confession #banglo

#7

"I should have realized that was just a gateway to, you know... Wilder parties, harder drugs," Yongguk sounded bitter and he was. There was so much regret in his mind.

"Did you try to stop him?" Youjin asked, carefully because he knew the topic was very hard for Yongguk. He was starting to realize the regrets Yongguk had surrounding this matter and why this had driven him and Gunhee apart.

"Not hard enough," Yongguk shook his head.

"I don't believe there was much else you could have done. He may have been younger but he was still an adult. He wasn't your responsibility, there was no way you could have controlled what he did."

"That's what I told myself too. It bothered me but I kept saying that it wasn't my business. His parents had controlled him so much during his whole youth and he hated it so I didn't want to restrict his doings too much. Maybe I was afraid that he would start to hate me or something," he finally decided to give up on playing with the bottle cap and threw it on his bed - he had gotten mad at himself.

"He knew you so well so he must have known you don't like it," Youjin leaned on his hand, studying Yongguk's expression.

"Oh he knew. Sometimes I noticed that he felt bad about being high in front of me. And he tried to hide it. I'm not sure if it was because he didn't want me to know or if he just tried to be considerate towards me. Gosh, I shouldn't have been such a coward. Why was it so hard to just get mad at him and really make him stop," reminiscing of the past made Yongguk break down again. His levels of self-loathing were rising again, although it was still nothing compared to what he had felt a year ago.

"How fast did it go downhill after that? From what I know you toured quite a bit together," Youjin asked questions again to make the conversation progress, thinking that telling the story would help Yongguk from wallowing alone with his dark thoughts.

"The album was a huge success, bigger than we could have expected. The three of us did performances together all around the country for almost two months. We had a new gig pretty much every weekend."

"Did he still rely on weed while you were performing?"

"Yeah. Every performance. He said he can't go on stage if he didn't smoke before. That wasn't so bad because he did well on stage. If it helped him get rid of his anxiety then I didn't mind. It was a blunt or two anyways. It was the things that happened after the performance that bothered me. The afterparties got wilder and wilder every week. Gunhee got so many contacts everywhere and he always found the craziest parties," Yongguk seemed to loathe the thought; Youjin understood those kinds of wild parties were completely unfit for his personality.

"I believe Gunhee's parties might not be the cleanest. Or even legal," Youjin was starting to cringe because he sensed where all this was going to lead to.

"Definitely not. Although I was afraid to intervene with anything Junhong was doing, I tried to sway Gunhee. I told him to stop many times. I told him we shouldn't go or that we should find some other kind of parties instead. I told him to stop using drugs and especially stop giving them to Junhong. I fought him so much for it. But he didn't care."

"Man," Youjin sighed. He had never felt hatred towards Gunhee but now he was sure he wouldn't be able to look at the guy normally for a while from now.

"I think it was after our fourth performance when we went to some rich guy's rooftop apartment after. There was a huge party there. Gunhee had told Jen not to come - it wasn't the first time he had done that, he usually did it with some shitty excuse - and it was not a wonder since the party was filled with girls in little clothes. The host offered free drugs. I have no idea what they were to be honest but Gunhee..." Yongguk didn't know how to finish his sentence, thinking back to how the eighteen-year-old Gunhee had reacted to getting free drugs.

"And Junhong too?"

"He was a bit doubtful at first but Gunhee needed to only say a couple of words."