alwaysfound himself to be a bit different from the other boys attending his high school.

To start off, he was painfully shy unlike everyone he knew.

He absolutely loathed initiating conversations and everything of that sort, he generally detested being in public.

Given to that, he would turn extremely flustered when receiving skinship.

Furthermore, he tended to be drawn more to... girly things.

As a small boy, he envied every girl his age that would run around, swinging her various styled up barbie dolls around in her arms.

He never wanted to become a strong firefighter or a sturdy police officer in his future like boys in his primary school, playing with toy cars of all shapes and colours (except pink, of course!).

He had always loved soft and pretty things, hence why he had wanted a cute barbie doll.

He remembered that one time where he kindly asked his parents to maybe buy him a barbie doll, he also remembered his father snapping at him with a piercing glare, it wasn't normal for a boy to want those things and he should get those foolish thoughts out of his head.

Taehyung would never forget the look of disgust and horror on his face and had decided to never ask such a question again.

Lastly, he spent half of his time studying to get perfect grades (he invested the other half listening to Girls Generation with his headphones on), and it showed. His grades never stooped below a B, something especially his mother appreciated very dearly about her son. His father would just tut at everything that was not an A+, and even if it was an A+, he would never be satisfied.

Taehyung would never be able to understand his father but he was used to his cold attitude. He still tried to see the good in him.

Now, his best friend, Jeon Jungkook was the complete opposite.

Sometimes Taehyung wondered why they were friends. Best friends. But then again, it was probably just fate.

Jungkook had always been more of a fierce and bold boy, yet still unsuspecting and even naive at times.

There had been a phase where he had been influenced to do all the wrong things- drinking, smoking, vandalizing school property, just to be a 'cool guy'.

Luckily, his middle school teachers never caught him in his acts.

Somehow, Taehyung had managed to get him out of his phase (by throwing away the cigarettes and beer bottles and having long discussions with him), concerned about his best friends health- and criminal record.

And after realizing how pathetic those actions were, Jungkook was more than grateful to him for doing so.

About the time when the both of them were high-schoolers, Taehyung figured some things out, about himself.

He never thought much of love and such, he never even had eyes for a girl once.

Maybe I just need more time, he had thought.

But at some point of life, he had put two and two together and when he found himself drooling over a handsome male celebrity, the realization had dawned upon him and hit him like a bucket of ice cold water: Oh shit, I'm gay.

He had contemplated whether he should tell his parents about this many times, so his father would stop talking about when he would get a beautiful girlfriend, just like Jungkook did, or how he should treat his future girlfriend like a lady, just like Jungkook does, to which his mother shook her head and told him to give their son some time.

But when he finally found the courage for an attempt of coming out, he heard his father muttering something about "those fucking f*gs" angrily while looking at his YouTube recommendations, where a thumbnail of two boys holding hands in front of a rainbow-coloured flag was displayed.

And when he heard similar things said at school the next day ("Gay people are so weird! I hope I never see them in public!"), poor Taehyung was terribly shocked and saddened, knowing he would never be accepted.

He would have never thought it was that big of a deal, well, apparently it was.

So Taehyung decided to keep it a secret, for as long as he could.