That One Summer 《 Vmin 》

Chapter 48

A/n: Idk about anyone else, but listening to BTS love urself album has become a ritual for me like freakin go go is my hype song and dimple is my slow body role song. The whole album destroys me.

Taehyung's POV

I stand motionless, staring through the lit translucent panes that have lingered more vividly in my head today than anything else, my gaze gradually ascending up at the dimmed little sign hanged above the wooden door frame.

This is the place.

Softly, I close my eyes as I inhale and let a deep breath escape my lips, trying to find a little confidence in my depthless sack of social anxiety.

It's unsettling.

How others make me so anxious about myself, how adults scare me with their superior labels; how humans criticising silently with their judgmental eyes like it makes a difference from verbally saying it to my face; like a plague.

I don't like it. I don't like the feeling I gain from it. I don't like the looks they always give. Except for Jimin's mom that I've become more open with, there's always that gaze that forces you to shrink into a bacterial speck. My mother did without a reason, I bet strangers are the same.

Thats why there's nothing I'd love to do more than to be invisible to certain people that I'd prefer didn't know of my existence; just having the ability to turn a dial and all the bonds I'd longed to burn will shrivel up and disintegrate.

Because I know when I walk in Ill have to communicate with a stranger to find what I want, my legs do not feel to leave this spot.

Because I know that I'll have to look another in the eye and use words that I'd prefer to keep locked up, my throat has become stiff with my eyelashes gluing themselves together.

But because I know all of this will make me the most uncomfortable I'd ever be in my life, is the reason that  I cant let my fear of others get in the way of what I want.

I want to get something for him; For his past birthday that means my everything, because he's already given me so much that I could never fully repay.

So gently, I push open the elegant white door to the little store on the corner, my nerves literally wrapping around lungs as I feel the gush of cool air sweeping through the a crack of the opening that I'm making bigger.

A loud chime rings from a small bell when I fully open the door, alerting someone for away that I had entered their beloved store.

The unexpected chirp of the petite musical instrument startled me quite badly, making me flinch harshly as an uncomfortable sensation starting to run through me chest because of it.

A hardy chuckle emits from the back of the absent store, quickly drawing my complete attention to it with an alarmed gaze.

Positioned behind the check out counter was a fairly older man with a soft but intimidating presence to him, his eyes on only me since no one else was there to share apart of it with me.

"Jumpy ain't we?" he humorously ask in a gentle tone, his voice having a thick foreign accent mixing with his vocal cords; a curious smile resting on his mouth as he sets down the newspaper he was reading before I disrupted it with my presence. "Does everything scare you young lad?"

His question doesn't make it to my brain in order for it to decipher for my understanding, a blank stare and wordless reply coming from me. I watch cautiously at the man behind the counter which blocked me from seeing the rest of his boy from the stomach down.