Deaf | BTS Short Fanfiction | Yoonmin

1

Jimin's world was silent.

He couldn't hear anything. He couldn't say anything.

While others took it for granted, he longed to hear morning birdsong, the hum of nighttime life, the wind rustling through the trees and the voice of his mother. His perfect vision captured the movement of his mother's mouth when she spoke, the sway of the trees, the city lights and the peaceful dawn, and yet his body deprived him of the depth of every experience.

He could feel the vibration of sound in his body if it was loud enough, but it was only ever a vibration. Never a tune or a sound. That one thing that he desperately wanted to understand, he could never have.

Nothing frustrated him more.

Nothing saddened him more.

In the mirror, he gazed into his eyes, made eye contact with himself and looked. Pools of deep, honeyed brown, glinting with anger and tragedy but dulled by a resigned blankness. Without thinking, he reached out, his hand coming to rest on the mirror, as though to comfort.

He opened his mouth, maybe to say something like, 'It's alright,' or, 'It'll get better soon,' but nothing came out. The expected vibrations of speech in his throat never happened.

As his hand fell back to his side, he realised that he didn't know what he could say, anyway. Would it really be alright? Could it ever get better? Did he have enough courage? He sighed soundlessly. Probably not.

In the reflection of the mirror, his bedroom door opened. Turning around, he greeted his mother with a forlorn smile and nod. She stepped into the room. The vibrations of her footsteps seeped into him from his feet, and even if he hadn't seen her in the mirror, those vibrations would have caught his attention anyway.

It was the closest he could come to hearing sound.

She opened her mouth to speak, started to say something, and then stopped suddenly. She did that a lot; spoke to him, and realised a few moments later that he couldn't hear. Every time it happened, her gaze would drop to the ground and her eyes would moisten with a mother's tears for her poor, pathetic, disabled child.

Those tears made it hard to be around her. He didn't want her to pretend was wrong, but he didn't want her to cry every time she was reminded of his deafness. He was the deaf one, anyway.

With a visible intake of breath, she straightened her shoulders and blinked the tears away. She was getting better at that. At reminding herself that it couldn't be helped and it was just something they would have to live with.

Instead, she took a piece of paper from his desk and wrote what she wanted to say on it. When she was finished, he leaned over to read her neat handwriting. 'I have to go to the shop. Will you be okay?'

He nodded to her and used the pen to write his own question in almost identical, but smaller, handwriting. 'Where is dad?'

'Travelling for work. Like usual.'

He didn't need to look at her face to see the sadness in her words - it was written on the page. It was in the slightly wobbly strokes and the line of writing, which slanted down instead of going straight across the page.

'It'll be okay, eomma,' he wrote. He hadn't seen his father for a year, but it would be okay. He would come back eventually. Her mother look pained for a moment, but the expression was only there for a few moments, few enough that he thought he might have imagined it.

She turned to him with an affectionate smiled and ruffled his hair. 'You're so cute, Jimin. I love you.' It was one of his few childhood memories that he could recall with clarity. It was so familiar that reading her lips as she said it was easier than breathing.

'I love you, too,' he mouthed back.

His mother's smile widened and she drew him into a hug. A few moments later, she drew back and picked up the pen again. 'I'm heading off now. Be safe! :)'

Her writing was level again, but he wasn't deceived.

Nonetheless, he nodded and watched her leave the room. With his kind mother and a comfy life, he was content despite being deaf. That wasn't to say his was satisfied with his life, but he could live with it if he had to.

He looked back down at his mother's writing and his own for a long moment.

Then, he picked up the pen, and with a beautiful smile on his face, he wrote, 'You too...'

-

A few minutes later, Jimin also left the house and went to the local park. It was green and spacious, with a children's playground, a soccer field and a garden. He avoided the soccer and the looming threat of being hit by a stray shot, instead wandering to the garden.

Halfway there, he stopped. From somewhere deep within his subconscious, a memory emerged.  Echoes of laughing, shouting children, murmuring adults and a soccer ball being kicked around. His memories taunted him, filling in the silence, but not enough. His memories mocked him that he would never hear those sounds again, and would soon forget them if he stopped coming to the park. He would lose the few memories he had of beautiful sound and be stuck in a world of silence.

At that moment, when everything seemed perfect except himself, where colours were more vibrant and smiles were joyful, Jimin stood in the middle of it all, blank-faced in his bubble of silence, wondering if he could ever be like them. He stood, separated from the rest of the world in another where he was completely alone.

And yet, something in the air felt... fresh, hopeful. There was a promise of warmth and companionship, and an invisible force that urged him to the garden.

He started walking once more, purposeful for a reason that escaped.

Even so, he fancied that he could hear the rust of his footsteps on the soft grass.