Kazimir chewed on her lower lip, waiting for the page on her browser to load while she twirled her pen around her fingers. Her notebook was open on a blank page with just one sentence jotted at the top in her elegant calligraphy.

Things to ask the doctor.

It had been two days of hibernating in her room since the day her eye had swollen up and the shock of it being something she was always scared of forced her into the confines of her four walls to try to get her thoughts together. She hadn't expected the process to take two days but her mind had really been giving her a hard time.

She skipped school owing to her sick leave and only made an appearance outside her room when she was sure Taehyung was at the campus but now she really had to come out of her little cocoon because she had an appointment at the hospital to replace the bandages on her stitched wound.

Once she had overcome the basic shock of having slept with Taehyung, she was able to move forward with ease. Though his conversation with Minho pulled at a few strings in her head every now and then, she was sure it wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

She thought Taehyung might have had an emotional episode afterward and thoughts like maybe he had hurt her only consumed his mind because he felt guilty at what he'd done but Kazimir still didn't understand what he was trying to throw at.

She wasn't too experienced herself but she had enough experience to know how she liked it and that's exactly what Taehyung gave her.

Although most of his ruthlessness was wasted on her because she barely felt anything over the throbbing joint pain that was coursing her body at the time but at least she could say she had a good time if she ever got past the embarrassment of having asked for something like that.

Merely recalling the actual deed without all the negative emotions around it was making Kazimir squirm in her chair with an added heat that was starting to reflux through her nerves in waves.

Emotional imbalance had pushed her to cry over it in the middle of the street and she had even stupidly enough chopped off her hair in the heat of the moment and made a fool out of herself by walking around in blood-stained clothes but now that she had enough alone time to asses through her emotions to get to the actual act, she wished she hadn't been so drunk on emotions to at least savor every last ounce of what she thought was the best sex she had in a long time.

She had mindlessly started wondering whether she would ever get to live an experience that would outshine Taehyung's angry performance anytime soon because though she was bitter at the fact that he ditched her for being a sick person, she couldn't help but grow needier for his touch now.

I've already lost everything, my self-respect topping the list. So it wouldn't really matter anymore if I asked for it again, would it? She tried to reason with herself reminiscing the leftovers of a dream she had woken up from in the morning that had left her hot and bothered and that mainly featured Taehyung's merciless mouth and a set of her muffled moans.

She put her phone down, the page she was waiting to load still unloaded, and had a sudden urge to pull her shirt up and look at the bruises Taehyung had left behind.

They made a little constellation of love bites on her torso, something like a path to follow with her fingertip from the crook of her neck to the waistband of her shorts where they disappeared and appeared again on the other side and continued on the inside of her right inner thigh where they finally disappeared for good with slight indentations a few inches above her knee that could not be anything but teeth marks.

A heavy sigh pushed its way past her lips and she leaned back against her chair and slid over slightly so that her head could rest against the end of it with ease as she looked up at the ceiling of her room.

A poem started to form in her head about ways certain fingers could play the perfect notes on the strings of her to create a tune resembling the one played by morning breezes, that sing of nostalgia and forgotten words but evergreen feelings that defy time. A tune that wiped away the word stop from her vocabulary because she wanted it to keep playing forever.

Taehyung faced a blank canvas but his eyes were trained ahead of him, towards the far end of a room bustling with students and to the very right. There he saw a girl smiling and laughing with a friend, her metallic golden curls bouncing with every tilt of her head as if they were never introduced to gravity and her smile reaching her eyes just enough to rob Taehyung of his breath.

Her signature magenta lipstick against her honeyed complexion was a color combination Taehyung breathed for somedays and other days, it knocked it right out of his lungs.

Sometimes when Taehyung wanted to paint her, he had a strange urge to connect the freckles littered on her nose and cheeks to see which constellation her face had hidden in plain sight for the ones who lost their all for the stars and other times, he just ditched the idea of running a paintbrush over a canvas and instead traced them with his fingertip.

He had warm feelings for the Italian student, not enough to declare he was in love but enough to be aware he was infatuated to the point he paid a heavy price for a freedom he thought would help him love her the way she had always deserved to be loved.

Openly and passionately.

His freedom did not come easy and now that he was headed right where he always wanted to be, he couldn't help but feel butterflies like he was a teen with a crush ready to take the world head-on for the sake of his dream as well as the one who shared it with him.

He hadn't seen her in a few days and he couldn't wait for class to be over so that he can walk up to her with lighter steps, steps not bearing the burdens of his kindness as a golden band on his finger.

Taehyung had always felt like he was carrying a burden whenever he found himself even remotely interested in anyone because though his engagement was announced recently, its shadow had been looming around him since the day Kazimir stepped into his life.

He knew his fate was intertwined with Kazimir's but deep down he prayed that one day his parents would wake up and call the whole thing off and till that happened, he made sure to be kind to her because mere kindness is all he had to offer. But things overturned resulting in everyone misunderstanding his kindness for something else.

He looked at the blank canvas and closed his eyes briefly and inhaled one long breath and held it in long enough for a fast-forwarded montage of his newfound freedom to play in his head.

He saw himself taking out every ounce of anger he had towards Kazimir, his family and his circumstances in one brief moment under the veil of darkness and over the exposed skin of the one he swore he would never touch, followed by his guilt overriding him to depths of hell itself because he had turned deaf ears to her pleas, followed by his talk with Minho about it, followed by an instance where Kazimir set his mind free with the two words 'it isn't', followed by a small clip of him taking all his essentials and heading to Jimin's house for his promised rental-writing deal.

He exhaled finally. He was free.

He hadn't seen Kazimir since that day though and he thought she didn't show up for classes the past days but he couldn't be sure since they had classes in different buildings.

While he was pouring treasures upon treasures for his major which was the most expensive art program in all of Czech, Kazimir was majoring in social sciences, a choice no one in their family understood till the present day.

Everyone thought she would major in English Literature or Language arts like it was second nature to expect of her but yet again, she managed to get away with something that had no explanation.

It wasn't even like she was in any way interested in what she was studying. Sometimes it appeared to Taehyung that she took the major just for the fun of self-torture just like every time she refused to take proper medication.

Taehyung dismissed the thought and pulled his attention back to his present predicament. He had planned to do everything in his being to get his dream job in New York and the plan mainly consisted of steering away from any attachments that would have to be left behind. And the plan was simple, no attachment to Kazimir or any other girl.

That is until he found out that Eleanor's application for the same job got accepted as well. They shared the same dream and were headed in the same direction and his heart was driving him crazy knowing he would finally ask her out despite beating himself up about his no-dating-until-career-is-rolling agenda.

Eleanor just had that kind of effect on him and he didn't want to lose her because of his fear of being glued to a relationship. Eleanor was different, she understood his passion for art and he knew she would share the same view about relationships. The view that if it was getting in the way of dreams, it would have to be left behind.

Once the class ended, Taehyung walked to his source of sunlight beaming from ear to ear.

"Hey Eleanor," he said intertwining his fingers through hers and shamelessly pulling her away from the circle of people around her and out the class.

Eleanor let herself be pulled, Taehyung's contagious smile getting the best of her and she followed along silently, trying not to let her own smile rip her cheeks.

"So," Taehyung said finally rounding the corner into an almost empty corridor and facing her.

"So?" Eleanor repeated looking up at him and his sudden but definitely welcome burst of joy.

"What are you doing tonight?" He asked placing his hands flat on the wall on either side of her head and tilting his head to look at her sideways.

"Why?" Eleanor asked keeping eye contact but she knew her eyes would eventually wander down to stare at his prominent Cupid's bow remembering the wonders it could do.

"Because there is a place just around the corner, an amazing architectural structure I might add, which just happens to be something this girl I know is dying to see from the inside. And..." he murmured leaving his sentence unfinished to read Eleanor's expression when her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open.

"And?" She prodded jumping a little on the heels of her feet.

"And let's just say I happen to have passes for tonight's event. So I need your help to convince her to say yes because otherwise, I would look like a fool." Taehyung finished leaning closer and closer until he said the last words directly in her ear, the bridge of his nose flattening down the otherwise always bouncing curls.

Eleanor's nerves jolted, unable to contain the overload of electric currents both his words and actions were inducing inside her, making her eyes flutter closed for a moment before snapping open when his lips pressed down on the shell of her ear.

Kazimir inspected her reflection one last time to make sure she didn't look too out of it as she eyed her outfit up and down. She decided to wear a loose teal button up and khaki capris, both of which were hand-me-downs from Naomi and seeing that she didn't look like she committed fashion suicide, she gave herself a small smile.

Her pain levels were treading on the low for that particular day. Her left pinkie toe, ankle, knee, hip, shoulder and wrist were all aching but not enough to make her stay in bed.

Her pain was like the waves crashing unto the shore, somedays the tide was calm and other days it was strong enough to erode rocks. But whether calming or crashing, it was always there.

She looked at her lifeless hair laying over one shoulder and decided to put it up since she would be expected to do so at the hospital anyway. She rummaged through her school bag to take out the hair clip she carried around everywhere and once she found it, she held it between her teeth while her hands went up to gather all her hair as her eyes looked at her reflection.

When she was satisfied that the bun she was creating was in the middle, she grabbed the clip from between her teeth and pressed it open but before she could secure the it over bundle of gathered hair, the clip slipped from between her fingers snapping shut, startling her in the process.

She shrieked first out of shock and then because the clip landed square on her foot but it took her a second to assess what really happened.

She ignored both the clip and the hair which had now tumbled down over her shoulders again and instead started inspecting her right hand and running her left fingers over the knuckles of the middle, forefinger and the ring finger of the right.

She didn't know what was it exactly because claw clips often slipped out of pressed fingers but this time Kazimir could tell something wasn't right.

She opened and closed her hand into a fist several times trying to see if she could still feel it working and it was functioning perfectly. Well as perfectly as her dysfunctional joints let it be but Kazimir was irked for a reason she couldn't pinpoint.

"Ready?" Minho asked knocking on her door and Kazimir was startled back into reality.

"Y-yeah." She called softly while bending down to pick up the clip and giving it a few testing tries to make sure what she imagined wasn't true.

Though both her hand and the clip worked just fine, she couldn't help the dark uneasy feeling from forming in her stomach.

She picked up her phone and the folded piece of paper with her questions for the doctor and threw them inside her bag and just before she left her room, she also picked up the clip for good measure and threw it alongside her phone, leaving her hair down.

She raced out the front door and down the stairs knowing Minho hated waiting when Naomi was late for an appointment but when she reached the car, she was met by a surprise.

"Where's Naomi?" She asked opening the passenger side door to ask Minho who was already seated behind the wheel with the seat beside him empty.

"We were already late so the doctor left." Minho explained starting the engine. "Get in or you'll be late too."

Kazimir grumbled a response of dissatisfaction and got in slamming the door shut with force.

"Just break it already." Minho suggested rolling his eyes.

He extended his hand to place it behind her headrest and turned around to see the way as he backed out of the parking place while Kazimir pulled at the seat belt to secure it around herself but it didn't click into the buckle right away.

After two failed attempts of pushing the metal tongue rather forcefully into its designated place, Minho's hand appeared in her view where he snatched it out of her grasp and clicked it into his seat buckle instead.

"That one's broken. You see that?" He asked and Kazimir looked down to see him pointing at the red button of her buckle but all thoughts vanished from her head as she stared at the long lean finger.

She looked away immediately as Minho started droning on about what was wrong with the button, his hand now flailing around as if he was explaining celestial facts to a student but all Kazimir could think of was just how much Minho's hand resembled Taehyung's.

Her eyes followed his hand, her ears drowning out his voice to make room for sinful memories to start playing again in her head, reminding her just how heavenly it had gotten when someone's similar hands tried drawing little hells over her.

Her cheeks flamed up and her hand instinctively started to run through her hair to get rid of the thoughts.

Minho looked sideways to glance at her in the middle of his rambling to make sure she was listening but he remembered something else at seeing her uncomfortable like that.

"So uh- I suppose you and the writer are still something, right?" He asked because the slightly fading hickey was really giving him a sense of ease.

All he wanted to know was that it wasn't another repeat of her reckless behavior with a drunk lad but instead a genuine mark of an unstable relationship because though instability wasn't perfection, it at least had the potential to speak for itself and give itself a label.

A relationship, Minho thought trying to keep his expression in check but he couldn't help the smallest ever butterflies in his stomach from fluttering around because a relationship meant she was at least letting someone in.

With Kazimir, it was nearly impossible to expect any type of investment in a commitment because she acted like befriending people was the most absurd thing the universe had ever come up with. But after spending five years with her in the same house and seeing how she interacted with Taehyung and everyone else around her, Minho had figured out that Kazimir didn't even know how basic relationships worked.

"I guess." Kazimir said shortly resting her head against the window and staring at the moving street lampposts that passed by.

"You guess? What kind of an answer is that?"

"I guess you had already planned this ride as a way to get me to spill everything about what is up, isn't it?"