Those Who Are Dead | KTH 🔞

8| Rock On

Jungkook and him are looking at each other so intently that I can practically feel the murky energy running between them. Taehyung puts his hands in his pocket, face blank.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, she did ruin our lives."

I stomp my foot to the ground, exasperated by this childish way of thinking they seem to share.

"I did not ruin your lives! It wasn't my fault! You all know that! I was a kid!"

"We were all kids," cuts Jungkook, "but thanks to you, some of us had to grow up faster than the others."

There is a silent in the room and I feel myself blush, this time out of anger more than anything else.

"Oh, come on! Get over it! You guys should all stop blaming me for your own mistakes!" I assert, and at this point I'm almost yelling.

Jungkook and Taehyung are still transfixing each other.

"She's the daughter of the town's embalmer," says Taehyung.

I don't know what's the secret meaning behind these words, but Jungkook seems to understand something by that.

"Her father's job is to embalm corpses in her basement," Taehyung emphasizes, weighing each word, and Jungkook's frown melts into a twisted grin.

"Okay, I agree," he finally conveys and the two of them smirk at each other and high five, and I'm pretty sure I didn't understand what just happened.

"So, is this the first time you're coming here?" asks Jimin, looking around with the same pride Taehyung bore earlier in his eyes.

I realize this place is quite precious to them.

"Yeah, and it's fucking amazing," I convey, which makes him nod in approval.

As I gaze around, I notice a quote above the door that I didn't see initially. It's written in big leaky majuscules on the wall, and I wonder which one of them wrote it.

There's someone in my head, but it's not me

I know this quote, it's from Brain Damage by Pink Floyd. As I take a closer look to the graffities around me, the ones tagged on the metal oven doors, leaky black and old-looking, as well as the newer ones, blue and white directly on the brick walls, I realize that they are all song lyrics.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly

This one is from the Beatles.

Sunday, bloody Sunday

U2 of course.

Come as you are, as you were, as I want you to be

Nirvana.

"This one is mine," says Yoongi, and I turn to him, realizing he is following my gaze and talking about the last quote.

"It's a good song," I convey.

"So we're going to the tunnel or what?" groans Jungkook in my back.

Taehyung is unusually silent, and I look back at him, tense and serious as he turns around and leads the way to another room inside of the brick factory.

I bite my lower lip, feeling my heartbeat pick up.

I shouldn't be here. This is a restricted area, and it belongs to the city. I know walking around here must be quite dangerous, with the old machines that could fall on us at any time, and the unstable floors that could open under our feet, but I can't help myself and I beam as I follow them further in the entrails of the factory.

There is something about these four boys that fascinates me. I feel like here we all are, teenagers of this small industrial town, coping with our shitty lives by dreaming we were elsewhere, while they actually live their dreams, exploring creepy tunnels, using music as their bible and breaking the rules in the most exciting way every day, just because they have the power to do so.

I want to be them.

I probably should be scared, given that the last two times I was alone with the four of them, there was also dead bodies involved, but on the contrary, I feel serene and my mind is at peace. I know deep in my heart that no matter what happens, they will not hurt me as long as Taehyung is around.

There is a tacit agreement between me and him, an unsaid bond that ties us together. It's the kind of connection you get after sharing all of your deepest darkest secrets as kids, hidden under the sheets in your bed at night when you should be sleeping. The kind of attachment you get after kissing each other's scrapes and bruises, walking in the sun and holding hands, digging for secret treasures and getting scolded for getting all muddy afterwards.

It's the kind of bond you get from being childhood best friends. And God knows we never get others like that later on in life.

So I just know, what we have will never be the same as it was, but it's still sacred. He wouldn't let anyone hurt me.

And as I follow them further down in the basement of the factory, as I look around me at the piles of dusty red bricks, the fallen machines and the fluorescent arrows drawn on the floor, I think that there is a certain aesthetic to all of this.

I'm here, with my plaid skirt and uniform sweater, the perfect teenage schoolgirl going to explore an abandoned tunnel with a group of older boys.

And I just know in this moment that when I'll remember my teenage years, the peak of my adolescence will be this moment.