something old, something new | taekook

Chapter 7: Me Remembering Me, Remembering You

🌺🌺🌺🌺

When he was 20, he dropped out of college.

Looking back on it, it was a decision that had been well on its way, but it all came to a head during his weekly phone call with his father. He only ever called to check on his grades, but Jeongguk appreciated the contact anyway. He'd take what he could get from their strained relationship.

The mention came from a harmless joke about dropping out to get out of some homework, and his father had simply let out a single sigh.

"You wouldn't dare throw away this opportunity we've given you."'

It was said so nonchalantly, but it stuck.

It stuck in Jeongguk's head for next week as he bled over his Econ homework stressing over due dates and unchecked emails. As he worried himself to the bone over a project he'd been working on for nearly three months. As he only got a couple of hours of sleep a night.

It stuck until he came to a realization.

'Opportunity?', he remembered, almost incredulously. Fuck their 'opportunity'.

He had wanted to be an artist. He had wanted to paint his dreams, his desires, and his aspirations- the world. He had wanted to create.

He hadn't wanted this.

He suffered for years expecting some sliver of recognition or affection from his parents, and all he got was a life of anxiety and repression. He had lived his whole life until that moment trying to please his parents, putting his wants and desires aside for affection and attention he was deemed unworthy of.

All it took was a few signed papers and a signature. It was only another hour before he had dropped his bags on a motel bed. Only another ten minutes before he had yanked on the clothes he had bought on a whim over a year ago, red-faced and wary as he carried the items to the cash register.

The pants were a little too tight and the shirt a little too sheer, but he had felt better than he had in years.

He had felt powerful, he had felt hot.

So- fuck it, he was going out.

He ended up in a club filled with dark lights and pounding music. People grinding to the music, a crowd full of leather and flashing metal.

The air was scented with sweat and spilled beer, but even as his nose scrunched at the smell it was almost freeing.

It was always a side he pushed away, the part of him that was always so needy. The part of him that wanted someone to take control, to bring him that edge where pain and pleasure blurred.

He had been embarassed- shamed- for so long, it felt almost second nature to ignore those parts of himself.

An attempt at self-acceptance had ended in his first heartbreak.

A second attempt had ended in his death.

🌺🌺🌺🌺

He was almost 12 when he sat down with his parents for dinner, an announcement ready on his tongue. He hadn't seen them in the same room together for nearly two years, but he was excited nonetheless. The flyer from his favorite teacher sat heavy in his pocket where he had shoved it that afternoon.

He had something important to tell them- He had so much he wanted to tell them- but he waited until they were well into their dinner to start.

He knew better than to interrupt their stilted conversation about their jobs as they half-heartedly ate. They were nothing if not traditional, even if they were only pretending. Like clockwork, his mother complained about their neighbors, his father rattled off a statistic from his meeting that morning, and then they were back to idly scraping at their plates, the clicks of their chopsticks the only background noise they ever needed.