The shooting had started a bit later than the schedule, taking away more time from the fixed schedule with its monopoly sluggish pace.
I sat with a blank face, splaying my sight far away from the throng of staff towards outside rush. The flight was tiring yesterday, on that weather had been adverse since the morning. No part of the sun was visible. The lustrous foreign but not foreign for me city appeared forlorn even with herds of busy people far away gathering on the street. A ringing voice inside my head had kept on saying - I am home, I am home. At the end of this ringing, I found out, it had turned into a question - am I home?
My swerving eyes met Jimin's for a moment. Not a second of contact had it been before his expression stiffened, ears palely ruddied, and eyes shifted in light's speed back to the stylist who was fixing his bangs at their places on his forehead.
I wanted to sigh, get rid of the returning cloudy thoughts from conjuring in my head. Both of us had been avoiding each other since that day, Jimin mostly. He would walk two meters ahead of me, eyes would be either behind sunglasses or staring at the void yonder. I couldn't blame him, neither could I blame myself. He was susceptible to what he felt, and I was no one to snatch his emotions away from him. Neither could I restrict him because I wasn't in a very stable situation myself in order to guide others. So, there we were, a ball of mess and all I could wish for was to time pass away and take these undulating emotions away. I was good at feigning and acting with indifference. He was good at everything, but this one thing?
"Noona!" Jungkook exclaimed far away from the studio. One part of his individual photoshoot had just ended, another about to start. He picked up a water bottle from the side, gulping half down as he came walking towards me.
"Can I sit here?"
I slid the fan closer to him, moving back to leave off some more space for him to sit. "When will we be heading for the second commercial shoot?" He asked.
"Can't tell yet." Amidst the staff, I felt conscious so I looked back at Jimin, finding his gaze eerily fixed on me again, an eyebrow of curiosity curved upward, turning away like before in a trice. I let out the sigh this time.
Guess he wasn't indeed good at this one thing.
"Only Jin, Yoongi, and Hoseok's part of the shoot got completed. This should approximately end before evening. If not, we can't proceed with the next shoot at night, we'll have to postpone it until tomorrow."
"That's bad." Despite saying that, his face was glowing like a hundred-watt bulb instead. I tittered, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how sad will you be?"
"Hmm, let's see, 2?"
I made a shocked face, "Yikes, that's a lot."
"What are you guys talking about?" Jin chimed in the midst, "Can I join?"
"Sure." I said, "I am guessing y'all have plans to go somewhere after this, don't you?"
Jungkook showed off his toothy smile, "I'm accompanying Namjoon hyung. He said he wants to visit the regional art museum here. And to uttermost surprise, this is the first time Yoongi hyung has agreed to go with us."
"Yoongi too?" My eyebrow arched with the information, "That's...interesting."
"He usually goes with locking himself in the hotel room with his work or just sleeps in. This time it took requests, but he finally agreed on the hangout, for real."
"Jin, you're going too?"
"Nah, too tired for this. I'mma sleep in today."
"Oh. I hope y'all have fun." If they were actually going to visit some museums...
"Why don't you come with us? It's your native country, after all. You will know the streets more than anyone else."
Oh? So, they were indeed visiting museums? "I'm sorry I'll pass. I have somewhere to go after the end of the shoots. Also, it's been a long since the last time I visited my country. The guide's efficient enough to show you around here wherever you like."
"Okay. When's the last time you've come back here?"
"Years. I left for Korea after my high school, after that, I never came back to visit."
"Must feel great now coming back after all these years," Jin added.
"...Yeah..." I couldn't ascertain how great it felt, my mind settled with the convolution as I questioned it. Things have changed a lot around here, the streets have developed, there were more stores around than it used to be before. In one glance, it would appear to me as the same land I had left behind, when I blinked once and opened my eyes again, the color would change. A pushed tint of artificial yellow over the black I held as its color in my mind, now would appear an unappealing tone settling for the rest of the gathering of memories. I wanted to look at it as a happy place but there was a streamline of bad memories always coming back to this.
And still, I resisted to be happy, find it happy. So I took my first step.
"Jungkook-ssi!" He bolted up at the call of his name. "I'll go, noona. Save the seat for me when I come back." Off he ran back to the studio. I picked up my phone, finding the messages I was looking forward to, piling on the notification bar.
Great! It's been so long since we've met!
I can't wait for this get-together
Welcome back Y/N
"Can I ask something, Y/N?"
I averted my eyes to Jin, "Yeah, sure. What is it?"
"I don't wanna intervene anywhere but, has something gone off between you and Jimin?" His question threw me back to the square one turbulence. Even others had started to notice now, that was bad.
"No, umm...why are you asking that?"
"He's been acting odd and gone quiet. And judging from how you two have been acting around each other lately, I think I'm not wrong if I say something happened between you two."
"Well..." I staggered, not knowing what to say. He perhaps took a hint from my behavior, deciding to retreat the question.
"I won't get between you two, it's okay if you don't wanna say. I've just been worried about him. He barely opens up, none of us can approach him for that."
I stayed silent for a moment, vacillating. Jin was always the reliable kind, but how much could I share with him? Or how much did I even want to share?
"Even though I don't know what might've happened, I can guess you are the one with the best actions," He said, "Jimin is one of the smart ones in our group I will admit that, but one thing about him is that he puts his heart too much into everything. It only recoils back bad to him."
My eyes widened. How much had he known? "You knew that..."
"I took a guess. The day when he brought you to the dorm to keep you safe. After that, before that. It's not too hard to get a grasp of what was up, from the way Jimin is acting. I can see that I'm not entirely wrong." He sighed lowly, "Did he confess?"
"Umm...actually-" I hesitated.
"It's okay, you don't have to tell me if it's uncomfortable for you. Just know that I entrust you to this situation. If there's anything you're facing a problem with, I'm all ears. You can share whatever you want, if I can't solve, I will to the least, listen."
"You know...umm...I do actually want to ask you- there's something I...I don't know, am not sure how to handle."
"Go on."
I took my time to gather myself before saying, still not sure if I sounded alright, if I should really be approaching him with it. His visage had a telling, providing an aura of assurance, urging others to open up and he would, really, listen.
"How would you make someone understand that the thing that they want is not good for either of them?"
"That's very complex in a sense," Jin said, "And if the person is Jimin, I can only say so much." I sighed in return.
"At least you understand the consequences. Had I been aware of consequences of situations myself, maybe...maybe," He stopped, looking down at his fingers fiddling on his thighs, ending with a deep breath. I waited if he wanted to continue and fill up his sentence. He added,
"There was...this one girl who I had been in love with."
I shifted when he said that. Flashback to the time when he was drunk, crying hallucinating me as his lover came back to my mind. Never I knew he would like to share this with me in a sane state. What was the name of that girl again? Momoka Saito?
"I called her Momo. We had been together for about three years. Until..." He halted.
"You guys...broke up?"
"She was killed."
Even though I knew all about it, his gloomed tone gave me a jolt at the revelation.
"...If only I was aware our relationship was no good and would only bring us nothing but momentum of ordeals, maybe, I don't know, but a part of me says maybe she could've been alive now, at least-"
"Wh-how? I"m sorry I didn't wanna ask that-" Despite true empathy involved, I had to still carry on the acting of oblivion.
"It's okay." He smiled sadly, "It doesn't hurt like before."
"Even I wanna know," He added, "why would someone kill her? She never even talked back to anyone, let alone cause someone any problem. Then why would someone go so far to kill her?"
He added, "Something tells me I might be one of the reasons behind this. Our relationship was. I wanna know who did it, why did it, and then-"
What then? I asked inside. He kept it blank, so I had to verbally ask.
"What would you do then?"
He kept silent for a long while, a somber night of smile creeping up onto his face, "I don't know. I really don't. It's like all my life I've been living onto this question mark. There was a plan for my life when she was alive, now that she's not, I'm still hunting forward with the presence of her absence. Once when that'll be gone as well, I-" He had to stop as his voice had started to crack.
I didn't know how to console him, instead, I just stared at him with sympathetic eyes. It was rare to see him break down. Not a bit of his porcelain expression ever fluctuated, but now with his real side on, he looked different. Someone who lost his love, left his home, lived with runaways and homeless, joined a hostel to survive, to now this - able to live a life of an idol with comfort on the outside but was knotted to the world of perpetrators. And I knew there was a reason why. My hate would've occurred otherwise. Instead, a pang of pain gouged my heart. Why did it have to be like this with him?
"I'm sorry I didn't want to include my shitty life story into this. It just...came out like that." He tried to ease it up with a forced smile, "That's why I can't rely entirely on Jimin. I know his ilk, and I don't want him to end up like me even the least bit. I see my past and his future, and you..." He took a pause, "That's why I trust you. Do whatever you think is right even if it hurts him in the process." He said, "at least...getting hurt anywhere but at the end is better than...you know..."
"I get you. Don't worry about it."
"Good. I uh- I think I'm gonna go check on Namjoon a bit now, uh, talk to you later?" He stood up, to me he appeared to be in discomfort for instinctively revealing about himself and now wanting to escape.
"Sure," I said.
>>>
As the shooting packed up for the day, I gathered up my stuff, walking ahead of others to hit the street first. The evening was a shade darker than the night itself, with the presence of gargantuan fluff of grey clouds. The air smelled sound with petrichor, bringing my mind back to the days of pretty blue and grey where the rain was the reason for my smile. It still now was. Finally, it had started to feel like home. I gripped on my umbrella, a smile pearling on my face, irrespective of the anticipation with the apprehension of the meet.
I was home.
Welcome home.
Time to revive my past.