You run into Lee Know (quite literally) and learn what friendship is about.
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You had spent your teenage years building up a fortress. Every single day after school, you went into your room and pulled out another brick. You made sure it was strong and sturdy. You took your time slathering those bricks with cement and placing them together. Day by day, brick by brick, you had created yourself a prison. You had trapped yourself inside without a door.
Isolating yourself from the world was reckless and you knew it. The first foundation of a solid relationship is communication and the second is trust, but you had trusted far too much. Too lenient, too forgiving, too many second chances which turned to thirds and fourths and suddenly there were eighths.
It was easier to make excuses and allow people to walk all over you. It's easy to fall into a pile of shattered glass, but it's harder to pull the pieces back out. The shards are too small. It stings. It aches. The glass scrapes along the bone. The tweezers hurt too much. Let the skin regrow over them no matter how much it'll internally hurt.
You had lived your childhood with your head in the clouds. Believing that people wouldn't take advantage of your kindness because wasn't that how everyone was? Wasn't everyone sweet? Didn't everyone have empathy?
You had been told you were gullible, but you never understood it until you got older. Gullible. Naive. Ignorant. An idiotic impressionable fool who held too much empathy inside them. The world was never meant for so much altruism.
You had given and given and given. No matter how tired you were, you offered your advice. You offered compassion. You spent so many nights staying up late reassuring your friends that their problems would be okay. Everything would be fine.
With your parents dumping their problems onto you, it only added to the weight on your shoulders. Parents. Friends. School. While searching for the answers for everyone else, you never had time for yourself. You pushed your own problems off to the side.
You couldn't bring them up now. No way. Not when everyone else was already dealing with other issues. What kind of asshole adds to other people's problems? You couldn't do that to them. You wouldn't.
That's how it went until you crumbled. Your glass shoulders had shattered. Your legs collapsed. Exhaustion hung over you like a storm cloud. You can give and give and give, but it will eventually catch up to you. The human body was only made for so much.
Something inside of you had broken along the way. You created your walls and that was your home. You pushed people away. You stopped coming out of your room. As much as you had once loved people, it was so much easier to be alone.
It felt better to drown in your problems by yourself. At least, you weren't hurting anyone this way. You could suffer alone and nobody else would be hurt besides yourself. It didn't feel right going to people and taking up so much space. Being vulnerable with people was something you could never seem to grasp.
You turned inward on yourself. Even after you finished school, you spent your days pacing around in that brick wall that you built. Studying every brick and trying to figure out how to get out. How could you face the world when you had been closed off for so long?
You had met Lee Know by accident. He had quite literally bumped into you and knocked you to the ground while in a rush to get to the JYP building. He had apologized non-stop and offered to disinfect and bandage your scraped palms.
You were about to turn down his offer until you had a change of heart. It had been years since you had distanced yourself from past friendships and let them die. You had never known how to befriend someone, but now was your chance.
You followed him into the JYP building and let him lead you to an office. He pulled out his phone to send a text to Chan announcing that he'd be late to a recording session and that's when you saw his lockscreen with his cats.
The moment you brought it up, his whole face lit up. The conversation shifted to the three cats. His warm brown eyes twinkled with delight. He spoke softly while he disinfected and bandaged your hands. Once he was finished, he led you back towards the entrance.
He apologized for having to leave so soon, but he had to go to work. He gave you his number and insisted that if you texted him, the two of you could make plans and he'd buy you a coffee to make up for it.
It took you a few days to finally work up the courage to text him. When you agreed on a time and a date, you showed up at the coffee shop the day of. You had arrived twenty minutes early, but he was already sitting at an empty table waiting.
He grinned upon seeing you and made a joke about how desperate you must have been to see him again for showing up so early. You had rolled your eyes and told him to get over his pride.
You had been away from people for so long that you had forgotten how to have proper conversations. You often used sarcasm and said things that some people considered to be rude. You were worried that you had offended him, but he had only laughed at your remark.
As the two of you went up to the counter to order drinks, your playful banter had only continued. Your conversations didn't feel forced. Your cold remarks had been returned with Lee Know's own version. You weren't uncomfortable, you were thrilled.
You didn't know his story and you didn't know his past, but he was so much like you that it hurt. The two of you started hanging out more and more. Your sarcasm and playful comments were continuously met with his own, but you could easily have serious conversations when you needed to.
At one point, you had been having an awful day. You woke up late for work and someone backed into your car while you were on the way there. When you finally arrived, it was announced that your favorite co-worker was transferring jobs to another company building.
The company internet, which all of you needed, had gone out for a few hours. Your boss yelled at you for something that wasn't your fault. The list kept growing and growing and then you met up for coffee with Lee Know.
When he joked that you looked like a raccoon with your eye bags, tears filled your eyes. He was right, you hadn't been sleeping well lately. Your depression had spiked back up because of the cold weather and you felt so miserable. No matter how much sleep you got, it never seemed to be enough.
He was expecting to receive a snide remark, but when he saw tears in your eyes, his face fell. He apologized instantly, but you shook your head. Blinking rapidly, you forced the tears back. You apologized for ruining the atmosphere and his heart broke.
"Why are you apologizing?"
"Because this is supposed to be a stress-free time period. I'm not supposed to be crying and ruining it." You wiped a stray tear away with the side of your finger.
"You're not ruining anything by crying. Why are you crying anyway? What's wrong? We should talk about it."
You frantically shook your head and insisted that it was nothing. You hadn't been sleeping very well, but you refused to tell him anymore. The conversation went to his cats and then he began talking about his day at work.
You pushed your problems down. Your thumb ran across the lid of your coffee cup as you listened. You nodded and commented here and there. He had even gotten you to laugh.
He finished by taking a sip of coffee and then gestured towards you. "Okay, now it's your turn. What did you do today? How did your day go?"
You shrugged, "I went to work. It was just like every other day. I went to work and came home."
"What did you have for breakfast?"
"Nothing."
"Why?"
"I didn't have time because I was running late."
"Oh, so you were late to work? Why? Did your boss get mad?"
You continued to vaguely answer his questions, but you hadn't realized that he was slowly figuring out why you had cried at his comment. You did have a shitty day and his innocent comment had been the final nail in the coffin.
"You know, when two people are in a friendship, the relationship is fifty-fifty. I tell you my problems, you tell me yours. We give each other advice. We make each other laugh, but we're also there when one of us is struggling."
Your gaze shifted down to your coffee cup, "I know."
"So why do you find it hard to open up to me? I want to hear about your days. I like hearing about the things you do. No matter how boring, I like to know about it."
You shrugged, "I don't like bothering people."
"Do you like hearing about what I do?"
"Of course."
"Then why is it different when you do it?"
You shrugged again not wanting to dive into the topic deeper and began playing with your fingers. It was a topic that you didn't want to talk about. Sensing this, he pulled out his phone to cheer you up.
"Let me show you this new photo of my cats that I took this past weekend."
You brightened up and quickly picked your head up to coo over his cats. You had always been a fan of animals, but cats had always been your favorite. Growing up, you often had them as pets.
Eventually, the two of you left the coffee place and headed home. You continued to regularly meet up for coffee. Every time you talked, it slowly became easier and easier to open up. You had finally met someone who understood.
You didn't have to be vulnerable in front of people, but having just one person to open up and relate to made it far easier to deal with life. Over time, your relationship became fully fifty-fifty. You talked about things and he talked about things. The two of you bickered like an old married couple.
Eventually, he finally let you meet his band, they didn't understand how the two of you did it. Lee Know would complain about something and you'd tease him for it. He'd threaten to fight you and you'd dare him to do it.
The first time you met them, you had gotten into a pillow fight that left the two of you giggling and breathless while everyone else was bewildered. Lee Know quickly turned the pillow to Changbin to break the ice. He ripped it away and started beating him back.
Lee Know stole your pillow and continued to fight Changbin. Wanting to join in on the fun, Chan grabbed his pillow from his room and thwacked Lee Know on the back of the head. The death glare that Lee Know gave him caused you to laugh.
That's when his attention had turned to you. Chan vowed to save you and soon everyone had pillows. Hyunjin shrieked with his hands up in the air as Felix chased him around the couch. I.N was on the floor with his hands over his head as Seungmin beat his head relentlessly.
Han had ended up on the back of Changbin's shoulders. Changbin had his arms tightened around Han's legs and Han raised two pillows above his head. The two of them were after Chan. Han threw one right after another which caused Chan to slip and stumble into Seungmin.
"Get yourself a cane, old man."
The words directed at Chan had caused enough of a distraction that I.N could get up. He slammed his pillow into the front of Seungmin's face which caused him to yelp in shock. Felix screamed after Hyunjin had finally turned around to face him and began chasing him back.
Lee Know's eyes darted around wildly until they locked on you. He flew over towards you and started beating on you. Tired and breathless, you fell onto the ground laughing while he beat your torso.
After a while, he dropped himself to the ground, laid his pillow on your stomach and laid down. "Alright, that's enough of that, I'm tired."
"Me too!" Hyunjin sighed and plopped down onto Minho's thigh.
He shot Hyunjin a glare, but dropped it when Felix curled up on his other leg. Soon they were all gathered around you. Everyone struggled to catch their breaths as sweat dripped down their faces. You let your eyes close at the quiet conversations around you.
A friendship is fifty-fifty. Sure, it can be terrifying opening up and being vulnerable. It's hard to break out of the walls you've placed around yourself, but having a friend is important.
Who knows. Maybe you might find someone who is just like you. Maybe taking a chance is the bravest thing you can do for yourself. You never know what adventures you might experience when you step out of your room and begin to break down your walls.