“More letters?” he asked despairingly. He stared down at the Scrabble tiles. Again, in English. He groaned. “Are you all trying to torture me with English lessons? On my birthday?”
“Perhaps,” Namjoon responded with a grin.
Sighing, Tae began to arrange them alphabetically again. But he quickly realized there weren’t very many.
A, E, U, D, G.
“Wait a minute!” he exclaimed excitedly. His fingers made quick work of the letters, arranging them in a very familiar pattern. Even to Tae. Especially to Tae.
DAEGU.
“It’s Yoongi! He and I were both born in Daegu.”
“Very good, Taehyung-ah,” came a low rumble from his doorway.
Tae glanced up and flashed a quick grin at Yoongi. “I knew it! Thanks for an easy one, Yoongi.”
“Here’s your next one,” Yoongi replied as he walked across the room to hand Tae another purple box.
Tae laughed softly as he accepted it. “This is just an elaborate game, huh? But…who was the first present from?”
Four pairs of dark eyebrows ascended into the clouds as four blank looks met his eyes. Tae shook his head. “All right,” he mumbled. “I’ll figure it out eventually. Hopefully, before breakfast!”
He ripped off the purple paper to reveal the white box beneath. Then he lifted the lid to find…
“What are these tiles?”
“Those are Bananagrams,” Yoongi explained.
Tae shook his head as he dumped them all out on the bed. “Whose idea was this?” he grumbled.
“Figure out this clue, and you’ll have your answer,” Yoongi informed him curtly.
Tae glanced up at him sharply. “I’m assuming it was one of the two who haven’t shown their faces yet. Jungkookie or Hobi. It must be Jungkookie. He’s the only one who would torture me with English lessons! Hobi certainly wouldn’t.”
He arranged the letters again.
A, I, O, O, Y, C, L, M, M, N, T.
Tae groaned. “Am I the only one getting a headache?”
Namjoon laughed. “I’ll help you. ALITY is the end of this word.”
Tae separated the ending to reveal only six more letters to decipher: O, O, C, M, M, N.
With a sigh, he began to move them around. MOONMC.
“Look, Jin! It’s your company name. Moon MC,” Namjoon quipped.
Everyone laughed at that. Especially Jin.
“No!” he shouted as he moved the letters around. MONO MC. It’s you, Namjoon!”
Snickering rippled across the group again.
“I don’t think so….” Namjoon intoned, shaking his head.
“MOMONC.”
“COMOMN.”
Tae sighed again as he continued to try new arrangements of the letters.
“Try keeping the M’s together,” Namjoon suggested.
“COMMON. Common! Commonality!” A flash of understanding struck Tae. “Jungkook!”
“In the flesh,” murmured his friend as he stepped through the doorway carrying – what else? – a purple box.
Tae flashed his boxy grin at his good friend.
“Happy Birthday, Tae!” Jungkook greeted him as he handed him the box.
Tae narrowed his eyes at him. “Happy Birthday? You’ve been driving me nuts with English word games. I presume this was your idea?”
“My idea? You were the one who said you wanted to practice your English with me,” Jungkook reasoned.
“Not on my birthday!” Tae laughed. “I didn’t think you were coming,” he commented.
Jungkook murmured in response, “You didn’t really think I wouldn’t be a part of your birthday story, did you?”
Tae smiled. “I hoped not. But, really, I didn’t think any of you would show up today. I figured you were all back in Seoul. Without me.”
“Don’t sound so pitiful,” Jimin chastised him. “We all came to see you!”
“If that’s true, where is Hobi?” Tae’s query coincided with Jungkook’s remark.
“Well, actually, Tae, we all came to see your eomma,” Jungkook teased him. “To thank her for the food she made for us.”
Tae scoffed and decided to open his last present. This one was – thankfully – in Korean.
Tae found four Hangul flash cards: ㅐ, ㄷ, ㅣ, ㄱ.
Tae grinned. “Finally! A language I’m fluent in!”
Hobi had made it truly easy for him. Only four characters and they were in reverse order. Tae arranged them correctly to spell one word. An obvious one.
기대.
Hope.
“Hope! It is, of course, Hobi!”
But no one opened his door again. Tae stared at it for a full minute before he frowned. “Where is Hobi?” he asked.
“My guess is that he smelled all the wonderful aromas emanating from your eomma’s kitchen and wandered that way,” Jungkook opined. “I almost made a detour there myself.”
Namjoon grinned suddenly as his brain played a game that mixed English and Korean. “Your eomma’s aromas!”
Everyone else just looked at him. But after a moment, Jungkook grinned. “It rhymes!”
Tae shook his head. “You all have gone daffy with your word games. Come on. Let’s go find Hobi.”
He strode out to his mother’s kitchen and discovered his friend sitting at the table while he chatted with his sister. Hobi glanced up at Tae as he entered the room. A sunny smile flooded his face with joy as he saw his young friend.
“Tae-Tae!” he shouted. “Happy Birthday!”
“You didn’t bring me a present,” Tae pouted.
“Not true,” Hobi responded immediately. “I brought mine first.” But he didn’t explain that statement. “How did you like my clue? I figured your brain would be getting tired by the time you got to mine,” Hobi informed Tae sunnily. “So I made it easy on you. Besides, it was obvious who was left. Hope.”
“When nothing else is left, there’s always Hope,” Yoongi murmured.
“What do you mean, you brought your gift first?” Tae queried.
“My gift started the game. The mystery.” Hobi glanced at the bird still sitting in its box on the table.
“Wait. The bird was from you?”
Hobi nodded.
Two fine lines popped up between Tae’s eyebrows. “But…what does it mean?”
Hobi smiled sweetly at him. “Tae. Don’t you know?”
Tae shook his head.
So Hobi explained, “You’re my songbird. We traded spots. Remember? I was supposed to be the vocalist, and you, the rapper. But you wanted to sing, so I took your spot in rap line. You gave me two gifts that day. My love of rap. And your beautiful voice. I love to listen to you sing, Tae. You are definitely better at it than I would have been.”
“No, Hobi. That’s not true,” Tae spoke in that deep voice now. “You’re a fine singer. Your voice is sunny – like you. But you are also a much better rapper than I would have ever been.”
No one responded to that comment.
Tae frowned. “One more question. Why is the bird yellow?”
“Why, because it’s such a cheerful color! It’s the color of the sun, you know. To me, yellow represents hope. So the color is to remind you that the bird came from me. It represents us both: the sun and the songbird. You can name it Tae-Hope.”
Everyone guffawed. And shook their heads.
Hobi continued, “But seriously, Tae, I just wanted you to know how much you mean to me. And how much I love the gift of your voice. You’ll always be my songbird.”
Everyone need a Hope in their life, lucky for us we have a whole sun
This made me cry, such a wonderful omage to our beautiful Taetae♡
Such an emotional story! Beautiful writing!