"With a light gray background, why am I standing here?

I don't know if I have a lot of thoughts or no thoughts at all."

Jihoon is floating. He feels the lazy waves rocking his body and he mentally sighs happily. It’s been a long time since he felt this relaxed. His eyes are wide open and even when he tries to blink his eyelids don’t move. He is not complaining though. The sight above him is shockingly beautiful. The night sky is illuminated by thousands of stars. Jihoon is sure he never saw so many in his life. Being born in the middle of the city, the stars were a rare encounter. But now he can see them all. There are galaxies, filled with silver dust and stars that put to shame the lights Jihoon has seen his entire life on Seoul’s streets. Some are small, blinking softly at him from time to time, but there were also huge spectrums of light, gathering into weird constellations. Jihoon finds them enchanting, hypnotic even.

Those are the same stars that guided the ancients, the same that will greet the future Jihoon won’t be able to ever see. In this moment he envies them. He envies their everlasting coldness, the ability of staying there, up in the sky, and observing the Earth with their frozen eyes, not ever being bothered by the human’s meaningless problems. The black charcoal under him acts as a gigantic mirror, an inverse image of the spectacle above. Hovering between them, Jihoon finally feels at peace. His body is strangely light and for a second he wonders if the water that moves him is under him or inside. Have the stars floating around slipped inside him too? Are they the ones that gathered in his throat, stopping the air from going in? Have they clotted his veins and stopped his muscles? Are they trying to convert him into one of their own? If so, he doesn’t think he’ll mind it too much.

His eyes are forcefully opened, Weren’t they already wide? The light outside jabs at them. Wasn’t it night? He swings his head around, confused. There’s a splash of blue on the white above him and when his eyes finally focus. He sees Soonyoung looking down at him with worry written all over his face. He’s talking, but Jihoon’s ears are still stuffed with water, or so it feels like. But there was never any water, wasn’t it?

“Jihoon.” Soonyoung’s alarmed voice finally reaches him and he locks his eyes with the other boy’s. Soonyoung lets out a long sigh and takes a seat on Jihoon’s bed.

“Sorry to wake you up. But you were sweating a lot. It looked like you were having a nightmare.” The shushed voice is still too loud for Jihoon. He already misses the silence.

“It wasn’t a nightmare.” He softly argues. It was a memory, altered by his mind to satisfy his needs. It definitely wasn’t a nightmare. Soonyoung casts him a weird glance before getting up.

“Anyway, I was getting ready to leave. I have a class to keep.” He says, hand curling around his bag. Jihoon raises himself, resting his back on the wall behind him. He feels Soonyoung's heavy gaze on him, but he ignores it in favor of the glass of water that awaits on his nightstand.

“Go, then.” He instructs because Soonyoung doesn’t move even after the water in the glass is gone.  

“I’ll come back right after.” The alarm in Soonyoung’s voice makes him finally look at the other.

“I’m fine.” Jihoon tries to sound as serious as possible, staring deep into the other’s eyes. “I’m perfectly okay. You don’t have to come back.”

Soonyoung's gaze turns into uncertainty, but Jihoon ignores it once again. He is completely fine.

“Go home after it. You’ve been here since last night.” He insists. “I’m okay, Soonyoung. I’ll just go back to sleep.”

“Fine.” Soonyoung finally gives in. “I have to check on the bar anyway. Just call me if anything happens.”

“Nothing’s going to happen.” Jihoon argues, getting up to walk the boy to the door.

“I… I know. Just call me.” Soonyoung says as he is pushed out of the room. “I’ll come check on you tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to!” Jihoon snaps. “I’m not sick. I have classes tomorrow, so don’t bother.” He is ready to close the door when Soonyoung stops him once again.

“Don’t go to class. You heard the headmaster. Just… take care of yourself.” He is dead serious but Jihoon finds it annoying.

“Fine.” He agrees. Knowing he won’t get rid of the boy in any other way. Soonyoung nods once, taking his hand away from the door.

“Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.” he announces, finally stepping away. Jihoon waves his hand once before closing the door.

When he turns around the room looks darker, as Soonyoung took with him all the light. He scoffs at his own stupid brain, pointing to himself that the sun is setting down. He drags his legs to the bed, flopping down face first. He groans loudly in his pillow and closes his eyes, hoping that sleep will take him quickly. It doesn’t and he is left repeating the events of the day all over again, brain exhausted but refusing to stop.

They say that his last song is a plagiarism. He scoffs again at the thought. Yeah, the song is not what he usually does, but it still has his vibe, the undertone common to all his songs. It’s not that hard to realize that this whole plagiarism thing is bull. But apparently, it’s too hard for some people… a lot of people.

He stretches his hand under the pillow, grabbing his phone and opening it. There are so many notifications from his YouTube channel that it hurts his brain. He presses on one, just to take him to the video. He vaguely thinks that this must be karma. He knew from the beginning that he should not post it, but at that moment he wasn’t thinking straight. It doesn’t take long for him to find the comment, since it’s one of the most voted ones. He ignores the text, already knowing it by heart, and clicks on the link it mentions.

The video was posted more than a month ago, and even if it wasn’t so popular until yesterday, the number of views grew by a few hundred thousands in the last day. There are hundreds of comments, but Jihoon refuses to read any of them just as he refuses to read the comments on his own video.

There’s just one thing that Jihoon doesn’t understand. How did they get his song? Because this is definitely his song. It’s the original instrumental, the one he composed at the beginning of the year. There is not even a note changed, like they wanted to rub it in his face. They knew that he will post the song one day, so they patiently waited. It didn’t matter if their video was getting popular or not, the only thing that mattered was that they posted the video before him.

“And? I just have to prove that it’s my song.” He argued earlier in the headmaster’s office. The man looked at him sadly.

“Even if you do that, it won’t be of much help.”

“What do you mean?” he was angry, fists fastened and lips trembling.

“This is not a matter of truth, Woozi. It’s a matter of reputation. Even if you succeed in revealing the truth, most people won’t care. They will only remember the scandal. The fact that Lee Woozi might have plagiarized a song, and maybe other’s too. They already ruined your reputation and if this grows more your future in the music industry might be over.”

“Bull!” Jihoon screamed, forgetting where he was for a moment. He turned around to Seungkwan, who was waiting by the door together with Soonyoung.

“Where’s Chan? He listened to the song before, he can witness that I’m telling the truth.”

Seungkwan jumped visibly, probably a reaction to the anger in his voice, and then shook his head.

“I don’t know hyung. I couldn’t reach him since this morning.” He murmurs, eyes focused on the floor.

“Woozi.” The headmaster asked for his attention once again. He turned to glare at the man.

“I’m sure everyone in this room believes you already. It’s not us who are the problem.”

“Then who? The people who listen to my music? They should know that this is my song.” He barked back, clenching his fists so hard his nails dug painfully into the flesh.

Mr. Kim Let out a sigh and his eyes left Jihoon to rest on the window. And Jihoon just knew that he didn’t want to hear whatever was coming. But he had to.

“I got a call from the contest’s juries.” Jihoon breath stopped in his throat, threatening to suffocate him. “They asked for an explanation. At that moment I had no idea what was going on, so I asked them to wait. They weren’t too happy, though. They are considering disqualifying you.”

At that moment Jihoon had enough. He closed his eyes and rejected anything entering his ears. He wanted to swear and kick and rip and just destroy anything. But he couldn’t, he’s a human being and he should behave like one. So he forced his anger down, digging his nails deeper into his palms, and crashing his teeth together. Exhaustion took its place, bending his body under its force. He turned around to the door and asked Soonyoung to take him home. 

He sighs in his pillows once again. For some reason, he is still calm. Maybe he is in shock, because he is definitely lacking some emotions right now. Or all of them. It’s rather relieving, to be able to be so calm after all of this. But it’s also worrisome because he is not like this. Even if he usually doesn’t show it, things like this affect him greatly. The absence of any reaction scares him.

There are voices outside the door, other students returning from their classes. He didn’t go today and the headmaster asked him to stay away for a few days. ‘Until everything calms down a little’ he said.  Jihoon is not happy about it, but he knows the man is right, as always. After all, he succeeded in making more enemies than friends in this school. He wonders how many of the people passing in the hallway wish him to fail. Maybe one of them was the one that did this, maybe they sneaked into his room and stole his song. If that’s the case, is that the only thing they stole?

He sits up abruptly, eyes darting around the room, focusing selectively on different objects. Everything seems in its place, but he can never be sure. His eyes stop on his computer and his heart drops a little. One song… why would they steal only one song when he has so many stuffed in the computer? It would be a stupid move and whoever they are, they surely proved that they aren’t that stupid. He shakily lifts himself from the bed and moves into the desk chair, opening up his computer.

There’s no password to it and he almost bangs his head on the desk. How idiotic of him. It’s almost an invitation to whoever did this. His music is waiting on the desktop, nicely sorted in folders according to genres and level of completion. He wishes he could cry, but the shock is almost too big, it darkens the corners of his vision and throbs inside his skull. Instead, a twisted laugh leaves his lips, filling the silence of his room in waves. He’s just so stupid, so ing stupid.

His head spins and he laughs again while forcing his legs to get him back to bed. He almost falls over the chair, managing to catch himself just in time, but sending the backpack that was resting on the chair flying to the ground. He ignores it, moving to the bed while some pens roll on the floor.

There’s a loud jingle and he watches his keys fall from the side pocket. His lips twitch at the silly keychain, an ugly colored handmade stuffed animal, at least he thinks it’s an animal. Seungkwan got it for him when he changed his keys, saying that he’ll lose it again if he doesn’t have anything attached to it. He tried to argue with the kid that that’s not the reason he lost it the first…

His thoughts break and his eyes widen to the point that they start to sting. His key. He lost his key. His legs give up under him and he hits the floor with a loud thud. There's a sudden pain right in the middle of his chest, dull, but powerful at the same time. He gasps for air, but somehow it doesn't reach his lungs, or at least that's how he feels, and that's when he starts to tremble as he was left out, in the middle of January. Desperate, he tries once more to breathe, crawling on the perfect polished floor, trying to get himself up, but the forceful action brings along the urge to puke. Torn between the ache in his chest, the need for air and the horrible feeling before puking he closes his eyes tightly.

He’s floating between the constellations once again. The calm settles into his bones. He would have sighed in contempt if not for the water occupying his throat.

Um... please don't kill me? Sorry :(

I hope I'll update more often from now on. Thanks to all of your who are still reading this <3

And.. see you soon?

Also Happy #LovelyBooDay