Trigger Warning: Brief Mentions of Attempted Suicide/Dark Thoughts

Jihoon could feel it- thick and heavy seeping into his body and sinking under his skin. That underlying feeling with which he was so intimately acquainted, the gaping emptiness. It made him weary, made his bones weak and his body ache from trying to fight it, from trying to push back the overly oppressive thoughts that accompanied it. It made him want to pull the blankets back up over his head, shut his eyes, and just go back to sleep, hoping that the feeling would be gone when he woke up if he woke up.

He needed to do this, he thought as he stared up at his white plaster ceilings, the ambiguous swirls on which he had already long ago memorized. He needed to get up, to force himself to move, to put one foot in front of the other and get through it the way he always had, no matter how bad it got. He could not let it back into his head again. He could not let it have the same kind of power that it did when he was seventeen and alone. He had to fight it, even if just to prove to himself that he could, if only to show that he was not his former self. He needed to push it to the back of his mind, even if it wasn’t entirely just for his own benefit anymore so much as someone else’s.

So Jihoon gets up. He slips out of bed, not bothering to make it because he can barely convince himself that there’s a point in getting up at all and convincing himself to do something so trivial seems unnecessary. He needs to save his energy and use it when it counts. It is not worth draining himself over a cocoon of blankets. He stops himself before he can wonder if anything in life is really worth draining himself for. He pulls on a dark grey hoodie and some sweats, frowning when he sees his own reflection in the mirror. His roots are showing again and the purpley-black bags under his eyes are back, a testament to his sleep deprivation. Jihoon makes a mental note to pick up some hair dye next time he is out, along with maybe some concealer to hide the bags and help his ever-weakening argument with his friends that he is ‘alright’. He grabs a granola bar from the cupboard, as he makes his way through his apartment, slipping on his worn sneakers and shoving his phone into his pocket. There are twenty-odd notifications but he doesn’t check any of them as he pushes open the door and heads out.

It is a quick walk from his apartment to the music department of his university, the building easily visible from his bedroom window. One of the reasons why he had chosen to live in the University-sponsored housing, even as a senior, was the proximity of the complex to where he spent the majority of his time. The walk is short but cold, a given in early January, the snow crunching freshly under his boots. He smiles weakly at the security guard by the entrance who grins back. Jihoon visits regularly enough that the guard no longer bothers to check his student id before letting him in.

His studio is small, its presence comforting as ever as Jihoon shrugs off his huge winter jacket, taking off his boots as well. The room itself does not technically belong to him, as students are not really allowed to possess such spaces, but his professor gave him the keys in the second semester of his freshman year, claiming that Jihoon needed such a space to improve upon his ‘genius’. Jihoon had wrinkled his nose, a bitter taste filling his mouth, but accepted all the same.

He hated the word genius almost as much as he hated the word prodigy. Prodigy was a tag that had followed him his entire life, haunting him as he aged and his mother forced him to enter competitions, mocking him when he missed a note and cried. It weighed heavy on his shoulders the first time he’d been afraid to perform, emptying the contents of his stomach into a sink while staring at the red-rimmed reflection of his eyes. It clung to him when he swal