SEVENTEEN | Imagines

Woozi (VI)

lengthy a/n at the end. 

Woozi

He sings the song of death.

. . .

The world works in strange ways. Perhaps it will give a gift to someone most undeserving of it, or perhaps it will so severely cripple someone's gift that it became torture. Which might not have been anything particularly groundbreaking but made Lee Jihoon's life a misery.

He did not belong to the first group, but rather the second. Born into a world where there were gifted those who had an amplified talent that seemed supernatural in nature, he was one of the 'fortunate'. While the numbers were not particularly low, the gifted still only represented a small amount of the population.

Even though at first, the gifted were looked at with envy or fear, these feelings soon changed because they were really quite normal. In fact, most had no desire to pursue a field where their gift would benefit them if the gift was even positive in nature. More often than not, the gift was effectively useless. For a librarian to be able to tell the exact temperature of melted steel was pointless, yet they were still gifted.

But Jihoon was not so fortunate, his gift directly affected his life and where his passions lay, as a singer. From very little, he was obsessed with music and wanted to sing for the world to hear. Born into a family of musicians, he was never discouraged but rather heavily encouraged to pursue his dreams. Which was until his gift appeared.

If you asked him, however, he would call it more of a curse than anything. In fact, his gift had broken the hearts of effectively everyone in his family who had been hoping that he becomes a household name. His voice had been praised as sweet and uplifting, capable of bringing smiles to the weariest. But his gift was that his singing would cause the listeners to remember them at their worst, causing great pain and anguish.

The scariest aspect of this is that depending on how much pain or fear the listener had experienced, they would feel it even more strongly. It truly was a curse, his voice that had once brought happiness had been transformed into a weapon of sadness. Since the first few times he had sung with his gift that had ended disastrously, Jihoon hadn't even sung in the presence of other people.

Resigned to life without singing, he moved on.

. . .

You looked at the two people that you had gathered together in preparation for the scariest thing you have ever thought up. Henry was lazily fiddling with a mini keyboard mixer, fingers moving dextrously over the tiny keys. Hyolyn, on the other hand, was humming lightly under her breath, eyes closed as if in her own world.

"We need one more," you finally spoke, tiredness decorating your face as you considered your current composition, "There are too many positive emotions to do what we're trying to do. There's something missing." Your hands were clicking away at a computer, trying to mix some beats together.

Hyolyn stops humming and replies, "I agree," and before Henry could stay anything, she continues, "Not downplaying your skill, but we need something that doesn't get your heart pumping. Between the three of us, we can make all sorts of upbeat kind of songs."

The bespeckled male was about to come up with a witty retort, but seeing the serious expressions on everyone else's faces, elected not to. "I know, we knew from the very beginning that we were missing sadness."

"It already took so long for me to find you guys," you switched back to scouring the internet, "After all people like us end up staying as far away from singing as possible. Finding the person willing to take a chance and be passionate about our project is near impossible."