Lucia ordered a drink and her fried apple pie. Yoongi ordered a black coffee. They found a seat in the far back corner of the restaurant. Right next to the restrooms. His back to the restaurant, Yoongi sat on the side of the table facing the back wall. Hopefully, no one would recognize him. Lucia sat facing him. She began their conversation with a question.
“You had a hard time growing up, didn’t you? Your parents didn’t understand you or support your dreams. Right?”
He nodded.
His mind went back to his sixth-grade year and the first time he heard Epik High. He had felt enlightened in that moment. As though he was discovering the very thing he had been created for. A fire had been sparked in his heart that day. That’s when his passion for music had been born.
But in his culture, it wasn’t an easy route to pursue. His parents wanted him to excel academically. They longed for him to become a brilliant force of intelligence to be reckoned with. But Yoongi’s dream was something else entirely. He wanted to write lyrics. He yearned to create music. So he pursued it secretly…
He’d begun to write songs. He’d scribbled lyrics down on paper napkins and scraps of school papers. He’d hidden behind his textbooks to pen all the words flowing through his mind. He poured his thoughts and beliefs out on sheet after sheet. Until the day that his parents had broken his heart.
They had invaded his sanctum and rifled through his belongings, pulling paper after paper out. Then they had taken every single word that he had written and thrown them into the rubbish bin. They had treated his most personal, private, and profound thoughts like garbage. They had stood over him and yelled at him and insisted that he was to focus all his energy on schoolwork. They had, quite simply, broken his heart. But not his spirit.
He had kept fighting for his dreams. Even when they had seemed too far away. He had continued to produce music. He’d become an underground rapper. He’d created his own CDs and walked the streets trying to sell his music. He remembered all the times the cries of his stomach had gone unheeded. Repeatedly, he’d had to spend his money to ride the bus home after an unsuccessful day trying to sell his music. He’d also been scammed more times than he could count. Or remember. But he could recall all the bowls of noodles he had stared longingly at yet had no money to buy.
Then, his big break had finally come. He’d signed with Big Hit and met Namjoon. Yoongi had thought that his dream was about to be fulfilled. He’d had no idea that the resistance was just beginning. He’d gotten a job as a paper boy. One day as he delivered papers, a car came from out of nowhere and hit him, leaving him to lay broken in the street. Cradling his shattered shoulder, he’d struggled to his feet. Then he’d finished delivering the papers before making his way back to the room he shared with Namjoon.
Life was cruel. And incredibly unfair. Yoongi had worked so hard. He had starved himself in the pursuit of his dreams. Now it had seemed as though he could finally grasp them. Then this vicious twist of fate. He had told no one. He hadn’t even had his shoulder attended to by a doctor. Instead, he had suffered through excruciating pain during every practice as a trainee with Big Hit. He had been terrified that they would let him go if he told them of the damage to his shoulder. As it was, there were certain dance moves that were now still impossible for him to perform. But he had pushed through every impossible circumstance to rise to the top, one of the seven members of BTS, a star that just kept floating higher in the sky.
