Chapter Text
무슨 영혼을 가졌길래
What kind of soul is it that you possess
무엇이 날 이토록 너의 곁에 잡아두나
What is it that holds me by your side like this
네게 난 추억조차 없는데
I don’t even have memories of you
난 이제 네가 너무 지겨워
I’m now so sick of you
너의 맨날 똑같은 잿빛 표정
The same old, ashy facial expression of yours
아니 아니 나는 내가 두려워
No, no, I’m afraid of myself
Namjoon laughs as he packs up the last of his boxes. Seokjin, where he’s leaning against the doorway, levels him with a severely judgmental look.
“What’s funny?”
Nothing, thinks Namjoon, but the truth of that response is too sobering to actually speak aloud. “Life,” he says instead, hands fidgeting over the cardboard edges. There’s nothing else to put in, no distractions left to chase. “Who thought I’d be the one moving out of here? I didn’t even think he liked this place.”
“You said you needed space,” Seokjin reminds him gently. “Otherwise I’d have come and intimidated him into leaving.”
Namjoon raises an eyebrow at him.
“I would have sent Jeongguk to come intimidate him into leaving.”
Privately, Namjoon thinks Jeongguk is even less intimidating than Seokjin, but Sangwook would be caught off guard by Jeongguk specifically showing up to fight him, and Jeongguk is certainly the bigger of the two of them. Maybe it would’ve worked if he got there and flexed his muscles a bit.
Doesn’t matter now, anyway. “Thanks, hyung. And I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m already set up at that hanok, so.”
“Don’t disappear off the face of the Earth,” replies Seokjin. He looks as serious as Namjoon has ever seen him, maybe barring the week prior when Namjoon had shown up at his door in tears and refused to explain what had happened for nearly an hour. “I’ll track you down, Kim Namjoon. Go cleanse your soul, or whatever. Meet people, have fun, explore new things, but don’t forget about us.”
“I couldn’t,” answers Namjoon, and it’s honest. Seokjin and Jeongguk and Taehyung are more family than friends by this point. The four of them had all moved to Seoul around the same time for different reasons, and clung to each other almost immediately. Now, six years later, Namjoon is leaving, but only because he needs to. And he doesn’t plan on it being forever, either. Half a day down to Wando and then another hour or so by ferry to the island proper is all he needs to get some distance, and then he’ll fix himself and come back, new and improved and happy, and his friends won’t have to deal with his sadness anymore. All of the places he loves won’t remind him of Sangwook or the time they shared or the way it ended, and everything will settle. “I promise,” Namjoon continues. “Just give me some time to get my head on straight.”
“Like you’ve ever been straight in your life,” scoffs Seokjin, finally joking.
Namjoon breathes a little easier, ripping the packing tape to shut another box. He’ll be dropping his belongings off at his parents’ house before leaving for Cheongsando Island, and his mom had been very specific about the way she wanted the boxes to be closed, a long strip of tape braced by two short horizontal ones on either side. If you don’t do it right the first time, it will fall apart and spill everywhere, Namjoon. Then what will you do?
Hilarious, he thinks. Everything these days just has to be a metaphor, huh?
“Right,” he answers Seokjin belatedly.
Seokjin sighs. “If you don’t need help, I think I’ll head out. You seem like you want some time to yourself.”
Namjoon feels his face go guiltily relieved. “I love you, hyung,” he says, making sure to add some aegyo.
“Gross,” replies Seokjin, patting him on the head where Namjoon is still bent over this box, hands fidgeting, restless, “love you too. Let me take you to the café in the morning before we go to your parents’, hyung will buy you a muffin.”
“Yeah?” asks Namjoon, looking up and batting his lashes. For some reason it’s always so easy to play the ridiculous dongsaeng with Seokjin, the only hyung he’s ever had aside from, well. Sangwook.
Seokjin nods, reluctantly fond. “The kids want to say bye before you leave, too.”
“Usual time?”
“Yeah, I’ll pick you up, just be ready outside.”
“I will,” promises Namjoon.
He feels bad about the fact that solitude is sometimes the only thing that helps when his thoughts get going like this, but once Seokjin leaves Namjoon does feel markedly better. At least like this, no one has to witness his mess. He hasn’t cried since that first night, where Seokjin told him to let it out and Namjoon really, really did, but he’s felt a little dazed, a little bit out of his body. Now, with a task to focus on, there’s markedly less room in his mind for doubt about his plan to creep in.
Maybe he’ll get a job in the village, once he makes his way there. Maybe if he keeps his hands occupied, his brain won’t torment him quite so much.
Once the last box is packed, Namjoon steps back and surveys his work.
Taehyung had come by earlier to take Namjoon’s plants, since they wouldn’t have traveled well, so the corners of the room are empty, awkward. The dresser is Sangwook’s, as is the bed. All of Namjoon’s belongings from the bedroom had fit into three small boxes, and the rest of the apartment didn’t require much more.
Namjoon was the one who loved this place upon first seeing it, but Sangwook was the one who filled it. Namjoon has always been better at hypotheticals than the real thing, anyway—isn’t that what Sangwook had said? Isn’t that why this is all for the better?
The apartment doesn’t look as empty without his presence as Namjoon thought it would. He wonders if they’d done it on purpose. If Namjoon had wanted to make sure it would be easy to leave, just in case. Or if Sangwook had wanted it that way from the start.
But there’s no use dwelling. Namjoon picks up the boxes, few enough to carry in his arms, out to the foyer. He’ll be taking them down to Seokjin’s car in the morning, where they’ll sit in the trunk while they’re all at the café, and then Seokjin will drive Namjoon to his parents’ house and leave him there.
And then Namjoon will take only the essentials with him to the hanok by the sea, and there he’ll make himself anew.