"Tell me with your sweet smile, tell me… tell me like you're whispering in my ear: "don't be like a prey, be smooth like a snake. I want to get away… Get away, get away from me! That is what I should say, that is what reason tells me to write to you.
Save me. Just save me. It continues even when I run away. I am caught in a lie. Help me, my love, help me. Find the me that was pure. I can't be free from this lie. Pull me from this hell. I can't be free from this pain. Save me, I am being punished. I want to find the me who lost his way. I want to find myself. It was like that every day. I feel so far away...
You always come in my way. I'm starting to think again that I should write to you: "get away from me!" But please: save me. Give me back my happiness. I am still the same person I was before, but an overgrown lie is trying to swallow me whole.
Hyung, my love, save me..."
Min Yoon-Gi gently placed the letter on the piano keyboard. He closed his eyes and sighed. His hand instinctively reached for the cigarette pack that should have been among the music sheets. But he had quit smoking a year ago. He often forgot. He had learned to forget things, so they wouldn't hurt him anymore. Later, he finished a song and signed it under the name Jeon Jungkook. Years before, he would never have believed that he would become a ghostwriter, a composer whose name no-one would ever know, a songwriter who disappeared behind someone else's name. Nor did he ever think he would be living a secret love story with the son of the family his mother had been cooking for for the past thirty years. His whole life seemed to disappear behind a dense and opaque lie.
When he received Park Jimin's letter, he'd never imagined he'd suffer so much because of the unhappiness of the man he loved. They had not seen each other for three years, but his love grew stronger and stronger, and so did his pain.
Yoon-Gi no longer existed as Jimin drowned in the appearances his life imposed on him. Jimin was torn between the way his father acted with him and the way his father acted, unofficially, with others. Deputy Park had three faces. He was a loving father, a corrupt bastard who would do anything for power, and a politician who knew how to play with appearances to endear himself to the Korean people. Yoon-Gi knew better than anyone how Deputy Park treated those who stood in his way.
Even Jimin was aware that his father probably had blood on his hands. And it was killing him. Still, the son would often blind himself to never see the true nature of the father: lying to himself was better than to admit that he was the son of the devil.
Yoon-Gi was incapable of helping him. And it was killing him. So, he stopped looking at the letter and threw it to the ground.
***
That night, Kim Taehyung came awake, his body trembling as it always did moments before the Don awoke. He inhaled deeply and let himself be carried away by the strange sensation that invaded him as his mind dissociated from his body.
Suddenly, he was in an unfamiliar hotel room. All was black. Moonlight bathed the room through the gaps in the shutters. The double bed was unmade. There was a folded piece of paper on the bedspread. He couldn't touch it. He'd never know what it said. On the night table, there was a clock radio showing the time and date.
2:11 a.m. May 14th, 2020.
He could hear water running in the bathroom. He approached. The door was open. What he saw inside chilled his blood. There was a man lying in the full bath. He was dressed. The tap water was still running, making the water overflow, the same water that had turned red, stained with blood, lots of blood. He was a young man. Taehyung had trouble recognizing him, at first because of the pallor of his face. Then the identity of the dying man dawned on him. It was Jeon Jungkook, a singer who had been a well-known and popular figure for many years. Jeon Jungkook always seemed to be the happiest man in the world. Yet he was dying after cutting his wrists deeply. He approached the bathtub and knelt down. The singer was murmuring something. Taehyung leaned towards him.
"I... don't... want... to die..."
Then the gleam in his eyes faded and he died.
Taehyung's spirit returned to his body. He grabbed his phone and turned on the screen.
2:11 a.m. June 5th, 2019.
He bit his lower lip nervously. In eleven months and nine days, Jeon Jungkook would die in the bathtub of a hotel room. His body would be discovered and his suicide announced.
Taehyung straightened up. He got out of bed. He sat down at his desk, on which lay the family book he had inherited more than ten years earlier, when his power had first manifested itself. He turned the pages, scrolling through the stories of his ancestors that he knew by heart. He stopped on a blank page and noted what he had just seen. He had eleven months and nine days to prevent Jeon Jungkook's death and discover the real reasons behind it. He put down his pen, closed the book and cracked his knuckles. After a two-year absence, "Her" was about to make its comeback.
Hey!
I hope you enjoyed it!
English is not my first language and this story is the translation of a French fanfic I wrote a few years ago on another platform. I hope you will enjoy it as much as the few thousand French-speaking readers who showed me their love!
I will publish a new chapter every day.
Have some idea about my story? Comment it and let me know.
With love,
Vivienne Taylor