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Yi-Seo

“Selling your talent illegally?” I inquire him in a shocked manner, quite uncertain about what he implied by that, and the look of alarm on my face makes Taehyung chuckle.

“Yeah, exactly,” he nods his head and takes another swig of the vodka from his glass.

“I don’t get it,” I prompt him to give me more clarity of the entire conversation.

“Miss Kwon, the industry could only ban me from performing and making music, that is, under my name. But I can always sell my work to someone else, right?” Taehyung cheekily wiggles his eyebrows at me, but mine knit together in confusion.

“Do you mean that you still make music?” My voice experiences an abrupt tremor, as do my hands, and my eyes freeeze wide.

“I do,” Taehyung confirms, nodding. “I write songs, I make music, and I record the melodies in there,” Taehyung points with his thumb to a closed door beside the door to his bedroom, “and I also sell them. I record scratch tracks for my work because my voice isn’t as good as it used to be.”

“I buy all these and more,” he slightly tilts his head in the direction of the dining table at the back, “by working as a ghost writer and a ghost producer. But my work is still very much in demand, you see,” he smirks proudly, without any hint of self-pity, and continues to nurse on his drink.

He just started talking, and it is already as worse as it can get. This is a terrible downfall for someone who lived his best life a decade ago. The depressing thought makes my heart deflate and sink a little, but it does not remotely match the emotions Taehyung is displaying on the exterior. So, I push it aside for the moment.

“Is it a recording room?” I’m looking at the closed door with wide eyes as I ask him that.

“It is. A small one with the basic necessary setup,” Taehyung answers casually.

I remain silent, trying to figure out what to ask him to know more about this interesting venture of his, and for how long he has been doing this for a living. I’m also extremely curious to check out the recording room, mainly because I haven’t ever seen one in real life.

“You’re curious to know more, aren’t you, Miss Kwon?” Taehyung raises an eyebrow, almost as if he just read the questions swimming about in my mind.

“I certainly am,” I confirm, nodding. “But only if you want to tell me more too. I don’t want to pry,” I admit, and Taehyung forces a chuckle upon hearing what I just said.

“I mean it… I really don’t want to be nosy,” I say softly, keeping my eyes on him and trying to gauge his reaction to what I’m about to say next. “But the urge to write about you, your life… is so strong, and I’m really trying hard not to show it out,” I let my confession out in the open.

Taehyung’s eyes don’t reflect even one percent of the enthusiasm that I’m feeling within, but he keeps staring at me for a few long seconds, and that stare does something to me. In a nice way, that is. I don’t feel intimidated or repulsed, no. It’s not that kind of a stare. It’s more like the kind where his arresting eyes are asking me silent questions and probably even telling me that he was waiting to hear something like this.

“What makes you think your work will sell if you write about me? I’m nobody now,” Taehyung shrugs as he takes a sip of his vodka, keeping his eyes on me, not even blinking.

“I don’t intend to write something just so it sells,” my blunt reply, though full of honesty, makes him cackle.

“Of course, you’d be writing for money. So, you definitely need selling points,” he asserts his judgment of the situation quite confidently.

“Biographies aren’t really interesting because who wants to read about someone else’s life when everyone deals with so much shit in their own lives every day?” I ask a question, but I don’t intend to get a reply from Taehyung who has finished his first glass of vodka now. “The fact that I want to write a biography itself should be convincing enough that I’m not just aiming to create something that sells,” my confidence is through the roof all of a sudden, and it reflects in my voice and posture too.

Taehyung places his glass on the table and leans back in his seat, spreading his arms wide on either side of him. But his gaze hasn’t diverted to anywhere else except my face for the past few minutes.

“What else is the aim then? Passion? Curiosity?” He questions me, his head swerving from one side to the other.

I suck in a deep breath with my eyes closed, and then I let it out slowly as my eyes open before I begin talking. “Taehyung-ssi, you may not be happy that I’m bringing this up again, but I strongly believe that there has been a lot of mystery surrounding everything that happened to you in the past. No one bothered to dig deeper, or probably other things were piled up on the actual truth to cover it up, intentionally, I suppose. And the world just forgot who you were. I find it very unfair, and I feel that a little honesty from my side could probably shine some light on the truth. It may or may not help you and me in any way, but it will liberate you. The truth is always liberating,” my eyes are met with Taehyung’s stupefied eyes, and he looks away, nodding his head a few times.

“It sounds tempting,” he nods absently. “But I have no reason to trust you,” he adds in an unusually soft tone, without making any eye contact. But the fact that he hasn’t yet chased me out of his home like he did the other day is definitely phenomenal progress made on this front.

“I trusted you, and I still do. But that doesn’t mean you have to trust me too. I’m nobody to force you into anything,” my answer causes Taehyung’s eyes to lift to look at me, and he begins nervously twiddling with his long fingers.

He remains silent for a while as if mentally evaluating the trustworthiness of my words, and me on the whole, and then he reaches out for his glass once again. He probably believes that the spirit would help his mind clear up and help him think and talk without any reservations. Taehyung refills his glass with the exact same amount of vodka as he did earlier and places the bottle back on the table with a soft thud.

As he takes relaxed sips of his drink, he keeps staring at a particular spot on the floor for a long time, and then his head swings in my direction. “Miss Kwon, you’re in for a terrible waste of time and efforts if you write about me. You should stay away from me for your own good,” there is caution in his tone, but I’m not buying that warning as an excuse to change my mind.

“I’m prepared to face it, whatever it may be,” I raise my chin confidently, and Taehyung looks away, uneasily swallowing the invisible lump in his throat.

“You’re not giving up, are you?” That definitely sounds like he has given up trying to scare me out of this, and it brings an untimely smile to my lips.

“I’m not,” my words are firm, and Taehyung exhales a long breath upon hearing my reply.

“Okay,” he says, looking up at me as he takes another small sip of his drink, pursing his lips together thereafter. “Where do you want to begin?” His question momentarily stuns me because even though I knew that he was slowly giving in, I didn’t expect that he would consent to it so soon.

“Do you mind if I grab a pen and a notebook? I don’t want to miss any crucial details and come back to you for verification later on”

“I’m surprised that you don’t want to record every word that I speak,” he gulps down the remainder of the vodka in his glass with a sarcastic smirk on his lips.

“Taehyung-ssi, I’m not going to use any of this against you. So, I don’t need a word-to-word proof of what you speak. I only need valid details since I’d be writing about an actual person who exists in flesh and blood and not some fictional character that I conceive within my mind.”

“You can find the pen and papers there,” he points to a shabby, craggy table in a corner.

I walk over to the table and find piles of music sheets, ill-organized handwritten lyric sheets, and some sheets where the content has been ruthlessly damaged with a marker. The urge to grab a bunch of the lyric sheets and read through them is beginning to gnaw away at my insides. I want to know about his deepest emotions; I want to know what he writes about, and I turn around and look over my shoulder. Taehyung is busy with his alcohol, and he wouldn’t know if I stole a sheet or two from here.

Carefully picking up the top two sheets with handwritten lyrics that aren’t really legible, I dip my neck a little and squint my eyes as I intently scan through them when I feel something moving right next to the side of my face. Slowly turning my head to the side, my eyes double in size when I see Taehyung’s face over my shoulder, studying the sheets that I’m holding in my hands, and it makes me jump.

Terrified, I drop the sheets to the floor and back away against the table, swallowing thickly.

Taehyung’s calm eyes follow the papers and fall to the floor, and then they slowly rise back up to look at me. “Curious much, are we?” He quizzes me, crouching on his knees to pick up the two sheets that I dropped on the floor.

Rising back to his feet, he shakes out the two sheets and returns them to the right side of the table behind me. He then takes two short steps closer to me, looking straight into my eyes, trapping me between his towering frame and the table.

My legs begin to tremble, and my breathing intensifies because I guess he is mad that I’ve been looking through stuff that he hasn’t allowed me to see yet. As I stand rooted on the spot clutching the edge of the table behind me tight with both my hands, Taehyung leans closer to me, and my nostrils are assaulted with the strong smell of alcohol. Our bodies are so close now, his chest is just touching mine, and I hold my breath even though my heart feels like it might beat its way out of my chest and straight against him. I squeeze my eyes shut, praying for this moment to end soon.

I stay completely still, and I do not feel him moving either. I have no idea how many nerve-wracking seconds pass, but it seems like a lot to me. And then I hear his deep voice, “Here.”

The warmth of his body and the pungent alcohol smell around me reduces in intensity, and only then do I open my eyes to find a blurry image of Taehyung holding out a sheet of plain paper and a pen in his hand. Blinking, I take it from his hand while taking in short spurts of breath, and for a fleeting second, I actually regret praying for that little moment to end when I notice him walking back towards the couch as if nothing just happened.

I wouldn’t lie by telling myself I wasn’t starting to get high from just having him that close to me.

⚜
So, to clarify, being a ghost writer or producer is not illegal. In fact, it is very common. But it is illegal when a blacklisted artist does it.
🤧😭

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Published on : 01/14/2023