Tee BoonDin☀️🌻

Short story coming soon: "At Least It Feels Like You" 💔 Dunk would rather be hurt by the memory of Joong than be healed into forgetting him.

🎥The Pain that Feels Like You (re titled) #JoongDunk #DunkNatachai #JoongArchen ✍️When I first entered this fandom, I never imagined that this scenario could one day become the future of us DungJangs. The pain I felt while writing this is beyond words. May this story hurt our hearts enough to help us find the strength to let go, make peace with what may come, and hopefully, begin to heal. 🌃Dunk had started to hate the nights, but not enough to stop waiting for them. During the day, he could pretend. He could laugh at jokes, answer messages, attend meetings, and show up for work. He could stand in front of cameras and give people the smile they expected from him. He had become remarkably good at making his heartbreak look like something he could manage. But the nights were different. When everyone went home and the world became quiet, there was no longer anything to distract him from the person he had lost. At 1:47 a.m., he would turn off the lights. At 1:52, he would put on his earphones. By two, he would be lying in bed, listening to heartbreak songs that seemed to know every detail of the life he was trying to forget. He had created the playlist during the first week after the breakup. Back then, he couldn’t find a single happy song that didn’t remind him of Joong. Now, he knew every track by heart. He knew which lyrics brought back their last conversation, which melodies reminded him of their late-night drives, and which songs could make him cry before the first chorus ended. He had become familiar with the routine: listen, remember, cry, replay, and eventually fall asleep when his body could no longer keep up with his heart. It was exhausting. And yet, he kept doing it. Because somewhere between the first tear and the last song, Dunk could stop pretending he was okay. He could admit that he still loved Joong, that he missed him more than he knew how to explain, and that he would give anything to return to a time when loving him didn’t hurt. For a few hours, he didn’t have to be brave. He could simply be the boy who had lost the person he thought he would spend the rest of his life with. And perhaps that was why he kept coming back to the pain. He didn’t enjoy suffering. He hated the headaches, the swollen eyes, the exhaustion, and the loneliness that followed him into the morning. But there was something terribly comforting about being hurt by memories that still belonged to Joong. When a familiar song played, he could close his eyes and almost hear his voice. When he looked at their old photographs, he could remember the warmth of his hand, the weight of his arm around his shoulders, and the way Joong used to reach for him in his sleep. For a moment, the distance between them seemed smaller. Then the song would end. And Dunk would remember. Still, he would press replay. Because even the cruelest memory was better than having nothing to hold on to. 📲The first thing people noticed was his Instagram. Dunk had always been someone who shared only little pieces of his life online. But lately, his posts had taken on a different character. He was posting almost every day. Sometimes it was a photograph of the night sky, accompanied by a song about missing someone. Sometimes it was a picture of his dinner, or that necklace that always hangs on his neck. Other times, it was an old-looking photograph with a lyric that seemed too specific to be a coincidence. There were no names. No explanations. No direct references to what had happened between him and Joong. But people who knew Dunk could read between the lines. His stories were becoming a diary of everything he couldn’t say out loud. A song about someone leaving. A photograph taken at an hour when most people were asleep. A quiet corner of a familiar restaurant. A lyric about wishing someone would come home. And then there were the posts that were simply photographs of himself. His face, his eyes, his familiar smile. Except the smile wasn’t quite the same anymore. Some fans worried. Others sent messages telling him to take care of himself. A few tried to interpret every post, every song choice, every caption, searching for clues about what he was feeling. Dunk saw some of the messages. He appreciated the concern, but he didn’t know how to explain that he wasn’t trying to send anyone a message. He was simply trying to find somewhere to put his feelings. Instagram had become the only place where he could leave pieces of his sadness without having to explain why they existed. He couldn’t call Joong to tell him that he had a difficult night. He couldn’t send him a song and ask whether he remembered listening to it together. He couldn’t share a photograph and wait for the familiar reaction. So he posted instead. Sometimes, he would upload a story and immediately regret it. He would stare at the screen, wondering whether he had revealed too much, whether people would understand, whether Joong might see it. That last thought always stayed with him a little longer than it should. Perhaps somewhere in the back of his mind, he was still hoping Joong would recognize himself in those songs. Perhaps he wanted Joong to know that he wasn’t doing well. Not because he expected him to return, but because there was still a part of Dunk that wanted the person who had once known him best to understand just how much losing him had hurt. 😢The lack of sleep eventually became difficult to hide. It showed first around his eyes. The dark circles grew more noticeable, and the skin beneath them became puffy from all the crying. His eyes, once bright and expressive, often looked gloomy even when he was smiling. Small breakouts began appearing along his cheeks and forehead, partly from the exhaustion and the stress of everything he had been putting his body through. He tried to cover them. His makeup artist did what she could before appearances, and his manager occasionally reminded him to get more rest. Dunk would nod, promise to sleep earlier, and assure everyone that he was fine. But the following night, he would be back in bed with his earphones on. The worst part was that he had an event to attend. He arrived on time, dressed beautifully and looking every bit the professional he was expected to be. His outfit was carefully put together, his hair styled, and his makeup done. From a distance, he looked perfectly presentable. But the cameras caught things that makeup couldn’t completely conceal. The dark shadows beneath his eyes. The puffiness around them. The tiredness in his expression. The little breakouts that showed through whenever the lighting hit his face a certain way. And his eyes. God, his eyes. They looked as though he hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep in weeks. He smiled when people called his name. He posed for photographs, greeted the organizers, and answered questions with the usual politeness. He even laughed at something someone said, although the expression disappeared almost as quickly as it came. A fan recording captured him looking down while waiting for the next activity. For a few seconds, he seemed completely elsewhere, his fingers absentmindedly playing with something in his hands. Then someone called him. He looked up and smiled. It was a small moment, barely noticeable to anyone who didn’t know him. But those who had followed him for years noticed the difference. He looked tired. Not the ordinary tiredness of someone who had been working long hours, but the kind that came from carrying something heavy for too long. When he returned backstage, he thanked everyone and went straight to his dressing room. He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want anyone asking whether he was sleeping well. He didn’t want to hear another reminder to take care of himself when the one thing he wanted to take care of was no longer his to hold. He sat in front of the mirror and stared at his reflection. For a moment, he barely recognized himself. He looked at his eyes, at the shadows beneath them, at the little imperfections that had appeared while he was busy trying to survive his nights. Then he let out a tired laugh. “You’re really doing a number on yourself, Dunk.” He wasn’t sure whether he was talking about the breakup or the person he had become after it. 🌃One night, Dunk opened their old conversation again. He had stopped counting how many times he had read it. Their messages were ordinary, filled with the little things that had once made up their life together. Have you eaten? I’m outside. Come here. Miss you. Love you, na. He stared at those last two words until his vision blurred. It was strange how something so simple could hurt this much. Back then, those words had been as natural as breathing. He had never wondered whether Joong meant them. He had never imagined a day when reading them would feel like standing outside a house he no longer had the right to enter. His thumb moved farther up the conversation until he found a voice message. He hesitated. He knew listening to it would ruin him. But he missed Joong’s voice so much that the possibility of hurting himself seemed less frightening than another night without hearing it. He pressed play. Joong was talking about something ordinary, his voice relaxed and familiar. At the end, he laughed, and Dunk felt something inside him collapse. It wasn’t even a particularly special recording. That was what made it unbearable. It was simply Joong being Joong, unaware that one day, his voice would become something Dunk had to borrow from the past. He played it again. By the fourth replay, tears were slipping down his cheeks, and he was clutching his phone against his chest as though he could keep the sound from disappearing if he held it tightly enough. “I miss you,” he whispered. The recording ended. Dunk waited, staring at the screen, half expecting the universe to take pity on him and give him something back. Nothing happened. Joong remained gone. “I miss you so much.” He put his phone down and covered his face. He wanted to be angry. He wanted to remember every reason their relationship had fallen apart, every painful thing they had said, and every moment when love had failed to be enough. But whenever he tried, he remembered the boy who had once made him feel safe. And how could he hate someone simply because the person who had loved him was no longer the person who stayed? 🚪Dunk knew he was keeping himself trapped. He understood that rereading messages wouldn’t change the breakup, that sad songs couldn’t reverse Joong’s decision, and that no amount of crying could make another person choose to stay. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to stop. He had built himself a prison, and the cruelest thing about it was that every wall carried Joong’s face. There was Joong laughing in a photograph Dunk had saved months ago. Joong leaning toward him across a table, looking at him with an expression so tender that Dunk could still remember what it felt like to be the person receiving that attention. Joong standing beside him, their shoulders touching, looking as though being together was the most natural thing in the world. Every memory was another wall. Every song was another lock. And Dunk was both the prisoner and the person holding the key. It was a jail where he was tortured every night, where every memory brought him back to the moment he lost Joong. Yet somehow, he had begun to find comfort in the pain, because at least inside that prison, Joong was still with him. Here, he could still hear his voice. Here, he could remember what it felt like to be held by him. Here, he could close his eyes and pretend that Joong was simply away for a while, that the distance between them was temporary, and that one day he would hear the familiar sound of a key turning in the door. Outside that prison was reality. A reality where Joong could wake up, live an entire day, and perhaps never think about him. A reality where Joong might learn to sleep peacefully again, laugh without remembering their old jokes, and build a future that no longer included Dunk. Dunk wasn’t ready for that world. So he stayed inside the one he had created, where the memories were painful but precious, and the person he loved was always just close enough to break his heart again. He knew it wasn’t healthy. He knew that he was holding on to something that no longer existed in the way he wanted it to. But there was a part of him that feared healing. Because if he stopped hurting, would he stop feeling close to Joong, too? If the songs no longer made him cry, would the memories become less vivid? If he could look at their photographs without his chest tightening, would that mean Joong was finally becoming a stranger? He couldn’t bear the thought of losing him twice: first in reality, and then inside his own heart. So he kept the wound open, mistaking the ache for a connection he could no longer have. There were moments when Dunk almost reached for the key. A morning when he woke up after a few uninterrupted hours of sleep and realized he hadn’t cried himself to exhaustion. An afternoon when he laughed at something a friend said and forgot, for a few precious minutes, that his heart was broken. Sometimes, he would hear a song that reminded him of Joong and feel only a quiet sadness instead of the familiar urge to fall apart. Those moments should have comforted him. Instead, they frightened him. He would find himself opening their old photographs, searching for the familiar ache. He would return to the songs that had destroyed him the night before, hoping they could make him feel something strong enough to prove that Joong still mattered. He had begun to measure his love by the amount of pain he could endure, as though suffering were proof that what they had shared was real. He couldn’t understand that he was allowed to heal without erasing their love. He couldn’t accept that one day he might remember Joong with tenderness instead of devastation and still carry everything they had meant to each other. To Dunk, letting go felt dangerously close to betrayal. He didn’t want to stay broken forever. He simply wasn’t ready to become whole without Joong. 🌃One night, he dreamed that Joong came home. It was such an ordinary dream that Dunk didn’t realize it wasn’t real. Joong walked through the door, looking tired, and asked whether Dunk had eaten. Dunk laughed, telling him that he was unbelievable, that he had been gone for so long and still couldn’t think of anything else to say. Joong smiled and reached for him. Dunk folded into his arms without hesitation. He buried his face against Joong’s shoulder and held him as though his body had never learned to live without him. He didn’t ask why Joong had left or whether they were still broken up. He didn’t ask how long he was allowed to keep him. He simply held on. For a little while, everything was all right. Joong’s arms were warm. His breathing was familiar. Dunk could feel the rise and fall of his chest, and the simple reality of being held by him made every terrible night seem worth surviving. Then Dunk woke up. His hand was stretched across the empty mattress. For several seconds, he couldn’t move. He stared at the space beside him, trying to understand why his body still remembered the warmth of an embrace that had never happened. Then reality settled over him. The breakup. The silence. The fact that he had dreamed of being loved by someone who had already let him go. “No,” he whispered, shaking his head. “Please, no.” He didn’t know who he was begging. He wanted to return to sleep, to find his way back to that little pocket of happiness where Joong had come home and nothing had changed. Instead, he reached for his phone. It was 3:16 a.m. His heartbreak playlist was still open. He pressed play, curled onto his side, and cried into his pillow. For a few minutes, he had been loved by Joong again. Now he had to survive losing him all over again. 😢Dunk had stopped asking himself when he would move on. The question made him feel as though he were failing at something everyone else understood. People spoke about healing as though it were a straight road, something that happened when you finally accepted the truth and decided to move forward. But what was he supposed to do when the person he was grieving was still alive, still somewhere beneath the same sky, still living a life that Dunk could no longer touch? There was no final goodbye that could make the loss feel complete. No clean ending, no way to mourn the person Joong had been to him while accepting that the person himself still existed beyond his reach. He couldn’t grieve him as though he were gone. He couldn’t love him as though he were still his. So he remained caught between the two, trying to make peace with a reality his heart hadn’t caught up with. Maybe one day the songs would become just songs. Maybe he would see their photographs and smile at the memories without wishing he could return to them. Perhaps he would finally understand that moving on didn’t mean their love had been meaningless, and that healing wasn’t the same as forgetting. But that day wasn’t today. Tonight, he still missed Joong. Tonight, he still needed the songs, even when they left him crying until he could no longer keep his eyes open. He would take his time, even if it took months, even if there were nights when he thought he was getting better only to find himself back at the beginning. He was learning, slowly, that he couldn’t force his heart to stop loving someone simply because the relationship had ended. And perhaps the saddest part was that Dunk wasn’t waiting for Joong to come back anymore not consciously. He was waiting for the day when he could remember Joong without needing to hurt himself just to feel close to him. Until then, he would keep waking up, keep going to work, and keep smiling when the world asked him to. He would continue posting little pieces of his life, even if some of those pieces were nothing more than songs and photographs from sleepless nights. He would show up at events, even when his eyes betrayed him. He would let the makeup cover what it could, smile for the cameras, and go home knowing that the hardest part of his day was still waiting for him. For now, the prison remained. The songs kept playing. And Joong’s face stayed on every wall. Because sometimes, the hardest person to let go of isn’t the one who left you. It’s the one you keep bringing back every night, just so you won’t have to face the full weight of their absence. Dunk put on his earphones, closed his eyes, and pressed replay. When the first notes filled the room, the tears came again. Joong was gone, yet he was everywhere. The pain made him feel less alone, and the memories gave him somewhere to hide from the reality he wasn’t ready to face. So Dunk stayed a little longer in the prison he had built for himself. Not because he didn’t want to be free. But because he still didn’t know how to leave a place where every wall carried the face of the person he loved most.