Silent Voice | Taehyung ✓

2 » monochrome

❝ We live in a world in which judgement is more important than getting to know that person. ❞

━ ANON.

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flashbacks | primary school

KWON CHAERIN.

Boring.

That six lettered word was the best to describe my whole childhood. Everyday was only a repetition of: sleep, bathe, eat, study, doing the same cycle all over again and again.

Our parents would always tell us to be selfish, to only think about ourselves, to live a sophisticated lifestyle in order to pursue success, hence why our generation was pretty screwed. They crafted us to be basic cowards, and I was included in that category, too.

Socializing wasn't in our menu. Well, we did socialize but it wasn't to gain more mutuals; it's to show-off whose parents were wealthier. And there's also several classifications in our circle. If your parents were the wealthy ones, then you would also have more advantages in the classroom. Average ones would be in the neutral team and not bothered. Lastly, the ones who have economic problems, they became the outcast of the school, the rubbish, the wallflower.

If only I could freely express myself and did not have to behave properly on behalf of my parents, I honestly wouldn't befriend with any of them nor bother to plaster a fake smile, because my so called friends here were the human form of fake flowers. I knew it, but couldn't do anything about it either. I had to put up a facade and go with it. I was scared to be an outcast, and my parents would probably disown me if I ever joined that group. Putting the parents business aside, I did not want to be bullied nor mocked either, that's why for some people like me, we decided to just go with the flow.

No one — or at least me — liked going to school, it was something we were forced to do by our parents, not something we genuinely wanted. And it was impossible to find a way to enjoy school as well. Sadly, I was one of those kids who had strict parents that always demand no lower than A+.

That's why not only at school, I had to study at home as well. My parents paid someone to tutor me at home. It was like a living hell — spending half of the day to study.

I was sick, sick of everything. Nothing interesting ever occured in my life. It was colorless, dull, numb, monochrome. I didn't have an authority towards my own freedom and that sucks. If I demand for freedom, my parents would just spit me with their magical sentences such as: I feed you. I raised you. I paid your school fee, how dare you talk back to me, ungrateful rat!

Freedom was what most of us sought. Just hearing that word was enough to make me envy of those street children who didn't need to go to school. Although the freedom they had was adopted from a sorrowful background; either they were left by their parents or they died already.

Despite of knowing the fact, I sometimes still envy them anyway, and vice-versa, I believe. What others have will always look better than what we have, although it might not be the truth.

Most of the time during classes I spent it to wander around my thoughts. Because the only free times I had was everytime I imagine things inside my head. To get out from the cage that my parents built for me was the best feelings ever.

The colorful world I used to see had turned monochrome. I was never interested on talking to anyone in my circle. They're boring and nothing special. They're the victims of their parents, no different from me. I needed to feel, to see, to know something new.

Until finally one day he joined us. And that's the day when finally colours returning back to my life, he immediately gained my―our interest.

He's different, he's that something I sought. He's not like me and the others, he was like an enigma to our eyes, immediately robbing our attentions. It felt like gaining a new toy to play, he was like an exquisite gemstone that we've never seen before — he was that interesting for us.

Kim Taehyung, the mute boy.