“Do you uh, want to come in?” she offered and stepped to the side so that he could enter.

“Thanks sweetheart.”

For goodness sake. Someone just kill me now.

Diverging wrinkles appeared at the sides of his mouth when he grinned. Jaehwa looked down at the floor quickly so that she wouldn't stare and he laughed lightly before stepping through the doorway to enter. She shut the door quietly so that she wouldn’t disturb her neighbours. He took his shoes off and lined them against the wall, then scanned his eyes around briefly. Jaehwa knew it was all furnished on a meagre budget, but to her it was full of more warmth than if she had owned a bigger apartment.

“Nice place you have here,” he complimented. She couldn't tell whether he was being truthful or just being polite.

“Sorry it’s a little cluttered, I don’t usually have many visitors.” 

“It’s cosy.”

She tried not to meet his eyes. “Do you want to sit down?” He nodded and seated himself on the sofa, placing the plate of rice cakes on the small table in front of it. Jaehwa sat down on the chair opposite and tapped her fingers on her arms. She had the urge to ask why he bought so much origami paper earlier, but it would've been rude to ask something tedious like that, and it wasn’t anything that affected her anyway. For all she knew, folding origami could've just been a hobby he was obsessed with, but it was still a little strange.

When she looked back at him, he was staring at her; the same dark, mesmerizing eyes that looked at her back in the library – and she was caught in their trap, her fingers stopped tapping and were motionless. The silence between them seemed to last for ages, and it was so quiet that they could even hear the revving of cars outside and the whirring of the electric fan. He was the one that broke eye contact first and he coughed abruptly. “So do you live by yourself?”

“Yeah.”

He pursed his lips together and drummed his fingers against his knee. Jaehwa's attention was now on the plate of rice cakes on the table and he caught her looking at them. “Do you want to try one?” he asked. She nodded. Taehyung pushed the plate closer to her and she picked one. While she quietly ate, Taehyung had occupied himself with a page of a magazine she ripped out earlier and was busily folding it into something. Again, she was awed at how skilfully he folded; his fingers were so precise, if only she had that kind of dexterity. Once he was done, he turned it round in his fingers and examined his creation with a critical eye.

“That’s amazing,” she said and stared – it was a rose. 

He held it out to her. “For you.”

“I, um...”

He gently planted the paper rose into the palm of her hand. He then slumped back into the sofa and gazed at the window. Jaehwa looked down at her hand where the rose was. 

A couple minutes of silence passed until Taehyung said something that she never would’ve thought he would mention; “I was in the army a few years ago. Before that, I had a girlfriend.”

She watched him as he continued to talk. He now had all her attention.

“I still remember the unreadable look on her face when I told her that I was enlisting. She cried for days, telling me to wait a few years, said I was still too young.”

“And you went?”

A melancholy look flitted over his eyes. “Yeah. And the sad thing was that I thought I was gonna marry her after I returned.”

You thought? 

“People change constantly. But that thought never really crossed my mind until after I finished those twenty-four months. I enlisted early becuase I wanted to get it over and done with so I wouldn't have to worry about it in the future. When she heard I came back, there was so much we needed to catch up on so we arranged a meeting together.”

“She told me,” he continued, “that during those two years she fell in love with someone else, she told me he proposed to her shortly before the end of my conscription. Now I haven’t seen her since. It was me that said to cut our connections with each other, and I wish I hadn’t.”

For the first time since Jaehwa met Taehyung, never had she seen that look in his eyes, their gaze was comparatively different to what it was at the library, a few minutes ago even; the glint they had revealed a world of darkness and even though he tried to hide it with a fake smile, one look told her everything; the hope of everything being the same when you came back, the ecstasy of the thought of returning back to normal life, but in the end, none of that happened. She saw a stray tear roll down his cheek. At that moment she felt indescribable sadness for Taehyung. Perhaps human eyes needed to be washed by their tears once in a while so that they could see a clearer view again, so putting a hand on his arm, she gave him a small, yet hopefully buoyant smile. She brought her arms around him and he tensed in surprise at the sudden hug, but a little later she felt his body relax. All that she could think of to comfort him was an embrace, and she wasn't sure if that was enough.

Jaehwa felt hot tears seep through her shirt. As he cried, she only cocooned him in her arms tighter. She didn’t care if she barely knew him, all she thought about was to console him, and at that moment she was sure he didn’t care either. It felt like minutes passed when they stayed like that.

When his tears began to subside, he looked up at her; his eyes lustrous and bleary. “Jaehwa, you smell really nice.”

She gaped down at him. If hadn't just cried just then she probably would've pushed him of her without hesitation. He strained a smile and involuntarily buried his face back into her shirt to hide his face. When he spoke, his voice was low. “You barely know me and I come at almost ten o’clock at night, tell you things that are personal to me and then I cry in front of you. The worst part of it all is that I’m a guy, an extremely sensitive one.”

Jaehwa scoffed. “So?”

“Stereotypically, the guy is supposed to be the comforter.”

“There can be exceptions.”

He shifted his position so that his head was resting comfortably on her lap. If she had been more awake, her impulses would have gotten to her and she would’ve pushed him away instantly, but there was something – something that stopped her from doing so. Perhaps it was the way he was looking at her; his expression forlorn and languid, or perhaps it was merely the sympathy she had for him. She wasn't sure. Or maybe she was just really, really tired. They both were.

“Thanks Jaehwa,” he said, and blinked up at her drowsily. She checked the clock; her eyelids were so heavy that her vision was too unfocused to be able to make a distinction between the minute and hour hand. Taehyung was breathing steadily and she assumed he was sleeping; he looked years younger, his eyelashes long and sombre. Gradually, her back slumped against the sofa and her eyes finally fluttered closed. Warmth and darkness enveloped her as she succumbed to the call of sleep.

*  *  * 

At some point during the night, she felt her body being carried and she opened one eye partially. Taehyung was looking down at her and a small smile played on his lips when he saw she was partly awake. “Taehyung?” Her eyelids continued to flicker sleepily. “What time is it?”

“Two a.m. - not time for you to be awake.” He was about to lay her down on the bed, but he stumbled and her head collided with the hard wood of the headboard when he tried saving a lamp from toppling over. 

“Ouch,” Jaehwa groaned. “That actually hurt.”

He adjusted the lamp to its upright position and rubbed the pink mark on the side of her forehead. “Sorry. That went a lot smoother in my mind.” Trying again, he laid her down carefully and sat at the foot of the bed.

Jaehwa huddled a pillow close to her, pressing her cheek against the soft material and shut her eyes. “Taehyung, will you stay?” What was she even saying? A lingering moment of silence passed as she waited for an answer.

“Do you want me to?” 

Jaehwa nodded absentmindedly and he shuffled closer so that he lay beside her, but she was still too tired to even care or open her lids again. Her eyes being closed gave her the chance to pay attention to his voice; it was so warm and comforting, it travelled her off to a land in which sound had the power to change everything wrong in the world.

“Goodnight sweetheart.”

A/n: The last chapter was where my dream stopped (when I woke up). I think you already know that males between the ages of 18-35 in South Korea have to do mandatory military service for around two years, depending which service branch you're in.