Amor de mi Alma || 2Jae

Chapter 21

Youngjae secludes himself from everyone, and by the time Thursday rolls around, the next Friday being a free day, Youngjae walks into the Band Room to find everyone in chaos, and he goes unnoticed as he walks toward his station, ignoring Rosy and Dany as the attempt to hit each other with mallets.

He doesn't know how everyone got themselves into this chaos and frankly, Youngjae doesn't care, walking to the xylophone and practising his part for Amor de mi Alma.

It is only when he hears a loud crash and a sudden silence washes over the room. Dany and Rosy managed to knock the snare-drum over, and it now lays on the ground in pieces, multiple springs rolling away and the skin spun over the instrument ripped in half.

"Very well." Youngjae's head snaps up when he hears Mr. Divins, and the expression on his face is unreadable. The whole class is in silence as he walks toward his stand at the front and clears his throat, putting some papers together. "I was hoping that everyone at least has their instruments out and were practising their scales, or thirds, or arpeggios."

Mr. Divins looks around the class, anger blazing in his eyes. Youngjae shrinks away behind his instrument. "This is not the time to goof off, or sit around and talk. We have an important performance in one week, the most important performance of the year, and now look at what happened, we'll have to fix this in-time, which is practically impossible. Youngjae!" Youngjae shrinks away even further, wishing that the earth would swallow him whole. "What the hell are you thinking? You are supposed to keep your section under control, all of the leaders of the sections are supposed to. You are slacking, and you better get it back under control. Look at me when I speak to you!"

Youngjae is scared. He's never seen Mr. Divins this angry, he can practically feel the anger radiating off his teacher.

"You, young man, have won the Band Award two years in a row now, and I was so tempted, so tempted, to give you your third award but recently you have been slacking, you are messing up on everything and you are so different that it is abnormal for you - stop crying you baby!" Mr. Divins frowns and Youngjae glances away. He's blown it all, his mask has fallen off. He's never cried in front of anyone, he had only sobbed in front of Jaebum when he thought he saw the man at the park. The thought of it only causes more tears to stream down his face. "Youngjae, what's wrong?"

Youngjae looks down at the xylophone and then slams his mallets down on the floor. "Everything."

"Excuse me? Young man, pick up those mallets and put them back if you break them you will have to replace them yourselves. Pick yourself up too, while you're at it. We can't have you slacking off in this last week before the Night Sky Concert -"

"Then deal with it!"

Whispers ring through the room. The usual chill, calm Youngjae is gone, replaced by a teenage boy who is being pulled through difficult times that feel like hell and that make him cry and scream in class. So many things have happened in the past week; his friends ignored him; he's blamed for revealing that Jaebum has social anxiety, and now he's being yelled at for something that he can't do anything about because he simply feels empty inside.

Youngjae looks around the room, to Yugyeom and Jinyoung, who sit next to each other with their heads cast to the ground, not looking up, and then to Kunpimook, who is aimlessly pressing the keys of his horn to distract himself, and Youngjae swears he can see the boy's shoulders shaking slightly every now and then. And then he looks at Jaebum, who is avoiding Youngjae's eyes and instead he is fiddling with his mallets.

There is one more moment of silence and then Youngjae huffs and leaves, storming out the room. Tears are streaming freely down his cheeks, the last time he ever cried like this was when he was thirteen and he found out his grandmother, whom he was very close with, died.