Bitter disappointment made its way down Jimin's throat as his eyes stared blankly at the laptop screen in front of him. The email displayed before him was one he was expecting but the content of it was what caused the blow Jimin was finding hard to swallow.

Another rejection was thrown his way from a publishing agency, along with apologies from the editor.

He tried to swallow the lump forming in his throat but because frustration had no way around it, only through it, he thought to let it wash over him before he could recover.

He leaned back against the wooden chair and brought his knee up to rest it against the side of the kitchen table to somehow block the light coming from the screen. It was the only light source as he was sitting in an otherwise dark kitchen while the world outside was enjoying the nightlife of Prague.

His love for playing the disappointed young writer surfaced and he moved forward to put his chin on his propped up knee and stared at the email some more.

The clinking of cutlery from upstairs disrupted his small party of self-pity for a second making him thank God that at least now he had a source of income rather than having to rely on agencies to accept his manuscripts for a publishing deal.

He was bent on trying out every possible way for earning money doing what he loved but so far he only met disappointment after disappointment, making him consider giving up for now and man up to look for a real nine-hours-a-day-job that would pay his bills.

He was fresh out of college with a degree in media studies-- a field he thought would come handy later in life with his far fetched fantasies about becoming a renowned poet but at the moment his degree was proving to be useless.

He hated the ball of emotions he became when he found himself helpless like that. Things were getting worse instead of better and he was the only one who saw his life falling apart.

He got up and shut his laptop plunging the kitchen into darkness. Grabbing his door keys and his jacket, he set out into the night deciding a run would shake some of the emotions away.

For him, running was capable of solving anything, be it writer's block or any other type of a letdown. If he ever thought to become a writer of self-help books, he would jot running as the medicine to anything and everything.

Once out under the night sky and the busy sidewalks, he let his feet take lead while his mind wandered through every thought he wanted to shake off, starting from the fact that he needed better inspiration for his work.

The girl from the bakery managed to fill up some decent amount of pages in his notebook but seeing her only twice wasn't enough for him. He had gone back the next morning to pay for his order hoping to find her but that also had been a disappointment for him as it appeared that she had vanished from the face of the planet.

It had been three days since he saw her for the first time but she hadn't returned to work again and he had already started to forget her features and it really seemed that she was nothing but a reverie to him.

His mind started playing around with their first encounter where she tried to scam him and his imagination turned that encounter into many more fateful meetings as a new story started to take form in his head.

It would make a lovely story, he thought but he was trying to steer clear of lovely and experimenting with more angsty setups recently and she didn't seem fit for a plot like that.

Her face wouldn't fit a description for an angst plot, he thought, because every time he wrote up a line describing her, he imagined the character to be the lead in a cliché romance rather than anything raw and original and painful.

His running halted on that thought when he saw that his night route was blocked by onlookers crowded to watch a marionette performance by a puppeteer.

Usually, he avoided such crowds because his wallet was stolen once by a pocket picker who took advantage of bodies crammed together to witness a street performance but this time the crowd was thin and he didn't even have his wallet with him.

He approached the little circle of people, drawn forward by the amusing music, and saw the old puppeteer sitting up on a chair while his adorable marionette danced in sync with the music as he skillfully moved the little wooden crossbars around in his hands. Strings attached to them pulled and pushed at various joints of the doll, making her come alive and buoyant.

The doll had red paint smeared on her wooden lips as if she tried to wipe off her lipstick and a crack drawn under one eye making her purposely look broken and melancholic.

She danced to the notes resonating from small speakers placed at the foot of the chair and even her skirt swirled in sync with her steps.

Jimin tuned out the familiar Czech song-- one he heard on the streets quite often and tried to listen in on to the remarks of the people around him.

Various accents and languages spoke words of admiration for the little show, expressing their awe at witnessing the sad story told only through dance.

Jimin smiled to himself, content at the fact that no matter what form of a culture he was surrounded by, art was still art in all its forms.

At last, the show ended earning loud cheers and applause from the audience and a few Bravos as the old man stood up to bow to everyone and Jimin joined in the applauding and the cheering, smiling widely at the enthusiasm around him.

The crowd started to disperse slowly and the puppeteer proceeded to collect coins in his hat from the few willing to give him any and Jimin rummaged through his pocket for some change to throw in the hat as well.

He turned to walk away but stopped when he saw her standing a bit far among the crowd.

She was tossing some coins between both hands as if they were sand, fisting her hand around them and letting them fall on the palm of the other and then fisting the second hand and letting them fall on the palm of the first, her eyes spaced out in deep thought.

The puppeteer approached her general direction and a few people around her tossed coins into the hat while she stood still, staring into the distance.

Jimin risked the chance and turned around for a second to look at what she was looking at and saw the marionette parched on the chair, her back slumped down as if she couldn't even carry the weight of herself, her face the picture of lost, broken and abandoned.

Jimin turned away from the doll to look at the girl who he saw had started walking to where the marionette was and tossed the coins in the little box beside her.

Jimin found this act strange and curiosity got the better of him, as it did quite frequently being the people watcher that he was, and he walked towards her.

As if she felt his stare on her back, she turned around and came face to face with Jimin, who was studying her with curious eyes.

Caught in the moment and shocked at their sudden encounter, Jimin forgot for a second what language he was supposed to address her in and English words flew out of his mouth.

"You paid the character, not the storyteller, isn't that unfair?" He asked putting his hands in his pockets.

She didn't answer and Jimin realized a second too late that she might not understand English and started rolling his tongue to get the right Czech words out but she cut him off.

"The storyteller made her pain look beautiful and people loved him for that," she said looking up at Jimin and he saw her eyes were swimming in tears. "But the moment he turned away, she went back to being the ugly doll that she was and no one spared her a glance."

Jimin froze.

Kazimir took this chance to study his features again. He reminded her of her home back in Korea where she grew up and that sudden thought along with everything else running through her mind pushed the tears over the brink of her eyes.

She wasn't having a good day, had just gotten fired from another of her part-time jobs for absences, Taehyung blew up in her face again for not talking to his mom and now she was dragged out of the house for an outing even though she told everyone she was running a fever and her right shoulder had a rhythmic ache that felt like someone was trying to cut the skin open with a dull, rusty knife, slicing back and forth, back and forth.

But you are always running a fever, Kazimir. But you always say no to going out. But you always have a headache. But you don't look sick, Kazimir. For God's sake, when would you grow up and stop making excuses.

The marionette just reminded her of herself, how her life had become a puppet show with everyone taking turns to be the puppeteer. Emotions balled up in her eyes in the form of tears and a lump in her throat.

She knew she was about to blow up and blow up pretty bad as was expected of anyone just before their infections flared up.

It was like pre-menstruation symptoms but worse in every way. Her joints would randomly start aching slowly and rhythmically while her emotions would intensify ten folds, pushing her to act on impulse which to be exact, were never rational impulses.

She was a marionette even to her own body, her own emotions and they reveled in pushing and pulling on her strings.

"Are you okay?" Jimin asked coming out of the trance of her words at the sight of the tears and that one statement pushed Kazimir over the edge.

Her frustration and grief turned to anger and she looked up at Jimin with a threatening stare, everything hitting her all at once.

"Why do you ask?" She mocked wiping rather furiously at her face with the sleeve of her shirt, "Is there something on my face that tells you I am not okay? Is there? Is that why you ask? And what do you want me to answer in return, huh?"

Jimin was taken back by her sudden outburst and opened his mouth to say something when she hit him square on the chest with her hands, an act of pure impulse.

"What do you want to hear? That it's getting better, right?" She asked hitting him again as more tears fell from her eyes.

"But what if it isn't? What if it's.... what if it's getting worse?" She asked, her voice disappearing completely at the end.

Jimin was confused and didn't know what to do at the complete stranger who had just voiced everything he had been wanting to scream at the world and when her hands came to hit him again, he just let her.

But instead of landing with force as they did before, her hands lost all their energy and came to rest gently on his jacket and she used his firmness to steady herself and took a step back, away from him.

Her shoulders slumped in defeat at whatever war she was fighting in her head and her tears halted.

Her posture along with her smeared lipstick from when she wiped at her face and the running mascara down one cheek made her resemble the marionette just then.

Her skirt the added element to complete the picture, except hers was a whole lot shorter.

She brought her hand up to clean the mess on her face all while Jimin didn't know what to do or say to her.

He looked from side to side, trying to form a question other than Are you okay, when someone grabbed her by the elbow, turning her around.

The guy looked furious as he looked her dead in the eye, his other hand holding his phone to his ear. He looked back at Jimin, eyeing him up and down and turned to walk away.

"I found her," he said into the phone, marching the girl with him and even though Jimin thought for a second she would throw him an apologetic glance, or any glance at all, she didn't.

Kim Minho dragged Kazimir to where the rest were waiting but once he turned the corner, he stopped to catch his breath.

Kazimir felt a pang of guilt at making her brother in law so worked up looking for her, but in her defense, she needed to get away from all of them for a minute. She just didn't realize she'd end up going so far.

"Are you okay?" He asked and Kazimir almost punched his face in.

"No." She said and his face contorted in confusion.

"Why, what's wrong? Did someone hurt you?" He asked searching her face. Looking for any signs of physical abuse, his eyes ran the length of her body, the sight of her skirt fueling his anger even more.

They both knew she wore it just to say Fuck you to him for dragging her out of the house against her will and Minho almost, almost, changed his mind and left her home. But he wasn't one to give up easily even if he had to walk around with her dressed up like a slut, as he had put it lightly earlier.

The Czech Republic was very well known for the cheapest beer worldwide and when the sunset, the streets were not safe for the likes of Kazimir anymore, especially when Minho already knew what kind of trouble she looked for.

When her family told her it was okay for her to move here along with Taehyung for college, she was ecstatic beyond believe for finally being able to take a breather away from their strict rules. But her freedom didn't last long when they all decided to move here as well after a while.

Soon after, Minho lost his shit at Taehyung after finding out that Kazimir used to go out pretty often at night all alone, and that once, she had even ended up in someone else's bed under the effect of intoxication.

Minho ate away at her ears demanding to know who was that asshole but Kazimir's lack of answer drove him over the edge.

She kept her mouth shut because she knew it was mostly her fault but that didn't stop Minho from shredding Taehyung's ears off as well with You were supposed to keep an eye on her.

"I have a fever," she repeated for the thousandth time that day, waiting to see who would believe her.

He rolled his eyes at her answer because since her diagnosis, her temperature would really rise and fall abruptly all the time and she complained about it so much that everyone stopped believing her.

Minho lifted his hand to place it against her forehead, checking her temperature.

"It's normal, Kazimir."

Kazimir looked up at his hand on her forehead and lifted both her hands to take it away and put it exactly where the fires were raging-- her right shoulder that is, but as soon as her fingers made contact with his skin, he flinched back.

Both looked at each other and Minho cleared his throat and started walking away.

"Asshole," Kazimir whispered following him and keeping a decent distance between them, contemplating and weighing the idea of moving out for real this time.

Being in the same house as the Kim brothers was driving her crazy. One was after breaking a relationship that didn't even form yet and the other was avoiding her like the plague to cover up his pathetic thoughts because no matter how much he degraded her with his words for being a lot more open-minded than Naomi, he secretly wished his wife was a lot less conserved and more like Kazimir.

After a minute Minho turned around to make sure she was following him and Kazimir took the chance to talk to him.

"What if I move out?" She asked switching her bag from her aching shoulder to the other, even though she knew the second would soon start a war against her as well. The flare-up had already begun, and all she could do now was to wait for the infections to wreck as much havoc as they desired and leave whenever they deemed fit.

"Where would you go?" Minho asked, clearly mocking her decision.

"Anywhere."

"And do you plan on paying for rent with what? You can't even keep a proper part-time job,"

That's because my body needs rest all the time. She thought.

"I don't know. I just hate to become more of a burden for you and Eonnie." She said feeding his ego because technically he paid for their rent.

"Isn't that the most sensible thing you've said all day?" He mocked again and Kazimir almost ran away then and there.

She contemplated answering but a sensation similar to metal scraping against metal shot through her shoulder suddenly, rendering her speechless.

It really is bad this time. Really bad. She thought trying to move her shoulder as little as possible.

"Let's say," she began slowly after a minute, trying to ignore her pain, "I take up a job working from home, then...." She left her questions hanging as something like a handcuff tightened around her right ankle, taking her breath away.

Fuck you, she hissed at her body.

"What kind of job would that be? That you think you would ace at?" Minho asked as he finally caught sight of the rest waiting for them.

Writing, Kazimir thought.

When Jimin returned home that night, he ripped up all the pages where he had described her as someone whose beauty was worth dying for.

Instead, he started scribbling a scene where a marionette ran away from her puppet show to take shelter at a young man's home. She wasn't good with names because she was never taught how to say anyone's name except her puppeteer's and so, he trained her to call him the storyteller.

He wrote about how the storyteller saw her with her broken strings, trying to move and live without the support of the crossbar controlling her and how he fell in love with her pain.

But that's where Jimin's inspiration ditched him.

Jimin wanted to find this girl, and write her story. He wanted to make her pain look beautiful.

Because 'The storyteller made her pain look beautiful