Guitarra | CHANYEOL

Our story begins and ends with a melody.

He was a singer. He was in a band, a very well-known one. I was an excessively day-dreaming songwriter. After I met him, I became his Muse —or that's what he used to repeatedly assure me.

We met like every mortal: through mutual acquaintances in a —luckily for me— private gathering. There was something within him I quite didn't like: maybe his recklessness, maybe his false confidence, maybe the way he looked at me like auguring trouble.

But, besides all those "red flags", I couldn't help the pull towards his appealing persona and the idea of getting to know someone so mysteriously open. The way we bonded that night made me feel like we were more than mortals, I even thought we're sort of star-crossed lovers.

But more like stars which shimmered for eternity, we burned too fast, like we hadn't time to lose, willing to exploit and extinguish our narrow existence.

The love letters in the form of songs came along before we even had our first month anniversary. He was pleased with himself, proclaiming his love with his voice and his guitar in every radio station and live presentation. Secretly, I hated his very public, overzealous, cheesy display. I didn't even like the words in his songs: too repetitive and cliché.

But the melodies. Curse me if I ever forget it.

The melodies were sweet, ethereal. I'll never know how to describe them, they were like a new feeling, like reliving a memory, like tasting an exotic flavor. They weren't even complex melodies, they were simple combinations of basic chords played lazily on his oh-so-beloved-and-nastily-expensive guitar.

On top of the couple of melodies he dedicated to me, there was a particular one that easily transported me to my cloud nine, my personal Nirvana. The melody was tainted by the cheekiest lyrics (something about him being pleased with me being his innocent good girl), nevertheless that sweet melody was my redemption and my condemnation. It made me fall even more deeply with him. It made me stop in the tracks the many times I was on my way to leave him. It convinced me to be oblivious to the slow harm towards me, the imperceptible drag to hell he was bringing about my life.

We were young and silly fools. I was drugged by the sweet melody he played on me. He played me, made the fool out of me (of both of us). I believed it all, dreaming for real love that wasn't even real at all.

Our story ended with that melody. One day, after he did me wrong and after our most chaotic and hurtful fight (and the very first time I woke up from my nightmare), I saw his straying eyes and discovered the damage, the messiness and the fake feelings dressed up in a perfect illusion. That day he lost his effect over me. My body and soul were finally free from the curse, and the melody couldn't go on ever again.