The Lies You Told Me Back Then (Yoongi FF)

Chapter Sixteen: I Don't Know You

It wasn't long until the happy moments I'd had at my brothers wedding were forgotten. As soon as I stepped inside the limo, the smile was wiped off my face. The ends of my lips curling down as I sat by the window seat right behind the driver. My mother sat across from me, and my father next to her.

Dad was in the front seat of the car, mom beside him reading our instructions to the water park. In the trunk seats, Minjae was having a conversation with Yoongi. I was 6 years old, and this was before our conflict had been solved. My mom and dad told jokes and smiled at each other, looking back at Minjae and Yoongi. Mom frowned looking at me being a hundred percent bored in the seat, alone and miserable. At least I had space, though.

"Talk to us, Ji-Dani. You can't expect the boys to want to talk to someone who won't speak?"

I shook my head. I drew four lines on a paper in my notebook and handed it to my mom.

"Tic Tac Toe? I'll be 'O.'"

I smiled at her when my dad whispered something to her. "Ah, that's a good move, honey. You're gonna have to beat her, Dani."

I put down the 'X.'

O
X
O
X
O
X
O

"Ah, it's a tie! Game two?~"

I snap out of my thoughts and memories to look at the remnants of the people that I used to know. My mother sitting near my father, and for what? He's got a laptop and a hotspot in his hands. She's on her phone. He's yelling into a Bluetooth piece. She rolls her eyes as she texts someone about something.

We had little then, and I didn't have many people then, but at least I had them.

Now, I have more, I have people, but I lost the ones that were there for me even before Yoongi.

I can't stop the words that leave my mouth, I don't think about them. "I don't know you." I whisper. My mother looks up to me, makes eye contact and texts me (since father is on the phone.)

Mother/
Don't be dramatic.

Mother/
I don't want to put up with your antics, young lady.

Mother/
Do you understand?

I look up at her and nod once. I turn my head to the windows again, turning off my phone before I do so it doesn't die. I pull down the window and look outside it. The world passed by me in a blur. The traffic looks as insignificant to me as I do to it. One car narrowly missed another and a pedestrian starts yelling after a car. A couple people are at stop lights asking for money, blessing you if they get the money, cursing you if you don't.

Here, in the rush of life, my tears can fly instead of fall. Fly without bringing attention to anyone, and I let myself feel a little more alive at the thought. Everyday, a part of me kills itself off for moments like these: ones where I can live my life in a blur. Moments where I feel different than the weak girl who's brother didn't love her. Moments where I feel different than the weak high schooler because she's got parental figures as active in life as a robot that got turned off. I nearly laugh into the night, because the night would get my pain.

That's the beauty of living in the dark, see. You're never scared to meet the night. You're never afraid to be someone's stars. No one hung the moon and the stars for you, because you are the moon and the stars, you are the planets and the comets, you are everything in front of the night. From dark emerges the light, like the moon in the night sky. Like bioluminescents in the deep ocean. Like...

Like headlights in the dark.

But somehow, instead of being happy and pulling myself into these thoughts, the chill in the car takes over. My mother shivers and pulls the window up. Not a moment too late, our house arrives. I enter and before I can stalk up the stairs, my mother gestures for me to sit down. Shortly, my father arrives.