Chapter Text
Namjoon woke up to the sounds of the rain that morning and he realized it was once again Monday, a day which every normal person would look forward to starting the week with, except that he was not one of them. He hated every day of the week, but Monday was a special case because it signaled the start of another dreadful and repugnant week.
It was only 5.30 am, which meant that he had the luxury to have another hour to sleep peacefully but whenever he tried to close his eyes, the rain would wake him up. Frustrated, Namjoon slid off the bed, brought along the comforter and moved closer to the window to see what was happening outside. Something akin to fascination and interest always arose within him whenever he had the opportunity to observe the rain. Droplets of water kept on showering down from the charcoal gray space above, drenching every dry thing with vice-like wetness. The water rammed relentlessly against the window’s glass, threatening to break the frail material that was separating Namjoon’s room with the world outside.
To Namjoon’s surprise, it didn’t take much time for him to get drowsy after watching the rain; too lazy to move back to the bed, he lay down on the wooden floor, wrapped the comforter around his body and drifted off to sleep.
-0-
By the time Namjoon woke up, finished his breakfast and left the house, the downpour had stopped and somehow, he wanted it to last a little bit longer. The unusually intense rain evoked an indescribable feeling within him that was heartening in an odd way, but his mood quickly settled down when he remembered that he was back to school because it was Monday.
His dislike for schools hadn’t always been there and was only surfacing at the beginning of his high-school year. It was cliché for Namjoon to think that he could finally blend in with the crowd and find his safe haven in his mess of a life. He was trying to be positive, to look forward to his first high-school class with nothing but joy and excitement; he had prepared everything methodically and had practiced greeting and conversing like a normal person with Jin and Hoseok, both of whom were the closest people to him ever since his family’s breakdown and he couldn’t imagine a single moment without them. They had looked at Namjoon proudly when he was able to finish the introduction about himself that all students had to make at the class’s first meeting.
In the end, everything he did earned nothing in return. No one paid attention to him when it was his turn to speak, prompting his internal anxiety and nervousness to surge up at an alarming rate, and Namjoon stuttered. That was when the entire class went silent and one of the students in the top row asked him to repeat what he was saying; Namjoon instinctively had a gut feeling that nothing good was going to come of him having an egg on his face at that moment. Lady Luck was on his side this time as the teacher interrupted to announce that his time was up and it was another student’s turn to speak, sparing him from the impending torment he was about to experience for now.
After that tiny little accident, his classmates were (one way or another) more wary of him and Namjoon could feel their gazes following every step he took, waiting for that one moment when he messed up. It was uncomfortable and on some occasions downright creepy, but he was determined to change whatever other people thought of him with a plan, which turned out to be a failure.
Attempt number one was terrible with him trying to be friendly and strike up a conversation with the girl sitting near him with something he thought was trending only to be given a curt reply “I don’t talk to freaks”, which he thought was a joke at first until she winced at his second attempt with “Eww. Go away. Nobody wants you here.” Attempt number two was another epic fail as Namjoon tried to top the tests’ scores in hope of gaining some recognition from the teachers, which failed miserably because almost everyone in Namjoon’s class except him cheated and they all got the same scores as him in the end. Attempt number three was him deciding to let being ‘different’ a go and share what he thought about a certain topic during one of the philosophy lessons with his classmates. He should have known better to not even try because they were constantly interrupting him and snickering at his English’s pronunciation. What made the whole ordeal worse was the fact that the teacher asked Namjoon to switch places with her because she felt that he should have the right to lecture the class with his 148 IQ brain, and he was able to sense the mocking tone of her voice when she started speaking.
There was no attempt number four, number five and so on after the event of Namjoon standing up for another classmate who was also being bullied; the poor guy’s table was scrawled with various insults and offends about his gender, how an animal like him should never have existed in the first place while his backpack was being tossed around and its belongings were scattered across the floor. It was the last straw when the guy came back from the toilet and wasn’t allowed in because he said that he was gay, or because he didn’t shy away from expressing himself at the class’s first meeting. ‘Oh fuck it.’ Namjoon thought and pushed through the crowd to reach for the guy’s backpack and its contents and pieced them back together. He didn’t care about what his classmates thought of him anymore, he didn’t need the validation from those who thought of themselves as superior to others and he knew that by doing this, he was going to become their new target. Later on in one of the biology lesson, when the teacher asked if anyone wanted to say something, Namjoon stood up and said, “There is no reason to condemn people with different sexual orientation because they’re still human at the end of the day.”
He knew that a civil war going to start when he left school that day. However, it began much sooner than he had anticipated with the hundreds of spams on his Facebook homepage about his little declaration earlier. Namjoon didn’t bother to read any of them and created another account. He lazily sent a text to Jin and Hoseok to inform them of the change and they both made a zipping mouth motion.
Ever since that Monday, Namjoon’s social life was overturned and he always found himself wondering whether his spontaneous decision was for the better or worse at the end of a school day. He had always believed in his principles as a person and from what his parents had passed down that the right thing should always be done no matter how hard it might seem. He was repulsed by the fact that he was regretting being a decent human being and he knew that his classmates’ words were affecting him. Never before had his self-confidence lowered when he heard his name being mentioned at every single nook and cranny of the class, when his home’s mailbox was stuffed full of hate letters and when he was always being alienated from a class’s project. Namjoon’s parents were away on a business trip and he didn’t want to stir up any trouble, so he only had Hoseok, Jin and his Ryan plushies for comfort whenever he wanted to cry.
Both Jin and Hoseok knew about how mortifying school had been for him and they had always tried their best to cheer him up whenever they got together. Namjoon had wished to be in the same school as theirs after the incident, but some things just couldn’t be changed no matter how much he yearned for them to. Namjoon would often ask Hoseok out of the blue whether it was wrong to be a decent human being, whether he should accept what they say about him and whether Jin and Hoseok thought the same thing about him. And Hoseok would always start crying and pull Namjoon as close to him as possible to tell him he loved him, Jin loved him, many people loved him for who he was and he didn’t have to care about whatever shit those thoughtless dicks spewed.
Hoseok would be so gravelly fearful of what could happen to Namjoon if he wasn’t there at the right time that he firmly decided to tarry at his place for an entire week to make sure he was only joking, with Jin joining despite having to go through the extra trouble of getting up earlier than usual to catch the bus to their school. They had miraculously convinced their parents and he still had no idea how they managed to pull it off.
-0-
Namjoon smiled at the fact that his thoughts had strayed off the mark for the umpteenth time that day and he had somehow got to the bus stop without being run over by a car at the road crossings, which considering his currently jumbled state of mind, was a miracle. He took out his phone, plugged in his earbuds and opened his playlist of self-deprecating music he had come across while surfing the Net. Happy and funky songs weren’t his forte despite Hoseok always choosing to play the latest hits in an effort to make Namjoon’s tastes in music less condescending. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, some of the tracks ended up growing on him and whenever Hoseok overheard Namjoon humming to one of them, he would laugh victoriously with an “In your face!” expression.
It was difficult to force himself to ‘enjoy’ what was playing when he recognized a couple of his classmates huddling nearby rudely staring at him and bursting into laughter every 0.5 seconds. Namjoon could almost hear every single word of their conversation without taking off his earbuds, and his 148 IQ brain could instantly envision everything from their high-pitched and annoying voices, their hysterical blabbering to their over-exaggerated imitations of what he was doing. The scene would have almost been funny had it not been for the alarming speed it took his self-esteem to thaw into a walnut-sized water puddle and his self-consciousness to culminate into a budding blossom. No matter how much Namjoon sought to acclimatize his heart, the spitefulness and the hostility never failed to penetrate the poorly constructed wall that was meant to shelter his already fragile heart, drilling a larger aperture inside it than the last.
After what seemed like eternity, the bus came. The brightly colored yellow was probably not having the effect the producers expected during the painting process and a manifold of nauseating waves racked through Namjoon’s body at the sight of it. He raised both of his hands to cover his mouth just in time and arduously swallowed down his breakfast, which had obviously been disintegrated into a mucus-like substance and was threatening to surge up into a tsunami. His body tensed up and Namjoon knew that he was going to vomit one way or another in public at a bus stop in front of a bunch of strangers and his so-called classmates. He was bracing himself for the worse only to feel someone grasp his wrist tightly and drag him away; before he could do anything in disagreement, that same person snuck his backpack away from his grasp and told him to relax and just let it all out with the deepest voice he’d ever heard.
Either Namjoon was desperate, or he simply didn’t give a fuck about what would happen next, because, for the first time in his 18 years of life, he went with the flow, let himself be assuaged by a stranger’s comforting voice and threw up.
-0-
Lady Luck was on his side as the stranger had taken him to a public toilet not so far away from the bus stop, which meant that Namjoon’s vomiting had happened at an appropriate place (for the purpose of that action) and he had fortunately not embarrassed himself in public. He flailed his hands around aimlessly to reach for something to wipe his face with and yelped when something soft was placed in his hand by that same person. The material was somehow familiar to him and Namjoon instantly recognized it was a handkerchief.
He reluctantly used it and made a mental note to wash it clean before returning the accessory to its rightful owner. Namjoon stepped out of the toilet and flinched upon seeing Kim Taehyung sitting casually on one of the nearby benches; he put two and two together and Namjoon sighed as he realized Taehyung was indeed Mr.Stranger.
Or to put it bluntly, the most popular guy at school who every girl (and guy) wanted to lay their hands on had helped the notorious social outcast, breaching the school’s social protocol for the first time in human history. Hooray.
Namjoon had no idea what was to come of his life after the events of that fateful Monday.