Lucid Dream

You don’t want to feel it and, yet, it’s here, rooted inside your core and you are so unable to do anything, to get rid of it. You don’t want it; you never wanted it to be like this, to have this red monster inside of you, eating you alive every time you see them together. It hurts. It hurts so much that you lose control over your own emotions. You, always so controlled, always so composed… There is anything you can’t do but to suffocate it, to run away from it, to ignore it the best you can - rolling in bed with a particular face embroidered in the night, a voice calling your name, telling you that you aren’t enough, that you will never be sufficient. It is never enough to escape it; it follows you, it is buried deep down your heart - it beats through your bones it flows on your blood, it is in the air you breathe and on everything you do. He is inside of you and as long as you feel this way, you won’t be able to rest, to break away.

You saw it coming. It wasn’t suddenly like in a movie. Instead, it happened with months and years of little things piling up, adding to your heart, until creating what you feel know. I didn’t bloom like spring, scattering its fragrance to the universe. It was in slow motion, made out of small moments that you started treasuring, a secret meaning inside your mind. It was sympathy that developed into something else; it was friendship and care but now you have to label it differently; now it’s love, nothing else. And you don’t want to pretend that you aren’t aware; it’s too late. You knew it since the beginning and never tried to stop it from turning into your own nightmare. 

The phone chimes in to break the quietness, to bring you back to reality. You aren’t daydreaming, it’s not your style - you don’t live on dreams and fantasies, you are a realistic person, you know very well where you stand, the ground beneath your feet, the way your feelings aren’t reciprocated. He doesn’t feel the same and it’s alright with you, you haven’t expected it to be any other way. You never held any expectations, you wouldn’t try to force it into him and to make your heartbeat at ease by having him tug under your arms, finally. No, you keep your mouth shut and stay true to yourself: carefree, young, wild and free. 

The screen shows you what you most dread; a single picture of him; of him with someone else. And it all turns red. You toss the phone away and it crashes against the wall. Even in a different country it still breaks your heart. But you endure it. All the words you want to yell, you kill them with pursed lips and starry eyes. You have always made sure to never let it slip between your teeth, between the broken walls of your room, you have always been careful around him, tiptoeing your feelings, concealing them for him not to see, even if his ignorance is the poison that is killing you. You don’t want to burden him with what lingers inside your heart, fluttering like a summer sky. He doesn’t need to know how exposed and raw and vulnerable you are to him, how just one glance can end your day. So you kill the lines you want to say against pale lips and you bite them until it bleeds - and the pain blurs into something that you can bare, something physical that mutes the ache of your heart - your whole body is hurt when you slash your flesh with nails and tears, digging them deeply, digging them until opening you ripe. 

Another place, another day, another burning monster.

He is on your screen, again, and you look at it mesmerized. He is talking about music, he is remembering how he came up with songs. He is playing the guides he made long ago and you are so proud of his talent, of how far he has gone, of how many goals he has achieved. And, despite that, your chest is constricted when he says his name. He is talking about him now: he is always so prone on his lips… “He has helped me with this, has done that”. Always he, never you, and you feel so depreciable, so lonely, so dischargeable, so done.

It wasn’t like this before. He used to be with you, chatting, having dinner, just resting together. You used to be there for him, too, but lately, the situation has changed. The turns have changed and nothing is the same anymore; he is never home, he is always a way, recording, creating, taking pictures of his dog. And always with him - always with Song Minho.

And the fury of the revelation makes you shake. You turn the VLive off and close your eyes, focusing on something else - the blackness, the emptiness, the hole inside your chest that voids you from him, making it more present, more insistent. You try to ignore the boy that is engraved on the back of your eyelids, the voice that is made of stars and that it’s always calling your name - like a murmur, Lee Seunghoon. The room turns red and blue and you want to scream, you want to throw a punch, to yell to the sky for making him so dear to you, for putting him so deep under your skin. You crawl on top of your bed, crumbling the sheets, muting the worlds spiralling inside your mind that are threatening you with escaping. You gulp them down, swallow them and lie with your face on the pillow, crashing down.

It is not because of Minho, you are not jealous of him but of what he means to Seungyoon - all the touches, all the jokes, glances that feel like secrets and that you have caught out. All that Seungyoon pours into him and that you want too. All that he is and that you are not. 

You know it is just a lucid dream, that it will never be true, that you should be contented with what you have. But you keep on longing for more, you are always begging for more, crawling for him to come back to you, back home instead of being away, far from here you can see him, be with him - locked in his studio, composing songs after songs that will never be released regardless of how many hours he works on them, never good enough, never sufficient to be allowed a go. Just like you - you will never be enough.

Before he can even say your name, you close the application, screen black, mute. You are greedy and mad and the look from your phone is making your blood boil. It’s more than you can take - it is far more than that, you have endured it for years and you can’t see the end of this tunnel you are immersed in, dark pitch with his eyes as the stars guiding you out of it, back to life. 

You don’t hear him calling for you, the way he pronounces your name, with so much care, with so much adoration painting all the letters of it, how his eyes sparked with something you can’t read because you can’t see it, too catch up on your own misery, in your own world of desperation and self-loath. You ignore it, how thankful Seungyoon is from all you have done, how much he respects you, how deep he believes in you - in your talents, in your wits, in whatever you do, he trusts in you. And it all shows, bright and clean inside his orbs, on the curb of his plump lips enunciating your name. 

But Jinwoo does - and he is your best friend. 

You have never told him, but you don’t have to, he knows. He always had because he is quiet, watching out all around. He has seen, he has heard, he has concluded. He is aware of your secret and you accept it as a fact - there is nothing else to do after all. He comes to you a few hours later, greeting you with his soft smile and he beams with joy that you can’t explain but that he clarifies, makes you understand. 

It is easy: Seungyoon loves you too. It is so easy, so simple, it’s hard to believe. But Jinwoo would never lie to you - you can read him like a scrip. And he is hugging you with only happiness beating on him, a bliss that spreads from his heart to you. And both laugh, rolling on the floor, dreaming about things that a moment ago seemed impossible, unreachable - but now you can nearly touch it with the hem of your fingertips and you’ll make sure that you touch Seungyoon properly, kiss him right when he is back from the office when he will come back home to you. You will tell him all, you are going to open your heart, let the butterflies fly away to him.

Jinwoo leaves you with a mixture of expectations and dreams about to come true and your chest is constricted with nervous that you have never felt before - you, the calm before the storm. The phone unceremoniously discharged a few hours ago, is now back in your hands. You are tracing down his profile, searching for what Jinwoo found and that you so blatantly ignored. You scroll down on all the pictures you take of him, consciously. Seungyoon, eating on a restaurant with you - a recommendation from a fan, he was sitting in front of you, pouting because the house speciality was out of order; he looked so adorable you had to immortalize it and he let you do so (he smiled for you in a way that it seems new now, in a way that is unclean, a mystery). Another one, and then another, and yet one more. All pictures of Seungyoon soft smile, no makeup, no awareness, not trying to impress, just him looking at you, Lee Seunghoon. Simple, familiar, so normal for you that you never noticed - the way his eyes were on you, fixated, sparkling, how his lips were glossy in anxiousness, bitten out of nervous (nervous of being observed by you, of being the centre of your attention, your universe). How cute, how adorable, how blind you were to the obvious - to reality. So in darkness that you blocked your own happiness for him without realizing that you two were grasping for the same thing, for the other. 

It is so simple you feel stupid, like an idiot, victimized - guilty of your own harm, a victim of your own prejudice, your damn sense that was all wrong, all twisted. 

It is so simple as a kiss welcoming him home. It is so simple as holding Seungyoon, arms around his tiny waist, his face pressed against the crook of your neck. It is so simple as looking him in the eye and telling him what he isn’t yet aware of.  

He gasps, surprised when you finally managed to tell him all. You tell him in between soft kisses that taste like stars - like strawberry and sweets and something that it’s only Seungyoon’s. And with him cuddled in between your arms, you sight, content as you haven’t been in years - before debut, before all the complication, back to when you were young and free; this is what it feels like, though, to be with him. And this time it’s not another lucid dream: it’s real - he weights against your chest, where his head rests, all curled hair that tickles your senses.