BTS HYYH Notes (Book 1, 2, BUS Game) // COMPLETE [Part 2]

2022, Aug 2 - Seokjin (The Inner Room & The Lost Memories)

(A/N: Long narration ahead)

[Places: Kim's home, den, inner room, his room]

When I came back from Jungkook's welcome home party, there was a pile of papers on my desk. A note on them said: a draft of your abeoji's memoir. You're in it too, so some feedback would be appreciated. The note was from Junho samcheon.

My abeoji's memoir. In the previous loops, this was about the time I first draft of it. It would be published mid-September, and I would even attend the celebration party for the publication without reading it. For the first time, I was asked to read it in this loop. It might have been a butterfly effect from having gone to Jungkook's party instead of the meeting.

I pushed the draft aside. I was not in the mood to read it. It might anger abeoji, but once the loop was in motion again, it was all meaningless. Ever since I realized how meaningless it was all, I had become unafraid of abeoji. And my relationship with him was no longer important. I had to focus only on my problems.

I turned the pages of the memoir by sheer accident. The wind from the window blew away the papers, and while I was picking them up from the floor, my eyes landed on something interesting. It was a part where my abeoji was near the container village next to Songju Station and thinking of the future with me holding my hand. It said he wondered if there would be a day when his boy would play soccer with a boy from the container village.

"Interesting" wasn't the right word for it. Nothing in that memoir was interesting. But I wondered were that really had happened. Was my abeoji that kind of person?

I kept reading, but there was an abrupt change in the story. The part was about me in high school, and he compared it to his days in school, but there were about ten pages missing.

The fact that the pages were missing wasn't important. Ten pages from a memoir didn't make a dent in the story, and I had no interest in my abeoji's high school years. I wasn't interested in which ten pages were missing or what they were about.

I flipped to the table of contents, and there I saw: The Map of the Soul. I gasped. I'd never imagined that I would see it in my abeoji's memoir. It was like getting punched while being completely defenseless. Namjoon telling me that I should ask my abeoji passed through my mind. I knew right away where the missing ten pages were. They were in the den. The inner room inside the den.

After making sure I was home alone, I crept into the den. When I walked in the door, I saw a painting over the desk. The vast sea, raging waves, and a precarious wooden raft. People without food or drink. People without compass or hope. Out of hatred, fear, and desire, they killed and sucked the blood of each other as they slowly died.

When I was young, I was so afraid of the painting that I stayed away from this place. I thought about why he had this terrible painting here. As time passed, the painting became a part of this den and no longer an object of fear or wonder.

But I had something else to fear. There was an inner room in the den. There was nothing special about the room. It had no lock, and it was just an extension of the den. The only noticeable thing about the roon were the books. There were many books --- books and papers he'd collected since high school. It was called "the inner room". Not because someone name it that, but because it was the most fitting description of the place.

Abeoji spent time there organizing his thoughts or coming up with new plans, and except for him, no one went in there. The exception was his secretary who went in to deliver papers.

I'd gone in only once, and even though I was very little then, I knew that the place wasn't just a den with books. On the surface, the place looked ordinary, almost human, cluttered with boxes, papers, and books placed or piled up without any order. But there was no usual warmth from the printed papers and no emotions from the paintings or pictures. Just standing there and looking up at the bookshelves. I felt an overbearing pressure that nearly shattered me to pieces.