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Taehyung didn't know when it began.
Maybe it was the way Y/N stopped asking questions and started leaving doors open — not just literal ones, but the kind in his mind that had always been locked. Maybe it was the way she looked at him — not like a monster, not like a man, but something in between.
He told himself it wasn't love.
Couldn't be.
Not when he still woke up at night choking on memories. Not when his hands still trembled from all the things they'd done. Love was a luxury he didn't deserve.
But… when she sat beside him at dinner, humming under her breath.
When she left letters on his desk about nothing — poems, dreams, silly thoughts.
When she asked once, very softly, "Do you ever wish you were someone else?"
And he didn't lie when he whispered: "Every day."
He started thinking it could be love. One day. Maybe.
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But he saw the way her eyes wandered out the window. How she paused when she heard girls her age laughing outside the estate walls. She never said it, but he knew:
She felt caged.
And it broke something in him.
So, one day, he left her a key. No guards at the gate. No locks on the doors. Just a note on her windowsill:
"If you want to leave, I won't stop you. I never should've. You deserve to be free, Y/N. Even if that freedom means leaving me behind."
He waited.
For hours. Then days.
She didn't leave.
But something changed in her. She smiled more. Talked to him more openly. And for the first time, he saw the trust in her eyes — not forced, but chosen.
And it changed him.
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One night, he found her curled up in the library, asleep with a book still open in her lap. He knelt beside her, careful not to wake her. He brushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek and whispered so low he was sure even the night wouldn't hear:
"You could've run… but you stayed. You stayed… and now I don't know how to live without you."
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He didn't kiss her yet.
Didn't confess.
Didn't ruin the fragile, beautiful thing growing between them.
He was still learning how to feel without control, how to care without guilt. And she — she was giving him the one thing no one else ever had:
Time.
Time to fall, slowly.
To love, gently.
And to set her free — not because he didn't want her, but because he finally understood…
Love isn't about holding tight.
It's about holding right.
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