Yoongi was silent.
She stared at him for a while. Then she whispered, “How can I help you if you won’t tell me what’s breaking your heart?”
Her soft words slipped straight into that broken heart. As did the tender expression in her beautiful eyes. He crumpled. He drew her near and buried his face in the crook of her neck. And he clung to her.
“When I was fairly young, my eomma passed away. She was the light of my life.” He smiled against her skin as he remembered the gentle woman who used to sing him to sleep at night. “I wasn’t even in middle school yet. Eunji – my sister – wasn’t yet six.”
He stopped speaking.
“Yoongi.” Her voice was full of compassion as she breathed his name. “How did your eomma die?”
“She had cancer. I watched it eat away at her. She spent over a year suffering through treatments before the doctors said there was no hope. A few weeks later, she was just…gone.”
He recalled standing in his eomma’s room. The one with the long, glass windows. From floor to ceiling. They let so much light into that room. Why couldn’t they let that light into her body? Into her soul?
He had stood in that room after she was gone and stared down at the white sheets. He’d wondered how a room so full of light could be so dark. How could a room so full of light be so empty?
Then he’d crawled into that bed and breathed in. But the smell had choked him. She hadn’t even smelled like his eomma anymore. She’d just smelled like sickness. And death. He’d jumped from that bed, stumbled through her doorway, and run to his own room. He had never visited her room again. Not in over eight years.
“When I was a tiny boy, my eomma lived in her garden. She always smelled heavenly. Like thyme. Wrapped in the perfume of her green plants. I used to breathe deeply when I would hug her. I loved that scent. I still do.”
Nari stilled. Her breathing stopped. “Thyme?” she muttered.
Yoongi inhaled. “Yes. She smelled like you.”
She couldn’t believe it. She knew it was a unique fragrance. She had never met anyone else who wore it. Nari had found it in a high-end store once when she was shopping with her eomma. It was a lotion. But she wore profuse amounts of it because the scent comforted her.
When she was little, before her father made his fortune, before they’d had the money to hire a cook, her eomma would spend all day in her kitchen. Baking. And always cooking the most delicious and unusual savory dishes. Something about her lemon-thyme chicken recipe had always delighted Nari. The little girl had loved the smell of thyme. So when she’d smelled the lotion, she’d been wrapped in all the comforting scents of her childhood. Back when she and her eomma were close. When they’d bake together in that little kitchen. Nari missed those times.
Nari pulled back and stared into Yoongi’s eyes. “I reminded you of your eomma.”
He nodded.
Her face crumpled. “That must have hurt.”
“No,” he whispered. “It was…like coming home.”
Tears began to slide down her cheeks as she gazed at him.
His lips quirked. “She loved black coffee too.”
“What?” Her eyes grew round as obsidian stones.
He nodded.
“Is that – is that why you drank the coffee?”
He bobbed his head. “That’s why I drink it black. It reminds me of her. And how much she loved me.” He stared, unseeing, across the room. “When you brought me a cup – without me requesting it – I, I felt like she had visited me.”
And there’s something about your laugh that reminds me of her too.
But that little bit he would keep to himself.
“So the grief that drove you to drink was the loss of your eomma?”
No. Not exactly. It’s so much more complicated than that.
Yoongi sobered instantly.
“She was the sweetest person I’ve ever known. She never harmed anyone, Nari. So why did she die so young? Why did she suffer so much? Watching her go through that, I learned that life isn’t fair. That it’s downright awful sometimes.
“But I had a friend who helped me get through that time. His name was Haeju. We would hang out at school and on weekends. And during the summer break.” He closed his eyes. “One day we traveled out to Yeongdo-gu.”
She was familiar with the island.
“We climbed the cliffs that face the open sea. Haeju decided he wanted to jump off. I was terrified. I had a very bad feeling about it. But I couldn’t convince him not to. He went running and jumped far out. But the water was too shallow where he landed. He’s been paralyzed ever since.”
Yoongi took a shaky breath. When he closed his eyes, he could still hear his friend’s screams. He could still see him splashing into the sea. Yoongi shuddered.
“I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that it was my fault. The trip was my idea. We snuck out. We didn’t tell anyone where we were going. My bodyguards didn’t even follow us. I evaded them. If I hadn’t convinced him to go…”
His voice broke, and he began to sob. He had never told anyone about that day. Except for his appa and Haeju’s parents. He had never unburdened himself or shared his guilt with anyone. But he had tried to drown it in booze.
He’d discovered the whereabouts of his appa’s liquor cabinet key a few weeks after the accident. Clever Yoongi had watered down his appa’s supply, so he wouldn’t get caught drinking. He’d discovered that the alcohol could numb his feelings for a while. It didn’t take much. He’d always been sensitive to it. And it had always given him a headache. Which he’d decided he deserved. Penance for breaking his friend’s body.
“Yoongi,” her voice was breaking too, for her heart had just been shattered by his grief. “You tried to stop him from jumping. It wasn’t your fault.”
“But if we hadn’t gone…”
“He might have done something entirely different and even more stupid. He might have gotten himself killed. You cannot blame yourself for other people’s poor decisions.”
He clasped her tightly and sobbed into her neck. “When I close my eyes, I can still see him hit the water. I can still hear him scream.” He was shaking. “It’s been seven years, but it doesn’t feel like it.”
“Yoongi,” she whispered his name. She had no idea how to heal this pain. “I am so, so sorry, love.”
He released her and stood up. His back was starting to hurt from sitting at an angle on the piano bench. He stepped around it and reached for her again. She flew into his arms as she wrapped hers around his waist. She hugged him tight.
“I don’t know how to heal this, Yoongi, but I do know that beating yourself up for the rest of your life isn’t a good option. When did you start drinking?”
“A few weeks later,” he breathed into her hair. “I got into my appa’s liquor cabinet.”
She closed her eyes. “How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
“Yoongi,” she whispered in distress again.
“I never drank much. Except for one time. One time I got so drunk I couldn’t stand up. I also got so sick that I never drank that much again.”
Until the night I made you leave.
“Your appa never caught you?”
“He did eventually figure out that his alcohol was being watered down. But he blamed it on a servant.” Yoongi winced. “The man lost his job. Another sin added to my accounts.”
“Oh, Yoongi.”
“I stopped getting into his liquor then. But a couple years ago, I made some older friends at school. It’s been easy to get ever since. I mostly drank soju and wine.”
“And now?”
Should he be painfully honest with her? Wasn’t he already?
“I was on my way to the liquor store when you arrived tonight.”
“Why, Yoongi?”
“Because I thought you didn’t want me.”
She pulled away to gaze up into his eyes. “Oh, Yoongi!”
“You didn’t answer my text.”
She looked down. “I know. I tried to ignore it.”
“Why?”
“Because I was terrified of falling in love with you. And being hurt by you. And abandoned by you.” She was muttering the words to his chest.
“We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?” he chuckled mirthlessly.
“Yoongi, when did you drink last?”
“The night I poured the wine down the drain.”
“So you drank some of the wine that night.”
“No.”
Perplexed, she furrowed her brow and glanced up at him.
“I drank all of the wine.”
Her eyes grew wide. “You drank three bottles of wine?”
He nodded.
“And then spent three days very sick?”
“Close. Two.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Yoongi. I would ask you to never do such a thing again, but you can’t promise it, can you?”
“I thought I was strong until tonight. But when you didn’t text, I was really struggling. I gave it up for you. And if there is no you in my life, then what is my abstinence for?”
“For you, Yoongi.” She stuck her index finger into his chest. “You are worth sobriety too, you know.”
“But it just hurts too much sometimes,” he breathed almost silently. As though the pain had stolen his voice.
“What hurts?”
“All of it. All of the losses I’ve suffered. Eomma. Haeju. The piano.”
“The piano? What does the piano have to do with this?”
“The piano is my first love. But no one – except my stepmother and my sister – even know I still play. My appa would simply laugh at me if he knew my dream.”
“Your dream?” she queried softly. “Yoongi, what’s your dream?”
“To play the piano.
“For crowds of people.
“To make music.
“To make people happy with my music.”
She got it out of him one sparse phrase at a time.
“That is a beautiful dream. And completely doable.”
He stared down at her in shock. He shook his head. “You don’t understand. My appa expects me to follow in his footsteps. To take over his company. He wants me to run it when he retires.”
“That’s nice. But that’s his dream. Not yours.”
He gaped at her.
“What steps can you take towards making your dream come true? Even in the smallest of ways?” she asked him.
He bent his head, and he kissed her. Lingeringly.
“Thank you,” he murmured against her lips.
“For what?” she breathed into his mouth.
“For believing in me. And encouraging me.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“For what?”
“For loving me.”
