rain » vkook

fifteen

I try to repeat my name in my head because the car is suffocatingly silent.

I am Jeongguk. I am Jeongguk. I am Jeongguk.

I am hysterical.

I am wavering lines bleeding across a canvas, I am things tearing and ripping and my heart is a shipwreck buried at the bottom of the sea. My breaths are filling the car, and I can see them cracking the glass but Namjoon doesn't notice; does he even notice me?

Am I even in this car at all? I can feel the seatbelt confining my inner skin to my bones; because we all have two skins. The flesh that everyone sees, the flesh that everyone wants to sink their teeth into, the flesh characterized by scars that is somehow dear to me when not even my own wellbeing was dear to me. There's the second skin, the inner skin, that keeps you inside your skeleton; it's sewn to your bones with thread and keeps you together. It has to exist or humans would just be dandelion fluff scattering on the wind, and then we'd truly have difficulty finding meaning and being important to one another. And sewn to your inner skin is your conscious, but my threads are threadbare and I can feel myself slipping through, turning to dust instead of dandelion fluff because nothing that ever leaves me will be beautiful.

Except Taehyung.

I hope that by trying to find him I will not hurt him even further. What if he has completely dissipated by now? You can't find the breeze because it is constantly moving; constantly around us.

I slowly become aware of the inside of the car; of Namjoon pressing the pedal more insistently and swearing under his breath. I become aware of my steady breaths and white maze of interlocked fingers. I become aware of my bouncing legs; both going at the same time but to different beats, and I become aware of my efforts to sync them. But they won't sync, so I stare out the window, stare at how the sun drenches everything and turns the people into people and buildings into possibilities. I stare at how the city seems so full of life and soul and okay people who I will never be like and I can feel the fracturing plastic return over my eyes and something inside me that has been struggling to stand up straight all these years break.

I can feel my bones slanting to the right as Namjoon whips through a red light, and I can feel everyone breathing their breath into my throat and it smells like a sickly sweet rush that I will never be a part of and this is why you don't become attached to broken boys with the rain in their voice and wildflowers growing in their hearts.

When we reach the hospital, I rush inside and Namjoon follows; his shouts for me to wait up and slow down falling further from my ears.

"Hello," I say breathlessly to the lady behind the desk. "Do you know if there's a patient called Kim Taehyung here?"

Her manicured fingernails clack on the keyboard of her computer and Namjoon settles into place beside me. Only then do I realize the deathly silence I have interrupted; it crawls leisurely across my skin. Time does not care about those it might be leaving behind.

The secretary looks up. "He actually got released a few days ago, sweetie, sorry." She offers a sympathetic smile but I'm already spinning on my heel, spinning inside my head, leaving, leaving, but the door is so far away.

Namjoon thanks her for me as I break into a run again. Why am I always running?

~~

Namjoon drops me off at home but he doesn't leave me. He stays with, stepping into the whirlwind of my stream of conscious with a strange sadness - mouth open as he surveys the two paintbrushes at the easel, a half finished painting resting on it, open tubes of paint lying nearby. The wooden table is cluttered with cups of cloudy water and blossoming paper towels.

"Jeongguk, can you please put the flowers in a vase or something? You haven't let go of them this entire time." Namjoon's voice sounds so worried and it makes my stomach hurt. I had no idea that he cared about me this much, and I finally realize that I can call him a friend.

So the flowers leave their home in my hand and settle in a vase, looking morbid and beautiful with their crushed, blood stained petals. They join the clutter on the table, as if they're no more than a figment of my imagination.

But they're real. And Taehyung is out there somewhere. Maybe he's wondering why I haven't found him. Maybe he thinks I don't care.

I want to climb upon my roof and scream to the entire world that I do care. I care so much that it's breaking me apart from inside out.

I care about Kim Taehyung!

For three days, Namjoon and I search for Taehyung. The sun beats down upon us, melting the hours into one smear of pale brown; one smear of fruitless efforts. Sometimes Seokjin helps us look, but he looks sad and empathetic and I can't bear to look at him because it reminds me of how terrible I must look. Everything in me yearns to find Taehyung but I can't, I can't, because I couldn't even hold onto him in the first place. Humans are not meant to touch the sky but I did and this is what happened and this is why our necks tilt down and we stare at the ground.

Because everyone knows what happens when you touch the sky except for me.

This is what happens when you touch the sky: you realize that the sky is human, maybe even more so than you, and you realize that the sky understands. The sky does not care about your inflated head or loud voice or rambling. When you look into the sky's eyes, you see twin mirrors; you see yourself. And you offer everything you have but you don't realize you are a fool, that you are hollowing yourself out for just one more moment with someone who understands you, but they are not a someone at all. Because the next moment, they are gone.

a/n: i love suffering :)) also when u guys comment and its just yall losing your shit ;)