"I'm fascinated by everything you do. Your smile, your touch, your laughter. Believe me or not, I have spent my entire life waiting for this moment."
"Was I in your dreams?"
"I rarely sleep. My mind has this scary capability of being dark and twiste...
"Some people are just born with tragedy in their blood."
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"Step-uncle, to be exact." Taehyung clarified.
"Oh, yes," my mother giggled girlishly, a sound that didn't suit a woman her age. "Taehyung is Julian's brother."
I stared at the tall man observing me calmly, waiting for my reaction. He was wearing the same eerie smile he had inside that church, with the corner of his lips tugged upwards tightly and his widened, unblinking eyes riveted to me.
"Then why have we never heard of you before?" I questioned.
My mother let out the loudest gasp of outrage ever, her cold eyes narrowing to slits as her long diamond earrings shook with the disapproving quivering of her head.
"Valerie!" she scowled. "When have I taught you to be so ill-mannered!"
"It's quite alright," Taehyung soothed, his voice polite and monotonous. "It's because these last years I've been doing some traveling. You see, as I was telling your mother, I'm a historian and my work demands that I travel a lot to various historic destinations. Just last month we've been on an expedition to explore a region of Egypt that we have enough reason to believe might be hiding a previously undiscovered tomb."
The way he talked and explained was so smooth and eloquent. He truly was a charmer and my mother seemed mesmerized with him. He had the twinkle in his eyes and his voice was as warm as dripping chocolate.
"How wonderful," my mother uttered as her fingers toyed with her pearl necklace. "You're the polar opposite of Julian. He was always hiding in his office, working and working. He wouldn't even agree to a walk in the woods." Her lips curled into an unpleasant pout.
"He would agree with me." I interjected blankly.
"That's because you two had your creepy bonding time," my mother grimaced before turning to Taehyung. "Although he wasn't her biological father, Julian and Valerie were very close. They would often go to trips and return with some sort of a dead animal in the truck of his car. He would teach her how to shoot."
"That is a very valuable skill." Taehyung remarked, staring intently at me. There was something in the way he was watching me, something wrong. Like he's doing so much more than taking my form in like others do.
"Sometimes I'd think she preferred his company over mine." My mother sighed deeply.
"Oh, I hardly believe that's true," Taehyung said. It seemed like he was talking to her, but he was staring straight at my face.
"Please excuse me for a minute." I uttered flatly, stepping away from the bubble of devoid pleasantries the two of them had formed around them.
"Where are you going?" my mother asked right away, just as I expected.
