The Pain Means You’re Alive

“Here.”

Sungjae pressed a round, white… thing into her hand.

Jiyoon had almost forgotten her promise, one that she’d made two weeks prior.

Just a week after Sungjae’s visit, Eunkwang, being three years older than her and of legal age, signed her out of the psych ward and had her move in with Soojung.

And now, she was sitting in Sungjae’s bedroom, across from him on his navy blue bedspread, her first joint in her hand. She gulped, nervously eyeing the drug. Sungjae eagerly lit his own up and began smoking.

“Try it, noona,” he urged, seeing that Jiyoon wasn’t moving.

He held the lighter out towards her. She just gazed it for a moment, wondering what the hell she was doing. “How… um, how do I…?”

Sungjae chuckled. “How do you smoke it? Easy, just inhale, hold it in for like, ten seconds, then exhale.” He paused, then added, “Don’t worry if you cough, it’s normal.”

Sure enough, she started coughing, nearly choking on the smoke that she inhaled. She quickly handed the joint back to Sungjae, who rolled his eyes. “I don’t think this is for me,” she muttered hoarsely.

He let out another chuckle. “It’s not for everyone.”

Jiyoon watched as he inhaled a lung-full of smoke, frowning as something clicked in her mind. “Sungjae, do the guys know about this?” she asked quietly, crossing her arms and watching him.

He seemed to freeze, lowering the joint from his lips. “No. They don’t.” His voice was quiet and a lot more serious than she’d ever heard him. “Look, Ji, you’re the only one I ever told about my anxiety. I didn’t tell the hyungs at all. I just… I don’t want them to know.” He lowered his head with an emotion that Jiyoon recognized as shame.

She placed a hand on his, a soft, reassuring smile on her face. “I’m not going to tell them, Sungjae. I promise.”

Walking along the sidewalk, Jiyoon kicked at the pavement. Her walking was more like shuffling. She looked nearly dead as she stared at the ground, her mind lost in thought.

That day, she’d seen an entirely new side of Sungjae, and it was a side that she wasn’t sure she liked.

She’d realized quickly that Sungjae was becoming reliant on pot to make him forget. He’d told her and the rest of the guys that he was healed, that he was okay. But his idea of healing was just to use an addictive plant to bury his feelings deep inside of him and hope that somehow, they’d just magically disappear.

They wouldn’t.

He’d made her promise that she wouldn’t tell anyone about it. He’d trusted her to keep his secret.

Jiyoon knew that he’d be angry with her if she decided to tell Eunkwang, but she also knew that Sungjae was heading down a dark path. She knew, she just knew, that eventually, it would get worse.

The anxiety wouldn’t stay away forever.

It would creep back into his heart, ten times stronger than it had been before, and it would steal Sungjae. She knew because her anxiety and depression took over her entire being, ensnaring her and leading her in a vicious, never-ending cycle of tears and hatred.

Seeing Sungjae like that would probably kill anyone who ever knew him.

Sungjae was always the cheerful one. He made jokes and played pranks, always apologizing if they hurt others. He did random things to make people laugh and he wasn’t afraid to make fun of himself to get a smile out of someone.

When Jiyoon had first met him, Eunkwang had introduced the maknae as “the giant ray of light that never stops shining.” The more Jiyoon spent time with him, the more it was true.

But then, she’d found out that Sungjae was suffering in silence.

She’d found him breaking glass, tossing it and shattering it against the walls of the kitchen. He had been sobbing, screaming at himself and at the people that weren’t there to hear it. Jiyoon had needed to pry the wine glass from his hands and sit him down, had needed to hold him until he stopped shaking.

That was when he’d confessed how bad his anxiety really was.

He made himself look stupid and made people laugh because he didn’t know how else to act. Whenever he was himself around people, bright and nerdy, never realizing just how weird he was, people tended to shy away from him.

And Sungjae didn’t hate a lot, but he hated being alone.

As Jiyoon had held onto him, he’d begged, “Please, don’t leave me alone. I can’t be alone again. Please, please…”

And as she’d held onto him, the younger boy falling apart in her arms, she promised him, “I won’t leave you, Sungjae. I’ll be here, sweetheart. I’ll be here.”

He was only in middle school at the time, barely a teenager. And Jiyoon wa