"What are you doing. Not killing anyone?!”

I dragged myself back to the present at someone's urgent shout. Onscreen, a shooting game was going on. Someone yelled in my headset that the enemy had appeared. I immediately grabbed the mouse. I shot like crazy. The opponents I shot fell like dolls without stuffing. I moved the mouse and looked around the map. There was a railway track right through the center of the map, and to either side of the track there were large metal containers stacked all around. It looked just like the container town at Songju Station.

I changed my weapon. It was a machine gun that could shoot continuously. In the distance, an enemy wearing a black bandana appeared. I aimed my gun, but for a second he looked like someone I knew. The enemy was knocked out in a single blow. I didn't think twice about shooting every single one who appeared. Unconsciously, I started thinking of the hyungs. I laughed. Come to think of it. They were a little similar. I took out each one and advanced. I shot every enemy that came from the containers. For a moment, I looked down at one of them on the ground. I thought to myself, is that Namjoon hyung, and in that moment someone's bullet hit my shoulder. I used the mouse to look up and saw an enemy holding a gun. It was Seokjin hyung. All at once, my rage boiled over.

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I raced towards the yangji riverbank as the sunset deepened. Pressing heavily on the bike pedals as I headed toward a sky full of mixed pinks and purples made me feel as if I were escaping from the weight of my everyday life. Today, too, I had taken my bike out as soon as I heard my mom start to prepare dinner. I didn't want to see anyone. My house was a place where not even one person would smile at me. Just because we lived together didn't make us family. Nothing changed just by leaving. My hyungs had left one after another, and even though we lived in the same city. It had been a long time since we'd contacted one another. Now there was no one left inside my house or out of it who would smile at me.

When the sun was gone but the moon hadn't risen yet, darkness settled down on the riverbank. The scenery changed depending on where I rode my bike past the road that had been turned into a park, there was a place full of garbage, abandoned cars and abandoned motorbikes and tires. I leaned my bike against a pillar under the bridge and made my way down the riverbank. On the other side of the river was a group of kids lighting fires and drinking and swinging sticks around. But on this side there was nobody, nobody came to this kind of ruined place. Maybe that was the reason nobody came to me, either. I was most comfortable like this, in a place nobody would come to find me. Alone in total darkness. I thought that it would be nice if this moment never ended.

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I stood at the window with my earphones in and sang along to a bit of the song. Already a week. By now I could sing along without looking at the lyrics. I took out one earphone and practiced with my own voice. [They] had said [they] liked it because the lyrics were pretty, but they made me scratch my head with embarrassment. The july sun shone in through the large window. The green leaves of the trees fluttered and shone in the wind, and each time the sun felt a little different when it touched my face. I closed my eyes. I sang while looking at the yellow and crimson and blue colors spreading behind my closed eyes. Whether it was because of the lyrics or because of the sun, something billowed up and tickled and stung my heart.

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In the end, it turned out how I wanted. I purposely ran into the thugs I met on the street and got beat up to my heart's content. Since I laughed while they were hitting me, they called me a crazy bastard and hit me even more. I leaned against the shutter door and looked up at the sky. It was already night. There was nothing in the pitch-black sky. I saw one clump of grass at a distance. It was lying on its side in the wind. It was like me. I felt like I was going to cry, so I forced myself to laugh.

I closed my eyes and saw the image of my stepfather clearing his throat. My step brother kicked me and laughed. My stepfather's relatives looked elsewhere or talked about meaningless things. They acted like I wasn't even there, like my existence didn't matter. In front of them, my mother was at a loss. I placed my hands on the floor and stood, but dust rose up and I coughed. It hurt as if I'd been stabbed in my solar plexus. I went up to the roof of the construction site. The night city stretched out in terrible color. I climbed up on the railing and walked with both arms spread out. One leg lurched, and I almost lost my balance. I thought that I could die with just one step. If I died, it would all be over. Nobody would be sad without me.

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I killed time wandering around the convenience store. I used to sometimes skip school by jumping over the back wall of Songju Jeil Middle School, and I would sometimes wait for the hyungs in the small park across from the convenience store. I looked around me. It had been a while since I'd visited this neighborhood, but nothing much had changed. I remembered that Yoongi hyung and Jungkook's houses were in this area. As I looked around, I saw something that looked like graffiti inside one of the alleyways to my right. It looked like Taehyung's work. I walked over that way.

Unconsciously, I stopped in front of the drawing. It was someone's face, scribbled in rough black lines without any sort of warmth. I say 'someone's,’ but I knew whose face it was. It was Seokjin hyung. As soon as I thought of hyung, someone else's face was superimposed on top of it. It was an entirely different face, but both of those faces looked identical. They had the same eyes. Soulless eyes. Only then did I realize who I had to find.

TRANSLATED BY @ORIGAMYFIREFLY. PLEASE DO NOT REPOST.