hotel_omelas | An autumn post office presence

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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.

When Jungkook spots the picture of Seokjin on the feed, cradling a guitar gently in his arms with a gentle expression on his face, he brightens immediately and reaches for the nearest coat in the closet. Chances are that his parents won't be too happy with Jungkook disappearing for the one day of the week that he's supposed to be at home, the one day that they're able to spend time as a family, but to see Seokjin indulge in something for himself is a rare and precious opportunity.

Jungkook doesn't want to miss it.

He slows down as he approaches the school campus, already knowing the paths to take to avoid most of the surveillance from CCTV, not that he thinks the school administration bothers to check. He has a backpack slung over his shoulder, just in case it's needed for optics, filled with a few of the easier music scores he has on hand. It won't translate completely to guitar, but it might be enough to start.

Tapping gently on the door, Jungkook pushes it open just enough to slip inside, cheeks pink from the run and the wintry cold. "Hyung! You really bought one!"

"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."

"I really bought one, like an idiot," he says. Even though he insults himself, Seokjin can't help a wide grin as he leans back so that Jungkook can get a better look at the guitar. He's barely made any progress yet and it annoys him even though he knows he's not being realistic. This is the first time he's ever held one of these things and he hasn't read any kind of music in years.

"I can't serenade you yet, but I'll get there. Unless you want to be serenaded to the C major chord over and over."

This is just the beginning, he reminds himself. He'll get better at this. He'll never be a natural like Yoongi and Jungkook, Hoseok and Jimin, but he can try.

"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.

"Ooh, it looks good. It looks so good in your arms, hyung," Jungkook marvels, slipping into a seat right next to Seokjin on the bench. Even though he wouldn't trade the piano for the world, there's still a part of Jungkook that admires other musical instruments, particularly strings, for the way that they require the skill in landing the note. A pianist can always tap something out with a well tuned piano. Guitars are something else.

"Most songs these days use four different chords anyway, so you're like, a quarter of the way there," he adds brightly, hands tightly clamped around the edge of the piano bench. "Ah, show me anyway, a C chord is still a C chord! I can't play anything on the guitar, so you're infinitely better than me."

"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.

Seokjin laughs good-naturedly at that. "Everything looks good in my arms, you know that," he teases. "Right now it looks better than I sound." Obligingly, he picks out and strums the C chord and then picks out a few of the individual notes that he's learned on the thinner, higher strings. "It's a start."

He just wishes he were further along. Then he'd have something to contribute to their creativity besides moral support and snacks. "I'm probably going to want to give up at least ten times," he says with an exaggerated sigh.

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."

"Ah, I don't know. When Jin hyung hugs me, I feel like I grow uglier by comparison with every passing second," Jungkook admits, pulling a face. There's some truth to the tease — there's no denying that Seokjin has one of those classically handsome faces, though Jungkook isn't sure how much Jin truly enjoys receiving such compliments.

His reactions always feel strangely self-effacing, just underneath the surface.

So instead of focusing too much on the topic, Jungkook lets himself sway on the piano bench in time with Seokjin's strumming, humming a melody under his breath to fill in the gaps. "Oh, hyung, you already picked all of that out on your own? Daebak," Jungkook remarks, genuinely impressed. "I'll just have to start grilling you so that you don't give up."

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."

"Aish, you do not," Seokjin says, putting on a tone like he really means to scold his friends. "You know you're adorable. You use it to your advantage all the time, especially when the last serving of something is unclaimed." And where cuteness doesn't work, rock-paper-scissors seems to work eerily well in Jungkook's favor.

"A very small jackpot." He can't help smiling, enjoying Jungkook's little bit of praise, even if it hardly feels earned. "Annoy me tomorrow and we'll see if I haven't gotten a little better."

"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?"

"You'll get better," Jungkook says with confidence, reaching around to massage Seokjin's opposite shoulder. Sometimes he senses that, out of the entire group, Jin hyung has the greatest doubts about his own talents and value. It makes Jungkook ache to be unable to turn that metaphorical mirror for Seokjin, to show his hyung all of the unique qualities he has that make the rest of them revolve around him like the sun.

But realizations like that, he's found, can't be forced.

"Just remember, you're listening to yourself constantly. You probably won't even notice when you're getting better, most of the time," Jungkook points out, pulling out his phone. "We should take videos. That way you can look back and see how far you've come."

"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."

Seokjin leans into it, only now realizing how stiffly he's been holding himself. He forces his shoulder to relax down and lets out a sigh at the stretch. It's going to take so long to cultivate anything worthwhile, getting his hands used to the process when they're already so naturally uncooperative.

"I was thinking of getting a video camera," he admits. "But I wanted to use it to record you and Yoongi at the piano or Hoseok and Jimin's performances. You can record me and tell me how bad I sound so that we can laugh when I get better." It's a strange form of optimism but it still feels a little more hopeful than outright self-deprecation.

"Heol," Jungkook remarks, blinking at the idea of a video camera. It's a great idea, though not one that Jungkook has ever personally considered before, not having enough spare pocket money to buy any camcorder of the quality he would prefer to have. Photography, cinematography — all of these forms are adjacent to the art that Jungkook loves most, composition bearing similarities across paper and film.

Capturing perfect moments and committing them to permanence.

"You should definitely get a camera! Not just for filming performances, but for the times we all spend together, too. Namjoonie hyung and I were talking about trying to wrangle all of us together for a trip sometime. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to film it? We can film while you're driving the truck."

Seokjin grins. "Yeah, he mentioned it to me too." There's always been an undercurrent to everything they say, to all of their daydreams. Every single one of them has so much he wants to escape that it's become the ultimate fantasy to pile into the car and go somewhere that none of it can touch them. Seokjin wants to drive away from his father's gaze, from his guilt and failings. He wants to go somewhere that he can just be a young man who loves his friends and plays guitar.

"Maybe somewhere warm, like a beach." Not that there's any beach anywhere in the country that's going to feel very warm this time of year, but if they're only dreaming, why not dream up the impossible?

"We'll make a movie about us, our lives, it'll be perfect."

"Ah, hyung! I love the water," Jungkook pipes up, brightening at the mere mention. He's always had a bias for the ocean, for the endless expanse of blue that he's seen in films, in photographs. It's been years since he's spent any meaningful amount of time at the beach, something he laments, considering the close proximity of the shores.

For some reason, he never gets much further than the Han River. Maybe it's a lack of time.

Maybe it's for the want of company.

"The beach sounds perfect. And yeah, a movie about us, that sounds great," Jungkook murmurs, tone slightly wistful. The thing about capturing memories, he thinks, is always the hidden implication — that such days won't last forever.

Jungkook goes from thoughtful and introspective to delighted in the space of a moment and Seokjin's reminded that he really is the youngest of them. Jungkook is so mature that it's easy to forget a lot of the time. It's why he fits in with them. Seokjin, on the other end of the spectrum, makes a point of being immature whenever possible.

"I've never had friends like you guys. A trip like that with the six of you would be perfect." And no matter what else happens, they'll always have those memories. Seokjin prays they don't drift apart but he knows it could happen. In a perverse way, that gives him hope. He's never feared it so much with other friends and now he feels like this is worth trying to keep.

There are times when Seokjin suddenly looks thoughtful in the midst of a close conversation - when his gaze turns elsewhere, not necessarily distant, but still somewhere Jungkook can't really turn his own attention. In this moment, Jungkook isn't sure what's caused it, but the sentiment that Seokjin shares isn't new. He's mentioned before that the six of his dongsaengs are the best friends he's ever known, and while Jungkook feels similarly about his hyungs, it feels different, coming from Seokjin.

For Jungkook, the idea of coming into these new, uncharted friendships is understandable given his age; in some ways, he feels like he's grown up with the other boys. But Seokjin is so kind, giving, that it's so hard to imagine that people haven't been flocking to him for all his life.

"Then let's go," Jungkook insists, one foot gently bouncing against the ground. "I'm sure that if we plan more, Namjoonie hyung and Taehyungie hyung can plan to have the days off. I know Namjoonie hyung really wants to go. Somewhere that doesn't feel so crowded like it is here in Seoul."

"Everywhere is too crowded for Namjoon," Seokjin says, not cruelly. He thinks it's because Namjoon has so much inside of him, so many thoughts and hopes and possibilities, that it's almost too much to put into one person. Take a person who's that stuffed full of potential and put him in a crowded place like Seoul and he feels like he might explode. It's how Seokjin feels lots of times and he's not any kind of match to Namjoon for intellect.

He closes his eyes for a second and imagines it. Somehow, they've found an empty beach and all they can hear are waves and seagulls and their own laughter. They're all safe and far away.

"We'll make it happen."

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An autumn post office presence

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