Killing trees was what he chose. He could’ve turned to drinking, or smoking, or pranking the principal by sewing whoopee cushions into his chair. Killing trees was how Jeon Jungkook would deal with his emotions. Can’t go wrong with the classic diaries. Besides, you know, the trees.

In the modern day, he could turn literally any platform into his own journal. He could pour out his feelings into paragraphs of Facebook statuses. He could start a blog and fill it with all of his daily thoughts and ridiculous soap-box moments. Hell, he could do what normal kids his age do with feelings and transform it into art. But that’s not as satisfying as being able to rip through pages with the words under the tip of your pen when you’re angry, or flipping through the doodles on the margins of entry days when you were happy, or being able to change the colour of your words to match the tone of the voice in your head.

So killing trees it was.

Over the course of five years, Jungkook flew through 13 journals. He found that he had a lot to write, and no matter how much he wrote, he still had too many words inside him. So he kept writing.

His last journal was left unfinished. If you looked at it from the top, it was clear that a significant number of pages had been ripped from the spine. After the void left by the missing entries, only two other pages were soiled.

June 17

Today my parents told me we’re going to LA.

It was nearly illegible chicken scratch, and Jungkook only remembered what it said because he’d spent so many times rereading it.

The page after that was much, much cleaner.

July 25

LA was fun.

Beyond that, blank emptiness.