Can I Afford Dreaming? (BTS Added Member)

Making It By (His Background Story)

What was it like to leave home? To part away with a place you were taught of the concepts of love, warmth, comfort, and all the good things that keep life worth it. It might be best to ask someone who did leave but how could he if she didn't even leave any footprints to follow? She took a path with no snow, no mud, and no residue therefore no traces. But maybe she gave no sign because she didn't see the essence of home in his father and him, therefore nothing important to trail back to. So no, she might not be the best person to ask after all.

"Where did she go? Did she leave for real this time around?"

The older man was one with time. Counting every minute and depending on it on a twenty-four-hour time frame. Twenty-four hours, one thousand four hundred forty minutes, or eighty-six thousand four hundred seconds, all confining a day. Confining a revolution around a touch of warmth, an attempt at defining natural warmth. He asks himself, how do you make a big change in one day? How come people say that it is far too long yet when it passes, don't even remember what had happened? But his questions were answered in moments he wished to have not happened. Moments he is guilty of expecting. Moments he wished were "too far away" from their time frame. But alas, the twenty-four hours of today, he remembered it all. Even before the string was officially cut right in front of his eyes, letting go of all it held together. Maybe remembering too much was a sign. A reason he remembered today too much to begin with.

His eyes before the mimic of the umbra and penumbra of the moon had given him one victory that day, beating the sunrise from his stand. But if he only knew that was his only victory then he would've asked for an exchange. 5:00 am, a win for him but someone was already moving around the house. 5:00 am, he discovered that his wife had not changed from her clothes last night, and smelled of wine. Another sign of another late night, another late night which he never knew the reason why.

He could remember the minutes that passed before he went outside the bedroom. Counting one to another number. He counted the seconds it took before his son noticed him. The turn that was at least thirty seconds away from the sixty decreasing. He remembered the whole day with no spaces of an unknown event in his memory. Of course, what he remembered most was 6:38 pm. But wasn't it too much to ask for 2:31 pm, a child had accidentally made a mess in the fast-food chain, to be the worst of the day? But no matter if it was yesterday, tomorrow, or today, as long as it will happen, it will always be engraved into his mind. Surely his son's too.

6:04 pm, he came back to rest before a night's shift. His uniform clinging to him more than his wife ever had. Yet at least a sign of hard work, nothing less of work and effort than the days before. 6:30 pm, his son arrived. His uniform was too short on him, his shirt at the very end of his torso, and a bit of stretch might show skin. His shoes were also overused, trying to peel out of their color but forced to be good enough. Minutes before the son's arrival, the father tried knocking on the bathroom door but it was locked. His questions of asking how the woman he loves is unnoticed but very evidently heard that she was inside, and on the phone with someone.

6:34 pm, the bathroom door unlocked but both husband and son left clueless as both were talking about Daeho being invited to peer teach somehow. Something that held the father's heart at an edge. This year was supposed to be like the last, wherein the boy would arrive home at around 8 pm or later because he'd attend an academy. But in their status right now, Daeho is rather the one teaching for the money. Guilt and pride in the father.

"Eomma, where are you going?"

The woman with a mission, many packed things behind her, and she was wearing something they couldn't afford. Yet she never addressed the young boy's question. Her ears were not blocked but open, yet deaf altogether. "I don't want this life anymore. I can't live with it. There's no love then there's no money? What is it even worth?" And they argued. She raised her voice, pointed her own fingers, and her actions were aggressive. His father's voice was softer yet stern, an underlying message of 'listen,', yet he didn't do anything beyond that. His anger was passive, and it was quieter but don't kid and think he didn't fight for her to stay. Laying out to her all the reasons she should yet it only took her one to leave. Her dissatisfaction with a simpler life, a forced life upon poverty.