music box | kim namjoon

chapter 3

Sometimes, Mina hated how good of a liar she was, or how bad her habit seemed it be.

"Are you okay?" A class member of hers, Park Jimin asked her. He was kind, and sometimes they exchanged notes.

"Yeah! Just tired. Hey, do you know where Namjoon is today?" He never showed up in class.

"He texted me and asked me to give him my notes after today so he could copy them." Jimin said with a shrug, like Namjoon missing from class was the most natural thing in the world. Mina frowned. He hadn't just texted her and asked her for notes?

"Okay... thanks." She turned back in her seat, not caring for conversation anymore. She didn't care for much besides figuring out why he had suddenly dropped of the face of the earth. It only made a sickening feeling drop in her stomach.

Where are you?

Is what she texted him.

Minji had a family emergency.

Is what he responded.

She sighed and set her phone down for the rest of class, trying not to think about how he wouldn't text her anything else, or ask her how she was, twice, or apologize for forgetting to call. She copied down everything twice and slipped it into her notebook when class was over.

If she spent enough time thinking about him, she'd go crazy, so the only other thing she could think to do was return to her room and study for awhile, hoping that books and essays and all would keep her mind constantly going enough for her to forget, for just a little while, about the reality of her situation.

And it worked for awhile, it really did, and she lost herself until she finished all her assignments, and then she had nothing left. And she tried to read a book, but she found herself pages later having no information retained. Then she tried to blast her music to make it impossible for her to think, and the people in the dorm beside her complained.

Then she gave up, and fell crashing into the white sheets of her bed. Suddenly the four walls of her room were so suffocating she couldn't breathe, and she had nothing left to do than leave.

There was something about the beach during the nighttime that made her feel completely understood. There was something about the dark sand, and the rolling clouds, and the lullaby of the waves when no one could see you. The fallen sun was kind to her.

She didn't mind the sand in her sweater, found between it's threads when she sat down after a subway ride and a long walk. She traced her name in the sand.

The more she sat, and she thought, she missed her childhood. She missed the simplicity, and the times she'd jump the creek on her bike, or sneak out her window after dark to sit on the roof. Everything was nicer then. She had never really enjoyed it as much as she should've, but back then she had no idea just how easy it was. She had always been too caught up in how people didn't understand her.

And now it was like everything was calling to her. Jupiter asked her to look up, and the waves wanted to reach her toes, and the young girl that she once was tapped her on the shoulder. And she felt so overwhelmed that she buried her face in the sleeves of her sweater but nothing could silence the intensity of it all. If things would just stop calling, maybe she could think for a moment about the fact that life was not like it was as a child, and she was losing grasp on everything, and maybe things were finally slipping away from her. Maybe this was it; the thrill was gone, the moment was disintegrating, and the high had crashed.