BTS SMERALDO THE NOTES 1 (Edited & Translated)

Jungkook: 11 September Year 17

Shadow of My Childhood
Part 7

After ten days, I stopped waiting for a birthday card.
I lifted a notebook out from my drawer. Four cards from previous birthdays lay at the bottom.

Jungkook, Happy Birthday, from Dad.
I read over the words again and again and again.

10 YEARS AGO

It was the winter I was seven years old.
I was asleep in my little attic bedroom when my parents's voices woke me up.
If I went down five stairs from my room and opened the sliding door I'd be able to reach their room.

I was about to open my door.
I hesitated.

I was young.
But as I stood outside their room, an uneasy feeling knotted in my stomach.
The tense atmosphere inside their room from their argument almost seemed to seem through the door.
It wasn't a good time for me to interrupt them.

"It's too difficult for me to go on like this," I heard dad say, his voice muffled by the door.
"This world is too heavy for me to carry on my shoulders anymore."

Mom didn't say anything.
I guessed she was standing still, crying quietly.

The silence stretched on for a few minutes before dad spoke again.

"If I keep on living like this, I'll be crushed. I want to leave before I reach that point in my life"

"You're the most irresponsible man I've ever met," mom hissed back.
She began to protest vehemently.

"What are you going to do about Jungkook?" Mom asked, suddenly remembering me.

I waited for a few more drawn out minutes by the sliding door.
Dad didn't answer.

The front door opened.

"There's nothing left of me for him. I can't do anything for him anymore."

Those were his last words.

I rushed back up to the attic and moved my chair to the window so I could watch dad leave.

He walked down the sloping road, the darkness slowly swallowing up as he walked into the night.

Mom opened my door roughly.
I quickly sprung into action and shut my drawer.
I didn't want her to see dad's birthday cards.

"Dad won't give you any more birthday cards," she said quietly.
"He's just that kind of man."

He's just that kind of man.
It was mom's usual repertoire.

And she was right too.
Dad was feeble minded, incompetent.
He was a social misfit for deserting us like he did.

I wouldn't receive any more birthday cards from him.
I was the world that was too heavy for him to bear.
I was the world he gave up on.

I wasn't worth the endurance he had gone through.
That he would've still gone through if he'd stayed.

I was his burden.

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