SCENERY / Taejin

2. Magic

Jin-hyung was right. We worked really, really hard.

Our company was broke. So, we didn't have the fanciest things to make it any easier. The other trainees and I went through tough chores and even tougher training everyday.

I soon learned to be on friendly terms with all the other boys.
They helped me get used to the place day by day in different ways, both in the company and outside in the city.

But it was Jin-hyung who I turned to most.

He was one of the oldest ones in the group and he was the one most responsible for glueing all of us together.

Jin-hyung was a lot of things. He was always jolly, he cracked jokes too often, he cooked 5-6 days of the week, and after hours of training, we sweated like drowned mice but instead, he glowed.

He always made the dinner table lively with conversation. He never forgot seaweed soup for all our birthdays and he'll always be the first to approach anyone who was looking down. And somehow his cringey jokes and sad attempts at comforting always seemed to work.
He was always grinning.

Even when he was sad.

Hyung was scolded the most out of all of us. By our vocal coaches and dance instructors both. All of us knew he had no experience of either of them before he came. He was just an ordinary kid in college who's never sung or danced professionally in his life before.
But still the scoldings got really harsh sometimes.

He would laugh it off and apologize. But I saw the little gulp and his nose and ears twitching and reddening just seconds before he shakes himself off and joke about it, making everyone laugh again. It was just for a minute but his tiny reflex always betrayed his happy facade.

He never gave us a chance to offer him comfort like he did to us. He was so good at hiding his emotions.
Unlike me. He was the total opposite of me.

I loved singing. I loved dancing. And I enjoyed working and being with everyone there.

But sometimes it gets too hard and I just broke down.

Ever since I was a kid, I've always taken emotions too far, too deep, too serious.
I've always over analysed words and actions directed at me.
I got upset often and most of the times, I'm not even mad at the person. I just question and blamed myself constantly if anyone ever had a word at me.

My friends dealt with me in different ways.
Suga-hyung, Namjoon-hyung, Hoseok-hyung, Jimin-hyung, Kook and Jin-hyung
-they were the ones I shared a room with; the ones closest to me.

And no matter how patiently anyone approached me with, I won't be affected. I hated myself for acting that way but I was stubborn and it was hard for me to hide what I feel.

My grandmother used to call me 'transparent'. She would often say that she could see right through me.Whatever I was feeling, it showed clear as day on my face. If I came back from school moody, she could see it from a mile away. She knew when I wanted the new bike my neighbor got even though I never said it. She knew I had a fight with my parents even though I desperately tried to hide it.

And the kid I was, decided that it was definitely magic. It couldn't be anything else..she knew me way too well!

"Taehyung-ah, Someday when you fall in love, don't bother trying to hide from me,ok? I'm gonna know it so easily. " And she would laugh heartily.

The guys decided it was best to leave me alone to cool off when I was upset. And so they all did.
All except Jin-hyung.

He was persistent. He won't ever give up trying. He gave himself a tiny mission everytime my anger pushed him away. No matter how much wall I built up, he came gnawing and huffing and Mario-jumped over it.

"Taehyung-ah,teach me this part." He would come ask the sulking me with the new dance routines.

"Taehyung-ah, how did this step go again?"

"No,I can't ask Kook for help."

"You don't know either? Then I'll teach you. Get up fast."

He would then laugh at me, with me, cackling with his windshield wiper laughs until he finally gets a chuckle out of me.

Like I said. He was persistent. And it always worked somehow.

Granny? Why is it that Hyung knows me so well the way you do? Why does his words always succeed in calming me down when no one else can?
And why does my stubbornness always makes an exception for him?
Does he have that magic like you do?
It couldn't be anything else,right?

Such a bad chapter. I'm sowwy. *Cri* (T_T)🔪