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N.O.
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Taehyung

Yi-Seo has gone out to meet Dr Han, and she said earlier that she wouldn’t be able to have dinner together with me. That made me sad, but I have to be practical in the way that I can’t just expect to have her all to myself all the time. What am I? Her boyfriend? Even if I were that it would be senseless to expect her to have every meal with me. That would be toxic, and being toxic is the last thing I want to be with her.

Tomorrow is the big day. The court considered Dr Han’s confession, and they have issued an emergency order for Sammy to appear in court for the second hearing, which is tomorrow. I would most definitely be seeing him after all these years.

Everything is in place for tomorrow, and although I’ve been appearing careless and unaffected by anything on the outside, on the inside, I’m extremely anxious and borderline excited to see what happens next.

I want to live, and not just exist. I’ve been waiting for this breakthrough for years now, without having any clue how to go about things. I could have fared better and done a far more decent job in surviving these blacklisted years without destroying myself and trading my craft for money.

I know I want to change the way I’m existing and be a better man, but the gravity of my poor choices over the years keeps dragging me down all the time. Yi-Seo has done so much for me that it would be so disrespectful and rude on my part not to do anything in return and just accept the rewards of her efforts as well as Jimin’s efforts.

She makes me want to try, and I am in fact trying to get rid of my drinking habit, but my dependency on alcohol is just too much that it has grown to a point where I’m unable to fall asleep without drinking. I’ve been craving it more than ever since Yi-Seo took away all the bottles and locked them at her home yesterday.

My head begins to throb and my fingers start to twitch because it is that time of the evening when I get together with my drinks, and to think that I have access to nothing right now is causing a pulsing headache to shoot within my skull.

Catching my head in my hands, I throw my head back on the couch and rub my hands down my face while repeating to myself that I need to divert my mind and think of other things now. I should not think about drinking, but the cigarettes are still lying around on the coffee table. So, maybe I can smoke away this irritating headache.

Fifteen minutes and two cigarettes later, the headache reduces by a small margin. Groaning to myself, I drag my feet into the kitchen and gulp down a bottle of fruit juice and toss the empty bottle into the trash can before I head over to my bedroom.

My face and body begin to sweat profusely, and my chest feels as if all my internal organs are quaking inside, and every muscle in my body feels taut and twitchy.

Shit!

I sit up in bed feeling like a burden to myself, and the headache isn’t making anything easy for me. My clothes feel like a prison, and my thoughts are so scattered too. Eating something would probably help me now, so I get rid of my sweat-soaked T-shirt and head back into the kitchen to warm up some instant rice and eat it with whatever is available on the shelves.

Luckily, there’s still a bit of seaweed and quite a lot of kimchi that Yi-Seo brought in a couple of days ago, and I manage to eat a healthy portion of the meal and head back to bed.

The sweating has reduced, and the ache in my skull has also gone down considerably. I have no idea what time it is when I fall asleep, but it is probably way past midnight.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

It seems just like a few minutes have passed since I went to bed, but there is a strange uneasiness that makes me squirm out of my sleep.

Growling, I grope for my phone among my sheets, and when I finally pick it up, I’m devastated to see that it is just around 4 am. This isn’t even close to my waking time, and now that I’ve woken up, I don’t feel an ounce of sleepiness anymore.

My headache has returned, and lying alone on the bed triggers the desire to take a sip of alcohol. I shouldn’t even be thinking about it, but it is all that I’m able to think about right now. My dire need to drink is at an all-time high, and the fact that there’s nothing left at home for me to drink is killing it for me. At this point, I’m ready to do anything to get myself a glass of alcohol.

One glass is all I need, right? Quite probably.

I rush to reach out for a quick smoke, and I find my hands shaking terribly as I smoke, yet I somehow manage to finish smoking one cigarette and return to my bed. A few more minutes pass by, and I’m desperately waiting for this killer discomfort to pass, but it only keeps aggravating.

Rising from my bed, I decide to shave and shower and do other things which might keep my mind off these drinking thoughts.

I need to survive these few dark hours until I meet Yi-Seo and Jimin, and then everything will be okay. I wouldn’t be able to think about drinking once I get out of home and go to court.

Picking out my best pair of clothes to wear to the court today, I turn on the lights in the bathroom and then walk in to hang the clothes in the hooks behind the door. I also make up my mind to get a clean shave, all the while avoiding acknowledging my headache or my alcohol craving. It feels like hell, but I know that I should try. I will try. I am trying.

Turning around to face the mirror, I feel my stubble with my fingers and open the vanity rack that’s mounted just above the sink in the bathroom to fetch a fresh razor. The moment my eyes realize what they’ve just seen, they double in size before my hand slams the door of the rack closed.

My chest begins to heave, and my breathing becomes unsteady at the same time when my limbs start to tremble a little too.

Holy Heavens! How the fuck did I forget this whole damned bottle?

Slapping a palm to my forehead, I swiftly turn my back to the vanity rack and try to collect my thoughts together in one place and focus on taking a shower and leaving my home, but that seems nearly impossible now. The bottle that’s sitting inside the vanity rack is unopened, and it succeeds in holding all my attention and everything else at the moment.

My pupils shake as I begin chewing my lips out of nervousness; I could just take one drink, and then I’ll be all good, right?

I don’t even bother to hold a debate with my mind, and now I’m already standing face-to-face with the bottle that appears nothing less than a virgin seductress who is stark naked and luring me in with her bewitching beauty. My hands need to hold her, and my tongue needs a taste of her. I can’t resist her anymore. She’s wicked and powerful, but she is the sweet poison I crave; she is my addiction.

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Yi-Seo

It’s just about 6 am, but the tension about how everything would go today has been keeping me on edge, and I couldn’t sleep well all night. Last night, I returned late after meeting Se-Young and dropping him off at Woo-Bin’s home, and he definitely seemed a lot better. Even though his lungs are still weak, and there is a portable oxygen tank that he has to roll around wherever he goes, he still did a great job in confessing in court yesterday. He seemed quite confident about showing up in court today as well.

Last night, I couldn’t meet Taehyung, and since I had taken away all the bottles of alcohol from him, forcing him to go cold turkey, I’m assuming that he must have had a hard time falling asleep. But today is such an important day, and him getting drunk today would have to be one of my worst nightmares that I don’t even want to think about.

It’s still too early to check on him, so I decide to waste some more time in bed and then get ready to face the day. With him.

My thoughts belong to Taehyung only, and they aren’t entirely the kind of thoughts that would make me curious about him. Rather, they’re the kind of thoughts that bring a blush to my cheeks and a smile to my lips. At this point, my thoughts may even be bordering on the territory of vulgarity, if imagining his lips on mine and how he would feel and taste against my tongue qualifies as vulgar, that is.

I’m unable to stop smiling to myself when I think back to his drunk confession about how he was trying hard not to kiss me, about the little cheek kiss on the bridge, and about the dinner night when he held me so lovingly and we danced together, and the way he spoke so softly, kissing my forehead and telling me things which we have never spoken of before.

We almost kissed that night, and we were closer to each other than we’ve ever been, and merely thinking about it is eliciting unwarranted physical reactions from me. While we danced together, his eyes were tickling the deepest corners of my heart and making me want to fall into his warm embrace and stay there forever.

I keep thinking back to how he asked me if that dress meant anything to me now, and the way he whispered into my ear while leaning so close to me is causing my nipples to spring to life right now, just like it did that night.

Did he ask that to know if I have truly moved on from Jungkook for good?

I have, and I’m sure of it. Without thinking twice, I pull out all the polaroid photos from the cardboard box under my bed and take them all to the kitchen. Grabbing a pair of scissors, I snip all the photos into many small pieces and dump them all into the trash can.

No. I will never fish them out of there ever again.

As I exit the kitchen, the display of bottles in my living room catches my attention, and I decide to do something about it. This is what stopped me from calling Taehyung inside yesterday, but I won’t let that happen again.

Quickly making up my mind, I pick up the bottles, two at a time, and move them to the overhead shelves in my kitchen from where they aren’t visible to anyone. It takes me a while to get it done because the number of bottles is huge to handle all by myself.

I head back to bed feeling lighter and happier than I’ve ever felt lately and hug a pillow to my chest. My mind goes reeling to places with just me and Taehyung, and never in recent times have I craved a person or their warmth or their kiss so badly as I do now.

We were so on edge the other night, and if not for my breaking the moment, we would have definitely kissed, and if he were anywhere near me right now, I have no idea if I would be able to suppress this rising desire.

The more I imagine things within my polluted mind, the more I feel my stomach twisting itself into knots, and my thighs closing tight with desire. I can’t really allow myself to wander off so often into this imaginary space where I’m practically living together with him because it could very well be just inside my head.

Maybe he was only flirting, and it is most probably just that, and I want to save myself from any impending heartbreaks. But I also know that I’ve been sucked too deep into this vortex not to be heartbroken if things take an icky turn.

He has been sending out subtle signals, quite strong ones even, but it could be that my mind is just putting a veil of romance over his acts of care and concern, and quite possibly even lust. It is probably only me who is perceiving things this way. Or does he feel the same as I do?

We even exchanged phone numbers yesterday, and I so badly want to text him something, but I have no idea what to tell or ask him. I may also appear too desperate if I text him first, but maybe he’s thinking the same. Should I text him? Or maybe a wakeup call?

I don’t even realize that I’ve spent more than an hour in bed thinking and overthinking about Taehyung until I pick up my phone and see the time. It’s late enough for me to practically scramble out of bed and scurry around to barely brush my teeth, make myself some coffee, and get dressed before I step outside.

Just as I’m locking my front door, I hear a car pulling over outside my home, and turning around, I’m ecstatic to see Jimin climbing out of his car. I still feel a pinch every time I see him, but I try not to show it out.

“Morning, Jimin-ssi!” I greet him with an exaggerated smile when he walks up to me, flashing a smile that matches mine in intensity. But to me, his smile somehow looks forced.

“Morning, Yi-Seo! I guess we’re all good to go?” He checks with me, his eyes briefly turning to look at Taehyung’s front door.

“Yeah, we are. I was just about to pick up Taehyung,” I smile, tucking a few strands of hair behind my ear while holding on to the strap of my shoulder bag in my other hand.

“Sure. Go ahead. I’ll leave now, and I’ll see you at the court,” he waves to me with a small smile, and I jog over to Taehyung’s front door before I see him off.

I press the doorbell and wait for a few seconds without any response, and then I press it again, more frantically this time. But there’s still no response, and I’m growing a little worried now.

Quickly retrieving my phone from my bag, I place a call to Taehyung’s phone, and my fears grow deeper with every unanswered ring.

My head snaps in a slightly panicked state, and I notice that Jimin is just ending a call with someone while looking my way with a puzzled expression. Seeing that I likely look like someone who is in the initial stages of experiencing a full-blown anxiety attack, he quickly jogs up to my side.

“Is he not answering?” Jimin asks me once he gets closer, and I only shake my head in response.

Sucking his teeth, he attacks the doorbell button by banging on it a few times, and his face is growing red with rage with every passing second.

“We need to break in, I guess,” he declares matter-of-factly while pulling out a plain white plastic key card from the wallet that was inside the back pocket of his trousers.

“What? What’s this? How do we break in?” I fire my questions in quick succession, but Jimin doesn’t bother answering any of my questions. He proceeds to swipe the card over the lock system on Taehyung’s front door, and it clicks open with a beep sound. A tiny green light begins to blink under the door handle, indicating that the door is unlocked.

I want to probe how the hell he did that and how he even has Taehyung’s house key, but he is the resident’s welfare association president, and he probably has a master key card that works on every door within Silver Springs.

There’s no space in my mind for asking him all these questions right now as I step into Taehyung’s home and look around the living room for him. Hazy visions of us dancing together to the slow jazz music appear in front of my eyes, and I shake my head with a faint and untimely smile to rid my mind of these thoughts. Jimin follows me inside, raking a hand through his hair as he scans the area with his sharp eyes.

He looks frustrated, and it is understandable, but I think Taehyung is most probably just sleeping soundly after a long and hard sleepless night, and it would only be a matter of a few more minutes until we all leave for court.

I, sneakily, peep into his recording room and notice that it is dark and empty. The kitchen is vacant, and so is his bed, and it is making me a little worried at this point. The door to his room is ajar, but the bathroom door is half-open, and if it were just me, I would have probably pushed open the door or called out for Taehyung. But since Jimin is here with me, I hesitate as I stand in the doorway.

Jimin takes it as his cue to push open the door to the bathroom while simultaneously calling out Taehyung’s name, but he soon flicks his head around to look at me with a mixture of shock and confusion crawling all over his face.

“He isn’t here as well,” Jimin’s voice gives away the hefty emotions that are building within his chest, which are essentially the same that I’m experiencing at this moment.

“Could he have already gone to the cou-” my question is cut short when Jimin alarmingly looks over my shoulder and pushes me out of his way to rush to the other side of Taehyung’s bed.

Turning around, I follow him too to see what made him react the way he just did. I should have felt relieved. I should have felt happy. But I swear I could feel last night’s dinner climbing its way back to my throat because what we are witnessing now is indeed my worst nightmare.

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Happy Valentine's day!!
I love you all!
❤❤❤

Also, a quick question for the readers (silent readers as well, please respond).
Would you prefer to read a one-part long epilogue (around 5k words) or two smaller epilogues?

Published on : 02/14/2023