‘It’s out here somewhere. Somewhere among the crap.’

                                                                   -Winter Damage, Natasha Carthew

          Picking on the melted ice under his fingertips, Jung Jungkook scrolled through his various shots taken from the frozen ground surrounding him. The layer of snow was thin, but the melted particles seeping through his pants were oddly comforting.

“I see that my usual place has been taken,” a voice reached his ears through the howling wind. A tuft of brown hair plopped beside him, and the male figure crossed his legs without a thought of snow. His bangs swished a little as he plopped a sketchbook down onto his lap, and turned his face to see him.

As soon as Jungkook set his eyes on him, he couldn’t stop staring. Crinkled folds that creased together when he smiled, dry, chapped and pink lips that were in a desperate need of some lip balm. As Jungkook scanned the prominent features, he stilled at the eyes.

The stranger’s eyes were like nothing he’d seen before. They were what would be described of as an old soul’s. They held the warmth and truthfulness of the world, a carefree nature that only an aged grandpa would have developed over more than a couple of decades. The misty brown seemed to stare straight into your soul, and in turn, throws up a screen to hide anything underneath.

One could get lost in eyes like those.

“You have pretty eyes,” Jungkook unconsciously slipped out, and those eyes curved into crescents, snapping Jungkook out of his reverie. His lips were now stretching so much, it looked like it would rip his face in half. The boxed grin stayed plastered all over his face as he stuck his hand out.

“Kim Taehyung. You?” Jungkook hesitated at the mezzo baritone voice. “Come on, you’re not just going to ignore me after staring at my face for a full 15 seconds, are you?” Jungkook blushed at the other’s teasing tone. He clasped his hand around the other’s equally cold one.

“Jungkook. Jung Jungkook.”

                “And this is a violet viola, or also known as viola reichenbachiana. It represents humbleness and modesty. Me and my sister had sat at this exact spot and painted it all day the year before the last,” Taehyung had flipped through various watercolored and acrylic paints that were littered all over his sketchbook. The floriography graduate had explained all of them in detail, sometimes reminiscing the stories behind them.

Taehyung was currently recounting the time when he had saved his younger sister when she had fallen into the lake not far from where they were sitting, and Jungkook had to admit, the guy was a great story teller. The small little gestures, the hushed whispers that added dramatic effects, the wandering eyes; they were all mastered by Taehyung.

          Taehyung’s obsession with the field around them also grew more and more prominent over the stories. The times when his dad had taught him the names of his current favorite flowers; when his older sister taught him how to walk; when he discovered his love for art and floriography; they all seemed to revolve around the place.

          “And, you know about the shooting that happened at the college school earlier this week?” Jungkook nodded his head as he clearly remembered the muffled gunshots that resounded throughout his entire street. He had taken a perfect headshot on the day after, and the overcast sky only added to the sorrowful effect to the weeping friends and family presenting lilies and red roses.

          “My younger sister had died then. Two shots to the forearm, three to the abdomen. She had died of blood loss before help could arrive,” Taehyung held up a hand before Jungkook could present his condolences. “She was suicidal. Apparently Asian lesbians are not very welcomed there, and her top marks didn’t add a lot of points.”

          “She has been abused too much, and I didn’t know until a week before the shooting. She seemed to fall in love with seeing bruises, and has cut herself to kill too many times. It really is a blessing to her, a blessing in disguise for herself. Her favorites were always the black roses; she had fallen in love with them during our small road trip to Transylvania,” Taehyung’s eyes started to water, but his small, sincere smile said otherwise.

          Noting the flow of snow was raining down heavier than before, and the stream of waterworks that was about to occur, Jungkook stood up hastily, sweeping off any remnants of ice. He extended his hand with a polite invitation to his studio, and Taehyung gratefully let the other pull him up, and followed him back towards the concrete jungle.

          After an in-depth conversation that transitioned from a 10 minute walk to over a cup of coffee in Jungkook’s furnished studio, Jungkook learned to like Taehyung way easier than expected. The guy was carefree, and didn’t mind to laugh at the lamest jokes. As Jungkook started to save his newly acquired pictures into his thumb drive and laptop, he realized that Taehyung’s life was much more colorful than that of a regular person’s. A single father, two sisters, and no brothers. Taehyung was the middle child, and was not afraid to complain about it too.

          His childhood summers were always filled with his entire family camping out at the field, and they would spend a full month there camping in a tent, gazing at the stars that were in the now polluted sky. A pity, he would say, for the longer you stare, the more they would start to twinkle, till the whole galaxy seemed to be smiling down at you.

          His older sister, however, had a mental illness called schizophrenia. She could hear voices that did not exist, but that has proved to be both a blessing and a curse. Her calling to the seemingly endless Sahara Desert was prominent when she had reached the age of 29, and she was now currently living in the midst of it all, with her recently deceased husband.

          The voices had provided a sole consolation, and also inspired her to write about her journey into the Sahara. Her work, “The Story of the Sahara Desert”, had been booming in the literature industry, and her newly acclaimed style of writing, “wandering literature”, was achieving worldwide acclaims and praises. However, she donated all of the money to charity, saying that she had not deserved such claims and brushed it all off her humble life in the Sahara.

          His father had also contracted Leukemia, and had passed away last year. Taehyung had spilled into a small bout of depression, but his older sister had travelled all the way back from the Sahara Desert just so he could pull his socks up. Well, more like forcefully pulled him off his wet, tear-filled pillow and told him to “get your off the ground and do something with your ing life”.

          His sister had lived up a very abusive dorm life, and he had no current place to sleep at, if the park benches don’t count. Jungkook’s eyebrows shot up at that claim. “You mean you don’t have a home?” It was Taehyung’s turn to furrow his eyebrows.

“I do have a home,” he noted Jungkook’s face flatly, “Home is where the heart is. Without a hearth, there is no fire. Even on a matchstick, the small flame survives on the residue. Home is where my feelings harbor, and where I would go when I miss it. That field, you know, the one with the pretty stars?” Jungkook nodded. He had wholeheartedly hung onto every of Taehyung’s words and stories, even the ridiculous ones.

Taehyung’s eyes started wandering again. “To me, that’s home.”

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A/N: Please forgive me if you see any mistakes, this is my first time writing. Please don't be fraid to comment or suscribe~~~~ :)