REDAMANCY

Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen (say the name)
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Immure
(v.) enclose or confine (someone) against their will.
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It was 5PM and Yoongi still couldn't sleep. He'd recently been going to bed earlier, in hopes of falling asleep at a decent time and getting the sleep he craved. But his conversation with Jungkook had mentally shaken him, and he couldn't stop thinking about this Daehyun guy.

He could've sworn he remembered hanging out with an underclassmen named Daehyun, but the chance of it being the same one was 50/50. He didn't remember anyone named Jimin either from his high school days. His memories of people from those years were fuzzy. He decided that the only way to recall Daehyun was to look through his yearbooks.

And to do that, he had to go back to his parent's home, because that's where nearly everything from his childhood was.

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His heart pounded and he sweat profusely as he approached his old house. His anxiety threatened to swallow him whole, and unwanted flashbacks came dashing back into his mind.

No. Stop. He'd vowed to let it go once he'd moved. But now it was all coming back.

Somewhere in the neighborhood, a dog let out a loud yip, and the sound of car's on the gravelly road -leaving their driveways- brought back more memories. All the noises of the city at night were familiar, and somewhat comforting. He opened the gate, his fingertips lingering for as long as possible on the cold metal bars as he walked onto the lawn— something he'd done every single day when he returned from school.

His house looked unchanged from the outside, the paint peeled and cracked, and the one window on the far right with the missing shutter. The plants by the door were dead of course, his mother never bothered tending to plants after getting them. The door, thick screened and a maroon color, seemed to loom over him. His throat felt dry, and he wanted to get the hell away from this house.

Finally with what seemed to be every last ounce of strength he could muster, he knocked on the wooden frame of the screen. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest.

Nearly a minute passed before the door opened, and he was face to face with his mother.

"Yoongi?" Her voice, worn and tired as it always seemed to be, was shocked. She looked him up and down, as if in disbelief.

"M-mom." His voice cracked slightly. He stood there awkwardly, hands jammed in his hoodie pocket. She looked as if she'd aged a decade, her dark hair graying, and her eyes tired and creased at the edges. She wasn't a tall woman, and Yoongi could almost look down at her.

"What are you doing here?" She asked, her brow creased with confusion. She cast a quick look back into the house— the living room, and then looked back at her son.

"Mom, I—"

"Yoongi?" A deep voice from inside the house said suddenly, causing Yoongi to instinctively lurch backwards.

A moment later, his father, the very man who owned Yoongi's fear stood before him, beside his mother.

Yoongi wanted the ground to open up and swallow him whole. He wanted to run, yet his feet remained rooted firmly in place. His father was taller than him, tan, broad shouldered and gray-haired, with dark eyes and an unreadable expression. Yoongi remembered it all so clearly. Everything he'd tried so desperately to forget. He mentally panicked.