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TAEHYUNG WAS FASCINATED, CAPTIVATED, BY THE CONCEPT OF THE BROKEN-the concept of and existence, the option, the mere fact that they were.
it's a strange-rather unhealthy-curiosity that he had, and the only excuse he had was his lack of exposure. but who would have thought?
in honesty, it depended on the person when it came to first appearances-some people saw the stories reflected in people's eyes, the memories engraved in people's hands, the prose written on their clothes. a lot of people noticed the hearts first, though, and taehyung never really understood why.
he grew up where there wasn't time time for broken hearts, wasn't a place-in all its severity, there were people who weren't broken but acted like it anyway.
but everything about that-every street he had passed, every friend he had made, every look in his mother's eyes-were forgotten when there was jeongguk.
jeongguk's heart wasn't gray, it was faded, it was offset, it was dim. at first it looked as though it were split right down the middle, but it wasn't as clean of a cut. its bottom edge was jagged and broke off to the left, and a piece of the back jutted out so you could see it from the front. usually, there were cracks (usually called aftershocks, or relapses) but taehyung didn't see any. he wouldn't have noticed, knowing him.
as for taehyung, he didn't have any cracks. a piece of hair or dust bore a resemblance to one, sometimes, and there was many a morning that he got up in a panic, thinking, naively, that something might have happened to cause it.
hearts shouldn't have been the only thing on his mind, because christ, jeongguk ate like an animal.
it was both amusing and terrifying to watch, taehyung stilled with his lips around his milkshake straw as he observed the somewhat out of character mannerism. they were sitting by the window at flowering nights, and after an awkward thirty minutes of waiting (taehyung's stomach growled-loudly-twice, and jeongguk didn't say a word but still) their number was finally called. jeongguk didn't even stop to admire the scenery before digging in with such aggression that taehyung couldn't help but stop, enraptured.
felt more human, though-in a way, taehyung was able to see something that jeongguk still had, even if it was just messy eating habits.
he handed jeongguk a napkin. jeongguk patted daintily at the corners of his mouth, and then continued eating.
taehyung's fingers curled in his pretty purple napkin, wanting to say something, but not being able to. he wanted to ask jeongguk about everything, where he lived and what he used to like, and who he used to be, and who made him this way.
