SECOND BUD

Butterfly Dream

“Sonsaengnim, please stop working.”

A slightly older young man with wide mouth and bold eyebrows is standing beside Jungkook’s desk. He is practically begging the other man to stop his doing. But Jungkook keeps persistently staring at his drawing tablet and handling its pen to draw on the display.

“I’m fine.” Jungkook shrugs off the hands from his shoulder.

“But you are overworking already. Please go to sleep for a while.”

“I need to finish this chapter first. Kim Editor has been asking for it.”

“Kim Editor has been asking you to stop sending him new chapters! He even hasn’t uploaded those new chapters you sent him few days ago.”

“But I’m so inspired to draw more.”

“You are about to faint! Look at your heavy panda eyes! You look more like a ghost than a human!”

“….” Jungkook doesn’t reply to it. He even doesn’t look like he is aware of his surrounding.

“Have you visited the doctor that I told you to, Sonsaengnim?”

“….”

“You really need some help, Sem.”

“Leave me alone! Don’t you hear me?” Jungkook slams his pen on the wooden table he uses to support his 27-inch pen tablet.

The assistant jumps in shock. Jungkook stares at the guy with his redden eyes. The guy is still standing freezing on his spot. It raises Jungkook’s annoyance more.

“Get out from my room!” Jungkook shouts once again at the top of his lungs and when his assistant doesn’t budge an inch from his spot, he throws some books from his table. It makes the assistant runs hurriedly out of the door.

When the door is closed he slams his back to the chair rest. Exhales hard. Jungkook thinks he can get some relieves. But instead from the outside he can hear people murmuring faintly. They are his assistants’ voices.

“He is insane seriously. I’m also going to be insane. I should know since far before that he is insane, but today he is more that it. Just because he has been famous since he was a child, it doesn’t give him permission to be such a hurt. How can I call a guy much younger than me ‘Sonsaengnim’?”

They are talking about him. Jungkook can hear that. He also realized he has been acting up too much lately. Lack of sleep makes him become overly sensitive. Jungkook has stopped sleeping at the night. Sleeping pills don’t help him so much anymore. His nightmares have become something more that he can handle on level head. Jungkook fears of sleeping even when he needs to sleep so much. Even if his assistants keep taking turn to tell him to go to sleep for several hours instead of keep working on his webtoon’s new chapters to keep his mind away from nightmare. Working seemed better for him because the problem is his real problem starts once he closes his eyes.

That’s why Jungkook only takes nap for fifteen minutes each times he feels too tired to open his eyes. He realizes that his dream doesn’t come on early stage of sleeping. It will only come when he gets into REM stage. Once he gets too deep into sleep, he will see some scary images inside his head that don’t really remember what is that about once he is awake. It feels like all colors mixed together. Colorful images shine brightly until they hurt his eyes. He could hear voices ringing in his ears. His dreams feel so grand and also painful at the same time. He only remembers the overwhelming fear once he is awake.

“We should talk.”

He starts to hear voices inside his head occasionally while he is doing something or almost dozed off because of sleepiness. It is like someone drills those messages to into him. The sentence keeps ringing inside his head. Jungkook cannot feel his head anymore.

This suffering h