“I shouted but turned away from my conscience
I feel the sharp reality more every day
There’s red blood from being torn apart by reality”
-Boy meets evil
My life seems rather like a dream to me. I will be promoted at work. I am in love with an Idol. How can this be my life? I was so ordinary. Just a random girl, spending her boring life going to school daily and reading books at home. I never intended to become something special in this world, but with Tae by my side, I am something special. I am the girl who is ‘just a friend’ of him to the world but to his friends and family I am known as the love of his life. I cannot believe it myself but it seems to be my dreamlike reality.
Today we fly to Tokyo together. Normally I have 2 days left until the seminar starts but he wanted me to fly with them so I can spend a few days with him until I have to work the whole day. He wants us to spend as much time as possible before we tell the world about our relationship. He is afraid that there will be no time to spend alone anymore after we release our secret. Namjoon said that every TV show wants to interview me, the one who stole Kim Taehyung’s heart. They want to know everything about me, my past, my future, my present. They want to know how we got to know each other and they want to know why he chose exactly me and how my life changed since I started dating an Idol. So many details about my life that even I cannot answer.
“Is everything alright, Jagiya?” He always worries about me and he can read my face like no one else can, so he can say when I am worrying about something. “I just think a lot since we decided to go public soon. I am not afraid of it. But I am afraid I cannot get comfortable with the idea of everyone knowing everything about me.”
“I will be there to comfort you. You don’t have to show them everything about you, just the things you want. We will make it, Jagiya. We will be together. Always.” Again only he is able to calm me down. He takes my hand and squishes it.
I look out of the window, down to the ground. Everything seems so small from up here. All the worries down there are small. Just as small as me. I am just a small speck of dust within the galaxy. I mean nothing to this world down there. But my boyfriend does. He means a lot to a lot of people. Him being hurt would affect a whole generation out there. I could die and only a few people would care and as soon as we release our relationship there are a lot of people who would be happy to see me dying. I will be hated by a whole generation who loves my boyfriend.
I look over to Tae again. He is observing me with his eyes. “You are still worrying. What can I do to stop this?” He has those eyes you need to love. The eyes of a guilty puppy that hopes he doesn’t get punished. “Stop putting the weight on your shoulders, Tae. Everything that will happen won’t be your fault. And maybe, all of my worries are just worries. No one knows if they will be our reality. I hope they are not.”
“I want you to smile” He says and cups my left cheek with his right hand, holding my hands with the left one without any intention of letting go of it. “Saranghae, Jagiya.” His glace is so straight that I get goosebumps. “I love you too, Jagiya.” Right after I finished my sentence he slowly moves closer and starts kissing me. His kisses are always so gentle but passionate.
Letting go of the kiss, he looks into my eyes again. “Maybe you just need some rest.” He symbolizes me to rest my head on his shoulder. To sit more comfortable, I lay my legs on is lab and let my feet block the way next to his seat. I fall asleep, relaxing a bit more with every breath he takes.
As I wake up I find myself in Tae’s arms. He hasn’t woken me up to leave the plane, he carried me out there. “Sorry. I wasn’t careful enough and your feet hit the wall and you woke up. I didn’t want to wake you up. You looked so peaceful.” What have I done in my life to deserve this angel? “It is OK. I haven’t asked you to carry me so don’t worry. Will you let me down now?” I look at him and he shakes his head. “I don’t want to but I need to. There are a lot of fans waiting outside. You will go through another exit.” Yes, the hide game again. When they see me with him the rumors are getting on and we want them to stop, although they are true. “And you will pick me up there?” I look at him and can see the sorrow of these situations in his eyes. “Yes we will pick you up there.”
He lets me down, kisses me good-bye and a security guard guides me to another exit. “So, you are his girlfriend?” He asks. What should I answer? I don’t know if he has a daughter who likes BTS so maybe he would tell her. But the way we said good-bye shows how close we are. “You can call it like this.” We will go public soon anyway, so why should I lie to him when it was that obvious?
My phone starts vibrating again. One good thing about the flight was that I had no internet. The hate of this fandom couldn’t reach me up there. But now I can again. I take my phone out of my pocket and cannot believe what I see. Pictures of us in the plane, picture of us in the airport. Someone was following us. The pictures show us kissing. They finally got their prove that I am not “Just a friend”. I stopped walking and the guard turned around. “Everything OK, Miss Lia?” Of course not. I couldn’t speak, there was something deep inside me that just wanted to shout. I knew this would happen the next days but I wasn’t ready for this at the moment.
I looked at the security guard and tried to say that everything is OK but I couldn’t. Instead I started to cry. “I want Tae here. Right now.” He came back to me and looked at my phone. First he couldn’t understand why I react so awful to pictures of us but then it seems like he read what they say about it and he understood the situation.
“Let’s go fast then.” He says but I cannot move. I just stand there looking straight along the floor, crying. He takes my hand and pulls me until we reach the exit. “You wait here, I don’t know who is out there. I will take a look and as soon as I see them, I will come and get you.” He doesn’t know who is out there? Who could be out there? Armys waiting for me to kill me? He opens the door slowly and steps out, leave me behind, alone.
“Finally you are alone. No one is here to save you now.” Someone says from behind me. It is a female voice and I have this bad feeling that I know her but I am too afraid to turn around. “I waited for this moment a few days now. As soon as you told me your fake story about you and him I knew it is fake. Do you really think I am that stupid?” Of course she is not and I am well known to who it is now. I turned around and look right into her eyes which look at me with a piercing look. “I knew you wouldn’t understand it.”
“Maybe I would have understood it if you told me the truth, Syra! I was your boss! I was your roommate! We were friends back then and you dumped me for him! You dumped me for one of my biases. A friend wouldn’t do this. And you being promoted as soon as you came back from Germany. It was so disgusting. You did like nothing for this agency but still Mister Lee promoted you because you look better than me and you have got a special rank in society because of you being ‘friends’ with an Idol. And that not being enough, you got my spot at the seminar! It should be me who is here to get this promotion, not you!”
“I didn’t know you feel like this, Amy.” I did but I am afraid of her actions right now. After following me here I have this feeling like she is capable of everything. “You just knew too good how I felt. I showed it to you every day but you just didn’t care. You just cared about him, so I needed to take my revenge. I followed you two nearly everywhere to take pictures of you, but your luck I couldn’t take one of you two kissing.”
“But today you were able to get such a picture. And you immediately posted as we landed here.”
“Wow. You aren’t as stupid as I thought you were.” She says and grabs behind her back, pulling out a gun and points at me. “Who will save you now, Jagiya?” She says. I can feel my heart beating faster. This is it. This is how I die. But I am not afraid of dying, I am afraid to leave him alone. I cannot stand the thought of him being hurt, I cannot stand the picture in my thoughts where he stands in front of my grave just like I stood in front of my mother’s. Crying because he wasn’t there to prevent it.
“I am here to save her.” I hear a voice from behind but before I was able to turn around to look who it was he took my arm and pushed me behind him. It was the security guard. “I cannot afford you getting hurt or even killed.” He says to me without looking away from Amy and he pulls out his gun. “The van is right behind this exit. You just need to run out and you are with them.” I really wanted to go out there, go to Tae, but I couldn’t let him here alone with this freak. “Syra, please just go out there. I said to them that I will come here and get you and when you don’t go now they may think something has happened to you and I don’t want to worry them more than they already are.”
“Thank you. Thank you for saving my life. One day I will come back and will pay it back to you. I don’t know how but you haven’t done this for nothing.” I say and turn around to leave this airport, just then I hear a shot. I turned around again and he was laying there on the ground. He died, he died for me. I just stand there looking at his dead body and cannot believe what just happened.
Just then the door opens and Tae’s bodyguard is standing there. “What happened?” He asks but then he follows my eyes and sees the guard. He pushes me out of the door and closes it behind him. He inside. I was shocked. I just saw a man getting killed because of me. “Syra, is everything alright?” Tae runs up to me and stands before me, looking into my eyes. “Are you hurt?”
“N…No. I… I… I am OK. I am not hurt. At least not my body.” I say, still looking at the door. “What happened in there?” I couldn’t answer this, because I don’t know it myself. I rather couldn’t believe it. I hear shouts from in there. It seems like his bodyguard called a few security guards and they try to take her down. Tears are filling my eyes. All this is happening just because of me.
“Everything is my fault. He is dead because of me. If I wouldn’t exist, he would still be alive.” I finally look in Tae’s eyes which are also filled with tears. Just then his bodyguard joins us. “We need to leave. Now. We need to get you to the hotel as fast as possible and we need to rise the security guideline for the upcoming concert. I will tell you wat happened as soon as we arrive in the hotel.” He says and pulls us to the van.
The whole ride to the hotel, nobody dares to say a single word. Everyone is just staring somewhere, imagining what could have happened and what happened. I am quaking with fear. I never was that near to death. Tae doesn’t touch me, he tried to as we started our ride but he let go of the touch as he realized I am uncomfortable with it. At this moment, I don’t want anyone to touch me. I just want to be on my own and cry until I feel better.
“We won’t stop in front of the hotel to greet the fans. We will use the back entrance and get you to your rooms immediately. We cannot risk anyone of you getting hurt. We will take care of this situation and you guys please just rest. We need to hide it from the fans. It would just worry them.” Sejin says. I would have never thought that being a celebrity means having that much secrets. “Don’t worry about your concert tomorrow. Everything will be alright.”
“Is there any room where I can spend some time alone? I… I need some time for myself right now.” I ask him and he looks shocked by my words. “Of course. Do you want your own room?”
“No. I don’t want to sleep alone. I want to sleep next to Tae, but I need some minutes alone right now or I will go insane.” A small laugher escapes Yoongi’s mouth. “I know this feeling, Syra.” He told me a lot about his past in the few months I know him. He realized that Tae really trusts me so he wanted to do the same and to show me that I belong to them now.
“Ah. I understand now. Of course. Do you need anything? Food? Drinks?”
“No. I am fine. I just want someone to guard the door. I don’t want anyone to enter it, I will come out as soon as I want to talk to anyone.”
“Of course.”
“And maybe a guitar. I need to do something to calm myself down” As soon as I say these word everyone looks at me. I never mentioned that I play the guitar and everyone is surprised by it. “Don’t worry. I will show you some of my songs later.” And with this sentence their eyes get even bigger. Is it something strange that I play guitar and write my own songs?
“OK. A bodyguard and a guitar.” Sejin repeats and leaves the car. “Follow me.” As I tried to leave it to, Tae holds me back. “I love you. I will always do.” He whispers. I can say by looking in his eyes that he is afraid that I will leave him. He wants to comfort me right now, but there are some moments when you need to be alone. When you need to care about yourself a few minutes. “I love you too, Tae. I will never leave your side, so please stop worrying. I am not dead. I am right in front of you right now. Please don’t worry about me and use this minutes to clear your mind. You also need some rest and as soon as I feel better, I will come to you.” I say and kiss him. He doesn’t want to let go of the kiss and lays his arms around my waist. It isn’t like the other kisses we shared. This kiss was full of pain. Pain we both shared and we both wanted to take the pain away from each other but it isn’t that easy when we feel the same pain.
After a few minutes he lets go of our kiss. “Will you sleep next to me tonight?”
“Of course I will. See you later guys.” I give them one last glance and leave. It hurts leaving him like this but I need this right now. Sejin guides me to my room and leaves without a word. It is a simple room with a single bed, a TV and a small bathroom. On the bed is a guitar.
I haven’t played it for years but as I take it it feels like nothing changed. It feels like the last time I played was yesterday and I play my song without even realizing it. I also start singing it quietly. It was a song I wrote after the first time my father abused me. It helped me to deal with the pain it caused.
I sat there for hours just playing the guitar until my fingers started to hurt. ‘Should I go to Tae now?’ 5 hours passed since I last saw him. He has to be dying of curiosity of how I feel. To my surprise, I see his face as soon as I open the door. He is sitting across the floor in front of it. “How long are you sitting there?”
“Since you started playing.” He sat there all these time, just listening to it? “Have you heard me sing?” I hope he didn’t because I don’t like my voice. “Yes I did. And I love your voice, Syra. It is so clear and it sounds like an angel is singing. Why haven’t you showed me this side before?”
“I was afraid to.” He stands up and comes over to me. “Will you come with me again? To our room? Tomorrow will be a long and hard day for us and I need to be fit since it is the first time you see me perform.” I nearly forgot about their concert tomorrow. By now I am sure all of them know my face and tomorrow I should sit next to some of them? What if they recognize me? “Don’t worry, you will get a VIP ticket.”
“OK. Then let’s go to sleep.” With this he takes me and throws me over his shoulder. “Tae! Oh my god! What are you doing?”
“Taking with me what is mine.” I started laughing. I will never be able to be sad around this man.