In the midst of the lupins

𝙴𝚙𝚒𝚕𝚘𝚐𝚞𝚎

I have your camera. Occasionally I leaf through our photographs, filled with life more than what is happening in my soul. Everything is dead there. I watch our funny videos, bathed in the rays of the sun and the greenery of nature, I listen to the song that we were fooling around with. If only I wasn't so curious. If I hadn't gone there, then... Everything would have been different.

I try to control myself so as not to return to that summer too often. Because then I cry: bitterly and painfully, drawn out and flooded. And I can't stop now. I'm in convulsions of despair. I know I deserve...

This painful year has flown by. Somehow, but flew by... I thought that I would not survive. I thought about death and couldn't believe that I would ever return to this stupid forest, but still green in my memory.

I pass the sentry house, in which you are not, but the familiar barberry bushes. I want to remember their sour taste. And again they have no effect on me. I suddenly imagined that this was the same year, that same summer, when I ran away from my aunt.

I'm still 17-year-old Beomgyu.

On the bench, having finished eating the last barberry berries, pink heads slowly swaying in the wind fell into my field of vision. It was the lupins that once connected you and me. And now a joyless veil deprives me of the ability to see. And then comes an unexpected epiphany, tears dripping hail. I get up and dive into the endless ocean.

How are you, Yeonjun? I'm not very good, but I seem to be holding on. People arrived from the city. Because summer. Over there, they're sitting under a tree among the rubbish. They are polluting the area. And we, Yeonjun, remember how we lay among the lupins and dreamed? Many office people do not go to the forest, to nature, do not appreciate its beauty, do not feel the way you and I do, Jun. They are afraid of getting wet, they take out their damn umbrellas and hide under them from warm drops. For me, this is a living gift. In every natural phenomenon, I see a piece of you. They are afraid to get their suits dirty, and for you and me, Yeonjun, lying on the grass, just like on a soft bed, is an incredible pleasure.

I hate it when these little groups get together and act against nature. They cut down spruces, break flowers and plants into some bouquets that they will throw out on the way into the bushes, and if it happens that they bring it home, they will also throw it out without regret when those poor things wither before their eyes. Sad to realize... Now I'm alone against them, standing near the raspberry fields. They look at me strangely. Those people don't see anything there. Lupins like lupins. But you are always where you are. Brightest one, you're still out there... living among the lupins.

But without having time to blink, a rainy August day is replaced by radiant expanses. As on the palms I see your blood on a stone, deadly drawn to the ground. Now the lupine fields have turned into wet grass and mud.

Well... those tears again...

From that day on, I started skipping school a lot. If it weren't for Taehyun, Soobin, and Kai, I'd never feel any better. I might even switch to home schooling. Friends did not know anything and continue not to know until now. I guess I'm just a bad friend.

"If my aunt starts calling you, asking what happened to me, why I don't talk to her, tell her that I'm just tired and that's it."

"Beomgyu, but will you tell us what really happened?" Taehyun was worried.

"We'll listen to you, buddy," Kai added as his brother tapped me lightly on the shoulder.

"I think it will go away with time. Nothing to worry about."

"In any case, you can always rely on us," my deskmate said.

"Thank you. I don't know what I would do without you."