escort | njm

prologue.

The sky was black tranquility married to a poetry of stars. It was the softness that called the body and brain to rest and let the heart go to its steady rhythm. Night came as a reward of sorts, a restfulness above to calm the soul.

Frost grew over the windows even as the duvet kept her warm. Areum watches as the ice-crystals grow for a while, allowing her brain to be empty, content to exist and be. Curled into a ball, hidden from the cruel society, she hid under the duvet as if it was her wall.

Areum hardly ever showed emotion beyond fatigue. She showed a polite interest in the lives of her best-friend but otherwise kept herself to herself. She was a flower in a tight bug, always afraid to open, her heart was strong and her soul was a shining light, both told her she must lead but always her head opposes without fail.

Music fills the air without effort, like the waves filling holes in beach sand ; the sound rushing in and around every person in the room. With her earphones in, she could feel the lyrics swim through her cerebral cortex like a wakeful dream, the notes relaxing her, enabling the song to call to her entire being. Music could never be something superfluous to her, it is medicine delivered in the most divine way.

Areum was one to hardly converse with others, that was until she stumbled upon him in Junior year of university, a hellishly handsome drummer slash guitarist, and a songwriter of his own who works at the call center of the university.

She peaks her head out through an open gap of the duvet, glancing at the modernised wooden clock, comforting her with its barely audible ticking sound. Na Jaemin loses his job at the university call center on the seventh day of the fall semester of his senior year.

Areum knows this because on the seventh day of the fall semester of her senior year, he comes banging on the door of her apartment at 7:17PM, seven minutes after he normally starts his night shift at the university call center. He's lucky she doesn't have any tuitions or activities in the 7PM hour on a Tuesday where most would still be in school for their after-school activities.

"Areum!" He shouts through the thin wooden door, his voice probably echoing down the thin hallway of her apartment complex. Areum opened it before the second knock — she only rush to the door to get him to shut the fuck up, and not because she's excited to see him. She swore — to see him standing on the other side, extra extra extra large university hoodie draped over his figure, down to his mid-thigh, baggy hood pulled over his head like a sad college-aged Star Wars character. He looks exactly like a jaded senior year college student would. He is beautiful.

"Aren't you supposed to be at the call center like right now?" She questions in lieu of a normal "Hello" or even a "What the fuck are you doing here, it's 7PM". Jaemin does not wait for her to invite him inside her apartment. Immediately kicking off his shoes by the entrance and tugs on Areum's apartment slippers that are a size-and-a-half too small for his feet, and marches over to her refrigerator to fish through the tupperware containers with the names of the items written on Post-it notes for an evening snack.

He waits until he's got an entire piece of frozen supersized ravioli shoved into his mouth before he responds. "I was fired." He mumbles over a mouthful of pasta and cheese. "What?" She asks, eyes widening as Jaemin shuffles through her kitchen drawers for a fork, which means that the first piece of lasagna that he ate he did so with his bare ass hands. Like a heathen, like a lasagna-craving twenty-year-old heathen.

"I was fired." Jaemin repeats, he stares at the microwave resting on her kitchen counter for a good ten seconds before he continues to eat the cold, unheated pasta. Every time he's in Areum's apartment, which is almost every other day, he nags at her how it's a fire, water, and explosive hazard to have her microwave on the counter like that. As if there is any other place in the apartment for it to go. Maybe out on the tiny balcony she has that overlooks the busiest street on campus. "Care to explain why?"

"No, actually you should shut the fuck up and let me rest, my head's throbbing."

Jaemin was a man with attitude problems, a very fucked-up attitude, despite his attractive looks, nonetheless he is a good drummer and a guitarist. A hopeless romantic fired from his job, writing songs about HER, crashing at his best-friend's apartment.

And if he stumbles upon a certain HER while accompanying one upon many other filthy rich daughter's he escorted, was she the one who he wrote those songs about?

heads up — slight drummer, jaemin! , electric guitarist jaemin!

enjoy,
jaevre.