Seokjin looked desperately at Taehyung and looking for a way to convince him to give him his letter back. Taehyung was a temperamental boy who thought his word was golden and unquestionable but he had to find a way to get him to reverse his decision at all costs.

Taehyung saw Seokjin's eyes suddenly light up, a sign that he had an idea and he rolled his eyes. There was definitely something different that day, Seokjin was too prone to protest and challenge his decisions. He had lost his usual submission, it was that high school response letter that had made him like this that morning, it was the only explanation.

"We will just have to make our two teams play again in a friendly rematch," Seokjin offered as a solution, "it will not take away their official title of winner that Choseon has just won but it will prove to everyone that if I had been able to play until the end, it's Gugbo that would have won for sure. If we replay the match, it is certain that I will win it, trust me!"

"No, you won't play against Choseon again," Taehyung replied.

"I haven't asked permission from the headteacher and the coach yet," Seokjin wondered.

"Yeah, well, I don't give that permission to you, like that, it's settled."

"What? But it's not you who decides, your not a teacher!" Seokjin protested.

Taehyung raised one eyebrow and frowned the other.

"Did you forget who I am? I'm Kim Taehyung, I do what I want and if you ask the coach to replay the game against Choseon, I will veto it, be sure of that."

"And why would you do that?! I want to play the game again and prove what I'm really capable of!" Seokjin said, outraged.

"Nobody cares Jin, everyone has already seen you lose."

"But I care, and I want to prove to you that I deserve my letter! By the way, without a return game, you can't really say that one team was stronger than the other or if it was just luck."

"You don't need to prove it to me, your team lost, so stop insisting, because you're only tiring me. You won't play against Jungkook again when he almost killed you today, it's my final decision."

Bewilderment flashed across Seokjin's face, with a hint of anger as after having already called Jungkook a crap before and now making him look like a murderer, Taehyung was starting to piss him off with wanting to make him hate Jungkook. He had always made sure Seokjin didn't have any friends in middle school but why did he also have to stop him from being friends with outsiders?

"Kill me?!" he repetead, the trembling voice of an incipient anger to which he was not accustomed. "Are you out of your mind? I had an asthma attack, how could that be Jungkook's fault?!"

"Oh, come on!" the other said, annoyed, "you don't know anything but football Jin, you are not good at all at figuring people out."

"Yes, you're probably right Taehyung," Seokjin replied bitterly, "because if I had been good at it, I wouldn't have become friends with you in the first place, it would have made my life much easier. Luckily, Jungkook doesn't look like you at all, no matter what you say about him with your malicious tongue!"

Taehyung's face hardened and Seokjin felt he made him very angry. Usually it would have worried him about the consequences but at that moment, he was himself too angry with Taehyung, so he wasn't going to apologize for that after what the other had said. Taehyung was the worst of all, he had made his life hell, he had ordered others to hurt him but he thought he was the best, he was exactly like his father.

At the foot of the bed, Taehyung seemed to be restraining himself from throwing himself on him to make him pay for what he had just said. Yet, with what seemed to be a superhuman effort for him, he managed to conquer his anger to avoid doing something he would have regretted later.

"You must really have Ventolin in your brain from stuffing yourself with it to be so far off the mark," he said nastily, "you think it's enough for someone to play football and smile at you to prove he's nice and innocent like you ? You're too stupid, Jin."

"Yes, okay, I'm too stupid but stop insulting my friend," Seokjin retorted, used to being insulted.

"He's not your friend," Taehyung said between his teeth, jaw still clenched.

"Yes, he is."

"No, he's not.

"Yes, he-"

"Jin!!" cut Taehyung, exasperated. "Stop pissing me off now or I swear you will regret it!"

"But I don't see why it should be up to you if he's really my friend or not!" Seokjin exclaimed, remembering Jimin's warnings.

"You should be happy that I decide for you 'cause you unable to see the obvious: if he's your friend, why didn't he withdraw when he saw that he had exhausted you to the point of knocking you unconscious? And if he is your friend, why did he not come to see you at the hospital and why am I the one who is there with you?"

Seokjin opened and then closed his mouth, slightly at Taehyung's words but quickly convinced himself that the other was trying to manipulate him into agreeing with him.

"Don't talk like I'm an idiot."

"You admitted just before that you were too stupid," Taehyung reminded him with a grin full of sufficiency.

Seokjin widened his eyes realizing he had been tricked but refused to leave it at that because he was too offended.

"Namjoon says you are the idiot, not me," he replied proudly, because even though he kept away from him, Namjoon was the smartest person he knew and he was never wrong. "If he says it, it's true."

His remark had the gift of making Taehyung angry in turn because he didn't like Seokjin taking Namjoon as a role model

"Namjoon says that because he likes you and hates me, not because it's true. He is not here everyday with us to see all your nonsense, I am, so only I can know the truth about you and you're gonna stick it in your head once and for all : you are an idiot, period."

Seokjin glared at Taehyung who would never let him have the last word and who ban on replaying the match. He couldn't afford to argue about this now because he wanted Taehyung to return his letter.

"If you don't want me to replay the game against Choseon, it's fine," he conceded with regret, "but then, consider me winning because I won the match as long as I was on the field, right? So that makes me a winner! And you said yourself that Jungkook didn't beat me because he only scored when I was gone!"

"Yeah, I said that, but even if Jungkook didn't beat you, his team did. It wasn't just a duel between Jungkook and you, remember? It was a match between two teams. The deal between you and me was you make our school team win and the adversary team lost. You failed, too bad for you."

"B-but... But that's unfair! I was going to win and you know it!" Seokjin stubbornly exclaimed, feeling anger rising in him again, "I would have won if I had not had this attack!"

"Yeah, maybe, but you had it and I'm not responsible for that, so no need to imagine what could have happened if you didn't," Taehyung said roughly, "you gave it your all but still lost, it's unfair but that's the way it is."

"But..." Seokjin began before being roughly cut off by Taehyung.

"And if you lost, it's because you're sick and unable to be a real footballer like the others, it's time for you to realize. This must serve as a lesson to you: it means that your future as a sportsman is threatened by this, you asthma attack can come back anytime and especially if you go to a sports school where you will have many more hours of daily sport than this year."

"Why are you telling me this?! To make me stop like you tried before? I already told you that I wouldn't give up. It's not my illness that will stop me. And anyway, I'll get better as I grow up, you know that, so stop it!" Seokjin retorted in a voice shaking with anger, as he'd said in the past over and over again because a doctor had given him reason to hope that after his eighteen, when his respiratory system would be fully formed, his illness would eventually disappear on its own as it had happened to other people.

"Not necessarily, you forgot the part where the doctor said to you that most people don't get well from asthma," Taehyung recalled as he was there the day the doctor explained it to Seokjin and his mother. "You clung to this idea believing you were stronger than the others but in the end, it became dangerous for you to continue."

"I have medicine to help me, I'm not afraid to continue!" Seokjin persisted.

"You know very well that if you take too many, your bones will become so fragile that they will break as easily as glass. Think about it Jin, it got off to a bad start from the beginning: I don't know why you continued to hope, when nothing predisposes you to be a footballer. You should have given up and found another passion when they told you you were sick."

"I don't care about my predispositions or my disease, my love for football won't go away!" Seokjin retorted, angry, "and I don't understand why suddenly you pretend that you care about my health, after all you've done to me, stop believing that you can decide for me!"

"Stop implying that I don't care, you know very well that I always did. And you can get that idea out of your head : of course I can decide for you, I always have a say in what you do, never forget it!"

"Despite everything you say, I will continue: I will go to my dream school, and I will achieve my dream to become a footballer even if I have to die in the field in doing so, now give me back my letter!" Seokjin said.

"Even if you have to die?!" Taehyung repeated in dismay, "That's what you proudly said to Jimin earlier, and now you are proudly repeating it in front of me as if you meant it?!"

"That's probably because I do!" Seokjin retorted.

Taehyung winced when he saw in Seokjin's eyes that he was sincere.

"If you are ready to die for this stupid sport, then I will not give you back your damn letter. I will also prevent your subscription to Whimoon and I will forbid you to do this damn football that you love so much! I can perfectly get you banned from all football clubs in the country, you know I can afford it," he said, angry that Seokjin didn't take him seriously.

"WHAT?!" Seokjin exploded in amazement, "no, you can't! you can't ! you have no right to do this to me, I let you take everything from me until now but you can't take this from me, I refuse to let yo-" his outburst of anger was cut short by a fit of coughing frantic that hurt his chest.

As he tried to stop his cough that wouldn't let him catch his breath, he placed a hand on his painful chest and grabbed the fabric of his hospital gown, the face already all red. Taehyung got up from the bed and approached him, suddenly worried. Eager to see him calm down and regain normal breathing, he put a hand on his shoulder:

"Hey Jin, calm down and take your time to breathe between words or you'll choke," he said awkwardly.

But Seokjin had no intention of calming down. Enraged, he straightened up to push Taehyung's hand away and ripped off his mask which he threw on the ground, letting the aerosol uselessly diffuse his medicine into the air.

"It's fine, act like a brat if you want, you are going to die today! At least you will have lost your bet with me and instead of dying on a football field, you will have died in a bloody hospital room, as you deserved, you stupid fool!!" Taehyung yelled in anger before widening his eyes realizing what Seokjin was doing.

Indeed, in his other hand, Seokjin still held his ventolin and in a fit of rage, he raised his arm and tried to throw it in Taehyung's face. But Taehyung had quickely anticipated it : he grabbed his arm before he could and snatched the inhaler from his hands.

"Were you really going to do this Jin?!" he shouted, face flushed with anger, before violently throwing the ventolin which crashed against the door of the room before falling to the ground in two parts, the inhaler on one side and its medicine refill on the other.

Unaware of the red trace that the overly tight mask had left on his face, Seokjin, beside himself, did not answer him but kept screaming angrily, his voice broken by his frenzied breaths:

"I... REFUSE... THAT YOU STEAL... MY ONLY... HAPPINESS!!"

Taehyung had never seen him so enraged even though he knew how much football was dear to his heart and that was what had always made him a good pressure tactic. Talking to him about football always made him immensely happy and talking to him about never doing it again and giving up on his dream was like telling him to give up living. These two extremes was almost scary.

Taehyung had always been able to maneuver skillfully to always get from Seokjin what he wanted with him. However, he asked him today to definitively give up what had always made him happy despite his difficult life, despite his football team which had always been odious to him. Running on a field with a ball at his feet was his whole life, Taehyung had never understood such a passion for this game, but he was aware of this reality.

"IF YOU DO THAT... I WILL... NEVER... EVER... FORGIVE YOU! I WILL... HATE YOU... FOREVER! AND THIS TIME... I... I... I WILL KILL... MYSELF!" Seokjin yelled, before being the victim of a new salvo of coughing which made him double over this time.

Amazed to hear that, Taehyung had the impression of having in front of him a Seokjin he didn't know. So that was what Seokjin looked like, without his dream? A boy in pain, hopeless and stripped of his joy of living who no longer wanted to go on living? Understanding that Seokjin would not calm down and really risked dying of anger, what he found really odd, Taehyung agreed to concede in spite of himself:

"It's okay, you can calm down, I won't steal it from you."

Seokjin raised at him his red face from having coughed too much but Taehyung had to wait patiently for him to stop coughing before knowing if what he said was enough to calm him down.

"Y-you... you won't?" Seokjin asked , panting after coughing so much.

"I won't," Taehyung nodded, "unless you don't take care of your health. So don't ever say again you're willing to die."

Seokjin seemed to calm down a bit upon hearing that, but he wasn't sure if Taehyung was telling the truth and was wondering if he wasn't just manipulating him.

"So you... you're going to give me back my letter?" he asked suspiciously, eyebrows frowned.

"Yes, I'll give it back to you," Taehyung sighed in defeat.

Seokjin seemed to calm down for good that time and Taehyung took the opportunity to bend over to turn off the nebulizer which was still humming as the medicine had completely evaporated. The sudden silence did their ears good. He also went to get the ventolin that was lying on the floor towards the door, easily reassembled the two parts and handed it to Seokjin.

"Thank you," Seokjin said, and Taehyung didn't really know if it was for give him back his medicine or for agreeing to return his letter.

"Mhmm," he mumbled before lifting Seokjin's blanket and snatching a gasp of surprise from him when he felt the cold caress his bare legs under his hospital gown, "now move on, give me a seat."

"What? No way!" Seokjin exclaimed, "Can't you make an exception and sleep alone tonight? it's late, you better go home!"

"Nonsense," Taehyung replied, "if you're here, there's no other place I can be to sleep."

After all, he had always slept with Seokjin since they were little.