Don't Read the Comments

Tired. Just tired.

That's all Namjoon had been feeling lately. All the way to his bones.

He leaned back lazily in the computer chair, legs splayed out in front of him without any sort of care in the world. He was slouched far enough that he felt the back of the chair up against the base of his skull, head leaned so far back that if he looked straight ahead, he'd be staring at the ceiling. Instead, his eyes were strained downward toward the monitor while he clicked and scrolled listlessly through posts he shouldn't have been reading-- hate messages and comments that probably would have hurt more ... if he just wasn't so tired.

Not sleep-tired, although that was on its way, but soul-tired.

Such was the life of an idol. Of an artist. Of a rapper. Of anyone with status. You get the good with the bad, the bad with the good. But sometimes, especially very late at night after endless hours of practice, the bad just slightly outweighed and decided to leave an iron clench on the heart. Again, it didn't particularly hurt, but it added to the density he was feeling in his chest.

The only sounds in the computer room was that of Namjoon's mouse clicking quietly, and the very quiet sounds of Gaeko coming from the speakers. He'd turned the volume pretty low down so he could hear the sound of his thoughts better, but had decided once he'd hit the Internet that he didn't even want to hear those. Still, it was late, and a thumping bass wasn't really what he was going for at the moment anyway.

With a click, he closed the forum he'd been surfing, after reading a particularly long post about how he wasn't any kind of true hip-hop artist due to being "leashed" by a company. "Don't think of yourself as 'underground' if you're owned by the land above." Closing his eyes against the montior's light, he tried to think of all the good things he'd read from fans-- how perfect his voice sounded to them, how great his image had been, how good his style was, how much his dancing had improved (even just slightly), how kind the group was to each other, how much they'd grown up over the years. But the negative comments came floating back up, in the end, and he squeezed his eyes tighter in an attempt to ignore them, like he just had to do every once in a while.

Namjoon was so distracted by everything he'd been reading and by the weariness in his body that he didn't hear the door to the room creak open. He hadn't really been thinking about if anyone else would be wanting to come in and check up on things or record a video log; in fact, he'd not been focusing on what the rest of the group was doing at all. As the leader, it was sometimes a bit of a relief to be alone and meditate on oneself, even if what he was meditating on wasn't the best.

Upon poking the door ajar and peeking in, Yoongi was expecting his groupmate to turn around in the chair and toss back a joke about "knocking before entering, you don't know what's going on in here" or something similar. To which he would have immediately replied with something witty and they would have had a good laughing moment. Instead, he was greeted with the slumped form of Namjoon, his pastel-splattered hair the only real visible body part. The monitor was still on, but, with nothing on the screen, Yoongi could almost only assume the other had fallen asleep.

Briefly, the redhead had the idea of sneaking up and scaring his friend awake, maybe donning a mask and strumming the nearby guitar ominously. The atmosphere in the room was strangely thick, though, and he wasn't feeling like the timing was good-- instead, he quietly closed the door behind him and took a few steps forward, peering over Namjoon's form curiously. Instead of sleeping, though, the leader's mouth was partially opened in a scowl and his hand was up against his temple, his eyes shut with effort instead of relaxation; he looked halfway between concentration and frustration.

It was too late not to get any kind of startled reaction, so Yoongi just let out a slight cough, clearing his throat in the process. In the stillness of the room, even with Gaeko's rhymes eminating in near-whispers from the computer, the sound came out quite a bit louder than he intended.