2: AN OLD PIANO AND ITS OLD MEMORIES

"The Uninvited Guest," by DΞΔN

                It was lunchtime at Jae-Dong High, but Naeil was outside, eating alone. She hoped no one noticed. It had nothing to do with bullying or anything like that. Sometimes it was just hard to be around people.             Naeil slipped her headphones on and leaned back on the bench. Nothing much had changed since she became a senior.

                Deep breaths come easier when you’re outside, she thought, letting her head fall back so the wind tickled the tip of her nose. It was an enthralling feeling.

                The red glow of sun through her eyelids fell dark, and Naeil popped open one eye to see if a cloud was passing over. Instead, the face of a classmate stared down at her. was moving, but Naeil couldn’t hear anything. The headphones would have to come off.

                “What did you say?” asked Naeil.

                “Ah. I was just asking if you’re okay.”

                “Yeah. I’m good.”

                “Why are you outside?”

                “I like…being outside.”

                “Nothing happened?”

                “Don’t worry, Soomin-ah. You know how I am. I just need to be alone sometimes.”

                “Ah! Am I bothering you?”

                Naeil smiled ruefully, hating that, if she was honest, she might just say yes.

                “Friends always come first. You already ate?”

                A nod.

                “Sit. I’ll—”

                The sound of doors slamming and kids shouting made the two girls turn. A group of boys spilled out from the school as one rowdy mass. Two boys, one older and one younger, seemed to be at the center of the brawl.

                “Looks like Jungkook got into a fight again,” said Soomin. She shook her head. “Aigoo, he’s been getting worse and worse ever since Min Yoongi disappeared last year…or I guess it’s almost two years by now, isn’t it? Since we’ll be graduating soon. Wow, how crazy is that?”

                Naeil’s eyes stayed trained on the boys fighting. “Min Yoongi is related to that kid or something, isn’t he?”

                “They’re half-brothers.”

                “That guy must’ve been in some serious trouble.”

                “Jungkook?”

                “Yoongi. How he just disappeared like that…”

                Jungkook threw a punch and got blocked by one of the ‘onlookers.’ This is not a real fight, thought Naeil.

                “You were there, weren’t you?” asked Soomin.

                “Hm?”

                “When Min Yoongi started that fire in the bathroom?”

                “Yeah.”

                “You almost got into so much trouble.”

                “I did get in trouble.”

                “You did?”

                The fight was obviously no longer one-on-one. Others who had previously been watching were now piling onto Jungkook. He was getting a pretty good beating. Naeil stood up, but Soomin caught her arm.

                “Naeil-ah. There are at least five of them.”

                “At least it’ll be two against five instead of one against five. This is totally unfair right now. Let go.”

                “But Naeil-ah, I think they’re all Bul-ui Agma, you’ll—”
                The doors slammed open again. “YAH!” shouted the new boy, coming out. “Get off of him, you little punks!” He ran over pulled kicking bodies off of Jungkook one at a time, taking every opportunity to twist a wrist or push a little harder than necessary. “Go before I call someone else down here! Now!”

                Soomin sighed in relief. “Wow, Hoseok came just in time.”

                Naeil said nothing. Hoseok’s brow stayed low and furrowed even as he dusted off Jungkook and helped him to his feet. She couldn’t hear all the worried words Hoseok muttered to the younger boy, but his mouth never stopped moving.

                The bell rang. Jungkook stopped and stared at Hoseok for a moment like a guilty puppy, before spinning around and dashing inside without another word. Hoseok sighed as he left.

                “Soomin-ah,” Naeil said, turning to her friend, “I’m gonna walk back with Hoseok-ah.”

                “Sure. See you later! Try not to get into trouble.”

                Hoseok didn’t even notice when Naeil ran up to his side; he just kept on walking in the direction of the school entrance with his head down, almost slamming the door in her face when he walked in. Naeil caught it by the edge and Hoseok turned around, surprised.

                “Oh, Naeil-ah! You were there?”

                “Yeah. Are you okay?”

                He started walking again.

                “I am. It’s just that there’s been some stressful things going on lately, and Jungkook is adding to the chaos.”

                “Nothing I can help you with?”

                “Are you good at finding missing people?”

                “What?”

                “Jimin’s missing. He’s been missing for days now actually. He had been acting weird for a while, but I wasn’t able to get anything out of him. Now I can’t find him, not anywhere.”

                “Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen him at school.”

                They stopped at his classroom’s door, but he didn’t go in. Naeil wondered what to say to Hoseok. Jimin was kind of a weird kid. He was always either super cheerful or super depressed. Or maybe he was actually always depressed, and sometimes he only appeared to be cheerful. But Hoseok looked after him as if he were his real dongsaeng, and Naeil could only imagine the way he felt right now. [Dongsaeng= a younger sibling]

                “You know, Hoseok-ah…some days, I’m all over city. I’ll keep an eye out for him. I’ll even ask around if I get the chance.”

                “Thanks, Naeil-ah. Really. Thank you.”

                “Of course. Tell me if you find him, okay?”

-------------------

                School was over—finally. Naeil had somewhere to be, but the bus would be late today, and all inspiration to do homework seemed far, far away.

                So, instead heading outside to wait at the bus stop, she detoured to the school’s music room. It wasn’t common for her to be there, even though she was very familiar with the subject. Naeil had taken private piano lessons for years, so she rarely had reason to venture into the school’s music room. Mostly, she only stopped by to steal a few moments at the piano. That’s why she was here today.

                Her fingers rested on the piano, as if waiting. These days, Naeil rarely knew what she wanted to play. Her hands began to move almost aimlessly over the keys, looking for new melodies and chords somewhere between the old ones.

                She thought about Hoseok, looking down with sad eyes. Jimin’s disappearance. Soomin speaking softly. Jungkook fighting with those kids. Yoongi.

                Naeil stopped playing. What had happened to him? He had even made it to the news a day or two, because they discovered his apartment on fire the day he ran away from school. By the time it was put out, everything had been completely destroyed. People thought it was suicide, but they never found a body.

                Min Yoongi had become a legend, or maybe more of a myth, at Jae-Dong High. Everyone talked about him after that, in hushed, sort of awed tones. Maybe no one thought about him more than Naeil. He disappeared before she was able to find out what it was in him that reminded her of something in herself.

                The truth was, that incident in the girls’ bathroom wasn’t the first time she had noticed him.  They didn’t technically know each other, but she had seen him around. She noticed interesting people, and Min Yoongi was certainly interesting. It was as if he was carrying some load around, but he refused—or maybe didn’t know how—to drop it off. He always looked tired, or depressed, or like someone had pissed him off and they were going to pay for it.

                But on that one day when she had stumbled upon him in the music room, she caught a glimpse of something deeper than that. He had been sitting at the piano where she now sat. She didn’t say anything, just watched. She couldn’t figure out, even after all this time, if her silence was to avoid being caught peaking, or because her breath had been stolen away so suddenly she barely even noticed. His playing wasn’t bad—no, it was actually really good. It wasn’t pretentious, either. It was just very, very real. Real, and beautiful. Almost like he knew what it was like to try to pour out your everything into a piano. Almost like he was asking every question Naeil’s heart had ever wondered.

                It was then that she realized there wasn’t so much of a difference between them after all.

Author’s Note

I am tiiiiiired. I am still haaaaaappy. But I need sleeeeeeeeep.

Naeil is pretty different from my last character, so I’m really curious to know what people think of her. I actually relate to her a lot more than I did to my last character (ahhh Kumi, you were so sweet, maybe even too sweet for me to properly write).

Thank you to everyone who subscribed and commented and maybe even upvoted :)  I love you. No really. I do.