hotel_omelas | An autumn post office presence

Kim Seokjin lives so much of his life carefully. Everything is bound up in what's proper, in invisible rules that he follows just in case something he does makes it back to his father. None of those careful, unspoken rules dictate what he should do about going into a music store except, probably, that he shouldn't be spending 68,000 won on an acoustic guitar.

He sends a post about how he's about to make a terrible decision and something about Namjoon's dread encourages him. Maybe because he still remembers their talk about living by made up rules that make no sense. No one is going to care if he buys a guitar. It's not like learning an instrument will bring shame on his family. Why can't he try it?

What he decides on isn't particularly extravagant. It's a handsome guitar made of blonde wood, advertised as a 'starter' guitar. It comes in a simple case and he grabs a few instruction books too. There's no point in making a stupid impulse buy if he can't even figure out how to play it.

Rather than go straight home, Seokjin takes his new guitar and goes to the empty classroom instead. The abandoned piano sits in the middle of the room and Seokjin sits on the bench, propping the instruction book on the piano's sheet music ledge.

On impulse, he takes a quick selca and posts it, telling his friends where he'll be. After all, Yoongi did promise music lessons...

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It's dark out already when Seokjin tweets about his new purchase, but Yoongi's tired of homework and he knows his father won't peek in before his 10:00 P.M. bedtime anyway. He might as well sneak out and head over to the classroom, see what Seokjin's getting up to.

Being at school at night is strange, but it's not the first time they've done something like this. It's easy enough to make his way across campus to the abandoned music classroom they've made their home base, knocking quietly to let Jin know he's here before he steps inside.

"Hey," he says. It was only wishful thinking that made him think it would be any less cold once he was inside, and he pulls his jacket a little tighter around himself.

"Hey," Seokjin says. Even in the poor light of the classroom, he can see Yoongi tense with cold and Seokjin throws over his coat. He's plenty warm in his hoodie and, thanks to his stupidly broad shoulders, the coat will fit easily over Yoongi's. "I've learned, hm, three notes so far?"

It's not quite true, but he's still very much stuck in the fundamentals, repeating them again and again until he thinks he knows them. It's not glamorous, not yet coming together into anything like music, but it's a start.

Catching the coat, Yoongi nearly stumbles, laughing a little, and slinging it around his shoulders. He crosses the room, taking a seat at the piano bench. "An auspicious start," he teases. It is a start, whatever little Jin has figured out with the help of the books he has in front of him. Whether Jin will stick with this or not, Yoongi couldn't possibly say, but at least he's having fun now.

He plays a few random notes on the piano, then pulls the coat on properly. "What have you got? Play it for me."

"It's barely a start," Seokjin says, huffing his dismissal. "And I haven't got anything besides a basic scale. Not exactly progress." Learning the notes, getting his stupid, uncooperative fingers to get in the correct formation? That doesn't count yet as playing. Right now he feels as if he's just making noise.

"It's progress," Yoongi says. "You couldn't do even that this morning. You have to start somewhere." It's not like he was born some kind of infant piano prodigy. It took years of work for him to get where he is, and he's still working, perhaps more than he should. It's not like he's going to go to school for music or anything impractical like that. He should be studying more and playing less, but he's pretty sure, if he did that, he'd pretty much just die.

"You and Jungkook make learning music look so easy," he says, even though he knows that both of them supplement all their talent with even more hard work. It doesn't change the way he envies the skill they've acquired when he's barely working out the basics.

"Well, this string here is the E string, but you can get more notes out of it than just E," he says, strumming it once without any touch and then pressing down on different places on the frets to change the tone.

They work like crazy to make it look easy, Yoongi wants to point out. He's proud that they manage that, though, that all their hours of effort have paid off.

Then again, the effort alone would be worth it, the hours spent together.

He tells his brain to shut up and takes a seat on top of a desk near Seokjin, listening to him play the notes. "That's not bad," he says. "I mean, I don't know how to play the guitar, but it sounds like actual notes."

And Seokjin knows how hard they actually work, how much effort goes into the appearance of ease, but it doesn't change the way he longs to have some kind of skill like his friends have. He wishes he didn't have to learn but just know things right away.

"It's not bad," he supposes. "But it's not anything else yet. I couldn't play music with only three notes."

"So keep working," Yoongi says. "Learn more. Just... not all tonight." He can imagine, once something gets inside Seokjin's head and sticks, how he might play around with his guitar until his fingers are aching and he can't anymore. It's better not to push that far, though, better if he lets his hands gradually adjust to the process. He'll get it eventually, though, if he keeps trying.

"So why the guitar?"

"Because women love a guitarist," Seokjin deadpans. As if his affections are even a little bit focused in that direction right now.

He shrugs and ponders the real answer because he's not completely sure himself. Piano is Yoongi and Jungkook's thing. Dance belongs to Hoseok and Jimin and, besides that, Seokjin is terrible at it. But guitar is something that can be his, if he doesn't screw it up.

"I want to be able to share the things you and the others do. Music. Talent."

An autumn post office presence

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