Hello, my darlings~

I've come with an update yayyy clap clap clappp!

School just started again for me and I have pretty much two honors and an AP course ahahhah....I'll try to update and write when I can, dw. Thank you all so much for reading this story and patiently waiting for the chapters. I hope this one won't disappoint you! 

Please vote and comment so I can have your feedback💜💜💜

-the chapter begins-

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In the music room of an ordinary high school, hammers tapped away relentlessly at metal strings. Thin and thick metal strings, lined up in neat order with a set of white and black to conceal them.

...Conceal them? No, embolden them? Empower them?

No one really knows for sure.

Now, why is it that the piano is black and white? Why, of all colors, does a piano have only those two? To match with the scores? To have a bright contrast against each other?

There has to be a reason, correct?

...Perhaps.

Perhaps, the instrument dressed in monochrome was made to look like a judge—there's a reason why pianos have hammers akin to a judge's gavel.

Perhaps music has the same power as the judicial branch.

Now, now, I hear your incredulous remarks. Shouts of dissonance on how they're nothing alike.

But think about it.

Are you really sure what you're thinking of isn't just sound? Notes, articulation, dynamics, different instruments, when the mist settles down, they're all just sound.

It can't exactly be called music.

Real music, on the other hand...Real music transcends paper, ink, bow movement, finger pressure, and whether their hands are suited better for Ravel or Tchaikovsky. When a musician plays real music, you don't see a person playing trumpet or a figure strumming guitar.

You see stories.

You see emotions.

You see love, anguish, sorrow, graduation day, cemeteries adorned with flowers, someone's first day living, someone's last day living, a kiss, a wound, a heart. You see all of these stories woven into the pieces or songs someone plays.

You see two people in the music room, laughing.

The window was open, its curtains drawn. Seokjin's head was tilted back in mid-laughter, fingers resting in the piano. Next to him, there's a girl with short hair, laughing alongside him, hands in her lap.

"YAH! How dare you say Mozart's better than Beethoven!"

Chaerin shook from laughter, "I can't help it! Beethoven looked so angry! And can you blame me?! Beethoven wasn't a cat-boy!"

She was right. Beethoven was too serious to be a cat boy.

"Alright, Chaerin, next time I'll play twinkle twinkle little star for you the entire time since you like Mozart so much!"

"Oh, please do! The fifth variation is my favorite—"

She paused.

Time hiccuped as Chaerin replayed what Seokjin said. A quick glance in the boy's direction told you he'd been waiting to use her first name for a long time now. Whether it was the day they met, or just an hour ago, she couldn't tell.

The laughter from earlier became a mirage—a ghost of the past. Chaerin was afraid she would be trapped in the sandy desert of silence forever.

Then, silently, Seokjin's fingers began moving again.

-please play the video at the top-

It was Mozart's twelve variations of "Ah! vous dirai-je, maman."

The theme of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

It was only a simple children's song—the very first song they knew, for some. It was a song of innocence—a song of dreams.

A song of galaxies, a song of twinkling, scintillating flashes of light.

But when Kim Seokjin guided the black and white keys, those galaxies erupted into a supernova. The tiny pinpricks in the sky known as stars glided across the sky as if they were dancing the night away.

The stars were no longer twinkling.

They were shining, they were burning.

"How?" Chaerin asked, mesmerized at the sight, "How is it that your playing is so colorful? Yet the piano keys are black and white, and you can only see in black and white?"

Seokjin replied without skipping a single note, "Elementary, my dear Chaerin. What color do you get when you mix every color together?"

"It's black, isn't it?"

Seokjin directed his eyes star-ward, "Yes...but I don't think enough people realize there are also colors in the form of light. LED screens, rainbows, etc. When that's mixed together, you get white."

"So, really," he flashed a smile, "I'm not colorblind at all. My eyes just mix every color together."

Seokjin paused his playing just as the seventh variation started and headed toward the window.

"That means ordinary, white sunlight," he opened the curtains, letting the sunshine through, "contains all seven colors of the rainbow."

Seokjin stood in front of the newly opened window, donning a smile brighter than the background.

"The world really is colorful, isn't it?"

And when those words left him, Chaerin felt like a child again. Memories of melted ice creams and bandages resurfaced, bringing along bouts of nostalgia with them.

A little girl with pigtails, refusing to go into a fine arts museum.

A little boy marveling at all the colors.

And him telling her about this exact topic all those years back.

But like a dream, the sudden memory burrowed into the ground again, escaping Chaerin's grasp just when she was about to connect the dots and query Seokjin on whether he really was the little boy she met all the one years ago.

Instead, she looked at him in the eyes and uttered one word.

A name.

"...Seokjin."

She felt a surge of electricity as his name was spoken.

"Chaerin," he replied.

"...Can I call you that, Seokjin?"

A hazy smile settled onto his face, like fresh snow on pavement, dusting grey concrete in white.

"Call me whatever you want."

"Whatever I want?"

He hesitated, afraid of what she had in mind, "Yes...whatever you want...?"

Chaerin's lips pulled back to reveal a grin of comedic malice.

"Seokjinnie...!"

"Aish, you sound like my aunt."

"Suckjin!"

"Absolutely not."

The next five minutes consisted of Chaerin spewing an abundance of potential nicknames, often ludicrous. But with each name, more sparkles appeared in their eyes, Seokjin's smile widened, gleeful laughs occasionally eliciting from his rose petal lips.

The piano in the corner watches quietly and tucks its hammers away, seemingly satisfied at the sight before it.

Tell me.

How many stories has a judge seen? How many divorces, how many restraining orders, and how many murderers does a judge see in his entire lifetime?

And now tell me.

How many proposals, children destined to become famed musicians tentatively plucking out their first keys, lovers, family, and moments where one's passion for music is rekindled does a piano at the mall witness?

Ah, I hear your clamors now. I said they were the same, yet provide examples that indicate the exact opposite.

A gavel in the judge's hand breaks things apart.

A piano brings things together.

One is yin, one is yang.

But please, reconsider the perspectives for just a moment.

A family can sleep soundly once the judge puts down the hammer. The unhappy couple can now start fresh. And I don't really need to say anything for the murderers, do I?

As for the piano, a psychopath stalks someone after hearing them play the piano, a man falls head over heels with a woman just with her playing and throws his ring away. Someone slams the lid of the piano onto another.

Music, although just vibrations in the air, just mere ink on paper, can unite and destroy.

Just like a judge with the deafening sound of her hammer. A piano bellows out a forte at the same time a judge sings out the final decision.

Outside from the window, a speculator's face contorts into an indiscernible expression.

Kim Namjoon didn't know what to feel after realizing this. Perhaps longing, perhaps sorrow, and perhaps a little mix of both.

And maybe a little bit of anger as well.

The stack of law books in his arms felt heavier by the moment.

He looked at the cover of one, scrutinizing the bland words on the blue-grey cover. He flipped to a random page, the book drowning his eyes in a sea of black and white words. Monochrome nonsense of human justice, what's right, what's wrong, all judged by incredibly flawed humans wearing masks of feigned perfection.

He closed the book.

And then he wondered, what would it be like to hold a page of Mozart's requiem instead? Chopin's Nocturne? To be drowned in music rather than the deafening sound of hammers and objections. To have the music lift you to the sky, starward.

No, NO!

Namjoon shook his head, ridding his mind of those thoughts. He returned his gaze to his books and admired them with fondness, albeit, with force.

This was what I've wanted to do all along, he told himself, this is my dream, not skipping class in the music room playing nursery rhymes.

Namjoon tilted his head, closed his eyes, and breathed in.

He turned to leave once his breathing calmed, but a part of him lingered its gaze on the door to the music room.

"Stop!" It screamed at him.

Perhaps it was his pinky, the only finger on his right hand not gripping the law book. Perhaps it was his mind, still finding ways to undermine Seokjin and Chaerin's laughter.

But, to everyone, except for Kim Namjoon, it was obvious the owner of that pleading was his heart.

And the only thing it screamed to him, begging him to take a closer look at their smiles and their happiness, was a single sentence.

"Look at how happy they are!"

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A/n - btw y'all all my stories will try to have a deeper moral or something that relates to society or the reader keke I think you guys have already guessed this, but this story's goal is to have people see the world with more color. Too many people see the world as dull and terrible so I want to change that (especially on here-). 

Once again thank you all for reading and make sure to drink water~