‘What do you want to eat?’ Taemin smiled, his elbows on the counter, his chin pressed onto his hands, blinking at you. The childish innocence of this boy was sickly sweet, part of you wanted to reach out and pinch his soft cheeks, the other part wanted to get up and walk out.

‘I’ll just have some water.’ You heard your voice crack slightly and only a whisper came out. Taemin pouted.

‘I’m not going to poison you.’ He sighed, standing up straight and walking towards the fridge, pulling out a large glass jug of icy cold water. The thought of a drink right now felt like the only important thing, your head began to spin at the realisation that you’d been living off simply air for the last few days. You wanted to snatch the jug from his hands and drink it all at once, but you waited, fingers tapping on the slate counter as he poured you out a glass. He placed it in front of you and you downed the glasses contents in one, not opening your eyes and noticing the blonde haired boy pull a chair beside you, watching you with wide eyes. The water was ice cold as it washed down your throat and your head tensed up with brain freeze.

‘Ow…’ you shut your eyes tighter, taking a hold of your head, slamming the glass down on the table so hard it almost shattered.

Taemin smirked, even wanted to laugh. You opened your eyes slowly to the smiling expression that greeted you. ‘Do I amuse you?’ you snapped at him, your fingers coiling into a fist on your lap. This anger swelled in the pit of your stomach and you didn’t know why, but you felt too weak to release it.

He looked back at you with a sudden sadness in his dark eyes, before reaching out to your hair. His touch was soft and gentle, it was as if he was sending you to sleep, you felt your eyes shut but you didn’t really know why when your head was screaming at you to tell him to back off. After a few seconds however, your head overruled and your eyes flickered open and you grabbed hold of his wrist and threw it to his side. ‘Don’t touch me.’ You said through gritted teeth. Defending yourself from Taemin felt increasingly more difficult, but you had to try. You seemed to be forgetting you knew nothing about him or why you were here.

Taemin finally let out a sigh, and rolled his eyes. ‘You really don’t want to be here do you?’

Say no. Of course you didn’t want to be here. Not with this boy and his unpredictable outbursts of anger, his sudden kind and almost loving advances, those eyes that both enchanted and confused you. Of course you didn’t want to be here. So why couldn’t you just say that?

‘I…’ your eyes scanned around the room, not allowing yourself to look at Taemin right now. You didn’t know what you wanted. The more you tried to think about what was waiting for you on the outside, the less you could remember. Why had nobody come to look for you? Did anyone even care? You flinched a little every time it crossed your mind what Taemin was capable of, yet at the same time it felt as though he might just be the only one that still gave a damn about you. You shook your head. ‘I don’t know.’ You answered him quietly.

Taemin’s eyes lit up. ‘You don’t know?’

You looked back at him and shrugged. ‘We’re making progress.’ He smiled, clapping his hands together.

‘What do you mean?’ you glared back at the soft childlike features that seemed so vivid when he smiled.

‘Well, you were demanding to leave an hour ago.’

All you could do was look back at him perplexed, and as you thought back, he was right.

A/N: i just want to apologise for the extremely late update, i am not really much of a writer and gathering inspiration takes a lot of effort for me so i reached writers block with this fic and it's currently in the stage where i don't know what's going to happen so it's quite hard for me to update. if you have any ideas or suggestions for the direction of this story, please let me know, i need all the help i can get to keep this story running!