I was woken up the next morning by someone calling out my name. My name. Who would still remember my name? 

"Taehyung, wake up! You need to wake up right now, or I'll pour water over you."

Grey eyes, again. Once again hooded by concerned brows.

"Jimin?"

"I didn't touch you, I swear! I only would have poured water over you, if you hadn't woken up."

I squinted in the sunlight that I was lying in. I raised myself off the floor, so that I could shuffle closer to the part of the window that was curtained.

"Taehyung,"

"I didn't give you my name so you could overuse it like this."

"No, Taehyung, your face."

I was about to make a rude remark when the events from last night came flooding over. The unusually persistent pain in my heart, the yellow paint, the chip in the mask. The crack.

 My eyes searched the floor where I had been lying down and sure enough there was a piece of the mask, as long as my fingers, slightly broken. But it was there, which meant.

"You're smiling."

I turned towards Jimin. His eyes were wide in disbelief.

"What?"

"You're smiling. I can see it. Your smile."

He was smiling at me now.

I looked at the porcelain piece and back at the boy, who appeared to have gained some sort of influence, not just over me, but on the curse itself. 

I smiled back, even though it wasn't a normal one. Even though he couldn't see it entirely. But because it felt like the right thing to do.

Jimin began to make an even more regular appearance in the following days. He even brought food thus making it unnecessary for me to go to town. And he also brought his stupid cat along.

His thrill in having witnessed my mask crack was that of a child witnessing, for the first time, the sight of a cocoon making a break for change. A sort of awe, but that was all. He wasn't aware of what an impossible dream this had been for me until the day it had happened.

There had been no more attacks of the pain. Neither had anymore of the mask cracked. I was still afraid. That one day, suddenly, my face would seal up again, if I made a single wrong move somewhere. I was afraid of what my face would be like once it all fell off. Would it have transformed to suit the curse even better than the mask?

All these fears haunted me through the days that we spent together. Even more, on the days I spent by my lonesome.

Jimin finally encroached the topic, when I was in the middle of painting and he was sat, leaning against the opposite wall, playing with his cat.

"Is there a story behind the mask, Taehyung?"

I paused a while, to watch the cat claw at one of the threadbare blankets. Jimin watched too. One of us pretending to not hear the question, while the other pretended to not having asked it.

"I would understand if it's not your secret to share." It was a loaded statement. He was curious as to know how much I had come to trust him. How do I tell him I trusted him so much that the fact shocked me everyday?

"There is a story. There's also a past. They are both my own secret to share."

I could feel his eyes on me now. The cat was left to it's own devices.

"Would you like to know them both?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I want to understand." 

So I began to tell my story. Slowly and in broken events, because this was the first time I'd spoken of it aloud. The first time someone had asked to be given a chance to understand me for why I became who I am.

"It began with a broken heart, of course. Like all stories do. But it was I who did all the breaking. I had people who loved me, romantically, platonically, irrevocably and I hurt them all. I broke their hearts to bits because I considered emotion to be a weakness. Something unworthy of being exposed and rejoiced. I called their love, a  lie and banished it from existence.

But then, one day, as Life would have it, when I had almost come to the conclusion that I was incapable of the emotion, I fell in love for the very first time. She had the most beautiful heart, so beautiful that even my vain self kneeled before it. And I knew I was undeserving. It wasn't fair to a man who had broken the hearts of several others to have a happy ending, was it? So I didn't tell her. I simply loved her from afar. I hid my face when she tried to find me. And sent her stupid roses, instead of holding her in my arms like I should have. By the time I realized that she also had been loving me back, and that I had been too much of a fool to have kept her waiting, it was too late.

She died of a broken heart, just like all the others. Except this time, I hadn't wanted to break anything. And despite it, had destroyed two hearts at once. All my love for her, transformed into something malignant upon the realization of what it had caused. It transformed and turned on me, cursing me and capturing me within it's wickedness. I stopped feeling. Stopped eating, sleeping, dreaming. I couldn't remember who I had been or what I had lost. I was alive but I had stopped living. 

The physicians that were brought to see me, they all failed to find the reason for my sickness. Then a lady walked into my room one day, I still can't remember her face or what she sounded like. But I remember her words."

The minute I left a pause, Jimin caught it.

"What did she say?"

" She said, 'Your heart has become a shriveled thing, boy. You've kept it from it's purpose for too long, and anything without a purpose has only one thing left to do. It will die.' I wanted to die then. My heart was me, and I was my heart. We wanted the same thing. But the lady had a plan of her own. 

She told me, 'I hate cowards, and you're being a very good one. So, no, your wish will not be granted. What I will give you is a second chance. A chance to get back what you let yourself lose. Your heart will remain frozen, until you let it feel again. But I warn you, only you can ask it to complete it's purpose, no one else. And if you decide to deny it, once again, it will shrivel away from existence. Slowly but surely.'

I was stubborn to a fault and promptly turned down her offer, very rudely. It angered the witch and that was when the final curse was cast. She mocked me for the cowardice I had shown in expressing my love to the girl and offered to grant me a way to hide forever. 'A fitting mask for a coward' she said, before my face was taken over."

I looked at Jimin. His boyish features had become clouded over. He looked older somehow, but also determined.

"I wouldn't blame you if you walked away now. Like I told you, I am but a monster serving my penance."

"The mask has never cracked before?" He appeared as if I hadn't even said anything.

"Never."

He suddenly broke into a smile, it felt so out of place from what I had been fearing.

"I think I understand, Taehyung. I think, I understand what I need to do."