True Acceptance- A True Beauty Fanfic

Chapter 13: Help.

SEOJUN POV

       On Thursday he went back to his class, where they started the day with an oral report on how they found their homework. It was to travel alone on both a bus and train.

   Seojun only got fifty percent because he refused to try the train part. All the trains here drove out of the city and he didn't want to wind up in Busan alone without someone he knew. Call him weak, but he wasn't ready for that yet.

   His braille reading was getting far better now, he was able to read almost every sign, most menus (As long as they didn't have freakishly weird names for their dishes) and the majority of their assigned reading.

  Any book he couldn't read or understand, they had an audio file on hand for, and Seojun secretly was grateful to be going to this school. He knew other blind kids went to public schools, but he would honestly feel lost there. At least here he never had to voice what accommodations he needed.

  It got exhausting, having to fight for accessibility all the time. It was tiring and even socializing with people took a lot out of Seojun. He had to rely on their voices and breathing to dictate tone, mood and jokes. He couldn't sit and just watch someone smile or wink and know they were being playful.

He felt lost many times in his conversations with his bandmates, they tried keeping him caught up, but when all three of them are talking, it's hard to tell if something is a joke, serious, or what emotions the boys are feeling.

He really only felt "good" At telling when it was one on one.

   He did, however, get a tiny bit of extra credit when he mentioned he was taking a Taekwondo class.

Even Sikhyun was shocked by that. He always sat with Seojun at lunch, by a large bay window that let in so much sunlight that Seojun could almost make out outlines of faces.

   "I do Taekwondo too!" Sikhyun exclaimed, he had a great habit of emphasizing words, making it easier to understand his emotions. "It's so much fun. I'm a green belt."

   "How long have you been doing it?" Seojun asked, green belts weren't the highest, but they were about three steps up from what Seojun was currently.

  "Bout seven months now?" Sikhyun said in a high pitched voice, "I started two months after I lost my sight, my mom thought it would be a good way to force me to socialize."

  "Force?" Seojun picks at his meal, rice and japchae.

"I didn't want to leave my room, much less house." Sikhyun hummed, slurping up his food. "She knew I couldn't stay like that forever."

   "Are we even allowed to ask how each other lost their sight?" Seojun wonders out loud.

  "We do mainly in the therapy class, the one you didn't sign up for." Sikhyun laughs, "I had a brain tumor, the operation to fix it screwed up a ton of nerves. Like, my whole left side was paralyzed and I couldn't see, my speech was completely horrible."

   "Your speech sounds great now."

Sikhyun chuckles, "That's thanks to about 8 months of speech therapy. I still pronounce some things weird, but I don't feel like going back to that class. Then there was about 4 months of intense physio. It's also why I go to Taekwondo, it helps me regain that function I lost."

   Seojun's face drops, he knew people had been through various traumas to end up like him, but he never imagined some of his own classmates could have even more than one disability to face.

     "Well now I feel stupid for being upset over my sitution."  He says lightly, losing his appetite.

  "Dude, everyone feels upset. Don't force yourself to be okay. I'm in the therapy class here and I have a therapist outside of here that I see twice a week. It helps a lot, and as time goes on I'm starting to cope better. I'm hoping I'll be able to graduate from this therapy class in a few months."