Sempiternal: • A.L.I.V.(d)E(ad)? • || BOOK 7#

38. Fragile peace

He massages his neck and stretches in his chair before looking to the right. Jin and Jungkook asleep on the couch, one on top of the other and giving each other occasional touches, as if trying to annoy each other in between sleeps. As silly as it is adorable. He turns off the TV, covers them with a huge blanket and goes upstairs with his cell phone in his hand.

Map of the Soul: 7 has been a resounding success.

So much so that they had to apologize on what more merchandise is produced. It's a crazy thing that Namjoon didn't see coming and it almost made him cry again. There is no one who doesn't do top down analysis below all the songs, the bonus video they released of Black Swan and not ask for some sort of confirmation of part of everything they think about it.

Namjoon prefers to give terse comments. Without showing off too much and let people have a chance to think what they want. At most, prevent them from straying into thinking wrong and bad things about them. It is inevitable that it will be said, not so that it is taken as an absolute truth to be disproved.

He peeks into the other rooms to turn off the TV, tuck in whoever is lying on one end of the bed and the like. It is difficult to get into Jungkook's room, as there is a string of dogs lying on the floor. Bam belly up and stretched out on the end. Namjoon has to balance to close the window to keep insects out.

Hoseok sleeps with half his body on the edge of the bed.

Yoongi curled up on one side of the huge bed.

Jimin and Taehyung in Jimin's bed, sleeping in deep silence with Jimin holding his arm.

By the time he reaches his room and intrudes into his bed, accidentally waking up his dog, Namjoon can rest with an immense level of peace inside him. As if any trace of insecurity regarding his ability to continue making music is vetoed from his system.

He can still do it.

He still knows how to do it.

Those melodies inside his chest did not fade away.

Junghwa did not kill them.

Junghwa could not devour them.

They survived. They were there all along, shyly hidden for protection.

"We've always been there," he opens his eyes, finding himself there, "but you didn't want us to be out there...because we weren't useful.

"You weren't."

"No... And it's better that way: we would have died."

He sighs deeply, closing his eyes and falling asleep in a few minutes.

~ * * * ~

The album continues to do very well, to the point that we've been invited on over fifteen more shows to perform. Everyone else is fine with it. They are so excited about a public performance. Even Yoongi has been practicing being in front of a lot of people so he can do it (he's adorable, we've gone to over five parks where there are a lot of people so he can get acclimated).

We've been practicing with headphones, so there won't be any problems with the applause and there will be a little practice beforehand to make sure everything is functional. It's a level of effort and excitement that they didn't have. That I saw off and now it's shining again. They themselves so happy to note how they are still the same as before.

Just much stronger, capable of more things. Even pick themselves up after the very shattering and miserable fall we had.

It's funny that I noticed a pattern in everything that happened: first we fell, because of it we broke and being like that, we became contaminated with the evil of others. It turned us into real living dead staggering in a disgusting limbo; we let ourselves fall on the worst side, going into a war and then, being worse than wild animals.