Piano Keys | Kim Taehyung | ✓

‖ Prelude ‖

●●●●●

Prelude : played as a usually brief introduction to another larger music piece.

[ A/N- this chapter introduces our main narrator before the other successive chapters and is set in the present so it's kind of a prologue ]

●●●●●

PRESENT DAY, SEOUL

My ringed fingers with chewed-down nail beds trace the expensive and heavy cream colored designer envelope for the umpteenth time since I got it this morning.

I trace my finger lightly over the name written on the elegant and sophisticated wedding invitation card in equally elegant cursive calligraphy.

It's a name I have tried to forget for almost a decade now, a name which used to keep me up at night with her thoughts swirling in my mind non-stop, a name whom I haven't heard from since she left all those years ago-

Park Iseul

Soon to be Mrs. Lee though, as evident from the card she has sent me.

Just the mere thought about her getting married and sending me an invite to her wedding after not contacting me for years leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and an all-too-familiar-yet-unfamiliar painful ache in my chest, something which I thought I'd never feel after going through the ordeal of her saying goodbye to me but here we are after all these years again.

And just when I had tried so so hard to forget her, to numb that ache in my chest, her invite appears on my doorstep out of the blue.

The universe is hell-bent on playing some kind of a sick and twisted joke with me, I'm sure. To think that just when I had convinced myself not to long and be stuck up on a girl who I haven't seen for a long long time, I am reminded of her existence in the cruelest of the ways there are.

I haven't yet opened the letter she has sent me along with the wedding invitation though. I recognize her messy scrawl from the name written on the folded piece of the white paper which says- To Taehyungie.

An unbidden slight chuckle escapes my lips when I trace my fingers over her handwriting- As usual, all her letters aren't in a straight line or of the same size, like she's written it in a hurry but that's how her handwriting usually is like-messy. 

Somehow, when I read my name written by her, her voice rings in my ear, calling out my name; her own versions of my name which I used to love-

TaeTae, come and sit here!

Taehyungie, how do I look?

Wow! Look there Tae, see how pretty the sunset is!

TaeTae, I'm tired.

Taehyungie, help me with this piece please.

That ache in my heart returns as I hallucinate her sweet and beautiful voice and suddenly her smiling face flashes in my mind:

 Her small doe eyes shut and lower lip jutting out, her tongue sticking out slightly as she played the piano, her long fingers moving effortlessly and making it look like child's play; the room being filled with the melodious classical pieces she played like a goddess, making my heart flutter when she saw me and grinned brightly as  she realized that I had been standing behind her and listening to her play; weaving her warm fingers through my cold ones and squeezing them tightly...

All those memories refuse to go back into the box I had shut them in for so long, and now that the box has been opened in my mind, I don't think I can shut it. Some part of me, the emotional masochist part does not want to shut it-it wants to remember those poignant memories.

A trip down the memory lane isn't that bad I guess, but the onslaught of those memories of my first love which now assault me are Saudade. They're like unseasonal rains - It's fresh and cool and beautiful while it lasts, but the aftermath of it is dark muddy puddles.

But still, I have missed her.

To be true, yes I have missed her so much. She was my everything at one point in my life- My best friend, my soulmate, my first love and even my inspiration and muse. And it pains, the fact that those things are all in the past tense now.

Before opening her letter, I decide to open my personal Pandora Box and voluntarily reminisce the old times. They were simpler times, better times when I had everything I wanted without even realizing it and when I did, it was too late.

But still they were the part of my life which I cherish the most, I guess. 

Because I was with her. Because I had her, my precious first love.

A girl called Park Iseul.

●●●●●