When Jackson had discovered the term “earworm” in middle school, the first thing he felt was relief that there was a name for the songs stuck in his head, followed by puzzlement.

      Earworm /ˈɪəwəːm/
      A catchy song or tune that runs continually through someone's mind.

Catchy? The random songs he heard in his mind are any but. If asked to sing or hum whatever earworm was in his head, Jackson could hardly pin down a tune, even if moments before, he had been tormented by the incessant repetition of what is probably the chorus of a song.

Popular belief was that earworms were usually songs you had previously heard, and could be triggered by words or hearing the song just prior (even in the background, since the subconscious could pick up on it). This had frustrated Jackson, whose earworms were always songs he had never heard of, in a language he didn’t understand, and to top it off, were impossible to tune out.

Supposedly, you couldn’t change the volume of the voice inside your head, even if you could vary the tone and pitch to make it seem like it is louder or softer. But Jackson was pretty sure that his earworms were on a different volume than his normal voice in his head. He was pretty sure that it was turned up at the maximum volume, intended to wreck his concentration whenever he was at a critical moment like his fencing matches.

Jackson didn’t understand why, but he tried his best to handle it as best as he could.

The first person he told about his extremely loud earworms is Mark. Jackson hadn’t intended to, but when he fumbled yet again during dance practice, and his fellow trainee got frustrated, he thought Mark should at least get some sort of explanation. He was surprised when Mark confesses that he, too, gets annoying earworms that often happened when he tried to sing, which was why he always had trouble staying in tune.

Jackson could immediately sympathize, which was why he ended up telling Mark more about his earworms and how he had realize his earworms were almost always some Korean song, which he had only noticed after learning Korean. He had expected to get a laugh out of the other boy, but Mark had been surprised, like a realization had hit him.

Later, lying under the blankets at night, Jackson had asked Mark why he had been so surprised, and Mark had said that it was because Jackson’s words jolted him to realize that his earworms were mostly in Korean too. Jackson didn’t understand why Mark had took so long to realize that when they both started taking Korean lessons a year ago, but Mark had only laughed it off saying that his earworms were rather mumbled and soft.

Jackson didn’t pry for more.

8 months before debut, Jackson noticed his earworms getting more frequent. He had tried so hard to handle his extremely frustrating earworms past his fencing career, to his trainee days and he was determined not to let it interfere with his dream of finally debuting. That turned out to be more difficult said than done, and when the earworms finally relented to the usual frequency (which was still a pain, but much more manageable), Jackson was really, really glad.

His happiness was short-lived because about a month after that (which was roughly after the line-up for GOT7 had been announced, with a new trainee to join as their main vocal), the earworms got impossibly worse than they’ve ever had. It haunted Jackson to the point that there is hardly any rest between each earworm, and funnily enough, became so constant that Jackson noticed the absence of his earworms instead.

Though, it was not like he had a lot of time or energy to pay attention to that with increasing preparations for debut.

There was a day after their debut, when GOT7 was resting, free from obligations for the day that Jackson remembers vividly. He hadn’t seen the relevance at that time, and had mostly filed it away as the time he had talked to Mark about earworms for the second time.

Mark was in the kitchen, getting teabags, and Jackson had followed to make sure he used the organic ones. Outside in the living room, Jinyoung was reading while the other four members were playing games with household chore duties for penalty. Jinyoung had been singing softly, absently while he read, when Mark had said, suddenly, “Jackson, what’s the name of the song that Jinyoung’s singing?”

Jackson didn’t know, and he asked Mark why he had suddenly asked anyway. Mark merely shrugged and said, it sounded the same as the earworm that he has, and he was curious. To satisfy Mark’s, and now his curiosity, Jackson offered to ask Jinyoung directly, but Mark had said it wasn’t important. Still, Jackson asked Jinyoung when Mark wasn’t looking, and he slipped beside Mark afterwards to tell him the song name.

Later that night, Mark had played that song on speaker in the room they shared, softly humming it under his breath but messing up the tune. Jackson had accidentally laughed when it happened too many times, and Mark huffed a “Don’t laugh, I’ve never even heard this song before so don’t judge me for not getting the tune right” around the same time Jinyoung shouted from his room across the hall, “Youngjae, stop singing! I want to sleep!”

Next door, Youngjae promptly stopped singing, and Jackson remembered thinking, peace and quiet for once. He can’t be sure, but he supposes that was also one of the rare moments when he didn’t have an earworm stuck in his head as well.

One morning, Jackson had woken up to clanging in the kitchen. He didn’t want to get out of bed to investigate because usually, mornings were the only constant period when he did not get earworms, and as much as he had gotten better than ignoring them, he still liked to enjoy the peace in his head as much as he could. Eventually though, he got out of bed when it seemed like whoever was in the kitchen didn’t seem to be done anytime soon, and Jackson should probably tell whoever it was to tone it down when most of the members were probably asleep.

In the kitchen, Youngjae was holding out jars under the dim kitchen light to read labels, a cup and thermal flask on the countertop beside him. To say Jackson was surprised at the identity of the early morning appearance being Youngjae, who needed at least three alarms and vigorous shaking to wake up is an understatement.

When Jackson asked what the other boy was doing so early in the morning, he only received a smile, and a voicelessly mouthed “sore throat” and “honey”. To have Youngjae not speaking a word means the sore throat was probably bad enough to stress their group’s main vocal out, and Jackson joined Youngjae in his search for honey.

Later, when the leader found out, Youngjae was sent to see the doctor and ordered to res