VOICES (JJ Project)

Noise

People's thoughts could be separated into two, positive and negative. At night when they were burnt out and weary from the day, most of them were negative. And although he himself was already exhausted enough, Jinyoung had no choice but listen as he was swayed by the bus' motion.

If it was just them tired from work or study, it was often still fine. But he was also forced to hear about how the girl two rows in front of him flunked her exam and was scared to go home, or how the man sitting at the back corner wanted to stop working because he was harassed by his superior everyday but couldn't. They just flowed into his head and he had no way to block it. Of course he had gotten used to it and learned to ignored them, but sometimes when he had a bad day or in a bad shape, the negativity would break through his defense and drained him dry. Before, he could just avoid rush hours, sacrificing his sleep to go earlier than workers and students then went home before them, but after he accepted to tutor some elementary kids, he couldn't. Being around kids was his salvation, their pure minds still blissfully innocent from the wickedness of the world. He thought there was no harm in letting his wall down around them, but he just found out how wrong he was.

That day was especially bad for Jinyoung. He saved a girl from getting scammed on the way to his lecture that morning. The scammer told her he was from a talent agency when he actually was going to take her money and run away. He really should've learned his lesson not to butt into others business because while it ended well for her, it did not for Jinyoung. He arrived late to his class and got chewed by the lecturer who happened to hate him because he corrected him once when he was teaching. He also used his lateness as an excuse to refuse the assignment he had spent three sleepless night for when he could hear him cackled in his head.

As if it was not enough, the kid who he had been tutoring for half a year and he had grown fond of, was surrounded with negative thoughts because his parents had a big fight the day before and he was blaming himself. That was why he stay away from people, because hearing negative thoughts from the ones he held dear was the hardest. And to make it worse, it was snowing. The cold always made him felt sluggish, and the hueless ice brought back bad memories he would rather forget.

Jinyoung sighed as the bus stopped, letting two passengers in. It meant more thoughts forcing their way to his mind. Fortunately there was nothing negative from both of them, because he could feel the back of his head throbbing. Maybe it was the result of neglecting sleep for three consecutive night, and everything that happened to him that day didn't help. He just wanted to sink into the comfort of his bed and sleep, but there was still fifteen minutes minutes before he could do that. He sighed again for the second time since he rode the bus and who knew the count that day as he rested his head over the window, watching cars passed by.

Just when he thought he should buy a car as soon as he graduated and had enough to buy one no matter how much of a junk it would be, he could hear someone singing. Not through his ears, but his mind. It was louder than any other voices, but it was not deafening at all. Instead, the loudness of that soft melody smothered around him like a blanket, warm and cozy, dulling the pain on his head. It was a song he had never heard before, and he fell in love at the first listen.

He looked around, searching for the owner of that sound. It was one of the men that just got in, sitting on the opposite side of the row he was in. Just like him, the stranger leaned his head on the window, but with closed eyes. His dark mullet, which he realized was actually dyed blue when he looked closely, was pushed back by what seemed to be a misused neck warmer, showing the width of his forehead. Usually, people either sang or hummed when they played a song in their head, but there was no sound escaped through his closed lips. If Jinyoung couldn't hear his mind, he could have been mistaken as asleep.

Following the stranger, Jinyoung closed his eyes and enjoyed the song. He wondered if the voice he heard was his or the original singer. Then the voice continued on to another song, so it was most possibly the man's voice or he just liked the singer so much. Whoever owned that voice, he liked it so much. It was the kind of voice that soothed you and smoothly drew you in, but felt like it was a fog veiling the fire inside the singer. He was so curious, but he couldn't possibly ask without the other thinking he was a creep.