"What am I doing wrong now?" you hissed, wishing you could see to give a death-inducing stare to your instructor who was laughing at you to your left.

"You're still holding it incorrectly," he warned you, reaching out yet again to correct the angle of the guitar in front of you.  As he brushed over your left hand on the neck (Or thats what you thought you was called.) he pushed it down and the right side of the guitar came up again.  It felt so strange, so foreign.  Slinging your arm over the side of this large instrument and holding up the other end, feeling along the strings which varied in thickness, holding it at just the right angle - it was impossible!

"I changed my mind, I want to start with the piano."

"Don't give up, you haven't learned a single chord yet," he encouraged you.  You wondered if he was exasperated by your already constant failure.  He seemed amused from his laughter.  You realized you did make quite a few mistakes and you'll admit some of them weren't entirely on accident.  When he laughed, you had to keep yourself from laughing and the last time you actually let it slip.

But you had no clue what kind of a person he was.  You wanted to know about him.

"Where are you from," you brought up suddenly as you were feeling for your starting point on the neck and placing your other hand near the sound hole.  You began placing your fingers in the position for what he called a "C chord."  Whatever that was.

"Let's made a deal," he told you, guiding your fingers further up the neck to help you position them properly.

"What?"

"For every five chords you master, I will tell you something about myself."

Sneaky bastard.  Trying to actually get you to learn things.

"Every five chords?"

"We still have the piano to learn, too," he reminded you.

"Okay.  Let's do this...B Chord thing."

"C chord."

"Whatever."

---

For the rest of the hour, you spent time trying to master your first five, C, D, G, E, and F.  You barely got the first two down.  You didn't strum correctly, hold your fingers correctly, didn't transition correctly, and a bunch of other problems.

"You'll get it," he told you for the upteenth time.  "If everybody quit this early, we wouldn't have many musicians, now would we?"

"I know," you told him and you handed him the accursed instrument.  It had been about an hour and you thought it was a decent time to leave.

"In your defense, you are more determined and doing well, despite your absolute zero amount of knowledge on the subject of playing guitar.  On Wednesday, we will have a bit of a vocabularly lesson before we begin."

"Wednesday?"

"Yeah, tomorrow I have lessons all day.  Unless of course, you don't plan on coming back?  I understand."

"No," you laughed at him.  "I haven't gotten my first five chords down, why would I quit?"

"That's the spirit," he declared proudly, placing a hand on your shoulder before he stood up.  You could hear him putting away the guitar.  "Yongsan."

"What?"

"I'm from Yongsan," he repeated the name.  "Not far from here then."

"Yeah," you nodded, trying to visualize a map of Seoul in your mind.  You couldn't place it.  You decided to look it up later.

"That's your reward for your lessons today.  Come back on Wednesday and you may learn something else."

"You're trying to get me to learn something.  You are terrible."

"It's my job."

You said your goodbyes before being guided out of the room by Jonghyun.  You began walking carefully down the hallway and were quite a few feet down before you heard his door shut.  After that, you stopped and smiled.

You found your hobby.

"Jungsik," you heard Eun-ah's familiar voice say to you.  You turned around in the direction of her voice.  She placed her hand on yours as she approached.  "Where were you at?"

"Finding a hobby," you told her simply.

"Well...I didn't mean this early in the day.  The university students are down here, you know," she scolded you slightly, though her voice sounded more worried and she seemed to almost whisper to you.  You frowned.  You did know.  There you were again, feeling like some animal let out of it's cage.  Why should the university students care if a blind girl is among them?  You weren't used to people always knowing where you were and nobody trusting you being alone.  It's been this way for three months and you still weren't adapted to the change.

"I must have forgot.  I don't come down here that often, I'm sorry."

"Well, you've been gone for a while.  Did you find your hobby?"

"I think I have."

It was quiet.  You knew she was waiting for you to elaborate.  When you didn't, she got impatient.

"Well?"

"Where is Yongsan, can I have a map?"

"Sure."

"And...do you think it is possible for me to borrow a guitar from the music room?"

"We can see...why all the questions?  Taking up music as your hobby?"

"You could say that."

You didn't mention that Kim Jonghyun was your motivating factor for your new found musical interest, and you didn't need to.  Eun-ah simply took you back upstairs and with a little bit of looking, you ended back up in your room with an old guitar the little old chorus teacher was happy to tune for you, and a book on guitar chords, pages raised for braille and all.  You even got a little atlas of South Korea tucked under your arm, finding out that Yongsan was indeed just one district below your own, Jung.  So why he was boarding here was beyond your realm of knowledge.

And so you spent your afternoon that Monday and most of Tuesday most certainly being the worst guitar player on the face of the earth.  You had to summon up Jonghyun's smooth touches from time to time so you would position your guitar correctly and place your hands in the right space.  You realized it was actually sort of fun, this new thing.  You had spent your past three months reading books and sitting in your room.  It had never occured to you to try something new.  You didn't bother to go out and make friends, when you did play sports you never played for long, and always longed for the solitude of your room.  Though you spent most of your time waiting.

Waiting for a cure that didn't exist.  Waiting for parents which didn't come.  Waiting for a life which never happened.

You never wanted to admit the fact that maybe your room wasn't the best place in the world, but maybe there were better places out there.

Places that offered new experiences.

This whole thing was impulsive of you.

But you didn't have to be that animal in the cage who can't do anything on her own.  You could be something more.  And then, maybe when you did make friends, you would have something interesting to tell them.  "I play guitar."  "I dabble in piano from time to time."  For the first time since your accident, you felt as if you were more than a caged bird, unable to sing.

"Working hard, I see," Eun-ah said, breaking you from your thoughts.  You had no clue that she had entered.  You smiled, placing your guitar to the side as she wheeled over your dinner.

"You told me to get a hobby."

"I'm proud of you," she blurted out.  You had only heard those words once before from her.  It was a bit of a shock to hear them again.  "Music is a lot of fun."

"It's hard," you announced, reaching for your food.  "Reading is definitely easier."

"Play a song for me one day," she asked you with a smile you could hear in the tone of her voice.

"Maybe once I actually realize how to properly play this thing."

It was silent afterwards, but comfortable.  Hearing her faith in you made your mood skyrocket.  You never felt like you had anything to show for.  You never did anything to be proud of.  But this woman, this woman who selflessly spends so much of her time with you and treats you as her own daughter - was proud of you.  It was such a simple thing.  You stumbled into a room with a man and stumbled out with a motivation and eagerness.  You weren't sure how it happened.  Maybe he pulled some kind of jedi mind trick.  Everything he said or did towards you made you want to learn to show him up or come back and learn more later.  Even now you were studying these five chords you couldn't seem to grasp all in an effort to prove yourself to this man.  To prove yourself to everybody.

But you needed to prove it to yourself, first.

"I have good news for you," Eun-ah seemed hesitant to speak, but the happiness in her voice didn't fade.

"What is it?"

"I got news from your father and mother today.  They are coming to see you tomorrow."

"Really?" you almost shouted, thankful there was no food in your mouth.  You had told yourself for a long time that your parents didn't matter much to you.  Whether or not they came to visit would not affect you.  But you couldn't hold back your excitement - they were your parents.  The image of their faces were almost fading from your mind and you were desperate to hear their voices.  "What time?"

"Real early, around seven.  They have to be back by a certain time."

"Okay," was all you could manage to mutter.  Eun-ah was silent, probably judging your reaction.

The air was thick with a tension you could almost feel.

"Will you see them?"

"Of course," you told her, a smile on your face.  "What shall I wear?"