CYPHER | BTS

40: THE LAST

- F O R T Y -

July 04, 2020
Saturday

📍Osaka, Japan

༺❀༻

Choi June

I spring awake with a suffocating breath from being pulled into an abyss of the dark unknown, drowning and sinking further and further. The air around me is too damp, too hot, too heavy. My heart is beating too fast, my eyes too frantic, and my adrenaline too high. Sweat beads down my hairline, every inch of me shakes with the innate need to move.

I thrash against the chair I'm tied in as I take in the room I'm in. Four dull concrete walls stare back at me. There are no vents, no hoses, no windows. Just me, the door, and the camera in the corner of the room, watching me.

The tightness of the rope around me begins to make me panic. The amount of times I've been tied to a chair is beyond me, but every single time I've found myself in that position, I always never managed to do anything about it. I had underwent training for this very specific thing many, many times and I never could succeed in escaping. The hope I would somehow succeed began to thin more and more.

I try to work my fingers around the rope tied at my wrists, but I struggle to even grasp onto it. The frustration bubbles in my chest until I'm pulling at the ropes instead, yanking my body away from it and leaving red marks on my skin as if it would prove a better strategy than this. The pain adds to the frustration and I let out a bitter scream.

It was hopeless. I was hopeless. What was I thinking, imagining that I'd be cut out for things like this? I was only twenty three. I was still so young, still naive, and still such a coward. The hope and determination I had projected throughout the last couple of days had been just that, but it was the naivety of me that allowed me to believe that was all I needed.

It wasn't. I needed strength too. I needed a well thought out plan. I needed skill. I needed to be able to escape from something as simple as being tied to a chair.

I needed... I needed Cypher.

The thought should have sent me into a whirlwind of newfound warmth, but all it did was deflate me in the wickedest of way. No matter how badly I ached for their presence, for their saving, I knew that it was foolish to rely so heavily on them all of the time.

How many times have I told myself that I didn't need a savior? That all I needed was for someone to just sit in the dark with me?

It was okay to want them here, I knew that. But I also understood with some semblance of realization that the only person who was truly going to save me every single time, was me.

The anchor bringing me down to this thing we call living shouldn't have been a single person in my life. That anchor should have been me. This entire time.

And it's that realization, that newfound sense of purpose, that has me inhaling a deep breath and trying again. I stuff the frustration down into the depths of my stomach to leave forgotten as I struggle to untie the ropes that bind me. I fail again and again, but I remain calm and most importantly, I continue to try again.

My fingers ache and burn and always slip away from the smallest of grips I scarcely find myself having. Seconds turn to minutes, minutes turn to ten. I'm sweating more now, the lack of ventilation in the room adding onto the heaviness of the air.