in the quiets they left behind- chapter -4 (taehyung)
your fourth soulmate is an unfinished sentence.
you meet taehyung after jimin, when your heart is still healing in strange, uneven ways.
you have rules now —
you don’t date musicians.
you don’t fall for anyone who uses pet names too soon.
you don’t believe in soulmates anymore, not really.
then you meet him at an art exhibit.
he’s staring at a painting like it’s a mirror, hands in his pockets, mouth a little open — awestruck.
“it looks like longing,” he murmurs, half to himself.
you glance at the same painting. “or loneliness.”
he looks at you. and smiles. “aren’t they the same?”
you don’t know how to answer.
he doesn’t ask for your number.
but you see him again, two weeks later — same café, same bookshop corner.
this time, he buys your coffee without asking.
you pretend to be annoyed.
you aren’t.
⸻
taehyung becomes a gentle rhythm in your life.
he always smells like bergamot and old paper.
he wears mismatched socks and talks to birds.
he texts you poems with no context.
sometimes they’re ones he’s written. sometimes they’re not.
you never know which, and you never ask.
you go on quiet walks together.
museum dates. rain-soaked bookstore afternoons.
there’s something cinematic about him.
he turns your world into slow film scenes —
sepia-tinted smiles, soft jazz laughter, long gazes that say more than either of you ever do.
you never define it.
and maybe that’s the problem.
⸻
he kisses you once, under a streetlamp at midnight, after splitting a caramel tart and a cigarette.
it’s soft.
terrifyingly soft.
you think: maybe this is the kind of love that lasts.
but the next day, he pulls away.
“i want to give you more,” he says.
“then why don’t you?”
“because i’m not done falling apart yet.”
⸻
you don’t speak for weeks.
then months.
and then one day —
you walk past a gallery window and see a familiar sketch. a man, sitting alone in a café, reading poetry with a coffee he didn’t want but bought for someone else.
he painted you.
or maybe he painted the space where you used to sit.
you never go inside.
⸻
some soulmates exist to prove possibility.
to show you that gentleness is real.
that love doesn’t have to hurt to feel.
taehyung doesn’t break your heart.
he just leaves it open.
unfinished.
like a book with the last page torn out.