Lights Are Missing : BeomJun

10.

It was something I hadn't really thought about, or picked up on, until I put on that jacket and my whole aura was filled with the scent of almonds. Not actual almonds of course, they didn't have a smell, but almond butter or almond milk, that kind of stuff.

After I let myself get adjusted to his jacket that was a little too big for me, I grabbed my sweater from over the door and swung the bathroom stall door open. My pants were still pretty wet and my hair was decently damp as well, but I was going to take that over a whole wardrobe of dripping clothes.

I imagined Soobin and Yeonjun standing outside, waiting for me. So I didn't want to take too long, I didn't want them to comment on how long it took me to change just for me to defend myself saying I'm the quickest changer in the world then to be questioned about what I was actually doing. I couldn't admit that I was just admiring the almond scent and the warmth of Yeonjun's jacket. That was just weird.

I stepped out of the stall and began to walk towards the bathroom door to go back out into the main entrance of the school, but as I passed by the mirror, I paused and just stared at myself. I never was self conscious about my body, but something about the way I looked in that mirror just made me want to run home. It wasn't the jacket. It wasn't the way it made me look, or feel. It was just the way I looked. All around. My hair, my arms, my waist, all of it.

The feeling I felt standing there was something I never really felt before. It was painful, seeing myself in that light. Seeing myself, knowing that this was such a foreign feeling. Maybe it was Yeonjun. Maybe it was Soobin. Or maybe it was Taehyun, and Kai. But I suddenly realized how different I really was from all of them. They were all taller than me, more muscular than me. They were all attractive. I was average.

I was just average. I didn't belong with them. I really didn't, yet I was the lucky one. I was the one kid who they actually reached out to because they liked me. Or maybe, if what Yeonjun said was the truth, maybe the only reason they invited me into their friend group was because Yeonjun did like me. Did they know he liked me? Was that the only reason they were being so friendly? No, surely not.

I allowed myself to stare a little longer at the person I saw in the mirror, too afraid of living my life in the footsteps of a screw up. Did I know any screw ups? No, but I surely wasn't trying to be the first screw up in the family. That would be a title I'd have to live with for the rest of my life. And to avoid that title, I'd have to focus on myself. My physical appearance, my academics, my social and emotional health, all of it. But it was something I wasn't used to. But I knew I needed to make a change.

But how? How could I focus on all of these different things at once? Was one supposed to be more important, more influential in my 'screw up' lifestyle, than the others? I was so lost, staring myself in the eyes. The longer I stared, the less I looked like myself. The mirror changed me. I shook my head and rubbed my left eye, the end of the sleeve falling down my arm as I lifted my hand to rub my eye. When I dropped my hand back down, the sleeve slid back down and covered just over half of my hand.

I couldn't stay sitting in the bathroom any longer. It had taken me too long already and there was no point in sitting in there just to contemplate all of my future plans. But did I even need to plan out my future? Was I even going to have a future?

One day, I knew, staring at myself in the mirror, that I'd never see myself in the mirror again. I knew, one day, that I'd be dead. Was it worth it? School? Friends? Physical appearance? Was the struggle and the suffering even worth it if in the end nobody will ever see me again?

"Beomgyu?" I heard my name from the bathroom entrance, causing me to snap out of the weird trance I was trapped in as I whipped my head around to see Kai standing in the doorway with a concerned look on his face.