*~*Chapter 19*~*

I made my way up the steps to the porch, shifting my backpack to one side as I bent down to enter the passcode for the door.

“I’m home!” I called as I stepped inside. It felt weird announcing my arrival after so many weeks of quietly leaving and entering, but after last night, I felt like RM and I had taken a huge step towards becoming close.

Silence greeted me as usual.

“RM?” I asked as I headed up the stairs. His bedroom door was wide open. Something felt strange. 

I stopped short when I noticed the sunlight streaming in through the window and splashing across the floorboards, spilling into the hallway. RM never once left his curtains open since I’ve known him.

I peered into the room and gasped. His bedroom was completely empty. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture or clothing anywhere in sight. Even the curtains were missing. That was when I realized it: with everything gone, I could no longer smell the rancid stench of B.O. that had embedded itself into everything it had touched.

A clang from the piano room caught my attention.

“RM?” I called as I dashed to that room. I froze in my steps when I reached the doorway. The ramshackle piano room that I knew, with shredded wallpaper and broken landscape paintings strewn across the floor, was no more. Instead, the room was now empty with no signs of dust or a single shred of paper. Even the grand piano was pushed all the way to the back wall, and it laid covered under a tarp. All the floor-to-ceiling curtains were also gone from the windows.

A slender man stood with his back to me in front of the wall between two of the floor-to-ceiling windows. He was dressed in dark blue jeans and a charcoal t-shirt, and his short, dark brown hair was cut unevenly in places. The refreshing smell of soap filled the room, mixed with the scent of fresh paint. In his hand, he held a large paint roller. Next to his feet was a paint tray filled with golden yellow paint.  I noticed that a matching paint stain was smeared across the back of his right leg, as if he had accidentally brushed the paint roller against it.

“RM?” I asked, my voice coming out as a croak.

The man turned around. He looked about ten years younger than the RM I knew. His face was clean shaven, and his plump cheekbones gave him a round, child-like appearance. His eyes were a soft brown, and they gazed at me quizzically, probably the exact same way I was looking at him, as if asking ‘who the heck are you?’

“Who are you?” I asked before I could even keep the words from escaping my mouth. “Where’s RM?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” a deep, familiar voice answered.

My heart leapt into my throat. Tingles pricked my cheeks and ears. “R—RM?” I rasped, my voice barely above a whisper. My heart pounded; the sound of my thudding heart resounded in my ears. This clean cut version was unnerving me: RM was unrecognizable without his mop of stringy hair or overgrown facial hair. “Where—What—Why—” I stammered as a million questions flooded my mind. 

“Do you mind helping?” he asked without missing a beat, nodding towards a second paint roller on the tray. Without another word, he turned around and went back to painting the wall.

I dropped my backpack at my feet and stepped into the room, stunned. 

As I grabbed the second paint roller, he asked, “Shouldn’t you get changed first? You don’t want to ruin your clothes.” He gestured to the paint stain on his jean leg as if to say, ‘see?’

“All my clothes are disposable,” I replied, still completely flabbergasted, and rolled the paint roller over the yellow paint in the tray.

Silence fell over us.

I looked back at him, gazing at the slender arm rolling the paint roller up and down. My eyes quickly went to his knees, but with the jeans on, I couldn’t tell if his knees were bandaged or not.

Am I dreaming all of this?

I continued to stare at him, mouth agape, unable to come to my senses.

He looked over at me. The sudden eye contact in close quarters sent a wave of heat across my face, and I quickly averted my eyes.

I must be dreaming.

I reached over and pinched myself on my right arm. “Ow!”

He glanced at me. “What are you doing?” he asked. I thought I saw a spark of amusement in his eyes. Pretty sure I heard a hint of delight in his voice too.

“Nothing,” I mumbled and started painting again. A couple of minutes passed before I asked, “I just can’t tell if this is a dream or not… Am I dreaming or something?”

He snorted. “It’s not a dream.”

“How can I believe you? I need proof.”

With a sigh, he set down his paint roller and pulled up one leg of his jeans to reveal a bandaged knee. “Is this proof enough?”

I gulped and nodded. He dropped the leg of his jeans and went back to painting. I set my paint roller against the wall again and rolled it up and down. We continued to paint in silence.

A few minutes later, he said, “When I went out last night, so many people stared at me. I could hear them whispering behind my back…”

I slowed to a stop. I looked back at him, studying this RM who wasn’t quite RM standing in front of me.

“They were talking about how I smelled…” He lowered his arm, letting the paint roller dangle dangerously close to the floor. He gazed down at his feet. “They thought I was a homeless person. The shopkeeper kept an eye on me the whole time, like I didn’t have money and was going to steal something.” He sighed and looked up at me again. “I didn’t realize how bad I had gotten. You and Jung Kook always tolerated me.”

I gulped. In a way, we did enable him to continue living in filth. 

“Would you have showered if we told you, you stank?” 

RM suddenly laughed. It was the first time I had ever seen or heard him laugh. I watched as his eyes crinkled up in the corners, and his whole face lit up. His laughter was deep and warm. It felt like getting hugged by a giant fuzzy teddy bear.

“Probably not,” he said at last.

I couldn’t help but smile. “You know, I like this.”

“What?”

“Talking to you.”

He looked at me for a long time before he spoke. “I like this too,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I like having you around.” He gave me a small smile.

My face flushed. I tried to focus all my attention on rolling the paint roller up and down in long . “Yeah, but you gave me such a hard time when I first came here,” I whined.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” he apologized as he returned to painting. “I just hated the idea of Jung Kook forcing someone into my personal space.”

“Yeah, I get it; I would hate it too.”

“You know, you weren’t the first girl Jung Kook brought here.”

“Yeah, he mentioned that when he first told me about the job. He said you threw out all the other girls,” I said with a chuckle. “I wonder, what made me so special?”

RM stopped and looked at me.

“What?” I asked, glancing at him.

“You should be careful.”

I stopped painting and looked at him. “With what?” I asked. “Jung Kook?”

He didn’t answer as he went back to painting. “Love is never what it pretends to be.”

I knew he was speaking from experience, but I couldn’t help myself as I said, “Well, I think it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.” 

He shrugged.

I studied him, knowing what his heart wanted to say, but he didn’t bother to say any more. We continued painting in silence. It took us over an hour to finish painting the piano room. By then, the sun was creeping towards the horizon. We both stepped back and admired our work.

I took in how the setting sun set the room ablaze with a warm, golden hue. 

“I like this color,” I commented. “It makes the room look really warm and inviting.”

“It kinda reminds me of you.”

I looked at him in surprise. He refused to meet my eyes as he admired the color.

“I was really angry when you first came here,” he confessed. “But as time went by, I started getting used to your presence. You mostly kept to yourself, but always made sure to take care of me too.” He looked over at me, smiling meekly.

“I was just doing my job," I said as I attempted to brush off the compliment.

“And I’m really sorry about yesterday,” he said, gesturing to my injured arm. “I was just so out of it when I saw…her…” His voice grew soft. Tears immediately welled in his eyes. He cleared his throat and looked away. “I always swing between hating her and missing her so much; I felt like I was going crazy.”

“Well…you did, in a way.”

“I did, didn’t I?” A faraway look drifted across his eyes.

I reached out and gently touched his arm. He looked at me, snapping back to reality, his eyes wide with surprise at my touch.

“I’m here if you ever want to talk about it,” I said softly.

He shook his head and looked away again. “Last night was enough.”

The events from last night drifted back to mind. I remembered the way he buried his face into my chest as he cried. I remembered the way the heavy sobs wracked his body, the flood of tears that soaked into my shirt. And the only thing I could do then was cling onto him to let him know that I was there.

“Thank you, Kyungi.” With that, he turned around and made his way out of the room.

“Wait, RM!” I chased after him. “How about we get changed and go out for dinner? I’m hungry, and I’m pretty sure you are too. And you know I’m a terrible cook.”

“You sure are.” I could hear a hint of teasing in his voice.

“Hey! You’re supposed to lie and say that my cooking isn’t that bad!” I retorted.

“Okay; it isn’t that bad.”

I scoffed. “You’re not supposed to lie after I tell you what to say.”

He turned around abruptly, almost causing me to bump into him, a smile on his face. “So where should we go?” he asked.

“I know just the place,” I replied with a giant grin.