Work Text:
Dear Taehyung,
I always thought that, just like the sun on a typical summer day, you shine so bright that everyone could see it. But today it’s raining and, before it started raining, the sky was full of clouds. And I still think of you, I still miss you, I still look up and see you.
Tomorrow is your birthday and I’m far far away this year thinking what could I do to miss you less, to make you feel that I’m thinking of you all day, but not just today or tomorrow. No, I think of you everyday since the day I’ve met you and I wish you could feel this, you could know not just from words.
I can't lie to you. I’m not writing this in one sitting. You know that I’m not good with words, and until early I didn’t know what I would give you, not because I didn’t want it or because I didn’t have time, but because I didn't know how to. So I was lying in my bed, trying to decide what to do and I began to write in my mind what I would say to you in a letter. So here I am. Writing to you an email, not a letter because it couldn’t reach you by tomorrow and I want you to get it in your day, so you can think of me, even if it’s for a second, even if you don’t have so much time.
I love you. And I couldn’t say this if it’s not right away, because I need you to remember that. I really wish I was with you tomorrow, I wish that I could hold your hand, intertwine our fingers. I wish I could make you laugh and that you could make me blush.
The other day, I remembered when we met and that time, just like now, I would daydream all night about you. About how you smile and how it reminds me of the blue sky. How your voice makes me feel like that feeling you have when you put on a warm coat on a winter day. When you play with Yeontan, it feels like I am in a movie like those romantic comedies you like. I think I’ve never said that to you, right? But the moment I laid my eyes on you, you are all that I can think about, till now. Even if we are far away, even if we don't talk everyday like the beggining, even when it’s easy to remember, but mostly when it’s hard. On the easy days, I wake up and think of you, I drink my tea and think of you, then I go to work and, when I've got locked up in a song, I just turn off, but you know that. What you don’t know it’s what brings me back to earth is always you. It’s a message that you sent, it’s a post that you made on social media. Sometimes it’s the way I hit my pen on the table and then I remember how you hate it. There are times that nothing and everything makes me think of you. The loud sound of the street, the silence of my home - our home, even if you don’t live here -, the tick tock of the clock, the sound that the keyboard of the computer makes when I write. When I am writing this to you.
It’s on the hard days that I think of you the most. On those days I miss you so much that sometimes it hurts. I wish I could take a plane to reach you, but knowing that I can’t is what almost makes me sick, and makes me want to give up all of this. But it is on these days that I remember how proud you are of me, and how proud this makes me feel of myself. So now, i want to thank you for everything that you keep doing to me even if you don’t know. Even if it’s just the memory of you, the memory of us. I don’t like when people say “without you, i couldn’t do it”, and it is because, for me, it looks like putting a pressure that the other one doesn’t deserve. So what I will say to you is: Without you, I could do it, but it would be harder. The easy days wouldn’t be that easy and the hard days would be tough. You make everything a little less tiring and I love you for that.
Okay, so, at the end of this email there’s a link. This link is for a playlist that I made for you and I want to explain why I chose those songs. The reason they remind me of you.
The first one is a song called Cananéia, Iguape e Ilha Comprida. Yeah, it is in portuguese, so you will need to see the translation. It’s from a brazilian rapper called Emicida and Namjoon showed me this album from 2019 of his called ‘Amarelo’ that he is obsessed with. The right moment I listened to this song I remembered you, even without knowing what he was saying. And it only grew after I read it. It’s a love song.
“From the bottom of my heart
From the deepest corner inside me, oh
To the decaying world
I write like someone who sends love letters”
When he sings it, it feels like he knows you, and this is about you. But it could be only that I’m in love with you, so every love song that I listen to is for you.
This is my love letter for you. This is what Emicida is talking about.
So, ‘Supercut’ by Lorde reminds me of us in the beggining. My daydreams. Our dates. Our late night conversations when we couldn’t sleep. When you sang to me for the first time and I didn’t know what to say. That feeling when you still don’t know enough about a person and all you can think about is learning everything about them. It reminds me too of our fights. And then I smiled because it's our fights, it’s the respect that we have for the other when we are angry and we can’t think straight, that gives us space to grow. Help us to become better, to love better. It’s not ‘just a supercut of us’, because it’s reality. And I love it, and I love you. And I miss you. And I wish you the happiest birthday you can get.
The third song is Flower by Johnny Stimson. Yeah, that one. That song was the one that you sent me when I told you that I would live away for two years, but you know that. What you don’t know it’s that I listened to it for two weeks straight. Even if the song asks for the other to stay, I knew then, and I know now that you wouldn’t want it, you would never ask it to me.
“What if I can't get you out of my thoughts?
What if my seasons don't change?
What if you love me then you love me not
And we fade away?”
When you sent it to me, I knew I've got the same fears of the song, the same fears of you. But now I know that you in my thoughts it’s where you belong. And the rest we can discover, together or not.
Everything about ‘Mystery of Love’ by Sufjan Stevens reminds me of you and this can't be a surprise, right? You love the movie that it plays, but beyond that, it feels like a dreaming song. Like what I feel for you sometimes feels like a dream. Feels like I’ve never stopped daydreaming after we met. Like our feelings aren’t real, but then I blink and I just know. I know it’s real and I know it’s you.
The next one is ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ by Toploader. Okay, okay, I know that you are laughing. I know that if you were here with me, you were gonna tell me that my sun and mercury in pisces is showing. I KNOW. But how couldn’t I put the song that was playing when we first met? The song that made me fall in love with you, and fall hard. So, it’s not just the sun that reminds me of you, but the moon too. And you were so happy, and you smiled so bright that day, that sometimes I wake up and feel like it’s the next morning of that night and I’m thinking of someone I just met that makes me feel like falling in love.
The last, but not least it’s “See You Again” by Tyler, The Creator ft. Kali Uchis. So, can you make it last forever by living with me in three months after I come back to Korea?
I love you again. Happy birthday again. See you soon.
yours truly,
yoongi