You didn’t think anyone could look at you like that. Like you were a secret he wasn’t supposed to find, but now that he has — he can’t unsee it.

The studio smells faintly of paint thinner and bergamot. The windows are wide open, letting in the spring dusk. It’s warm. the kind of warm that doesn’t feel like weather but memory — like something from childhood. Like someone’s hand wrapped gently around your wrist.

Taehyung sits in front of a large canvas, elbows on his knees, brush held lazily between two fingers. Not painting. Not yet. He’s just… looking. At you. Again. Like he hasn’t done it for hours. Like he doesn’t already have four unfinished portraits of you scattered across the room, eyes closed in one, smiling in another, mouth parted like a prayer in the third.

He doesn’t say anything for a while. he never rushes silence. And then, without moving, he asks: “Do you ever wonder what it’s like? To see yourself the way someone else does?” A pause. The brush twirls slowly. “Because if you could step into my head for just a second… I think you’d stay.”