IQ148 // namjoon ✔️

__SEPTEMBER__

September; 2014

They can feel the season changing; they can see it in the way the people passing by pull their jacket closer to cover more skin from the autumn breeze. They see it in how the green leaves from summer have become golden at the tips.

They sit across from each other in the nook near the open window, gazing out at the street outside with the bustle of Seochon Village on a weekend. The breeze that threatens to blow into the bookstore rattles the demode shutters and flings them back to hit against the wall.

Neither of them say anything; they remain still in this image while thinking in their individual worlds, not knowing what the other is thinking while gazing out the window.

“Do you have a dream?”

NamJoon is taken aback by her question; mainly because it's usually the other way around where he is the one asking her. Also because he's never really thought about it until JungMi brought it up.

The gears turn in his head.

“I guess I do…” He trails off.

He remembers he didn't have any ambitions in high school. His days were filled with school and his nights were filled with homework. He never really had time to think about dreams, “I originally didn't have any dreams, so my father always said to me that 'if you want to succeed, you need to study, then in the future you can choose to do what you want.’”

JungMi can imagine a younger NamJoon sitting at his desk struggling to keep a proper posture and not slouch while he hovers over his school work under the illumination of his desk light. She can see him diligently reading through the passages given by his teacher and processing the numbers in the equations he had to solve. JungMi cannot imagine him as anything other than a good student; how discouraging it must have been to be the top student and not have any ambitions.

In NamJoon's head, he is imagining what could have been. He continues, “Initially, I wanted to go into literary studies, but I thought it was too risky a career choice and instead considered business administration.”

It's too risky…

JungMi knows these words so well; they have been repeatedly emphasized to her and ingrained in her subconscious ever since she decided her major in university. Those three words usually branched out into a much lengthier and heated discussion with her parents:

It's too risky… You should go for something more stable than creative writing… How will you provide for yourself?... You need another plan to fall to when writing doesn't work out… You'll starve yourself to death… There's no such thing as a career in creative writing!... Why couldn't you be more like your brother?

Yes, JungMi knows those words so well…

NamJoon doesn't realize she is lost in retrospect as he reflects on his own past out loud, “All I did was study. I never did anything besides that. My youth revolved around those textbooks, but I didn't know what I was supposed to do when my studies were over.”

He watches the people who pass by the window with an intense stare; the window gives them a glimpse into the world outside that moves without them. He sits in the nook stopping to take a moment to recall his life leading up to this point; his mind catches up to where his life has taken him.

“I think it was obvious that I was confused and lost, but I think life is about being lost. Life is just a series of continued wandering. It's especially true for us right now since we're still young.” NamJoon shrugs and spews out an aphorism on the tip of his tongue, “It's okay not to have dreams at first.”