#literally One sentence that is relevant to anything u need to write. i am sorry

[bejoomi]

* ♪ – it's okay, i'm okay

the christmas concert is all excitement and adrenaline and a dash of organized chaos. once it is all over he feels free.

and maybe a little stupid. optimistic, if you want to be nice about it. it's an almost-manic energy that overcomes him and compels him to think wandering around lotte world on his own after the performances would be fun.

to his credit, he has done worse thanks to the lingering adrenaline from being on stage, but it still turns out to be a bad decision.

eventually the joy fades and he is alone. he has nearly a week off of training now for the holidays and he is alone. he wasn't really thinking about the fact that the last two times he was here, it was with jinyoung. he was thinking about how he used to work here, and it would be fun to enjoy the winter festivities as someone in a far better place, allegedly.

he knows that objectively, he is still in a better place than he was this time two years ago. he is thankful, even now. he just isn't feeling the best. everywhere he looks is a memory with jinyoung – something simple he was fascinated by the first time joomi took him here, or some kind of backdrop to their slightly dysfunctional love story.

then there are the families. children with face paint and overpriced amusement park food, hand-in-hand with their loving parents with camera rolls full of pictures of them giggling on the carousel joomi used to run or screeching on the swing tree. it stopped bothering him for a while, when he had pleasant memories and a tentative promise of someone to accompany him in this theme park built for dates and family outings.

now it is once again a reminder that in a few days, these families will exchange gifts and probably have a cute little tree in their homes that they will gleefully wake up to on christmas morning. joomi has nearly a week off of training and he does not really know what he's going to do other than be alone.

he has a few lingering friends who might also have nothing better to do. in the past, he might've done something with ren and dohyun, but dohyun is gone. last year he went to the christmas market with yejun, but he's gone. he would've loved to enjoy time away from training with jinyoung and have his first good christmas, but he's gone. this year comes with a unique emptiness joomi has never felt before – emptiness like holes, or missing pieces. emptiness where something once was.

it's not like regrets anything. he wouldn't take loving any of them back. he is now of the mind that it's better to love and lose than never love at all, but it is a mentality that opens you up for more pain.

it's okay. he is strong, and he has survived worse. he will survive this too. maybe he'll have better luck next christmas, and maybe on his 24th birthday he will have more to celebrate than grieve. it's okay that it's not this year. it's okay.

this year, he'll just sit on a bench in the middle of lotte world on a saturday night and dissociate.

he should really just go home.

– @bejiu