23 July 2010 (Hoseok)

When I counted to three, I heard the sound of laughter like a hallucination. The next moment, the young me passed by, holding someone’s hands. I looked back quickly but there was no one there except my classmates, staring at me. “Hoseok-ah.” The teacher called my name. Only then did I realize where I was. It was a class field trip. I was counting the fruits that were drawn in the textbook. Five, six. I kept counting, but as I did my voice trembled and my hands grew sweaty. The memory of that time kept surfacing.

I couldn’t clearly remember my mother’s face, that day. I only remembered the chocolate bar she gave me as we looked around the amusement park. “Hoseok-ah. Count to ten and then open your eyes.” When I had finished counting and opened my eyes, my mother was gone. I waited and waited, but she never returned. I had only counted to nine. If I counted one more time it would be fine, but my voice wouldn’t come out. My ears were ringing and my surroundings grew cloudy. The teacher kept pointing, telling me to keep counting. My friends were staring at me. I couldn’t remember my mother’s face. It seemed like if I counted one more, my mother would really never come back for me.

Just like that, I collapsed to the ground.

29 December 2010 (Taehyung)

I took my shoes off and threw my bag and went into the main room, Dad was really there, I didn’t think about how long it had been or where he had gone. I only raced thoughtlessly into his embrace. I don’t remember clearly what happened after that. Whether the smell of alcohol came first, or the cursing, or the slap to my cheek. I couldn’t know what was going on. He smelled of alcohol and when he panted, his breath was foul. His eyes were bloodshot and his beard was growing wildly. He hit my face with his large hand. He hit me again and asked what I was looking at. Then he lifted me into the air. His scarlet eyes were frightening, but I was so terrified I couldn’t even cry. This wasn’t my father. No, this was my father. But it wasn’t. My two feet shook in the open air. In the next moment, my head crashed into the wall and I slumped to the floor. It seemed like my head was exploding. My vision flickered and I blinked a few times. My head was filled only with the harsh sound of my father’s breathing.

6 April 2011 (Jimin)

I faced the gates of the Flowering Arboretum alone. The weather was gray and a little cold, but I was in a good mood. It was the day of the picnic, but my mom and dad were both busy. I was a little disappointed at first. But at the flower drawing contest I had been praised, and my friends’ mothers had said, ‘Wow, Jimin is so mature.’ I had seemed a little cool, then.

“Jimin, wait here. Teacher will come soon.” When the picnic ended, my teacher had asked this, but I hadn’t waited. I was confident that I could go by myself. I grasped the straps of my rucksack with both hands and walked maturely. It seemed like others were looking at me, so I spread my shoulders even wider. Quite a while later, it started to rain. My friends and their moms had all left, and no one was looking after me, and my legs hurt. I covered my head with my rucksack and crouched under a tree. The rain started to come down harder, and there was nobody passing by. Eventually, I started to run through the rain. I didn’t see any houses or stores. The place I arrived to was the back gate of the arboretum. The side door was open and through it I could see a storage room of some sort.

19 September 2016 (Yoongi)

The fire burned crimson red. The house  I lived in until this morning was engulfed in the flames. People who recognized me ran up, shouting something. The neighborhood people walked with quick steps. They said the entrance wasn’t safe, so the fire truck couldn’t come in. It stopped where it was.

The very end of summer. It was the beginning of autumn. The sky was blue and the air was dry. I didn’t know what I should think, what I should feel, what I should do. Then the thought ‘ah, Mom,’ came to me. In the next moment, the house collapsed with a loud sound. The house engulfed in flames--no, the house had become flames itself, the roof, the pillars, even my room crumbled like it was a house of sand. I stood dazedly and watched it.

Someone pushed past me. They were saying the fire truck had entered. Another person grabbed me and pressed me for an answer. That person looked into my eyes and shouted a question, but I didn’t hear anything.

“Is anyone inside?” I stared dumbly at that person. “Is your mom inside?” The person grabbed my shoulders and shook me. Unwittingly, I replied. “No. There’s no one.” “What are you talking about?” A neighborhood woman said. “What about your mom? Did she go somewhere?” “There’s no one.” Even I didn’t know what I was saying. Someone pushed by me again.

2 March 2019 (Seokjin)

A damp smell came from the principal’s room as I followed my father in. It had been ten days since I came back from America, and yesterday I had heard that I would be entering one year behind, since the school system there was different. “Please take care of him.” My father put his hand on my shoulder, and my whole body flinched without me realizing. “School is a dangerous place. There need to be regulations.” The principal looked straight at me. Whenever the principal speaks, his wrinkled cheeks and the skin around his mouth sagged, and the inside of his black lips was pure, dark red. “Don’t you think so, Seokjin?” I hesitated at the abrupt question, and my father rested his hand more heavily on my shoulder. It was a grip strong enough to make the veins on his neck stand out. “I believe you’ll do well.” The principal met my gaze with tenacity, and my father put increasingly more weight into the hand on my shoulder. It hurt so much I thought my shoulder bones would crumble, and I clenched my hand into fists. My body trembled and I broke into a cold sweat. “You must always speak to me. Seokjin, you must become a good student.” The principal looked at me with an unsmiling face. “Yes.” The agony disappeared as soon as I squeezed out a response. I heard my father and the principal laugh. I couldn’t lift my head. I only looked down at my father’s brown shoes and the principal’s black shoes. I didn’t know where the light was coming from, but they seemed to shine. I was afraid of that light.

12 June 2019 (Yoongi)

I thoughtlessly ditched school, but truthfully I didn’t have anywhere to go. It was hot, I had no money, and I had nothing to do. It was Namjoon who said we should go to the beach. The younger kids seemed excited, but I didn’t particularly feel like it, nor did I dislike the idea. “Do we have money?” At my question, Namjoon made everyone shake out their pockets. A few coins, a few bills. “So we can’t go.” The one who said we could just walk was probably Taehyung. Namjoon made a face begging them to reconsider, but the kids just chattered away, laughing and pretending to roll around on the road before starting to walk. I wasn’t in the mood to talk back, so I just fell behind. It was midday, so even the gingko trees couldn’t provide shade, and the cars kicked up dust as they passed us on the sidewalkless road.

“Let’s go there.” It was Taehyung this time too. Or was it Hoseok? I didn’t care, so I didn’t look carefully, but it would have been one of them. I had been walking along with my head down, kicking the dirt, but when I almost collided with someone I lifted my head. Jimin was standing there as if frozen in place. The muscles of his face trembled as if he had seen something terrifying. He was staring at a sign that said “Flowering Arboretum, 2.1 kilometers.”

“I don’t want to walk.”I heard Jungkook’s voice. Sweat dripped from Jimin’s face His face went pale, as if he might collapse at any second. What is this? I had a strange feeling. “Park Jimin.” I called, but as I expected, he didn’t budge. I lifted my head again and looked at the sign.

“Hey, it’s so hot, why would we go to an arboretum? Let’s go to the beach,” I said, as if dragging my feet. I didn’t know what kind of place the arboretum was, but it didn’t seem like somewhere we should go. Whatever the reason, Jimin’s expression was strange. “We don’t even have money.” Hoseok replied, “That’s why we’re walking.” And Taehyung added, “If we just walk to the train station we can probably make it.” Then Namjoon said, “Instead we’ll just starve at dinner.” Jungkook and Taehyung pretended to cry, and Seokjin hyung laughed. Jimin only started to move again once it had been decided that we would take the road toward the train station. Walking with his head down and his shoulders trembling, Jimin seemed like a small child. I looked up at the sign again. The characters spelling “Flowering Arboretum” were gradually getting further away.

30 August 2019 (Jimin)

While Hoseok hyung was on the phone, I amused myself by kicking at the dirt that was pinned under his shadow. Hyung giggled and made a face that said ‘Park Jimin has grown up a lot.’ Walking home from school was a distance that took two hours walking. By bus it didn’t even take 30 minutes, and if we only took the big road it would be reduced by 20, but Hyung insisted on taking a road through winding alleys, over low hills and across pedestrian overpasses. Last year, I had transferred schools after being discharged from the hospital. School was far from home and I didn’t have anyone I knew. I thought it was okay. I had already moved schools a few times and I didn’t know when I would be hospitalized again, so I didn’t think it was anything special.

But then I met Hyung. It was just a little while after a new semester had started. Hyung had approached me like it was nothing and walked with me for two hours. I only realized a long while afterwards that our houses weren’t in the same direction. I couldn’t ask Hyung why. I only hoped that those hours with our shadows side by side, walking together under the sun, could stretch the day out just a little longer.

Hyung was still on the phone, and I kicked his shadow again and ran away. Hyung hung up the phone, and started to chase me. Our ice cream melted under the hot sun and the sound of cicadas stung my ears. Suddenly, I felt afraid. How many of these days could be left?

20 March 2020 (Taehyung)

I slid down the hallway, my feet making noisy sounds. Then I stopped. I could see Namjoon standing in front of ‘our classroom.’ Our classroom. Nobody knew this, but I called that place our classroom. Me and the hyungs and Jungkook, it was ours. I caught my breath and approached. I was going to startle him.

“Principal!” I had barely taken five steps when I heard an urgent voice through the open classroom window. It seemed like Seokjin hyung. I stopped walking. Was Seokjin hyung talking to the principal right now? In our classroom? Why? Then I heard my name and Yoongi hyung’s, and I saw Namjoon hyung draw in a startled breath. As if having sensed it, Seokjin hyung suddenly opened the door. There was a phone in Seokjin hyung’s hand. His shock and confusion was plain on his face. I couldn’t see Namjoon hyung’s expression. I hid and watched. Seokjin hyung opened his mouth, maybe to make an excuse, but as Namjoon hyung passed by Seokjin hyung, he lifted a hand and spoke, “It’s okay.” Seokjin hyung looked confused. “Hyung must have had a reason.” After he spoke, Namjoon hyung passed by Seokjin hyung and went into the classroom. I couldn’t believe it. Seokjin hyung told the principal what Yoongi hyung and I had done for the last several days. He told everything, about skipping class and climbing over the wall and fighting with other kids. But Namjoon hyung said that was all okay.

“What are you doing here?” I turned around in shock. It was Hoseok hyung and Jimin. Hoseok hyung pretended to be even more shocked, then slung his arm over my shoulders. In a moment of confusion, I let Hoseok hyung pull me into the classroom. Namjoon hyung and Seokjin hyung were talking, and they looked up. Seokjin hyung got up in a hurry and, saying something had come up, left the classroom. I looked at Namjoon hyung’s expression. He had watched Seokjin hyung’s retreating back, but now he laughed as if nothing was wrong. At that moment, a thought occurred to me. Namjoon hyung must have had a reason. Because hyung knew more than me, and was smarter than me and older. And because this was our classroom, I went into the classroom, smiling the foolish smile that the others called my ’square smile’ I thought that I wouldn’t tell anyone that I had overheard the conversation.

15 May 2020 (Namjoon)

As I crossed the storage classroom that had become a hideout for those of us with no place to go, I set a few chairs straight. I picked up a desk that had fallen over, abandoned, and wiped the dust away with my palm. Endings make people emotional. Today is the last day I would come to school. Two weeks earlier, it had been decided that we would move. Maybe I would never come back here again. And maybe I would never see my hyungs and dongsaengs again.

I folded a paper in half and set it on top of the desk, and even got out a pencil, but I didn’t know what words I should leave behind, so i just passed the time instead. In the middle of scribbling a few useless words, my pencil lead snapped with an audible sound. ‘You have to keep living.’ On the paper, which was covered in the smudges of the fragments of pencil lead, I had scribbled without even realizing. In between the black lead dust and the scribbles were scattered some stories of poverty, parents, dongsaengs, moving.

I crumpled up the paper and put it in my pocket, then stood. I pushed the desk away and the dust rose up. As I started to leave, I paused and breathed out onto the dirty window, then wrote three characters. No goodbye would be enough, and even if I said nothing, this would convey it all. “Let’s see each other again.” More than being a promise, it was just a wish.  

25 June 2020 (Jungkook)

I stroked the piano keys with my fingertip and smudged the dust. I put some strength into that finger, but the sound that came out was different than the sound of Hyung’s playing. It had been ten days since hyung hadn’t come to school. Today, the rumor had gone around that he had been expelled. Namjoon and Hoseok hyung didn’t say anything and I was too afraid to ask. On that day two weeks ago, only Hyung and I had been there in the hideaway classroom when the teacher opened the door and came in. It was visiting day for the class parents. I didn’t want to be in the classroom, so I went thoughtlessly to the hideaway. Hyung didn’t even look at me and kept playing the piano, and I put two desks together and closed my eyes like I was pretending to sleep. Hyung and the piano seemed slightly different, but also seemed so much like one and the same that I couldn’t separate them. While I listened to Hyung’s playing, I somehow wanted to cry.

Since I felt tears threatening to flow I rolled over, and the door suddenly slammed open and the piano sound came to a stop. I was slapped across the face, stumbled backwards and ultimately fell. As I crouched to withstand the violence, the voice stopped. When I lifted my head, I saw Hyung standing over me, pushing at the teacher’s shoulder. Over Hyung’s shoulder, I saw the teacher’s shocked expression.

I pushed the piano key. It was a mimicry of the song Hyung used to play. Had Hyung really been expelled? Would he never come back? Hyung always said it was ordinary for him to get beaten up a little. If I hadn’t been there, would Hyung not have had to stand up to the teacher? If I hadn’t been there, would Hyung still be here, playing the piano?

25 June 2020 (Yoongi)

I swung the door open and came in, then pulled a bag out from the very bottom drawer of the desk. When I turned it inside out, a single piano key fell out with a clack. I threw the half-burned piano key into the trash and laid down on my bed. The fire in my heart wouldn’t cool down, so my breathing was a mess, and at some point soot had smudged all over my fingers.

I had gone alone to the house that the fire had destroyed, once the funeral was over. I had gone into my mother’s room, and had seen that the piano had been burned so badly you could barely recognize its shape. I sunk down at its side. I sat there as the afternoon light came in through the window and then began to fade. The last of the light rolled over a few piano keys. What sort of sound would come out if I played them? I had thought about how many times my mother’s fingers had touched them. Then I had put one of them in my pocket and left the room.

Almost 4 years had passed since then. The house was quiet. It was insanely quiet. It was past 10, so my father would be asleep, and everything afterwards held its breath. Those were the rules of this house. It was hard to endure this stillness. It wasn’t easy, either, to keep to prescribed times and regulations and forms. But nevertheless what I could endure even less than that was the fact of living in this house. I received allowance from my father and ate dinner with my father and was scolded by my father. Rather than opposing him and going astray and causing trouble, I lacked the courage to abandon him and leave the house to live on my own, to make that freedom into action and not just words.

I suddenly rose up from the bed and dug the piano key from the trash can under the desk. I opened the window and the night air rushed in. That air slapped me in the face with the strength of everything that had happened that day. I threw the piano key out into the air with all my strength. I listened hard, but I couldn’t hear the sound of the key hitting the ground. No matter how hard I thought, I couldn’t imagine the sound that piano key would have made. No matter how much time passed, that piano key would never make another sound again. And I would never play the piano again.

17 July 2020 (Seokjin)

Past the school doors, the sound of cicadas prickled my ears. The school yard was crowded with kids laughing and playing and competing in races. It was the start of summer vacation and everyone was chattering. I ducked my head and walked in between them. I wanted to leave as quickly as I could.

“Hyung.” I lifted my head, surprised by the sudden appearance of someone’s shadow. It was Hoseok and Jimin. They looked at me, their smiles wide and bright as ever and their eyes full of mischief. “Today is the start of vacation, are you just going to leave.” Hoseok asked, tugging at my arm. I muttered ‘sure, sure’ and a few more meaningless words, then turned my head away. What had happened that day was clearly an accident. It wasn’t intentional. I hadn’t imagined that Jungkook and Yoongi would be in the storage room at that time. The principal suspected that I was covering for my dongsaengs. He said he could tell my father that I wasn’t being a good student. I had to say something. I had mentioned the hideout because I thought it was empty. But in the end, Yoongi had gotten expelled. And nobody knew that I had been complicit.

“Have a good vacation, hyung! I’ll call you.” Maybe having interpreted my expression, Hoseok let his hand drop slightly and forced an even brighter greeting. I couldn’t answer this time, either. There was nothing I could say. As I passed the school gate, I thought of the first day I had come to this school. We had all been punished for tardiness together. We could laugh because of it. I had ruined those moments.

15 September 2020 (Hoseok)

Jimin’s mother paced back and forth through the emergency room. After checking that the name on the head of the bed and the IV bottle were properly placed, she brushed a blade of grass from Jimin’s shoulder with one finger. I approached hesitantly, feeling that I should tell her why Jimin was in the emergency room, about the seizure at the bus stop. Jimin’s mother seemed to discover my presence only then, and she looked at me with a long, evaluative gaze. I didn’t know what to do, so I hung back. Jimin’s mother said only ‘thank you’ and then turned back to him.

The next time Jimin’s mother looked at me, the doctor and nurses had started to move the bed and I moved to follow. Jimin’s mother said thank you again and pushed at my shoulder. Rather than pushing, it would be more correct to say she touched me slightly and then pulled her hand away. But I suddenly felt an invisible line being drawn between Jimin’s mother and myself. That line was sure and solid. It was cold and sturdy. It was a line that I could never surmount. I had lived at the orphanage for 10 years. I knew that much with my whole body, my sight, the air. In a moment of bewilderment, I took a step back and then collapsed to the floor. Jimin’s mother looked vacantly down at me. She was a small and beautiful person, but her shadow was large and chilly. That shadow fell over me, collapsed on the emergency room floor. When I lifted my head, Jimin’s bed had left the emergency room and could no longer be seen. After that day, Jimin didn’t come back to school.

28 September 2020 (Jimin)

I stopped counting a few days after I was hospitalized. Counting is something you do when you want to get out, or you think there’s a hope of getting out. The trees and leaves far off outside the window, they still looked like people’s clothes so I knew not that much time had passed. At most, slightly more than a month. Maybe because of the medicine, everything was boring and dull. Even so, today was a special day, the kind of day you have to write in a diary, if you keep one. But I don’t keep a diary, and I don’t want to have any problems if I did write it down. Today, I lied for the first time. I looked into the doctor’s eyes and pretended to be gloomy, saying, “I don’t remember a thing.”

30 September 2020 (Jungkook)

“Jeon Jungkook. You’re not still going there, are you?” I didn’t answer. I just stood staring at the toes of my shoes. When I didn’t answer. He hit me on the head with the attendance file. But even so, I didn’t open my mouth. It was the classroom I used with my hyungs. After the day I had followed the hyungs around and we had discovered that classroom, there wasn’t a single day I hadn’t gone. Maybe the hyungs didn’t know. Sometimes they didn’t come, because they had other plans or were busy with part-time jobs. I hadn’t seen either Seokjin hyung or Yoongi hyung in a few days. But not me. I didn’t skip a single day. There were days when nobody came at all. But that was okay. Even if it wasn’t today, then they would come tomorrow, and if not tomorrow then the day after, so it was okay.

“You only learned bad things following them around.” He hit me again. I lifted my gaze and looked at him. He hit me again. The image came to me of Yoongi hyung hitting me. I gritted my teeth and endured. I didn’t want to lie and say I hadn’t been going.

Now I was standing again in front of that classroom. It seemed like the hyungs would be there if I opened the door. It seemed like they would look up from the game they were playing and ask me why I was so late. Seokjin hyung and Namjoon hyung would be reading books, Yoongi hyung would be playing the piano, and Hoseok hyung and Jimin hyung would be dancing.

 But when I opened the door, only Hoseok hyung was there. He was cleaning up the things we had left behind in the classroom. I held the door handle and just stood there. Hyung came over and put his arm around my shoulders. Then he led me outside. “Let’s go.” The classroom door closed behind us. I suddenly realized--those days were gone, and they would never return.

25 February 2021 (Hoseok)

I danced without taking my eyes off my reflection in the mirror. The me in the mirror had feet that didn’t touch the ground, lifted up and was free from the standards and gazes of the world. There was nothing important, nothing that made my heart beat in my chest other than moving my body in time with the music.

The first time I danced was around the time I was twelve. Maybe it would have been for the talent show on a field trip. I stood on stage, led by my friends. The things I remember from that day are the sound of applause and cheering, and the sense that I had finally become myself. Of course, at that time it was only that I felt enjoyment from moving my body in time with the music. I would only learn much later that that feeling was joy, and that that joy came not from the sound of the applause but from somewhere inside me.

The me outside the mirror is hung up in so many things. My feet can only leave the ground a few seconds at a time. When I hate something I smile and when I’m sad I laugh too. I collapse just about anywhere, even though I take medicine I don’t really need. So when I dance, I try not to take my eyes off the me in the mirror. The moment that I can become my truest self. The moment that I can throw away all the heavy things and fly away. The moment that I can believe that I can become happy. I protect those moments.

17 December 2021 (Namjoon)

The people waiting for the first bus rubbed their hands together in the cold. I looked down at the dirt, clutching the strap of my bag. I was trying not to make eye contact with anyone. It was a countryside village where only two buses stopped per day. From a distance, I saw the first bus approaching.

I boarded the bus behind everyone else. I didn’t look back. When I was passionate about something, when I barely had something in my grasp, when I had nothing left but things to escape--I had conditions. I wasn’t to look back. The moment I looked back, the efforts I’d made until now became little more than sea foam. Looking back, that was a kind of suspicion, a kind of lingering attachment, and a kind of fear. Only when I had overcome these things could I finally escape.

The bus started off. I had no plans. I had nothing I was passionate about, nothing in my grasp, no particular reason to escape. It was closer to thoughtlessly running away. My mother’s tired face. My father’s illness. Starting with the situation in our house that grew more difficult with every passing day. From my family, who enforced sacrifice and tranquility, and from me who pretended to know nothing and restrained myself, trying to adjust and grow resigned. And most of all, away from the poverty.

If anyone asked if it’s a crime to be poor, everyone would say it’s not. But is that really the truth? Poverty grows on so many things. Things that were precious become meaningless. You give up on things you can’t give up on. You grow suspicious and fearful and resigned.

The bus would arrive at a familiar stop in a few hours. When I left from that place a year ago I had left no messages behind. And now I was returning with no sign or warning. I tried to recall my friends’ faces. I had cut off all contact with them. What were they all doing these days? Would they be glad to see me? Would we be able to get together and laugh the way we had back then? There was frost on the windows and I couldn’t see the scenery outside. On top of the frost, I slowly moved my finger.

‘You have to survive.’

7 April 2022 (Yoongi)

I stopped walking at the clumsy sound of a piano. The only sound in the empty construction site was the popping of a fire someone had lit in an oil drum. I knew the sound of the song I had just played, but why had I thought of that? My drunken footsteps stumbled. I closed my eyes and walked even more carelessly. As the heat of the fire grew stronger, the piano sound, the night air, and my intoxication all grew fainter.

I opened my eyes at the sudden sound of a horn, just as the car grazed narrowly past me. In the confusion of the headlights’ brightness, the wind of the car’s passing, and my own drunkenness, I stumbled helplessly. I heard the driver curse at me. As I came to a stop, prepared to curse right back, I suddenly realized I could no longer hear the sound of the piano. Amidst the sound of the fire blazing, the wind, the silence left in the wake of the car, the piano sound was gone. It seemed to have stopped. Why had it stopped? Who was playing that?

The sparks from the fire surged forth from the drum barrel with a sharp noise. I looked at it for a long moment, spaced out. It was at that moment that I heard the clanging sound of a fist slamming down onto the piano keys. On instinct, I looked behind me. For a moment, my blood rushed so strongly that my breathing became erratic. The nightmares from when I was young. It was like a sound I had heard there.

In the next moment, I was running. Without any will of mine, I ran toward the music shop, my body turning of its own volition to look behind. I felt, somehow, like this was something I had repeated countless times before. It was a sensation of having forgotten something important.

The music store with its broken window. Someone was sitting in front of the piano. Although many years had passed, I recognized them in an instant. They were crying. Their hands curled into fists. I didn’t want to be concerned with someone else’s life. I didn’t want to comfort anyone else’s loneliness. I didn’t want to become a person who meant something to anyone. I had no confidence to be at their side til the end. I didn’t want to hurt them. I didn’t want to be hurt.

I walked slowly. I intended to turn back and leave, but I approached before I knew it. A wrong note rang out. Jungkook lifted his head and looked at me. “Hyung.” It was our first time seeing each other since quitting high school.

11 April 2022 (Jungkook)

In the end, it turned out how I wanted. I purposefully ran into the thugs I met on the street and got beat up to my heart’s content. Since I laughed while they were hitting me, they called me a crazy bastard and hit me even more. I leaned against the shutter door and looked up at the sky. It was already night. There was nothing in the pitch-black sky. I saw one clump of grass at a distance. It was lying on its side in the wind. It was like me. I felt like I was going to cry, so I forced myself to laugh.

I closed my eyes and saw the image of my stepfather clearing his throat. My stepbrother kicked me and laughed. My stepfather’s relatives looked elsewhere or talked about meaningless things. They acted like I wasn’t even there, like my existence didn’t matter. In front of them, my mother was at a loss. I placed my hands on the floor and stood, but dust rose up and I coughed. It hurt as if I’d been stabbed in my solar plexus. I went up to the roof of the construction site. The night stretched out in terrible color. I climbed up on the railing and walked with both arms spread out. One leg lurched, and I almost lost my balance. I thought that I could die with just one step. If I died, it would all be over. Nobody would be sad without me.

11 April 2022 (Namjoon)

I was rummaging around for a t-shirt, but Taehyung reached his hand behind and picked up a shirt. It was a t-shirt with the same printed letters as the one I was wearing at the moment. With an awkward laugh, Taehyung removed his torn t-shirt. In the faint glow of the lights that hung from the trailer ceiling, I caught a momentary glimpse of his bruised back. Hoseok looked at me with a shocked gaze. Taehyung put on my shirt and looked at his reflection in the dirty mirror. Then he laughed.

“This punk. Turning up late after getting caught by the police for running wild and doing graffiti.” I pretended like I was going to hit Taehyung, and he made a fuss of pretending to be sorry. Yoongi hyung, who had been sitting in one corner of the trailer, slowly approached and smacked Taehyung’s shoulder.

11 April 2022 (Seokjin)

I came to the sea alone. In the viewfinder, the sea spread out as wide and blue as it always had. I was all the same, the light that sparkled from the water, the wind that came through the pine forest. The only thing that was different was that this time I was alone. As soon as I pressed the shutter and the scenery in front of my eyes flickered, a moment from that day, 2 years and 10 months ago, seemed to appear and disappear. On that day, we sat side by side and faced this ocean. We were tied and had nothing and were desolate, but at least we were together.

I turned the car around and stepped on the accelerator. I went through the tunnel and passed by the rest stop. When I approached the vicinity of the school we all used to attend together, I opened the car window. The air was warm and cherry blossoms fluttered in the trees that lined the school’s wall. I left the school and passed several intersections, took several left turns and several rights. In the distance, I began to see the lights of the gas station where Namjoon worked.

11 April 2022 (same date)(Seokjin)

With a screech, the car barely came to a halt. I had been so lost in thought that I hadn’t noticed the light changing. Students in familiar uniforms crossed the street and stared at me through the window. Some people were pointing. I forced a smile and bowed my head.

I knew what I had to do. But I wasn’t unafraid. Could I really put an end to all of these misfortunes and hurts? Doesn’t repeating the same failure mean that success is impossible? Isn’t it telling me to give up? Uncountable thoughts passed through my mind.

At some point I approached the intersection with the gas station, and a ways off I could see Namjoon filing cars. I took a huge breath and let it out slowly. I tried to recall their faces one by one-- Yoongi, Hoseok, Jimin, Taehyung, Jungkook. Then I changed lanes and entered the gas station. I couldn’t give up. If there was even a 1 percent chance, I wouldn’t give up. Through the window I saw Namjoon approach.

2 May 2022 (Jungkook)

When I lifted my head, I was in front of Namjoon hyung’s container. I opened the door and went in. I gathered up the scattered garments, covered myself with them and hunkered down. The cold descended on me. My whole body trembled, and I wanted to cry. But no tears came.

When I had opened the door and came in, Yoongi hyung was standing on the bed. Flames were shooting up from the edge of the sheet. In that moment my whole body became entangled in rage and fear that I couldn’t hold back. I wasn’t someone who spoke well. I was slow to express my feelings or to convince anyone else. Tears welled up and I coughed and words would not come out. As I ran into those flames the only words I could manage to spit out were, “We promised to go to the beach together.”

“Why are you like that? Did you have a bad dream?” I opened my eyes to someone shaking my shoulder. It was Namjoon hyung. For some reason, I felt a sense of relief. Hyung felt my forehead and said I had a fever. It seemed like I did. The inside of my mouth was boiling but I was unbearably cold. I had a throbbing headache and my throat hurt. I barely managed to eat the medicine Hyung brought. “Sleep some more. Let’s talk later.” I nodded. Then I spoke, “Can I become an adult like you, hyung?” Namjoon hyung looked back.

19 May 2022 (Jimin)

In the end, I had to go to the Flowering Arboretum. I had to quit telling myself the lie that I didn’t remember what had happened there. I had to stop living in hiding in the hospital and stop having seizures. If I wanted to do that, I had to go to that place. With that intent, I went to the bus stop every day, but I couldn’t ride the bus to the arboretum.

Yoongi hyung came and sat next to me after I’d already let three buses go by. I asked what was up, and hyung said he was bored and had nothing to do. Then he asked why I was sitting here like this. I lowered my head and kicked the dirt with the toes of my shoes. I thought about why I was sitting here like this. It was because I had no courage. I wanted to pretend I was okay now, that I knew a little, that I surpass it on my own, but in truth I was afraid. I was afraid that I might encounter something, that I might not withstand it, that I might have another seizure.

Yoongi hyung looked relaxed. He slumped down like he had not a thing in the world to worry him, and said that the weather was nice, said all kinds of useless things. After I heard that, I realized the weather really was nice. I had been so worried that I didn’t bother looking at my surroundings. The sky was so blue. A warm breeze blew on occasion. From far off, the shuttle bus for the arboretum was coming. The bus stopped and the door opened. The driver looked at me. On impulse, I spoke.

“Hyung, do you want to come with me?”

20 May 2022 (Hoseok)

I took Taehyung and faced the police officer. “You’ve worked hard.” Although my head was bowed and I spoke firmly, that wasn’t my mood. It wasn’t far from the police station to Taehyung’s house. If he lived in some far-off place, would he not have been in and out of the police station this often? Why had Taehyung’s parents chosen a place so close to the police station? The world was so unfair to such a foolishly kind and tender kid. I slung my arm over Taehyung’s shoulders and asked if he was hungry, acting like it was no big deal. Taehyung shook his head. I asked if the police were so glad to see him they bought him food, but he didn’t reply.

We walked in the sunlight. In my heart, a cold wind blew. If I feel this way, how does he feel? How torn and broken was his heart? Did he have a heart left at all? How much torment must be inside? Thinking all these thoughts, I couldn’t look at him, so instead I looked at the sky. In the blurry sunlight a plane was passing by. The first time I had seen the wounds on Taehyung’s back was the first time I met him in Namjoon’s container hideout. I didn’t say anything to Taehyung, who was laughing brightly for having gotten a t-shirt, but a place in my heart had collapsed with a thud.

I had no parents. I had no memories of a father, and my memories of my mother only lasted until I was 7 years old. When it came to pain regarding families, no one would be envious of mine. People said things like this. That you have to overcome your pain, accept it and grow used to it. That you have to reconcile and forgive. That only when you do that, you can live. It wasn’t that I couldn’t because I didn’t know. It wasn’t a refusal because I didn’t want to. Nothing is achieved just because you try. No one told me how. The world gave me new wounds before the old ones had healed. I knew there was no one in the world who didn’t have wounds. But why did anyone need such deep ones? Why were the necessary? Why did things like this happen?

“It’s okay, hyung. I can go alone.” Taehyung said at the fork in the road. “I know, jerk.” I paid it no mind and took the lead. “I said I’m fine. Look, it’s nothing.” Taehyung tried to smile. I didn’t answer. There was no way he was okay. He wasn’t okay but he couldn’t stand acknowledging it. He was turning away. That was his habit. Taehyung flipped his hood and followed. “You’re really not hungry?” I asked as we approached the path leading to Taehyung’s house. Taehyung smiled his foolish smile and nodded. I watched his retreating back, then turned away. The path he walked and the path I walked were both narrow and desolate. We were both alone. I suddenly turned to look behind me when my phone rang.

20 May 2022 (Taehyung)

I looked down at my hand. It was stained with blood. Suddenly all the strength went out of my legs. I started to collapse, but someone caught me from behind. Murky sunlight was coming in through the window. Someone was crying, and Hoseok hyung was standing wordlessly. The dirty household goods and blanket were spread out as they always were. There was no one there where my father had stood. I couldn’t recall when or how he had left the room.

The rage and sadness I had felt in that moment I attacked him were still intact inside me. I didn’t know what had held me back from stabbing him. I didn’t know how I could comfort my heart, which seemed like it might go crazy. I didn’t cry. I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream, I wanted to kick and destroy and ruin things, I wanted to mess everything up, but I couldn’t do any one of those things.

“Hyung. I’m sorry. I’m okay, so just go.” My voice came out drily, at odds with my heart’s madness. It didn’t seem like my voice. I sent away hyung, who didn’t seem like he wanted to leave, and then stared down at my hands. Blood was seeping out from the white bandage. Instead of stabbing my father, I had hit the floor with the alcohol bottle. The bottle had shattered and cut my hand. When I closed my eyes, the world spun. What should I think? What should I do? How should I live? When I came to my senses I was looking down at Namjoon hyung’s phone number. Even in this situation--no, because I was in this situation, I valued his existence so much more. I wanted to tell him. Hyung, I, I almost killed my father, my father who raised me, my father who beat me like hell every day. No, truthfully, I killed him so many times. In my heart I killed him so many times I can’t even begin to count them. I want to kill him. I want to utterly kill him. I don’t know what to do now, I don’t know anything. Hyung, I just want to see you now.

22 May 2022 (Namjoon)

“It’s barely a year difference. No, nobody said that. I’m his hyung. I know. But he won’t always be a little kid. I’m asking if it isn’t about time for him to know a little. Got it. I get it. I’m not mad. Sorry.”

I hung up and stared at the ground. A tepid ocean breeze swept through the pine forest. My chest felt so stifled it might explode. On the ground, half sand and half dirt, some ants had formed a line and were going somewhere. To someone far greater than me, both physically and symbolically, would it be obvious that I was going somewhere, why I was going and how it would turn out?

It wasn’t that I didn’t love my parents. It wasn’t that I didn’t worry about my sibling. I wanted to turn away if I could, but since I couldn’t help being myself, of course I wasn’t entirely able to. And in that case, what point was there in struggling or being angry, or being frustrated, or wanting to leave?

A little ways off I could see the back of someone else, standing transfixed just as I was. It was Jungkook. At some point, Jungkook had said something like this. “I want to be an adult like hyung.” I couldn’t tell him, back then. That I wasn’t that great an adult, no, that I wasn’t even an adult. Saying something like that had seemed cruel. To someone who hadn’t received the love and interest that he naturally should have, how could I say that getting older, getting taller, and living a little more doesn’t make someone an adult? I hoped that Jungkook’s future would be a little kinder than mine, but I couldn’t promise that I would be a help to him in that process. I approached him and put my arm over his shoulders. Jungkook lifted his eyes and looked at me.

22 May 2022 (Taehyung)

I was passing a pine forest when I saw Hyung pick up the phone and start to lag behind. There  were lots of times like those nowadays. He moved away, far enough that others couldn’t hear, and answered the phone. I purposefully slowed my steps and hid myself off toward the ocean. Hyung didn’t see me hide, so he passed by me. “Only one year younger than me. No, I don’t really care. Anyway, I’m not going to take responsibility so just do whatever you think is best.”

 Something cold slid down my spine. It felt like the whole world had crumbled with a crash. It felt like floating alone in the middle of the ocean. It was terrible and frightening. I was miserable and insignificant. I was angry. I was so angry I couldn’t hold it back. I wanted to cause a scene. I wanted to destroy something, to hit something, to wreck myself. I was always afraid. That my father’s blood ran in my veins. I thought, maybe his violence was my inheritance. It seemed as if something was piercing my tightly-wound defenses.

22 May 2022 (Jungkook)

I felt as if my body was floating but I found myself on the hard ground somehow. I couldn’t feel anything for the longest time. My body was unbearably heavy that I could not even open my eyelids. I couldn’t even swallow or breathe. I started losing conscious and my surrounding started to fade.

Then my body began shaking like crazy as if it was shocked or stimulated by something. I couldn’t identify the pain and thirst and I closed my eyes. It felt as if my eyes were becoming blurred from sand but I saw something faint. I thought it was a light but it wasn’t. It was bright, big and dim. It didn’t move but floated in the air. As I looked at it for some time it slowly took form. It was the moon.

The world was upside down, maybe because my head was pointed backwards. In that world, the moon was also hanging upside down. I tried to cough so that I could breathe, but was unable to move. Then a chill came over and I was scared. I moved my lips but no words came out. I didn’t even close my eyes but my vision started getting darker. As I was losing consciousness, someone spoke to me.

“Living will be more painful than dying. Do you still want to live?”

31 May 2022 (Hoseok)

I reflexively turned my gaze away from a breathtaking wind. After dancing for a long time, I was often short of breath, but this wasn’t the same context. I thought that I was similar to my mother. No, that was neither a thought nor perception, and it wasn’t something that could be explained or described. I couldn’t look at the face of a friend I had known for more than 10 years. We had learned dance together and failed together and been frustrated and gained strength. When we had slumped to the floor covered in sweat and had thrown towels to each other and cracked jokes. It felt like a bothering sensation that I hadn’t felt once in that entire time, and I stood hurriedly up from the floor. As soon as I reached the corner, I leaned my back against the wall and stood there. I tried to calm my unsettled breathing, but I heard the sound of someone saying, “Where are you going, Hoseok-ah?” A voice. I thought that it could’ve been a voice. A voice that called me “Hoseok-ah.” A voice I couldn’t recall now, that called back to the time when I was seven.

8 June 2022 (Yoongi)

I took my T-shirt off again. The reflection in the mirror seemed entirely unlike me. The T-shirt with “Dream” written on it wasn’t my type, no matter how you looked at it. The red color, the ‘Dream’, even the tight fit didn’t sit right with me. In a fit of annoyance, I pulled out a cigarette and grabbed my lighter. It wasn’t in my jeans pocket, so I turned out the contents of my bag, and only then did I remember. [They] had taken it. And what [they] had thrown back to me afterwards was a lollipop and this T-shirt.

I messed up my hair and stood up, then heard the sound of a text message arriving. As soon as I saw the three-character name on the screen of my cell phone, my surroundings went white and my heart fell out of my chest. I snapped my cigarette in two as I went to check the message. In the next moment, the me in the mirror was laughing. Wearing that tight, red t-shirt with “Dream” written on it, laughing like an idiot as if something about it was good.

13 June 2022 (Seokjin)

After returning from the sea, we were all alone.

As though it was all agreed, we did not contact each other. We simply assumed each others existence through the graffiti that was left on the street, the gas station that was lit brightly, and the sounds of the piano that was heard from the time-worn building.  Every time that happened , like a vision (before my eyes) it brought back the afterimages of that night. Taehyung’s eyes, which were like flaming sparks; their gaze aimed at me, as though they had heard something unbelievable. Namjoon’s hand that was holding Taehyung back. The (image of) me who could no longer stand it and threw a punch towards Taehyung.

I failed to locate Taehyung, who had run off, and returned to the dorm by the seaside, where no one remained. A broken glass, bloodstains that were starting to dry, and broken biscuit crumbs were all that was left to remind me of the happenings of a few hours ago. There was a photo that had fallen among all of this. Against the background of the sea, we posed together for the photo smiling.

Today, too, I just passed by in front of the gas station. Someday, there will be a day we meet again. There will come a day where we will smile together, just like in the photo. There will come a day where I will have the courage to face myself completely, However, right now, (I realized) it’s still not the time for that. Today, too, just like that day, the wind blew, carrying moisture in the air. And in the next moment, as though it was a warning, my cell phone rang. The photo that was hanging on my room mirror shook. On my (phone) screen, Hoseok’s name appeared.

“Hyung, Jungkook got into a car accident that night.”  

15 June 2022 (Yoongi)

I was unaware of anything other than the sound of music playing in my head. Not how much I had drunk, nor where I was, nor what I had been doing. I didn’t know, and it wasn’t important. When I went outside, stumbling, it was already night. I swayed as I walked. I bumped into pedestrians, news kiosks, walls. I didn’t care. I just wanted to forget everything.

Jimin’s voice was still ringing in my ears. “Hyung, Jungkook…” My next memory was of running like crazy up the hospital steps. The hospital hall had been strangely long and dark. I passed people wearing hospital gowns. My heart pounded. Everyone’s faces were too pale. They had no expressions.They all seemed liked dead people to me. The sound of my breathing was harsh inside my own head.

Inside the slightly-opened hospital room door, Jungkook was lying there. I turned my head without realizing. I couldn’t look at him. At that moment I suddenly heard the sound of the piano, flames, of a building crumbling down. I clutched my head and sank down. ‘This is your fault. If it wasn’t for you…’ It was my mother’s voice--no, my voice--no, someone’s voice. At those words, I was tormented by countless moments. I wanted to believe it wasn’t so. But Jungkook was lying there. Jungkook was lying in the hall full of corpse-like patients passing by. I was utterly unable to go inside. I couldn’t check for myself. When I stood, my legs threatened to give out. I left with tears flowing. It was funny. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had cried.

I went to cross the street, but someone grabbed my arm and I came to a halt. Who was it? No, I didn’t care. No matter who it was, it was all the same. Don’t come near me. Go away. Just leave me be. I don’t want to hurt you either. I don’t want to be hurt. So please, don’t come any closer.

25 June 2022 (Taehyung)

I purposefully slowed my footsteps and perked my ears up at the small sense that someone was walking behind me. Today was the third time that we had met at the convenience store. If there was something that was different, it was that today [they] had run away as soon as [they] saw me. Then they had hung around in a small vacant lot at the back of the store, but as soon as I appeared they hid again. They had hidden themselves well but their shadow was reaching far towards the front of the abandoned lot. I giggled. I passed by, pretending not to see, but then they started to follow me.

I entered a narrow alley. This was the only place in our neighborhood where the streetlamps weren’t broken. The alley was long and the streetlamp was located somewhere in the middle. When the source of light is ahead, the shadow stretches behind. So now my shadow was stretching out behind me. It could have been stretching all the way to the feet of the person who was following me with bated breath. As I passed beneath the streetlamp, my shadow disappeared beneath my feet. I started walking a little faster. Not long after, a shadow that wasn’t mine appeared on the cement road. I stopped my steps, and the presence behind me stopped too. The two shadows of different heights stopped side-by-side.

 I spoke, “I’m going to wait until you come here.” the shadow jumped. Then it held still as if to say it wasn’t there. “I can see everything.” I pointed out the shadow. Then the sound of footsteps started to grow nearer, purposefully noisy. I laughed.

30 June 2022 (Namjoon)

I looked a little strangely at myself, pushing the door open button as if my hands had a will of their own. There were moments like this. Moments that felt like I had repeated countless times, even though it was obviously the first. The elevator doors opened again, moments before they closed, and the people pushed their way in. Among those people, I searched for a person wearing their hair tied with a yellow elastic. I hadn’t pushed the door open button with the knowledge that that person would be there, but I thought that it was obvious that they would be. I moved back step by step. The cold wall of the elevator touched my back, and I raised my head and saw the yellow elastic.

A person’s back tells a lot of stories. It was just that I had heard a few of them. A few things I could only guess at, and few things were left unexplained even after they were over. I suddenly thought that you can only say you know a person when you can read everything just from their back. Then wouldn’t there be someone who could read everything from my back? As I lifted my head, our gazes met in the mirror, and in a flash they avoided my eyes. This kind of thing happened often. When I lifted my head again, I could see only my face in the mirror. I couldn’t see my back.

3 July 2022 (Jimin)

In the end, I sprawled out on the floor. I turned off the music and all at once, my surroundings went quiet, and I heard nothing except the sound of my breathing and my own beating heart. I pulled out my phone and played the choreography video I had learned in the morning. In the video, Hyung’s movements were smooth and accurate. That was the result of countless hours and sweat, the result of practice, and since I was nowhere near that I was incredibly jealous. But understanding and hoping are different, so I sighed often. I suddenly stood up again. I imitated the turn as he’d done it, but my steps kept getting tangled. I kept making mistakes at the part where we had to match our flow while moving positions. We had decided to try it again tomorrow, but until then I wanted to show that I was serious, rather than the playful praise of “That was better than I expected,” I wanted to be recognized as a serious and equal partner, one who could match breaths with Hyung.

4 July 2022 (Jimin)

By the time I returned to my senses, I had washed my arm so much that I was losing skin. My hands were trembling and I was short of breath. My eyes in the mirror were bloodshot. What had just happened came back to me in fragments.

For a moment I had lost focus. I was dancing with a noona from the dance club, a collaborative dance, but I had lost my flow and we collided. I fell to the rough floor and my arm started to bleed. At that moment I had remembered what happened at the Flowering Arboretum. I thought that I had overcome it. But that wasn’t the case. I had to run away. I had to wash it away. I had to look away. The me in the mirror was the same eight-year-old kid who had run away in the rain. Then all at once I realized. Noona had fallen down too.

There was nobody in the practice room. Through the open door I could see the rain was falling heavily. In the distance I saw Hoseok hyung running. He was being rained on. I took an umbrella and ran out too. I ran, and then I stopped.

There was nothing I could do. All I could do was fall and hurt someone, leave them behind and tremble at my own pain, and then run after them too late with an umbrella before stopping. Every time I took a step, rain water soaked my sneakers. Car headlights passed me by. It wasn’t okay. No, it was okay. It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t that serious an injury. I was really okay.

4 July 2022 (Hoseok)

I stood in the hallway the whole time she was receiving first aid. Even though it was night, the hospital was bustling with people. Moisture dripped from my hair, wet with sweat and rain. I dropped the bag I had taken off of her. A variety of things tumbled out of it. A few coins rolled away, and a ball pen, and a towel. In the middle of it all was an airplane e-ticket. I picked it up and scanned it.

At that moment, the doctor called me. He said it was a mild concussion and nothing to worry about, and after a moment, she came out as well. “Are you okay?” She said that her head hurt a little, and she took her bag from me. Then she spotted the e-ticket peeking out, and looked up at my face. I shifted my bag to my other shoulder and said that we should go, pretending that it was nothing. As we left the hospital, it was raining as hard as ever. We stood side by side outside the door.

“Hoseok-ah,” she said. It looked like she had something to say. “Wait a second. I’ll get an umbrella.” I ran thoughtlessly into the rain. There was a convenience store in the distance. I knew that she had auditioned for an overseas dance team some time ago. The plane ticket meant that she had made it. I didn’t want to hear her say it. I didn’t have the confidence to congratulate her.

13 July 2022 (Namjoon)

I rested my head against the bus window. From the library to the gas station. The scenery passed by the window, almost frighteningly familiar since I took this route every day. Would there come a day where I could leave this scenery behind? I felt that it was impossible to predict what tomorrow would bring, nor to hope for anything.

I could see that there was a woman sitting in front of me, her hair tied with a yellow rubber band.  Her shoulders lifted and then dropped as if she was sighing. Then she rested her head against the window. For around a month already, we had studied at the same library and gotten on the bus at the same stop. We hadn’t spoken a word to each other, but we looked at the same scenery and lived on the same time and sighed the same sighs. The hair tie was still in my pants pocket.

The woman always got off the bus three stops before I did. Every time I saw her leave, I wondered if she was going to distribute fliers. What kind of time was she spending, what kind of things was she enduring? How strongly did she feel stifled at the thought that tomorrow might not come, or that from the beginning there had never been a such thing as ‘tomorrow’? I thought things like that.

The woman’s stop began to approach. Someone pressed the stop request button and other passengers got up from their seats. But in the midst of this, the woman didn’t stir. She just stayed in her seat, her head against the window. It seemed like she was asleep. Should I go and wake her up? I fought with myself for a moment. The bus approached the stop. The woman didn’t move. People disembarked. The door closed and the bus started to move.

The woman didn’t wake, even as we passed the next three stops. As I moved to the bus door I fought with myself again. It was clear that once I got off the bus, no one else would pay attention to her. She would wake up somewhere far from her stop, and it was impossible to know how much more tired she would be today because of it.

I left the bus stop and started to walk toward the gas station. The bus took off and I didn’t look back. I had left the hair tie on top of her bag, but that was it. That wasn’t a beginning, and as such nor was it an end. It was nothing to start with and there was no reason for it to be anything. So I thought it really didn’t matter.

16 July 2022 (Jungkook)

I stood at the window with my earphones in and sang along to a bit of the song. Already a week. By now I could sing along without looking at lyrics. I took one earphone and practiced with my own voice. [They] had said [they] liked it because the lyrics were pretty, but they made me scratch my head with embarrassment. The July sun shone in through the large window. The green leaves of the trees fluttered and shone in the wind, and each time the sun felt little different when it touched my face. I closed my eyes. Whether it was because of the lyrics or because of the sun, something billowed up and tickled and stung my heart.

17 July 2022 (Taehyung)

My side hurt so badly it seemed to be tearing. Sweat fell in drops. In the nooks and crannies of the railroad, in the vacant lot behind the convenience store, under the overpass--the girl was nowhere to be found. I had even run to the bus stop, but as expected I didn’t see her. The people waiting for their buses looked at me strangely. What had happened? We hadn’t promised to meet, but it was still strange. That girl always appeared from somewhere and followed me around. Even if I told her it was annoying, it was no use. But now she was nowhere to be found, even in the places we used to go together.

I came to a familiar wall and slowed my steps. There was graffiti there we had drawn together. It was the first thing she had ever drawn. On top of it there was a large “X” drawn. It was her. I hadn’t seen her do it, but I knew. Why? There was no response. Instead, several after-images overlapped on the wall.

Her laughing at me after I had laid down on the railroad tracks and hit my head. Her helping me up after I’d fallen trying to help her run away, her angry face after I’d stolen and eaten her bread. Her cloudy expression when we passed in front of a photo studio with a family photo in the window. Her gaze following the students we passed by, unbeknownst even to her. As we had sprayed this wall together I had said, “If you have a problem, tell me about it, don’t just grumble to yourself.” The X was drawn over all those memories. It seemed like it was saying they were all lies. Without realizing, I had made my hands into fists. Why? Of course there was no response. I kept walking. We were alone again. Me, and her.

26 July 2022 (Jungkook)

I sneakily broke a flower off the hospital’s wreath. I kept laughing and having to bow my head to hide it. The midsummer sunlight was blindingly bright. I knocked on the hospital room door, but there was no reply. I knocked again, then opened it slightly. It was oddly cool inside the room. And no one was there. It was only full of a very quiet darkness.

I left the hospital room. I had met her here, when I was bored and stifled and pushing my wheelchair like crazy up and down the hallway. She had appeared so suddenly that I barely had time to stop, and there she stood, a girl with her hair tied in a ponytail. When I left the hospital I saw a bench. I remembered that we had listened to music together and drawn, sitting there. And over there, on that roof, we had strawberry milk. I was still holding the wildflower in my hand, but now there was no one to give it to.

3 August 2022 (Seokjin)

I opened the storage classroom door and went inside. It was a summer night. The uncooled air was mixed with a scent of mold and dust. A flash of moments passed by in my head. The principal’s shiny shoes, Namjoon’s expression as he stood outside the door, Hoseok turning away and going back alone on the last day. My head hurt suddenly, and I felt a chill. I felt something that wasn’t exactly irritation nor fear, but a complicated emotion that came in like an aching pain. The signal I felt in both my body and heart was clear. I had to leave from this place.
Taehyung must have caught on to my signs, as he grabbed my arm. Hyung, please try a little bit more. Please try to remember what happened here. I shook off his grasp and turned around. I walked around in the sweltering heat for hours. I was exhausted beyond imagination. The others looked at me with an expression as if they were not sure what to say. Remember. What Taehyung tried to tell me to remember was all meaningless to me. The fact that I had done that, that it had happened to me, that we had done something together. We could have done it. I think we might have done it. But you don’t experience something by just hearing about it. It must be planted and rooted in your heart, in your heart, in your soul. But for me, the memories of that place were bad ones only. Ones that make me feel pain, ones that make me want to run away.
A fight started between me who wanted to go back and Taehyung who tried to stop me. However, we were both exhausted. Hitting, dodging, stopping the fight, all the movements felt so slow and heavy as if it were happening inside a highly viscous substance. Before we knew it, my feet and Taehyung’s were all tangled up. I thought my shoulder had crashed into the wall but in the next moment, I lost balance and swayed.
At first, I didn’t know what happened. I couldn’t open my eyes in the thick dust. I coughed endlessly without stopping. Are you okay? After hearing someone ask, I realized that I had fallen down to the floor. As I raised myself up, I noticed that what I had thought was a wall had collapsed down. Past the wall was a quite a spacious area. For a moment, no one moved. Oh my, after all this time that we spent here, said someone. No one had possibly imagined that this place would exist beyond the walls. But what’s that? As the dust settled, I noticed a single cabinet in he middle of the empty space.
Namjoon opened the cabinet door. I took one step closer. In that place, there was one notebook and flipped to the first page. For a moment, I stopped breathing. The weathered notebook’s first page, inside it, was an unexpected name. It was my father’s name. As Namjoon was about to flip one more page, I grabbed the notebook from him. Namjoon looked at me in surprise but he didn’t go beyond that. I turned the pages. The old pages of the notebook flipped through my fingers as if they were falling apart.
The notes that were written in my father’s handwriting were logs about the things my father and his friends had went through in their high school days. It wasn’t about every single day. It even skipped by month, and there were even pages with blood marks pressed in, making it impossible to read these pages. But I was still able to know. My father had endured the same events as I had. Just like I had, he had made a mistake and had done something wrong, and in order to correct them, he was running and running.
In my father’s notebook was a lot of his failures. Eventually, my father gave up and he failed. He forgot about it, turned his head, and avoided it. He abandoned his friends. In the last page of his logs, all that was left was an ink stain that had press through. It had spread through into the next page that had nothing written on it, and into the next, and into the last page of the notebook. It’s as if the ink stain was displaying my father’s failures.
I didn’t know how mush time had passed as my senses had dulled. Feeling that the sir coming in through the window had become cool, it seemed like the darkest time of the day, just before the sun rises. Namjoon, all the other dongsaengs had sunk to the floor and fallen asleep. I raised my wad and looked up at the walls. I had once see my father’s name written here somewhere. Everything had started here.
It was the moment that I was about to close the notebook, that I felt a type of quick movement at the tip of my fingers. On top of the ink stains, I started to see faint letters. Past the window, I felt a foggy energy. It seemed like the sun was going to rise soon. But the night was not yet over. It was a time of day where it was not night, nor dawn. Depending on how the darkness and hazy light came together, from the dark ink stains and in between the margins and empty spaces, the things my father decided to forget, the things he decided not to remember, remained there as is. Although the colors had faded away, the imprints remained under the fingers of my father like a vortex of the many times he endured the fear, the despair and the faint hope that he felt he would not be able to overcome. A map of m father’s distorted soul remained on these notes.
When I closed the notebook, I felt tears fall. I sat like that for a while, and when I raised my head, my friends were still sleeping. I looked at them, one by one. Perhaps, we had to come back to this place, the mistake I was never able to admit to out of my own mouth, remained like an open scar.
It occurred to me then, that all of this may not have been a coincidence. Eventually, I would have arrived at this point. That way, I would have found the meaning behind all the pain and anguish that I felt from the mistakes and things I had done wrong throughout all the time. And at last, it had allowed me to take the first step in discovering the map of me soul.

15 August 2022 (Seokjin)

After emerging from the blocked intersection, I drew to an abrupt stop just when I should have been gaining speed. The car behind me passed by with its horn blaring, and it seemed like someone cursed, but in the din of the city it went unheard. I saw a small flower shop in one corner of the alley to the right. It wasn’t that I had stopped because I saw the store, but rather that I had discovered it after I’d drawn up short.

The store was under construction, and even as I approached the owner, who was organizing documents over to one side, I had no real expectations. I had already visited several places, and I couldn’t find even one florist who knew of that flower’s existence. They had only shown me flowers of a similar color. But I wasn’t looking for something similar. The flowers had to be real. After hearing the name of the flower he looked at me for a long time. He told me that although the store hadn’t formally opened, he was able to arrange a delivery, and then asked, “Why do you need that flower, of all flowers?”

I thought about it as I turned the handle and went back onto the street. The reason why I need that flower. There was only one. Because I wanted to make [that person] happy. Because I wanted to make [that person] smile. Because I wanted to see [that person] enjoy it. Because I wanted to be a good person.

30 August 2022 (Seokjin)

Can anyone remember the moment they fell in love? Can anyone predict the moment their love will end? What could be the reason that humans don’t have the ability to recognize those moments? And why was I given the power to return [restore] all of those things?

The car comes to a sudden stop, the headlights flash, crashing, bouncing, falling. I did nothing but stand defenseless in the face of all those moments. I heard no sound and felt no sensations. It was summer, but the wind seemed cold. There was the sound of something tumbling along the street. Then was the scent of flowers. Only then did a sense of reality come to me. The bouquet of Smeraldo flowers fell from my hand. She was laying there in the middle of the street. There was blood flowing in between the strands of her hair. The dark red blood flowed along the street. I thought. If only I could turn back time.