Loud.

It was all too loud.

The music blaring, the people talking, the bottles clinking; everything surrounding you pounded into your ears and crowded every square centimeter of your mind.

It was almost too much to handle. All these sounds were deafening. Yet the loudest ones were not the drinks, or the chatter, or the music; it was the thoughts.

Not yours. Theirs. It was their thoughts. The thoughts of every other person in that club. The thoughts of the man standing next to you, the thoughts of the girl stumbling to the bathroom, the thoughts of the DJ as he contemplated the next song.

All their thoughts swirled around in an invisible vortex in the corners of your minds eye, and it was so loud. They were so mixed and it was impossible for you to place a thought to a face.

You knew how hard it was to understand a group people as they attempted to speak all at once; their words tripping over another and blending to create sentences that didn’t belong or paragraphs that molded a story that wasn’t real. It was impossible to interpret.

Words are bad like that, but thoughts are worse.

For every single word a person says comes a thousand more thoughts, flooding and drowning that one word into something unidentifiable. For every person trying to speak over the other, their thoughts multiplied in your mind and the frustration of trying to figure out what they were saying turned to fear.

You were no longer able to make out one word from a thought.

To them, their thoughts were something hidden and almost a piece of fiction that only they believed in, but to you it was all fact that haunted you with its reality of their every thought. None of it made sense, but you were forced to know it was true. It was pure torture.

You shouldn’t have left your room. Your nice, comfortable, somewhat quiet room with no person to hurt your mind.

Your friends didn’t understand why you never wanted to go out. They didn’t understand why you didn’t like loud music, or crowded room. Nobody understood what it was like.

Closing the bedroom window didn’t work, yelling to drown out the sounds didn’t work. Nothing worked. Your world was just loud, and never, since the day you heard your mother’s thoughts for the first time, had it been quiet.

Your world was now all sound and deafening noise. You needed to leave. To get the heck out of that club and to a place far enough away from any person.

You stood up off the stool you had been sitting on and tried to look for the friends that had dragged out of your doorway, despite your objections, and into this thought hell-hole. You knew that their intentions were well thought out (you could hear them), but you couldn’t stand it anymore. The least you could do was let them know you were leaving.

You spotted one of your friends as she stood on the dance floor, pressing her body tightly against the man behind her. You couldn’t determine her thoughts from the rest of them, but you knew you wouldn’t be able to reach her from where you stood. It would have been best if you just left and let them know later, so you turned away instead and stumbled to the nearest exit, trying to keep your balance as best as you could by holding onto the edge of the bar’s counter.

The neon green of the exit sign was mocking your chaotic mind as you took staggered steps in an attempt to get closer to it. Bodies swirled around you like air, but more noisy and much more difficult to get through.

Unrepentant bodies into you one after another and you didn’t have enough time to fall to the ground before another would knock you the other way.

Their voices and their thoughts swirled inside your head just as much as their bodies did around you. You couldn’t make out only a few things they said, or thought.

“Watch it.”

“What is she doing?”

“Oh man, she is so wasted.”

It was interesting that the only ones you could make out were the ones that were directed towards you.

You were close to the exit but you were able to see the door past the seemingly looming wall of more bodies and unspoken thoughts.

“Move,” You said aloud, not taking to common curiosity when you felt as if your head was about to explode. Your desperate pushing and nudging at the wall got you a few uncaring glances, but not enough to create a dent. “Move, please.” Your begging was not enough to draw them away from each other.

The exit was very close, nearly only five feet away, but between the bodies and thoughts it felt an eternity away.

You turned away from the wall and towards the air of people and almost san to the ground in defeat. Your eyes desperately scanned every corner of the room for some way, any way, out.

The noises almost felt as if they were getting louder, and you felt weak, dizzy. It only took a few more bumps before you couldn’t hold yourself up any longer; your legs finally gave out and you were collapsed onto your hands and knees, a sob escaping your lips.

The noise was dropping down onto your shoulders, caving in and adding more more weight; each thought jabbing into your skull. Your breathing shallow, and the panic was turning into liquid nausea in the pit of your stomach as silent tears ran down your cheeks and neck.

Chaos is all you felt.

You knew you wouldn’t die from this, but you couldn’t ensure your sanity.

You thought you were screaming, from the scratch in your throat, but if you were, you couldn’t hear it. You didn’t know what to do in this situation. It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, but each time, you lost sense of your own thoughts, and therefore never knew how to get out of it.

The only thought out of the millions that you could make out, was one of your own. A single word.

‘Help.’

Then it was gone.

The noise was gone.

Muffled by something covering your ears. You were familiar with the feeling. The feeling of hands covering your ears. You had felt it a million time from your own hands and your mother’s hands.

Yet this time it was actually working. The hands on your ears were now doing what your hands, or your mother’s hand, or your doctor’s prescriptions had been able to do.

They blocked out the noise.

You must have stopped screaming, due to the shock, because the scratch in your throat was gone, replaced by a sore feeling as you swallowed and slowly looked up to see who had done what had taken you years to do.

You met dark eyes, framed with silvery hair.

The hands from man with the dark eyes and silvery hair were working.

You could still hear the thoughts, but they were muffled and they no longer dug inside of your head. The only thing inside of your mind was your own thoughts. Any Thoughts but your own were stopped by his hands from moving through to your ears.

Your eyes studied him in amazement.

He had saved you.

Moments passed, and then his lips were moving, saying something.

‘Focus on me.’ They formed those words and you stared at them. ‘Just me.’

You nodded slowly and moved your eyes from his lips to meet his own dark eyes. Focusing on him as he had instructed. He didn’t remove his hands.

For several moments, you both just sat there, focused on each other, as other people’s thoughts floated around you. But the thoughts were impatient. They wanted back into your mind.

You could hear them growing louder once again, getting closer and closer to your mind. Every so often, a thought or two would slip between the man’s fingers and into your skull, fighting with the other thoughts that were now cowering in renewed fear away from the intruders.

An involuntary whimper left your mouth, and your breathing started to quicken once again as more and more came in. He noticed your panic, and his hands gripped the side of your head a bit tighter, creating a better seal from the thoughts.

‘Watch what I say to you.’ His lips mimed, and you nodded again. ‘Breathe.’

You followed his instructions and took in a deep shaky breath, letting it out immediately after. You got the hang of the pattern after several breaths and it began to steady as you took control; breathing in for second, and exhaling for an equal amount of time.

You noticed the number of thoughts beginning to diminish second my second, starting with the intruding ones in your mind and soon the ones on the outside of the man’s hands began to grow quieter.

The tension in your body loosened and relaxed as he nodded along with each of your breaths, guiding you through everyone. His dark eyes distracted you from the noise, and before you knew it the only thing you could hear were actual words. Not a thought in sight.

He seemed to notice your change in demeanor and his hands slid from your ears onto your shoulders as he helped you to your feet.

Once you were standing again, you glanced around to see that not a single person was watching you, but all were enjoying the music and noise around them.

It was the same place you had entered not even an hour or two before, but now, it was quiet.

“Thank you.” You said meekly to the silver haired man in front of you, and he nodded. He didn’t smile or anything, but he still looked like a hero to you.

“Are you okay?” He asked, and you nodded.

“I am now. But I just want to go home.” You said, wanting to bask in the newfound quiet, but at the same time wanting to get away from any noise at all. He nodded in understanding.

“I’ll get you a cab.” He took you by the wrist and you followed him without question to the exit you had not been able to get to earlier.

The night air stung against your flustered skin, but it also felt amazing. You were amazed that you couldn’t even hear the thoughts of the people lingering outside the club.

It didn’t take him long to hail a cab and he came back for you within a few minutes. He opened the door for you and you climbed into the seat and told the driver the address to take you to.

“Thank you again.” You said to the stranger and he only nodded before closing the door. You told the driver to go, and basked in the near complete silence. The drivers thoughts weren’t even there and you felt so happy you could cry.

But it wasn’t silent for long before a single thought popped into your head. A thought that wasn’t your own.

‘I’m Yoongi by the way.’

You spun around in your seat, eyes wide, to look back at the man who had helped you. He knew something. By now he was just a figure, but you could make out the way he held up his hand in a single wave farewell.

‘I hope that we can meet again, Yoongi.’ You thought this to just yourself, but it seemed that you weren’t the only one who heard it.

‘We will.’