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JieMi
His mind was consumed with thoughts of Amber.
They swirled in his head in a constant never-ending cycle. When he was at work, no longer preoccupied with music, his thoughts would flicker to his soulmate. He would wonder whether she was thinking about him, wonder about what she was doing. And then his thoughts would move to dreams of her sounds, her touch, her skin, her scent. And the soft bulge in his pants would harden almost immediately, begging to spill with liquid love.
When his natural biological reactions occurred during an interview, panic would fill his heaving chest. Horror consumed him when it happened during a dance practice with their choreographer. Dismay would eat at his heart when it occurred minutes before a stage.
His brothers understood his pain, and sure Sieon could laugh his head off at his problems. But JieMi could easily turn the teases back on him just minutes later, when he spotted the asshole with a raging boner. It was just so damn easy to rile them all up when it came to their soulmate. And their designer had to take hard-ons into account when picking out their outfits.
Bliss was a constant in their family, and while the darkness lingered in his head, JieMi found his mind healing overtime. There were days in the beginning when he would feel as if the world had collapsed and negativity was all he could be despite everything he had. But his family knew to never convince but to listen. It was so different with Ha-Eun, who would put down his feelings with an angry stomp of her boot over his heart.
"It hurts," he'd tried to verbalise his clinical depression to Ha-Eun on one of his bad days.
He'd not wanted to visit but he had to quell her suspicions, had to act as if everything between them was normal. It'd been a bad day for him, one he longed to sleep away, but he'd gone to her, irritation dark on his face and sadness drenching his frame.
"It just hurts to breathe."
She'd only given him a look, a horrid frown that turned his insides cold. "You're fortunate, you know? You're not like the starving children in a third world country." She'd checked her nails, body language screaming dismissal. "You're actually, a millionaire with more fans than me. You're set for life, you have people who love you, and you'll have a child soon. You've got everything you wanted." Her voice turned ugly the more she spoke, a sound akin to a grunt. "How can you be sad?"
Her words angered him because it seemed to crush his feelings. Feelings that he now knew, from the careful words of his therapist and the coaxing from his family were valid and should be respected. It pushed him to speak more than he usually did. It pushed him to explain, to try to see if the Ha-Eun he once knew was there at all. The Ha-Eun that had stolen his heart and trapped him in a jailcell that he longed to leave.
"I just am—"
"This is unexpected," she'd given him a look, her brows knotted together. "You were fine weeks ago, and now you're telling me you're clinically depressed and that's why you can't meet me?" Her lips pursed into a tight line. "You're lying." She accused.
"I'm not," JieMi replied quickly, shaking his head. "I was just good at hiding it, but not anymore."
There was a time when he'd truly not known why he was depressed. He'd hidden his problems away, pushed it so far out of his brain that he'd forgotten the reasons why he was sad. His head, in an act to protect his fragile heart, had shoved everything out of his mind. He had tried to act happy, and what resulted was a maniac mood that he clung to desperately. He'd chosen numbness then over insight, chosen sadness over truth.
Those days had been the ones that made him yearn for death.
"You've got to hide it more." Ha-Eun's eyes combed over his frame, disapproving, haughty and distrustful. "We can't have the media finding out, or your fans. They can't see our weaknesses. They'll drop you. You know that."
"I know." He licked his lips. "I know…"
But why did he have to hide? Why couldn't his fans know? Why did idols have to be tailored and formed into perfection? Why were weaknesses shunned? Why couldn't he cry? Why couldn't he scream and shout at the world? Why must he be a role model to millions? Why couldn't he make mistakes? Why did the world think that the famous could never be human?
But it was never about perfection…JieMi's lips stretched into a cold thin line. They were products placed upon a rack at a store, they were sold and bought, cherished. But when defects appeared, when issues were raised, they would be thrown out by once loyal customers.
Idols, were never humans in the eyes of the public.
Idols were objects.
"It feels like a barrier," he'd said, voice eerily cold. "Like I can't cross a ledge and everything is just dark, and the whole world is against me." Her eyes had grown incredulous, she'd opened her mouth to rebut. And he'd given in, decided to sigh, to run his fingers through his hair, and pretend. "I know, damn it, I know that I'm fortunate but I can't escape the cycle of thoughts because it's in my head. It's in me. It's just…"
"Can't you distract yourself?" Ha-Eun'd shrugged, dismissing his words with a pop of her lips. "Why are you depressed anyway? I don't get it." She shook her head, turning to look at him with cold, unfeeling eyes, irritated eyes. "Just watch a movie. You'll get over it with a laugh." She shrugged, then added a final word that pissed him off more. "That's how I get rid of sadness."
Sadness?
Heat roared in his chest, a fire that towered and screamed. He grew increasingly angry at her words, at how flippantly she'd treated his mental illness. JieMi would fucking love it if his depression was just like the sadness others experienced daily.
The sadness others got from an F in a paper, the sadness others got from a dramatic movie, the sadness others got from being fired at work. The simple sadness that left just days later. He would fucking love it if he could get rid of his depression just by looking at the bigger picture, just by watching a damn comedy. He would love it if he could fucking rip out his heart and toss it to the flames, roast it in the fire and just tear out the part of his brain that made him sad.
JieMi wasn't fucking depressed because he chose to hold on to his sadness.
He didn't think about death because he was fucking stupid and couldn't get over his issues. He thought about death because he wanted to close his eyes and feel alright again. He thought about death because he wanted to be free.
And JieMi now knew from the words of his therapist and the thump of his heart that he was not free, never free. JieMi's voice was trapped in this industry, his life was wracked by Ha-Eun, and his depression made him feel like the weakest, most useless thing one could ever be in the world.
Guilt, shame and self-loathing had once been his best friend. Sleeping felt better than staying awake, being positive was fucking impossible on his bad days! His brain was now chemically wired to pump sadness through his veins.
But he now knew what had been the initial trigger, the one person that had made his life absolutely miserable. The situation that he had refused to face, the person he had refused to hate, the problems he'd buried in hopes that they would be solved on their own.
Ha-Eun.
He couldn't stand to be with her at that moment.
He'd left with a flimsy excuse that the guys were calling him, slammed the door behind him and didn't look back. She didn't care too. Ha-Eun was much too engrossed in her show to look at him, too used to ignoring his 'mood swings' to give a fuck about his mental well-being.
JieMi had cried that day while standing outside in the cold. He'd cried and cried, and when he got home, he cried some more in Amber's arms mourning the life he'd lost in Ha-Eun's clutches. He had bad days, and he had good days, and he got through them all one step at a time,
If pretending to be with his abuser sucked, going to school with Ha-Eun sucked even more.
"Oh, I missed you baby!"