Colors

XXXVI : Park Jimin

My name is Park Jimin, and I'm in love with my best friend.

Her name is Lee Jinhee and I've known her since I was ten. 

I dreamed to sing and dance onstage, in front of thousands or maybe more. It was a passion burning inside me. Meeting six other guys with the same flame in them, we decided to strive together.

"Teamwork makes the dream work," my friend always says.

 But, I wasn't the luckiest person on earth.

My father cheated on my mother, betraying our family. The moment I found out about the truth, I was incredibly sad, angry, and afraid. The reason to those feelings is how such a person I've always looked up to could do something that horrible. It went no farther than to that. But my mother was different. Her trust and hearts broken, her disappointment turned into boiling hatred. Fights became a daily event at our house, it got harsher and more violent each day. One day, my father hurt me during a fight. I left the house repeating words in my head, words saying that he would never have intended to do that. 

I stayed at Jinhee's. 

The morning I returned, he was not there. Since then, my mother had to fend for us alone. She worked multiple jobs and lacked sleep. I told her that I could help by getting part-time jobs but she forbid me to do so, she even scolded. I still secretly went, though. I saved money for myself to spend, so that I wouldn't have to burden her with more than my school fee and food. Sometimes I shared some of it to Jisang, for him to buy encyclopedia books he liked reading, or even just snacks.

I thought that I was finally being something useful. 

But it all crumbled down as I fell ill to a syndrome which damages my nerves, causing my legs to literally go weak. My family's financial situation troubled enough, my treatments had only worsened it. After four months of regular visits, my legs recovered, or we all thought so. I promised myself to never burden my mother with such weight again.

But my body didn't obey.

It went back, even worse this time. The principal had trusted me and my friends to perform at the School's Birthday Festival. It would have be the perfect chance for all of us to get closer to our dreams, since we heard that some entertainment companies would attend the festival to cast new talents. It would have be.

But then ill legs means that I can't dance. My friends and I have worked our asses off to choreograph and prepare for the event, but my damn illness chose to invite itself again right there. I still remember the hating I felt towards myself, hearing our group's choreography leader suggest us to retreat to performing a slow song. Just singing, rapping, and no dancing. I remembered everyone's sad eyes as they nodded and agreed to the idea, probably disappointed as that means just the same as agreeing to waste the opportunity to get casted.

My fist clenched and my teeth gritting, I told them to perform their original plan as six instead of not dancing. But all they did was brush the idea away and laughed it off, bitterness and sincerity visible on their smiles at the same time as they told me that they would never leave me out.

Not only ruining my own dream, it dragged down my six friends' dreams along.

And of course, Jisang's.

Unlike me, Jisang wanted to be a doctor. "A surgeon, so that I would be able to save lives and give them new chances," he always said. My mom wanted to put Jisang to a good school, where he would get good education and a good environment to prepare for his future. But wasting money on my treatments had ceased the hopes on making that happen.

About Jinhee, I've always realized that there was something between me and her. I never thought of it seriously since I've always thought that we would always be together.