Please write your start date here.
The first chapter of our story, I'm so excited. Until we bring the story up to date and tell it, we will talk about the past for a while and read what they both went through in those years. Do not forget to comment and give reactions between the lines. Each star makes you read the new chapter earlier. The story is definitely not Angst. I just love to explain the inner world and emotions of the characters in detail, and I also like to bring the readers together with their inner voices that they cannot tell anyone. The first chapters are a bit more self-explanatory and detailed so you can fully understand the characters' personalities. You will read more dialogues in later chapters. I put a song in the media. Those who wish can search for the song on Spotify and listen to it while reading. It helps you understand the feel of the Chapter more clearly.
If you're ready, here we go.❣️🫂
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*It's Not Love If It Hurts Too Much*
2017 , from Jimin's narration.
I woke up from the sudden rains of April and a day when I was breathing the smell of renewed soil that heralds summer, and after doing my routine work, I went to the faculty as every day. I had the excitement of being in the last semester of my eight-semester education and the weight of all the years on my shoulders. In the end, I had to prepare a final thesis and a model project, and lately I couldn't even find time for myself.
Nothing felt this hard until two years ago. Although we were in frequent contact with him, his presence here was a factor that made me stronger. After Yoongi Hyung left, our group didn't get together as much as before, and our weekly meetings were reduced to once a month.
Everyone was focused on taking on more of life's responsibilities, and we were at that stinging point where we had to turn our youth into adulthood. I felt like the days when we promised each other to stay young forever at our drinking tables were long gone. I don't know how I would have gotten through these times without Taehyung.
From the window of the bus number 11 going to the faculty, I was thinking about the time that passed and the things I couldn't make up for, and I was faced with the feeling of regret for being late for something in the depths of my soul. It was then that I realized that I had to face this feeling very often. My life was slipping away, my youth was evolving into adulthood, and I couldn't hold back the time that flowed like sand through my hands.
I remember Yoongi Hyung saying comforting things to me when I was getting on the No:11 bus again at the same bus stop on the days when I was feeling like this. He didn't even need to make any extra effort for me. He brought me back to the present moment and comforted me by asking very simple questions when my mind was full and elsewhere.
While we hadn't spent almost a single day apart for years, it shocked everyone, including me, that he suddenly wanted to do his master's in Italy. I always supported his dreams, but he never once told me about it, and I was sure that he had made this decision suddenly. I didn't say anything so as not to upset him until he left. This was his career, and I couldn't interfere with the decisions he was making for his own life.
Until he left, we all spent time together, laughed and had fun again. Everything seemed normal. But it wasn't. The first day I learned that he was leaving, a heavy feeling in my crop took me hostage. I felt as if whatever I said would be too late, whatever I did would be too late. That's when I realized for the first time that I was late for something and someone. How could I have known that when he left, he would take my mind and soul with him.
At that moment, at the goodbye party we prepared for him, I realized that I had already irreversibly fallen in love with my Hyung, whom I grew up with for years, went to the same schools, chose interior design just because he wanted to be an architect, and protected me from everyone and everything.
He was sipping his drink with the shirt that I thought suits him best and his angelic smile on his face that bears the traces of a new life on his face. The attention of everyone around him was on him, and even that bothered me at that moment.
The panic I felt the moment I realized I was in love with him made my head spin. I realized that this feeling didn't occur at that moment, in fact, it has always been somewhere in my heart for many years. I relived all the years we lived in that brief moment, like a film strip, over and over again. In that fleeting moment, I tried to remember exactly when I fell in love with him. We've been friends for so long it's almost impossible for me to remember.
Until I remember exactly when I fell in love with him, the party was over, Yoongi Hyung left, and so two years went by.
Every day at the same bus stop, I thought the same things. I was too late for him. If I had told him about my feelings in my first years of college, maybe I could have made him love me too. But I didn't even know that. For the past two years, the possibility of him loving me seemed impossible to me. For him, I was always someone he loved very much, like his brother.
It was difficult to deal with these feelings. It was hard to lose him completely. Therefore, I acted as if everything was normal until he left, but after he left, when he didn't even know about it, I got angry with him. I was angry with him because he had no right to be so untouchable. I was angry that he had to leave when I came to see him as a miracle and realized that my heart would always be incomplete without him.
I came out of my deep thoughts with the notification sound on my phone and replied to Taehyung's message. My eternal friend, Taehyung, who has been by my side all this time and helped me deal with all these feelings.
When I got off the bus, I saw that Taehyung was already waiting for me at the bus stop, and without saying anything, I ran over to him and hugged him tightly. Even though he took a few steps back, he kept his balance and held me tight. Taehyung knew, when I hugged him like that, I was the one who needed to be hugged by someone.
I felt him breathing deeply.
"Today I'm going to hug you tight," he said.
He didn't need to say anything more to me because that meant he understood me best.
While walking from the large garden of the faculty to the cafeteria, I saw how happy all the lovers were sitting in a corner with the freshness of the spring months.
"Jimin-ah! Have you heard from Yoongi Hyung these days?" he asked.
Taehyung knew that the only magic word he had to say to me to give him my full attention was 'Yoongi'.
''It can be said that we don't communicate much these days. I think he is very busy." I replied.
As soon as I saw the empty bench in front of the cafeteria, I quickened my steps and sat down before anyone grabbed the bench. Also, I had the strange feeling that we had been less in touch with Yoongi Hyung lately, and I didn't want to talk much about it.
Taehyung didn't even ask me any more questions anyway. Only a mischievous smile appeared on his lips, and he entered the cafeteria, saying he would buy us both coffees. As he left, I let out an audible gasp and checked my social media account on my phone. It wasn't like I was posting a lot; I was just looking at the photos Yoongi Hyung shared every now and then for hours and pondering what kind of life he was spending there.
"Hi Jimin."
The moment I looked up from my phone, I saw Namjoon Hyung's smiling face.
"Hello hyung."
Namjoon Hyung adjusted his bone-frame glasses with one hand and sat next to me as he always tried to hold the pile of books that didn't fit in his backpack and that he had to carry in his hands. He was doing a master's in psychology, and I was proud of him.
"How have you been since we've seen each other, Jimin-ah?"
This is the question Namjoon Hyung has been asking almost every day for the past two years. Except for Taehyung, no one in the group was aware of my feelings for Yoongi Hyung, but everyone was sure of the emotional change in me over these two years. Still, I couldn't say anything but say I'm fine.
'' I'm fine Hyung.''
He shook his head negatively and took a deep breath. His gaze wandered over the blossoms of the cherry tree, which was slowly beginning to bloom. Even though he didn't say what he wanted to say, I understood.
"Jimin you know, you can always tell me."
Since he was a psychologist, he had been trying to reach me for two years and get me to tell him, but all these feelings were so mixed up in me that I kept them all in my mind because I didn't want them to be spread around. After I didn't answer for a considerable amount of time, he patted my shoulder with one hand. I saw that he had picked up his books again and was about to leave. I left him unanswered. Again. But, as always, he read my mind.
"Jimin-ah.. All those things you couldn't explain will one day be too heavy for you and I won't be able to help you anymore. Let me help you before this happens to you." He said and left.
I realized that I fell in love with Yoongi Hyung at a time when I didn't know exactly what it meant to fall in love with someone in life. Not knowing if this is a right or wrong action. I don't know how accurate it would be to describe love as an act, but after falling in love with him I thought about whether it could be right or wrong. Every thought greeted me with uncertainty.
''You're in love with a man, Jimin. You are in love with a man who knows you best.''
I kept repeating these two phrases to myself over and over. In my own mind, there was a case between my heart and logic in a courtroom. While my heart was arguing that it wasn't wrong to fall in love with a man, my logic argued the opposite, and my heart and logic didn't have equal weight in the scale of my mind's, and the tiredness of all this was descending on my soul like a darkness.
When Taehyung arrived with coffee in his hand, he immediately knew from the expression on my face that something was hurting me. He nervously took my hands as he placed the coffee cups on the empty side of the bench.
"Jimin-ah, what happened to you?"
Without even waiting for me to respond, he grabbed my shoulder with one hand and allowed me to rest my head on his shoulder, giving me small touches that he aimed to get me gain strength from.
"Namjoon Hyung was here."
After breathing heavily, he handed me one of the coffees he had brought.
"You know Namjoon Hyung wants to help you."
I knew. I was the one who knew this best. I was aware of what people around me were trying to do for me. But this awareness was not helping me to solve my problems. I didn't even know if it was possible for someone I fell in love with one-sidedly and obsessively to fall in love with a man, and I didn't want to ruin the good memory of all the years we lived.
"I know TaeTae, I'm always grateful to him. The fact that he sees me rather than ignores me is something valuable." I said.
As I took a sip of my coffee, I realized that Taehyung had ordered my favorite coffee as usual. In normal times, he would bicker with me and order the same as he drinks, but that day he did everything as I wished.
"You are not one to be ignored, Jimin. You never were."
I laughed out loud because the coffee he ordered had satisfied me. That meant I could make him do whatever I wanted. I took another sip of my coffee and turned towards him. It was funny to watch Taehyung's facial expressions change from moment to moment as he looked at me with my puppy eyes and smile, which I thought was the cutest on my face.
"Let's hang out together tonight."
He shook his head negatively. But he had a sly smile on his face.
"I know what you call 'hanging out' is putting on your chick pajamas and drinking until you get drunk at home, Jimin-ah."
Well, it wasn't a lie. Yet he had no right to underestimate my holy chick pajamas.
"Are you insulting my holy chick pajama nights?"
His smile got even bigger than I looked at him with a fake anger on my face.
"Never mind, I have a better plan in mind. We're going to Sakura tonight and having fun. The first drinks are on me."
I rolled my eyes and leaned back against the bench. He nudged me with his arm.
''Don't say no to this. We haven't done anything like this in a long time. This will be good for both of us. It's time to remind everyone who the 95s are. We will be Sakura's most attractive duo."
I folded my arms across my chest and puffed out my cheeks like a balloon as I exhaled a deep breath. I didn't feel ready to socialize.
Taehyung pinched both my cheeks with his fingers.
"You really look like a mochi when you do that and I'm fighting myself not to bite off your cheeks."
I quickly got up and grabbed my bag.
"Stop babbling, I'm late for the professor's class."
I was laughing and bickering with him. He was one of the most perfect men I've ever met in my life. I threw the paperboard cup with the finished coffee into the dustbin and stepped forward without saying a word to him. I knew he was waiting for an answer from me. After taking a few steps, I stopped and turned around. He was sitting on the bench watching me.
"Text me what time we should meet," I said. We were both laughing.
"Jimin-ah, your dress code is Alley Cat."
I laughed so hard that some people on campus turned their attention to me.
"And what are you, Mr. Know-it-all?"
He laughed louder than I did, and at that moment I realized that everyone on campus was looking at us, not just anyone.
''You guessed almost right. My dress code is fate reader.''
I didn't know exactly what awaited me that day. After saying goodbye to Taehyung, I was going from one lesson to the next almost without a break and I was pretty busy and tired. A few students had asked me to help them with their projects. I was the most favorite student of the professors, so the youngers asked me for help first when they needed it. I loved doing this up to a point, but there was a short time before I graduated, and I had a project ahead of me that had to be nearly perfect.
Most of my day was spent meeting with mentors for my project, constantly changing and improving something. I was sitting in a wheelchair around my gigantic project, which took up almost a quarter of the project room, moving from side to side like a machine to do new things from every angle.
I was thinking about how careful I should be while moving the tongs, which I hold in my hand to carefully place the smallest design pieces, over one of the most difficult parts of my model. That we will go to Sakura that evening; it had brought to light the memories that were already dancing in the depths of my mind to remind me of itself.
The most important of those memories was when I went to Sakura for the first time with Yoongi Hyung. Sakura: Apart from being the most elite and funniest bar in Korea, it was one of the most popular places for young people to enter only with costumes. The person who took me to that bar in my first semester of college was again Yoongi Hyung. He organized a lettuce costume for me and a Joseon Scholar costume for himself, and we laughed until the morning. We got so drunk after leaving the bar that it was the day, we got ourselves two different colors of hair dye from one of the 24-hour-open convenience stores and dyed each other's hair at Yoongi Hyung's house. We were drunk and laughing and young. After sitting on the marble of the bathroom and drying each other's hair, I looked at his mint green hair that matched his white skin like a puzzle piece, and he told me I looked like a tangerine.
Later, I was angry at Yoongi Hyung for making fun of me, not knowing that tangerine was his favorite fruit to eat. I was going to learn..
Our selfie photo, which is still saved on my phone and which I look at from time to time, was proof of how happy we look with mint green and orange hair. It wasn't right to give it an emotional meaning because at the time I didn't even know I was in love with him. We were just.. We were just like brothers who were very close to each other. That night when I knew I was in love with him, I realized that I had already had these feelings for him. All the time, I just loved him. With the memories flooding my mind, I took my phone and looked at that photo once again.
While I was looking at the photo, I dropped my phone on the floor when I saw the notification from Yoongi Hyung on the screen. We hadn't communicated for almost a week and that was a long time for us. Ever since we were children, we haven't been apart much, except to sleep at night in our parents' homes. Some nights we would go to each other's houses and sleep in the same bed. It would be the most embarrassing thing in the world for me to do all this after I realized I was in love with him.
Everything was easier when I didn't know that I used to have these feelings. Love was a very complex affair. As soon as I clicked on the message and read the first word, tears welled up in my eyes one by one. He liked to call me 'my sweet tangerine'. Those heartbreaking words that were easy for him to say but hard for me to deal with were the things I wanted to hear from him more and more each day. I wanted his love from him, when he didn't even know about it.
"My sweet tangerine.. I know you're sullen as I haven't been able to reach you for a long time. I am sorry. I am not in Italy these days. I had to come to Paris for a conference. I will call you as soon as possible. Hyung who loves you..''
His influence on me was so big that I quickly packed my things, left the campus, and caught the first bus home. The fact that he constantly took my mind hostage and that it was one-sided was something that exhausted my emotions.
At this rate, I knew I was going to lose my mind like Namjoon Hyung said.
Therefore, that night, as Taehyung said, I was going to distract myself in Sakura and suppress for one night the emotions that drove me crazy every day.
As a matter of fact, I did that. But the night ended as I never wanted.
I had looked at myself in the mirror for hours and had conversations with myself after putting on my costume. I told myself many times that I am not the person I was two years ago and that I can deal with these feelings, that love is not a sad thing and that there are all kinds of love in the world and that I can feed on those loves to soothe my soul. In fact, all I needed at that moment was to lie on my mother's knees and say, 'your son is in love with a man'. In return, I dreamed of my mother stroking my hair and jokingly getting angry at him for making my heart beat so fast.
Even in my dreams, I couldn't say that the man I fell in love with was Yoongi Hyung. Because our closeness lasted so many years that even our families became like one family with each other.
When Taehyung and I met in front of Sakura, we both looked at each other. We were not the only ones looking at us, we moved forward with the awareness that all eyes were on us as we passed through a large crowd of young people, some from our campus and some from other campuses, who flocked to Sakura.
"I admit, you look very wild, Park." He whispered.
I looked at him from head to toe and how perfect he looked.
''You look so dazzling, Kim. Don't cause me any trouble tonight...''
After we both laughed, we entered Sakura with beautiful music playing and reminding me of Yoongi Hyung with everything. Taehyung pointed towards the table he had reserved for us, and with one hand ordered one of his usual drinks from the bartender in the Kumamon costume at the bar. I almost cried when even Kumamon reminded me of Yoongi Hyung.
After our drink order came, I understood the signals that the night would be long after Taehyung ordered a bottle of Hennessy. We drank, had fun and danced. When the music got heavier and the dance floor was left to the costumed lovers only and they were romanticizing in slow dance mode, we returned to our table and watched the crowd in front of us.
Taehyung sipped his drink while watching the crowd in front of him. He was talking to me without looking at me, and it made our small-talk more comfortable.
"I would never want to give you hope that won't come true, you know. Your sadness is not the last thing I want in this world."
He was serious. The drink I was about to drink hung in the air before it touched my lips.
"What does that mean?"
He didn't know where to put his hands and was adjusting his sitting position.
"I... I haven't known you as long as Yoongi Hyung, but after him, I'm the person who knows you best, Jimin-ah."
After downing down his drink, he looked into my eyes. I confirmed him with a nod. He warned me not to interrupt him and to listen until the end. Afterwards he didn't even look at me once. I even thought that as a friend, I was giving him a hard time and making him feel depressed.
"You've been thinking about him every day for two years, crying for him and pulling yourself to the bottom. Essentially, nothing has changed between you and him. I am aware of your fears. If you tell him about your feelings, you think that there is a possibility that this strong bond between the two of you may not continue as before."
At that moment, I understood better why he couldn't look me in the eyes because everything he said was stabbing into my body like arrows and hurting me. I realized that my eyes were watering when my gaze on my glass on the table became blurred. He hated to see me cry. I even held my breath because I didn't want to sob and lose myself in front of everyone.
"I can't tell you what to do or not do because I can't go through all the emotions you're going through and feel you, but I see you Jimin. If you love him so much that you hurt yourself, you should finally tell him. Isn't it worth a try?''
When all the adrenaline waiting inside me like an extinct volcano erupted, I ran out of Sakura, not even caring who would see my tears, and ran madly through the alleys in the dark of the night. Without knowing where I'm going...
My eyes were swollen from crying and my eye makeup was ruined. I was sweaty from running and my hair was messy. When I stopped to catch my breath, I lifted my head to the sky and looked at the full moon shining right above me. I took a deep breath, I thought it would be enough for my lungs. However, every breath was sinking into my chest. I bent down, put my hands on my knees and tried to gain strength from myself. At that moment, I realized that I had arrived in front of Yoongi Hyung's parents' house. My feet had dragged me here and I didn't even realize it. I was crying.
It was 3:00 in the morning.
There was no other place I wanted to go at that moment. I was tired. I knocked on the door, not knowing how I would be greeted. I was crying. When Yoongi Hyung's mother opened the door in her dressing gown, she had an expression on her face as if she knew that the person she was expecting to see was me. She wasn't surprised at all, but she was worried about me.
"Jimin-ah my beautiful son. What happened to you? You are shaking.''
I even realized that I was trembling after she told me, and my crying became even more intense. It was like I couldn't say anything. My voice was shaking, I was shaking. I was sure that the tears that fell from my eyes were trembling even where they fell. She was looking at me with worried eyes and I could only wish one thing from her.
'' Can i... Can I sleep in Yoongi Hyung's bed tonight?"
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That selfie that Jimin still has saved on his phone.
Sakura's popular 95s.
Psychologist Namjoon
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