Closing his eyes, Taehyung stays completely motionless save for the ragged jumps of his chest in his thin shirt. His head thumps back against the wall, the dull pain from the movement making his stomach wrench and his mind race, recalling the images this time. Blood in the floorboards and on his clothes and underneath raw fingernails, his fingernails, caked and dark and not his own. So much more blood than he'd ever seen in his entire life. Even that hadn't been enough to stop him.

Taehyung doesn't feel the black clothes shifting, not really, and only feels half-surprised that there's a voice attached to them. He's only ever lived in Seoul, and while homelessness isn't exactly common, he's seen enough of it to recognize the signs for what they are. He's on the outskirts of the city, no doubt, or at the very least in one of those neighborhoods that could never hope to grace the glossy pages of travel ads.

It doesn't matter. Taehyung begins to hoist himself back up, muttering a robotic apology, only to stop when he sees a pair of sleepy, confused eyes staring at him. Taehyung blinks back, shocked into a completely different silence. He doesn't expect that voice to belong to a kid. He barely looks old enough to fill out the clothes he's wearing, hair falling in too many directions, holding lightly onto a blanket bunched around his waist.

For the first time since it's happened, Taehyung's mind refocuses. Thinks. It's starting to get dark now, and there's something soft in the kid's expression that shocks him even more than before. For three wonderful seconds, he forgets everything.

"Are you sleeping here?"