PAPER HEARTS

33

Halfway through my packing and checking off the things on my to-do list for the day, I feel myself grow weak-headed. A headache throbs in the base of my skull as I rest a hand over the half-empty desk. It's crammed with a few papers and empty refills that I intend to throw into the pile of junk that's waiting to be taken out.

My phone chimes from beside me and a soft groan leaps out of my throat when I reach for it.

Household CEO
should I send someone over to
pick you up?

I can send Kevin if you need
help with the packing.

I roll my eyes, stowing it back onto the neatly made bed with a low resolution. I'm sour with frustration and my response may come off too wryly if I did send her one now. My mother has been nagging me about staying with her for a few days before leaving for New York, claiming that it would be a nice time to reunite and bond over a cozy Christmas weekend. Unsure of how that would go, I'd responded in a typical way in hopes of having my consent play its cards of reasonable.

With determination brewing on the inside and a bleak sense of motivation on the exterior, I heave the books that lay disregarded by the side of my desk before placing them over the bed.

I walked in with so little, but everything seems so much heavier now that I'm leaving.

Ryoko has been flooding me with her memes and that's the only action my phone has been seeing all week. I haven't talked to her about any of the events that have happened and I'm sure her fury could kill a barn.

And Taehyung.

We've come to the conclusion that breaking our relationship off would be the best alternative for my absence - I proposed it, of course, and all he could do was oblige.

"Friends." He'd announced before leaving.

I don't know for how long that's going to sit well with the both of us.

I'm panting when I reach my luggage. I have six bags that are close to exploding and I'm in a crisis of how handling them at the airport would work for me. Stepping over the cluster, my eyes graze through the interior of the closet to make sure I haven't missed something. If I did, it's going to stay as a freebie for the new tenant because I have no space to fit anything in, further.

When I reach the wardrobe, my ears perk up to the sound of the lock clicking open, and the squeak of the front door's swing.

I turn, eyebrows stitched and my heart jetting up for a marathon before allowing my adrenaline to pitch in. It's been a while since someone's scarred my paranoia for a lifetime.

"Taehyung," I grit when he stumbles in, unhooking the inside of his coat from the doorknob. "I told you not to do that."

His hair is a frizzy mess, and they fall over his eyes when he looks over at me. Taehyung dazzles me with a wide smile and his eyes nearly disappear under his fringe as he closes the door behind him and rubs his feet off against the doormat. 

"I thought I'd changed the passcode?" I huff, crossing my arms over my chest.

"You did," Taehyung rolls his eyes, grin expanding, "But it's still my birthday reversed, it isn't nuclear math, Jae."

"Right," I bite the inside of my bottom lip when he crouches over a little. 

I wait for him to take his shoes off, but a long pause follows before he shrugs it off and saunters in with an airy skip weighing each step. I didn't think he would cross my doorstep after yesterday - after having my antics ruining his mood for the thousandth time since we called us each others', and definitely not after I'd told him I would be breaking our hearts if this ever bloomed into an overripened form of itself.