(Play the music)

Taehyung remembered the night the hotel burnt down.

He was an aspiring artist, travelling around the country with his best friend, and the both of them stopped there for the night.

Taehyung had had big dreams, ones that he would tell anyone he met about. He was going to paint masterpieces so beautiful they would sell all across the world. He would be travelling from country to country, seeing the scenery from each region and capturing what he saw on canvases that would soon fill his home, so that when he grew older with children and a wife, they could all see what he had seen too.

But on that fateful night, Taehyung realised that his dreams would never come to be.

He had awoken from a peaceful slumber to notice the odour of smoke filling the air, the fumes of it so thick he could barely breathe. He had opened his eyes to look around the room, only to find the walls that had once been a beautiful painted cream were now lined in auburn flames.

Frightened, he had hastily pulled himself from the bed and tried to run through the door – which was still clear of flames - but had slipped on an upturned panel in the floor. With arms outstretched hopelessly to brace his fall, he was launched face forwards into a burning wall.

At first, all he could feel was pain, burning, and stinging through his skin as his body naturally slumped to the floor. He tried to escape from the hellish pain but his leg, twisted underneath the upturned plank of wood had rendered him immobile.

He could not move, nor would scream for the help he chanted to himself arrive any minute.

He could not see.

And then, slowly he began to realise...

He could no longer breathe.

Despite the burning heat from the blazes around him, Taehyung began to feel cold.

So, so cold.

All he could do to escape the horrifying moment was close his eyes and pretend he was back in his studio again, painting a remake of Van Gogh's 'Starry night'. He imagined the calm hums of ivory keys playing in the background, as sweet as the symphony of a thousand angels, wrapping him in their harmonies as he felt himself slowly fade from reality.

When his eyes opened again, the sound of wood tearing and flames licking across the walls were gone, replaced by the echoes of the morning birds chirping. He felt relief, assuming that perhaps everything had just been a dream. He pushed himself back from the wall carefully, realising that he couldn't see very well. Perhaps it had been an effect from the smoke.

His leg could move now, though barely as he pulled it out from underneath the upright plank. With much difficulty, he was able to pull himself up from the ground. Looking around the room, all he could see was the charred remains of cream walls that were once adorned with tiny teal flowers. When placing his hand on the ruins, he found that he could no longer feel the timber he expected to feel beneath them. Upon the realisation, Taehyung pulled his hand away from the wall as if it were placed on burning hot coals, his eyes searching his upturned hand.

Turning his head toward the window, his hazy gaze could just see the sun blaring through the windows like nothing had happened the night before, and despite being in its glare, Taehyung couldn't feel it's heat. He felt cold, and not the type of cold he used to feel shivering on winter nights around the fire.

He felt cold like he had never felt before, like he was stuck on the razor blade between the two, unfeeling of neither.

Limping toward the window, he watched through his broken gaze as the trees around the large mansion whistled and waved in the wind, birds weaving through their branches as they sounded in harmony with each other. So alive, so free, and here he was, watching them.

And that's when it occurred to Taehyung, chilling him to the depths of his soul.

He no longer felt alive.