HYYH 1 Notes (ENG)

The Things with Wings

SeokJin
2 May Year 22

I was so nervous that my fingers stiffened. I clenched and unclenched my fists. What if I fail? I'd done this repeatedly, but I felt terrified each
time. I took a slow, deep breath and thought about YoonGi. He must be drunk by now, clicking his lighter
with one hand and holding his phone with the other. He might be lying on
the couch, contemplating the reasons why he should go on living. Or the reasons not to.

How does YoonGi see the world
and himself? I faced this question everytime I tried to save him. I
couldn't understand how he could
keep trying to destroy himself. It
didn't mean I was overjoyed living
in this world or that each and
everyday of my life with happiness.
In fact, I was never captivated by anything, not even by life and death.

Looking back, I was no different when
I first started all this. Would I be able to straighten out the errors and mistakes and save all of us? I didn't grasp the weight of this question. It was true that I desperately wanted to save all of us. No one deserved to die, to despair, to
be suppressed, and to be despised. On top of that, they were my friends. We might've had our flaws and scars and have been twisted up and distorted.
We might've been nobodies. But we were alive. We had days to live, plans
to follow, and dreams to fulfill.

At first, I didn't think much of it. I thought it'd all depend on how much effort I put in after I figured out who
I needed to save and from what. That was what I'd thought. I believed I could solve it all by persuading them and changing things. I was that simple and naive. But it was no more than an attempt to save my own skin. After a series of trials and errors, I had a realization. It wasn't so simple to save the others.

YoonGi wasn't easy to handle. He was probably the most difficult of all. He was always changing the time and place of his attempts at suicide. I had
to approach him differently than the others. A solution that worked fine
the last time it didn't work the next time. Just when I thought I'd finally unraveled one mystery, it led to
another hitch.

At first, I couldn't put my finger on
his reasons. After everything, all I
could guess was that YoonGi's distress was connected to his inner conflict. NamJoon got caught in a fight because of those rude customers at the gas station. But YoonGi was different. He had no definite target and no definite cause. He had too many variables.

I tried to imagine what was going on
in YoonGi's head. Once, I followed him secretly for hours. His footsteps were insecure and unpredictable. He staggered through the night streets
and tried to fling himself into the fire. He sometimes squatted on the ground and listened to music that flowed out
of somewhere from inside an underground shopping arcade. After
a night of following him, I realized
how dry, dull, and flat my own life
was. It wasn't that I envied YoonGi.
The suffering he must've endured, going from one extreme to the other, were beyond my imagination. All I could do was watch him stagger on.

One setback was always followed by another. A new layer of despair came down even before the previous one
was stripped. I might not be able to save YoonGi after all. I couldn't find
a breakthrough. But at that moment, hope flew in. I once heard that hope had wings. It was a little bird with wings.

A bird flew into YoonGi's workroom, which was in an abandoned building
in the middle of a redevelopment neighborhood. It'd been decided to demolish the neighborhood a long time ago, but it was left deserted when the redevelopment plan stalled. The bird flew in a broken window. YoonGi was standing in the middle of the workroom with a lighter in his hand. The entire workroom smelled strongly of gasoline. I was standing right outside the door.
I was about to jump in when I heard
a big thud and the flapping of wings.
The door was half-open, so I peeked through. YoonGi had his back to me.