YELLOW | yj x bg

☀︎ twenty seven.

—yeonjun

You told me a long time ago, Beomgyu, that you never want to grow up. So why is it that these days I find you doing just the opposite? I know you're wondering why I was acting differently around you this week. Well, how else am I supposed to react if I secretly caught my best friend smoking cigarettes with a suspicious gang in an abandoned alleyway?

Yes, it was after school on Tuesday. I found it confusing that you had left early because we usually walk home together. Even Taehyun and Hueningkai had the farthest idea of where you were. Anyhow, I figured something must have come up and that you couldn't message me because your phone must have died like it always does.

But just 10 feet outside from school, I saw you. I saw you and three other people I didn't recognize. I did what I've always done with you; kept watch on you secretly. I peeped behind the wall and refrained from making my presence known.

They looked older, Beomgyu- the people were hanging out with. Older and scarier. The kind I never expected you to mix in with. Handing each other cigarettes, taking swigs from beer bottles in broad daylight. And the worst part of it all was that you didn't refuse. You didn't refuse to indulge.

They were laughing around, making absurd jokes, showing off how many times they've done this before. And you laughed along with them. But I didn't get fooled, 3 years spending time with you gave me enough knowledge to be able to tell apart your real smile from your fake.

And I knew then that you'd rather not be there. But if that was the case, you should have stepped away, Beomgyu. But you stayed behind.

I was in disbelief the whole way home. I couldn't stop thinking about it until late at night. Things like 'what made you go to such an extreme degree?' You were the last person I'd expect to be near a gang like that, voluntarily handing yourself over to them.

I was so furious at you that I didn't want to think you must be doing it for a good reason, something must be eating you alive. But in the end that's what I concluded anyway.

The next day at school I didn't breathe a word about it to anyone, but I subconsciously did stay away from you. And I could tell you were confused by that. But I'm scared to let you know.

Scared to let you know I'm feeling other than wonderment, and love, and admiration for you for the first time. For the first time I'm feeling disappointment. Not in you as much as I felt it in myself; how I somehow must not have fulfilled my duties as a best friend to lead you to behave like that.

The yellow in you is slowly starting to fade, Beomgyu. Now you're a gray cloud, a black sky, a blue ocean. And it's scaring me. Because the Beomgyu I used to know is hiding himself somewhere inside you. And as your best friend, it's my job to pry him out.

But I'm scared of failing to do so.