It's been a while.
A while since I started seeing all of you differently. I don't know when it exactly happened. I think that's the thing about change. It doesn't knock. It doesn't warn you. It just settles in quietly, and one day you look around and realize everything has already shifted and you don't even remember watching it happen.
I kept asking myself, am I doing this right? Every single day, I kept asking. Every hangout that felt a little too careful, every conversation that ended a little too quickly, every silence between us that used to feel like comfort but slowly started feeling like something I had to carry alone. I kept wondering if anyone else noticed. If anyone else was still trying.
I was. For a long time, I was the only one still standing in the same place, waiting.
And slowly, without meaning to, I started losing hope. I started losing that feeling. That specific, loud, reckless feeling we had when we were young and certain and the future felt like something we could hold in our hands.
God, I miss that.
I miss us.
The pointless arguments. The late nights that had no real reason to last as long as they did. We just didn't want to go home yet. The chaos of being together with no agenda, no weight, just us. The boys we were before any of this became complicated.
Now it's different. Everyone has somewhere to be. Everyone is building something new. And when we do find each other, it's still warm. It is, I need you to know that. But there's something sitting underneath it now. Something none of us quite said out loud.
We grew up.
And for the longest time, that terrified me.
Hoon.
I need to talk to you. I've been needing to for a while now.
You made me a promise once. Or I guess it was more like a wish. We were at the beach, the sky doing that thing between gold and orange, and you looked at me the way you always did when something was sitting heavy on you. And you said it like it was simple.
If you still share the same dream as mine, then I'm glad. That's enough. Just knowing someone is with me in this, that's already enough.
And then you said it. That you wished we'd all come back together again someday. That you wanted me to promise you that.
And I said it. Without thinking, without hesitation. I promise. We'll be back together again.
And then you gave me your name tag.
I still have it. I've moved it from pocket to pocket, drawer to drawer, all these years. Never deciding to keep it, just never putting it down. I think part of me always knew it meant something I wasn't ready to face yet.
But I also know now what you were really doing. You were lonely, Hoon. You wanted something to hold onto and you gave that weight to me because you trusted me. And I don't blame you for that. I never will. But I think somewhere in those last days, you realized it too. That you had asked something of me that was never really mine to carry. That the dream, the promise, the wish, it was yours. And you handed it to someone who didn't know how to say no to you.
You told me later. I remember. You looked at me and said, don't trap yourself in someone else's dream. Not even mine.
You were trying to take it back. Quietly. Gently. The way you always did things.
But it was too late by then, wasn't it? Because you were gone after that. And I was left holding a promise I had already made, standing there with your name tag in my hands and nowhere to bring it.
I couldn't face your grave empty handed, Hoon. I couldn't go back to you without having kept my word. So I held on. I held on so tightly that I stopped noticing when it started hurting. I took your wish and made it my mission. Your dream became my dream, not because I truly wanted it, but because losing it felt like losing you all over again.
The truth is, and I'm only just now able to say this, the dream was never fully mine. I liked it, yes. I liked being part of something with all of you. But if you had never asked me, I don't know if I would have chased it the way I did. I was following along because that's what we did together. Because where you all went, I went.
And then you were gone. And I didn't know how to stop.
I'm sorry, Hoon. I'm sorry it took me this long. And I'm sorry you carried the guilt of that wish even before the end. You weren't selfish. You were just human. You just wanted your people around you. There's nothing wrong with that.
But I need you to know, the promise was never the point. You were the point. You always were.
To the members.
I lied to you.
I told you it was a car accident. I told you it was sudden and clean and not his choice, because I didn't know how to give you the truth and keep you at the same time. I was afraid that if you knew, it would break something I was still desperately trying to hold together. I was afraid you'd fall apart in a way I couldn't fix.
I'm sorry. You deserved the truth from the beginning. You deserved to grieve him the right way. And I took that from you because I was scared. Because I wasn't ready.
But you came back. When I told you he was gone, you came back. And for a moment, just one moment, we were those boys again. Standing together, laughing through tears, remembering what it felt like to want the same thing at the same time. We performed again. Just once. Just enough to feel it.
And it was beautiful. It really was.
But we all felt it, didn't we? That it wasn't the same. That we weren't the same. Not because something was broken, but because we had grown, genuinely, quietly, in different directions, into people that the boys we were in 2020 wouldn't fully recognize yet.
You have new dreams now. New paths, new interests, new mornings that look nothing like the ones we used to share. And standing in that room with all of you, watching you laugh and reminisce and light up talking about the things you're building now, I finally understood something.
Not all dreams we have as children are meant to survive into adulthood. And that's not failure. That's just life moving the way it's supposed to.
So I'm letting it go. I'm letting us go, the version of us that was tied to that dream, that promise, that summer in 2020 when everything felt infinite. I'm disbanding what we built, not because it didn't matter, but because it did. Because it deserves to be remembered as something pure and not dragged past the point it was meant to last.
We're not over. I want to be clear about that. We still talk. We still know each other. We still belong to each other in the ways that actually count. But the dream, the formal, structured, promised dream, I'm putting it down now. Finally.
And it feels like breathing for the first time in years.
This is the lesson, I think. The one it took me years and grief and a name tag in my pocket to finally learn.
Don't take someone else's dying wish and make it your whole life. Don't mistake love for obligation. Don't confuse holding on with honoring someone.
Cherish it. Let it be something warm you carry quietly. But don't let it become a cage.
Hoon didn't want that for me. He said so himself. I just wasn't ready to hear it yet.
I hear it now. I finally hear it.
The dream existed. It was loud and bright and completely ours for a season. And that's enough. That will always be enough.
To the boys I grew up with, thank you. For all of it.
To Sunghoon, I kept the name tag. I'm keeping it. Not as a reminder of what I owe you, but as a reminder of what we were.
I'll see you when I see you.
-Heeseung♡
(Future of own dreams last chapter letter draft by amajohn)
