Diamond in the Rough (Seventeen and Bangtan Fanfic)

4: Gap in the Wall

Mingyu's POV

Almost a year pasts and the boys don't really see her around anymore, although they talk about her on a daily basis. I listen quietly but never speak my thoughts. Why would they want to know what I think of her? What would it matter if they did?

Rika's POV

I'm made to clean the toilets, tidy up the dirtiest office areas, clean up after all the trainees, wash their clothes...I eat all the cold food after everyone else leaves the cafeteria, I use the showers last and clean up after everyone, and my room is the smallest in the dorms. It literally has a space on the floor enough to unroll my mattress, with a small window ledge, and the ceiling is slanted at a weird edge. I doubt anyone even knows that this room exists. I don't mind all this, but...

The hell I get from Hyorin and her mother is worse. They want to get rid of me. They can't even stand the sight of me cleaning their crap up. That woman has hit me and pushed me so many times while I was cleaning the toilet, I can't even count it anymore. Today Hyorin kicked the cleaning bucket full of dirty water onto me in the toilet and when I said sorry she spat at me.

Fine.

Nothing I can't take. I've had far worse from my days when I was part of a small street gang full of kids like me. But we never hurt anybody; we only fought to survive. Its not that people like us like to steal, or fight. It's that we only have the choice between this or dying. In a world as cruel as one like this, people like us have to fight to survive.

And trust me, I'm not proud of my stealing and fighting. Its a part of me that disgusts myself. But there was no other way. No one would have taken an underage worker like me. But I've kept a record of everything I've had to steal. I help out with the shops without asking for payment using an alternate identity to try and make it up.

One day I'll return the money I owe them.

This, I swear.

You liken me to Cinderella, but I'm no Cinderella. Cinderella stayed because she was kind, or because she didn't dare to leave, but I don't stay for any of those reasons. I stay because I have somebody worth fighting for. Eomma.

In the end, they and my father are the ones giving me money, far better than I could ever get fighting in my old street gang. And that's all I need. I can take all this from them, it doesn't matter at all. I've lived worse than this. I may have the last name Han, but I'm no princess.

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I cleared up the buckets and dumped them outside before sneaking back in to take a quick shower and rush back to my room. Although my room is small, it's one of my only places of sanity, apart from the hospital eomma is in. Its my only moments of silence.

And despite it being a little corner in the building, I don't have many belongings, so I was able to make the ledge a reading spot which looked out a small circular window. It was small, but to me, it was reprieve.

At first the only thing that really bugged me about the room was the gap that resulted from the wall not being built the whole way through. A part of the wall that separated my room from the training room next door was a mirror- a one way mirror, I soon realised after I had settled into my room.

At first, it really bugged me. But now...It's my source of comfort.

Remember those boys I talked bad about? I've watched them practice almost every night without fail through this gap in the wall until at least 1am in the morning, and I feel as though I'm at least part of their lives. I watched them grow over this one year, and their hard work...it's commendable.

A part of me likes to think that they accompany me- that while I'm working hard and slaving away, they are also practicing and working hard. But in many ways they have it better than I do. Perhaps a part of me envies them, that while they are practicing and having fun at what they love, this is my reality. I don't have a future in sight, while they do. They're so bright, smiling even through all the tears and sweat and blood.

These boys...they remind me to smile, when I'm alone, of course. They remind me that live isn't meaningless even when it's mundane.

Seventeen.

I was wrong about these boys.

And as time passed, I started to care for them. I started to feel their joys, their pains, and I started to feel proud as their hard work payed off. I spent my nights watching my private concert, pretending that it was I they were singing for, dancing for, and laughing to.

But I know I will never talk to them. They don't know I've been by their side for a whole year already. As much as I feel like I'm a part of their lives, I don't exist to them. What would boys like them want to do with a girl like me? A girl with no future, no dreams.

I'm happy to watch them from afar.

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Pushing the door to their training room, it swung open noiselessly, and I took 13 bottles of lemon honey drinks I had made earlier out of the plastic bag and placed them on the floor in rows before sneaking back into my room and watching as the lights flickered on through my gap in the wall and the boys tumbled in one after another, laughing and jostling each other. Like always, they come in in order of age, Seungcheol to Samuel being piggy backed by one of the hyungs, but Mingyu is missing.

Ah, there he comes, jogging in with his fluffy brown hair and his beautiful smile, late again, like he seems to be every Tuesday.

I feel my lips tug into a faint smile. I've always felt more protective over this boy, Mingyu. Maybe it was something as simple as him being the one at my side of the mirror the most, staring into my soul from the other side. Maybe it was as simple as that, but there was no denying that I always feel my lips smile more when he appears.

The boys blare a song with a hip hop beat and one by one, the boys join in to a dance perfectly in synch, just like a super-practiced dance mob. They start laughing as they push each other to the middle to have a dance battle.

When they start dancing to Nues'ts' Hello, I dance to it too and hum the song under my breath with the little space that I have after rolling up my mattress and tucking it on the ledge. I know almost all their dances by heart- after all, I practice with them as much as they do, on my side of this mirror.

They dance. I dance. And we dance together.

And for the one moment in my tortuous day, I spent it watching the world through the gap in the wall. I was tired as hell, but for the one moment in my day, I danced with these boys I hardly knew, yet knew so well.

This was my gap in the wall,

My solace,

A moment all to myself, and all together with boys who didn't know of my existence at all.

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"Hope you all liked this chapter guys! Please gimme feedback, I'd love to hear how you like this story, or what you don't like about it!

I just thought this song Day by Day by Lunafly really fit this part and Rika's frame of mind and the kind of perseverance and thoughts she has, and how she's waiting day by day for a new way of life :) I only just discovered Lunafly yesterday and my GOD their vocals are amazing!!"

<3 Rina Yumi~"