There was once a time - one which might not be so ridiculously far away for some, that I was known as the boy with the golden heart. Back then, millennia ago perhaps, love and compassion ran through my veins - entwined with my blood, pumping through my lungs like badly craved oxygen. Every person was allowed the key to my heart, to all the whispers and secrets within me. No matter how many times someone might hurt me, or the severity of the wounds they caused me, they would always be allowed back. There was always a warm embrace, words of comfort as if they did not hold the blade piercing my skin. I would sell whatever is left of my soul to the evilest forces simply to have known what I know now. Some people hold the blade with a smile on their face, bright teeth lighting up the room while looking for the most painful spot. For the most notable, so they may forever leave you with a scar. If I had known so then, perhaps I could have saved myself. Perhaps I would still be known as someone good, and kind. But alas, I am not. Naiveness is punished, and from falls we learn to stand up once more. I am not who I used to be, I am a carcass protecting a rotten corpse.
There was a time once, might it not be obvious, in which I was well loved in this world. I would bring down constellations to bring the shine to someone's eyes, I would bloody my own skin to ensure another did not have to. Maybe I should have noticed sooner that my wounds were only for me to clean. That in a world in which I sacrificed it all for others, all I saw were backs turned on me when I needed stars of my own. Deep in me, I felt as though it was right. That I was meant to open the doors of my soul to all who needed it, dote on those who might not have one to do it for them. I was young, innocent, unwounded - when he ran into me in those damned school hallways. Books splattered on the ground, pen ink marking the lockers to remain as evidence of the crime scene meant to happen. An exchange student from Japan, with the most gorgeous smile I had seen in the entire world - bringing butterflies to my heart as soon as our eyes connected. Hoseok was his name. A foreign beauty, wanted and beloved by all.
He was the plain image of what I had dreamt of my entire life, a fairytale prince straight from the books. I did not know he was more poisonous than all those villains, perhaps I should have known. A victim is what soulless people always look for. I watched him from afar, feelings grew as did the attention on him. For that reason I did not approach. I might have been loved, loved above all, but I was not so idiotic. I did not think so, anyway. I thought I could admire from afar, keep the fluttering feelings and the unsteady beating of my heart as a childhood memory. On a drunken night, one darker than most, I made the mistake of bearing my heart to the one I thought of as my soul companion. My best friend. She did not consider me so - clearly. The morning came and with the chirping birds came the news that it had all spread. The night was gone and so were the secrets I had so deeply guarded. I so desperately wished there was a blanket to envelop me and hide me from the darkness, or perhaps a hole from the ground to swallow me whole and turn me into an inflorescence of gardenias. Maybe Cupid fell for his smile, the confidence in his steps as he approached me - and allowed him to bewitch me completely as well. He asked me on a date that same morning, in front of the willow tree that guarded our school. It was in front of that same tree that we became a couple. Swore that we would be together forever. Ludicrous.
"Love, we can keep this a secret, can't we? Our secret?" Uttered those words under our willow tree, on the night he asked me to be his. Under all the stars as our witnesses, and those constellations I lassoed from the sky for everyone else.
I had grown so infatuated with the idea of him that the mere thought of disagreeing made me want to laugh at my own foolishness. With that decision the thoughts came. Circled around me like a chain to my neck. So much so, that I made the decision to confide in someone else. Yugyeom, the only one who dared approach me after I was humiliated the first time. Everyone under the guise that I was no more than a joke, the entire punchline. I should have known then. It was all so obvious. My heart shattered in front of him, his irises tracing the crack within my soul and mind. The connection was absent after the insecurities suffocated me. Alas, of course nothing was easy. Yugyeom did not speak, guarded what I felt like the dragons guarded the princesses. But someone else did hear, and what better to do with someone's fear than make it an abomination? In my own idiocy, I felt that this coming out would heal all. That my beloved would go forth and protect me from the hateful words, jokes, laughs, and stares.
No, imbecile. Have you not put it all together yet? He never cared.
"He's just there for me to fuck. Don't worry."
"I'd never stoop that low, what a joke. Almost offensive you'd ask me if I was dating that monstrosity."
That morning - once again cloudier than most, the clouds raging in their despair at my betrayal. Zeus threw the lightning bolts that would imprint on my mind for what felt like an eternity, in that moment. I learned a lesson that morning. One I should have perhaps picked up sooner, yet did not. An idiot is what most would call me. But I do not blame my heart, I cannot help the blood that runs through me, so deeply tarnished with a compassion that fights to leave. Hide. Tall, behind walls cemented twice and once more after that. If people wish to speak ill, let them dirty their own mouths. Let the words crawling out of their throat leave such disgust that it will suffocate them. You know who you are, and nobody else can define that. No individual will ever steal your worth. It is yours. If my own company is all I will ever have, so be it. My kindness is enough to withstand loneliness. And the golden heart that beat so excitedly in my chest came crashing down in that moment, all valves disconnecting and bittering my beautiful interior. In the darkness of nights and within the embrace of Oizys, I turned myself inside out in hopes to run from the haunting feelings.
Nobody else could see it all fall apart in the space of a whisper, how could I ever allow them to? So, I toughened the exterior they all used to love. Covered it, guarded it like Cerberus protects the entrance to the underworld. I do not feel for I cannot feel, I rot in my own sadness because nobody else deserves the last pieces of me that still function. The face that once held a smile and the key to all happiness, or the body that tugged the world together to prevent someone from falling - was now nothing more than a memory. It was stone cold, with piercing eyes that resembled the first fall of winter. Naiveness is punished, but from falls we learn to stand up once more. And with that knowledge, with the first taste of true pain - I knew to distinguish it all. So the moment he came along, the man who so easily perused through my heart and organized my thoughts, I knew better than to fight it. I knew better than to reject his own golden heart, for he might be the solution to rekindling mine. So I could give it to him, of course, only him. The new boy with the golden heart.
- rewritten.
