Spring. He wonders what it tastes like. He knows the smell of spring more than anything. He knows the look of spring better than his own room. But he never got to taste spring. He knew the sweet warm taste of summer. Summer tastes like strawberries, sweet and soft on his lips, Jungkook tasted like summer too.
He also knows the colourful taste of autumn. The long aftertastes of cinnamon and cranberries, he loves the taste of autumns he thinks as he slips his hands through the fallen leaves in the front garden. 
He only got to taste winter recently. It was the day of Jungkook’s accident. Winter tastes cold, with a hint of mint and vine. It’s a taste he learned to hate. 
But he never got to taste spring. Did it have a sweet aftertaste? Did it tickle his senses like the autumn taste does? Or will it leave him longing for more like the summer does?

It had only been 5 years since Jungkook passed away and he never gotten used to the taste of winter. It tasted wrong and he hated it. But after those years he still hasn’t gotten to taste spring.

---

Taehyung usually sat by the lake during summer. Looking at the water, noticing the small ripples as fish swam up to eat. He was happy like this, alone and breathing in the warm air. Soon autumn will come and the water will be filled with the late summer rains. Autumn doesn’t last long here and winter comes too soon. Leaving the lake with a cover of white and silver ice. Taehyung liked winter too. He would be able to cross the lake he watches over in the summer. He would be able to stand in the middle of it without sinking to the bottom. But he didn’t like winters, the air was cold and dry. There were barely children playing, scared by the cold breeze and heavy snowfall. In the summer the shallow parts of the lake were filled with laughter, children splashing around in the warm water. But there were less and less children by it in the past few years. Taehyung had heard there was an accident by it a few years ago. A young boy, fell in the water and had drowned. There were many rumours of it, some thought it was suicide, but Taehyung figured it was just bad really bad luck.

Still he went to the lake. He didn’t know when it started but at one point he started talking to it. Telling it his troubles, his wishes, his dreams. He knew it couldn’t understand him. Taehyung knew that. But there was a sort of comfort by talking to it. He wasn’t interrupted and it couldn’t answer back. But Taehyung was never lonely.

---

He didn’t know why, but he found himself standing at the place he last saw his best friend. He was staring over the water, peaceful and quiet. The air was still cold from the recent snowfall, even though it was already April. The taste of vine still on his tongue as the cold minty taste is long gone. 

He sits down on the rocks next to the lake. He remembers how Jungkook would climb onto them when he was 7 and Jungkook only 5, Jungkook had fallen off them and he’d been comforting him the entire day since it hurt. But he didn’t cry. Jungkook was always jealous at how he wasn’t able to shed a tear. Not while watching the Titanic for the first time when he was 11 and Jungkook only 9. He remembers Jungkook had sat in his lap crying until there were no more tears to be cried. But he never cried. Not when Jungkook died. Not at his funeral. Not the next year at the memorial. Not the next or the next after it.

---

Taehyung came to the lake once more. This time he said it would be the last time, the last time he told it his troubles, the last time before he would slip away from this town. Slip away from everything that held him back. Slip away to somewhere he could breathe again.

He started walking towards the side of the lake, the place where he always went to. It was the most calm and you could see all over the lake, and no one came there so he could sit alone. Today he wasn’t. There was a boy sitting on the rocks right next to where he usually sits. The boy didn’t look that much older than him, but there was an aura around him that didn’t say happiness. It looked darker than that, but not yet dark enough for it to be sadness.

Taehyung had always been able to see some things others couldn’t, his parents would tell him it was a gift, that some people are born with extraordinaire skills that differ from everybody else. There was no-one with the same kind of gift. And yet Taehyung had never met anyone with such gifts, he was always different from the others. But his gift, his skills he only recently had controlled was that he could see people’s feelings. It was hard to explain to others, every feeling looked somehow different from the other. For example, happiness looked fluttery, small yellow spark ignite from people’s hands, spreading to other’s hands and start a chain reaction of yellow sparks. He found it beautiful. Love on the other hand looked different from each person. He noticed his parents had the same kind of love, light pink and red lightening up their chests and pulsing beautifully in beat with each other.

But lately these colours had changed; they became more purple coloured than pink, and slowly started to stop pulsing in beat. Maybe he grew up.