(This chapter is low-key unedited so please ignore any spelling mistakes or anything. I just wanted to update as soon as possible)

Kazimir ran her fingertip over a photo frame while her eyes observed the picture displaying someone she didn't recognize but who had enough features to link her as Jimin's mother. The woman stood by Jimin's side, smiling at the camera while Jimin stood beside her with a birthday hat on his head. He was turned slightly to the side, eyes closed, smiling from ear to ear, holding what appeared to be a half-eaten slice of chocolate cake.

Kazimir smiled at the picture and gently pushed it down to conceal it from her view and walked from the mantle to the bookshelf and ran her fingers over the spines of the many books adorning it while her eyes scanned through the titles one by one. Once she was done with the books, she turned around and stared at the rest of the living room.

The lights were dimmed low and the scene looked ethereal like she was standing in the middle of a vintage novel and her modern attire was an offense to the time period. She wondered how Jimin ended up living in a beautiful house like that with intricate cozy interior design to a breathtaking and nostalgic front and a strategical museum-worthy location. Her dad's old house where she and the Kims lived was not far from there but both the scenery and the designs differed a lot with just a turn of a street.

Prague, she thought, the name itself tickling her mind with a whirlwind of wonders.

She walked around the living room taking in the little details, like the engraved wooden armrests of the sofas, or the intricate design on the wallpapers, everything giving off eccentric Victorian-era vibes until she reached the kitchen doorway and went to sit at the table. A cup of instant ramen waited for her with a metal fork beside it. Since Taehyung had claimed the bed as his own, she had no choice but to get up and wander about the silent house.

The inviting sofas made her mouth water with how much comfort they seemed to be offering but she decided to put off laying down just yet to eat something.

Going through the pantry, she was glad to have come across instant ramen cups even if all the flavors looked unfamiliar to her. She was used to only eating two flavors but her rumbling stomach made her cave in and grab whichever her hand landed on first.

As usual, notebooks and pens littered the kitchen table but this time, there were two empty cans of beer in the midst of them.

Kazimir smirked, knowing Taehyung's coward ass wouldn't have gone past that. Two cans and he was out cold. She missed the days when he used to sneak beer for her because she had enough rumors about her around high school parties that getting labeled as a drinker would have been a cherry on top of her already ruined image.

She picked up the fork and started eating her ramen while her eyes ran the length of the many memo pads laying in front of her.

Jimin seemed to be the type of writer who disliked crossing out words and hence, Kazimir noticed wherever a certain sentence was left hanging, it was rewritten in the next line with one or two words replaced with new words.

What's the fun in that? She thought, slurping the noodles.

She reached her hand and pulled a random notebook towards herself and then a pen too. She cracked open the notebook to a random page where Jimin had scribbled down what looked like a poem and Kazimir started to take notes in the margin of the page, kind of like her way of rebelling against his neatness by messing the obvious order of his careful writing. His handwriting and words were crying to be set free of restrains of the lines Jimin had bound them to and Kazimir decided to be their knight in the shining armor.

She first decided to read over the entire poem before taking out the sharp nib of the pen to cut the words down and make them bleed on paper.

'Han' the title of the poem said. Kazimir wondered if it was about the book Han.

Do not give hope to a hopeful girl,

you and I and him and her, we're all the same.

I am painting a sky above my head with a few memories of your smile,

And her story makes me want to paint a few thundering clouds as well.

No wonder she saw a forever when he painted her a yesterday.

Jimin woke up next to no one and thought Taehyung might have already woken up and left. He pulled himself in a sitting position and grabbed his phone from the bedside table to check his messages before fully getting up and leaving the room to go see Kazimir.

He still had to decide whether he would be going to get her stuff from her house but since she hadn't said anything about the matter, he too thought to wait it out. Even though the nagging feeling Minho left in the back of his head about throwing her things out pricked him.

He expected to find her sleeping but when he saw the door to his room open, he couldn't help but knock gently and peek inside. Much to his surprise, his bed was empty and the door to his bathroom ajar.

He tilted his head to the side in confusion and started walking around the house when he finally entered the kitchen and found Kazimir sleeping beside two empty beer cans, an empty noodle cup, and three of his notebooks open at random pages sprawled in front of her head with a pen between her fingers.

Jimin's first instinct was to sprint forward and check up on his poems and short stories but had to stop himself because almost everything on those pages was no longer his property. He could see the way they had been claimed by drunk fingers by the way the ink looked like it had hemorrhaged over his writing. But he held himself back.

He couldn't pinpoint his exact emotions at the sight, whether he was enraged or surprised or shocked, he couldn't tell. But at least he managed to get a pen in her hand and for that, he gave himself an imaginary pat on the shoulder.

He turned around and decided to get washed up before waking her up but his mind caught another train of thought on his way to his room.

Where exactly in this house would she be staying? He wondered, opening his drawers to get a change of clothes. Taehyung had given him a pass to crash on his bed once and he doubted he would ever be generous again.

He couldn't ask him to leave too because technically he was paying rent and Kazimir was not going to be doing that. He needed the extra cash badly but he also needed to give Kazimir a place to stay.

The steaming shower didn't take his mind off the matter but it didn't give him an answer as well. He couldn't trade his room and bed to move to a random couch every night but he also couldn't bring himself to offer a couch to Kazimir.

The frustration started to get to him when he walked into the kitchen. Kazimir was still asleep so he bent a little and tilted his head to the side and gently nudged her on the shoulder.

"Hey," he said softly, "Go sleep on the bed."

Kazimir hummed in her sleep and turned her head around. A scowl adorned her face and her eyes moved under her closed lids. Jimin noticed the tensed jaw like before but this time, she was mumbling too. He nudged her shoulder again and came face to face with the mere reason he had been caving into her existence since they first crossed paths; specks of gold in her dark eyes when she opened them.

"What?" She mumbled looking up at him, a look of uncertainty and confusion clouding her expression.

"What?" Jimin echoed her question, having forgotten what he had said because he was too caught up trying to catch the specks red-handed before they disappeared again.

Kazimir squinted her eyes to figure out what was happening and Jimin's vision of her eyes temporarily got blocked. Kazimir thought she imagined it but she thought she heard him whine under his breath.

She caught herself staring at him to process her whereabouts but when the obvious hit her, she backed up as if electrocuted and looked away.

"I am awake," she announced to no one, bringing her hands up to push her hair behind her ears.

"Yeah," Jimin agreed still lost, "you are."

"Yeah," Kazimir repeated awkwardly. She stood up, sending the chair flying back a few steps, and looked around to get her senses back in action.

"Yeah, okay so," Jimin began, straightening up and forcing himself out of his trance, "Uh- you woke up for an early breakfast?" He asked eyeing the beer cans and the noodle cup.

"No, I slept here. Tae took over the bed so..." Kazimir yawned leaving her sentence hanging, "Your house is so beautiful at night though. It kept me company until I drifted off to sleep."

"You should have at least slept on a couch," Jimin said, rubbing the back of his neck because he didn't know what else to say to cover up his embarrassment at being a bad host. But hearing about Taehyung wandering in the middle of the night and ending up beside her pricked a little spot in his mind. He wanted to address it but because he didn't know enough to judge their relationship with, he let it go.

He subtly remembered Taehyung telling him it was just friendship and that he didn't see her that way but Jimin always sensed a strange type of tension between them, mostly from Kazimir's side. So far he only knew Taehyung's little side of the story, not hers.

"That was the plan, but I got carried away with reading and I don't know when I fell asleep." Kazimir gestured to the table.

"Ouch. That boring, huh?" He asked looking down at his notebooks.

"Don't make me the judge of that. I've never seen drafts written with so much care as if you were scared the words would bite off your head if you crossed them out."

"A few hours into writing and a lack of inspiration and an added bout of frustration really make it look like the words are jumping out of the page for your blood." Jimin chuckled.

"Oh you're one of those writers then, you know, the ones who wait for the inspiration? Because the way I see it, words coming for your blood is the best way to write. At least you could say the craft took it all out of you, the life I mean. What good is poetry if you didn't at least give up a little part of yourself to write it?"

Jimin stared, awestruck by the way she described the art form and his heart almost jumped out of his ribcage.

"I love you," he said, taken over by the emotions.

"Huh?" Kazimir snorted.

"I mean, as in, the- I mean not you obviously, not that there is anything wrong with you, but- uh- I love that you are you, poetically." He stuttered while all the blood rushed to his cheeks.

Kazimir laughed at his state, knowing he wasn't serious with his confession but his love for her work started to take her off guard.

"You're at the wrong chapter. Y/n still has a few more cheesy adorable remarks left to make before you realize she's been the one all along," she said.

Jimin rubbed the back of his neck and smiled, "Yeah, maybe I should wait a little more. I still have to confess I am a rich CEO before anything else."

"Sure." Kazimir returned the smile and pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

"You sound in a good mood this morning," Jimin said softly, placing a hand on her arm. He had started to realize how easy it was to offer her little physical comforting touches like that. She almost looked like she was always waiting for one which made it so much easier for him to subconsciously offer them all the time as if they were second nature to him when in reality they were all his firsts.

"Today I am a character in a stranger's story. My own can wait until I am done deciding why yesterday wasn't the last chapter," she said.

She walked past him on her way to the bathroom but Jimin almost swayed from the sheer force of her choice of description and subtly staggered a step back.

He eyed her retreating figure until she disappeared from his sight. He gulped and turned back to look at his table and leaned against the back of a chair. Her words resonated through his head and he let his thoughts dissect them word for word, and tried to piece them back together to figure out which parts were crafted by the poet and her witty way to weave metaphors and which parts were the truth.

Jimin prepared breakfast but he was still caught up with his earlier thought, where would she stay, but neither the frying eggs nor the brewing coffee answered his question.

When he was finally done placing the food on the table, he sat down and waited for her. His hand pulled one of his notebooks towards himself to see what damage had been done to his work but no part of him was alarmed anymore. He knew his words were in safe hands and they were getting the right treatment.

He was in the middle of one of the poems when Kazimir rounded the corner and Jimin noticed she was still wearing his clothes from yesterday; a gray shirt and baggy jeans. The previous night after she had thrown up, Jimin had insisted on offering her some clean clothes but now reality was knocking on their door more firmly and they needed to show up for themselves. Him with his living arrangement and her with her things from her house.

"So- uh-" he began as soon as she sat, "We need to get your things," he said, placing a plate of food in front of her.

"Thanks," Kazimir mumbled at the food and picked up her fork.

"And we need to figure out where you will be sleeping," Jimin said. He tried to sound assertive like she had no choice but to agree.

Kazimir's hand stopped for split second mid-air between her plate and her open mouth before she resumed her eating.

Jimin noticed the halt in her behavior and thought he sounded too harsh but things needed to be sorted out so he didn't make an effort to repeat his statement in a softer tone.

"What do you mean where would I be sleeping?" Kazimir asked, chewing, "Any couch is fine. And I'll get my things as soon as possible."

"I can't let you stay on a couch," Jimin said, "Who does that?"

Kazimir's eyes shot up at him. She gestured with her head towards a notebook at the edge of the table, "The storyteller who let the runaway marionette into his house."

Jimin's hand stopped moving and his eyes ran along the length of the table until they landed on the notebook where he had written down the little summary of a story inspired by his encounter with Kazimir a few moons ago where he described how he wanted to help the marionette just so he can write about her pain. He doubted the girl sitting across him had figured out the story was about her because the snippet he had written was too vague but he didn't put it past Kazimir to have figured it out.

"How does the story end though?" Kazimir asked, stuffing her mouth with the eggs and Jimin almost sighed in relief because her casual demeanor said she had no clue about the origins of the marionette tale.

"Uh- I don't know. How do you think it should end?" He asked.

"Well," Kazimir began, taking a sip of her coffee, "The marionette was supported by broken strings right?"

Jimin nodded.

"And the storyteller fell in love with her pain. But he only wanted to make her pain look beautiful so that people could love him for that, right? But what if the storyteller couldn't make the pain look beautiful no matter how much he tried? What if the story ended with the storyteller getting tangled in the broken strings because he got too caught up in trying to understand the pain to write it better?" Kazimir questioned.

"How can the story end there? That sounds like the middle, not the end." Jimin put his fork down and leaned back against the chair, "The storyteller gets tangled, but what if while trying to understand the root, he finds the exact place where the strings are attached to her and cuts them off, freeing both of them?"

Kazimir squinted her eyes and gave his words a thought, "But no broken strings, no story for the storyteller to tell. Then what's the point?" She asked.

"The storyteller would have had enough stories to tell when he comes out of the tangles, having found out new things while he tried cutting the strings off. The marionette's joints will not be stiff anymore and she'll be able to dance more beautifully and gracefully. Both end up happy."

Kazimir's fork halted too and she put it down beside the plate.

"So the broken strings were making her joints stiff?" She asked.

"Yeah, you know, that's where the strings are normally attached to a marionette or a puppet," Jimin offered casually.

Kazimir looked away from his eyes and down to the pile of notebooks in front of her. She pulled her hands from the table and placed them in her lap, away from his eyes because they started to shake a little. Jimin noticed the tension in the air but it was too little for him to be concerned about.

"What if even after she is free, she can't move freely because her body stayed in the same position for such a long time that her pain is nothing more than a living memory that her bones can never forget?" She asked.

It was Jimin's turn to squint his eyes. He leaned forward and placed his arms on the table and tilted his head to the side in thought.

"What if," he started, an idea forming in his head, "The storyteller makes better memories with her and instead of her entire body aching in the memory of pain, new memories would stretch her frown upwards into a smile." He leaned back, a smug expression on his face as if he had won the argument, "What if the memory in her joints gets suppressed under all the new memories to the point that even if she couldn't forget the pain, she couldn't let it overpower her happiness?"