confession #banglo

#4

"That's how it all started. That damn song," Yongguk muttered with a low voice, fidgeting with the bottle cap that was on the table. Youjin had been listening to his story carefully, not letting out an utter and just giving Yongguk the chance do the talking. He was glad to know more about his best friend; being as close as they were, there still seemed to be a lot of things he didn't know about. He wished he could be someone Yongguk could talk to about anything and everything, so seeing that Yongguk really did trust him with things like this now made him feel reassured.

"Confession was the first song I heard from you too," he said and Yongguk lifted his head to look at his friend next to him, his expression slightly confused as if he had already forgotten he was talking to someone. "It was so big back then, my friend at that time played it in a car and I just had to ask: 'who is this?' That friend didn't even know you three, he just vibed with the song."

"We were happy to get even a couple hundred plays on it at first but then suddenly that became a couple thousand," Yongguk had a small smile on his face recalling back to the joy they had felt when their song got big. "After a couple days it was over ten thousand. We went crazy."

"Gunhee must have been so ecstatic," Youjin wondered and Yongguk left out a soft yeah.

"He kept urging me all the time, let's make more songs, we need to make another one," Yongguk explained. "We were at the studio pretty much every day making more songs."

"How about Junhong? Was he with you too?"

"Everytime Junhong had time I would hang out with him. I had already dropped out of college at that time so I was always free. Sometimes I even wondered if I'm being too much but we always had a good time together, even if we weren't doing anything," Yongguk let the bottle cap drop to the table just to pick it up again a couple seconds later, needing something to do with his hands. "He was with us on every song we made. We were making it a joint album. Him and I. Gunhee was producing all the songs."

"Noir?" Youjin guessed the name of the album although he didn't even need a confirmation from Yongguk to know he was correct. He knew every song Yongguk had ever put out, even the most underrated ones back from when he was a no-one, though he only discovered all of them after Yongguk had blown up.

"Yeah. Less than two weeks from the release of Confession, that album was ready. We wanted to put it out immediately but we had a gig on that weekend so decided to wait until it was over. It was Gunhee's master plan to play songs from that album as a surprise," Yongguk's tone became more bittersweet when he recalled back to their first gig. To most artists, it would be a happy memory but to him, it was when everything started going downhill.

"You and Gunhee already had experience, right? Was it Junhong's first performance?" Youjin kept asking questions he already pretty much knew the answer to but he felt like he needed to do so in order to keep Yongguk talking - and also show he was interested to hear more.

"Yes it was his first time ever being in front of a crowd. He was so nervous he could barely sleep the night before. He was spending the night here so we could go to the capital together. Gunhee had already gone ahead of us," Yongguk couldn't help but glance at his bed, reminiscing not only the night he was talking about but all the nights he had slept there with Junhong. They had known each other for barely a couple days when they already started sleeping at each other's places. It felt so natural for them and when they spent most of their free time together, it just felt useless to go sleep in separate addresses.

"Did your parents also like Junhong?"

"I think they just appreciated me hanging out with someone else than Gunhee. They didn't really intervene with anything I was doing as long as I always let them know where I was going and when I would be coming home. And they never questioned whether Junhong and I were something more than just friends. Which we- I don't know..."

Youjin didn't say anything even though some questions arose in his head after Yongguk's words. He just assumed that things would open up to him better as the story proceeded but still kept his questions in mind in case he would need answers for them later - maybe some other day.

"Honestly I regret it so much. I regret we went on that first gig and I regret we even released Confession. I regret it was such a good song that we got recognized. Things would have been better if no one ever listened to that song," Yongguk's voice got dark and he felt his eyes starting to burn again.

"It's no use regretting it now. You can't change what happened. And you made him so happy, didn't you?"

Junhong indeed had been happy.