Silence Behind Glass

Forgotten memoir

The afternoon had been quiet. Too quiet.

Taehyung had spent hours reorganizing the poetry section, alphabetizing by author, then by title, then by color—anything to keep his hands busy. The familiar rituals usually grounded him. Today, they felt like spinning wheels. His mind kept drifting back to the garden. To Bo-gum's hands. To the cold stone against his spine.

"No one can hear you out here."

He was reaching for a volume of Rilke when the bell above the door chimed. A customer. Taehyung straightened, forced a small smile, and turned.

A man. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dark coat.

For one horrible second, Taehyung saw Bo-gum's face superimposed over the stranger's. His heart stopped. His vision tunneled. The book slipped from his fingers and hit the floor with a dull thud.

"Sorry," the man said, bending to pick it up. "Didn't mean to startle you. I'm looking for something on Korean folk poetry?"

Not Bo-gum. Just a customer. Just a man with a kind face and an umbrella dripping rainwater on the worn floorboards.

Taehyung's lungs remembered how to work. He took the book, pointed the man toward the correct shelf, and retreated behind the counter with trembling hands. His pulse hammered against his ribs like a trapped animal.

It's over. He's gone. You're safe.

But the fear didn't fade. It coiled in his stomach, cold and heavy, spreading through his limbs like poison. He pressed his palms flat on the counter and tried to breathe the way Jungkook had taught him.

In. Out. Again.

The customer left. The bell chimed. Silence returned.

Taehyung closed his eyes.

And then the images came.

Not from last night. Something older. Something buried so deep he'd forgotten it existed—or maybe never known it at all. The memory rose like a corpse from dark water, fragmented and terrible.

A room. Not his bedroom. Smaller. Colder. The smell of mothballs and stale cigarette smoke.

A shadow on the wall, too large, too close.

A hand. Pale, knobby fingers, reaching for him. Touching him somewhere he didn't want to be touched. He was small—so small. Four? Five? He couldn't remember. He only remembered the weight of that hand and the way his body had frozen, just like last night, just like always.

"Don't tell anyone," a voice whispered. Low. Rasping. "This is our secret."

And then—

Taehyung's eyes snapped open. His breath came in ragged gasps. He was on the floor behind the counter, he didn't remember falling. His knees were pulled to his chest, his arms wrapped around them, his whole body shaking violently.

"What was that?" he whispered to the empty shop.

The memory was already dissolving, slipping back into the dark water where it had lived for twenty years. But the feeling remained. The knowing. Something had happened to him. Something he had spent his whole life forgetting.

Someone had touched him. When he was a child. When he couldn't fight back.

Taehyung pressed his forehead to his knees and sobbed.

The tears weren't quiet this time. They tore out of him—ugly, gasping, wrenching sounds that echoed off the bookshelves and faded into the dusty air. He cried for the boy he'd been. For the hands he couldn't remember. For all the times he'd flinched at touch and never known why.

Now you know, a voice whispered in his mind. Now you know.

He didn't know how long he stayed on the floor. Minutes. Hours. The light through the window shifted from gray to gold, afternoon bleeding into evening. His phone buzzed—Jimin, probably. He didn't look at it.

Eventually, the tears stopped. His body felt hollowed out, scraped clean. He pulled himself up using the counter, legs unsteady, and caught his reflection in the dark window.

A stranger looked back. Pale. Shattered. But something else, too. Something that hadn't been there before.

Survival.

Taehyung didn't understand the memory. He didn't know if it was real or a dream his broken mind had manufactured to explain the terror that lived in his bones. But he knew one thing with sudden, crystalline clarity:

He couldn't keep hiding.

The bell above the door chimed.

Taehyung flinched—but didn't fall. He turned, slowly, bracing himself for another customer, another man, another shadow.

And found Jungkook standing in the doorway

Rain soaked his dark coat. His hair clung to his forehead. His chest rose and fell like he'd been running. His eyes—those dark, searching eyes—found Taehyung's tear-stained face, and something in his expression cracked wide open.

"You're crying," Jungkook said. Not an accusation. An observation. A wound.

Taehyung opened his mouth to lie. To say I'm fine or it's nothing or why are you here. But the memory was still fresh, still bleeding, and the words wouldn't come.

Instead, he whispered: "I remembered something. Something I'd forgotten. Something bad."

Jungkook took a step forward. Then stopped, as if remembering that Taehyung might not want to be approached. His hands hung at his sides, open and empty.

to be approached. His hands hung at his sides, open and empty.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" he asked softly.

Taehyung shook his head. Then nodded. Then shook his head again. Tears spilled down his cheeks, silent this time, and he hated how weak he must look—how broken—standing in his soft cream sweater with his raw eyes and his trembling hands.

Jungkook didn't move closer. But he didn't leave, either.

"Okay," Jungkook said. "Then I'll stay. Right here. As long as you need."

Taehyung looked at this man—this ruthless, powerful, terrifying man—standing in his little bookshop with rain dripping from his coat and patience written across his face. And for reasons he couldn't explain, the shaking began to slow.

"Can you—" Taehyung's voice cracked. He cleared his throat. "Can you just talk? About anything. I don't want to be alone with my head right now."

Jungkook nodded. He leaned against a bookshelf—far enough to give Taehyung space, close enough to feel like company—and began to speak.

"I have a meeting tomorrow with a board of directors who all hate me," he said. "They think I'm too young. Too aggressive. Too willing to burn everything down. They're probably right."

Taehyung listened. The steady rhythm of Jungkook's voice washed over him like warm water. He talked about corporate politics, about a merger that was keeping him up at night, about the way Mina organized his schedule with military precision. He didn't ask for anything. Didn't push. Just talked.

And slowly, very slowly, Taehyung's heartbeat returned to something almost normal.

When the sky outside turned dark and the rain finally stopped, Jungkook paused. He looked at Taehyung with those dark eyes—soft now, unguarded—and said: "I should go. You need rest."

Taehyung should have nodded. Should have let him leave. Instead, he heard himself ask: "Will you come back?"

The question hung between them, fragile as spun glass.

Jungkook's expression shifted. Something flickered there—hope, maybe. Or fear. Or both.

"If you want me to," he said.

Taehyung thought of the memory he couldn't fully remember. The hands that had touched him without permission. The years of flinching and hiding and apologizing for existing.

Then he thought of the garden. The jacket draped over his shoulders. The voice that said "You're safe now" and meant it.

"Yes," Taehyung whispered. "I want you to."

Jungkook nodded once. Then he turned and walked out the door, leaving behind the scent of vetiver and rain—and the quiet promise of tomorrow.

Hi! there!🌱💜

I will be posting everyday if i am able to meet my deadline at 10pm.

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