Broken Promise | Monsta X Jooheon

14//Bravado

"All my life, I've been fighting a war. I can't talk to you or your friends. It's not only you. My heart jumps around when I'm alluded to. This will not do." — Bravado, Lorde

I wasn't scheduled for a fight that night but they managed to fit me in anyway.

I won. Fear, awe, money, the usual prizes. I gave my opponent the cash prize, went home, cut, and cried myself to sleep.

I wasn't scheduled for a fight the next night but they managed to fit me anyways.

I won again. More fear, more awe, more money. I repeated the same cycle, giving Jooheon and Jiho such a glare on my way out that they didn't dare approach me.

The next night, I actually was scheduled for a fight.

I won again.

And the next night and the next.

At one point afterwards, some bitch made a snide comment about how I put my body to use so much, it would only made sense that I could be able to win fights.

It took four grown men to pull me off her.

I won that fight too, escaping with a busted lip and a scratch on my eyebrow while blood was leaking from my unconscious opponent's probably broken nose, both eyes were black and would probably be swollen shut by morning, and I'm pretty sure I saw a tooth fly out of her mouth.

All these fights I was winning. Fight after fight after fight and I was winning them all.

So why wasn't it fixing anything?

Why wouldn't it make my dad notice me?

Why wouldn't it bring my mother back?

Why wouldn't it help me forget my mother's gentle fingers caressing my face, the soup she brought when I was sick, her soothing voice when she sung me to sleep, or her crinkling eyes when she laughed on her grey aerial silk in the rain?

I could make everything right in the present, correct my behavior, get straight A's, win every fight, be straight-edge as can be.

But it wouldn't bring my mother back. It wouldn't fix the past. Nothing would. The past would always be a broken, fucked-up, shattered mess so what purpose did that lead to the present? What hope for the future?

How much longer could I survive, feeling the ache of my mother's suicide and my father's absence in everything I did? Everywhere I went, it was always there, looming over me like a twisted, disfigured storm cloud, lightning strikes frying my every nerve.

Every year I felt this was during the anniversary of my mother's death and every time, it got worse. If it was this horrendous this year, what would it be like next year or the year after that?

How long before I end up with my skull blown apart and a gun in my hand, just like my mother before me?

Would anyone even care if I did?

"Promise!" I stiffened at Ajiad's voice, not even having the chance to turn before eight worried faces were suddenly converging upon me.

"What the hell is going on with you?" Hyungwon asked.

"You've fought every night for like a week, give your body a break!"

"You would've killed that girl if they hadn't pulled you off."

"I've never seen you lose control like that!"

But it was the look in Jooheon's eyes that kept me from hopping in my car and skidding away. He knew. One look in his eyes and I could tell he knew. Who in the fuck told him?