“Rome has not seen a modern building in more than half a century. It is a city frozen in time .” -- Richard Meier

    You raised your hand to the wood, hesitating. You knew that he had invited you over, but for some reason you felt a little bit nervous. It’s only a study session. Calm down. With that in mind, you rapped your knuckles lightly against the door.

    Taehyung opened the door, his perpetually messy bed head the first thing you notice after his tired college-student eyes. He smiles anyways, leading you inside with a quiet ‘this way’. You know his parents are decently well-off, so it’s not surprising that he has his own nice apartment off-campus. He is a grad student, anyways.

    You heft the bag higher on your shoulder as you walk through the long hallway, glancing at the endless rows of graphite rubbings framed and hung on the wall. When you enter his room, your eyebrows shoot up. Taehyung’s room was a paleontologist’s heaven. Ammonites were displayed carefully on a shelf next to imprints of worm trails, and an especially impressive fish fossil stared at you from across the room. Taehyung left with a mumble, saying something about getting drinks, and you sat down at his desk, carefully setting your bag to the side. Your eyes roamed over everything, drinking in all of the details. Dinosaur teeth, ferns, shell fragments...Taehyung’s room was essentially a museum.

    ‘He’s either extremely rich or has some incredible connections. There’s no way he could have collected some of this stuff on his own. I can think of at least three museums that would gladly kill for a portion of this,’ you muse, acknowledging Taehyung with a nod as he returns with glasses of soda. “Thank you.”

    “So...you said you had some questions about the class you’re taking? The intro class?” he asks quietly, eyes staring down into his cup. He seemed tired, but also somewhat reserved. No wonder not many people came to him for help.

    “Uh, yeah. It’s interesting, but since I never took any prerequisite courses I’m unfamiliar with some of the stuff that the professor’s talking about.” You dug through your bag and found your book and notes, pulling out a few select sheets and handing them to Taehyung. He scanned them in silence, and you sat nervously. The silence was almost unnerving, especially in the gloomy, dim museum of a room. It was too much to take, and you shifted slightly.

    “Umm...you have a really cool fossil collection,” you finally managed, and Taehyung’s head slowly came up.

    “Thanks. I like to collect them.”

    You rubbed your knuckles. “Yeah, I’d imagine so, as a paleontology student.” You laughed nervously at the dumb statement, but Taehyung nodded anyways, face as serious as it had always been.

    Looking around the room again, you marveled at the diversity of his collection. “What’s your favorite fossil, then? Out of all of these?”

    Taehyung hummed quietly before setting the paper to the side and standing, wandering across the room. You held your breath in anticipation. Out of all of the amazing trilobites, dinosaur teeth and mammal skulls, he must have a hidden treasure, a secretly amazing fossil. But when he turned around, you only spotted a small, flat piece of rock.

    “What’s that?” You inched closer as he approached, holding it delicately. He placed it carefully in your cupped hands, and you examined it closely. A dragonfly?

    “Yes, it’s a dragonfly.” You jumped at the sudden speech, and looked up into his amused eyes.

    “Why this one? You have lots of T-Rex teeth and bird imprints! Aren’t those cooler?” you murmured, passing the fossil back to him. Taehyung shrugged, putting it carefully back in his place on the bookshelf.

    “Isn’t it interesting? That something as small and insignificant as a dragonfly has been alive for so many thousands of years without changing? As if it’s frozen in time. We don’t think about it, but we walk among ancient creatures.” Taehyung’s eyes have glazed over, and he seems lost in his own world.

    You nodded warily. “I guess.”

    And even as he helped you with the lecture notes and led you outside, bidding you goodbye in the cool night air, you couldn’t shake that look of his from your mind.

    He’s interesting. Definitely interesting. Almost a fossil himself.