleared his throat, snapping his friends out of it. "Ah, so all of you are now back from dreamland."

"We weren't dreaming," Mingyu pouted, "we were just trying to comprehend what you just said. Look, even Jungkook is still spacing out. I mean, you know we never expected Hanbin at all. I never thought, even for a second, that he could've been the one!"

"Taehyung, when did you find out about this?" Jimin whispered cautiously, glancing over to the clubroom opposite them.

Taehyung closed the door behind him. "I found out two weeks ago." All of them were about to say something, but he interrupted them first. "And before any of you ask me anything like why I didn't tell you guys earlier was because I had a few things to deal with first. Plus, I needed to confront Hanbin by myself for to make sure, and then he admitted to it. Sorry it took me so long."

"No, Taehyung, we're not mad or anything." Hayoung assured, nudging a scowling Mingyu. "We're glad that you told us. It means you trust us. Besides, you must have been going through your own hardships."

"Yeah, hyung." Mingyu nodded in agreement.

"What are we going to do now?" Joy brought up. "Wait, what about Seul? Don't tell me us you haven't told her yet."

"I'm not going to tell Seul anything, so you guys can't tell her too or anyone from the other club. I have my own plan," Taehyung gulped nervously when his friends were squinting their eyes at him, "what? I'm telling you guys the truth! It's just that... I haven't thought of it completely yet. I thought of it this morning, so it's still in the making, but I really can finish it in a few days."

Kento walked over from the water cooler to the middle of the room. Since he had a serious face on and he wasn't uttering a single word eventhough he was often a talkative one, everyone was looking at him. Taehyung knew Kento was going to criticise his way of handling things. This wasn't the first time Kento had done this and it showed how rash of a person Taehyung was at making perfect decisions.

"This won't do, Taehyung." Kento stared at him straight in the eye.

There was no Taehyung-san. It surprised him. Kento always called him and everyone else with a 'san' after saying their names because it was Japanese etiquette. At first, he couldn't drop the habit when he started school at Hanguk High. He also used to speak in broken Korean and would mix Japanese and English words in his sentences. As time passed, he managed to stop addressing them formally, but he continued anyway to annoy them. Taehyung knew that whenever Kento dropped the 'san', he wasn't in a mood for joking.

Taehyung was a little intimidated once he saw that there was no sign of the playful Japanese exchange student he met two years ago. "W-what?"

"In Japan, teamwork is a big thing. And what you're doing now, saying that you'll do all of this by yourself, is plain thoughtless." Kento said. "You know you have a lot of people on your side. We're always ready to help you, but sometimes it feels like you don't think of reaching out to us. We know you're the main target in this whole situation, but I think that if we work together, we'll actually be able to catch Hanbin. It's not your magazine he sabotaged, it's ours. Let's do this together."

Together.

A powerful word carrying so much meaning.

Why did it seem like that word hadn't thought of popping up in Taehyung's mind all this time? For the whole time he was only thinking of solving things by himself because he knew that he had the ability to. He was so confident of his abilities that he overlooked what his friends could do that he couldn't. The thought of him being selfish was right, that was why he wanted to fix it by telling them, but he couldn't believe he never thought of coming with a plan together, with his club members. 

"I... I thought of that, of course I did. I told you guys this because I didn't want to think that the whole situation was revolving around Seul and I only. You guys have the right to know about this, but it looks like I was being selfish in thinking that I could handle this all by myself after telling you guys. I thought that after I told you, none of you were going to get involved. Kento is right, we should do this together. I'm sorry for thinking of doing it by myself." Taehyung played with his fingers, he hadn't done this ever since he was in fifth grade when he was getting scolded by his mother.

No one was talking again, for the second time. Taehyung saw all of them sending messages with the look in their eyes, glancing at him briefly. They huddled in a small circle in the middle of the room while he stood still at the doorway, waiting for their answer. He wasn't expecting them to reject his plan for them to work on this as a team, but suddenly he felt that there was a fifty-fifty chance they would agree on it. It was just how they were all on one side of the room with him alone on the other. Hm, are they all against me now? There's no way they would do that... I really want to do this together now.

Just then, Jimin cleared his throat to get his attention. He turned to face Taehyung. He was acting as a representative for the rest of the members, speaking on their behalf. There was a proud smile on his face, and Taehyung couldn't tell if it was because he was chosen by them to speak or because there was good news coming his way He hoped it would be the latter. There was no plausible reason for it to not be. After all, he did acknowledge his mistakes.

"We've decided on our answer." Jimin put on a strict face. "Kim Taehyung, since you apologised... and we've known you long enough to know that you're actually being sincere," a grin creeped on his face, "we're going to agree on doing this together."

Behind Jimin, everyone else was nodding.

Taehyung's was starting to feel touched. He felt a pleasant tingle down his spine and it was impossible for him to not smile. He ran over to all of them with a smile that seemed to have made up half of his face before enveloping all of them in a hug. His arms couldn't fit all of them, but they were all group hugging and he finally realised why these people were his closest friends. He couldn't have been more thankful to have them by his side.

It was six in the evening when Taehyung exited the clubroom. He was the last person, and as he was closing the door he happened to meet Seul. It was merely by coincidence that they were going to head home at the same time. Taehyung met her gaze, he was sure he had already looked in to those captivating eyes before turning away. He had to say something to her, anything. They weren't strangers and ignoring each other was only an excuse for them to do the same in the future.<