yestoday

(He declared we should go that evening, even after I argued that it would be very busy since we would be there right at dinnertime and that it was a Sunday. He countered that it would be even busier tomorrow, since it's Memorial Day, so we might as well just go today. We went today. It was busy as hell. There were so many people around us, and it was so loud. I was bouncing my legs off, but we don't have to get into that. The food took another near-hour to arrive after we ordered, and in the meantime, I managed to like and look at every single one of Sungjae's current 266 Instagram posts, screenshotting multiple in the process. The food wasn't even that good. But, oh well—that's done and over with, at least—I got to spend time with my family, so there can't be real fault in time spent like that, right? I can endure some silly crippling anxiety to stack up on family-time-points. That's fine. And, I got some pictures of my sister standing next to this goose that wouldn't flee no matter how close we dared to get to it.)

 

Thus, it was also a nearly-hour-long drive back home—obviously, I hope. (I mean I wouldn't mind some spacetime continuum fuckery in my life to spice up my inter-dimensional immortal existence, but that wouldn't help with the coherency of the event I want to describe here.)

Surprisingly or not, I love car rides, for the most part. I can listen to the fuck out of my music, and if no one bothers me or tries to converse with me during the session, I will get so into it. Then, I'm able to enter this euphoric headspace where the music is literally coursing through me, and my brain feels like it's overloaded with the tidal waves of serotonin that are sweeping over it. I've measured my heartbeat a few times after some really intense moments, just to see if I was actually burning calories or something from sitting there because it sure felt like it, especially when I step out of the car at the end and my legs are wobbly and feeling like they just ran a marathon—exhausted, but in the good way. Anyway, you get the point.

Usually, during those music ecstasy sessions, I'm imagining that I'm witnessing the song live in concert, or even that I'm performing it. For Sunday's specific circumstance in question (that I swear I am getting to), it was the former. During those trips to and back that accumulated to over an hour in the car, I blasted the fuck out of a wide range of songs: on the way there, it was mostly Teen Top (I had a revelation of how emotional 미치겠어 made me… 미치겠어 out of all songs, though? Hm.), and on the way back, it was entirely SEVENTEEN.

I tried going for INFINITE and began Last Romeo at first, but was too exhausted to be feeling hype after being outside for at least three hours straight already. I settled on SEVENTEEN's (newer) non-title tracks that I haven't listened to as much lately, since I figured what better way was there to prepare for the concert—that I am definitely going to be able to go to, by the way. I'm definitely going to get good seats, too, and I'm definitely going to not mess up the fanchants, and my phone is definitely not going to die halfway through recording, and I'm definitely going to remember to bring my glasses, just in case. I'm definitely going to be able to relearn all their dances by then, and absolutely nothing is going to go wrong when I see them—than to go through the new B-sides that I've been slacking on. (By 'new', I mean everything post-An Ode.) But before that, I had to retouch on my ultimate SEVENTEEN favorite: Run to You, as we all know—also known as my ultimate K-Pop favorite.

So, guess what I put up next: Run to You and Together, back to back. Together is basically Run to You's younger sibling, and I love her, but I did not expect what she was going to hit me with that night. Run to You was just as powerful as always; it still made me feel everything it used to, but I suppose the sheer amount of times I have played it managed to placate the force of it, but never the intensity. I suspect that was why Together impacted me way harder than I could have ever expected—I haven't had it on loop for years like that; I haven't already picked apart every minute intricacy of its beauty and adorned my cochlea with it like I have already with Run to You.

I was listening to these imagining seeing it in person, at the concert in August, and my god, the Together scene I hallucinated did things to my heart. The sky was dark by then from these long ass car rides, so I was staring out my right side backseat window into the inked navy aether, Seokmin going at those beautiful notes in my AirPods, emotions already welling in me. I was in another realm at that point already. But then—but then!—came the bridge, came Mingyu's muted line, came Seungkwan's double tie into a high note, and then, the tears started flooding out—actually flooding out. I started sobbing in the car; I was going through it. I looked over at my sister and slammed my head on the back of the car seat and was like "LEA! This song is sooooodfjsdj goooddfjsfdnjkbfsjhekmdfdjwwww…" I'm pretty sure everyone was confused as shit; my mom was like 'what's going on?', and my dad glanced back for a second while trying not to crash the car. I can't remember what song came on after that because I cried through it for like a few more minutes, but that was unreal. That's when I instantly realized I was absolutely doomed to bawl my eyes out at the concert, whether or not this song is on the setlist (if it is, I might as well just not come out of that venue breathing).

Mind you, this will be my first time seeing SEVENTEEN in real life. The closest I got was at KCON New York 2019, but I had to leave before the second day started, which was when they would be there. I think I left New York the morning after they arrived, which means I was in the same city as them at one point—that was the closest in proximity I ever was to them. I also wanted to go to Ode to You tour in New Jersey so bad, but my mom couldn't take me in the dead of winter, so that didn't happen. (Back then, I thought suppose that disposed of my chance of ever seeing Let Me Hear You Say live, but it ended up not being on the setlist anyway… Either way, there's even a lesser chance that it'll performed this time, I suppose.) I've never heard them sing in front of me, and I can only imagine how magical it is. If my imagination could ruin me like this, I can't fucking comprehend the state I'll be in during the concert. I just hope my mind stays present through the whole thing.