Flicker - Park Jongseong (En- Jay)

Chapter 1 - Home my ass...

Yeseul had always hated school. The people, the stares, and the judgments. She hated them all. The teachers, the homeworks and the team works. There was nothing that could make her like school. Especially not her little sister. With whom she did not have any more classes due to her failing a year.

Yerin, her sister, was the perfect child. Perfect hair, perfect grades and perfect personality. She enjoyed shoving that in Yeseul's face. Sibling rivalry. One more reason why she hated school. While she was going to graduate and enter a prestigious university, she was still stuck with immature boys and girls solely caring about dating and hot kpop idols.

She couldn't care any less about idols than she already did. They were fake, only making online content for money; Companies exploiting young teenagers and adults too, making a fuss about something stupid. They weren't even perfect behind their wonderful facades. Look at all those rumours. Her father could talk all he wanted about how nice the boys he worked with were, but Yeseul knew that he couldn't even utter a bad word about them even if he wanted to, that's how entertainment companies were. Professional secret. Only good things, because they are good people.

And then she had to live with those said boys. A bunch of rowdy teenagers her age, all together, in a single flat. - Hell. That's what it felt like to her.

Good thing her sister wouldn't be there too, that would be double hell. Why not? You may ask, simply Yerin has friends. And Yerin has the perfect friends who have an empty room for her to live in. And Yeseul was a loner. A real, lonely, one.

Her father was a good man, she couldn't deny it. He was nice and had this friendly aura, he was reliable and very professional. Basically the best worker you could ask for. So of course, HYBE entertainment had to help him in time of need and lend him somewhere to live in when his house burned down. His daughter was the problem.

But they had the best solution for her. Evidently. She could bunk with their rookie group while her father went to search for a new home.

So that's where Yeseul stood during a very normal day in the middle of September 2021. Her father in front of her, and a bodyguard beside her. She felt like a tiny girl where she stood, which she wasn't. Another thing that was not perfect about her. She was too tall for her age, and for the perfect beauty standards Koreans could have. Those demands were delirious. She scoffed to herself.

When the door opened, it was a young boy her age with a round face and a smile too big for such a stupid thing.

"Manager-nim!" He said enthusiastically, "It's so nice to see you here, I was told you would be coming by, but not why. Why not come in, I'll call the others." He was acting too cute, it was sickening. Yeseul couldn't wipe the school that appeared on her face. She would hate to live with an Aegyo bubble right next to her. She'd deck him if he didn't stop acting like that once her father left. Naturally happy characters like him got on her nerves way too easily.

The three of them shuffled inside. Yeseul's father seemed already used to the space and had started taking glasses out of a cabinet after taking his shoes off. He was at ease, even more than he had been at home. It annoyed Yeseul. Did her father like those boys more than her? It definitely seemed like it.

Yeseul took her shoes off and dragged her bag inside, they were clothes their old neighbours had given her and her sister after learning of the fire. It had taken all of her belongings. Clothes and memories. Souvenirs. And her studies, but she didn't care about those. It was her belongings that had burst into flames, and now she had nothing but second hand items from people she didn't even talk to. She had clothes that were random, not that she cared about that, it was simply that her favourite converse shoes and her lucky hoodie had been in her room. Nothing could replace those, they had sentiments to her. And having things that her sister refused was another jab at her not perfect fashion sense.

When she looked up from the uninteresting books in the bookcase by the entrance, Yeseul saw that there were seven boys in the living room, sitting on the sofa and across the floor, glasses of juice in their hands. Her father was too nice, he had even served her one. But she didn't like juice, Yeseul preferred water. Didn't her father know that?

It saddened her that her father didn't know simple things like that about his own daughter. Maybe he knew about her sister's tastes, she was more open about what she liked and what she didn't like. There were more of the latter. Yerin was so picky it often made Yeseul want to eat in her own room, whatever there was in the fridge, instead of witnessing the tamper tantrum the seventeen years old girl was having.

"Yeseul-ssi." Someone called her from the side. She had been spacing out and looking through the window to the cityscape in front of the building. The sky was grey. "Yeseul-ssi." This time the girl turned around, looking straight into the boy's eyes.

"What?"

"I'll show you where you will be staying, and where you can leave your belongings." She didn't care about much, she just didn't want to sleep in the same room as the loud and 'happy' boy from earlier, he was laughing at that moment, drawing all of the attention to him.

But her mood went down even lower than it was before when she entered the bedroom. Eight beds lined the two walls. She'd have to share the room with more than just the happy ball, but each of the boys.

"We changed a bit of the arrangement, you'll be in the bottom buck down there. Sunoo was there but he decided to move on top of Niki for the time you will be staying here." She didn't even know what the name of the boy was, but he was really turning her head in with all those names. "Jay is the one next to you, I'm on top of him and in the bed on the other side we have Jake and Jungwon. In conclusion, you're in the corner over there." Yeseul just dropped her backpack on the bed and waited to be told where her clothes would be, the boy just talked to her endlessly while he showed her around. With the way he was going, none of the information he told her would be remembered. There was too much and not enough explanation. He would be a terrible teacher.

"'K." She muttered when she had left her clothes in a closet. This was her home for the coming days, maybe weeks. She wished she didn't have to call it that, built this was where she would be staying, living, eating and washing up. Home. Or the house she had to share with rowdy teens.