The water is cool and refreshing after a long, sleepless night. I splash my face again before inserting the contacts. Blinking against the initial discomfort, a glance in the bathroom mirror shows my eyes as a dull brown, with a hint of late night shadows underneath them.

Morning preparations done, I head out into the kitchen. A bottle of orange juice and a cereal bar are sitting on the counter, which I'm certain was empty ten minutes earlier. Frowning at their sudden appearance, I glance towards Minho's bedroom. Silence.

My hesitation doesn't last long however, and three minutes later I'm out of the door with the tuning kit slung over my shoulder. Today's task requires total focus and meticulous planning, so there's no room in my mind for thoughts of the hands on my waist and the breath on my cheek. It's not often that I'm hungry in the morning anyway. The university awaits me, and, regardless of what happened last night, at least I can trust in Minho to carry out his part too today.

 

The keys are warm to the touch under my fingers. The regular monotony of black and white probably shouldn't comfort me, but they do. It's been some time since I've had any keyboard within my reach, and I can't resist playing a few scales. The baby grand* springs to life at my touch, and it's like I'm being greeted by an old friend, renewing the times when I sat for hours on end at the instrument, telling stories with the music at my fingertips.

The tuning kit weighing down on my shoulders reminds me of the 'job' that I'm being paid to do, and I have to keep up appearances if I'm to discover more about Lee Jinki. Setting it down on the piano bench, I play a few more notes across the whole range of the keyboard. It doesn't actually seem to be that bad; in fact, it's not often that instruments are this in tune. Not that it doesn't require servicing; it's probably that there's just someone who takes extra care of this particular piano for some reason. At least, this means that I can spend less time on the instrument and spend more time placing the 'bugs' in strategic positions.

No larger than a pin head, the super sensitive cameras known as bugs in the industry can stick to almost any surface and work in practically every imaginable environment. That is, they can be thrown into water or embedded in the bark of a tree, and I can still obtain crystal-clear retina images and eavesdrop on conversations up to twelve metres away. All this, and I don't even have to be in the same room to renew the battery, since one push of a button from the accompanying handheld device emits an undetectable electromagnetic pulse that juices up the bugs over and over again.

I reach into the hidden pouch nestled inside my jacket, where a handful of the bugs are concealed. The door opens before I can take any out however, and I quickly whip my hand from my jacket, laying it nonchalantly on the piano keys.

Lee Jinki stands in the doorway, apparently bemused by my presence. A gentle smile springs up on his face as he walks towards me, though his eyes dart to my hand on the keyboard.

"Good morning." He seats himself on the bench besides me, as companiable as his greeting.

"Hello, Jinki-sshi."

Hearing his name he winces slightly, but turning to me with that friendly smile again and replying,

"Call me Onew. That's how other people know me, and it's OK if you're not so formal."

"Onew... sshi?"

"Just Onew's fine."

"Onew-sshi."

He sighs and concedes to my stubborn formality. Grabbing some tools from the tuning kit, I get up and move behind the baby grand* to lift up the lid and start my work.

"So how's your first day here?"

"I can't really say since the day has barely started."

An answering chuckle resounds softly in the small room, and he is silent for a few moments. As my hands do their work automatically, I search for some discreet way to make Lee Jinki to leave the room if I'm to plant the bugs here. Even though my eyes are on the strings, I can distinctly feel him watching me openly with a curious intent. At this rate, I'll have to wait until tomorrow to put the bugs into position, and I'd rather not waste time. Surely there's no reason for him to stay here and watch me, is there?

"Don't you have lectures or classes you should be in?"

"I don't have any lectures until this afternoon."

"Then why are you here so early?"

"Well usually I like to get some morning practice in everyday before classes, but since you're working on my piano..."

"I thought all the instruments here are owned by the university?"

Another low chuckle escapes from him, causing me to glance up at him in question.

"Yeah, that's true. It's just that this piano isn't used by anyone else except me, so I've become sort of attached to it. Like, sometimes I do a little maintenance, because I feel like it's my responsibility, you know?"

I do know. More than anyone. An instrument to a musician is like what a child is to a parent, like a flower is to a gardener... or like what Apollo was to me.

Lee Jinki's reverberant voice snaps me out of my morbid reverie, and I try to form a smile to placate the confused expression on his face.

"Sorry, I was just..."

"Deep in thought?"

I nod slightly and he grins at me like I'm missing out on a private joke that only he knows.

"I understand how you feel about your piano. In fact, can you play a C major scale, please?"

The resulting melody, with each note perfectly in tune, causes such a face of unbridled joy that for just one moment, Lee Jinki reminds of the children I've seen when they get the first of an ice cream, or when they're the first one to reach the roundabout in the local park. Such childish happiness does not often come from a set of strings and a few planks of wood.

"You're so good at this!"

"I am a professional."

Silence ensues as I carry on to work on the lower range of the piano, all the while feeling the weight of the bugs in my jacket. Looking up, the air of quiet embarrassment that hangs around Lee Jinki is tangible, so it's not long before his eyes are scrunched up in confusion again.

"Uh, Jiwoo-sshi?"

"Yes, Onew-sshi?"

"Don't you need to check the intervals with an electronic tuner?"

No, is my simple answer. Can he play a couple octaves of a chromatic scale starting on the bottom note of the piano, please? Watching him watching me, just merely listening to the heavy bass notes, realisation slowly dawns on his face and he stares at me like I've just grown an extra limb from my forehead.

"Jiwoo-sshi, do you have perfect pitch**?"

I can't help it; a small sigh escapes from my mouth.

"Yes, I was born with it."

"Wow, that's amazing... I'm really jealous of you, Jiwoo-sshi," he says wistfully.

"Well it's useful for music, but being unique means that people have... expectations for you." Lee Jinki, of course, can't hear the double meaning of the words. Images of Altaïr and Ezio appear in my mind, memories of tortuous cycles of training and hospitalisation in my childhood years. Clearly, they were successful when I exceeded all those expectations, but the moments of insecurity are more frequent now after I failed to protect what was home to me.

When Lee Jinki doesn't reply I risk a glance at him still seated at the keyboard. What I see is somewhat unexpected.

Instead of contempt, offense, or even worse, pity, when I look into Lee Jinki's rich coffee-coloured eyes, all I get is the sense that he understands. Understanding, and even acceptance. For me? Perhaps I'm misinterpreting something here. Lee Jinki has known me for less than a week, and he believes that he knows a part of my mind, a part of my desires. But how can someone truly know the real me when they don't even know the true colour of my eyes? I revert my gaze back down to the strings before my face gives something away.

"Are you thirsty? I'll go get us some drinks and you can take a break."

As the door shuts behind him, I grab the opportunity and plant a bug at both ends of the room. My task complete, Lee Jinki is none the wiser when he comes back to find me still working at the baby grand*. He comes to a stop by my side, and holds a bottle out hesitantly.

"I, er, realised I don't actually know what kind of flavour you like, so I just got you the same as me. Everyone likes peach tea, right?"

"Of course. Thank you, Onew-sshi."

"No worries," he replies with a flash of teeth.

"...yeah, I'll meet you there when I get him. Onew, are you in here?"

Another male voice chimes out behind the open door, and the owner appears a second later. When his eyes fall on me, his lips curve upwards politely, but the fake expression immediately tells me that he's hiding something. I control my own response and formally lower my head in greeting.

"Oh hey, Jonghyun, I was just on my way," Lee Jinki says with a nonchalant grin.

"Really? Well, hurry up, since you need to study, apparently. Who else am I going to copy notes off, right, Jiwoo-sshi?" Kim Jonghyun beams at me, all pearly white teeth and mischievous cheer as he winks yet fails miserably, his eyelid going through a series of rapid convulsions. Reacting to his motor defect, my own eyebrow twitches involuntarily, albeit barely. Kim Jonghyun tilts his head in confusion when his audience fails to burst into wild giggles, although his face still manages to keep an expression similar to the Cheshire cat's when he misguided Alice into Wonderland.

"Jonghyun, I know for a fact that you wasted at least three hours playing on the Wii last night. Why can't you do your own work for once?"

"What!? Says the weird guy sitting at a piano he's not allowed to touch, creeping out the poor piano tuner and getting in his way on his first day. Be an awesome hyung and don't just leave his dongsaeng hanging; I'll even let you play with me on the Wii tonight, yeeeeeeah?" Kim Jonghyun's eyes widen and grow as the words gush out in a remarkable display of his lung capacity, drawing out the last word for so long I can replicate it on the piano as a scale.

"Firstly, I have been useful to Jiwoo-sshi, unlike a certain dinosaur. Secondly, will you let me win on Mario Kart?"

"Hell no."

Lee Jinki rolls his eyes, stands up and goes to Kim Jonghyun at the door. Going out of the door, he looks back over his shoulder with a stubborn expression.

"I'll be your hyung."

Evidently he's still intent on forcing a bond between us. It's probably better this way; for we need Lee Jinki to extract the information from his father. The bodyguard looks unhappy though; his hand is tightly squeezing the door handle and the wary expression on his face revealing his disapproval on our growing 'friendship'. At this point in time, it's hard to decide whether Kim Jonghyun will be an obstacle for me to worry about, and if so, then it'll be a question of whether a paid discipline can hold up against a life of cold-blooded killing. Just to see the bodyguard's reaction, my teasing answer is accompanied by an equally indulgent small smile.

"Whatever you say, Onew-hyung."


 

A/N: Oh lord, I apologise for this mess of a chapter. Argh, I at writing dialogue but I tried to present each of the characters with their own individual quirks and whatnots, so leave comments and feedback? Please? I'll give you free watermelon

The amount of time it takes me to write a single chapter is getting stupid, really. What's worse is that I will be going away for five weeks on holiday without internet access, which will frustrate me to no end. no fangirling on tumblr for over a month boohoo

*a baby grand is like a regular grand piano, only it's about half the size. One of my lifelong ambitions is to buy my own baby grand. as if that's ever gonna happen lol
**perfect pitch is the ability to hear any sound or noise, and immediately know how to replicate it on a musical instrument. Like Jiyeon/Ashen/Jiwoo (so many names for one character, sorry) someone with perfect pitch is usually born with it, although I've heard of cases where someone trains their hearing ability for absolutely ages to achieve relative pitch to an almost perfect degree. As a musician I'm pretty envious of those who have it, although it can be annoying for people if they hear something that's the slightest bit out of tune, but there's two sides to every coin, right?

07.07.12