Chapter Text
Good mornings aren’t for everybody, Jinyoung learns, as he sighs, hopelessly trying to win those additional few minutes of sleep by throwing a blanket on his face, covering it from the light, which is trying to break through every damn window. However, the lack of air only irritates him more and more as the seconds go by. Jinyoung rolls back and forth in his bed several times trying to fight this weird feeling in his guts, but soon he has to admit that something feels off today. He feels off today. Again.
Jinyoung closes his eyes and sighs. It’s not like he hasn’t felt this way before - tired, exhausted even after long hours of sleep, with something very heavy building up inside him as if he was suffocating. He never tried to fight this feeling, though, everyone said it’s okay to feel down once in a while, that it’s normal. Everyone feels tired sometimes.
But Jinyoung’s sometimes usually turned into days and weeks of trying to push through his responsibilities with a fake smile plastered on his face. He was the Park Jinyoung – the jokester, the chatty one, always fine and ready to console others if needed, always maintaining his image in front of everyone. He can’t lie, there are some good days here and there, when he has enough energy to go out, crack jokes, be amusing, instead of just faking it. But not today.
He finally gets off the bed when the second alarm announces that if he doesn’t move his ass, he will be late to work. Not that he was extremely needed there – he left all the playlists on autoplay yesterday and it was barely seven in the morning, but Jinyoung always thought of university radio being one of his special places where he could concentrate on something else rather than his thoughts.
Jinyoung always wished to continue working there even after graduation, because he was just too used to the routine of being the main announcer of the radio, but he knows it’s not possible. This position is available for one year only and Jinyoung hasn’t felt this desperate wish to stay twenty one forever ever before.
He makes some sort of disgusted sound seeing his half asleep face in the bathroom mirror. The view is far from satisfactory - his eyes are a bit swollen and red and his skin has this greyish tone as a result of rarely seeing the sunlight. Jinyoung lets out a deep sigh again before leaning over the sink, averting his eyes from the mirror to his hands. His right palm is marked with a fresh red cut he got yesterday from trying to open an old box while searching for his favorite album in the radio, but staring at his bruised hands somehow feels much better than looking at his face.
Jinyoung doesn’t bother to style his hair that morning, he just goes through it with his bare hands, instead of using a hair brush. He has absolutely no intention to look at least appealing to anyone today.
Like always, the world seems pretty grey for Jinyoung when he finally steps outside – grey pavement with holes here and there, grey buildings of his neighborhood he’s so used to see on his way to the bus stop. And most importantly, the grey cloudy sky, which is pouring cold rain on his wrinkled clothes this morning. Partly, Jinyoung blames the weather for feeling like this, but a tiny voice inside his head keeps annoyingly poking at the fact that it might not be the case.
“Straight from the shower?” he hears a familiar voice greeting him after entering the building. Like on a command, his smile automatically turns on as he looks at Jackson, one of the foreign students doing their internships here, trying to crack a joke seeing Jinyoung’s drenched clothes.
“Yeah,” the latter laughs back, but the smile never reaches his eyes. He feels Jackson’s stare on his back as he is walking down the corridor, as if the Chinese guy is trying to figure out if his laugh was sincere. However, none of them say a word, and Jinyoung finally breathes out at ease, draping himself over his favorite chair and putting his headphones on.
It’s a usual Tuesday – since he has no lectures on Tuesdays, he always enters the radio at 8 AM, prepares for the morning news until 9:30, reviews the interview questions for the upcoming show until 10:30, small coffee break at 11 and today is no exception.
He announces the news at 10 AM as per usual, but even Jinyoung himself feels how terrible his voice sounds, as if he was announcing the death of someone, not the news of an upcoming five days long national holiday.
“Are you okay?” Jinyoung flinches at the unexpected voice behind him. He takes his headphones off and presses a finger against his lips, showing the guy in the room to keep it quiet until he’s sure that the microphone is turned off.
Jaebum just nods, patiently waiting for an explanation.
“Why?” Jinyoung asks a few moments later, when he’s sure everything is working like it’s supposed to. Honestly, he’s a bit surprised that Jaebum, out of all people, is asking about how he feels.
The latter shrugs and continues, “I was listening to the broadcast, it sounded like you’re pretty much dead.”
“I guess it’s just the weather,” Jinyoung assures, not looking directly at him.
Jaebum just nods. He thinks he could understand in some kind of way – everyone seemed slow and lazy today, and Jinyoung rarely takes any days off, so he must be dead tired. Yes, that’s the case, easy as that.
“Go home, I will host that show for you today,” he offers, but as soon as he opens his mouth, he knows that Jinyoung is going to refuse.
“It’s fine. It’s fine,” Jinyoung keeps repeating stubbornly and Jaebum can’t help but flash a suspicious stare towards him, but few seconds after Jaebum silently says that he’s going to the lecture.
“Good luck, by the way,” he adds, turning to the door. “The results of the internship interviews are going to be announced today.”
Jinyoung knows that way too well, he couldn’t sleep these past nights because of the anticipation. Being absolutely aware that for his own sake he shouldn’t ask such thing, Jinyoung still opens his mouth.
“Where did you apply?”
“The usual ones,” he gets a reply and Jinyoung tries his best to fight the urge to sigh. It means they both applied for the same position, like always.
Ever since they met two years ago, they were stuck together. They did all the assignments together, organized all the events together, and entered the radio together. They even applied for the announcer spot together, unfortunately Jaebum caught a cold and lost his voice just before the tryouts and Jinyoung was chosen instead.
Starting from that time, Jaebum started to keep his distance as if he was jealous for some reason. He talked with Jinyoung less and less, and at one point the latter just gave up, accepting those few messages a month he got from him, mostly when Jaebum needed an advice or moral support.
Actually, Jinyoung didn’t even want their relationship to go back to normal again, as he always felt like he’s only a mere low quality copy of Im Jaebum. With the same talents, but never on the same level – Jaebum always was some kind of god to their peers and teachers, witty, smart and talented, and Jinyoung, well… Was just Jinyoung, not a complete dumbass, but not Im Jaebum, either.
He successfully convinced himself that he got this announcer spot only because Jaebum wasn’t able to participate in the tryouts. And the latter never actually said anything to deny this conviction, although he knew very well what his friend was thinking.
When Jaebum finally leaves the room Jinyoung closes his eyes and rubs his temples. He doesn’t know what is going on with him, why is it so hard to show his usual personality, but nothing excites him today, not even the fact that it is only an hour and a half left until his favorite activity – hosting a show that was like Jinyoung’s child, a thing that he created from scratch on his own.
Ever since he got the idea of just picking random students for interviews about their activities every Tuesday, trying to create an approachable image of the radio, the ratings hit the roof. Thanks to Jinyoung’s warm and easy-going personality, no one ever felt awkward in the studio. It was quite risky, as Jaebum liked to emphasize, since this show had no particular concept, contrary to the one Jinyoung hosted on Thursdays, where he just played the music according to the listeners' demands and gave advices about student life. But Park Jinyoung managed to pull it off.
The only thing he can’t pull off quite well is his own life, he bitterly thinks.
It takes two beeps of an incoming text message for Jinyoung to wake up from some sort of a trance.
Good luck today! Wish your name to be on the list! – YJ
Jinyoung forces a smile, as if Youngjae is watching him, but doesn’t reply. It’s nice of Youngjae to remember this important day, but Jinyoung suddenly catches himself wishing that he wouldn’t have told this to anyone.
When it was the time to pick a place for the internship, he didn’t really think that much as the choice seemed obvious – he listed the biggest broadcasting stations in his application form. KBS, SBS, MBC – he wrote them all, being strongly convinced that they need Park Jinyoung, one of the most popular hosts among all the radio stations for students.
Not even once he thought that maybe he is hoping for too much. KBS has one spot available, SBS has two, MBC clearly stated that they’re not sure whether they will be picking interns this year overall, but Jinyoung didn’t care back then. Only now, only today, for the first time he thinks that it might have been a good idea to list something else in that list also. A small cable TV station, or a local radio. Anything.
A short lunch break he allowed himself to have passes incredibly slowly, with him flipping his food from one side of the plate to another while listening to Jackson’s rambles. Jackson hates any kind of silence, so he always tried to fill it with words flying out of his mouth so fast, Jinyoung had trouble understanding what he is saying, but overall he didn’t mind some background noise.
“… and then I say, no, mister, we don’t need any more drinks this evening, and that asshole – can you imagine? – he charges us double the amount saying that the tips were included in the bill,” Jinyoung’s ears catch a story Jackson is so eager to share. An understanding smile and a slight laugh escape his lips, creating the illusion of a normal Jinyoung. “And I’m like, mister, where was it written like that and then the last thing I see is him calling the security because we’re now refusing to pay the bill and that’s how I, Jackson Wang, spent a night in the police station, trying to explain what was happening to an officer who looked more stoned than me.”
“Well that’s some experience,” Jinyoung tells, knowing that some sort of reaction is more than welcome. “I see you’re spending your weekends in an entertaining way while you’re here.”
“My parents went wild,” Jackson laughs, finishing his sandwich. “I’m not allowed to go out on weekends and I can only take the car from Mondays to Fridays just to get myself to the campus. They even threatened to take me back to China.”
“You’re 21 year old, Jackson, live a bit,” Jinyoung says, trying to throw his salad out without getting noticed. “Your parents don’t have to know everything.”
“Says the one who kisses his mom goodbye every morning.”
Jinyoung just smiles at this remark and says he needs to go back to the studio to practice for the interview. That throbbing pain in his right temple is getting worse and at one point he even gets scared that he’s going to get an aneurysm or something, but it soon goes away, as the clock shows 11:30 AM. Time for the results to be announced.
Jinyoung’s hands get a bit shaky as he reaches for his phone to dial the number. He doesn’t expect much.
“This is the application information system for applicants of the year 2015. Please enter your application number after the signal and wait for further instructions,” a cold robotic voice echoes in Jinyoung’s ears.
He hears the beep and then types in his application number.
“Applicant no. 15020602 has applied for 3 positions in total,” the same voice continues to repeat things Jinyoung already knew by heart. “The following are the results of application evaluation.”
Jinyoung feels a cold sweat forming on his forehead. The voice is talking way too slowly for his liking and it makes him frustrated.
“Junior announcer internship, KBS – not qualified,” Jinyoung feels out of air hearing this, but he knows it’s okay. They had only one spot, it’s normal, the competition was tough. “News anchorman assistant, SBS – not qualified.”
There is no hope that MBC would take him, they never take anyone from their university and Jinyoung feels like he fucked up his entire life. He can’t even write the final thesis without finishing his internship.
“Junior announcer internship, MBC – not qualified,” the voice in his ear confirms. “If you got selected, please press 1 for further information. If you want to listen to the results again, press--“
Jinyoung tosses his phone back on the table, he definitely doesn’t want to listen to the results again. Out of a sheer habit, few seconds later he updates Youngjae on the situation.
“Aww, man. It’s okay, barely anyone gets into these from the first attempt, so heads up! I’m sorry to hear that though, but you will rock it next time!”
Youngjae’s response is sweet and supportive like always, but Jinyoung doesn’t feel any better. Sure, he knew that it’s hard to be picked in a first try, but something inside him keeps telling that if only he tried harder, if only he wasn’t such a failure… Maybe?..
“How did that internship thingy went?” Jackson peeks through the door Jinyoung must’ve left open.
“Didn’t get anywhere,” Jinyoung says, trying to sound nonchalant and Jackson seems to be buying it. Jinyoung was always good at pretending.
“There’s always a next time, even though I was completely sure you will get a place somewhere,” Jackson tells and Jinyoung frowns. So people were expecting him to do well and he failed. Well, what’s new. “Anyway, don’t think about it too much, and also, the guy you’re interviewing today is already here. Should I let him in?”
Jinyoung looks at the clock. 11:45 AM. He doesn’t feel like hosting anything else except maybe his own funeral, but he nods to Jackson anyway. Personal matters can wait, he has some responsibilities for this place, too.
The guy looks exactly how he remembers from the photo of his Facebook profile – dark brown hair, sheepish smile and an aura of pure awkwardness, but Jinyoung smiles to him anyway. He seemed kind of nice when they were chatting. It was Jaebum’s idea to invite him since he knows the guy, and Jinyoung isn’t surprised – Jaebum is hanging out with a whole lot of various people these days.
The guy speaks slowly while greeting, since he still isn’t a pro at Korean and keeps searching for the rights words in some dictionary app in his phone. It irritates Jinyoung a bit, as he clearly isn’t in the mood to carry the entire conversation by himself.
“Sit down, Mark. You will be speaking into this,” Jinyoung shows him the second microphone, the one next to the window, while Mark follows everything with his wide eyes, trying to catch Jinyoung’s every word. “Just don’t be nervous and if something’s going wrong, just give me a sign, don’t blurt it out to the listeners, okay?”
“Okay,” Mark replies and Jinyoung thinks that this deep and even cold voice doesn’t match the guy’s appearance. “I’m sorry you have to do it in English, though.”
“No problem,” Jinyoung says, checking how many songs are left until the show starts. Two. “The show needs a change, and not every day I can talk with a guy who used to participate in illegal racing.”
Mark giggles a bit while sitting down, looking at the paper with the key questions, while Jinyoung takes a last glimpse at his Facebook feed.
A few late messages wishing him good luck with the internship, few texts wishing him a good show today, and then… Jinyoung flinches so bad, even Mark leans over to ask if everything’s okay.
Im Jaebum added a life event 15 mins ago
“Started working in KBS as a junior announcer”
“Yes,” Jinyoung murmurs, closing the browser and searching for a bottle of water. He feels a familiar mix of his hurt self-confidence and despair taking him over again. “It’s just that I’m a loser and some people are Im Jaebums.”