...However you may spell grey where you come from.

Word Count: 1519

Reading Time: 4-6 mins.

I still remember it, the moment I started to doubt myself, to question what I was doing to others to reach my own goals.

It was my third year at the school; all was well, and it had come time to pick the next first chair violin player. It was mid-April, I remember, and Jimin and I had just gone out to have some black day jjajangmyun during our lunch break. When we got back to the school building, we had some trouble getting to our next class because the halls were being clogged up by a cloud of students swarming around one comparatively miniscule sheet of paper, which had been tacked to the bulletin board in front of the office.

It was a notice for the upcoming auditions, and I had every intention of coming out the victor. I was already busy mentally picking something out of my roster of 'looks impressive and extraordinarily difficult' pieces to play for my audition, when I remembered Jimin.

"Cool, I'm gonna try out! When are the auditions?" his eager face could have lit up the whole of the universe.

The text on the notice wasn't clearly visible from our spot at the back of the crowd, the layers of people so thick between us and it that all the crucial information was garbled and illegible from where we stood. Of course, this wasn't of very much consequence to me; I didn't need to see the sheet to know exactly when the auditions would be. My favourite teachers had already given me the correct date and time so that I could have a practice-time advantage over the others before the actual auditions.

"Uh, next month, I think. The tenth of May."

They were going to take place the nine days before that, actually, but I didn't tell him that. He was my only competitor now, the only one I hadn't yet thrown to the ground for daring to compete against me. After all, he was supposed to be my "bestest friend" (his words). I had kept from challenging him, from trying to sabotage his efforts, until now, but now that the time had come for me to make my final decision on whether or not I'd risk giving up the top position in the school's orchestra, it shocked me how little I hesitated before deciding to do away with any chance my one and only friend had of becoming first chair.

It hadn't even felt like a decision; the little lie had just fallen out of my mouth, and I couldn't take it back now. He'd think I was weird for telling him the wrong date in the first place.

That little audition date slip-up was my first lie. I didn't foresee, then, the downward spiral that I'd end up taking from there.

I clamped my mouth shut, as though to physically stop myself from giving myself away to Jimin as a dirty liar. I'd become too accustomed to this whole lying thing for there to be any sign of nervous sweat on the back of my neck, but I could feel the guilt start to whisper in my ear as Jimin cheerily led us away to our class.

Betrayer... You would lie to your own friend... After all he's done for you... For shame, Devil Min indeed...

It was the first time I'd felt so truly anguished in the act of pushing a competitor of mine away.

It was the first time I'd purposefully crushed the hopes of someone I cared about.

I still remember it, the moment I began to think back on my own actions with disgust, to hate myself for what I'd done. 

When I began to think of myself as the monster all those countless students already thought me to be.

I'd told him I would be out on the first of May, the day of the real audition. My second lie.
I did very well, applause from the judges and everything, but all I could feel when I played was how could I have done this to Jimin, that helpless thing? What happened to "stay with you forever"?

I turned my phone off the morning of the tenth, so that I wouldn't have the burden of feeling pressured to go with Jimin to the "auditions."

I felt every bit the monster that I was, then, having thrown my phone down on the bedside table after watching it shut down completely.

The screen grew empty and black, much the way I imagined my own soul.

Lifeless. Useless.

I still remember it, the moment I knew I'd lost him for good.

Crestfallen is the only way I can describe Jimin's face then, his eyebrows drawn in tight and lips trembling as it hit him in waves; I'd betrayed him. They had all been right, those tens and hundreds that had told him to stay away from me. Disappointed. Devastated.
I told my third lie when he came back to the dorm in tears that day, and stared at me as he stood in the doorway, silently demanding some kind of explanation. Jimin was confused and hurt and utterly shattered, and he looked to me for any sort of reassurance, anything I could say that would give him hope that I had kept our promise, that I'd stuck to the oath I'd sworn to him years before.

But I hadn't.

I wanted to make it all easier for him, so I acted like I didn't care. I told him that I'd never loved him, and that I'd never cared for him in the slightest. That I'd only used him and his friendship to my advantage, twisting things around and pretending to be nice. 

Those were all lies, too, but this time it was for his good.

He jumped into his bed without giving me so much as a second glance, and he didn't speak at all until we fell asleep.
The next morning, he had already moved out, and he hadn't left me any notes of any sort to tell me about his departure or anything like that -- not that I'd expected him to.
His bed was meticulously made, his side of the room spotless, no trace of him anywhere.
As though no one had lived there for the past three years with me in the first place.
It felt new and clean... and tainted.
With the blood of my friend, whom I'd taken as an enemy.
With the broken remains of his trust in me.

It's been a year since that all happened, a year since I lost Jimin forever. I haven't seen him at all since.

I hope he's doing okay.

Those lies that I told, the ones that fell out of my mouth while I was sitting on my bed, fiddling with my phone (so as to achieve maximum douchebag potential), they were meant to help him. Help him get over me, help him to move away. I was afraid that if I told him the truth, he'd forgive me. He'd come back to me with that unbreakable forgiveness, and he'd tell me that it was okay, that he understood, that he was happy to stand in the background while he watched me rise to fame. That he was fine with everything and that he'd love me no matter what.

They were meant to be white lies.
But they broke me.
They made me wish that I could be heartless enough to use Jimin like that, if that would quench the wildfire in my consciousness. Guilt. 

If 'good' lies are white, then lies are black, and those I told were in between. Grey. Meant to be white but coming out all murky and smudged with unwanted shade.
And perhaps the worst part was that he thought I was a worse person than I really was, though it's true that I do think that my true self wasn't much better than the disfigured, soulless creature I'd formulated on the spot there.

I wish he didn't have to stop loving me.
I don't think he ever did stop, just like I didn't. But I knew we didn't have a future together, because I was too selfish and too harsh and too unworthy of all his adoration and care and just love, love, love

They all blame me for Jimin's departure. I'd thought he'd just requested to be moved to another dorm, that I might catch glimpses of him on campus once in a while. But he'd left for good. He'd really packed his bags, given up his music career, and just left. Without a trace, Without a word.

We told him, they say, we told him that that Min Yoongi was a monster.

I am, and I am ashamed of it. I am utterly ashamed of what my life has come to.

This all came to be because of my decisions, because of my stupid "ambitions," because of my irrational desire and habit of just ruining everyone.

Park Jimin walked right out of my life, just the way I'd planned.

So why does it feel so wrong?

Heyyyyyyyy guys so now you know the truth that Jimin doesn't know, Yoongi did care for him...

Apparently story!Yoongi has a thing with lies. Tsk, tsk

Well, there's the broken!Yoonmin story completed

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