🐨: Hello. I hope you’ve been well. It’s a sweltering summer. It’s already been a little over two months since I was discharged. I’m living far away in Los Angeles, working, living, and playing together with the members. It’s truly a strange experience. A bit like that unfamiliar feeling of Bon Voyage Pyeongchang? Strange already, isn’t it?.. Anyway, I feel like I’m steadily moving toward somewhere. I’ve had a lot of time to think since coming here. I wake up around ten every morning, exercise, eat, then head to work around one or two, and come back around eight or nine. After that, I sit alone on the terrace of our rented house, and I often think about the past, the present, and the future these tangled tenses of time. Honestly, I can’t quite grasp any of them firmly. I’m neither fully laughing nor crying, just running forward day by day. They say the “self” is actually an illusion. Scientists call it the sum of electrical signals in the brain. The Buddha said it’s the result of flow and interconnected causes. And I wondered… maybe our team is like that too. Not a fixed entity, but something that’s changing every day? In our hearts, “Bangtan” might be like pieces of paper, each of a different color. Even I’m not quite sure anymore what it is or rather, what it was. But there’s one thing: as I near thirty, to still be creating something together with these friends I want to dedicate myself to, and feel grateful for, this very moment itself. As for what our next album will become, I’m still figuring it out myself. But I’m hoping that the moments we’ve shared here, in this faraway place, will turn into some kind of beauty something I’d forgotten for too long. So I write this, sitting on a summer terrace. What color are you right now? I miss you. It’s been such a long time, hasn’t it? But when we meet again… it’ll feel like it was never that long. I promise. I’ll be flying to you soon. Until then, I’ll do my very best. I love you. —Namjoon Kim