Chapter Text
Nimble fingers dance over the cool keys of ivory and ebony, music wafting through the room, floating in and out of the consciousness of those present. Jeongguk finds himself breathing liberally for the first time in a long time, the sensations that the music possessed, speaking to his soul, mending the fissures in his being the longer that he played. The music begins to reach a crescendo the more intense his feelings of belonging become.
“Stop.” A crisp voice cuts through the melodious sound, the tune ending on an awkward note as Jeongguk does what he is asked. The young boy looks up and sees his father staring at him across the room with loathing and disappointment in his eyes. Another failure for Jeongguk, but what else is new?
At only seven years old, Jeongguk has felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. Nothing was good enough for his father, but Jeongguk thinks that is a lie. Up until the year that his mother passed, his father had never bothered with him, focusing more on his brother whose gift was the art of talking and persuasion. A rubbish gift to have when you’re only seven, but Jeongguk’s father had seen the opportunity.
When his mother had passed, suddenly his father was paying more attention to him and nit-picking every small thing that the young boy ever did. Despite being biologically related, his father had already singled Jeongguk out as the black sheep of the family, even without the manifestation of his gift.
“Jeongguk, I would like you to pick up the flute.” The facility director instructs, scribbling something on his clipboard. The young boy wants to scoff, no matter what the tests say, it would only be a disappointment to his father; just because it isn’t like his brother’s.
Even so, Jeongguk picks up the unfamiliar silver instrument. Despite his unfamiliarity, the metal seems to buzz to life under his fingertips as he lifts the musical instrument to his lips. He was not aware of how flutes were to be played, no teachings of how much force to put into his breath; yet the perfect harmony of notes that float in the air would not so much as even hint at such a notion. He plays, his fingers moving without him thinking, all his emotions bleeding into the melody, ending on a melancholy note as Jeongguk heaves.
The director is smiling at Jeongguk, his hands clasped together. “Congratulations, you are officially gifted with the power of music. You will find that you will flourish when working with melodies and harmonies, getting your hands on instruments and allowing the notes to hit your soul.”
Jeongguk smiles tightly and bows. His manners are not forgotten despite the loathing feeling in his chest. The man talked to his father as the boy found himself near the window, hand on the chilled glass. The snow dances gracefully outside, surprisingly to the tune that floats around in Jeongguk’s mind. He presses his forehead against the window as he tries to focus further on the whirling crystals.
The one thing about discovering one’s gift, especially as intangible as music or persuasion, is that it’s nearly impossible to tell if everything does bend into the beholder’s eyes, or if they are more aware of the patterns of life around them now.
Jeongguk sighs as he realizes that the music adjusts to the snow swirling outside. He thinks that being able to control the pattern of movement in nature, tying it back to his own gift, would be too much power for him to wield, especially at only seven years old.
The car ride home was silent, as it always was when Jeongguk went out with his father anywhere. In the beginning, when his mother had passed away, Jeongguk’s father tried making an effort with his youngest son. These days he doesn’t, especially not now that he knows that the young boy will grow up to do nothing substantive with his life.
– 🎵 –
Growing up, Jeongguk found that he enjoyed his gift, even when the other children getting tested around him ended up with cooler and more dominating and useful skills. Some were like his brother, the art of persuasion pumping through their veins. Others had the gift of controlling the elements, which made them some of the most feared people in their society.
That was not to say that all those who possess elemental gifts were dangerous, but if provoked, then it wouldn’t take long for things to get ugly quickly.
Children, as early as second grade, developed gifts that made then computer whizzes, despite the lack of need for it at such a young age. But no one in Jeongguk’s year developed a gift like his.
They do say that your parents play a huge factor in what gift you develop, so should Jeongguk really be surprised that he manifested the power to be able to play music on any instrument without prior knowledge when his mother played all kinds of music as lullabies for him when he was younger? Not really, but that doesn’t mean that he had to like it.
He especially didn’t have to like it when he got older and they specialized their classes to allow for students to properly pursue what they want in college. Among his class of almost 900 students, Jeongguk was one among a handful of kids who had enrolled into the music program. It was a smaller department given that rarely anyone develops a gift for music and instruments.
Jeongguk had a handful of friends when he entered high school at fourteen, but by the time he turned seventeen, they were all gone. None of them were left, and lunches were spent in the music room where he would play the instruments to his delight.
Some days, even the prospect of being able to play his favourite song on the piano or guitar wasn’t enough to fill the aching void in his heart and replace the social interaction he craved so desperately from the rest of the world. He’d long since accepted that his father would not be a friend or someone that he can rely on, therefore leaving him to rely on the love and interaction of others around him in hopes that it would be enough to replace years of neglect.
While music could not fill the void in his chest, nor could it offer him an alternative to the neglect he had faced, it was on one rainy afternoon that he found something that could; more so an act that could.
Jeongguk was strumming away on the guitar, his emotions intertwined in every note, the melody composed straight from his heart. Usually, no one entered the room when he played — but for some reason, one of his year mates walked through the doors, sitting himself on one of the chairs as the music wafted around them.
When Jeongguk had asked him how he felt later, the male had told him that it felt like the music took on the form of a human being, draping itself over him, soaking into his being and reaching bone deep. He felt the ache in the music, the highs and the lows in pitch as if it were his own emotions. He was caught in a trance as Jeongguk strummed, telling the story of someone who spent life in solitude.
That was how Jeongguk got his first boyfriend at seventeen — although one couldn’t really call it that. Jeongguk didn’t like him as a boyfriend should, and he rather saw the boy as an experiment. Every day, he would lure him into the music room with the promise that he will play something else for him that will tell the boy something else about Jeongguk and who he is.
It might have been true, but larger than this idea of getting the other boy to understand him, Jeongguk played him music that conveyed different sorts of emotions in him and watched how the reactions varied each time. His emotions were reflected back at him through his music and his audience.
The power he felt when he looked at his hands, calloused from picking at the guitar was heady. His head was spinning, a mildly psychotic look on his face as he laid in his room, looking up at his hands that he held out in front of him.
It began with a quiet chuckle, but before long, Jeongguk curled into himself and silently laughed in his solitude.
The world thought he was useless.
He would show them.