Sight || PJM ✔️

7 - Set

Jimin

I thought I'd feel watched.

But I don't.

When I know she's watching, I feel the urge to practice harder.

I finish my choreography and walk over to turn off the music before the next one in the playlist turns on. Usually there'd be claps of awe.

But it's silent.

I turn around and scan the corners of the room, music temporarily forgotten. 

She's nowhere to be found.

Something in me shatters. Why? Did I do something wrong?

I didn't even get to say goodbye.

I walked around the room aimlessly to see if she's just hiding, but even as I looked around, deep inside I knew that she couldn't have been hiding - her book bag is gone.

She'd packed up and left. That was the only plausible conclusion.

She left me.

The fluttering emotion that I'd normally feel, thinking of her, changes into something dark and tragic and... sad.

Regret.

Meanwhile, the next song, Spring Day, plays from the speakers. The song echoes throughout the empty room. It echoes with the regret and sadness inside me, with thoughts of her.

It's the song that now echoes between us. The one I've failed to notice until it's too late.

It's too late.

I curl up in the corner. I don't pause the music.

It all happened so fast... just like that she's gone... What did I do wrong?

The music begins to distort. I glance up at the speakers, but they look distorted too. The music bends and dies down, and then I'm left with silence. Broken speakers.

Suddenly I don't have a voice either.

Why?

The walls are melting. Why?

Panic fills me. Without her, without dance, without music... there's nothing left. I immediately look at the clock, but its hands remain in the same location forevermore.

1:50pm

The mirror shatters. My heart shatters too.

The windows lose their strength and break. The ground begins to shake.

A strong gust of wind rushes in with no warning, and then I've lost my strength too, down on my knees, covering my face from the dust and debris from the storm -

Then I open my eyes, and I sit up straight, terrified, and around me is...

My bedroom.

What?

I blink a few times and look over at the clock.

6:27am

It's almost time to go to school. It was all a dream.

I frown. Nothing but a dream. No wonder the clock was stuck at 1:50pm.

But my heart sinks at more realizations: She never passed me that note. She never watched me dance from the corner of the room. She's only the mysterious girl who sits next to me at lunch everyday. We never talk, we just eat together in silence.

But then I remember...

She's also my partner for math class. She's the one who noticed me, and called my sketches beautiful. She's the girl who peeked in on one of my dance practices.

I look down at my hands, wondering.

The dream may have ended the music. It may have ended her momentary presence in my mind, and ended her magic.

But I saw. And I wanted more.

Could it be... is this... what love feels like?

~

You

We eat together in a comfortable quiet at lunch, like we always do.

He has his earbuds in, sketching more choreography ideas. He never seems to run out of those. I'm reading a book.

I'm on a particularly interesting section about Wool's Orphanage when I sense movement next to me. I look up and see that he's removing his earbuds.

He never does that outside of class.

He shuffles in his seat and tentatively looks up. His eyes meet mine.

"Hi," he breathes.

"Hello." I'm just as stunned as he is.

A moment passes by.

"I'm Park Jimin," he says. Then, probably realizing I already know that: "I, uh, saw you peek in through the door the other day... when I was practicing dance."

He almost never speaks this much. I nod. "Yea, I'm sorry about intruding."

He shakes his head and lowers his gaze. Is it shyness? A faint smile seems to have appeared on him. "No. It's okay. I'm sorry for ending my practice after that. Do you want to... would you like to..."

I wait patiently.

"... would you like to see more? You could, like, settle into the corner and watch."

My eyes widen. Of all the things he could have said - he could have asked about my book, he could have brought up his sketches - this was the last thing I expected him to say. "Really?"

He nods. "I..." A beat. "I don't think I'll mind. Really."

A wave of emotion washes over me. It's familiar, yet so amplified that it seems almost foreign. Of course I want to watch him.

He must have gathered so much courage to do this. For me. A bubble of joy expands inside me. He literally just invited me to his private dance practice. Willingly.

I don't know how to reply with words.

So I nod.

His tentative smile becomes a genuine one.