Word count: 428
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Being quiet wasn’t the most acceptable treat when you’re always in public. Mark would know because that was his situation. He did enjoy speaking but he wasn’t the most talkative person and preferred to think before speaking up about things he didn’t know everything about. Sometimes he felt as if he should’ve just stayed in Los Angeles and get a poorly paying job to later meet someone to start a family with and live happily ever after – as all stories he heard when he was a child said.
But he really wanted to work with music. He just didn’t want to make the same type of music as all of the artists in the US did. He didn’t want to write his own music nor did he want to just sit back and watch others do all of his work. That’s when he figured out he wanted to perform and not just work with music.
He had been close to giving up a few times but always tried to find motivation, which wasn’t usually too hard. He wanted to make his parents proud, he wanted to prove the people at his old school he could become something big. It worked for a while. But as time went by, it became harder and harder to motivate himself with those simple lines. That's when Mark's biggest source of motivation appeared.
A guy from Hong Kong became a trainee under the same label as Mark. Even though their personalities were as different as they could be, they bonded easily and a week after the Hong Kong guy - Jackson - became a trainee, Mark had someone he considered his best friend.
Every time Mark felt like giving up and going home, Jackson would be there to distract him. Jackson wouldn't say 'it will be alright' or 'you will regret leaving' but simply distracted Mark by talking about whatever had gone viral, or about how he liked the Seoul weather better than home, and many times he asked Mark to go for a walk with him. Mark liked the last option the best.
"Mark? Will you accompany me to the coffee shop down the street?"
"Of course, how could I ever say no to that?"
"That's a date then!"
A tiny detail to the story Mark may have forgotten to tell was how he was fortunate enough to fall in love with someone who was in love with him. The best part was how the one Mark was in love with was also the reason he stayed. Jackson was Mark's light.

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