Chapter Text
Mingyu || Wonwoo
People think loneliness has a sound—silence, maybe. I think it's more of a rhythm. A kind of beat that plays under everything you do. Brushing your teeth alone. Walking across campus with your headphones in, pretending the music is louder than the world. Eating lunch next to people who talk around you but not to you.
My days blur, not in the exciting, action-packed way people mean when they say "life flies by," but in the way where you realize a whole week passed and no one really noticed you were there. I don't say that bitterly. I just exist in the background. A familiar figure in the library. That kid who always sits in the back row of the lecture hall. The one with the long sleeves and soft footsteps.
I'm majoring in Sound Architecture—not music, not design, but somewhere in between. We study how sound behaves in physical space: acoustics, vibrations, emotional design through ambient construction. It's as lonely as it sounds. Most people haven't even heard of it. That's okay. I like things that echo.
My roommate, Seungkwan, is everything I'm not. Bright, funny, energetic. He leaves the dorm at eight in the morning and sometimes doesn't come back until midnight. The social orbit he has is... massive. Sometimes I wonder how many people's messages he wakes up to every day. I can't even get my professors to reply to emails.
It's not like I mind the silence. Actually, I wait for it. When the day is over and I'm finally back in my room alone, that's when I feel most like myself. There's this strange freedom that comes with no one watching. I sit on my bed, plug in my headphones, and for hours, I'm not Jeon Wonwoo anymore.
I'm the voice behind a screen name. A faceless artist with over two million subscribers, whose songs drift across TikToks, vlogs, midnight car rides. People cry to my lyrics, tell me I saved their lives. But if I walked past them in the street, they wouldn't even blink.
Maybe that's why I like it. This version of me can be soft, vulnerable, honest. I can write about things I don't say out loud. Loneliness. Quiet sadness. That ache to be seen, but not touched. And no one will ask questions, not even Seungkwan. He's too busy living a life that looks like color, while I quietly paint in monochrome.
When he does come home, I pack up my things and head to my mom's house just outside the city. She gets it. She always has. She leaves my room untouched, stocked with snacks and tea and a guitar stand that holds everything I don't say. She's the only one who knows who I am. What I do. She's proud, but she never pushes. And I think that's why I keep going back.
I'm not sad. Not really. But there's a part of me that wonders, every now and then, what it would be like to matter to someone... as me. Not as the voice they cry to at 2 a.m., not as the lyrics they share on their story. Just... me.
But then the morning comes, and I walk back onto campus. I put my headphones in. And I start again.
Today was a Friday. Seungkwan had flung open the closet doors dramatically at 6:00 p.m., already blasting some obnoxiously energetic playlist while deciding between three nearly identical jackets. I was curled up on my desk chair, pretending to read, but mostly just watching him with half-lidded eyes.
“You sure you don’t wanna come tonight?” he asked, for what had to be the sixth Friday in a row. “It’s this new place near campus, apparently they serve neon drinks. You love neon.”
“I don’t love neon,” I muttered, turning a page I hadn’t even read. “I love being alive. Which I won’t be if I go out to some crammed club with loud people and questionable hygiene.”
Seungkwan laughed, already pulling on the sparkly jacket. “Suit yourself. If I get kidnapped, you’re the one explaining it to my mother.”
“She already thinks I’m your bodyguard,” I called after him.
He winked and blew me a kiss before heading out, perfume lingering like glitter in the air. The door clicked shut behind him, and just like that, it was quiet again.
I locked the door out of habit. Not for safety, really. Just... ritual. A way of sealing the world out.
It was only 7:30, but the window was cracked open and the summer air was warm, humming with crickets. I grabbed my guitar, fingers instinctively strumming nothing in particular. I whistled softly—just to test the acoustics in the room. One, two notes. A rhythm formed, but it felt off. I adjusted. Tried again. Still off.
I didn’t know what I was chasing, but I knew I hadn’t caught it.
The lyrics notebook sat on my desk, open to a blank page for hours. I had wanted this one to be upbeat. Something with a faster tempo, a danceable kind of brightness. I thought it’d be nice to show a different side of me for once.
But when I finally looked down at the page, I saw something else entirely.
Not a single happy line. Just fragments of thoughts, written like confessions.
No metaphors. No cleverness. Just raw honesty. My chest tightened.
I set the guitar down beside me and leaned back in my chair, staring at the ceiling. The fan was spinning lazily, mocking me with its peace. With a sigh, I pushed myself off the chair and onto the bed, my arms sprawled wide, head sinking into the pillow like it had waited all week for this moment.
The sigh that escaped me was louder than I expected.
“What’s up with me these days?” I murmured, my voice husky in the empty room. “The loneliness has never gotten to me... not like this.”
It wasn’t like me to dwell. Not like me to ache like this. I was good at being alone. I had perfected it like a craft. But something about the past few weeks had been different. It was like I was drifting—further from everything, even myself.
And maybe... I was tired of floating.
I sat up again slowly, hands finding the guitar, body moving before the mind caught up. I closed the lyric book. Started fresh. Not trying to be clever or poetic. Just honest.
The melody came first—simple, slow, soft. The kind of tune that sounded like sitting on the floor of your bedroom in the dark, wondering if anyone's ever really known you. Then came the words, all at once, like someone opened a dam in my chest.
I kept writing, letting the song spill out of me. It wasn’t upbeat. It wasn’t even polished. But it was real. So painfully real that by the time I finished it, my throat felt tight and my eyes burned.
I didn’t cry. I rarely do.
But I sat there in silence for a long time, guitar still in my lap, staring at the wall like it owed me something. Like it could give me an answer.
Eventually, I stood, grabbed my mic, plugged everything in.
And I recorded it.
One take. No edits. Just me, my guitar, and a voice no one knew belonged to me.
I scheduled the upload for midnight.
Didn’t even watch it back.
And then I went to bed.
Because sometimes, you just need to say it. Even if no one knows it’s you saying it.
...
Song Title: “People Like Us”
[Intro]
The room is full, but I still freeze
I smile enough to not displease
They talk like I’m not even there
And maybe they’re right—I’m barely air
[Verse 1]
I learned to speak when spoken to
To never take up too much space
They called me distant, maybe true
But I just never found my place
The jokes all pass a little fast
The chairs get filled, I’m always last
It’s not that I don’t want to stay
But I don’t know what I would say
[Pre-Chorus]
And maybe that’s the hardest part
Wanting in but locked outside your heart
[Chorus]
So this is for the almost-heard
The ones who choke on every word
For those who sit and shrink and fade
And never ask if they can stay
You’re not a ghost, though you feel thin
You’re not a wound that can't begin
You're just someone learning how to trust—
This song’s for people like us
...
I sat back in my chair, my hands still tingling from the final chord. The silence after a recording always feels louder than it should. It presses against your chest like it’s waiting to see if you’ll breathe again.
I didn’t even listen back to the track.
Not this time.
There was something sacred about it, like reliving it would taint what I’d just managed to get out. I saved the file and uploaded it to my channel under the usual name—just the symbol I always use. No face. No real name. No identity. Just the voice.
The title was simple:
“People Like Us”
I stared at the empty description box for a while before typing:
For the ones who feel like they exist on mute. You’re not broken. You’re just quiet. And that’s okay.
— anonymous
I hit publish before I could change my mind.
The moment the upload was complete, I closed everything. Not because I didn’t care. But because I cared too much. The kind of care that makes your hands shake.
I packed my mic and notebook back into the box under my bed, hid the guitar in its case. It’s funny—how hiding the things you love becomes second nature when you're so used to doing it alone.
I didn’t even bother checking the post-upload stats. I never do. I’ve always avoided watching the numbers climb, because that’s never what the music was for. I don’t crave virality. I crave... release.
And honestly, I was tired. Really, really tired. That song had wrung something out of me I hadn’t even known I was holding in.
I glanced at the time. 12:41 a.m.
Work was piling up for my Sound Architecture class, and I had barely touched it. With a groan, I opened up my laptop again—switching from raw lyrics to cold, structured schematics. Acoustic simulation models. Reflections and absorptions. The kind of things no one outside our department even understood. The kind of things I used to use as distractions.
Tonight, even that couldn’t hold me.
Somewhere around 2:15 a.m., I fell asleep at my desk, chin resting on an open textbook, glasses still on.
I woke up late.
My eyes felt like sandpaper, my limbs heavy. I didn’t check my phone. Didn’t remember to. My body moved on instinct—shower, teeth, books in bag, keys, jacket. I barely registered Seungkwan humming from the kitchen until I caught a familiar chord drifting from his Bluetooth speaker.
My blood ran cold.
I froze in the hallway, toothbrush still in my mouth, as the unmistakable sound of my voice filled the dorm.
Not the one I used to ask about lecture notes.
The other one.
That voice.
“So this is for the almost-heard, the ones who choke on every word..."
Seungkwan bopped his head, buttering toast like he didn’t just shatter the ground beneath my feet.
“You’re not a ghost, though you feel thin…”
He turned the volume up and grinned to himself. “God, this song? It’s everywhere. Like—everywhere. You’re gonna hear it a hundred times today, just wait.”
He didn’t look at me. Didn’t notice the way I’d stopped breathing. Didn’t catch the way my hand was gripping the strap of my bag just a little too tight.
I swallowed hard.
I didn’t say anything.
Because how do you explain that the song that made everyone else feel seen… was written by someone still trying to believe it himself?