Sensitive

Chapter One

Jungwoo has always been an emotional person. Whatever emotion it is, he feels it hard. He used to get bullied frequently for it and he was miserable for the longest time. He finally learned how to put a wall up when he was a trainee because he knew he wouldn’t be able to make it if he cried about every little thing. Of course, he had a lot of bad days where he would get upset at little criticisms or something one of the other trainees said to him, but he wasn’t as bad as before. No one had called him too sensitive or to man up yet so he considered that a win. Whenever he was feeling down, especially when the staff had said something that hit at his insecurities, he’d hold it in until he was alone and then let himself wallow in his emotions.

When he debuted with NCT, he started to learn that he didn’t have to put up a barrier. Taeyong and the other members had shown him and told him multiple times that he was fine the way he was and that he could always rely on them. He used to be ashamed and tried to hide whenever he was upset, but the other members had gradually broken through his wall and shown him that he didn’t need to run away. He owes a lot of his now confident and affectionate nature to the members. Because of them, he doesn’t feel afraid to be affectionate and emotional.

Even though the Dreamies are all younger than him, he’s also learned a lot from them in terms of how to be more open about his feelings and that being clingy isn’t a bad thing. He finds himself loosening up whenever he’s with the younger subunit and he especially likes goofing around with Donghyuk when they’re doing schedules for NCT 127. He’s gotten much better at sharing his feelings and letting himself feel them because the members have never pushed him too far. They’ve teased him and joked about his crying a lot before, but it’s never been malicious and he knows they don’t really mean it. Logically, he knows they don’t mean some of their snide comments that they let slip occasionally, but his heart doesn’t always know that.

They’ve never teased him so far that they’ve hurt him before, but recently it’s been getting to him. It’s probably because the staff has started criticizing him more and their schedules have picked up, but he’s become more sensitive and the other members have become more stressed. That combination has not been faring well for Jungwoo. At the dorms when everyone is back and exhausted, tempers are more easily lost and sometimes people snap. That’s been the trend lately and Jungwoo has been too scared to say anything even though he has been upset by things they’ve said this week.

Usually, he would roll with the punches and respond with something equally as sassy, but he hasn’t been able to. Recently, some of the words have started to sting and it just makes him more emotional than he already is. He’s done a good job of hiding it, or the members just haven’t bothered to notice, because no one has treated him differently or asked if something was wrong.

He needs to say something soon before he ends up breaking down or getting in a fight with one of the members. He can’t keep doing this to himself. The vocalist sighs deeply and runs a hand through his hair tiredly. He needs to talk to the members soon, but preferably when they’re in a better mood so things don’t escalate. That means he’ll have to talk to them at game night tomorrow or talk to some of them individually which will be super difficult; game night it is then. He can already feel his anxiety spike at the idea of having to address this issue, but it needs to be done.

“Jungwoo-ssi?” A voice calls.

“Yes?”

Jungwoo quickly sits up in his chair to seem like he wasn’t distracted. He had been waiting for a couple of hours to record his lines and his mind had naturally wandered. He had been trying to calm his nerves by thinking about anything other than harsh recording staff but had ended up worrying about the situation with the members at the dorm. Nothing seems to be going right for him.