After calming down the kids to the best of my ability, and convincing them that I didn't secretly have a boyfriend, I quickly ran to the restroom before going down to meet him. I wasn't looking my best today, what with my hair being all messed up and my outfit not particularly nice, but I had to make it work.

I quickly tried to flatten my hair, but since it was absolutely refusing to sit in place, I just pulled my hair tie out, and shaking it out of its ponytail, I retied it a little higher.

Not wanting to make him wait, I pushed open the restroom door and wad to the stairs as quickly as I could, sliding down the first banister but then walking down the second set of steps, since the banister of the ground floor wasn't fixed in place very firmly.

Smoothing my shirt down one last time, I turned the corner to the lobby area to see Taehyung. I couldn't help but smile as I looked at the way his features lit up with recognition, the same little smile that I knew so well making its way onto his lips.

"Y/n, so sorry, I just thought we could meet for lunch, and then..." his voice trailed off as he looked at something behind me.

"What?" I turned around, trying to follow his gaze. I was met with three of the kids watching us not-so-discreetly through the glass door. I grinned, turning back to him. "Sorry, don't mind them, they're the kids I was working with this week."

"Wha- oh, no issues," he said, his easy grin coming back to grace his features. "You should have seen them when I said I was here for you. They looked so offended!"

I laughed lightly. "Well, I'm really sorry Tae, but I can't join you for lunch right now. I actually was organising lunch for the kids, but- wait, Tae!"

He had nodded and was about to turn around to leave.

"Yeah?"

"You can join us, if you'd like." I hated the idea of him coming all the way here for me and then leaving to go eat all by himself.

"Oh, no, I don't want to impose. It's fine really, I -"

"Tae, it's fine. Plus, I need company." That wasn't really true, the kids were company enough for me, but I really wanted him to stay.

"Oh, okay then, sure." He held out his hand as if expecting me to take it, but then suddenly turned bright red, as if realising what he had just done. Pulling his hand back immediately, he scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, not meeting my eyes.

I laughed, taking his hand, which made him turn even redder, and led him upstairs.

*** 

"So, hyung. How do you know y/n?" The boys were sitting with Tae, chatting. The girls had just gone to use the restroom, and I was just pouring myself a glass of orange juice. I looked away, trying to pretend that I wasn't listening to what they were saying.

"She- well, we have this friend group, and I just got to know her through other friends, pretty much," said Tae. I took a little sip, for some reason feeling a little bit disappointed. When he put it like that, I really just was another friend. Nothing all that special.

"Nice. So have you guys known each other long? You seem quite close." He wiggled his eyebrows again, flustering Taehyung even further.

I sat down on the other end of the room and looked out the window, pretending not to listen. I really wanted to hear his answer to this, since I wasn't quite sure what I would have answered to it.

"Yeah, I've known her since she was in high school, actually, but we only became close friends more recently, in the past couple of months. To be honest, I don't think she liked me very much in high school, so we never really talked."

I looked away at that. I had disliked him in high school, but only because I thought he had hurt my friends. It hurt me now to think of how wrong I had been about him, but I put that aside for now.

The girls came back and I poured some juice into the cups for them.

"How come you came to see noona today?" I resisted the urge to bury my face in my hands. These kids were going to scare him away with all these questions. But when I looked up at him, he seemed relatively unfazed.

"I just wanted to take her out for lunch, without checking with her first, though. We had decided to meet after work, but I thought it'd be fun to have lunch as a surprise as well. That part kind of backfired, but it's okay," he smiled.

"Yeah, but it's the thought that counts," I said, making my way over to their side of the room. It was almost three, so the kids would have to pack up if they wanted to get the three o'clock bus. "You guys, you can start packing up, the bus gets to the stop no later than ten past three, so you wanna be there by then. Don't worry about the plates, I'll clear them," I told them as they came over to clear up.

I helped them all pack up and made two more rounds around the office to make sure that none of them had left their stuff lying around.

"Unnie, it's fine, we have everything!"

I walked over to the four of them who were about to leave. "You guys, keep in touch, okay? I'm gonna miss having you around here." I smiled and pulled the two girls in for a quick hug. "Bye guys!" I called out to the the four of them as they left the building, heading towards the bus stop. They turned and waved to me before turning around the corner and out of sight.

I went back upstairs to clean up, only to find almost everything already cleaned up, and a smiling Taehyung.

"Wow, Tae, thanks so much, you really didn't have to."

"Awh, no problem. So are you free now? We can do something like we planned."

"Yeah, sure. I'll just tell my brother that I'm going out, and that I won't be home. He'll have to use the spare key." Picking out my phone, I sent him a quick message to let him know.

"Sure." Picking up the last few disposable plates and putting them into the big black trash bag that I had brought, Taehyung took one last look around the room to make sure everything was cleaned up.

We walked out of the building quickly, heading in the direction in which Tae led me. We walked for about six or seven minutes, kind of in the direction of namjoon and jin's apartment, talking about the kids and how both of our week had been so far.

"They're super fun to work with," I said. "Normally I'd have thought that working with teenagers would be a pain, considering how snobbish some of them tend to be, but these kids are absolute angels. They even listen to everything I say!"

"Yea, I could tell that they really look up to you, and I think part of that comes from how well you manage them."

"Ha, don't give me too much credit," I said.

He smiled at me once again. Fuck, I am crushing wayyy too hard on this boy.

"No, really. You're really good with kids." His eyes strayed away, looking away, far ahead. I could have sworn I saw him sigh with a light little smile on his face.

Then suddenly, as if catching hold of himself, his eyes widened and he looked back at me. I looked straight back, confused, and he relaxed.

"What?" I asked, seeing his smile spread across his face.

"Nothing," he looked down at his feet.

"Whaaaat?" I whined, smacking his shoulder. "You can't do that."

He stopped walking and turned to me, lowering his face to be closer to mine, a light smirk on his face. "Oh yeah?" He asked softly. "Or what?" He licked his lips, looking down at mine, and I felt a slight shiver run down my spine.

I struggled to think straight. "Or... or I'll- um, I'll-"

I was broken off suddenly when he placed his finger on my lips, silencing me. My eyes widened at his touch and I took a step back, the back of my head hitting the streetlight pole.

Way to go, y/n. If you didn't look like an idiot before, you sure do now.

"Woah, are you okay?" Every hint of the smirk that once graced his features had disappeared, replaced with a mask of genuine care and worry. He hurried forward to me.

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine," I said, but he placed his hand behind my head gingerly, as if to see if I would have any reaction to it.

Since it genuinely didn't hurt, he let go. Then, placing his hand between my shoulder blades, he steered me forward in the direction we were walking earlier. I tried to concentrate on what he was saying, and focused as much as I could on making appropriate responses, but in reality I couldn't get my mind off his hand, which was still placed on my back.

"Mmhm," I said, nodding along. "Hey, are we going to some specific place? I don't really know this area." I said, looking around. I wasn't quite familiar with where we were, since we normally would have turned left to go to Jin's apartment, and instead we had gone straight.

"Yeah," he said. When I nodded at him to go on, he shook his head, saying, "you'll see when we get there, it's a surprise. Not a very big surprise, mind you, but it's a nice place." He paused. "Don't get your hopes up, it's nothing great." He sounded worried, as if he didn't want to disappoint me.

"Okay?" Not wanting to make him wait any further, I followed him.

It was now a bit past four pm, and the sun was beating down as brightly as ever. I wanted to ask Tae how much longer it would take to get wherever it was that he was taking me, but I didn't want him to think I was tired and then stop. I was genuinely curious to see what kind of place this would be.

*** 

"And.... here we are!" He said, pushing the small gate open.

A little smile lit up on my face as I followed him into the small empty park. He was right, it was nothing much, but I loved it all the same.

The place looked quite old, but the kids play stuff looked relatively new, like it had been redone sometime in the past couple of months. There were a few play sets for children with slides and monkey bars and things placed in the little sandy area, and behind that a little walking path and a couple of benches under a short tree whose branches spread wide, providing a large shelter from the sun.

Nothing much. But again, I loved it.

***

"So, what's the story behind this place?" I asked him, looking down from the branch I was sitting on. The tree, in addition to providing great shade, was also very fun to climb, so here I was, sitting on a branch while Tae sat on the bench below. It was quite a high branch, so I could understand his worry when I was climbing on here, but once I proved I was totally okay, he relaxed slightly.

"What makes you think there's a story?" He asked, not looking up.

"Well, let's see. If you wanted to go to a children's park, then you would have taken me to one of the parks closer to home. Mine or yours. But instead you brought me here, a place that's definitely old enough to have been here when we were young, remote, not even that many play stuff to play a game or anything."

He looked up at me this time, clearly surprised that I'd bothered to notice all this. "You're right." He smiled. "I used to come here when I was little. My caretaker used to bring me here."

I smiled at the image of a young taehyung. I hadn't seen too many pictures of him, only one or two that the boys had posted on his birthday, but he'd always been absolutely adorable.

I liked this, how whenever he took me somewhere I felt like I got a little more insight on his personality. I think there wasn't much for me to show him about me, seeing as my life was pretty much an open book, but it felt good to share something with someone the way we did.

We sat around chatting for another fifteen minutes or so when I invited him to come up and sit next to me on the branch. It was pretty wide and there was plenty of space if I scooted over, so he followed my instructions on footing and climbed up to join me.

Once he was here, though, suddenly it didn't seem like there was so much space. I was far too aware of how close his fingers were to mine, and every time I looked at him I felt slightly dizzy, so I focused on the ground instead, avoiding eye contact as we spoke.

Again, I was unaware of how quickly the time passed until I heard the little gate creak open again and saw a couple walk in with their son and daughter.

I nudged Taehyung and gestured towards them, motioning for him to climb down the tree.

He frowned at me "I think I need help climbing down."

He was in between me and the main trunk of the tree, so I couldn't climb down and help him down after.

"Um... okay. Here's what we'll do." I said. "You help me get to that side, I'll climb down, and then I can help you."

He bit his lip, looking nervous. "Okay."

This was risky. If for whatever reason I couldn't get to the other side of Taehyung, I'd fall from this height, which was, just to say... not advisable. Not only would it hurt like hell, I was almost sure to break something from this height.

But I didn't say any of this, not wanting to make the poor boy any more nervous than he already was. He's cute when he's worried, a little voice in my head said. His eyebrows and nose scrunch up and he's so cute I- 

Ignoring the voices in my head, I placed my left hand between us and wrapped my fingers around the branch, leaning forward to place my right hand on the other side of Tae.

My eyes widened when I felt his hands around my waist, holding me up so I wouldn't fall, and I almost let go of the branch out of surprise.

But the adrenaline kicked in, lending me a burst of strength, and I pulled myself up onto the branch, now on his left.

Breathing heavily, leaned back, grateful that I hadn't fallen. It wasn't until I pushed my hair out of my face again that I realised his arm was still on my waist, and I stiffened unintentionally. He realised too, and jerked his hand back.

"Um, so. I'll climb down and I'll tell you where to put your feet, okay?" I didn't meet his eyes.

"Uh, yeah. Sure, yeah."

I climbed down the tree, my mind still a little numb. Personally, I was fine with physical contact- as that person in the friend group who insisted on hugs and holding hands, I never really felt much of it when I was with friends- even back when I was dating Jeonghan, he was so confident and comfortable with contact that it didn't feel like a big deal.

But that one touch from Taehyung just felt so different, I felt like my eight-grade self who would blush just at the thought of the day that my guy friend held my hand. I felt like I was so easily flustered around him, and truth be told, I enjoyed it. I really did. 

A/n: SORRY FOR SPORADIC UPDATES I've been struggling to write recently. I know what is going to happen in the next few chapters, it's all planned out, but when I write it just doesn't come out the way I wanted so this chapter went under major editing. I'm still not super happy with how it came out, but at least the plot is kind of moving ahead so I can get on with the next ones. Maybe I'll come back and edit this one later cuz it's really boring tbh 

But anyways I love you so so so much, and I hope you have an amazing day or night wherever you are <3