Quiet | BTS ✓

29

When Yoongi re-enters the classroom with his uncle, he feels as if he is walking on air. Such a heavy burden has been lifted from his shoulders as he exposed his deepest pain to his closest family member; that piano in the music room that let him be who he has always meant to be, his piano, in a sense, helped him as it always has in getting his story from within his desperate mind to swirl in the air around him like he is painting the room with his very thoughts. He and that piano became one in that moment, as they always have and always will. He and that piano are old friends.

"Aria," Mr. Min calls out as Yoongi returns to his seat.

Aria nods curtly at Mr. Min before sliding a paper towards Yoongi and getting up from her seat, staring down at the blonde-haired man next to her.

Yoongi glances down at the paper to read the delicate handwriting asking a simple request that he knows he cannot deny her.

"Come listen."

Yoongi locks his brown eyes onto Aria's apprehensive blue ones, raising an eyebrow as confirmation. Does she want this?

Does she want Yoongi to hear something so deep and personal?

Aria responds to his silent question with a slow nod.

So Yoongi gets back up from his seat, folding the note and placing it into his pocket before following Aria and Mr. Min towards the music room.

Mr. Min sends Yoongi a quick questioning glance to which Yoongi just shrugs.

If she wants him in that room, then that is where he will be.

Once Aria gets herself situated in her place on the piano bench, Mr. Min seats himself into the chair on one side of the piano to observe her technique while she plays.

Yoongi stands behind Aria, not sure where she would want him to be.

She glances over her shoulder at him, gesturing for him to sit in a chair on the other side of the piano.

Once Yoongi takes his place, Aria's eyes lock on his for a moment; a moment that Yoongi reaches out and squeezes her left hand that is placed on the keys.

After sending a small smile his way, Aria begins to tell her story.

Her story of loss.

As the first delicate notes surround the three people in the room, Yoongi can hear the story.

A story of a small, fragile girl with the entire world laid in front of her, even though to her, it seems as if the world is no longer what she thought it to be.

Without her family and her dreams, all she had was this earth-shattering sadness; this ache in her body that brought her to her knees. The world no longer seemed bright or remotely happy; all there was in her path was the loss.

The loss of nearly everything she held dear. In place of what she lost, she only gained pain and regret. The pain did not love her like her parents did; the pain did not lift the spirits around her like her singing did. The pain's only purpose was to bring her to her knees in front of it. The pain only wanted her to succumb; it wanted her to bow down.

And seemingly, for a long time, she did.

But as the song goes on, he hears another emotion.

Anger.

Aria is angry. Just as loudly as if she is speaking it, screaming it; she is angry.

She is angry that her parents were so forcefully and suddenly ripped from her. She is angry that one second, she had a voice that was described by her best friend as 'the most beautiful voice,' a voice that she planned to use for the rest of her life to pursue her dream as a professional singer; in the next second, she couldn't even speak a word.

She is angry that she let the pain bring her to a heap on the ground. She crumbled under the weight of its unrelenting agony and she let herself break.

She bowed down to the pain; the pain became her core instead of the hopefulness she held in her soul alongside her love for her life.

Yoongi can hear her self hatred. She loathes herself for forgetting that even though she lost her parents and her voice, she was supposed to pick herself back up and move on.

She was supposed to continuously love herself. It's what her parents would've wanted.

But the day she submitted to the pain, the day she let it consume her, was the day she stopped being that person that loved her life.

The day her parents died, a part of her died as well.

Instead, all she had left was the shell of her former self. And she is angry that she let herself do that.

For so long, she let the pain win. For so long, she only thought of the past.

The present didn't matter to her. The future didn't matter to her.

They didn't matter because the day her parents died, her world stopped turning. Her world stopped. She didn't want to take a step forward without her family. She couldn't. She wouldn't.

So instead, she drowned in the pain and the regret.

The regret of not telling her parents more often that she loved and appreciated them.

All of this regret, all of this pain... it has stayed locked inside of the silent woman playing this song right now.

Yoongi cannot help but think that her mind must be screaming at her. She just wants to be heard and understood, but all she can do is hear her thoughts echoing in her own mind, knowing that she will never be able to voice them.

He has never heard her play so powerfully and angrily before; it has always been sadness and loneliness that he has heard.

But underneath that, he can hear the unbridled anger that she has towards everything.

Yoongi always thought that the anger was masking the sadness; after hearing her play this song, he now knows that it is the other way around.

Aria has anger towards herself. Anger towards the world that has stopped turning. Anger towards the pain that leaves her curled on the cold, cruel floor of her life, her eyes squeezed shut and ignoring the thought of a future that lay just ahead of her crumpled form.

She is angry because if she had just opened her eyes, she would've seen how bright of a future she had just out of her reach.

But in her fear of the unknown, her fear of a life without her parents, she didn't look.

She couldn't look.

In the midst of her powerful piece, Aria's eyes lock onto Yoongi's for a split second; just the briefest of moments.

But in that moment, he sees it.

He sees what she wants to tell him as her piece comes to a soft and delicate end, again showing the sadness taking over her form as the anger buries itself back down into the dark depths of her ever silent mind.

As clearly as he has always understood her, he knows exactly what she's thinking in that moment.

"I've opened my eyes because of you."