For You and Me

Chapter 1: Bad Meeting

Photo credit to Keunakeun International

I've been posting this exclusively to the KNK Amino app. There are a lot of great posts there. If you like KNK you should check out the community ^_^

_______________________________________

Silence. His whole life is silence. Or to be more accurate he is silent, always has been. The only moments Jihun can remember uttering sounds is when he learned words in his first few years at school. But one day he simply never wanted to speak again.

He had heard his parents embarrassingly telling his relatives that he had fallen and hit his head when he was playing at school one day and woke up not wanting to speak. They had thought he was asleep in the other room while they told the tale but it became the last time he was ever curious about what the adults did when he was supposed to be sleeping.

That was probably what happened. He couldn't really remember clearly what the reason had been in the first place. Just that as he has grown the thought of trying to use his voice threatens to make him physically sick so he continues to avoid it. For nearly 15 years since he was 7, Jihun had been utterly silent until the moment they entered his life.

↪↩↪↩↪↩↪↩↪↩↪↩↪↩↪↩

Jihun stops staring at himself in the mirror and finishes fixing his hair. He checks his phone again and smirks at the screen, 12:30pm. His shift is over. He shrugs into his jacket and leaves the men's bathroom of the construction site he had gotten a job at just that month. He walks the short distance to the trailer that houses the meeting area and work crew's lockers. It is also the official main office and unofficial mess hall. Not that he ever sat there to eat. He had reached the point of exasperation and he was done explaining himself to people. Let them say what they want in their bubbles as long as they leave him alone, he thought.

His boss is sitting at one of the two only desks in the trailer shuffling through some papers. He looks up when Jihun closes his locker after grabbing out his wallet, phone, and an unfinished water bottle.

"Going home, Jihun?" His boss asks in a gruff voice before clearing his throat. Jihun nods and then bows his head in goodbye before ducking out of the building. He exits the site and pulls headphones out of his back pocket and slips them into his ears connecting them to his phone in one fluid motion. He turns on his newest obsession, Debussy, as he makes the scenic treck home.

Jihun is no stranger to walking long distances. In fact he generally welcomed it and might even go so far as to call walking a hobby for him. Although it would be more accurate to say his hobby is music and the uninterrupted time walking provided for music listening always provides a simple happiness. He tunes out the world as he listens to the cacophony of piano keys moving in their curious way.  He could almost see a story playing in his mind. One of his favorite things about this genre. You could tell a story without words.

His long legs eventually get him to the destination of his family home. He takes out his headphones as he crosses the doorway and takes off his shoes. He takes the stairs two at a time and walks through the door to the left. His bedroom. It is full of boxes mostly packed and furniture shoved towards the door for easy access when the moving truck finally comes on Saturday. His father had gotten a new job hours away and his family would be moving by the end of the month.  Except he would stay behind in his familiar town, by himself for the first time.

Staring at the temporary cardboard homes that still hungered for the rest of his belongings he is again filled with the dread and excitement the decision had given him when he finally made it two months ago. Would he really be able to live on his own? Probably. Did he want to? He wasn't too sure about that but it was too late to back out now.