Invisible Affection | Taejin

45. Was It Hope, or Did I Make It Hope?

Seokjin sat across from his psychiatrist, feeling more nervous than he usually did in this room, and that alone bothered him because Dr. Park's office had become one of the few places where he did not have to perform.

For years, this had been the place where he could say the things that did not come out clean, where he did not have to make himself easier to understand, where he did not have to pretend his thoughts arrived in a reasonable order when most of the time they came too fast, too loud, and too full of feelings he could not always trust.

Still, today, he could barely keep his hands still in his lap, and the more he noticed it, the more ashamed he became.

When he had called her from South Korea, he had not sounded like himself. It was as if something inside him had suddenly come undone, and all the emotions and thoughts he had worked hard to keep under control started to pour out.

He had been distressed, vulnerable, and broken down, frightened by how badly he wanted someone to tell him there was a way to fix what had happened with Taehyung.

Dr. Park had not given him the answer he had been hoping for. She had not told him what to say, had not told him how to make Taehyung listen, and had not given him a plan to earn his way back into a life he had once lost.

First, she had checked on him. She had asked where he was, whether he was alone, and if he could place both feet on the floor and name what he could see around him.

She had guided him through the breathing exercises they had practiced for years, the same exercises he sometimes resented when he was calm and clung to when he was not.

She had stayed on the phone until his voice stopped shaking so badly, until his crying slowed, until he could answer her without apologizing after every sentence.

Only after Dr. Park was certain he was no longer caught in that first rush of panic did she tell him to leave South Korea and return home.

Seokjin had listened because that was what their relationship had become over the years, not dependence and not blind obedience, but trust. He trusted her when his own mind felt unsafe. He trusted her to tell him the truth even when it hurt, and he trusted himself enough to know that calling her had been the right thing to do.

When he landed, she told him they needed to meet in person, which was how he ended up here, sitting in her office with his body tense and his throat tight, anxious in a place that had once taught him how to breathe again.

Beneath the anxiety was something stronger, though it was not directed at her. He was angry with himself for going back there so quickly, angry that one night out together, one person, one old love, had been enough to pull him into a state he had promised himself he would never return to.

Dr. Park sat across from him with her notebook resting on her lap, though she had not written anything yet. She watched him without rushing him, her expression calm but not distant, and when she finally spoke, her voice carried the same steadiness that had kept him grounded through more moments than he cared to count. "Explain to me what happened," she said. "I want you to tell me everything you remember before you called me. Start wherever you can and take your time. I cleared my afternoon for you."

Seokjin drew in a slow breath and stayed silent for a while, letting his thoughts move through the memories in pieces. Taehyung's face, his voice, the way the past had felt close enough to touch, the way Seokjin had wanted to believe that the pain between them had not ruined everything.

Hope had entered him before he had been ready for it, careless and dangerous, making him think of second chances as if they were something fresh and free from past mistakes.