Work Text:
Dark.
Jisung thinks that would describe what it felt like inside of his head. Dark and grey and empty yet too full. Full of the fear and unease that came with having too many thoughts at once.
Like being struck with the intense beams of stage lights. Like the sharp stare of cameras watching him at every angle. Like a maze with no way out.
The cavity of his skull was an abstract painting; crazed with the vivid brushstrokes of memory, the heavy-handed markings of anxiety. The hue of every high and low splattered across the canvas.
The colours of life were always much brighter to Jisung than they were to others. The brilliant gold that hummed with every note of song, the prismatic patterns of instrumental glory, all ablaze in every wrinkle of Jisung’s brain.
Yet the blank greys of mediocrity were like mouthfuls of chalk to his nerves. The black ink of his worst days, the crawling fears that hung like leeches under his eyes, they always threatened to spill out of his head, to drown him in their dark grease and snake away under his bedroom door.
They yearned to unbury themselves from behind Jisung’s carefully curated mask and rear their shadowy heads to the world. Everything Jisung wanted to keep hidden forever. He knew that the badly patched-up cracks in his smile would not last. But he would try.
Jisung wanted to run. To break out of the stifling daze of the everyday and shake away the perpetual grey. He urged to feel the beating of his empty heart; a frantic bird trapped in the steel bars of his ribcage. To feel the whirring ache of his muscles as he flew away. Higher.
And so he ran.
The city could not hold him. Streets that were once different worlds on the other side of bus windows barely felt the scuffle and crash of each footstep. Skyscrapers that hid the evening stars in the tight grips of their fists faded into the background, were colourless shapes casting blocky shadows in his path.
Alive, the wind raced him through the dusk, panting and wheezing as Jisung sprinted ahead of it. It could only reach for him, a cold hand grasping the hem of his shirt and trying to pull him back, back to the rigid churning of routine. Back to the dark.
The howling drum of his heart deafened him to its plea; Jisung refused to let it win, refused to be chained down to the chaotic monotony of his life. Of pretending everything was alright. Of burying his desperately-beating wings in the weight of his bones.
Jisung ran. Through damp alleyways littered with the tattered remains of a duvet, sodden cardboard, toppled rubbish bins; all forgotten. Reminders of others not spared by the cruel brush of life’s darkest fingertips. The stain of that black ink. He shook it from his head, skidding on the tarmac like a car out of control, dizzy with the adrenaline of momentary freedom.
The wind still followed him, but everything in Jisung’s head was left behind, stuffed in a drawer in his bedroom. Unceremoniously shoved into its dusty corner, underneath everything else Jisung wanted to forget; old jewellery, paperwork, the hysterical buzzing of his phone. Messages. Too many. Their faces.
Did he want to forget?
Every vibrant colour that painted the warm gazes and radiant smiles of his group. His family. The sunshine-yellow gleam of the promise they made, tucked away in the light of their eyes, a warmth only ever found in the heart of a home. The colour of belonging.
Was it all for nothing?
Was it crumpled in a sorry mess in that corner of his bedroom drawer? Left in the dark trail of his footsteps, half-sunken in that black ink?
If Jisung kept on running, would he forget the spiralling dark, the monotone grey that taunted him in every quiet moment, in every tremble of his hand?
Would the dream he shared with his family disappear with it?
Would he leave his entire world behind? Just to run?
Jisung wanted to go home.