Chanyeol's POV

Don't jump to conclusions— now, aren't there always two sides to a story? I don't understand why people don't take the time to hear my story. Can't anyone see how I'm struggling to stay alive? They don't know how dark my thoughts are and they scare me too, sometimes. It's like a devil is propped up on my shoulder, pouring poison and into my ear. And then before I can pour the poison out, it seeps into my brain and becomes me.

Listen to me, please. Just be that one person that I need to listen to my story.

✖

I grew up in a family in a loving family when I was young. But as my mother died and my step-mother moved in, my family moved to an entire new city in Korea- a change that I was not accepting towards. I packed my bags and left the city that I lived in for twelve years, never to see it again. New school, new friends, new neighborhood, a new life. And I never fit in and I didn't try to.

I always compared my new life to my past one. Thus, I started becoming a very angry person. No, I didn't flare out at people more or anything. I started becoming a very negative and dark person. But instead of flaring out at people, which actually could have been better at that time, I began to bottle these feelings up; gathering my feelings and throwing them into a bottle, trapping them in deep inside myself. Tie a string around it and hope, pray that it would be the bottle was endless, ready to contain all my bloody thoughts.

I didn't know that bottling them up would bring it's consequences in the future. I thought bottling them up would be a permanent solution to my anger, but I was wrong.

-

One day, the glass of the bottle began to crack, and before I knew it, everything spilled out. Il tried forlornly to get rid of it, to patch the shards back together, because now I was a good person and not a dark person like I was before. Right? But the bottle had consumed my life and when it exploded, so did I.

✖

The bottle was first created when I was in fourth grade when I was bullied for not being able to speak korean "properly." They told me that I had an accent and that my accent was for hill-billies and homeless men. They shoved soap into my mouth, a whole group of people surrounding me, telling me to "wash my mouth." Even the teacher laughed and didn't even try to look like he was trying to stop them. All I know is that when I spat the soap out and it went skidding under the teacher' desk, the teacher was the one who picked it up and threw it back into the crowd.

That night I went home with a throat that tasted like acid and a numb tongue. I considered telling my parents, but instead I created a bottle. This is of course a figurative bottle, but nonetheless, it was my escape.

Everytime I wanted to hurt my classmates, I poured in my feelings into the bottle, sealed it, then immediately felt better. Bad grades, parents coming home drunk, being hit by my parents while they were drunk, no friends, don't see a point in living, cutting, the pain is pleasure, "Chanyeol needs help," said the counselor, "You should take him to the hospital", being interrogated by a woman who looked like a mouse with whitewashed hair, "Chanyeol tell me everything" she said, I told her that I couldn't take her any longer and left the room... all these little things filling my bottle up. Filling to the brim, threatening to spill, oh, please don't spill. It'll cause so many disasters. Don't tell any one about the bottle. Park Chanyeol, do not tell anyone about it. Do not, do not, DO NOT.

-

"Chanyeol," Byun Baekhyun, a new trainee that Chanyeol had recently taken under his wing, sat down on the sofa. He took Chanyeol's hand and pulled him down next to him. "I just wanted to tell you that you can trust me. You can trust me with everything."

Though Chanyeol had only known Byun Baekhyun for about four months, their friendship was genuine, so deep that Chanyeol could not imagine a life without his new best friend, or rather his only best friend. Probably this is why he felt so protective over Baekhyun- because he was afraid that he would lose him to other people. Baekhyun was a social butterfly; if he were to fall off a buildling, he would have tens and maybe even hundreds, because all the other trainees loved him so much, ready to catch his fall.

But if Chanyeol were to fall, there would be no one but Byun Baekhyun. And if Baekhyun left, there would be nothing, absolutely nothing there to catch him. Not even the world would be there to provide him a solid ground to land on, or trees to slow down his fall, or even a sense of gravity because the world hated him. And as Chanyeol was falling, he would remember the bottle, bring it out and look at all the hate b in the bottle. He'd fall on it. Chanyeol would land deep in his own hate t