H.Y.Y.H (Hwa Yang Yeon Hwa)
THE NOTES
NAMES
DATE
Hoseok
July 23, 2010
Taehyung
Dec. 29, 2010
Jimin
April 06, 2011
Yoongi
Sept. 19, 2016
Namjoon
May 02, 2018
Jimin
Dec. 10, 2018
Jin
March 02, 2019
Yoongi
March 15, 2019
Jungkook
May 28, 2019
Yoongi
June 12, 2019
Jin
June 25, 2019
Taehyung
March 20, 2020
Namjoon
May 15, 2020
Yoongi
June 25, 2020
Jungkook
June 25, 2020
Jin
July 17, 2020
Hoseok
Sept. 15, 2020
Jimin
Sept. 28, 2020
Jungkook
Sept. 30, 2020
Hoseok
Feb. 25, 2021
Jungkook
May 02, 2021
Jin
Aug. 09, 2021
Namjoon
Dec. 17, 2021
Hoseok
Feb. 25, 2022
Hoseok
March 02, 2022
Taehyung
March 29, 2022
Yoongi
April 07, 2022
Taehyung
April 11, 2022
Jin
Apr. 11, 2022
Jin
Apr. 11, 2022
Jin
Apr. 11, 2022
Namjoon
Apr. 11, 2022
Namjoon
Apr. 11, 2022
Jungkook
Apr. 11, 2022
Jungkook
Apr. 11, 2022
Yoongi
April 11, 2022
Namjoon
April 28, 2022
Taehyung
April 30, 2022
Yoongi
May 02, 2022
Yoongi
May 02, 2022
Jungkook
May 02, 2022
Hoseok
May 10, 2022
Hoseok
May 12, 2022
Jimin
May 15, 2022
Jimin
May 16, 2022
Jimin
May 19, 2022
Taehyung
May 20, 2022
Hoseok
May 20, 2022
Taehyung
May 22, 2022
Taehyung
May 22, 2022
Namjoon
May 22, 2022
Jungkook
May 22, 2022
Jungkook
May 28, 2022
Hoseok
May 28, 2022
Jimin
May 29, 2022
Jin
May 30, 2022
Hoseok
May 31, 2022
Jin
June 04, 2022
Taehyung
June 07, 2022
Yoongi
June 08, 2002
Namjoon
June 12, 2022
Jin
June 13, 2022
Namjoon
June 15, 2022
Yoongi
June 15, 2022
Yoongi
June 23, 2022
Taehyung
June 25, 2022
Namjoon
June 30, 2022
Jimin
July 03, 2022
Hoseok
July 04, 2022
Jimin
July 04, 2022
Namjoon
July 13, 2022
Jungkook
July 16, 2022
Taehyung
July 17, 2022
Namjoon
July 20,2022
Jimin
July 24, 2022
Jungkook
July 24, 2022
Jungkook
July 26, 2022
Jungkook
July 26, 2022
Jungkook
July 26, 2022
Jimin
July 28, 2022
Yoongi
July 29, 2022
Jin
Aug. 03, 2022
Hoseok
Aug. 13, 2022
Jin
Aug. 15, 2022
Jin
Aug. 30, 2022
Jin
Aug, 30,2022
HOSEOK July 23, 2010 When I counted to three, I heard the sound of laughter like a hallucination. The next moment, the young me ed by, holding someone’s hands. I looked back quickly but there was no one there except my classmates, staring at me. “Hoseok-ah”. The teacher called my name. only then did I realized where I was. It was a class field trip. I was counting the fruits that were drawn in the textbook. Five, six. I kept counting, but as I did my voice trembled and my hands grew sweaty. The memory of that time kept surfacing. I couldn’t clearly my mother’s face, that day. I only ed the chocolate bar she gave me as we looked around the amusement park. “Hosoek-ah. Count to ten and then open your eyes.” When I had finished counting and opened my eyes, my mother was gone. I waited and waited, but she never returned. I had only counted to nine. If I counted one more it would be fine, but my voice wouldn’t come out. My ears where ringing and my surroundings grew cloudy. The teacher kept pointing, telling me to keep counting. My friends were staring at me. I couldn’t my mother’s face. It seemed like if I
counted one more, my mother would really never come back for me. Just like that, I collapse to the ground. TAEHYUNG December 29, 2010 I took my shoes off and threw my bag and went into the main room. Dad was there. I didn’t think about how long it had been or where he had gone. I only raced thoughtlessly into his embrace. I don’t clearly what happened after that, whether the smell of alcohol came first, or the cursing, or the slap to my cheek. I couldn’t know what was going on. He smelled of alcohol and when he panted his breath was foul. His eyes were bloodshot, and his beard was growing wildly. He hit my face with his large hands. He hit me again and asked what I was looking at. Then he lifted me into the air. His scarlet eyes were frightening, but I was so terrified, I couldn’t even cry. This wasn’t my father. No, this was my father. But it wasn’t. My two feet shook in the open air. In the next moment, my head crashed into the wall and I slumped to the floor. It seemed like my head was exploding. My vision flickered, and I blinked a few times. My head was filled only with the harsh sound of my father’s breathing.
JIMIN April 06, 2011 I faced the gates of the Flowering Arboretum alone. The weather was gray and a little cold, but I was in a good mood. It was the day of the picnic, but my mom and dad were both busy. I was a little disappointed at first. But at the flower drawing contest I had been praised, and my friends’ mothers had said, ‘Wow, Jimin is so mature.’ I had seemed a little cool, then. “Jimin, wait here. Teacher will come soon.” When the picnic ended, my teacher had asked this, but I hadn’t waited. I was confident that I could go myself. I grasped the straps of my rucksack with both hands and walked maturely. It seemed like others were looking at me, so I spread my shoulders even wider. Quite a while later, it started to rain. My friends and their moms had all left, and no one is looking after me, and my legs hurt. I covered my head with my rucksack and crouched under a tree. The rain started come down harder, and there was nobody ing by. Eventually, I started to run through the rain. I didn’t see any houses or stores. The place I arrived to was the back gate of the arboretum. The side door was opened and
through it I could see a storage room of some sort.
SEOKJIN March 02, 2019 A damp smell came from the principal’s room as I followed my father in. It had been ten days since I came back from America, and yesterday I had heard that I would be entering school one year behind, since the school system there was different. “Please take care of him”. My father put his hand on my shoulder, and my whole body flinched without me realizing. “School is a dangerous place. There need to be regulations”. The principal looked at me. Whenever the principal spoke, his wrinkled cheeks and the skin around his mouth sagged, and the inside of his blacked lips was pure, dark red. “Don’t you think so, Seokjin?”. I hesitated at the abrupt question, and my father rested his hand more heavily on my shoulder. It was a grip strong enough to make the veins on his neck stand out. “I believe you’ll do well”. The principal met my gaze with tenacity. And my father put increasingly more weight into the hand on my shoulder. It hurt so much I thought my shoulder bones would crumble, and I clenched my hand into fists. My body trembled, and I broke into a cold sweat. “You must always speak to me, Seokjin. You must become a good student”. The principal looks at me with an unsmiling face. “Yes”. The agony disappeared as soon as I squeezed out a response. I heard that my father and the principal laugh. I couldn’t lift my head. I only looked down at my father’s brown shoes and the principal’s black shoes. I didn’t know where the light was coming in from, but they seemed to shine. I was afraid of that light.
NAMJOON May 15, 2020 As I crossed the storage classroom that had become a hideout for those of us with no place to go, I set a few chairs straight. I picked up a desk that had fallen over, abandoned, and wiped the dust away with my palm. Endings make people emotional. Today is the last day I would come to school. Two weeks earlier, it had been decided that we will move. Maybe I would never come back here again. And maybe I would never see my hyungs and dongsaengs again. I folded the paper in half and set it on top of the desk, and even got out a pencil, but I didn’t know what words I should leave behind, so I just ed the time instead. In the middle of scribbling a few useless words, my pencil lead snapped with an audible sound. ‘You have to keep living’. On the paper, which was covered the smudges of the fragments of pencil lead, I had scribbled without even realizing. In between the black lead dust and the scribbles were scattered some stories of poverty, parents, dongsaengs, moving. I crumpled up the paper and put it in my pocket, then stood. I pushed the desk away and dust rose up. As I started to leave I paused and breathed out onto the dirty window, then wrote three characters, no goodbye would be enough. And even if I said nothing, this would convey it all. “Let’s see each other again”. More than being a promise, it was just a wish.
YOONGI June 25, 2020 I swung the door open and came in, then pulled the bag out from the very bottom drawer of the desk. When I turned I inside out, a single piano key fell out with a clack. I threw the half burned piano key into the trash and laid down on my bed. The fire on my heart wouldn’t cool down, so my breathing was a mess, and at some point, soot had smudged all over my fingers. I had gone alone to the house that the fire had destroyed, once the funeral was over. I had gone into my mother’s room and had seen that the piano had been burned so badly you could barely recognize its shape. I sunk down at its side. I sat there as the afternoon light came in through the window and then began to fade. The last of the light rolled over a few of the piano keys. What sort of sound would come out if I played them? I had thought about many times my mother’s finger had touched them. Then I had put one of them in my pocket and left the room. Almost four years had ed since then, the house was quiet. It was insanely quiet. It was past 10, so my father would be asleep, and everything afterwards held its breath. Those were the rules of this house. It was hard to endure its stillness. It wasn’t easy, either, to keep to prescribed times and regulations and forms. But nevertheless, what I could endure even less than that was the fact of living in this house. I received allowance from my father. Rather than opposing him and going astray and
causing trouble, I lacked the courage to abandon him and leave the house to live on my own, to make that freedom into action and not just words. I suddenly rose up from the bed and dug the piano key from the trash can under the desk. I opened the window and the night air pushed in. That air slapped me in the face with the strength of everything that had happened that day. I threw the piano key out of that air with all my strength. I listened hard, but I couldn’t hear the key hitting the ground. No matter how hard I thought, I couldn’t imagine the sound that piano key would have made. No matter how much time ed, that piano key would never make a sound again. And I would never play the piano again.
JUNGKOOK June 25,2020 I stroked the piano keys with my fingertip and smudged the dust. I put some strength into that finger, but the sound that came out was different than the sounds of Hyung’s playing. It had been ten days since Hyung hadn’t come to school. Today, the rumor had gone around that he had been expelled. Namjoon and Hoseok Hyung didn’t say anything, and I was too afraid to ask. On that day two weeks ago, only Hyung and I had been therein the hideaway classroom when the teacher opened the door and came in. it was a visiting day for the class parents. I didn’t want to be in the classroom, so I went thoughtlessly to the hideaway. Hyung didn’t even look at me and kept playing the piano, and I put two desks together and closed my eyes like I was pretending to sleep. Hyung and the piano were slightly different, but also seemed so much like one and the same that I couldn’t separate them. While I listened to Hyung’s playing, I somehow wanted to cry. Since I felt tears threatening to flow I rolled over, and the door suddenly slammed open and the piano sound came to a stop. I was slapped across the face, stumbled backwards and ultimately fell. As I crouched to withstand the violence, suddenly the voice stopped. When I lifted my head, I saw Hyung standing over me, pushing at the teacher’s shoulder. Over Hyung’s shoulder, I saw the teacher’s shocking expression.
I pushed the piano key. It was a mimicry of the sound Hyung used to play. Had Hyung really been expelled? Would he never come back? Hyung always said it was ordinary for him to get beaten up a little. If I hadn’t been there, would Hyung have had to stand up to the teacher? If I hadn’t been there, would Hyung still be here, playing the piano?
HOSEOK September 15, 2020 Jimin’s mother paced back and forth through the emergency room. After checking that the name on the head of the bed and the IV bottle were properly placed, she brushed a blade of grass from Jimin’s shoulder with one finger. I approached hesitantly, feeling that I should tell her why Jimin was in the emergency room, about the seizure at the bus stop. Jimin’s mother seemed to discover my presence only then, and she looked at me with a long, evaluative gaze. I didn’t know what to do, so I hung back. Jimin’s mother said only ‘Thank You’ and then turned back to him. The next time Jimin’s mother looked at me, the doctor and nurses had started to move the bed and I moved to follow. Jimin’s mother said thank you again and pushed at my shoulder. Rather than pushing, it would be more correct to say that she touched me slightly and then pulled her hand away. But I suddenly felt an invisible line being drawn between Jimin’s mother and myself. That line was sure and solid. It was cold and sturdy. It was a line that I could never surmount. I had lived for an orphanage for 10 years. I knew that much with my whole body, my sight, the air. In a moment of bewilderment, I took a step back and then collapsed to the floor. Jimin’s mother looked vacantly down at me. She was a small and beautiful person, but her shadow was large and chilly. That shadow fell over me, collapsed on the emergency room floor. When I lifted my head, Jimin’s bed had left the emergency room and could no longer be seen. After that day, Jimin didn’t come back to school.
JUNGKOOK
SEOKJIN 3 August YEAR 22 I opened the door and went into the storage room of classroom. In the middle of a summer night, the odor of fungi and dust were mixed with the humid air. I had flashbacks of many different moments at that time. I ed the shiny shoes of the principal, Namjoon’s facial expression when he was standing outside the door, the day I ignored Hoseok and walked back alone. My heart started hurting and I got chills. I had this complex feeling that overwhelmed me with pain. It’s hard to say how it felt like because it wasn’t annoyance but it wasn’t fear either. The sign was clear. I knew I had to get out of this place. It seemed like if Tae knew what I was going through & held my arm. “Hyung, try a little harder. Try ing what happened here" Then I got tae’s hands off of me and turned back. We walked through the heat for hours. We were as tired as we could be. Other guys looked at me as if they didn’t know what to say to me. Memory. What taehyung said about memory was just a meaningless story. That I did that..That it happened to me… Story that we did something together. It’s possible that it happened. I think we did that. But, memory isn’t something that you can understand or accept. You don’t understand experience through just hearing something. Experience is something that is deeply rooted in your
mind, head, and soul. But for me, the memories I had about that place was only about the bad things. Things that made me painful and and made me want to escape. A fight happened between me and taehyung who stopped me from going back and leaving. But we were both tired. Hitting or avoiding...it both felt heavy and slow as if we were in a hot viscous liquid. It happened in a sudden when tae and I tripped over each other. My shouldners bumped into the wall and I faltered as I lost my balance. At first, I couldn't tell what happened. I couldn't open my eyes or breathe due to the dust filling up the whole place. I continuously coughed. "Are you okay?" I realized I fell after hearing that person. As soon as I tried to get up, I see something that I thought as a wall crumbled. There was a huge space over the crumbled walls. No one moved for a second. Oh my world. Someone said, "we spent such a long time here" we never imagined there was a space beyond the walls" But what's that? As the dust settled down, we were able to see a cabinet in the middle of the empty space. Namjoon opened the cabinet. I took a step closer. There was a note inside the cabinet. Namjoon picked the note up and turned to the first page. I instantly held my breath. The first page of a note that seemed pretty old...the page had a expected name written on it. That was my father's name. As Namjoon tried to flip another page over, I took the note away from him. Namjoon seemed surprised and looked at me but didn't mind much. I went through the book shelf then an old note tipped
over as if it was about to crumble. This book written in my father's handwriting was a diary by my father that recorded what he experienced with his friend in high school. All the days weren't recorded. Sometimes,the diary skipped a month and there were pages where there were covered with blood stains. I knew that my father went through the same thing as me. He also made a mistake in his life and tried to run and run to make up for his mistakes. The things that was written on my father's note were the records of his failures. My father ended up giving up and failed. He forgot, ignored, and avoided it. He lost his friends. The last page only had a date written and the rest was covered with dark ink. The ink was stained into the next page and the page after where nothing was written on it. That stain seemed to show my father's failure like if it was some sort of an announcement/speech/advocate. After some time ed by, all my senses got blurry. I felt the cold wind blowing over the window and knew it was the darkest time of the day, the time right before the sun rose. My dongsaengs including namjoon were scattered around sleeping. I looked up to the ceiling. I ed seeing my dad's name written somewhere here. Below that, there was a sentence written "everything started from here." I felt something from the tip of my fingers when I was able to close the note. I was able to see letters written under the ink stain. I felt something out the window. I guess the sun was about to rise. But this night didn't end yet. The time wasn't night or
past midnight (AM). As the darkness and blurry light intertwined, I was able to see the words on the line from the darkly stained page. The note had memories that was beyond something that was recorded. On top of the words, in the spaces in between the lines, the things that my father decided to forget and not remained on the pages. The color evaporated but the traces of how the pen was pressed onto the paper were left. My father's time of fear, hopelessness. And his small and fragile hope and despair whirled around. My father's map of soul was reflected and left on the note. When I closed the note, I teared up. I looked at each one of them. Maybe we had to come back here. Everything started here. I realized the joy of being together. I realized the meaning and the joy of being together and being able to laugh together. The initial mistake that committed...the mistake that I was never able to confess was left like a scar. I think all these things are not a coincidence. At the end of the day, had to get here. So that I will find out about the mistakes and faults that I have committed and find the meaning of the pain and my agony. And perhaps take a step closer to finding a map to my soul.