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EPIPHANY
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Yi-Seo

Unable to fall asleep right away, I keep shuffling about on the couch until I finally give up on trying to sleep. I walk over to the window and take a look at my living room, sighing before I turn back to face Taehyung’s couch. But my eyes are uncontrollably drawn to the closed door that conceals his recording studio.

As decent as I want to remain and not go about exploring that room in his absence, my conscience keeps torturing me to check it out just once. And I give in to that mischievous voice within me as I walk over to that room and twist the knob on the door, thinking it might be locked.

But to my surprise, the door clicks open, making my eyes widen. Holding the knob in my hand, I turn around nervously just to see if Taehyung is not behind me. He isn’t, fortunately.

Taking a deep breath, I push the door open a little wider and step inside after turning on the lights. I stand anchored to my spot and look around the room that looks completely professional to me.

The floor is wooden, unlike the marble flooring in the other areas of the house, and the walls are all black, probably because the room is sound-proofed. I walk around, slowly trailing my fingertips over the array of headphones and the tangle of wires on one side of the main work table. The table also has a large desktop computer, a smaller laptop and lots of scattered sheets on which Taehyung has scribbled stuff.

A labeled file lays on the table, and I peer to read the name written on it, which is Hong-Cheol. I have no idea who this person is, but my guess is that he, most probably, is the middleman through whom Taehyung sells his craft. I feel the compelling urge to flip open the file; I don’t though.

There are a few types of microphones as well that are next to the table, and large sets of speakers that are set up around the room. Alien-looking devices with numerous knobs and display screens are also present, but most importantly, I notice a large stage piano next to the table and a violin that is hanging on the wall right behind it.

Despite him giving off the clumsy and unkempt person vibes, this room is actually spotless with not a speck of dust anywhere. Even the spaces between the piano keys, which accumulate dust quite easily, are sparkling clean. Being in here is destroying the stereotypical image that I had of him in my mind, and I’m learning a little more about him as an artist, as a true professional.

My heart feels blue thinking about all the lonely moments he must have spent here, working hard to trade his music to someone else for money, just so he could survive. A sad sigh leaves my lips as I slowly walk past the small leather couch in the corner before I turn off the lights and close the door behind me.

I head back to the couch, picking up my sheet of paper and pen, and then I begin to roughly scrawl out the characters that I met through him while reviewing every detail that Taehyung told me earlier tonight.

1. His mother and his step-siblings

2. Soo-Ah

3. The bullying scandal guy who is an office worker now

4. Choi Sung Won a.k.a Sammy

5. The Jeju actress

6. Idol Mel linked with the sex tape

These were the only people he talked about today, and I’m unable to find any link between any of them. Mel recorded and leaked the tape intentionally, and someone instigated her to do it. But who could it be?

It has to be one among these people because otherwise why would he ask me if I haven’t yet figured out who it is? And, I obviously have no idea about the other people in his life.

My heart races in anticipation as my gaze floats over the list from one name to the other, and I try to connect the random dots, in vain.

I can’t find a motive for anyone to do this to him, but I definitely need to look closer and think harder because I have a strong hunch that it is one among them. Taehyung undoubtedly gave me hints, but he did not reveal the name for reasons only he knows.

I must think, but my brain feels clogged up with too many details, which may or may not be because of the history rewind with Taehyung. The distressing mental image of him spending time all by himself inside the recording room with so much heaviness in his heart is not helping me right now. It could also possibly be because of the stifling, stale air inside his home; I have no idea. But right now, I have lost my ability to analyze and dissect anything.

Rising from the couch, I open up the windows in Taehyung’s living room and head over to the dining table, and collect all the empty alcohol bottles. There are almost eight large bottles there, and I take them in batches to the trash area in his kitchen.

I head back to the coffee table in the living room and clear it up as well. The ashtray looks like it hasn’t been cleared out in ages, and I take it to the kitchen to empty it and scour it clean.

As silly as it may sound, cleaning and decluttering is a kind of stress-relieving mechanism for me, and I almost always find myself in a much lighter and clearer headspace once I get a bit of cleaning done.

So, without thinking twice, I begin to clean up the mess on Taehyung’s kitchen counter. It takes me around thirty more minutes to wipe down the stovetop and counters, scrub the splatters on the tiles, clean the sink, mop the floor, and make his kitchen look spotless.

I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I look at his kitchen now, and I proudly dust my hands before heading back to the living room. The corner table that’s overflowing with heaps of papers looks so inviting right now, not just to organize it better but also to read through what he has been writing about.

After standing rooted to my spot in the middle of the living room for a few seconds, I turn my head around and look at the doorway to Taehyung’s bedroom.

There’s absolutely no trace of movement there.

Nevertheless, to make sure that he’s still sleeping deep, I turn around and walk back to his bedroom to check on him. He is sprawled out on the bed in the exact same starfish posture that I helped him into a while ago.

Taehyung is still breathing, fortunately, and I’m guessing that he probably won’t wake up until morning. He drank and smoked far too much to wake up so soon.

Heaving a sigh of relief, I head directly to the corner table and pick up all the sheets of paper and place them on the floor, bunch by clumsy bunch. Once all the papers are on the floor, I sit down cross-legged and start sorting them out into lyric sheets and music sheets.

I must admit that there are an awful lot of sheets, and my back starts hurting by the time I finish sorting them all out.

Music notes are out of my league, so I stack those sheets together and place them all on the table, and put a stationery stand on top of the stack to keep the papers from flying away.

I gather the lyric sheets and lean my back against the wall as I slowly flip through them. His handwriting is lousy, and most of the words appear like dots and dashes in Morse code, but I’m pretty sure those are just regular words that he has written so badly. I’m guessing that he probably wrote these when he was drunk to the brim.

Alcohol brings out the most honest and bolder sides of a human, and they tend to tell nothing but the raw truth when they’re drunk. Taehyung is not an exception as seen from how much he told me about himself while getting drunk, when his sober self refused to spill even a single word earlier today.

I’ve seen Jungkook do that every time. Whenever he got drunk beyond his capacity, he always spoke about how his life and childhood was sabotaged by his father who was a powerful drug mafia, and how he wasn’t ever going to forgive him for what he did. He also poured out his sourness for his infidel mother by cursing her most obnoxiously.

However, when he was sober, he always spoke of his parents as if they were noble humans. But I knew the truth, and I knew what he truly felt about his parents. That was one thing about Jungkook which made me want to be by his side and give him all the love which no one had ever given him.

Wow! Isn’t this the answer to Taehyung’s question?

I loved Jungkook for how vulnerable and honest he was in his drunken state. But taking a step back now, I also hated him when he was drunk because that was when he usually grew abusive. He took out his anger on his mother by calling me names and degrading me. In his drunken state, he abused me and treated me like a rag doll, using me as an outlet to vent his rage.

Taehyung was right.

The reasons why I loved him and hated him all whirl down to the same epicenter—alcohol. And it was after he started consuming drugs that his violence episodes became more frequent and brutal. Making a mental note to reflect upon this revelation later, I flip through the remaining lyric sheets.

What goes on inside Taehyung’s mind when he’s drunk? What are his deepest emotions?

Fortunately, not all the sheets are so poorly written or damaged with a marker, and I’m able to read what’s written in them. As I scan through the few legible sheets, I’m surprised to see that even though most seem like love songs, a major part of the lyrics are based on two redundant themes—betrayal and jealousy.

Is this a hint about who was behind his downfall?

My eyebrows pinch together as I quickly glance through a few more sheets before replacing the whole bunch on the top of the table. Light bulbs begin to flicker to life inside my head as I walk back to the couch and pick up my sheet to look at the list of people he mentioned today.

First up, is his family. Betrayal and jealousy from them? Quite possible from his step-siblings who I have no clue about, but he said that he left his family when he got selected through the auditions, and if anything, they would have only tried to feed off his popularity and not tried to destroy him.

Next up, Soo-Ah. Betrayal? Yes, so much to the extent that he is still broken by her departure even though he says he moved on. Jealousy... uhm? She obviously didn’t want to do anything with him, and he even said that he met her once later, which he regrets. And the tape leak probably isn’t even remotely connected to her. Soo-Ah is ruled out.

The idol, Mel, is the one who did the cheap act, and she definitely betrayed Taehyung. But there was no reason for her to be jealous of him because she was a rookie, and he was already a famous idol. They were in different leagues altogether.

And the actress he talked about, probably isn’t even significant here because he gave no details about her, and she also got what she wanted from Taehyung. If it was her, she could have as well recorded them when he took her to Jeju for an entire weekend, but she did not. So it most definitely isn’t her.

So as for the person who planned the tape leak, it leaves me with just the bullying scandal guy and Sammy who could have possibly driven Mel to do this.

The bullying scandal guy...well, Taehyung said he was the softest person among them all, and he even felt bad for the guy being removed from the group. But people change, and him having been a soft person in the past doesn’t rule out the possibility of his involvement in the sex tape scandal. Anyone is capable of turning evil. He could have definitely been grappling with a lot of jealousy seeing what Taehyung had that he could have possibly had too. And if he did do something in this matter, then it is betrayal of the first order.

And Sammy?

I pause for a while, nibbling the corners of my lips along with the end of the pen as I ponder over the details about Sammy that I received earlier from Taehyung.

He didn’t talk much about Sammy except for disclosing the fact that they both debuted as soloists, had a great passion for their work, and that they also worked together many times to sort out their schedules and other stuff. But most importantly, he also mentioned that things were good between them.

Just because he was a colleague doesn’t give him an edge over anything, and being an idol himself, he could have had easy access to other idols. So, there is a fat chance of Sammy being the one behind the sex tape scandal.

I pick up my phone and search the internet for K-pop soloist Sammy, and just as I did with Taehyung, I check out his photos first.

Choi Sung Won, also known as Sammy, looks handsome too, but his face or charisma isn’t the kind that could reel your mind all over the place. And the results are also fewer in number as opposed to those about Taehyung. That’s understandable because a few more minutes of browsing and reading about him reveals that his records were all clean without any rumors or scandals, and he also wasn’t too popular or successful in his prime days, unlike Taehyung who always seemed to have been in the limelight no matter what he did or didn’t do.

If Sammy had been the reason behind the tape leak, then it is definitely an act of cheap betrayal because Taehyung seemed to have trusted him as a good friend. Besides, he obviously wasn’t as popular as Taehyung who debuted at the same time as him. So, there’s a very high chance that he was jealous of Taehyung.

With my pen, I circle the two characters—the bully guy whose name I don’t know yet and Sammy. I then place the paper and pen on the coffee table before taking off my glasses and placing them on top of the paper. My suspects could be the wrong ones, but I have no more energy left right now.

It is only when a long and tired yawn leaves my mouth accompanied by a few sleepy tears that escape the corners of my eyes that I realize it’s probably time to put aside my detective mask and get some shut-eye.

As I snuggle up on the soft couch and keep mindlessly staring at the bright red couch in my living room, my eyelids gradually droop down. I strongly believe that it could only be the lingering smell of alcohol and cigarettes in the air that is overpowering my senses and tranquilizing them at the moment, pushing all other thoughts to the back of my head and quickly dragging me to the doorway of Morpheus.

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POV change?
Coming right up!!
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Published on : 01/20/2023