Four Years America

7

Today was my first day of college officially, and since I had been taking all my courses online I was still in the year I needed to be in if I would have just started with Johnny and never left. Me and him have a few classes together, as him and the rest of the group do. 

Me, him, Mark, and Ten all have the same period dance class. Thinking about it scares the hell out of me though, America added some trauma to dancing. Though I was still excited to be back, even if I did still have to take dance classes. 

In the morning Eunbi and the two other boys, Mark and Ten, came to our door and collected me and Johnny up to go to our classes as a group. As we were walking Johnny was explaining to me how they did things, since they had all technically been friends for two years since I’ve been gone and I definitely needed caught up on how their group works.

“So basically every morning Eunbi gathers us all up to walk to class together so we have time in the morning to talk before we all split up for classes. Before we split we all put our hands together and raise them up and shout NCT, it’s our group name and we shout it for good luck and hopefully a good day. It kinda seems to work… Then we gather all up again to go eat lunch together, then we end up having to split up a bit again.”

“Johnny, you guys sure do a lot of weird stuff… Why do you call yourselves NCT anyway? What does it mean?”

“Oh Mark came up with it two years ago before I met them. He’s a little random, but he basically said it means Neo Culture Technology… It doesn’t really make sense but apparently describes how we can have an infinite number of friends join our group now? I don’t know, he is kinda weird.”

I just shrugged it off and decided to go with it. Soon Eunbi fell behind so she could walk with us.

“So, Jaehyun… What was it like in America? I’m curious.” She asked.

“It was pure torture, I don’t even like to think about it. But if you subtract the fact that I had to do a bunch of work I didn’t want to do and just look at it as a little trip, it was kinda nice. The air is much different there than it is here.”

“Oh that’s interesting… You’ll have to tell me all about it later. We are at our split up spot.”

Ten and Mark gathered around us and we all naturally formed a circle, and Johnny picked my hand up to throw it in, and they all piled theirs on top.

“1, 2, 3, ready? Let’s go NCT!” they all shouted as I tried to mumble the right things under my breath. It was all just so new to me. It’s been a long time since I’ve had friends like this.

When we linked up again for lunch we all sat at our own little table and chatted. It was nice to have company again. I sat there and enjoyed getting to know them better as I kept thinking about what a drastic change I’ve had.

I used to be completely alone in America, but now not only do I have Johnny back in my life, I also have three new great friends who already seem like they’re ready to protect me with their life and stick together with me and the others till death do us part.

I was happy with the amazing gift of friends I came back to, I really was, and I was ready to protect them as well. I could tell we were all gonna be tight. I knew them and Johnny already were, he met them two years ago on a trip to Tokyo, I still remember getting the call from an excited young little Johnny.

“Oh we should make a group chat with each other!” Mark piped up which interrupted my happy thoughts of them.

“Yeah, we should! It would be much better for when we are trying to tell everyone about something instead of just one.” Johnny agreed.

“I’ll make the chat now…” Eunbi whipped out her phone and in a matter of seconds we all got the same text to our phones from Eunbi.

‘NCT is now in order of business.’