BTS Eighth Member | The Life: Year 2018

Chapter 37- Heart of Stone

May 27th, 2018:

The comeback was going as well as we could have wished. We were breaking records both in Korea and at home. We were being treated unbelievably well and even groups we were meeting in the hallways of weekly music shows were acting like wide-eyed fans when they saw us. I could tell that while it was going amazing, it was all a bit much for all of us. This "superstar" treatment had grown exponentially, and it made us all a little uncomfortable to no longer be seen as their potential friends automatically since they were all automatically putting up that "celebrity" barrier between us, or at least the younger groups were. 

I was using this excuse to explain why I'd been so quiet. I'd dived into work and been spending basically all my time in my studio working on songs. I'd reached out to Celine Dion to finally talk about a song, and I was working with her producers on a song for her next album, or maybe even a single, she still wasn't sure about that. It would definitely be after her tour anyway. 

I'd also angrily deleted all the song files I'd been working on with Hanbin. He'd been no contact since he left my apartment that night other than a text saying we should not contact each other to make sure there was no connection between him and me for a bit to prove we were not together if Seohee leaked some info soon. I hadn't answered starting to feel really angry at him for all of this heartache. If there was one overarching emotion I'd been feeling lately it was anger. Anger towards Hanbin, towards my job, towards society, towards myself. 

I now understood how some of the greatest artistic works were done in times of turmoil. My anger and heartache was making me churn out song after song, poems, short stories, drawings. I was a literal emotional machine right now. My notebook was getting filled up far faster than it had been in a very long time with how much I was letting out onto its pages. I was trying my hardest to get through this as smoothly as possible, but he had truly been someone I had started to lean on, especially in this incredibly uncomfortable and unknown transitionary period, so it felt like my house had lost one of its pillars and was struggling to stay upright. 

I hadn't told anyone, nor did I want to, honestly because I was embarrassed. Maybe Yoongi was right, and I was just this serial dater who couldn't seem to find a guy who would stay with me. It also proved the boys' anxieties about him right and I hated them being right when I wasn't. Voicing it aloud would also make it all the more real. It was almost like not talking about it meant we were just having a prolonged fight that would work itself out in the end. A part of me still held out hope a miracle would happen and we'd somehow get back together. It was like when my heart had broken into a million pieces back in my apartment, Hanbin had taken a piece with him as he left and my heart couldn't be whole until I got it back. It was a completely different type of heartache than I'd ever felt before, but I was slowly starting to get used to the constant aching feeling, almost apathetic to it.

Nevertheless, for fans, I kept putting on this happy façade. No one knew anything had happened, even the boys thought it was about the comeback and pressures of fame that were responsible for my change in mood. I was proud I'd gotten really good at putting up such a convincing façade, I guess it came with the fame.

We had our first Fake Love fan sign today and I was currently sitting in between Hoseok and Seokjin toward the beginning of the table. We were nearing the end of the line which was feeling unending. There had also been a resurgence in men, either this comeback hooked some more in, or they were willing to overlook the Ilbe scandal. It wasn't to the number it was before, but there were nearly what look like a fourth of the fans that were men now.

Fan #48

"Hi," I smiled at a teenage-looking boy as Seokjin passed me his album we were signing.