Cut the strings and set me free

Part 3- a puppet tied to countless strings

(Y/N) POV:

I stare at the ornate jewellery box, fingers digging into the edges, biting my lip to keep the sounds of pain at bay.

"(Y/N), won't you open it?" a voice asks, soft and gentle, looking at me with gentle brown eyes, plump lips curved up into a knowing sad smile.

His hand reaches out to lightly squeeze the one closest to him, trying to relax the stiffness in my fingers, at the death grip I grip the edges of the box with.

"I can't..." I confess, feeling the vision of the box blur, too ashamed, too weak to meet his eyes.

He lets out a deep sigh, full of empathy and understanding and yet somewhere disappointment lingers too. As if wishing that I had the strength to just open it.

After all it's only a box, how much can it hurt?

I try tear my eyes away from him, find myself prisoner to the knowledge in those brown eyes, that remain silently filled. He leans forward, chain falling out of his loose linen shirt, a flash of colour catching my eye momentarily before he tucks it in impatiently, still focused on me.

"As one of your advisors I'd tell you not to. As a friend first and foremost I'd urge you to. Don't let moments pass you by and regret remain (Y/N)." he says softly. His eyes are understanding, always have been, the silent empath in my group of advisors, one of the few who've pushed me to take decisions for me, for my heart.

The one who'd pointed out to me years ago that sometimes our head can be swayed, misled and unknowing but our hearts never led us astray. Could never feel something wrong or unjustified.

"But Jinnie...oppa I can't. What if I open it and it throws everything into a horrible mess? What if I don't have the strength to see what's inside?" I whisper, hating the weakness to my own voice, hate the way it trembles and my vision threatens to blur once more.

"Then you don't. But when we fall weak, we rise back stronger. What's the one thing we've always advised you?" another voice cuts in, the light levelness of it always the same. But never have his eyes been able to disguise his feelings, his raw emotions. Never have the dark pair of eyes deceived me and neither have I mistakenly thought for a single instance that in his sleepy, narrowed-eyed look was ignorance or boredom.

"To be me and everything else will fall into place." I reply, a part of me stirring up with joy at the pride that flickers in his eyes, raising his glass filled with amber liquid to down it, face unflinching and barely grimacing.

He'd taken one look at me at their private chambers and declared he needed the hardest liquor to get him through what he proclaimed to be the most difficult problem to date.

He hadn't been wrong.

It had been nearly two hours and my grip over the ornate box was yet to lessen, yet to ease up, the engravings imprinting into the soft skin of my palms with how hard I clutched at it.

"Hyungs...we can't force her. What if she opens it and decides she can't do what she's spent years trying to build herself upto? I can't see her shatter like that. I refuse to." The third voice of my inner circle speaks, the trio who I trusted with my life, with my secrets and with my title.

Namjoon oppa looks at me, eyes flickering with sympathy and knowledge, the absence of his dimples giving away just how seriously he was taking this, despite the fact he'd tugged on his dressing gown at one sight at me, covering from me the sight of his low-neck linen shirt, eyes blinking at me from behind his thin frames.

He's firmly against it.

And the other two for it.

And for once in my entire life, since I'd asked them to form the backbone of my counsel, of being the ones who'd be my support system, do I find myself adrift- floating on charting waters.