02 brewing feelings

Taehyung had not known about his curse at the time of his mother’s passing.  He had a feeling but there was no real confirmation.  However, as his dad brought him up, the visions had kept coming and with each passing day, he felt like he was slowly killing his dad off. 

It began with small things like his dad tripping over a stone and twisting his leg or his sleeve would catch on to fire and burn his arm slightly.  He had first thought that maybe he was just able to predict the future and that what he saw was already predetermined.  But he couldn’t deny feeling the severity of each accident increasing over time.

The accidents were also all timed perfectly to every time him and his dad interacted, which was often since Taehyung loved holding hands with his dad as a child.

So, Taehyung made his best effort to avoid skin-to-skin contact with his dad.  It was easy in the winter because he would pretend to complain about the cold and wore gloves all the time.  And all the accidents stopped.

And that was when for the first time, Taehyung truly realised that he was cursed.  And that it had been him who had accidentally killed his own mother. 

He knew that his father knew something was off as well.  His father never said anything but, he had slowly avoided staying too close to Taehyung and Taehyung could never erase the look of fear in his father’s eyes when he had one day reached out to straighten his shirt for him.

He had been the most anti-social during that one-year period.  He had even ignored Irene all the time.  But Irene didn’t care; she walked to and from school with him everyday and talked to him when he didn’t say a single word. 

When he finally was able to make peace with his mother’s death, his father’s increasing detachment and turned to look at Irene properly for the first time in a long time, he saw that she was smiling back at him.

“Why are you smiling?” His 11-year-old self had asked her.

“Because you finally came back.  I’ve been waiting.” She had said, her voice triumphant. 

“I’m sorry…” Taehyung had mumbled.  He was still a kid back then.  He didn’t know what to say.  He had never told Irene about his powers.  He was scared she would run away.  And she was the one he wanted to keep by his side.

“You don’t apologise.  You didn’t do anything wrong.  You should be doing something else instead.”  Irene had said, her hands on her hips.  She was growing lot faster than Taehyung was back then and height was still on her side.  Taehyung had wondered when he would ever grow to be as tall as her.

“What should I be doing?”  He had asked quietly.

“You should be saying ‘thank you for staying by my side’ you silly doofus,” Irene had said back, grinning showing the gap where one of her front baby teeth had fallen out and was beginning to show a peak of her adult teeth.  “And then I would have said, your welcome Tae.”

That may have been the first pang he felt.  The first accumulation in his pot of feelings he was slowly and unconsciously brewing for her.

- - -

If there were any humiliating moment that Irene wanted to completely erase from her high school memories, it would have been when she lost a bet to Taehyung.  But for Taehyung, it was one of his most treasured memories of Irene even if it was also one of the more painful ones.

High school Taehyung had already grown and finally surpassed Irene with his tall legs and broad shoulders.  He was no longer the scrawny little boy who was shorter than his best friend Irene.  Irene on the other hand had grown from a pretty little girl to a slender girl with delicate features. 

“Oppa~” Irene had called out to Taehyung in the most high-pitched voice she could manage.  She was struggling to take out the disgusted look on her face as she called out to Taehyung.

It was the exact type of girl Irene hated, those who used their cuteness to win guys over.  She had cringed internally for having to call Taehyung that of all people and tried