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The blue moon hangs low in Seoul’s starry night sky, casting a waning shadow on Yoongi’s face. There’s a staticky murmur of sleep from the other members buzzing through the dorm, but Yoongi is wide awake.
While the others were currently swept up in dreams, Yoongi dreamed all the same — although he traded the soft envelope of his duvet for a pen, some paper, and nothing but his own heartbeat racing against the cage of his chest. The steady thrumming of this feeling somehow syncopates with the sound of the clock on his desk, ticking away to indicate the midnight hour.
Coupled with looming deadlines and professional obligations, it had been a while since he had the time to sit down and create something that belonged to no one except himself. Pulling his arms above his head, he stretches, allowing each knot in his shoulders to relax as he bites the pen cap off, pinching it between his teeth as he brings the tip to parchment.
There’s an unbridled euphoria that pools in Yoongi’s veins at the sight of the ink bleeding into the paper, starting with an incipient drip that blooms into a seeping sweep of blue that colours the parchment with strokes of Yoongi’s creative genius.
One, two, three strokes of his hand, and he’s written a new refrain. He’s lucky that today the lyrics seem to flow like water, breaking a creative drought that had plagued him for a while.
It’s a pretty colour, Yoongi thinks to himself as he takes a sip of his Americano out of its blue straw. This appealing shade of cobalt that reminds him of so many things — all finite, yet everlasting.
Simple things, like the peeling cracks in the wallpaper of the same shade from their Nonhyeon-dong apartment, or his minty hair back in 2015. It's a colour that seems to follow Yoongi everywhere — starting with the deep blue sky (staring at it almost seems to cause a jarring pain in Yoongi’s back; both burdening him from the pressure, yet beckoning for wings to appear and take him higher).
Then there is the cerulean sea — shimmering blue waves that simmer and snap, pulling Yoongi along with them as they collide against the dry yellow desert of his lyrics notepad and come to a crashing burst of salvation.
Perhaps years ago, Yoongi wouldn’t have found such resonance in blue. He had been much more red — finding himself in angry, violent slashes of colour that threatened to overwhelm their canvases.
Yet, as he grew older, he realized that people changed the way that water flowed, and that slow, azure trickle had carried him to where he is now.
He is now coloured blue, flushed from head to toe in a colour that had slowly crept up to erode the edges of the former hues of red, softening them and painting over to create a new colour.
Purple. The last colour of the rainbow, and one that coloured the faces of the people who he loved and who loved him.
It’s the same colour of the tape that currently holds the wobbly leg of Yoongi’s desk together.
If there was one thing to marvel about in this world, it was the resilience of this very desk, which had survived countless moves and even more sleepless nights.
Yoongi still remembers the day that he first assembled it, back when all seven boys were cramped into the same room, sharing floor space and secrets that would spill into bright giggles or sometimes tears almost as blue as the wallpaper.
It didn’t help that the desk was huge — an almost Herculean fixture that confidently occupied half of the room — yet no one had ever asked Yoongi to move it.
Perhaps sleeping elbow-to-elbow every night had allowed them to be able to understand each other’s hearts, and this led them to detect the spark in Yoongi’s eyes as he hammered away at the desk. A bright red flame, steadily growing with every leg and every piece that Yoongi managed to assemble.
Or perhaps, they could feel that the desk’s large presence in the room amplified Yoongi’s own ambition, undeniable and overwhelming.
Now, that same desk fits comfortably in Yoongi’s current room, nestled against the wall and bidding a sweet greeting to the deep brown piano that sits adjacently.
Like the piano reminds Yoongi of falling in love with his craft, so does the surface of the desk, which is adorned with etches and reminders of times when Yoongi’s passion had bled past the parchment, ink lovingly seeping out of the pen tip that carved words into its surface.
As he traces these etchings with his finger, his mind dredges up memories with each bump. In the upper corner lie remnants of the first mixtape that Yoongi has ever written. The wood feels unnaturally rough, and flecks of red ink are still visible between the carvings.
Then, in the bottom corner, the wood is freshly etched from the product of Yoongi’s most recent creative project. Tracing these lines, Yoongi realizes that the engravings here are much more shallow. Softer.
Taking his hand off the desk, Yoongi sees that there are small smears of blue ink on his pinky.
Fidgeting with the pen between his fingers, Yoongi taps it on the edge of the desk absentmindedly as he thinks of another verse. In a way, the seemingly small sound seems to seal every gap in the room — from the quarter-drawn curtains, to the half-full bowl of tangerines neatly placed on the side, right down to the purple fan letter fluttering right above the radiator that reads you’ve done well today, also.
Leaning back in his chair, Yoongi regards the letter’s movement with a sense of curiosity.
Had the ARMY that had written it been sitting hunched over their desk like he currently was, pen in hand and heart on the table? Did they, too, stare at the blue moon hung low on nights like these, feeling their fingers reaching out towards it like the ocean calling the tide home?
Regardless, Yoongi was sure of one thing — the letter, adorned in purple ink, bridged the gaps between Yoongi and those who loved him. Whether it was a couple steps or entire oceans between them, the power of passion poured into ink on paper was enough to close distances and burst open hearts.
Cautiously, Yoongi sets the pen down and flips through the notebook in front of him. Ink-stained hands feel his pulse softly beating through the pads of each fingertip as he meets the page, tons of lyrics crossed out and scrawled out before him, as if his heart had given his hands command of mapping out his soul onto parchment.
Right now, the pages are steeped in a sweeping blue running up and down the margins, but Yoongi knows that they’ll soon become a splendid purple, bursting into a mosaic of colour the moment his song wraps those whom he loves in a soft embrace.
To these people, Yoongi’s blue lyrics will shift form, reaching out of the pages to become someone’s family, someone else’s winter, someone’s birth, and someone’s end.
And in the midst of it all, the soft caressing tendrils of purple and blue will fuse together and hold each and every person in a tight hug, away from the grey monotony or red slashes that may loom nearby, so long as the tugging birth of a dream laid in their hearts.
Hearts like Yoongi’s own, steadily beating like the clock on his desk, while the blue moon outside embraces a dark dawn that’ll soon melt into the brightest sunrise.