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Seungmin is Deaf. Well theoretically he is Hard of Hearing, he can hear some stuff with his right ear even without his hearing aid … But if anyone asked him, he’d say he was Deaf.
Deaf is a word he’d learnt to grow fond of with time. It was easy enough to explain and no one within the hearing community would question him. Yet, even though now he reclaims that word as part of his identity it hadn’t always been that easy.
Seungmin was born with bad hearing, it had always been there, yet it hadn’t always been that bad. When he was a little kid, back when he lived with his Eomma and his Appa, the Appa of his early childhood, he could hear stuff. It was back at that time that he’d learnt to love music.
He had vivid memories of the man blasting music, so loud it made the whole apartment vibrate. He remembered the man singing in his ears so he could enjoy it. He remembered all that and he loved those memories. Music was the man’s go to to make Seungmin happy and it worked.
Seungmin remembered jumping around on the couch with his big brother, some old-ish rock music coming out of the speaker, and their father playing air guitar on the side. It was basically their weekly thing to do on week-ends when Seungmin's Eomma wouldn’t be here, much too busy with her work.
Seungmin cherished those few memories of his past. He knew now it was just a cover, the cover of a book that looked happy from the outside but that wasn’t that great once you’d look through it. No matter what, the happy memories were filled with music and that’s what he wanted to keep within his heart. Seungmin knew that the memories he was the most confident about (the fact that they did happen) came with their own music. It was just the way it was for him, maybe the autism made that or maybe it was just the way it was for Seungmin.
Nowadays he is 100% confident with that title, but still, being Deaf isn’t always easy. It comes with all kinds of challenges. The world doesn’t communicate with him right and no matter how well he’d adapted to it and especially how well he could read lips, it still sucked.
The belittling of having people ask your parents or siblings what you'd have at the most random restaurant … Seungmin knew people looked down on him, a Deaf Autistic guy in a power wheelchair … and he would have liked to say he didn't care but he still somewhat did.
Even though, to be very honest, being Deaf wasn’t the part that impacted his life the most. If he had to choose only one, he’d probably say that poor mobility and balance sucked the most. No matter the years of physical therapy, Seungmin wasn’t able to walk completely free of mobility aids and he’d gotten used to it but … yeah, it sucked.
Seungmin’s biggest problem with being Deaf was how hard it was for him to sing. Because music quite literally was Seungmin’s passion, his special interest as well, he was just so in love with it that it could sometimes be painful to not be able to hear himself properly when he sang.
Music is literally what makes Seungmin’s happy.
He’d found so many ways to enjoy music. As unconventional as those ways were. He’d sometimes spend hours in his room sitting with his hearing aid and his cochlear implant both connected to his phone and blasting music in his head (or at least it was the feeling of it), he’d also sometimes just put music on a speaker and just sit next to it or leave his hand on it, feel the buzzing on his skin. He’d always loved that vibrant feeling of music crawling deep down, tickling his bones, it was just the way it felt for him. If he closed his eyes long enough while listening to music, it was almost as if he could see it and he just adored that. He’d also learnt to play guitar using an amp onto which he would put his bare foot. He could do little stuff on the piano though it was much harder to coordinate his hands on a keyboard especially with his paralyzed hand …
Yet when he was younger and he tried to talk about this specific special interest of his, most of his friends would brush it off. His friends, or at least the ones he used to call friends back then, couldn’t understand what he meant when he said he loves music, because they talked about the vibrations and he knew there was so much more to it.
He’d got in so much trouble at his school for putting music in his ears all day … He’d started to sneakily use his phone in class when he was about 13. Weirdly enough, it took the teachers a few weeks to realize what was up with Seungmin when the “not that good to start with” student's grades started to drift down. His fathers hadn't been so happy about it and at that time he got his phone taken away during the school day to prevent that.
His bad grades slowly pushed him out of his elitist school, it for sure was a school for deaf kids but it also was the best of the country and Seungmin didn't really care to be the worst student of his whole class (and even of the whole grade). He'd spent so many years being taught school at the hospital in between appointments with his speech therapist, physical therapy and occupational therapy that he’d had a hard time fitting in a normal school setting anyway.
In the end he’d only spent a year and a half in this school before going to school with all his siblings. And even then he didn’t really fit in. Yet the extra music classes the school offered was a bliss for him, despite the other students not really understanding what he was trying to do here. He would sometimes just play around with a guitar and pay attention to what he was doing only. It had the talent to piss off some of the people that were actually here to learn … unlike him.
Honestly Seungmin wasn’t such a good student no matter what. Unless it came to music. And no matter the number of teachers he could meet at his school, the best teacher when it came to music was his Dad.
Seungmin's favorite place to be since he’d become a member of his family was the company (and home but the company was just like home). He would just lay on the floor and watch people dance, enjoying the buzzing on the floor and the vibration of their feet stomping on the ground. Or he would just visit the studios, the producers (especially Namjoon) happy to put the sound louder for him to hear. He could spend hours watching waves appear on the laptops during recording sessions and he followed vocal coaches around like an assistant.
Seungmin was just a constant shadow, always somewhere around the company, his tablet with him just in case he wanted to talk to someone but couldn’t bring himself to actually speak. And he absolutely loved to talk to people who actually understood his passion for music.
That's how he ended up dropping off school when he turned 16, to the disappointment of his grandparents that were very concerned about his education. But even though his fathers were reluctant at first, Chan and Changbin were ultimately okay with it, Seungmin didn't find his place in school and it would be torturing their kid to insist. After all, Seungmin wasn't dumb or anything, just unique, different from their other kids that were more or less scholarly involved.
These days, the 18 year old spent so much time at the company bugging the vocal coaches that he’d actually started to learn how to coach from them.
Since he couldn't really ear when the sounds got too high, they'd show him the demo records in a sort of pitch tuner program and the curent recording of the trainess voices in another so he could be able to see the visual waves and compare them. He'd also sometimes connect one of his hearing devices to the laptop they used to be able to hear the recordings better.
Thanks to the laptops and under close supervision, he was able to give tips to the new trainees, rarely unsure of what he said and it usually worked quite well. Because he definitely didn't need to hear the them super clearly to know they weren’t the best at singing yet.
It felt great to feel useful and to learn more and more about singing, despite the technics he tried and tipped not fully working on himself.
The music never stopped for Seungmin, once he was back at home it continued, of course, it wasn't his only interest but it was for sure the main one. So Seungmin constantly made sure to fill his somewhat silent world with symphonies and cacophonies.
"You're loud!", Jeongin would often complain.
"If you're not happy then just go.", he would always answer.
But weirdly enough Jeongin would stay, Seungmin knew it was because Jeongin didn't like to be alone, much to used to having someone around all the time. Jeongin had been spending much more time in his space ever since the other had moved out for University.
"Can I listen?", he'd sometimes ask when he saw Seungmin work on a track and the big brother would often indulge.
Of course, Jeongin would be highly judgemental of the things he created but it helped him progress even though they would disagree on some points. He was thankful Jeongin wouldn't just blatantly lie to him and tell him it was good when it wasn't.
"You should try to make a love song, Hyung.", Jeongin had once told him and if he initially disagreed, he accepted it as a challenge.
And it didn't quite take the turn Jeongin expected because Seungmin did manage to write a love song, just a song about love and dedication to music. And Seungmin found it pretty cool.
"You should post it on your YouTube channel.", his Dad said when Seungmin finally allowed the man to listen.
"You think?", he asked with a big smile. "Are you sure it's good enough?"
"Yes I'm very much sure."
He did have an account, he sometimes posted vlogs and stuff, he didn't have that many views, he only did it for fun and without really promoting his channel much. But he decided not to post until much later.
And once he decided, he posted his first song, and he called it "The Music of My Heart".