Yoongi removes his headphones in a swift move and lets his head hang back, face turned to the ceiling. He closes his eyes, trying to gather the pieces of a melody lost in oblivion. The song on his computer sounds hollow but he can’t bring himself to erase all his hours of hard work and just throw everything out. Words arise and die on his lips, Yoongi finds them all ugly. He sighs. The silence in his working room, once relaxing and inspiring, seems to suffocate him into a void of dry ideas and bleak thoughts.

Yoongi writes about love, as foreign as it is to him, and he feels like a blind person in the middle of a colorful crowd.

It feels like a hole in his chest, like being empty even if surrounded by wealth.

Yoongi writes about love, but how to find the right words when he has nothing close to it?

His head falls back on the table in front of him, forehead hitting the surface with a dull sound. He feels exhausted even though he did nothing but stay seated here repeating the same song in loop, trying to find the vibe he was looking for all along.

Cold coffee stands next to his computer. He takes a sip to keep himself awake for the next couple hours, making a face at the bitterness of the beverage. Pulling all-nighters has become part of his daily life ever since he started composing. Fingers tap in rhythm on the table, a riddle he used to sing as a kid.

“Round and round like the windmill running,” he whispers to himself, and the room seems to be brought to life again, “Seasons keep coming and coming…”

In his head, another voice mixes with his own.

Yoongi doesn’t remember the voice as well as he did years ago, nor does he recognize the blurry face in his mind, but it takes him to another time, of playgrounds and freshness, a lost memory buried deep in his brain. It has been a while since Yoongi last allowed himself to let his thoughts wander this far. Maybe it is the tiredness, or the quietness of the night calming his nerves, he doesn’t know, but he lets himself be rocked by the soft melody only he can hear.

When he opens his eyes again, the sun is already up in the sky.

He wipes the drool off his chin, lifting his gaze but not focusing on anything, rather staring in the distance. The remains of his dream are still vivid in his mind. His eyes sting a little but he blames it on the brightness of the room, bringing tears where he doesn’t want them to be.

It feels like forever has passed since the last time Yoongi dreamt of Taehyung.

Even though it has been a few years, Taehyung looked as young and as fresh as before, gummy smile never ending just like Yoongi remembers him. Just like before, the young man sang with him, hitting wood sticks on stones to make a rhythm, running barefooted in the grass, shoes tied up and hanging on his shoulder. It felt too close to reality to be a dream, Yoongi thought all along, but didn’t question anything. He would rather enjoy Taehyung’s presence as much as he could. It has been a while and sometimes, just sometimes, when Yoongi is lying alone in bed, he misses him. Even if he doesn’t shed tears anymore, even if the horrible void has been filled by now, there is still a scar, still a scratch, invisible.

“Are you real?” he dared ask him as they were arriving to a familiar lake, and Taehyung – or was it really him? – dipped his feet in the cold water.

Taehyung laughed, twinkling sound filling Yoongi’s ears, and he had the urge to reach for his microphone and record it. “Are you?”

“Of course I am.”

“How can you be sure that someone isn’t imagining you? What gives you substance?” Taehyung was surprisingly smart, but maybe that was a detail Yoongi had forgotten throughout the years. “Being able to feel, to touch… How can you assume the veracity of such things?”

To that, Yoongi was left speechless.

“You and I,” Taehyung looked upon his shoulder with a wide grin, and at that moment he could swear that his heart skipped a beat, “We are the same. If you are real, why wouldn’t I be?”

The next second, Yoongi woke up.

He rubs his eyes thoughtfully. Maybe his mind is trying to tell him something. Yoongi doesn’t believe in something as foolish as religion, let alone spirits: he knows Taehyung wasn’t real. He knows Taehyung could not have been real. It was nothing more but his imagination, distorted by tiredness.

He allows himself some rest, seeing that even coffee wasn’t enough to keep him awake, and wraps himself in his blankets with delight after spending twenty-four hours sitting on a desk chair. He clutches on a tiny plushie, a worn-out lion Taehyung used to carry everywhere with him – his secret. No one needs to know that it has been four years since he was last able to sleep in his bed without it.

The plushie is soft in his hands, the familiar contact of the fabric on his palms bringing a smile upon his lips – as worn-out as the little lion, compared to the bright grin he used to display in a faraway past.

He falls asleep singing in his head, little riddle playing in his mind like a never-ending melody.

Round and round like the windmill running,

Seasons keep coming and coming…

Taehyung is sitting on the pebbles near the lake, toes curling and uncurling, humming along.

“You’re here again,” Yoongi states blankly even with his heart racing like it’s going to speed up and get out of his chest.

The beloved laughter replies to him.

“I never left,” Taehyung doesn’t turn to him but Yoongi detects the smile in his voice.

“Liar.”

Yoongi’s legs feel heavy. He barely manages to sit next to Taehyung.

“You can’t be there,” he says, and this time Taehyung turns his head slightly around to look at him. “We moved from here ages ago.”

“Oh you mean there!” Taehyung chuckles.

“What did you mean?”

“Let’s go bathe our feet! I was waiting for you.”

The young man gets up from his sitting position and practically runs to the lake, and Yoongi simply watches him. His own limbs feel stuck to the ground.

“Taehyung!” He calls. He wants to say so much things he didn’t have the chance to, but like the other times, the words get stuck in his throat. “Taehyung!”

Taehyung is going forward into the water, up to his waist.

“Wait!” Yoongi yells this time. “Wait just a minute!”

He wants to get up and reach him but Taehyung just keep getting farther and he stands there helpless, unable to do anything, even now.

“Taehyung!” He cries out all the air he has got left in his lungs, as the water reach the other’s neck.

Taehyung turns his head but his steps still take him farther, and he gives a peaceful look to Yoongi, although mixed with nervousness.

“I’m ready to die,” Yoongi can read on his lips. All of a sudden Taehyung seems twice as tired, pale to death, wearing his favorite beanie upon his now bald skull. It’s like a pang to Yoongi’s chest. This is real, too real, and he is not ready to face it again.

“Don’t leave me!” He tries to shout but only a whisper comes out of his mouth.

Taehyung disappears into the dark waters.

Yoongi wakes up clenching his lion plushie tight to his chest, tears already gathering in the corner of his eyes. Taehyung’s voice and face are still as precise and present in his mind that four years ago, and the pain is nearly as unbearable.

Round and round like the windmill running,

Seasons keep coming and coming,

Spring, summer, fall and winter,

On and on and forever…

Yoongi wishes time would stop and go back on its track, to an era, faraway, where Taehyung would sing again for him and himself would be inspired again, to write about love and life, birds and bees, all those things Taehyung liked to hear about. Yoongi wishes to be smart, as smart as those pompous genius kids, and find a remedy to cure Taehyung instead of just standing by his side, watching him falter. Yoongi wishes to give everything he can, to summon anything he can, just to see Taehyung’s teeth and gums and smile again, but Yoongi isn’t sixteen anymore, and life goes on for him just like it should have for Taehyung, and he can’t do anything about that.

Water streams on his face and body, erasing all traces of sweat and tears but he can’t erase Taehyung’s sick face of his mind. The image stays stuck to his eyelids, as an ugly reminder of what things used to be. How much Yoongi would pay to see Taehyung healthy and happy again, though.

“I am happy, hyung,” he had said, although fumbling with his catheter – before the nurse scolded him – but Yoongi hadn’t believed one word of it.

However, whenever Yoongi would come with a new mixtape, Taehyung’s eyes would light up as if it was Christmas, and they would look exactly as they did when he was just a careless toddler.

Those mixtapes were made in a really short amount of time, just for the sake of Taehyung’s precious grin whenever he would put the headphones on, but Yoongi have never had the courage to change them later. They were perfect to Taehyung, and thus they were to Yoongi too.

Yoongi wishes he could gain back the raw emotions he had succeeded in conveying while composing for Taehyung, but now that Taehyung isn’t here anymore, Yoongi doesn’t know if he is strong enough.

“Oh,” he whispers to himself, “So that’s what they call love.”

And everything finally makes sense.

He gets out of the shower and on his bed, Taetae the little lion seems to be looking at him the way Taehyung did. Yoongi cradles it into his hands, thumb the worn-out fabric. Taehyung loved this plushie.

And Yoongi loved Taehyung.

A tear crashes onto the lion’s head.

Yoongi erases all the songs he was working on and starts a new folder.

Although he had never been good with expressing his feelings, words come to him naturally, even too quickly for him to write as they come.

Yoongi writes about sorrow, sorrow that has been eating him up for so long, for not being able to say all that he wanted to say.

Yoongi writes about fate, Taehyung’s and his own, forever drown into those dark waters.

Yoongi writes about death, and it doesn’t revolt him like it did years ago, and the wound has healed even though he hasn’t forgotten.

Yoongi writes about life, life that comes and goes like the waves on the shore, life as fragile as a thin thread tended between branches.

Yoongi writes about love, love as real as Taehyung’s image in his mind, as vivid as his blood flowing into his veins, as much as he hates it.

Yoongi writes about love, and he finally feels in peace with the little voice singing in his head, Taehyung’s young and grinning face carved deep into his heart.

Round and round like windmill running,

Seasons keep coming and coming,

Spring, summer, fall and winter,

On and on and forever.

Round and round like windmill running,

Life keeps growing and milling,

Seed, sprout, plant and flower,

On and on and forever.

Round and round like windmill running,

This voice is still calling,

Takes me to another time and harmony,

I’ll come to you eventually.