Chapter Preview (Word Count: 883)

"Ow! Ow! Oh! This is hot!"

Verbena lifted her eyes from the folded letter she had been staring at to the man seated at the table across from her. He was furrowing his brows as he stared at the bowl of hot soup she had prepared for him. She had wanted to make sure that she prepared something warm for him though. After all, she didn't know how long he had been standing on her porch in the snowstorm waiting for her to get home. Judging by his bright red face and ear tips, it had been a while. The yellow and plaid jacket he had on over a white turtleneck looked like it had been more of a sponge against the elements outside than anything else.

The gray gloves he was wearing were thin and were the kind where the tips of the fingers were exposed. She could see them shaking slightly as he reached out towards the bowl again, trying to grab it up with his fingers with the same ending result.

"Ow!"

"It's soup. What are you trying to do?"

He looked up at her with those familiar yet unfamiliar doe brown eyes. It pained her to see them.

"It looks like a liquid, so I'm trying to pick this up to drink from it. I mean, aren't you supposed to drink liquids?"

Verbena sighed as she reached across the table to grab the spoon that rested on the napkin. She held it in front of his face. His eyes fixated themselves on it, looking at his reflection in the warped surface.

"What you have in front of you is soup, and this is a spoon. You use this to eat soup."

He took it from her hands after her small spiel, holding the spoon in both hands before trying to dig into it the soup like it was a shovel digging a hole. Sighing again, she got up from where she was seated, dragging her chair around the table to sit beside him.

"Give me the spoon."

He looked over at her and gave it over without question. She spooned some of the soup up before bringing it towards his mouth.

"It might still be a little hot, but it shouldn't burn your mouth."

He trusted her completely, opening his mouth like a baby bird did for their mother. She watched his lips close around the spoon before he let out a hum.

"Oh this is good!" he said as he swallowed it; his eyes lighting up. "What's the chunky stuff in the liquid?"

"Potatoes, chicken, maybe celery."

"Can I have more please?"

She nodded, spooning up some more and feeding it to him. She kept doing that for a few minutes before pausing so he could have a drink.

"How old are you exactly?" she asked as he put the glass back down on the table.

"Twenty-six I think," he said as he looked down at himself as if doing so would tell him his age.

Twenty-six would make sense to Verbena. That would be the age he would be. She still half suspected this might be some big elaborate joke on his part.

"And you're seriously going to sit here and continue the act that you're not my former best friend, Kim Taehyung?"

"I'm really not him," said the man in front of her; his dark brown hair kissing the tips of his reddened ears and frost-tipped eyelashes as he lifted his head to look back over at her. "And former best friend? He always spoke so highly of you that I just assumed..."

"What's your name?" Verbena asked next, immediately cutting him off.

"All the questions you're asking can be answered in that letter I gave you; in the letter Taehyung wrote," said the man as he nodded his head at the letter she had left folded on the other side of the table. "Don't you want to read it?"

"I want the answer to come from your mouth," she said. "What is your name?"

Besides looking like the best friend she had lost touch with after university had ended, the man before her hadn't told her his name. All he had done was insist over and over again that he wasn't Taehyung, but that he had been sent by him.

"My name is V."

She looked at him; her eyes springing with tears at his answer. V looked over at her, looking concerned at her reaction to the name.

Maybe she really had meant as much to Taehyung as he had to her.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's just...V was what he used to call me. That was his nickname for me since Verbena was too unusual for him to say over and over again."

V smiled softly before grabbing up the napkin on the table to wipe away the tears running down her cheeks. The man didn't know how to eat soup, but he knew how to wipe away tears. Of course.

"Where is Taehyung?" she asked. "I know I can read the letter. I just...I want to hear it from you. Start from the beginning, please?"

Even before V opened his mouth to begin his story, Verbena could already tell she wouldn't like what he'd have to say.

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I have been toying with this idea all day in my mind, and I just couldn't help myself anymore. The teaser went a little longer than normal, which is why I called it a 'chapter preview' instead. It pretty much was a couple hundred words short of being one. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on yet another idea from my overactive imagination.

I ask for your patience as I write all my new and old ideas. I will try my best to finish them all at some point, though I write what I'm inspired to so updates will be sporadic.

* If you would like to volunteer to help with a cover, aesthetics, trailer, banner, etc., for this book, please leave a comment here and I'll reach out to you through PM! 😁

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8/22/2022

CHALLENGE TIME!

If this story meets the following challenge, I will work on the first chapter so that it can be posted sometime by the end of this upcoming week.

Before I post the first chapter, I'd love it if this author's note could get 10 votes. Lets see what happens, shall we?

(This challenge is obviously just for fun. Even if the idea doesn't reach 10 votes, I will post the first chapter if I feel like it. However - if the story reaches 10 votes and I haven't yet posted anything more to it - I will keep my promise and upload the first chapter ASAP).

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This story is a BTS AU, which means not everything in it will be canon. Some details about the members of BTS might have been altered slightly to better fit the storyline.

This work is a work of fiction (in first draft form) that does not reflect in any way, shape or form the ideals of those it is portraying. I'm also not - in any way, shape, or form - affiliated with BTS or HYBE. This is merely meant as a piece of entertainment.

This work is an original work of mine, so please refrain from plagiarism. (NovelHD - or NovelWW as you're calling yourself now - don't think I don't see you).

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this book, and will try to post the chapters in as timely a fashion as I can.

If you're a fan of my writing (which I'm flattered if you are), below you can see other works that are either completed or also in progress. All of them are BTS stories.

Completed:
The Cupid Complex - JJK
Baby Daddy - JJK

In-Progress:
Vicariously Yours - KTH
The Cosplaying Cowboy Chronicles - MYG focused/OT7
Body and Soul - JJK & KTH
BTS Lyrical Stories - One Shot Collection
Every Day - OT7
Pied Piper - KTH
Film Out - KSJ
Good Luck Charming (A "Cupid Complex" Novella) - OG character w/JJK, KTH
Wild For You - KTH
Traitor's Song - OT7

Coming Soon:
Who Shrunk The Boy Band? - OT7
Final Departure - KSJ
Stuffed Up - OT7
What Would Kookie Do? - JJK
Wish Away - JJK & KTH

Paused:
Under The Influence - JJK
Fragile Line - JJK

© Sherly Holmes (2022) All Rights Reserved

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I do not own the gifs used in this author's note