Shadows of Daegu | Min Yoongi

One

The air in the penthouse was thick with the scent of expensive cologned and hollow hum of the air conditioner. Het on the edge of the king-sized bed, his spine curved like a question mark. He rubbed his face with hands that felt heavier than they had during the final bow of the four-hour concert. 

Behind him, the sheets rustled. A woman, he remembered her name was Sarah or maybe Sora, sat up, trailing her fingers over his shoulder. She was beautiful, undeniably so. The kind of polished, symmetrical beauty that looked perfect in a leaked Dispatch photo. 

"You're leaving already?", she whispered. She leaned in, seeking a warmth he did not have the capacity to give. 

Yoongi stood up abruptly, sudden distance between them more honest than the last three hours had been. He snatched his jacket from the chair, swinging it over his shoulder.

"I have a 6.00 AM call time", he lied, his voice low.

He did not look back as he stepped into his boots. 

He did not have a call time.

He had a void.

For the last ten years, this had been the cycle of his private life. Grim.

It started with high-end, underground bars where the lighting was dim enough to hide his soul but bright enough to highlight his status. It moved through shared drinks and transitioned into few hours of physical distraction. It was a desperate attempt to quiet the ringing in his ears, a frantic search for a spark. 

But the end was always the same: the inevitable crushing coldness that followed the silence. 

He was not looking for a long-term partner. He was not looking for "The One". He was looking for a ghost. Every time he closed his eyes in the dark, he will try to map a stranger's features onto a memory from Daegu that was starting to fray at the edges. He looked for a specific curved of a smile, a particular way of laugh, a scent that was not bottled anywhere but smelled like honey and chamomile tea. 

By 4.00 AM, Yoongi was exactly where he always ended up when the silence got too loud, the Genius Lab. He sat in his ergonomic chair and stared at the digital audio workstation. He opened a hidden folder on his drive, one labeled simply with "Daegu".

Inside were files that no one, not even Namjoon or the managers had ever heard. They were voice memos from years ago. Muffled sounds of a girl laughing while he practices a clumsy versy. The sound of a Daegu buss braking. And her voice, clear as a bell, saying, "Don't work too hard, Yoonki. The stars aren't going anywhere without you"

"Liars", he muttered to the empty room. 

"The stars moved. You moved. Everything moved but me"