It’s been almost a month since I came back to Japan. 

Not a word had been said.

I haven’t even tried to talk to him either…

That was it. We were more than over, and seriously, what was I expecting?

Life had to go on, and I had to leave behind what hurt, I had to see beyond.

A new semester came in view and there I was, in the same place with my same idiotic friends, the same hard teachers and the same pile of exhausting work.

I am kind of depressed, but as I promised to my aunt before leaving, I didn’t retrieve myself from everyone and locked myself in a room. Actually, I had been going out for meals and socialising even more than before. I decided that I was not going down… and I was not going to leave any time for me to be sullen with it. I had to move forward.

I found myself another shift at Mr. Akiyama’s store, I take an extra class and take the initiative to take the assistant position (that everyone avoids) for the advanced editing class. Meaningful little changes that are design to keep myself busy.

The obvious backwash of my entirely new found enthusiastic life, is the decrease of the time I am sleeping but the direct affectation of how properly I am taking care of my school work.

And this is why I’m here, Saturday morning, walking to the nearest Starbucks in the middle of a heat wave that is currently hitting Japan (damn climate change) and hoping to get extremely urgent done (once and for all). I had a due over the week and I had already pulled the “extra cute poor scholarship foreign girl with extreme good GPA” card to the animation project professor so I managed to land an extra two days of extension to turn the assignment in.

I had been here countless times in the past. My usual table in the corner. Jun, my favourite barista (because he knows I’l scowl if he puts anything more than necessary in my coffee… whipped creme? who was the genius that thought americano and sweet whipped creme were a good combination?), hands me the usual dark, full of caffeine drink and I sit with my computer and headphones to drown myself with work and decent coffee.

Animation… it takes a lot of time, a big amount, just to make the character move. It requires dedication and… patience? Thank God I have a lot of dedication, cause when the twentieth error flashes through my screen I want to smash the whole thing to the floor.

“You’re sulking”- A new cup of coffee dances in front of the screen of my computer making me come back to earth. I look up and see my best friend grinning at me… and somehow I want to kiss him right there.

“Of course I’m sulking… I have the slight feeling I’m not gonna be able to meet the death line”-Kenji takes the sit at my side, he slides the cup through the table and hands me a hand full of papers with it- “What is this?”

“Kimura-sensei sends his rewards”- Kenji glances in between his bangs and the cup he’s currently sipping- “He said, and I quote: She’s kidding with me! I want  this lame excuse of an essay redone and I want it here due yesterday, do you understand?”

“I’m dead”- I fall on top of the laptop and decide that I would just see my life go through sitting in this same spot.     

“I think I’ve never seen you struggling with school”- his smirk is even bigger than before, it makes me wanna jump him and strangle him- “It’s kind of fun to be truth….”

“I hate you”- I whisper into the hot surface of my laptop. Mi brain went blank, dried in y skull, I feel nothing anymore.

“… but it is scary too”- I look up to him and see his concerned face- “I mean… you were never the type to procrastinate but… you’ve changed a lot since you came back from Korea”

“Things… aren’t the same”- I take another look at my rejected essay and calculate the time I would have to spent to redo it completely- “Kill me now”

“I’ll do the essay”- he says looking at the screen of my computer- “You’ll have to make that work if you want to keep being Yoshida-sensei’s favourite”

“Kenji… I love you”

“You are ing bi-polar”

“I know”

He takes his laptop out and starts typing.

“You’ll have to buy me lunch for a week you know?”

The heat was incredible, even in the AC-ed Starbucks, evertime someone opened the door a heat wave could be felt everywhere in the store. I tried hard to ignore the combusting feeling that not only my body, but my brain were feeling and concentrate even more in the almost impossible task I had in front of me.

6 past 15 and I still can’t make it work… I’ve been going on and on with this since early in the morning. Could I be more frustrated by now? What the ? What am I doing wrong? I’ve already written the OPP three times…

Times like this are when I would rather shut the laptop and just jump out of the window, times like this make me wanna call everything quits… Times like this makes me wonder if this is really what I wanna do for the rest of my life…

And then, the background music I had transformed into white noise, conveniently started sounding more and more like actual words coming through the set of earphones.

Follow your dream like breaker

Even if it breaks down, oh better

Follow your dream like breaker

Even if it breaks down, don’t ever run backwards, never.

Weeks ago, Tomorrow was one of my favorite songs. It had helped me through very difficult times and all the self doubt I had before coming all the way here. But now… it all reminded me of him. His voice… I miss it so much

“Ahh…”- I sigh heavily ruffling my hair.

“What?!”- Kenji shouts besides me. I didn’t even notice he was still here, drooling over the table, laptop already stored away in his bag pack.

“Why is he talking to me in the ing song? Can’t I just listen to a BTS song without him talking to me?”- I get up and shut the computer. Kenji stares at me with a little terror in his eyes.

“Do I have to know what are you talking about? cause I’m pretty sure I’m still sleeping and…”

“Pack up”- I say sighing. The almost impossible headache between my eyes and the now latent reminder of my half-assedness on the matter made me exploit. I just wanted to sleep and to forget- “Let’s go home. I’ll send this damn thing to Kitani, she owes me and I know she’s better than me in object-oriented programming. I can’t keep my eyes in the screen anymore”

“That’s actually a great idea Nana”- he says, trying to articulate adequately in between a yawn. Kenji’s dry drool all over the table makes me realise how long had I been sitting here, racking my brains.

“I can’t do this on my own. I’ll ask my aunt for help to illustrate the project background and I’ll try focusing on the design of the characters… and the music… I’ll just snatch some copyleft from somewhere in the internet…”

“You are thinking like me now”- he gets up and follows me to the exit- “I had already send the essay to Kimura-sensei”- he said yawning- “I think I excelled myself so he’ll be more than happy. He might even think you wrote it!”

“I’ll buy lunch tomorrow, but it depends on the grade I get for you to get away with anything else”

“…stingy”- he said under his breath.

“Go home”- I say menacingly and it’s his cue to leave silently before I smack him with my backpack- “It’s late…”- I look at the sky and find nothing. Tokyo isn’t a city were you could watch the stars, not even with this kind of summer sky… damn it. It’s even hot at night. What’s going on with the world? Is it the end… already? I feel like since I came back from Korea, everything had changed too much. My professors were even more demanding, my friends lacked time to expend with me… even the quiet and tranquil Mr. Akiyama had taken a liken to scold me for every little mistake I made in the convenience store.

It wasn’t like everything was fine before, it was just… normal. But now, something was definitely wrong in my life.

It felt awkward.

It felt lacking.

After a half hour walk I get to my crappy little 7 tatami room and lay the futon to lay down. This morning I was in such a rush to get to the Starbucks that I didn’t even picked the futon up. I haven’t done the dishes, clothes hang from the little couch and are scattered everywhere, I haven’t dust in a week… it looks like a war zone. The little dust bunnies stare judgementally at me from the corner of the sliding window, but now I’m just spent. I don’t wanna do anything more. I don’t do the dishes, I don’t take a bath, I don’t even search for a 7eleven onigiri I had stored in case of getting too late and being hungry… I am hungry, but I don’t have an appetite. Does it even make sense? I just want to shut the out of the little voice that keeps torturing me in the background.

I open my kalkao and surf through the messages. Half a dozen of them from the people I’m supposedly helping through different assignments. I ignore them nonchalantly. I skip to the end and see the ones that I crave the most.

My aunt had sent some photos of Bangtan’s jacket photoshoot. Everyone looks so good, cold, but good. It’s nice to see that some people aren’t going through an extremely weird hot air chamber atmospheric conditions, and are actually living in a normal time-space place.

I love U. Help me with the illustrations… due next friday… please? :P - I type and send.

Tae’s message contained a war sounded dubsmash set in the middle of the photoshoot. Jin falling in the middle of a ridiculous amount of bullet sounds over-theatrically feigning death while Taehyung repeats a almost serious “Hasta la vista, baby”. Funny… very funny Taehyung.

“It’s soooo late here, the sounds of the bullets might have provoked a slight heart attack to my neighbour’s cat next door. Say hi to everyone for me, ok?”- I say to the microphone and send the voice message to Tae- “I’m fine. Everything is good… work hard and sleep well. And try not to kill everyone, I want a safe comeback for Christ sake”

Jimin’s message was car ride vid. The background music was almost silenced with the noise made from the air hitting the half opened window, but I could hear a good 10 seconds of Linking park’s Numb. I guess he’s in the car too…

Take care of her. 

Sent.

I scrowl down, to the last conversation.

Nothing.

It’s not like I had checked my phone frantically every hour, every minute hoping he had texted me… but I can’t deny it. I was waiting for something. Maybe a funny picture, or a pile of senseless emoticons… just…whatever.

But every night I find myself reading and re-reading the last kalkao Kook had send: “I’m sorry”

I can’t even start on how immensely wrong it was.

He’s sorry? for what? He did nothing. I am the one that should’ve send it. It was  me the one that took advantage of his curiosity. It was me that made use of my connections to slid into a piece of his live and earn his trust. It was me that begged for a little of his attention and It was definitely the one that screwed our friendship… It was all me… so ing pathetic.

“I’m sorry”

.

I don’t regret it though, it was amazing. Every second and…

Really? I’m crying again? Haven’t I cried everything out?

I told him… I ing told him and he rejected me and everything was as clear as water. We’re over. Full stop and new paragraph….

“I’m sorry”

I want to hear his voice. I wanna talk to him, and I want his opinions on my work. I wanna have breakfast with everyone, I wanna play and listen to music through shared earphones till our eyelids closed. I want to hit him with pillows and make a mess… I want to call him and just talk and talk, and talk…

“I’m sorry”

But I also want to… cuddle and walk with interlocked fingers. I want him to feed me and smile to me, I want him to look at me the way I look at him. I know I’m asking too much… I know. And that’s exactly why I had to do what I did. Run away? Yeah, it seemed like I did. I really earned this ice treatment… anyways.

How did I manage to fall in love so quickly?

“I’m sorry”

“Don’t”- I decide to type. 

It’s been three weeks, and I have written a hundred different answers, but I haven’t press the send button… Cause I know I’m never gonna settle with a friendship. I can’t be his friend. I want so much more… and he can’t give it to me. It’s better to let things die… maybe, some day I’ll have the guts to talk to him again. Maybe someday I’ll be able to be his friend.

I throw the phone to the other side of the room hoping I didn’t crash the display after the loud blast.

“Someday”- I mumble into my pillow.

________________

I wake up to the notification sound of my phone. 

The red letters of the digital clock on top of the nightstand reads 3:12 in the morning. Who would be so cruel to send a message at this time? I’m tired, I’m so freaking tired. It feels like a truck had just run me over. I’m aware, I’ve been dancing myself to exhaustion, the hellish production schedules and the preparations for comeback.

The silence in the room it’s almost overwhelming. I look up at the ceiling and wait for my senses to wake up completely. This is definitely not Seoul… nor Busan. It’s so quiet that I can here the sound of the waves from here, even if the hostel is far from the shore. Reality is always hard to get after being submerged in a tranquil full of nothing dream. Reality is almost too crushing at times.

I take a deep breath and then pull myself out of bed. With heavy steps I make it to the bathroom without running into something. I decide not to turn the light on, I don’t want the fan to activate and make Jimin-hyung wake up. I splash a little water on my sweaty forehead and focus my eyes in the mirror. After a couple seconds, my eyes start to get used to the dark and the reflection on the mirror takes form. The bags under my eyes… I should make an appointment to the skin clinic. 

I had been looking at the mirror rather a lot lately. It’s weird, the picture staring at me in the other side. It’s not me, it’s not the same person I was a few months ago. My eyes are slightly more slanted than before, the baby fat that was around them has also diminished considerably. My face has more edges, it’s less rounded.

The posts on the fan cafe had ratified my worries. There were entire topics of my change, of me growing up. Puberty, they say, hit hard, and it was the best thing that happened to me since… well, ever. The thing is, I don’t know if I feel the same. For me, it’s something like living a life that’s not mine anymore, this person that’s looking at me through the mirror… it’s not me. It’s not only the appearance, I feel out of myself, like I am some kind of third person narrator on my own life. Something is missing. I’m short of something. 

I walk back to the bedroom. My eyes long accustomed to the dark, so I get easily to the minibar and pull the water jar out. I sip on it slowly, feeling the cold spreading in my insides. It comfortable, after the feverish feeling in my guts. I notice Jimin is gone… where the hell could he be at this hour? 

I throw myself on bed again, not fearing to make noise this time. I kick the blankets away, the heating is way up and it’s making me sweat. Maybe it was the dehydration that woke me up, not the notification ring… I light the lamp besides me hoping to get a glance of the thermostat to lower the heating… nowhere in plain view, and I’m just lazy to start a deep search, so I settle it taking off my pants and hoodie. I turn off the light again in an attempt to fall asleep again. I turn in the bed, again and again. It’s not working, I cannot sleep. I don’t know why, but my sleep habits have been all over… crazy. I used to sleep soundly but lately… I find myself watching the ceiling more often than not, even when I’m exhausted.

I finally give up and turn to the nightstand and take my cellphone.

1 notification.

I decide to ignore the lost of sleep offender and decide to browse the internet. I open the melon app and put my favourite playlist. The silence is broken, and I feel a little more peaceful. I have never been a silence fan, at all. Music is… important for me.

“Do you like what you do?”

“Not always, but it gives my life sense”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like… when I was a kid I used to spent hours… no, full days going through this stories. I learned, I laughed and I cried with them. They were part of who I ended up being today. And when i truly understood how important it was for our entire generation… wow, It’s amazing how much you can influence a person through art… It hit me really hard. So I understood what I wanted to do with my life, right there. I want to inspire…. and yes, it’s really hard sometimes, and I wanna quit. But then I watch Howl’s moving castle and I… just… it’s like my life call. It makes sense”

She said that night while sharing pop corn and watching re-runs of One piece.

I understood. Completely. It’s what I felt when I knew I wanted to be a singer, the passion… I still have it.

Damn.

I miss her.

She’s so interesting. So mature… for her actual age. Is she really younger than me? She seems like she has everything sorted out, while I’m having all these mental breakdowns. 

It’s not like I could have that kind of close relationship with just anyone. It’s hard for me to open up, specially with women. Girls always… seek for me because I look good. I know. It’s not easy to show my full self when they are trying so hard to make me into the ideal image they had in mind when they met me. 

"I'm sorry oppa... I know you thought I was different. I know. I tried to be… I swear”

That evening, in the amusement park I did hope to get her feelings out of the way, I wanted to compromised her so she would never screw our friendship, cause I liked how things were going. I liked my fan- female -friend. 

I knew, I knew she liked me liked me. By the second time she came to the dorm to have dinner, she was no longer shooting hearts and stars at me. She was actually an almost too cool for this girl. She showed me her true self, the disorganised, bare face, boyish unvarnished girl. She wasn’t trying to fool me or dazzel me with something she was not. And she was amazing… She liked me. Not the variety Jungkook, but this figure in the mirror I can no longer recognise. 

This time around, it was me who wanted her to fit in the image I created for her. And she did try to change, for me. She tried to… ignore her feelings for me. Cause she knew I was expecting her to be my friend, my, and I was so cruel. I played her.

I really miss her.

Why did she leave? I… really wanted her to stay a little longer. 

It’s been three weeks. Three full of work weeks, but I think about her every single day. I go through every little piece of the conversation in the amusement park. I was going for answers, but it left me with even bigger questions… predicaments.

"Do you have something to prove? do you have something to prove to me, or to anyone?”

That question had been hunting me in my sleep. I don’t know. I don’t actually feel like I do. The only thing I want right now is to prove to myself I am… me? Not some creation of the fans, not some enterprise product, but… myself. It’s confirmed to be more than an impossible task for me. I want someone else to show it to me.

I’m sorry.  That was the only thing I could write to her after the amusement park. After I bluntly broke her heart.

I’m such a ing prick.

4:30 a.m. I don’t wanna live in my skin anymore.

The battery of my cellphone is running out. It might have enough for a couple more minutes. I hope Jin-hyung doesn’t forget to pack my charger. I had talked to him yesterday before going to bed, but maybe it would be better to remind him. 

I decide to send another message to him, just in case. Today is gonna be a long day, and I’ll need music to go through it. I open my kalkao and press the first conversation, but I realise it’s not the Bangtan group… it’s someone else.

“Don’t”

Oh… It’s the shortest reply she had ever sent to me. Suddenly, the room’s temperature drops. I feel the blood in my stream stopping it’s course.

Where is she right now? It’s Saturday… well Sunday actually… she might be partying with her Japanese friends, in a Japanese club. She might be drunk… stumbling through some alley, some new guy hitting on her, maybe even taking her home… No. She’s not the kind… is she?

I wanna call her, maybe she needs help, she wouldn’t reply… unless… She’s over me now.

I can almost picture her, typing down the reply and hitting send while holding hands with some other guy. Three weeks, and it’s over.

It hurts, somewhere between my ribs.

The playlist is over. Silence is drowning me again. My brain going through everything over and over. Her image in an oversized hoodie and loose pants dragging her feet trough the kitchen with a well grounded frown sipping coffee and scratching her head. Her, rolling in her belly after Tae’s fail attempt to jump from his bunkbed to Hoseok-hyung’s bed and landing phenomenally in his . Her falling asleep in my shoulder after a too long session of showing her music tracks. Her, her, her… everywhere. 

I don’t wanna be over. I never wanted in the first place. We never even started… we were… never we. I shattered everything before we could exist.

I could’ve give her a chance, one chance, she deserved it. But I’m me, and I’m me the way I hate the most. I am me that thinks first of his feelings, above the others.

.

I like her too.

I’m a ing slow dumb …

I don’t want to loose her. Is it too late? 

I miss you. 

Sent. I can be a man and admit it.

I wanna see you.

Sent. I don’t want to keep making mistakes.

I’m sorry

Sent. I want someone to tell me. I want you to tell me who I am… no, I want to find out who I am. With you.

I need u.

Sent.

__________________

This chapter... I did it in a rush, so I'm sorry for all the mistakes. It's beta-ed so... sorry, again. Also, let's celebrate Namjoonie's birthday. I did this fanart as a gift XD. This is one of my favourite photos of him. Namjoonie fighting!! You are such an inspiration for everyone! 

Also, I'm starting a colossal project for Jiminie's birthday. Please look forward to it!!! I hope to get in shape too, so next Tuesday I'm publishing another chapter (even if I die in the attempt).