Two years.

Two years of his life, ruined.

He always runs, runs from the eyes everywhere, judgmental, criticizing him, his every movement, his family. And maybe he’s a coward if he runs, if he goes nowhere at all, sits in a chair in his home (prison) like he’s already behind bars for some heinous crime he didn’t do, never even thought of. But. But he just wants his family safe, he wants Hye Jung safe, he wants Haru safe, and he’ll do everything he can, even if it’s to do nothing at all, to keep them from harm, to shield them from the death threats aimed at them, even though the one the public hates is him and not them.

It’s unfair, outrageous and maybe he deserves it.

He’s so tired of everything, and he wonders about things, if if if if if if if if if, all possible outcomes and endings and everything he should never have done and things he did anyways.

He regrets.

Sometimes, he’ll wake up from a dream, a dream filled with empty eyes and empty anger, and he won’t understand. He won’t understand why anyone and everyone who doesn’t even know him, as a person, would be so angry at something he never did. He won’t understand why nobody believes him even though he’s telling the truth, he’s shouting it from a cliff. He won’t understand anything about everything, and sometimes he’ll wonder why he’s even alive.

But he has family. He has Hye Jung and he has Haru, the most precious little thing, sweet and adorable all curled up asleep, and he’ll want to scream, he’ll think that they’re nothing alike at all, and he’s just a failure, a failure as a husband and a father and just a human being in general.

He ditches Tablo. He tears everything off, closes in on himself, becomes Daniel Armand Lee, but the worst part is, the worst part is, as Tablo or as Daniel Armand Lee, everyone is calling him a fraud. A fake. Nothing at all. Unworthy. They tell him he’s not himself, and he can’t convince them he is. And he tells someone, someone who wants to know the truth, that it feels like living in a Kafka novel. Like he’s a joke.

He wants a chance.

It’s all he can do, writing songs and weaving truth into lyrics and vomiting words all over, when YG gives him that chance. He’s tired of waiting, he's tired of hiding, he’s tired of running. He wants to show the world. He’s himself, he’s Tablo, he’s Daniel Armand Lee. He creates an album, YG sells it.

He waits. He waits waits waits waits waits. Time ticks by too slow, but he waits.

And suddenly, he’s free.