*Y/N POV*

"Taehyung? Tae. Earth to Taehyung." I snapped my fingers in front of his face. "You good, buddy? You zoned out there for a sec."

He shook his head and looked up at me, slightly dazed. "Yeah oops. I just- yeah. Let's go?"

He walked ahead of me and I jogged to catch up.

"So, you and this Junsu," he said to me as I caught up with him. "How long ago did you guys break up?"

"Uhm...it's been a couple of months. We only started 'dating'," I made air quotes with my fingers "in November of last year, and then we 'broke up' in February of this year. So it's been about...three months since then."

"Hm."

"We actually..." I laughed at the irony "we actually broke up the day before Valentine's Day, so we weren't even obligated to buy anything for one another."

We walked in silence for a couple of minutes after that, and I looked around us, humming. We were nearing the edge if the upmarket neighbourhood, coming closer to a more busy part of town.

"Is that your brother?" Taehyung poked me and pointed across the street to the bus stop on the other side. My brother was on his phone, clearly trying to look at the directions to tae's house."

"Oh! Yeah." I raised my had to wave out, but he beat me to it.

"Hyung! Y/n's here!" My brother's head whipped up at the sound of that, and he smiled and waved at us from across the street.

The traffic light turned red and the cars to our side stopped. I grabbed Taehyung's hand and speed- walked across the road, dragging him behind me.

My brother greeted us both with a smile, slinging his hand over my shoulder. "Hi, Taehyung. It's been a while,"

"Hi, hyung, how are you doing?"

They engaged in some small talk as I looked around.

"You want to eat somewhere?" My brother asked me. "It's quite late for dinner."

"I already ate. We ordered dinner to his place," I said, gesturing to taehyung.

"Oh, great. Thank you so much for walking with her, Taehyung. Are you staying at your home tonight?"

"Yep. That's the plan," he replied. "I'll see you guys around, sometime, okay?"

We both nodded in sync. "Yep."

"Bye!" He turned away

"Bye, Taehyung," we chorused back, and turned away to walk back home.

***

"OHMYGOSH!" I suddenly bolted upright in my bed. I had just gotten into bed and was about to sleep, after showering and changing into my pajamas.

"Y/n!" My brother ran into the room. "What the heck just happened? Don't scream like that, the neighbors will complain!"

"Sorry. I just realised how close Rina's birthday is!"

"Oh! When is it?"

"You don't remember her birthday? She's been my best friend since I was tiny!"

"I'm sorry, okay? I'm terrible at birthdays," my brother defended himself.

"It's on the nineteenth. Today is the...fifth."

He seemed to understand my frustration and came and sat down next to the bed, reminding me of how my parents used to when I was small.

"You have plenty of time, calm down and sleep. We'll figure something out in the morning tomorrow, okay? You wanna go check out some shops or something? I can go to the mall with you and we can even catch a movie or something like that. It's the weekend, relax. It'll be fine, okay?" I didn't respond. "Goodnight." He patted my head and left the room, closing the door behind him loudly.

My mind wanted to race and continue thinking about what to do for Rina, but the exhaustion of the day got to me before I could, and before long, I drifted to sleep.

***

*Taehyung POV*

I didn't get much sleep that night, what with my mind being so jumbled and my body not tired at all. I couldn't quite wrap my mind around the fact that I was here yet, and so it felt so strange to be staying in this house again.

But eventually, a couple of hours past midnight, I fell asleep, the world fading into jumbled dreams.

***

"Hyung!" Jungkook barrelled across the lawn to me, pulling me into a giant bear hug.

I chuckled. "Hey, Jungkook, you didn't tell me you missed me this much." I slapped his back. "So, what do you want to do today?"

"Not sure. You must be tired, so if you want to stay home?"

"Gosh, no. I'd love to go out, if you're okay with that."

"Yes, okay. I wanted to go out, just wasn't sure about you. There's this new arcade that's opened in the mall, you want to go there?"

"Are you sure? The last time we went to an arcade, the place was full of eight year olds who thought we were the staff."

Jungkook placed his hand over his chest. "Who are you and what have you done to Kim Taehyung? If I remember correctly, you're the one that took me to the arcade last time. And you made friends with that kid, remember? The one who was really good at that game."

I laughed, remembering how I made 'friends' with this kid who was insanely skilled at the claw game.

"Yeah, let's go to the arcade. We'll have lunch out?"

"Sure." Jungkook replied. "But you're paying, rich guy."

I grinned back at him. "You know I am."

***

"NO! Back off you tiny-"

"Jungkook!" I shot him a warning look. "He's six."

"He cheated! You can't take his side!" He whined.

"Jungkook, let it go."

"Jungkook, let it go," he imitated me terribly, and muttered something unintelligible. I doubted it was very flattering.

He had just been absolutely smashed on a game by a six year old kid who was here for his birthday party, and did not take well to losing the game. I personally found it hilarious, but I had been Jungkook's friend long enough to know to keep my mouth shut.

"Come on, man. Don't waste your anger and youth on these kids." I dragged him away from going back to the game. "Let's do something else."

"Dang it! The card is out of money," he said, handing me the arcade card.

I checked my watch. "See, it's a sign from God. It's lunchtime, let's go eat."

"Humph. Fine. Let's go. I need to get my mind off that stupid kid anyways."

Leaving the arcade, we headed to the food court. The mall was quite crowded, since it was the weekend, full of people of all ages. I scanned around the area to look for a place to sit when I saw something that made me lose all trains of thought.

Grabbing Jungkook by the sleeve I ducked into the shop on my left, dragging him behind me.

"Hyung!" He hissed. "What are you doing?"

I looked up at him. I probably looked like an idiot right now, hiding behind a rack of women's summer dresses. The ridiculousness of it suddenly smacked me in the face, and I got up, dusting my jeans and trying to look casual, or as casual as I could, standing there.

"Uhm, nothing. Nothing. You want to get lunch somewhere else?" My voice sounded a bit off, but I cleared my throat to cover it up.

"Uh...nah. I haven't had food court food in forever. I kind of miss junk food." He began walking out of the shop towards the food court. I tried to catch up with him as inconspicuously as possible, desperate not to attract any unnecessary attention.

"Well, there's a Japanese place I saw last night, we can go there?" He didn't hear me, and kept walking ahead of me. Cursing under my breath, I followed behind.

A few minutes into getting our food, everything was going well. I relaxed a little bit, realising how crowded the place was and therefore how unlikely it was that we'd be spotted. After picked up the food and paid, I scanned the place to look for a table out of their way. Fixing my gaze on one in the corner, I began speed walking in that direction, Jungkook following me.

Safe. We made it. I opened the water bottle and poured some water into my cup as Jungkook went away to wash his hands. Once he was gone, I scanned the crowd once more. I couldn't find her for a second, and I relaxed. She must have left.

Until my eyes met another pair of wandering ones from across the food court.

Shit.

***

"Hi, Taehyung! Sorry to bother you, just wanted to say hi," y/n walked over to my table, her hand gripping her brother's hoodie sleeve and dragging him along. He flicked her finger off of him, and she drew her hand away quickly, glaring at him.

"Hey, y/n! Such a surprise to see you here!" Not really, I thought to myself, I knew you were here, but let's just ignore that for now.

"Yeah, I was just looking for something for Rina. Her birthday is coming up." As she said that, the gears in my mind began to suddenly go to work, the shadow of a plan in action.

"Really? When is it?"

"It's on the nineteenth."

"You want to have a party?" I asked. My heart was beating rapidly in my chest to hear the word coming from her mouth, a word that would give me endless excuse to spend time with her.

"Umm... I'm not sure. You see, last year I threw her a party, and to be entirely honest, though yes, she loves spending time with all her friends, she's more of a stay in person than a go out person. So I'm not throwing her one, but probably I'll do a movie night with her and I'm getting her some more art supplies and a few clothes."

My heart sank a little in my chest. "Oh." But then it was there again, another idea, another excuse. "If you want to do a movie thing, you can use the home theatre at my place. Just the two of you if she'll prefer that."

She considered it for a moment, a slow smile appearing on her face. "Yes. I think I she'd like that. Yeah." She looked at me. "Thank you so much. Really. That'll be amazing." She gripped my shoulder and gave it a light squeeze.

I smiled back. "No problem, y/n."

***

"So you're telling me that y/n was just here?" Jungkook asked me, his eyebrows raised so high that I thought they might fly off his face.

"Yep. She and her brother. They left about a minute ago."

"Dang it, I can't believe I missed them!" He face palmed. "It's fine. I'll talk to them later. Anyways," he began to talk about something that happened at work, but I could hardly pay attention, too excited about having an excuse to spend time with y/n.

***

The week went by, full of quite enjoyable work, and by Thursday or friday I found myself settling in completely. I liked living in the house again, and although I was still a little bit uncomfortable with the number of staff workers, I didn't have the heart to let them go, especially considering the fact that some of them had taken care of me since I was a literal fetus.

The gardener came every morning at about seven thirty, and worked for about an hour at my house before going to the one down the street, and there were two housekeeping staff who came by a bit before noon to do the cleaning. One of them was my caretaker when I was small, I used to call her eomma until I was about four or five when I realised she wasn't actually my eomma.

The thing was, I didnt quite need two housekeepers, or a gardener who came by every day. But I couldn't let them go, because their income depended entirely on me paying them.

I had just finished eating a late lunch on Friday afternoon and decided to watch a movie. I turned on the TV, and opened up Netflix, but didn't really find anything that piqued my interest, so I opened up YouTube. There, on the top left corner of my recommended was the fourth episode of the Chinese drama that y/n liked, Professional Single. Smiling, I clicked on it to continue, and within minutes, was lost again in the college romance.

***

*Y/n PoV*

"Ara, come on! We'll miss the bus!" I dragged her by the arm toward the doors of the building. Since I had shown her around the office building a few weeks ago, we had begun speaking more often. Turned out we were only a month apart in age, and we found that we had quite a lot in common.

This had bloomed into a wonderful new friendship, and we were both glad to have one another to spend time with during our break.

Right now, though, we were about to miss the bus to dinner because Ara had found out Yoongi was going to be there too, and was quickly trying to touch up her makeup.

"One sec! I'm almost done! I-"

"Oh, shut up! You're gorgeous anyways, a little bit of lip gloss isn't going to change that! We'll be late, come on!" It was true, she really was a real beauty, with her perfectly oval face and a pointed chin, and her hair sweeping over her shoulders elegantly no matter what she did. Add to that her tall, slim figure and great sense of style, and she might as well be a model. Dragging her by the arm, I ran out door of the building and towards the bus stop. Just as the doors were about to close, I pulled us in. Breathing heavily, we both let out a huge sigh of relief.

"Thanks," she said to me breathlessly.

"No...no problem," I replied, looking around for support as the bus began to move, throwing us a little bit off balance.

I grabbed on the railing next to me and Ara did the same on the railing a few rows back, seeing as all the seats were full. We held on for a few minutes before reaching the next stop, where I hoped some people would get down, because my left leg was hurting a bit.

The bus smoothly slowed down to a complete stop and the doors opened. However, instead of the place clearing out like I was expecting, several more people flooded in, and I shook my head as I realised we were right outside a big business park.

I gripped my bag tightly as I scooted over to make some more space for the people entering, making sure that it was closed. The bus jerked forward once again, and I tightened my grip on the railing to keep myself from falling over. I looked over to Ara, but the crowd of people between us obstructed my view, and I could just barely make out the top of her head behind a slightly older lady.

The bus ride went on, and I was starting to get quite tired from standing up. It hadn't been long, but I was standing very rigidly in order to give space to the woman behind me. At the next stop, no new passengers got on, but three or four got off. Our stop was next, thankfully not too far away, just about two or three minutes away.

I looked over to Ara once more. She was looking around herself uncomfortably, trying to shift but unable to do so because of the sheer number of people in the bus, so I tried to go up on my toes to see what had happened to make her so uncomfortable.

Oh. My. God.

Standing behind her, a little bit to a side, was an older man, probably in his mid 30s. He looked absolutely normal, just like another guy just holding on to the railing on the bus, except for the fact that his hand was ridiculously close to Ara's. 

As I watched, he brushed his finger over her hands, smiling at her serenely, as if this were totally normal. Nobody around noticed, all absorbed in their own worlds, but Ara was visibly terrified.

Oh my God.

Not bothered about the fact that there were plenty of people in the way, I pushed through the crowd towards the railing where Ara was standing, glad that I was this small. 

Pretending to be oblivious to what was happening, I grabbed Ara by the shoulder and said loudly, far louder than necessary, "Ara! Come on! We're almost here, let's go!" As I expected, he looked away immediately, and moved his hand away, lest someone see it.

On cue, the bus stopped and she let go of the rail immediately, and taking her shaking hand, I led her out of the bus.

We walked briskly down the pavement without saying a word, not looking back. She was taking quick breaths, her face clammy and clearly showcasing her discomfort. I felt a little fire in my stomach. That son of a bitch. How dare he even touch her?

The restaurant was a little bit ahead on the left, and I saw Yoongi standing outside. Before going there, however, I stopped and looked up at Ara.

"Hey. Ara, look at me. It's okay. You're okay. He's not here anymore."

She took a deep breath. "Yeah. It's okay. I just- I'm just disgusted, nothing happened, so it's fine. Let's go inside, I think being around Yoongi should help." She gave a little nervous laugh, but it was clear that her heart wasn't in it.

Not wanting to press, I walked her to the front of the restaurant, where Yoongi greeted me with a hug and her with a smile and some undeniable blushing.

We had just walked in and were about to settle down when I saw the guy from the bus, that sick man, walking outside.

"Uh, can you guys excuse me for a moment please?" Yoongi looked at me, the panic evident in his eyes, probably under the impression that I was playing matchmaker. I would have loved to have done that, but that wasn't my intention right now.

I ran out of the restaurant, careful not to go too far, with no clear plan in mind, but a basic idea of what I was about to do. It wasn't a very good idea. But it needed to be done.

I made sure to stay in sight of the restaurant before doing anything next, knowing that I shouldn't be too stupid or reckless.

"Hey!" I called out, louder than I should have. More people turned to face me than I expected, but that group counted him as well. "You." I said, little softer, pointing my chin towards him. All the others turned away and continued on their way down the road. He however, stayed in place.

I suddenly realised how stupid this plan was. I was either going to get reported, get hurt, or get ignored. And I should probably have told Yoongi where I was going first. That's what got me into trouble the last time I went somewhere alone, and maybe what would get me in trouble again.

He smiled at me, a horrible know- it- all, patronising, I-know-best smile that made me sick to my toes. "Yes, darling? Can I help you?" He took a step closer towards me.

He just called me darling, that sick prick.

"Whoa, whoa whoa. First thing. Stay the fuck away from me. Don't take a single step closer." He seemed taken aback by the harshness of my tone, and I was too. I felt much more scared than I was letting on, and I took a deep breath before continuing, hoping that my voice wouldn't waver.

"I saw what you did to her in the bus," I began. "It's fucking disgusting, grown men like you who think they can do whatever they want to women because you know she wasn't in a position to fight back. You should be ashamed of yourself, harassing someone and then walking off like it's no big deal."

"It was no big deal," he cut me off. "I don't see her complaining anywhere around here, so honey, why don't you do yourself a favour and run off before you get yourself in trouble for that big mouth of yours?"

"Like hell I'd do that. And the only reason she's not out here is because she's disgusted. Disgusted of the filth like you that doesn't deserve to be a part of this society. Of any society. You're fucking disgusting, you know that. And I feel sorry for anyone who has to be a part of your life."

"Is there a point here, darling?" He said calmly, trying to seem unfazed, but I saw that, little by little, my words were starting to get to him.

"Maybe just think about respect, think about the fact that you literally wouldn't be here if not for a woman, and maybe think about that before you touch one in the sick, repulsive way that you did." His face tightened, and for a second, I thought it was because my words had wounded him severely. But a quick glance behind me told me that it was because Yoongi and Ara had, apparently run out of the restaurant after seeing me engage in argument with this lowlife.

"That'll be all," I said calmly, turning away from him. "Thank you for listening."

"Bitch." I heard from behind me.

"I'm sorry, what did you call me?" I asked, an undeniable steel in my voice that I had rarely ever heard myself. 

It was as if there was this fire inside me that had hardly ever been ignited before apead come to life. And boy, it had fuel, so if it wasn't put out soon, it would burn on.

He looked at me and looked away, and for the first time I saw the clear intimidation on his face. Fierce pleasure coursed through me at wounding his pride.

I heard I little something from him that sounded a whole lot like "nothing."

I laughed a little sarcastic laugh, a sound that seemed so foreign coming out of my mouth. "That's what I thought, coward."

A/n: Hi everyone! So, as I was writing this chapter, I wanted to just speak about something that is personally very important to me, as well as a very prominent social issue. 

Street harassment is a real thing, experienced by so so many women (and men) around the world. Catcalling, sexualisation of minors, sexualisation of women in general, and completely uncalled for touches. All of these are a few of the many examples of street harassment that are still all too common in today's world.

As someone who has actually experienced some of these firsthand, through comments like I feel that this is still a problem faced in society that doesn't have enough attention. It has gotten to the unfortunate point that, as a female i am literally scared of men, to the extent that I always cross the road when walking past a man, even in the safety of my own neighbourhood. I have been called paranoid, over cautious, and so much more, purely because of my discomfort in public because of such experiences that I have had, and such issues are faced by so many people around the world.

In order to bring more awareness to this, I have linked down below Hollaback, an international organisation that aims to end harassment in all forms. Please do check it out, and please do help spread the message.

https://www.ihollaback.org/stand-street-harassment/

I love you all, thank you so much for reading, and have a great day or night wherever you are <3