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The room was painted a muted, rusty orange. Golden-yellow lights popped out of random spots in the ceiling. The pieces of furniture around the room were varied and multicoloured. Something to please everyone. The bean bag Taehyung had elected to recline on after the requisite signing of some papers was a magnificent and shocking pink. He barely had a few seconds to admire how well it matched his beanie before Jung Hoseok From Last Week walked into the room.
Jung Hoseok From Last Week was the man who had approached Taehyung who was on his merry way home a week ago to ask him if you would be interested in participating in a social experiment his company was running.
Taehyung, who lived his life diving head-first into anything social had tried to ask the amicable stranger solemnly about his company and the exercise they were running and had promised him to think it over after exchanging contact information.
Both of them knew Taehyung was already sold. He exuded curiosity and excitement on a day-to-day basis after all.
He had called Hoseok back within an hour of digging around the website listed on his card to inform him to count him in please. Hoseok had duly counted him in and had reverted to him just a day ago to apologetically state, “Hey it’s Jung Hoseok From Last Week! I know this is short notice, but can you come down tomorrow? Someone else we had down had to cancel and-”
“I’ll be there. I got your back,” Taehyung had cheerfully told the frantic man.
And he was now sitting in a room with mismatched seating provisions.
“Hi, Taehyung!” his week-old acquaintance greeted him briefly but loudly.
“Hi, Jung Hoseok From Last Week!” Taehyung replied, Hoseok’s effervescent nature supplementing his own excitement.
The other man chuckled after a momentary pause of confusion. “Just hyung will do. You make it sound like you’re talking to a past version of me who’s time-travelled into the future.”
“That would be thrilling!” Taehyung huffed, continuing to struggle like an upturned turtle off the bean bag.
“Exceedingly,” Hoseok agreed and reached forward to grab Taehyung’s hands to help him up. Taehyung shot straight out of the bean bag following Hoseok’s little tug.
“Wow you’re really excited about this, aren’t you?”
“I am!” Taehyung confirmed because he was. “I looked around your website and I watched your videos on Youtube. It was such an experience just being a viewer. Multiple tears were shed, you know?” Taehyung presumed Hoseok knew and continued, “And now I get to be on the other side of the screen. To be a part of something beautiful I’ve binge-watched all weekend.”
“That’s a lot of videos to watch within two days.”
“Binge. Watched,” Taehyung reiterated.
“Uh. Thanks?” Hoseok asked mirthfully.
Taehyung waved off the gratitude with a full smile. “And... I really like meeting people, talking to people, getting to know people... I just... really like people. And this,” Taehyung gestured to the door Hoseok had halted in front off, assuming that beyond it lay the room where he was hopeful of finding something, he was not sure what, but something, “will probably be the most novel way I have ever interacted with another fellow person. ‘Course I’m gonna be excited!”
“This is great!” Hoseok beamed, lips stretched across perfect teeth. “So, I’m assuming you know how this goes?”
Taehyung was going to be introduced to a person. He was going to converse with them. Ask them questions about their interests, preferences, jobs, anything. Just like a normal first conversation. Except, Taehyung and his partner would not be allowed to see each other. The point of the exercise was to reflect on the different conclusions the strangers would form based on what they had heard but not seen.
Hoseok still gave him a rundown on how things were going to go despite Taehyung’s serious affirmations to assure the other man that Taehyung knew exactly what he had signed up for.
Then Hoseok opened the door and stuck his head in and yelled a few muffled words into the room before addressing Taehyung again. “Your partner’s already here. His name is Jeon Jeongguk,” he whispered and immediately placed his finger to his lips to remind Taehyung to keep his voice to himself.
Taehyung nodded his head his vigorously, eyes widening to show he would never betray Hoseok’s trust like that. Hoseok then guided a backward-walking Taehyung by the shoulders to a spot somewhere in the centre of the room. He bestowed an energetic thumbs up and edged away from the filming zone.
“You guys can sit down now,” the director of the video pleasantly informed. Taehyung lowered his body as noiselessly as he could, feeling for the chair, even though he had not been restricted from being as noisy as he wanted with his body. But first impressions were important.
Taehyung knew Jeongguk was sitting with his back facing his, only a few inches away, but that still did not stop him from jumping out of his skin when he heard a loud sniff from behind him. Jeongguk’s existence so far was only established because the staff had told him so. To hear physical evidence of that existence had Taehyung toppling forwards on his chair.
So much for polite first impressions.
A voice behind him chuckled. “Sorry,” it said softly.
And then, even softer, “Shit.”
Taehyung wanted to laugh out loud. Jeongguk forgetting that he was supposed to keep mum was not exactly hilarious, perhaps just worth a muted giggle, but the whole experience was catching up with him. The excitement of doing this exercise, something new, something different. His senses were tingling with oversensitivity and he felt more energy bubbling under the surface of his skin than he knew what to do with sitting on a chair.
The director seemed not to have caught Jeongguk’s fumbling. He was gave a few last minute instructions and finally, finally, gave the command that got it all started. “Thank you for coming here and participating in this exercise, guys. Let’s see if you’ll enjoy getting to know each other as much as we hope you will. But no pressure!” he laughed.
Was Jeongguk curling his toes in his shoes like Taehyung was? Was Jeongguk nodding to the director’s words like Taehyung was? Would Jeongguk mind if Taehyung asked him these questions after the filming?
Before Taehyung’s brain could shoot off in other directions, the director took a this-means-business- now breath and announced, “Taehyung meet Jeongguk. Jeongguk meet Taehyung. You can speak to each other now.”
Taehyung did not have to be told twice. “Hello,” he offered immediately, trying his best to keep his eagerness from leaking into his voice.
“Oh,” was the reply he received.
Taehyung asked, “Oh?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Jeongguk amended hurriedly, voice a little high-pitched and embarrassed. He settled his voice with a quiet cough before inquiring, “How are you today, Taehyung-ssi?”
Taehyung liked Jeongguk’s voice already. It was cute in the way only cute voices could be. And it faintly reminded Taehyung of someone.
“Today,” Taehyung replied, “I am super pumped!”
“That’s... That’s good, I suppose. What about yesterday? How were you yesterday?”
Taehyung recollected the previous day before he answered. “I was also super pumped yesterday. Soonshimie, one of the dogs I look after gave birth yesterday. All healthy pups,” Taehyung declared proudly. He liked to believe that he was single-handedly responsible for the fit condition of the stray dog and her puppies.
“Oh! Sweet!” Jeongguk sounded upbeat. “I love dogs!" Taehyung knew then that they would get along well.
“Do you have any?”
Silence followed.
And then-
“Sorry. I was nodding my head.” Taehyung pressed his lips together. Whoever this Jeongguk person was, he was adorable. “And yes, I do! Back home. I miss Gureumie a lot. More than my brother probably.”
“I’m sure your brother would be glad to hear that.”
“Director-nim, please cut that out,” Jeongguk raised his voice and appealed.
Jeongguk’s voice. The more he spoke the more Taehyung was beginning to figure out whom it reminded him of.
“Are you interested in music, Jeongguk-ssi?” Taehyung questioned.
“Quite. I study it after all.”
Taehyung smiled, “How lovely.”
“Do you enjoy music?”
“I do! I used to play the saxophone but now my musical pursuits are limited to being an avid listener.”
“Sax, huh? That’s so cool. You should pick it up again sometime, maybe?” Jeongguk asked shyly, as if his advice would antagonise Taehyung.
“Oh no. I’ve lost touch completely. It was all a long time ago,” Taehyung responded genially.
“I see. But, don’t let go of music. It’s the most simple and obvious form of magic.”
Taehyung sighed, “I know,” because he really did know. Taehyung wanted to turn around and pat Jeongguk on the shoulder. This felt like an appropriate moment for that.
“Alright guys,” the director called attention to himself. “Looks like you two have quite a bit in common and could go on all day. I’d love to indulge you but... I can’t,” he said, sounding apologetic and amused at the same time. “So Jeongguk, do you think you’ve been able to deduce stuff about Taehyung?”
It was now time to lay bare the guesses Taehyung and Jeongguk had made about each other based on the clues they had gathered from their chitchat.
“Maybe,” Jeongguk replied, voice coloured with laughter. “But I could be horribly wrong.”
“Doesn’t matter. Let’s hear it,” the director encouraged him.
“Alright then,” Jeongguk said and took a deep breath.
Unwelcome butterflies were fluttering in Taehyung’s stomach again. Was Jeongguk rolling his shoulders in preparation? Would he be able to guess what Taehyung looked like? How much would he get correct?
“I think Taehyung-ssi is from Daegu...”
Correct! Taehyung wanted to cheer. He stuck to giving Hoseok a delighted smile.
“...And he’s forty years old? Around forty years old...”
What.
Oblivious to Taehyung’s struggle to keep himself from crying out with laughter Jeongguk was rambling, “At first, I thought he was way younger because he smells good-” Jeongguk abruptly stopped his sentence and Taehyung liked to imagine the man behind him was red in the face.
Jeongguk hurried to correct himself. “Oh god that sounds really weird, doesn’t it-?”
Taehyung interrupted, “Are you saying forty-year-olds can’t smell good.”
“Well, you’ve proved me wrong,” Jeongguk answered. “Maybe,” he added, in case Taehyung was not forty years old.
“Maybe” Taehyung smiled.
“And Taehyung-ssi works as a vet. He mentioned that Soonshimie is a dog that he looked after so...” Jeongguk trailed off, offering an unasked explanation to his third guess. Taehyung was surprised that Jeongguk remembered the dog’s name. He was a good person.
“From Daegu. Forty years old. Vet,” the director summed up Jeongguk’s statements. “Taehyung, you want to have a go now?”
“Okay.” Taehyung stuck a thumbs up in the vague direction of the director. "I’m going to tell you my assumptions about Jeongguk-ssi. But don’t laugh because they’re gonna sound a bit ridiculous.”
“I’m all ears.” Was Jeongguk smiling as wide as Taehyung was? Would Taehyung at least be as correct as Jeongguk was?
“So...” Taehyung dragged the word out.
Just thinking of his theory was embarrassing him. To actually say it and have people watch it was... how much would Jimin laugh at him after watching the video?
“There’s this Youtuber I follow. He’s a singer. A very gifted singer. I think he plays the guitar too? Maybe. I don’t know... And god, his voice is just angelic, it cleanses me. I want to hug his voice or something-”
A couple of quiet chuckles drew him out his reverent description of the voice that enthralled him.
“I’m blabbering, aren’t I?” Taehyung asked, strangely nervous about what a complete stranger would think about his admiration.
Jeongguk laughed. It was a good, open chuckle because Taehyung could feel the force of it through their chairs. “A bit, but I guess you have a point?” Jeongguk replied.
“I do!” Taehyung asserted. “Okay, so his name’s Nochu-”
“Nochu?”
Taehyung had long forgotten how strange the name sounded. He rushed to explain. “I mean, I think that’s just his username. I don’t think that’s actually his name. But we may never know. He’s-he’s secretive. I mean, his videos are super simple. Like, minimalist to a whole other level. All his videos just show a blank screen and he doesn’t speak, doesn’t introduce himself. Just sings what he wants to...” Taehyung shut his eyes to allow himself a moment as he pulled Nochu’s voice out of his memory and let it wash through his body.
“Er, uh, anyway, getting back to the point,” Taehyung coughed, embarrassed, when he realised how quiet the place had got while he was being dramatic for a small second.
“Yes. The point,” Jeongguk’s voice was inquisitive and encouraging.
“The point is, in my mind, your voice sounds like what Nochu’s talking voice would sound like. And I already have this image of what Nochu looks like. And I can’t stop applying that same description to you as well.”
“Ah. So you spend a lot of time thinking of this Nochu, huh?” Jeongguk’s voice was slightly teasing.
“Yeah. I guess,” Taehyung realised only as he said the words.
The director prodded Taehyung further, “So, what do you think Jeongguk is like then through your Nochu-coloured glasses?”
“Wow ‘Nochu-coloured glasses’. We're working with layers of assumptions now.” Taehyung smiled to himself at how much they were indulging his outlandish theory. “Based on the kind of songs Nochu sings, I’ve imagined Jeongguk to be young. Twenty, twenty-one years old. He’s probably wearing a plaid shirt, nice corduroys. And build? Slight.”
Taehyung had always pictured Nochu to be a willowy young man who looked soft and sweet with neatly combed hair and probably a pair of glasses perched on his nose. His imagination did justice to Nochu’s voice and the tender love songs he sang.
“So you’re going with twenty- twenty-one years old. Wearing plaid. Slight build?” the director asked Taehyung.
Taehyung curled his fingers into fist, squeezed and uncurled them. “Yep.” He said determinedly.
“Alright. Thank you, Jeongguk and Taehyung. Could you shut your eyes and stand up please so that my colleagues could rearrange the chairs?”
Taehyung readily obliged.
He felt a gentle arm move him a bit and the sound of chairs being scraped along the floor reached his years. “Keep your eyes shut, okay?” Hoseok’s voice hummed and he felt himself being steered around. “You can sit down now.”
Taehyung followed Hoseok’s words, heart beating tremulously as he awaited the next command.
“Okay guys, you can open your eyes now.”
Taehyung’s eyes eagerly flew open and he was met with the sight of a boy around his age slowly opening his eyes.
When Jeongguk’s eyes opened fully, the two took a few seconds taking each other in before laughter gurgled out of their mouths. The staff around joined them.
“You’re not forty,” Jeongguk said mock-accusingly after all the giggling had subsided.
“And you’re not slightly-built. What the hell man,” Taehyung accused back.
Jeongguk was far, very far from the slender man Taehyung had made him out to be. Muscles bunched in his upper arms even though they were relaxed by his side. The width of his upper body across which his grey t-shirt, not plaid shirt, stretched was not natural but obviously and carefully developed.
The rips in his dark-washed jeans, not corduroys, extended all the way till his thighs, exposing their firm and toned nature.
Jeongguk grinned, the heavy eyeliner disappearing momentarily as his eyes narrowed, and held his hands up. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Taehyung waved him off cordially. “Hey, you got Daegu right.”
“And you got my age correct. I’m twenty-one.” Jeongguk was still smiling, the snakebite piercings that dotted his lower lips winking away, and Taehyung liked that he could see all of Jeongguk’s expressions and his reactions instead of mulling over them in his head.
“You're younger than me," Teahyung grinned and then remembered something else. "Why did you think I was forty?”
“Your voice,” Jeongguk replied and dropped his own in an attempt to imitate Taehyung’s, “It’s so deep.”
Taehyung burst out laughing at his impersonation. “I’m not a vet either,” he informed. “So, two out of three for both of us?” Taehyung asked the director, hoping that the man would direct them to do something before the air turned awkward between him and Jeongguk because Jeongguk seemed sweet and fun and Taehyung wanted to see more of him after this was done.
“Yep, those are the stats,” the blond man nodded. “You ready for a little bit of a side interview, Taehyung? Jeongguk, you can go next.”
“Yeah, sure,” Taehyung said. Jeongguk was still looking at him as he got up, so Taehyung knew he had to act. “I’ll... um wait for you to finish and we can go get coffee or something after?” he asked the boy with jet black hair that fell over his pierced eyebrow and into his dark eyes.
Jeongguk brought up an arm to scratch the back of his neck and answered softly, “Yeah cool.”
~~~
“What did they ask you?” Jeongguk asked after taking a sip of his drink
“You know. Standard stuff. “Why do you think humans make assumptions?” “Is it a good thing?” That kind of stuff...” Taehyung replied, tilting his head this way and that, trying to match wherever Jeongguk’s gaze kept jumping around.
“Yeah, same,” Jeongguk murmured and sipped his drink slowly.
Taehyung scanned through his brain for a topic to talk about. He wanted to know Jeongguk more. And he wanted to know Jeongguk for a long time. There was something so vulnerable and charming about the boy. Surprisingly, it was Jeongguk who spoke again.
“Are you, umm, disappointed with how I turned out? Because you really like that Nochu guy and sort of held me at his level. But I, I am very,” he said, gesturing to himself a bit resignedly, “different.”
“Hey, no!” Taehyung jumped to defend Jeongguk from himself. “It was wrong of me to compare you like that to another person. I’m sorry I didn’t allow you your own being. Nochu can be however he is. You’re you and I like how you are.”
“You do?” Jeongguk asked, eyes briefly meeting Taehyung’s before they scurried away again.
“Yup!” Taehyung responded at once, eyeing the tattoos that crawled up Jeongguk’s forearms and neck. Getting to know Jeongguk had truly exposed to Taehyung the different layers at which assumptions operated. Not only was he not the picture of Nochu, but he was also not what pierced and tattooed people were like. Then that made Taehyung think what were pierced and tattooed people like? Where did these generalisations begin? How had they crept up on him?
“But you... don’t?” Taehyung ventured to ask when Jeongguk ducked his head down.
“Huh?”
“Don’t like how you are?”
Jeongguk’s head snapped up. “Oh no. I like how I am. I do. I’m not sure a lot of people would though.”
Taehyung cocked his head inquiringly.
“How I am,” Jeongguk said, once again signalling towards himself, “body art and all, I like how I look with my tattoos and piercings. I think I look good like this-”
“You do!”
“-Th-Thanks,” Jeongguk stuttered, cheeks growing rosy. Taehyung smiled at that.
Jeongguk swallowed and continued, “But a lot of people don’t like how I look. Which is okay. But they don’t make an effort to see beyond that. I’m tired of that I guess.”
“Jeongguk, I’m gonna be honest with you, alright?” Taehyung started, collecting his thoughts and framing them out into sentences in his head. “If I’d come across you before today, I wouldn’t have come up and spoken to you. Not because I’d associate you with negative stuff but simply because I had never stopped to think of why I wouldn’t come up and talk to you. And that is my problem. I would have missed out on meeting a super polite and cute person who shares so many interests with me.”
Jeongguk’s eyes were finally steadily resting on his face.
“Today was a learning experience for me. But not everyone has that. What I’m trying to say is... stop withholding yourself, Jeongguk. If people can’t see beyond your gorgeous tattoos, it’s them who are missing out, and not you. But don’t... don’t censor yourself for them, okay?”
“I... wow?” Jeongguk’s right hand tugged at one of his earrings. “Thank you. I mean, I know this. But it’s always nicer when someone else tells you this than when you’re telling yourself this.”
Taehyung smiled at him, wide and joyful. “So, may I get to know you more, Jeongguk-ah?”
“Yeah, hyung” Jeongguk breathed a sigh. “Over dinner?” Hopeful. Bashful.
Taehyung nodded, smile still plastered on his lips. “Saturday’s good?”
“Saturday’s good.”
~~~
Taehyung’s phone beeped. He rolled off the couch and crawled towards the coffee table expecting Jeongguk to have finally replied to a meme he had sent two hours ago. Texting Jeongguk made him feel all sorts of giddy and silly. Saturday could not come soon enough.
It was not a text from Jeongguk. On the bright side, however, Nochu had uploaded a new video. Taehyung clicked on it immediately, smiling when the familiar black screen greeted him.
Nochu had selected an English song this time. Taehyung knew this one, Tori Kelly’s Paper Hearts was a personal favourite. He sang along but softly, making sure not to sing over Nochu’s heavenly voice. How could a person pour so much emotion into their voice? How?
Nochu’s covers only seemed to get better, a feat Taehyung considered impossible every time he heard the latest song the artist put up. He was smitten from day one.
The song wrapped up a little after three minutes but when Taehyung made to exit he saw that the video still had a minute left. Intensely curious, Taehyung stayed on as seconds passed by with only a blank screen displayed, wondering what kind of a Marvel-esque stunt Nochu was pulling.
Taehyung’s pondering came a complete and stunned halt when the black faded away to reveal a boy smiling at the camera in all his pierced and tattooed glory, but his slightly large incisors making him look younger than his twenty-one-year old self.
Jeongguk took a deep breath and waved shyly with one hand, his other hand fiddling with his earrings out of habit. “Hi guys, my name is Jeon Jeongguk and I wanted to personally thank all of you for supporting my channel. A hundred thousand subscribers is a big deal for someone like me who is, well, not the most forthcoming person.”
It was as if he suddenly became conscious of where his hand had strayed off to and forced it away from his ear before continuing. “Someone thoughtful and kind I met recently through a wonderful event asked me to stop censoring myself and to consider giving others an opportunity to think and rise above assumptions. And I think I’m gonna start doing that now. I hope all of you continue to encourage me and my channel for a quite a bit.”
Taehyung brought a hand up to wipe away the tears that were treacherously swimming down his cheeks. Everything about this made him indescribably happy- someone actually considering his words worthwhile, Jeongguk willing to lower his walls in more ways than one and OH MY GOD Jeongguk was Nochu!
On screen, Jeongguk was still smiling. “Tae hyung, thank you for telling me that I don’t have to be invisible if I don’t want to. I can’t wait for Saturday.” He gave cute little bow and disappeared into the characteristic blackness with a “Nochu out.”
~~~
And Taehyung replayed the last minute of Nochu’s video all the way till he met Jeongguk on Saturday when he kissed him deep and slow under the stars.