Oh, how it started with me hating the boys, like actually rolling my eyes every time their songs came on, and now they're my family in another city under the same sky, people I've never met but would cry for in a second, and I don't even remember the moment I fell for them. Maybe it wasn't a moment at all but a slow leak, a thousand small things stacking up until one day I woke up and realized I was in too deep, and now I know all the inside jokes, I know who has no jams, I know who is Michael Jackson, I know the Converse high jokes and the weird noises they make in the background of lives and which member hates cilantro and who can't cook rice, damn, it's been almost six years. And I still can't forget that night, the stadium, the way the lights went soft and then ARMY started singing Young Forever without being told, just voices rising from everywhere, and Bangtan just stood there on stage like they couldn't move, like they were holding onto every note, and I remember thinking, I've never seen something more beautiful before, not once in my whole life, and I still haven't. Because Bangtan and us, we have a bond I can't explain, the kind where you live for each other, the kind that doesn't make sense until you're inside it, and now here I am six years later still tearing up over seven boys who don't know my name but somehow saved my life anyway, and maybe that's the thing about Festa, it's not just celebrating them, it's celebrating us, the messy loud colorful family that grew under the same sky without even planning to.
