Work Text:
The sand was grey under the white sun. The foamy water sloshing onto the shoreline brings seaweed and wrecks of plastic, as if all of a child’s abandoned memories had been torn apart by a storm before they were washed up beneath his feet. The pile and yellow bands of construction walls stationed at the near-finished seawall loomed beneath a veiled mist. The air was heavy with salt and gasoline.
Seokjin stared at the waters below his feet from the podium. Just like the beaches of Malibu, only everything was piercing bright. Construction was going on near Carbon Beach when Seokjin went there to take some photos for his collection. At midday, the sun was beating down on the creamy baked buildings, stilled with only saturated blues above their heads and bougainvillaea sprouting bright purples and reds. Screams of children flowed within the violent drilling as they ran bare feet on the asphalt into the pebbled sand, skin hot red with burns and soot yet unbothered by the heat in the midst of the game. The beach was pure white, stone snow, where the cold waters washed away the refined grains until there was nothing left.
It was the taste of the modern sublime, and all Seokjin felt was a numbing pain in his chest.
Stay away from the sea , his grandmother warned before he went, eyes clouded with loss and mist. That was how they took your mother.
Not once had Seokjin gone near the sea until he was nineteen. The woman’s whispers were long gone. What remained were the lingering voices of the young boys splashing across the shallow waves, the sound of their laughter and smiles masked under the golden shade of years ago.
Everything was different now.
Namjoon changed the least. Still direct and honest, still the pillar of their group, but there was no more light in his eyes behind those bars. Two dead, two arrested, one was back in the hospital and the other unknown. He acted like it was meant to be.
The small fishing ship from afar keens with hissing smoke, mourning for the dead. Crows flew above the waters, searching beneath the wreckage of plastics and seaweed, a glimmer of hope to feed on. The sun was fading, subcomming to the fall as the orange light blinds the colour of the sea with the darkening light.
SEOKJIN!
Seokjin clasped his ears with his hands as another rush of drilling pierced through the air, muffling the screams of a dead child from the past. His body sank to the podium as he squeezed his eyes shut, his chest tightened with a dull pain. The fearful eyes of Taehyung in his bloodied jacket when he was taken away by the men, the shadow of Namjoon’s back behind the car’s window sill, the image of Jungkook isolated within the sea of students, all traced back to the smiles of the young boys he failed to protect as he watched from afar.
Coward. You shouldn’t have said anything that day. When will you ever do anything right?
“I never wanted this,” Seokjin whispered, his voice suppressed by the overwhelming shouts of the construction as he curled into himself. “I never wanted this.”
The orchids are just like the students. There was only one answer under Principal Koo’s sharp gaze and Father’s painful grip. Was being happy not enough? All the boys were laughing and smiling on the day at the beach. Were any of them happy after they split up? What did they do to deserve any of this?
If you could turn back time, do you believe you could straighten out the errors and mistakes and save everyone?
A voice rang clear in the midst of the violent drilling. It echoed like a bell, a limelight in the swirling darkness, and Seokjin clung to it like it would be the last thing he saw before being swallowed by the darkness. A pair of heterochromatic eyes stared back, its body glowing in a bright white that extends beyond the sun. Perhaps it was a hallucination under his blurred vision with tears, but its whispers were like feathers of the heavens flowing around his body. It was as if Seokjin was a young boy again in Father’s office, gazing upon the massacre of the raft that hung as a prized painting at the mercy of the raging storm.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter anymore. All he wanted was for people to be happy. He didn’t want to hurt anyone again.
“Please,” he whispered to the creature, “I would do anything.”
I will do anything to fix this. I will do anything to make this right. This is my fault. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, everyone. I just want everyone to be happy. I just want to be happy.
There was a flash of the clear ocean waters, a glimpse of the cold as he descended into the depths of the seas, and the laughter of a group of young boys echoed in his ears before everything was shattered into a deep black as reality was fractured into bits of glass.
Fire.
The house was on fire.
There wasn’t a single way out of it. No windows, no exits, and the only staircase was blocked by a wall of fallen bricks. A school hallway with rooms where thick black smoke seeped out from the closed rooms, enclosed walls of melting concrete, and a piercing ring of alarm that screamed fire, fire, fire.
Jungkook and Yoongi were inside the storage room.
He ran, only to find out that he wasn’t. Stuck on the corner of the elongated shaft, heat rising with scorching pain with every breath, lungs burning in pain. Jungkook and Yoongi were inside the room, sleeping contently in each other’s glistening arms.
He shouted their names, but no voice came out. He twisted his bounded limbs, but they were stuck in one place. He watched as the fires consumed half of the burnt wooden door, how they coursed through the vein of gasoline oil, how a trickle of sparks slithered through the liquid until the tip of Yoongi’s finger before their bodies were engulfed by the flames.
Inhuman screams that howled past the doors; Jungkook’s eyes were bloodshot and wide despite half of his face being eaten by the flames, staring straight at the Seokjin through the cracked door, the fires rotting away the two boys’ skin until there was black, and Seokjin just stood there, trapped, unable to move and the fire burns under his skin it burns it burns it burns hyung help me it BURNS—
The date is April 11.
The white curtains flow gently under the spring breeze spilling into the bedroom. The late morning sun shines on the white bed sheets like pure snow.
S-Seokjin.
It’s okay.
I’m scared.
It’s going to be alright.
SEOKJIN!
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m—
Get his arms.
I can’t do this.
You’re going to have it a lot worse if you don’t stop moving.
HELP ME! PLEASE! SEOKJIN!
I can’t. I can’t, I really can’t do this, please, let him go, Father, make this stop, make this stop Father–
“Stop.”
Seokjin covers his face as he whispers to the dark shadows lingering on the wooden walls. He doesn’t want the light. He doesn’t want to wake up. Ten years have passed, and everything has grown in size—the flesh, the city, and the memories—but this house never forgets.
It is the fourth run-through, and Seokjin will continue to wake up again and again, crying to the young boy’s screams that were never there.
October 7 , Year 9
The sky was a blinding sea blue, and the little streams from the stone stairs gurgled, drooling into the sewers. Tiny moths plastered onto windows like speckles of eyes, lured by the late classes of afternoon delight. Bells rang in a tune that embedded the sadistic laughter of children as they plucked out flowers from their seams.
Outside at the school’s garden where all the cicadas and sparrows used to buzz with life, between the midst of dying yellow leaves and tall hay-like pampas, a young boy with bruised knees and dirt covering all over his shorts squatted down at the tiny fish pond of the school, watching the koi blurb bubbles as they swim in the green waters.
“There you are.”
The young boy turned around and found his best friend standing behind him, the pink camera still in his hands. He always had that pink camera with him.
“We should go back. Father said there’s a storm this afternoon.”
There wasn’t anything good about storms. Storms were like a disease: if you touched the rain, you would risk an infection. Thunder and lightning were even more deadly. The painting of the raft at Father’s office said so; the massacre drilled hard into his mind. But the young boy only beamed, his wide smile showing the tiny gaps in his teeth. He bounced up from the ground and thrust his hand towards his best friend, surprising the other boy.
“I’ve got a gift for you!”
The young boy opened his palm, and a small butterfly lay placid. A work made during art class, where Mrs Kang told everyone to design animals with fuzzy wires, glitter, stickers. Half pink, half baby blue, with two enormous googly eyes on the forewings that could tumble onto the floor, even with a slight jostle.
The other boy stared at it, puzzled, before accepting the gift with a small thank you. Lacing his tiny fingers over the animal and rubbing at the edges of the wings, he felt its soft fur tickle against his numbing, cold hands with every brush of touch.
“Protect him for me, okay?” The young boy said with a toothy smile, sticking out his little pinkie to mark a promise.
A Church nearby knelled, just in time when afternoon recess was over with a Maiden Prayer.
A group of thick grey clouds drifted from the south despite the sun still gliding light over the waters.
Whatever he had said, he had forgotten, but it made the young boy giggle. The boy hugged him tight, with the familiar warmth enveloping his tiny torso.
Three days later, Father tore that boy away from Seokjin’s useless, obedient arms.
The night never stopped with the thunder, rain, and winds. It just kept screaming.
Sometimes, the things we have lost will return to where they came from. Whether it’s from under the corner of your mattress, through a shabby thrift shop, or through the reminiscences of the beach from the touch of a finger. It may take days or years until they return back to your hands.
It was like fourth grade all over again, with the piercing blue sky, the callings of spring, bubbling water from slope drainage near the road, and the feverish heat. Going out at night meant a cosy adventure, a late-night party, and a small room filled with pillows, confetti and cream.
Only this time, Seokjin knew what would happen in the end, and there was always a large hand behind his back.
It was a grey October day when a trapped animal was freed, blessed by a fourteen-year-old boy’s warm touch.
“This looks stupid,” was the comment, doe eyes meeting the fake pair. He was sitting on the wooden desk, legs swinging back and forth. “Why do you bring this to me?”
“I don’t know,” Seokjin replied, and it was true for once. There wasn’t a reason in the back of his head. He woke up at midnight, pain latched onto his chest, and it chained his body to the creature’s child-like googly eyes under the layered towels. It demanded to be freed and told what it witnessed after being shut in the dark for a decade. “It…reminds me of you, I guess.”
The boy scoffed. “Are you calling me stupid?”
“Hey, you called yourself that. I said nothing.”
“I mean, no offence, hyung,” the boy looked up with a smirk, “but I thought you were supposed to be good at everything?”
The autumn light illuminated the room, and the boy laughed, showing his bunny smile. The butterfly on his hand rested perfectly in his palm, like it was meant to be.
“But I’ll take it. It’s kinda cute,” the boy said. “Thank you, hyung.”
There was really nothing to correct in the end.
He has his eyes, Seokjin smiled bitterly, telling the boy to keep the butterfly safe. He really has his eyes.
It was as if the heavens above had had enough of his pleas, his night torments. A second chance was given; a lost memory was found in Songju. Seokjin may cherish it this time before it leaves him again, before the wave crashes and the tides have overturned the sands, and when the campfire set up by the dancing children was drowned in black smoke.
Those eyes came back to haunt him for his mistakes, tainted with blood pooling from the skull, a burning hatred from the fire.
Afterall, Seokjin never made the butterfly, and neither did Jeon Jungkook.
Six months.
A perfect streak of six months, all ruined by a small mistake.
Six months had gone by after what had happened. Six months had gone by when Seokjin gave up on his life once again because no one was safe from death. Namjoon was dead. Namjoon was dead from the beginning, from the moment they were lined up together in a row on a dusty afternoon as a punishment when he looked up to meet the older boy’s gaze. Namjoon was dead the moment he knew who Kim Seokjin was.
The entire shanty town was swallowed in the flames, and Namjoon was stuck inside. Seokjin was there for all of it, the helpless shouting, the men cackling and that tearful trill from the house before the flames drowned his last breath. Sometimes, he was early, but not early enough, and there was Namjoon’s face, tear stricken and eyes wide, staring back from the window after being locked inside a burning oven a second later before the house collapsed into a pile of ash.
His father cleansed the city of all impurities and burned his best friend alive.
When Seokjin woke up to the bright white sheets of curtains barely concealing the morning light of one particular day in April, Seokjin pulled his hair and screamed like a madman.
Why can’t I just die?
Dying isn’t scary anymore. He knew what dying felt like. A long, long sleep, like what happened to Mother in Berlin. Seokjin didn’t want to wake up anymore. At least when he closed his eyes, he could drift away to sleep, but then he wouldn’t hear the voices. At least when he faces the void forever, there will be no more blood, no more corpses, no more fires, and no more water dripping down from a dead body.
This is your punishment. This is your punishment for what happened to him.
Perhaps he did deserve it. A child died because he was weak. Seokjin doesn’t deserve death. He deserved hell.
“...Hyung?”
Someone is touching his hand.
Seokjin blinks.
His vision fuzzes as if everything is underwater, but the feeling on his hand just becomes stronger.
He is at the doorway.
“Hyung,” Taehyung repeats (Oh, Taehyung). He is still wearing the same hoodie as the one in May and the same haircut, but his usual boxy smile is gone, expression growing increasingly concerned. “Dude, are you okay?”
It takes a while for Seokjin to feel for his words. His body had somehow gone completely numb. He doesn’t know. He smiles. He goes with the usual.
Taehyung furrows his brow but doesn’t ask any further. “Okay….” He squints at Seokjin, glancing around the front yard. “Weird. I swear I’ve met you like this in a dream before, like some weird coincidence….” He let his expression drift a little before quickly wearing back his smile, still holding Seokjin’s hands tight in his palms. “Anyway, are you surprised to see me?”
In that dream, Taehyung would’ve been Seokjin’s only hope.
In that dream, everything had fallen apart, ending with an innocent boy’s tears and Seokjin’s blood in his hands.
But he doesn’t know. Of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t even know who the person standing in front of him was, only that the last time he had seen him was in the background of a photo, a young man holding a pink Polaroid, always hiding his face behind the black shutter, smiling fondly at their parties in the late night.
He doesn’t know the time they fought, blood and bruises layered on both of their hands and faces because of a single line of betrayal. He doesn’t know how many times blood had stained his favourite hoodie. He doesn’t know how many times Dobu had died in his arms, doesn’t know how he killed Seokjin with his bare hands. He doesn’t know. He will never know.
Seokjin smiles.
It’s all mapped out for him. His life is no longer his own. Taehyung leaves, a puzzled look on his face, but Seokjin can’t care less. All that matters is what is on the planner board, what is on the flimsy post-it notes, confined in the room of white, fluttering curtains.
It’s alright now.
It is what he deserved anyway.
The boy never really left, even all these years.
“I’m sorry,” Seokjin once pleaded in his dreams, now an adult, returning back to the garden at his first school. “I’m so sorry.”
The blue sky was as bright as ever, glowing, trees heightened to shift between neon green and gold, the tree trunks black like soot and dried blood. The pool still had orange and red koi frothing transparent bubbles, the cicadas loud with their chirping. The young boy was wearing the same shirt, dirt and bruises covering his knees, still having his back turned against him as he crouched on the ground, eyes glued to the trail of ants on the soil.
“Have I done enough?” Seokjin asked, desperate for an answer. “Have I saved everyone?”
A grey cloud was approaching near the school despite the sky being clear with blue, invisible bright light. It was going to rain soon, and the young boy knew it. He stood up and turned, his toothy smile still present, eyes glowing blue and green, his hands holding the long dead branches as if everything was a game of hide-and-seek.
“Seokjinie is always so stupid,” the young boy teased.
“Hyung.”
Seokjin wakes up inside his rented van. It is already sunset.
“Hyung, are you crying?”
Seokjin turns to the side, and Namjoon sits beside him, gentle eyes reading his expression. It is May 22nd again, just like a dream that he wakes up in again and again. The van is empty, with only the two and the smell of old cigarettes.
Seokjin wiped his eyes with his fingers, only for more tears to flow down his face. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“Don’t be,” Namjoon says. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Seokjin sniffs, shaking his head. His dream becomes fuzzy when he wakes, perhaps for the best. Dreams never become pleasant when he wakes, not when they often follow with the aftertaste of glass cracks.
Glass. The glass. The time loops.
Seokjin shoots up, his eyes wide awake. “Where are the others?”
“I-uh—” Namjoon stutters. “They, uh, they went outside again. Said they want to look at the ocean—”
Seokjin doesn’t need to hear a command twice. He unlocks the car door and storms out.
“Wait, Hyung–!”
It is an instinct at this point, the way his body screams to move, and his mind is hardwired to believe that in each and every second, danger lurks that will take away everything, and he will never know when it will be. He runs and runs and runs until he reaches the coast of the beach, just like how many years before on a summer’s day, just like the day he had promised he would fix everything on the podium, where the seawall is still blocking their dream, the waters, yet there they are—
—smiling, damp hair as they splash each other with irritating saltwater, their legs half-submerged underneath the light blue waves.
“Jin-hyung!”
“Fucking finally. It’s about time you wake up.”
“Yeah, seriously, hyung, you really are an old man– HEY! WHAT THE FUCK?!”
“THIS IS FOR FUCKING UP MY HAIR, JEON JUNGKOOK!”
“Guys, calm down–AH!”
“HAHAHAHA! Got you, Jiminie–”
“I’M GOING TO GET YOU THIS TIME!”
“YOU HAVE TO CATCH ME FIRST!”
“Jesus Christ…”
The whole scene is total chaos, with Taehyung and Jungkook stumbling on the water as they reenact a cat-and-mouse chase, Jimin trying to escape from Hoseok’s large hug, and Yoongi standing far away from the ruckus, hand-palming at everything. The water droplets under the blazing sunset turn into orange crystals, and the winds are gentle, as if they are playing with the hair and the hems of their shabby shirts.
“What a mess,” Namjoon mutters beside him before rushing straight into the pile and tackling a stilled Yoongi, both tumbling back to the water.
And Seokjin watches, just like last time almost six months ago, just like the time in 2013 when everything was simpler, just like when he was only five when he was still counting the number of seagulls flying on the horizon while sitting on a woman’s lap.
Jimin is still wearing his hospital gown, Taehyung is still covering his bruises with his worn-down hoodie, Yoongi is still hiding his burn scars from the fire, Hoseok and Namjoon are still struggling, and even with his wide smile, there is still darkness inside Jungkook’s heart that is forever irredeemable, no matter how much glass has cracked, how many lilies have wilted for him, or how much time has passed.
Still, the young boy that keeps coming back to him never stops.
Now, you have the time, a voice speaks. Now, you have control of the future. Wouldn’t you want to change it?
Seokjin takes his pink Polaroid camera once more and leaves, with the boys’ laughter frozen in time. He smiles at last.
There isn’t any other way.