Mother, it was father who lit those cigarettes,

then why was i always the one who got burned?

‌─yoongi

BUTTERFLY

[ angst, despair, fire, demise, destiny and home. ]

Min Yoongi was feeling combustible.

Potent and fiery, he was feeling devastatingly hot in his skin. Give him a peck from fire only for it to lick his whole flesh with no remorse the next minute. Nothing, he moans panting from intense sweat clinging to his skin, can extinguish the fire that rages inside of me.

Like a moth drawn to a flame, his salivating tongue whined for a flicker but the moment fire assaulted the cigarette, the tempting whinings collapsed. Extinguished. His lethal eyes throbbed violently, almost berserk to squeeze out shameless tears draped with unbending pride of alcohol but his throat shrieked in utter despair. The beating stopped. Extinguished.

Cigarette, discarded on the floor. Alcohol bottles he shamelessly stole littered around as if searching for a home, full to the brim. Polaroids scattered on his mattress beside him and a combustible man clinging onto the sheets, whimpering from the haunting whispers of forthcoming destiny that was reluctant to leave him alone.

He was not new to despair. Not new to this intense ache in his chest that had morphed him into a maniac. But this vacancy, this...this hollowness was new to him. Sickening to him. Utterly...poorly tormenting to him.

It would be a mess of words, a shame to the dictionary if he opened his heart out and rambled the exhausting truth that hammered ache to his chest because how many versions of truths could he possible tear open?

Min Yoongi wasnt simply just a man or an antagonist of his own story. Min Yoongi was a mess of countless other personas, countless other lives that breathed inside of him.

He was bare, stark naked to the world. He had a story. A story he could sing to the world, pen to the world but was the world ready? Because if they had ever come across his story, his battle with his own self, his truth, would they have cared enough to dissolve him into an ocean where he could strip this malicious fire off from him into nothingness? But...what if his story had never reaches the mighty souls? And even if it did will they be able to recognize the man they read about?

What if he was not the Min Yoongi they know?

What if he was not the one they laughed with? Toyed with? Afterall, how many versions of himself could he possibly write when he himself wasn't at amends with all those reckless and foul personas. They were him. Remove their independent existence entirely, there had always been only one him, one Min Yoongi.

That one Min Yoongi whose each bit was different yet so akin.

Clutching the sheets in his fists, his eyes raked over pictures in desperation. The disheveled hope inside of him, in no mood for reawakening. Swallowing, panting and quivering from the emotional thrusts by the moment which was dragging him into an intense chokehold, he wasn't able to utter anything of significance to rekindle his shattered bonds.

It was as if the bittersweet irony made a vow with inevitable to mock him. To run away like he did. Oh, but he won't call it coward. Starving for an escape and finally swallowing it can make none a coward. Cowards aren't the weakling they talk about. Cowards aren't the antagonist someone can conjure up as the malicious in a story.

For leaving something behind takes up a lot of courage. And sometimes that something, sizes upto someone's everything.

He left his everything in the home they built and now, settled for a house. He was painfully aware that he himself was that house. Where no pianos sang. No human survived.. No poetries swimmed. No life lived. He left it in the hope to become something, trading his everything but it was just anguish he ended up with. How could this possibly make him a coward? How can this make anyone a coward?

Lost in an eternal dilemma with moments flashing in front of his eyes, none in a sequence but fulfilling to him, a sigh lost somewhere in the extinguished flames rose to a new height. Memories latched upon his eyelids like a grudge he couldn't get rid of, and a sweater over which he threw a fit during winter because it was mad ugly. Like that stupid haircut Jungkook made him get while he was far from sober and how the firecrackers during that dusk with his everything made him swoon in delight.

Passion. Youth. Love. A heart that cried for more. A car they stole when their hands itched for some motion. A wall to which they gave life because it's melancholy gave them chills. The confetti which roared in delight while they danced throwing aside their insecurities and piling expectations. Care. Smiles. Giggles. A home.

Which now cease to exist.

Not because it broke or shattered into ruins, but because what made it a home no more dwelled in there. It was loneliness. The same loneliness that cuddled beside him in the name of an empty space on the other side of his bed; Or tears that erupted from his eyes without a shoulder to lean on when thunder cackled in twisted humour. It was loneliness that surrounded him and it arrived in the form of death where the lonely, snuggled in the blanket, stayed devoted to the slumber.

No grins. No giggles. No obnoxious clanking of crockery. No hitching of breath. No muffled voices of television from dining room when sleep was ringing in head. No life. Just unadulterated loneliness.

Even the dead can't entertain themselves in that lonesome deranged space because they are dead. And dead can't speak. Just listen to the cacophony of the muffled lullaby of the mother they dearly miss and the friendships that broke in a haste which now sobs due to the befallen tragedy. There's just despair. Nothing to prove that it takes all away...because there's too much it leaves behind which dead can't recover.

Abruptly, a brutal shriek resonated around him. Broken shards of glass tore apart the angst that shrouded him the moment. Long gone were the inaudible whispers, for they intensified drawing him closer to the window which had a huge gaping hole in the middle. Clutching the polaroid in an insane grip, he crouched down to pick up a bulky stone, the culprit of the assassination of his window and peace. Unwrapping the paper wrapped around the nasty piece of stone, the flapping of the wrinkled paper made him cringe.

With his brows furrowed, he groggily smoothened the paper only for it to clutch his windpipe in an uncivilized grip and make it burdensome for him to breathe. Your destiny is here, it read. In a font bold italic but the world around him this moment bold traumatic it hounded him at the corner only to prey at him with no visible escape route.

Frantically shoving the piece of paper away and launching himself at the window his eyes looked for the misery that latched onto him, signing off as destiny but the street-lights that flickered outside chaotically alongside the shimmering streets after a possesive shower of rain made it doubtful to decipher anything. But breath logged in his throat when his eyes caught a figure beneath the lustrous gleam of the street-light on the very corner of the street.

Clad in all black with an aura of doom and resemblance so uncanny that dread gnawed at his soul, Yoongi's palms flattened against the mirror drawing him close. "What is she doing here?" He muttered but the burning in his throat and a desire to flee away was very much weakening his speech.

It was quick, too quick, his eyes just fluttered closed for a moment to draw in a breath but another second, there was nothing. No one. Just the haunting whispers which were yanking him to the ground. A gasp resonated. Hands trembled. Body stumbled back when the woman who plagued his mind with her naggings at some unfortunate hours stood before him, in the middle of the street.

There was a suffocating silence lingering in the air that tied a leash around his neck, tightening every passing minute. Words denied to tumble out. But what sent his body into a mess of a haywire was the sick grin of the woman whose eyes cradled Icarus as if trapped in there ever since he took his tragic fall. An aura so strangely barbaric and remorseful tested the waters around them.

Clock ticked. Minutes passed. Silence moaned. Hands moved. Finger pointed at him. Another moment passed. A tap on the wristwatch. Tragedy to fall. Breath quivered. Icarus cried. Yoongi stumbled back. Bottles shattered. Alcohol pounced. Wind grunted. An almost deceased cigarette flickered. Alcohol kissed the bud. An ignition. Destiny? No. Inferno.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

You were tainted with the seething rage of fire. The bewitching way it cascaded down your flesh, rejuvenating each nook and corner that resided underneath your scorching skin.

Everything was draped with the liquor of turmoil, despair, anguish and agony. Each scarred bit of your tormented flesh was now tearing apart from the seams. I was peering at your pathetic self in hostage to those strings you once held with utmost delicacy that now pounced on you having each bit of you dragged on the asphalt with blazing cinders.

I told you, didn't I? Your doom always had a thick bounty on your pretty little head. But you being an ignorant lad never paid heed to my gibberish. And now I gape at you, getting engulfed by your nonchalance and malevolence-each flame smooching bits of you, nibbling on it, savouring the exotic tinge those cowardly glands excrete from within.

You were flaring, soaring up high recklessly. I never grasped the significance of endings, until I realised that those cinders that relentlessly ignite from my quivering breath are the souvenirs, ashes of your flesh─your ending.

They are you.

Which you set ablaze by your own foolishness.

Icarus, the mighty, fell from the sky ensnarled in the clutches of barbaric fire where he collided like a shooting star and the world saw it's first living miracle.

A miracle which got born as you who soon enough stumbled on the same path. I warned. You ignored. You were just a prey, hiding behind the veil of a predator. A forgotten memory left astray.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

A tear trickled. A smile followed. Polaroid clutched to his heart. Waves giggled. Breeze thumped. Laughter barked.

A knowing shriek. A lick of fire. Fluttering eyes. A checkered shirt. Six fragments of his eternal memory. Broken shards of glasses. Indistinct yells. Hyung!

Swollen eyes. March 9. Destiny. Demise. Fading whispers. A humorous chuckle. Tempting ground. A tear. A strong embrace.

A home.

"Hyung! Let's not die."

"Please, just stay alive."

there's only one thing i can say. please wait for the epilogue.