the relationship [sequel]

release

Life never went back to normal, but it got as close to it as it could. The menace of public shaming was combatted by the attention span of the internet with eventually left me for dead and moved onto their next prey. I got back into routine, eternally grateful for the fact that Mr. Kim allowed me to work at the bookshop - just not behind the counter.

After leaving Jackson 5 voicemails I understood that he probably wanted space, and so with a heavy heart I left him alone. While it was nice to finally place my feet back onto solid ground, I still felt lonely. I had no one left, no one that I could really call a true friend. No one to depend on.

It was this loneliness that prompted me to make a fateful internet search about how the boys were. I had done my very best to avoid any information about BTS for the past month (which was challenging) but necessary for me to move on. However, once I fell into the internet spiral I couldn't stop.

The first thing that came up when I searched up his name was the aftermath of our scandal. Fans had noticed he was looking incredibly sad and not himself on stage despite trying to put on a persona that everything was fine. He had been caught crying on stage a few times as well as at the airport. Looking at pictures of him, he looked tired. Exhausted. He didn't look like the man I left.

In videos of them I could tell the other members were trying their best to distract the attention away from Namjoon, clearly not wanting people to notice how worn out he looked. There was a large part of me that wanted to pull him into a hug, but I knew I couldn't. I knew that would only send me back down the same slippery slope to misery as before.

Going onto the official twitter account, I raised an eyebrow at a tweet that had been posted only twenty minutes before.

@bighit_official: 25 minutes until a new song is dropped by our leader.

I could wait five minutes to see what was happening with him. Jimin's words rang clear as day - the key to unlocking Namjoon was to look at his lyrics. I felt my heart rate increase when I saw a link posted, and hesitantly I clicked on it.

I don't like the sound of silence,
It sounds a lot like you to me,
The never ending static,
Makes me feel like I can't breathe.

The darkness reminds me of myself ,
The lonely night of truth,
As I lay beside a photograph of you.

We got forbidden love
And forbidden hugs
And forbidden words
Under a forbidden sun.

Forbidden names
Forbidden games
Yet it's all worth fighting for.
Yet you're worth fighting for.

I had to click pause to the song, tears rolling down my cheeks at a speed I couldn't control. It was like I could feel him in the room with me, it was like his voice was wrapping me in an embrace I never wanted to break away from.

I'm not sorry for saying I love you,
Cause it's the one thing that I meant,
I'm not sorry for saying goodbye,
Cause I knew it was for the best.

Hugging a pillow to my chest, I whispered his name in the hopes that somewhere on this gigantic world he was doing the same thing. I wanted to dissect every word, look for meaning in every line, but I had to stop myself.

There was a large part of me that wanted to believe that this was his way of calling out to me, but there was a small part that wanted to be realistic. Would Namjoon be stupid enough to release a song that would make people point fingers towards me? I had to remind myself that the world knew me as Bangtan's slut not his lover.

I felt helpless. While I wanted to send him a text clarifying everything, I knew that speaking to him again would pull me back into a world that I didn't want to go back to. And so I held firm, and did what felt best for me for the future. It was an intense exercise of willpower but I managed to fall asleep without doing something I would regret.

I woke up to the internet theorising the meaning behind the lyrics of his song, trying to grip at straws that would make some kind of sense in the BTS universe. Inside I chuckled weakly, knowing that I could tell them what the lyrics meant. How 'the lonely night of truth' was our parting goodbye where we had never felt so separate while being next to each other. How silence reminded him of me because of my inability to solve our problems with words.

I went about my day with a heavier heart than usual. It was easy to move between the days thinking that Namjoon didn't exist, but now he was very much at the front of my mind. And I knew that I was at the front of his thoughts.

-

feat. my own cringey ass song lyrics from 2016.

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