"It looks like you're eating well," Hoseok piped. Yoongi sat across him in the engineering caferia. Hoseok had never had a meal here before but after coincidentally finding Yoongi in the campus he decided to follow him here for lunch.

Yoongi looked hackneyed, but that's what he'd always looked like as far as Hoseok could remember. The difference only was that his eyes didn't look as sunken and hollowed, his pale complexion wasn't greyed like a few days before. He slowly chewed on his rice while a book laid open in front on him.

Hoseok wondered if he had really heard his voice, and discreetly he took a sausage from his own tray and put it on his. Instantly Yoongi looked up and Hoseok shot him a bright smile.

"You should eat more. I had an apple an hour before." Hoseok wasn't lying, he really had one. After struggling with weight for most throughout his teen years he had learned the importance of snacking healthy whenever he felt hungry, and do physical activities when bored.

Though often he wanted to pig out, he wanted to fall into inertia too. Lay on his bed in a sangfroid noon and not spend time on the ruminations that'd make him feel miserable and cruel at the same time.

"Thank you but I can't stomach much," Yoongi replied nibbling on the end of his chopstick.

"Oh, you have to. Don't you have a lot of jobs?"

"Yes, one after lunch too. But I missed out last week, had a break." Yoongi shut off the book lying in front of him and fixed his gaze on Hoseok, his hand listlessly poking on the food before him with his spoon.

Hoseok felt raptured that Yoongi decided to give him time. Yoongi often was busy and whenever with the others he always looked occupied with his own thoughts. Now Yoongi was provoking a slight conversation in a cordial manner.

"What is the job after lunch?" Questioned Hoseok. "You really work too hard. Breaks are essential!"

"The tutoring one. Soon I wouldn't have to do that, well, after my student takes the entrance exams."

"Good for you, right?" The journalism major surely did not know why Yoongi needed so many jobs but probably he needed them for a reason.

Yoongi only shrugged in response, again putting a spoonful of rice inside his mouth. Tediously he chewed and then he talked again, "Have you seen Jungkook? He'd usually hang around this cafeteria."

"Why would the basketball major eat here? Doesn't the sport faculty have a big cafeteria of their own?" The curly haired laughed in response. No sooner had it vanished, a crease appeared between his brows.

"Now that you've mentioned it, no. I haven't seen him at the dorm either."

A silence fell, Yoongi looked lost in his thoughts, eyes on somewhere distantly and Hoseok felt a bit restless all of a sudden.

"We're both absent from the dorm almost all the time. Maybe he's just sick, or has exams and busy in campus. They do have a lot of practices everyday." After the short vomitting of the words Hoseok asked himself if it was his own self that he was assuring.

Yoongi didn't show a sign in his nonchalant face. The slow and aimless conversation meandered throughout the lunch and then Yoongi minded his business, Hoseok his own- which was going to his classroom after he received a call from Serim.

She said it was urgent and Hoseok wondered why. They didn't have anything else to do for the day, nor was there any class, which meant Hoseok could wander around the campus or the streets for no reason, since there wasn't any volunteering work or club works sceduled either.

The classroom was empty save for his two juniors, Taehyun and Soobin, his classmates too, Hyungwon and Serim.

The juniors greeted him and left right after. He greeted back and held his hands up in the air in a cheerful manner when his classmates noticed him. "Hey sunshines!" He chirped, and then he realized how Serim looked anxious and the boy who was standing beside, at least two heads taller than her rapidly shifted between his one leg to other.

"Hoseok," Serim started, a cloak of nervousness coating her usually playful demeanour.

Hoseok approached them and knew something was wrong. His classmates eyed each other, as if they didn't know how to break it to him.

"I... I lost our group assignment." The blonde haired boy, Hyungwon finally uttered after what it felt like ages.

Hoseok felt like the ground beneath him had just swallowed him whole. He could barely hear what the boy was blabbering about next.

"I promise you, it's not my fault. I had the file in my phone, and it fell from my hand and the phone is not working now-"

"It's not his fault. I saw it," Serim added, by then a hammer was banging on Hoseok's head or so he felt like. His fists were clenching involuntarily, nails digging into the inside of his palm.

He did not stay up late hovering over his laptop for this to happen. By now the assignment should've been printed and handed to Mrs. Ko, by now it would have been there on the professor's desk.

"We could talk to Mrs Ko and extend the date for us, just for a day so I could repair the phone and-"

"Are you fucking kidding with me right now?" Hoseok bursted out.

Pin dropping silence followed. Hyungwon and Serim both were incredulously watching him.

Hoseok was violently shaking by then. If he could, he would jump onto the taller latter and pummel him to the concreted ground. "Why the hell did you only have one copy and only in your phone?"

"Hoseok." Serim gently put a hand on his forearm, her skin cold against his but he jolted away as if her touch burned him.

Hyungwon anxiously gnawed on his bottom lip. His skeletal fingers pulled out his phone from his hoodie's pocket, Hoseok noticed how the screen had cracked for the fatal fall.

"I'm really sorry, man. I just..." The blond boy tried to open the phone but the screen stayed dark, not even a static showed up. "I might have another copy at home. If I could call my roommate Wonho right now maybe he would open up my laptop and-"

"Why would you screw up everyone's score over your stupid mistake?" Hoseok spat, his throat encircling on its own, it hurt to even speak, but he wanted to scream. "If you were going to be such a fucking loser you should've joined someone else's group, Hyungwon. Because I surely didn't sign up for a moron in my group."

There, right there he got the look he had always loathed, abhorred with all his being. The puzzled look that was filled with fear, feared by Hoseok, and pain, because Hoseok had just unintentionally hurt them.

Unintentionally, because he really didn't mean to do this, he didn't mean to burst out like this, he didn't mean to get agry for the starter, and he never meant to let his emotions take over.

Though that's what his emotions always did, they had full control over him. And maybe that's why he liked to live in solitude. That's why maybe he avoided truly being friends with someone. Because he'd end up hurting them.

And he'd get abandoned consequently.

Hyungwon and Serim were staring at him with aghast expressions, certainly offended, certainly in pain.

Hoseok couldn't stand still anymore. Now that the rush of aggression had left him and he realized what he had done, he quickly pivoted on his ankles and left the classroom.

There was no explanation to this, no valid excuse he could give his 'friends', heck, he was so temperamental that even now he was trembling when he was so happy even few minutes ago. He wasn't trembling because of anger now but because he was so dejected for his own actions.

He felt a hand again on his arm and halted. He looked back to find Serim huffing as if she had ran all the way.

The shorter girl retreated her hand back quickly this time. "I'll inform Mrs Ko and extend the submission time for our group."

Hoseok didn't answer, mentally he prayed so she wouldn't ask why he overreacted, or why the corner of his eyes were glistening right now.

She didn't, thankfully. She only patted his shoulder lightly before storming to the classroom again, probably to console another boy who was starstruck and on the verge of falling apart after the harsh incident.

Hoseok knew it wasn't Hyungwon's fault. Accidents never makes an announcement before happening and Hoseok knew that well.

What also he knew well was that behind this sanguine disposition of his, he was a monster.

He was cruel, he harmed people without a proper reason and without intention. He was fucked up, he was so fucked up in the head that if people knew they would stay away for good.

After whatever had happened, Hoseok was not in the mood to jog throughout the evening, he wasn't in the slightest mood to do anything at all.

He went to the dorm straight and he laid down on his bed without even changing his outfit. The mauve glow of the falling afternoon was still spreading throughout the glossy skies of the city. The snowfalls had stopped long ago, the winter was slowly fading away.

Yet Hoseok felt cold, his blanket was draped over him from head to toe. In the dark on his bed alone he tried to calm his breathing, closing his eyes and counting one, two, three and repeating again.

The tremor in him had stopped, but he couldn't find serenity even in his little bubble, in solitude where he could take care of his volatile emotions.

In the silence a very low tune of an old music piece knocked onto his ears. From the second floor the land lord was playing his old vynil records again.

"Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
But in your dreams whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me"

Like the fading winter, Hoseok's consciousness was starting to lose visibility too as he slowed his breathing down and focused on the distant humming of the song, the melody dancing in the stiff air surrounding him.

Hoseok wished with all his might that he wouldn't visit a nightmare again.

And that he would stop being such a monster someday.

---
A/n: the song is called dream a little dream of me by Doris Day.