Your Melody | SOPE

Ch. 1 - Reset

"We're moving?" Hoseok gaped at his mom.

"We have to move on," she places a hand on Hoseok's shoulder. "And we decided to go to Seoul, if that's okay with you?"

"It's fine," Hoseok responds, which almost sound like a question from the tone of his voice.

"What about your friends?" she asked. "You'll be okay with leaving them?"

What friends? Hoseok almost blurts out of his mouth. You see, Hoseok doesn't have any friends at all. Friendly acquaintances, of course. But friends, no. It's not like he was shy or anything. He just finds it hard to socialize with others. How to find common interests. How to keep conversations going. When people actually reach out to talk to him, they find out how awkward he is. So awkward he makes it seem that he's not interested in them, and that's what keeps them from being friends. He doesn't put in a good enough effort.

And everybody knows that effort is what makes relationships long lasting.

Maybe this was what he needed. A new city, a new community, a new school, and hopefully new friends.

"It's fine, we can always text." Hoseok shrugs.

"Oh, text." she nods. "So that's how the cool kids communicate."

Hoseok gives his mom a weird look, and she laughs. "So now, we gotta figure out what to do with Dawon's things."

Hoseok's face morphs into a blank expression.

"You wanna go look through her things?" his mom carefully asks him. "Whatever you don't want, we can donate."

"Yeah," he nods, heading upstairs to his sister's room.

About 5 months ago almost near the end of his junior year in high school, Hoseok's sister passed away in a car accident. She died on the way to the hospital, before anyone could say goodbye to her. Since then, Hoseok hasn't been able to recover at all. He accepts the fact that she's gone, but he can't deal with it.

She was a good sister. Always waking him up early for school, teaching him how to take care of himself, yelling at him for being annoying (which he was), and playing piano for him.

She was even working on a piece she made herself, but it's unfinished.

Hoseok entered his sister's room. The walls were painted light purple, her twin sized bed had a fancy veil over it. The white side-table next to her bed had pretty picture frames displayed. Pictures of family, friends, even their fluffy puppy named Mickey. The whole place was squeaky clean— not a single dust particle since Hoseok's mom cleans her room regularly.

He's never really stepped foot into Dawon's room since the accident, only at the doorway where he can glance inside. Even one look of the room, he'd get emotional. He'd feel regret, guilt, loss. He turned to the small piano sitting across from her bed, and walked over to it. He ran his fingers across the keys gently.

"Too bad I can't play this thing," he mutters to himself.

"Oh, her piano." He hears his mom's voice from the doorway. "I remember always coming home from work, to hear her playing this thing. She always got embarrassed when I secretly record her."

Hoseok chuckles softly. "Yeah. I-I wanna keep it."

"Sentimental value?"

"Yeah that," he nods.

"Right," she takes a few steps towards the door. "Well I'm gonna start packing up everything. You start doing that too once your done looking through her stuff."

"Okay."

"Here," she hands him a 2 flat cardboard boxes. "Put the things you wanna keep in one, the others in the other box."

Hoseok saw his mom glance behind him at the piano. "We'll get someone to move the piano to the new house."

Hoseok nods and grabs the cardboard from her hands. She left the room, and he began looking through Dawon's things.

♬

The car pulled into the driveway of their new house. This was gonna be the first time Hoseok's seen the house. Judging from the exterior of the simple house, it was smaller than expected. Of course since it was just his mom and him, they didn't need much room. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, and they're good. So Hoseok wasn't surprised that there was only one floor.

Hoseok got out of the car and shut the door,rolling his mom inside the house through the garage door. It led them straight into the empty kitchen, which was also connected to the empty living room.

"Lucky you," his mom says. "You got the whole basement to yourself."

"The whole basement?" asked Hoseok.

"There's only one room in the house," she explains, pointing to the hallway. "That's my room. You okay with that?"

"Yeah," Hoseok grabs one of his boxes. "Always wanted a bigger room anyway."

Hoseok carefully walked downstairs with the cardboard box filled with his stuff from his old room. After going down the last step from the stairs, he entered the basement. It wasn't like those creepy, dusty, dark basements you see in the movies. For their house, the basement was built to be like a second living room. Two windows that showed the backyard, a soft carpet, a brightly lit ceiling light similar to the ones upstairs. And also empty, like a dollhouse. It was a little cold, but he didn't mind. He could live with it.

Setting the box in the corner of the giant room, Hoseok tried to think of what his bedroom could look like in his head, put his twin sized bed next to the window, maybe in the corner. What about his desk and dresser? He's gonna need to buy a closet for his clothes, and there wasn't even a door in the basement.

"Hoseok!" he heard his mom call him from upstairs.

When he made his way upstairs, he saw Dawon's piano placed neatly in the corner of the living room. A framed picture of her beautiful face displayed on top of it, along with a small pot of flowers.

"Wow," he breaths out. "That's the perfect spot."

"Good," she chuckles. "I was hoping you'd say that. How's your new room by the way? I know you don't have a door, but I can just stomp down and knock on the wall."

Hoseok smiles at that. "I love it. Not just the room, it's a nice house."

"Yeah," she nods. "Did I tell you when your first day of school starts?"

"No," he shakes his head.

"Well, your first day is on Tuesday," she says. "Today and tomorrow we'll focus on unpacking and moving everything in."

"Okay," Hoseok nods.

He'd be lying if he said how excited he was. He wasn't all. A new school, new people. He didn't know how people in Seoul work. Are they nice? Are they bullies? Would one of them be looking for a fight on his first day there? Hoseok doesn't fight. But still, this was like a reset button in life. He could go into that school, being someone completely different from who he was at his old school. That one new kid who fit in with the crowd immediately.

At least he hoped it would go that way.

Author note:
That's the first chapter lol