“ONLY THOSE WITH HEART FULL OF LOVE,
AND A SOUL FULL OF LIFE,
WILL FIND LIFE IN DEAD PLACES
AND POETRY AT DARK TIMES.”

“How did you come up with this?” Pdogg asked.

Namjoon and Hoseok abandoned their individual works and paid attention to the conversation between Seokjin and Kang Hyo Won, also known as Pdogg. The record producer was reviewing the lyrics of a song Seokjin submitted for his mini album. He composed and wrote the lyrics entirely by himself, unlike most other songs, but this one's credits belonged to him alone.

Yoongi couldn't ignore the interesting situation any longer, so he also joined the conversation.

“Holy shit! Hyung, you wrote this on your own?” Hoseok's eyes widened.

Namjoon was still reading the lyrics with a stiff expression, his tongue poking his cheeks. Without tearing his eyes away from the words, he said, “This is too impressive. We can call it a perfect b-side track.”

Seokjin's ears were getting red from the praises of the people in the studio. He stood proud with a shy smile on his lips. He was confident they wouldn’t suspect anything.

Until Yoongi had to point out that suspicion. “But none of us are really good at writing love songs. We always have to let the other songwriters help us or have them submit their songs.”

It was a love song. An emotionally beautiful song that he had been working on for a while. Even he thought at the end that he had just written down a masterpiece. It wasn't hard for him actually because, unlike his members, someone was his muse behind this song.

The others grew a suspicion out of it, which he had anticipated.

“Was someone particular on your mind, Seokjin? When you were writing this song...” Pdogg, as the adult, shouldn’t be curious at all, but well, there he was.

The rappers turned towards him with a mix of surprise and confusion on their faces. They looked like they were gonna faint if he revealed he had a partner.

“Guys, it's just a song. And it's not that hard to write a love song. You just think of romantic movies and write some sentences down.”

Namjoon spoke first. “That makes no sense.”

“Of course it does. That's how I came up with the song.” Seokjin couldn’t hide his smile. He felt unnecessarily happy.

Hoseok whispered in Yoongi's ear. “Why is he smiling like that?”

Pdogg decided to drop the matter as he should. “Well don't mind me for being a little curious, especially the way you are behaving these days. If you are not careful, some might think you are in love.”

If only they knew he was deliriously in love with Yoon Min...

Seokjin fell into a routine with Yoon Min in the following weeks. He would go to his workplace in the morning and work for hours until it was evening. Then he would come straight to her place and spend the rest of the night with her. Sometimes, he was too tired to go back to his own apartment, so he would fall asleep on her big couch in the living room or the bed in the guest room. She didn’t mind at all; in fact, she welcomed his presence inside her place in the warmest way.

Surprisingly, she was skilled in taking care of him, making him food, fixing his hair, tying and untying his shoes, doing his laundry, etc. She would know if he had an exhausting day and massage his shoulders and limbs. It was one of his favourite things about her; when she would put her hands on him. He would melt in relief at her caress.

Most of the time, they stayed indoors and spent quality time with each other, asking about each other's day, playing games, sharing dinner and watching movies. Other times, they took a long stroll in the streets to be under the presence of the star-drunk sky. Not knowing where to go because they had already been everywhere together, they would find an isolated field to lie down and look at the moon and the stars, lost in deep and funny conversations. They would talk for hours, about life, about love, about everything.

The nights when they were with each other in the middle of a rolling green field, just lying on their backs and staring up at the vast universe, were undoubtedly his favourite thing to do with Yoon Min. He wouldn’t wish to be anywhere else in the world when he was with her under the night sky.

“I read something before. Do you think it's true when people say someone else knows them better than they know themselves?” Yoon Min once asked him during their stargazing dates.

He averted his gaze from the sky towards her. Sometimes when he looked at her, he couldn’t understand why no man before him didn’t see what he saw. He couldn’t understand how someone before him didn't notice the beautiful universe hidden within her.

“I guess so.”

“I think no one can truly know you like you know yourself,” she said softly. “No one knows all of your thoughts, no one sees things in the same way you do, no one feels exactly as you feel.”

The stars flickered like a million tiny fireballs. The cool breeze of rain scented coaxed the grasses into a waltz.

He said then, “You're right. But you can't completely know yourself either. You don't know how you look when you smile in a blissful moment, you don't know how you sound when you are excited, or how you do something completely normal, but it's cute to somebody else. You never know how you appear to someone. Sometimes it's a little different from who you think you are.”

She finally tore her gaze from the sky and met his eyes. She smiled. “Enlighten me, mister.”

Seokjin wasn’t the kind of person to indulge in intellectual conversations for a long time. But ever since he met her, it was one of the few traits he absorbed from her; the ability to think deeply and feed his mind with knowledge. It became fascinating to him that people start liking something because someone they love likes it.

He shifted and turned to his side so that he could fully look at her, using his arm as a pillow under his head.

“To me, you have a way of making me look at things differently, with my heart. You look away when I stare at you; your smile isn’t always real; you care a lot for others; you flinch every time I touch you, and you laugh at my jokes even if they aren't always funny. You read books to escape from your past; you cry secretly at random times of the day, and you watch movies to distract yourself. You can handle the world but you can't handle yourself. But you don't know all these, do you?”

She was captivated by his words. Even in the dark atmosphere, he could see her cheeks flushing. It took her a few seconds to smile as if she was absorbing every word of his description of her into her heart.

Matching his position, she also lay on her side to gaze at him. The stars and the moon didn’t matter anymore. It was all about each other.

“Do you want me to tell you what you are to me?” She reached for him and placed a trembling hand on his cheek. His cheek warmed automatically under her gentle touch.

“There are...stars in your eyes that are reminders of all the times you have put others first. You make silly jokes to lighten the mood and ease the burden. So that we—I am happy and laughing even for a moment. You like compliments but you blush and get embarrassed if someone does so. You still love your fans dearly even after what happened. You never give up on people because you always see the good in those you love. You made me believe that despite all the hard times in life, there are still things that will make me happy and I will learn to appreciate life. I was broken but you shaped me.”

This was why he was in love with her. He didn’t fall for her instantly; rather, he arrived to love her slowly. He dug deep and found a soul so wonderful that falling in love was the only option. Now he was aware of his feelings for her, the you-feel-so-much-you-get-scared-kind-of-love. The type of love to lose sleep over, to lose the ability to spend a minute without the thought of her.

The love he never knew he was searching for.

A small smile fluttered on his plump lips. “Are you flirting with me again?”

Yoon Min let out a sweet chuckle. “I was poetically describing you but whatever.”

He snorted before grinning and covered her hand on his cheek with his own. Her hand felt a bit cold so he let the warmth from his hand flow to her.

“So nobody can truly know you, and you can never truly know yourself.” She came to that conclusion after their long paragraph about each other.

“Seems right.”

Because all along, he imagined he would experience an epic romance with the girl he would grow to love. A celebrity like him or maybe someone similar, with perfect visuals and a great sense of humour. He fantasized about the world, calling them a power couple, two people equal in every aspect. A guaranteed happy ending to his story.

But Seokjin met a simple person like Yoon Min, and he didn’t know what brought her to him, but suddenly, he couldn’t imagine his life without her. He forgot who he was before her. Since he spent more than half a year with her, he grew attached to her and got used to her presence in his world. And everything felt brighter and better with her.

He would like to believe this kind of unexpected love had a higher chance of that happy ending he imagined.

☆THE FAULT IN OUR STARS☆

THANK YOU FOR READING
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