HYYH The Notes Chronologically

Yoongi, 25 June, Year 20

I swung the door open and came in, then pulled a bag out from the bottom drawer of the desk. When I turned it inside out, a single piano key fell out with a clack. I threw the half burned piano key into the trash and laid down on my bed. The fire in my heart wouldn't cool down, so my breathing was a mess, and at some point, soot had smudged all over my fingers.

I had gone all alone to the house that the fire had destroyed, once the funeral was over. I had gone into my mother's room and had seen the piano that had been burned so badly you could barely recognize its shape. I sunk down at its side. I sat there as the afternoon light came in through the window and then began to fade. The last of the light rolled over a few of the piano keys. What sort of sound would come out if I played them? I had thought about how many times my mother's fingers had touched them. Then I put one of them in my pocket and left the room.

Almost four years had passed since then. The house was quiet. It was insanely quiet. It was passed ten, so my father would be asleep, and everything afterwards held its breath. Those were the rules of this house. It was hard to endure this stillness. It wasn't easy, either, to keep to prescribed times and regulations and forms, but nevertheless what I could endure even less then that was the fact of living in this house. I received allowance from my father and was scolded by my father. Rather than apposing him and going astray and causing trouble, I lacked the courage to abandon him and leave this house to live on my own, to make that freedom into action and not just words.

I suddenly rose from the bed and dug the piano key from the trash can under my desk. I opened the window and the night air rushed in.  That air slapped me in the face with the strength of everything that had happened that day. I threw the piano key out into that air with all my strength. I listened hard but I couldn't hear the key hitting the ground. No matter how hard I thought, I couldn't imagine the sound that piano key would have made. No matter how much time passed, that piano key would never make a sound again. And I would never play the piano again.