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So a spaceship starts tearing up New York, big whoop-di-doo. Jaemin can’t count the number of times that sort of thing has happened over the past ten years, so he doesn’t think too much of it when he first sees the headlines. He only spends a few minutes scrolling through footage on SNS before Renjun sighs for the third time in three minutes, prompting Jaemin to put his phone down and offer to make them both some food instead.
He sees something about a fight in Scotland when they’re eating the leftover jjamppong from last night’s delivery. Then he doesn’t look at his phone for the rest of the day, too caught up in gaming with Jeno and later Chenle when he joins them online; it means he misses the news about the spaceships landing in Wakanda, about the fight brewing there as night falls over South Korea.
“Do you want a cola?” he asks Jeno in between rounds. It’s late, so they really shouldn’t be drinking caffeine, but Jeno grunts an affirmative as Chenle screams something wild through his headset. Jaemin groans as he stands to fetch them, taking a lap around their living room to stretch his legs before reaching the fridge.
“We only have diet cola or cherry cola,” he says, rooting through their stocks. “Which do you want?”
There’s a clatter as Jeno’s remote drops to the floor, and Jaemin looks up to see him frowning down at his hands. “Huh?” he says, holding his hands up for Jaemin to see.
Jaemin has to look twice, because it looks like they’re fading. Or falling apart. Then he looks back to Jeno’s face to see the rest of him crumbling too, leaving only dark ashes in his wake. The headset clangs to the floor, Chenle suddenly silent on the other end.
“Jeno?” He looks around as if it’s a trick. “Jen?”
It doesn’t feel like a trick. His gut is screaming at him something fierce that this is something very, very bad. There’s a shout from Jisung and Renjun’s shared bedroom, and Jaemin leaves the fridge door open to run across the short length of their dorm.
He swings open the bedroom door too fast, sending the ashes on the floor skittering away and flying out of the open window. Jisung is staring down at them with wide eyes, clutching the side of his bed with one hand, strangled speech caught in his throat.
“Hyung—he just—what just—”
Jaemin throws himself at Jisung, wraps his arms tight around his back, holds him so hard it must hurt but Jisung either doesn’t notice or doesn’t say anything.
“Don’t disappear,” he tells him, fervent. “Don’t you go too.”
“I—I’m—” Jisung starts, before he clutches Jaemin back, starts to shake in his grasp. “What happened to him? Hyung, what happened?”
Jaemin doesn’t know, so he doesn’t answer. Eventually Jisung stops asking, and the two of them stay like that for a while, listening to the distant screams and blare of car alarms in the street beyond the open window. Every time Jisung inhales, exhales, twitches slightly in his grasp, Jaemin is afraid he’ll go too, but he never does. Jaemin holds him for a long time as Renjun’s ashes blow past their faces and into the cold night breeze outside. Swept away before they can catch him.
-
Jeno’s phone rings first. They can both hear it buzzing against the floor in the next room, lonely and loud, but it’s Jisung who moves first, coaxing Jaemin into unclenching his limbs around him. He’d rather stay here, holding Jisung close and keeping him safe, than face whatever is happening out there. But Jisung is adamant.
“Jeno won’t answer,” Jaemin says as Jisung pries himself away. Doesn’t know how he manages to get it out. His voice doesn’t sound like his voice.
“I know,” Jisung says. “That’s why we have to.”
Jeno’s phone is on the floor beside a pile of grey ashes. Jisung stops in the doorway when he sees it, so it’s Jaemin who ends up answering. Doyoung’s name is at the top of the screen.
“Jeno?” he says as soon as Jaemin picks up, sounding close to hysterical. “You’re alive?”
“No,” Jaemin manages. “Just me and Jisung.”
“Oh, God,” Doyoung cries. Breaks down into sobs after that, and the phone is taken over by Taeyong, his voice small and unsure as he asks,
“Do you know about Chenle?”
Jaemin looks at the headset in the pile of ashes. Chenle’s character is motionless on Jeno’s screen. “I—I think he’s gone too. Who—who’s left on your end?”
A silent moment. “Just the two of us and Jaehyun.”
Jisung is breathing fast behind him, on the verge of something disastrous, but Jaemin can’t make himself move to check on him. “Out of everyone?”
“We ran down to the other floors once we realised what had happened. They were all asleep, so it took a while to get to the bottom of what was going on, but—Yangyang, Hendery, Ten. Sungchan. That’s it.”
“Alive?”
“Alive.”
Jaemin sits back heavily. There’s a buzzing from inside the bedroom, and Jisung’s shadow disappears from over him.
“Hyung,” he says, struggling to hear himself over his own breathing. “What happened?”
“Apparently this is happening everywhere, across the whole world. Half of all life, they’re saying. Bella is alive, but Louis and Leon are gone. My parents and sister are fine, but Jaehyun can’t get through to anyone he tries. Have you tried your family?”
Jaemin’s fingers are starting to ache from how hard he’s clutching Jeno’s phone. “No.”
“Try them. Someone might need you.”
“Okay. Okay.” He doesn’t know how to end the call, so he hangs up at that.
“I don’t—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, there was nothing I could do—” Jisung is saying from the room behind him, and Jaemin heaves himself to his feet again, barging into the bedroom. He doesn’t have to ask who it is. He’s only met Renjun’s mother once, but has witnessed Renjun chatting away on many, many calls with her, and knows what her voice sounds like down the end of a receiver.
He takes the phone from Jisung’s hand. “I’m sorry, Eomma,” he says, and Mrs. Huang wails back. Jaemin can’t say much else to ease her heartbreak, so he hangs up this call, too.
“Jaemin-hyung!” Jisung exclaims, eyes following Renjun’s phone as Jaemin puts it back down on the desk. “She’s—she’s grieving!”
“You should call your family,” he says in response. “Now, Jisung.”
-
No one Jisung calls picks up. Jaemin gets through to his mother and promises to reach her as soon as he can. Jisung packs his bag in a daze, Jaemin methodically handing him the things he’ll need, and neither of them talk about it until they leave the building together.
“We have to check on Chenle,” Jisung says as they walk out through the front doors. “Please. We have to know for sure.”
Jaemin already knows it’s a lost cause, but he agrees anyway.
On the midnight street outside their apartment a baby is lying in an unattended buggy, screaming her little lungs out. The odd person runs by them, shouting into phones or intently focused on reaching their destination, and they can hear the bustle of the city crying out just beyond that. Many of the lights are on in the surrounding buildings, more than usual for this time of night, and they’re all so loud—the people inside them are screaming, muffled beyond the walls. In the midst of it all the baby cries and cries on her own, kicking a little pink blanket out of the buggy and onto the road. There’s a bag of groceries secured in the net under the carrier, a lone handbag dropped on its side, and a pile of ash on the street in front of it.
“There’s no way we’re getting through all that,” Jisung says. Jaemin follows his eyeline to see a build-up of cars all the way along the road, all sat still, dust floating out of windows or doors left wide open. Many have their headlights on and engines left running, too many car alarms screeching into the dark, warring with the more distant cry of emergency sirens. The streets are completely jammed.
“We can walk to Chenle’s from here,” he says. “Then we can go to my mom’s tomorrow.”
“Do you know the way?”
“Course.” Jaemin takes the handle of the buggy and turns it around to face the right direction.
Jisung stares. “You’re taking that with you?”
“You want to leave her here?”
“Someone might be looking for her!”
“Bring the handbag. We can contact the family when we get her somewhere safe. It’s too dark to leave her here and hope someone comes along, and we can’t stay with her.”
It’s impossible to run whilst pushing a buggy and they can’t even speed walk around the piles of stirring ash they’re trying to respectfully avoid in the dark, so it’s a strange twenty-five-minute walk across the city to Chenle’s house. The poor baby screams and screams as Jaemin murmurs comforting words at her, Jisung awkwardly gripping the handbag like the world’s guiltiest child-saver. There are cars crashed into other dented cars and cars sticking into the front of buildings in every street, random doors to shops and apartment buildings left wide open and empty, people crying out of windows or kneeling in the middle of the street. It’s like Armageddon has come in an instant, and they’re walking through the heart of it in the dead of night. It’s like nothing Jaemin has ever seen, nothing he could even imagine.
Jisung knows Chenle’s passcode by heart. When they make their way inside, the house is dark and empty but for a pile of ash in the kitchen and a pile of ash in Chenle’s room. The game is left static, Jeno’s character hovering on the screen. Daegal recognises them when they come to stand in the doorway and trots over from beside Chenle’s ash pile, head cocked in question.
“What’s happening?” Jisung whispers. “Why?”
Jaemin can’t stop staring at the screen. “It’s half of everyone, Taeyong-hyung said.”
“Why?” Jisung asks, hoarse. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” he admits.
“Why them?” Jisung asks, body hitting the doorframe. He slides down it until he’s squatting on the floor, clutching his knees. He’s crying, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “Why?”
Jaemin has no answers for him, so he doesn’t say anything.
-
Chenle’s house has baby supplies in from the last time his extended family had come to stay in Korea. They feed and change the baby once she’s exhausted herself from all the crying, then set her down to sleep in the same buggy she’s been in all day. Jaemin has no idea if you’re supposed to encourage crawling time before bed or something, but that seems inconsequential when whoever was pushing this buggy has gone, and the phone in the handbag hasn’t rung all night. No one is looking for this disappeared person and their baby.
The three of them take Chenle’s spare room together. Jisung cries himself to sleep quickly enough, but Jaemin stays up all night reading everything he can find about the disappearances. After an update from the Avengers in the early hours, conversations online start to call it the Snap. Some alien had snapped his fingers and half of all life on earth was gone; the heroes don’t know if it’s possible to get everyone back. Jaemin wonders if they can still be considered heroes after a loss so immense.
The baby wakes up at some point in the night. Jaemin sets his phone to charge while he paces the house with her, gently rocking her back to sleep and whispering comforting words that don’t mean much. He passes Chenle’s room to see Daegal sleeping beside his ashes rather than in her dog bed. She lifts her head as Jaemin passes to watch him walk down the corridor, then settles down again, whining softly in the back of her throat.
Jisung wakes up later in the night too, shivering and crying out Renjun’s name. Jaemin pulls the blankets up further over his chest and strokes his hair until he falls back asleep, then remains by his side until the sun rises over an ashen city.
-
In the daylight, the streets look even worse. The ashes are no longer in piles but spread over the streets like a carpet reminder of the horrors of yesterday. He packs all the baby supplies Chenle has into the buggy and clips Daegal onto a leash to half-drag her across the city. Before they leave the house, they scoop Chenle’s ashes into a jar on the shelf and the ashes of his aunt into a pot on the kitchen table. Jaemin finds he can’t stop thinking about Jeno’s ashes in their front room, left alone and untouched, so they decide to go back home and do the same for him. Renjun’s remaining ashes have been blown away overnight, leaving only pitiful scatterings under the bed behind.
They let the baby crawl around the apartment and make sure to charge up the phone from the handbag, but it’s password-locked and there are still no notifications on the home screen, so there’s not much they can do to locate her living family. They sleep in the dorms for another three nights before the streets are properly cleared of orphaned cars, Jisung sharing Jaemin’s bed, Jeno’s ashes stored in a food container on top of the fridge. The baby cries and cries, most of the time. Jisung cries and cries with her. Jaemin does his best to comfort them both, but he’s starting to feel numb from all the noise.
Ten calls on the third day.
“Jaemin,” he starts, and Jaemin knocks his head back against the sofa.
“Hyung, how are you? How is your family?”
“Alive, for the most part,” Ten says. “I got really lucky. You?”
“My mom is alive. Jisung is struggling to reach anyone.”
“How are you holding up?”
“About as well as anyone is right now.”
A pause. “Are you both still at the dorm?”
“Yes, but if we can bag a taxi tomorrow we’re going over to my mom’s.”
“Don’t worry about that, I’ll get Doyoung to take you. He’s planning on going back to home tomorrow too, so he should be able to drop you guys off. Sungchan left on the first day, and I think Taeyong took Jaehyun home yesterday, but the rest of us have been waiting for the airports to open again before we go anywhere.”
“Thank you,” Jaemin says, watching Jisung stare at the TV, lights flickering over his face in the dark. The baby is asleep in Jaemin’s room, the door cracked open so they can hear if she starts crying again. “I hope you guys can get home soon.”
“It’s no problem,” Ten says. “I’d rather wait a while and know I’m flying safe, that the pilot isn’t going to nosedive us all into the Pacific or something. Are you guys really doing okay, do you need anything? I’m sorry, I really should’ve called before now, but Yangyang has been in a state and Ten isn’t doing that great either—”
“It’s okay,” he cuts him off. “We’re okay. We have each other, and this baby. And Daegal. I think Jisung is becoming less afraid of them both, so that’s something. We’ve eaten nearly all the food we have in, but we’ll get some more at my mom’s place.”
Jisung slowly pulls himself out of his haze at the sound of his name, blinking a few times and dragging his gaze away from the screen to register what’s being said. Jaemin flashes him a smile, but Jisung just looks back at him blankly.
“You really have a baby? I thought Taeyong was talking about Jisung when he mentioned that.”
“Yeah, no, a real baby. We picked her up on the first day. No one’s come looking for her yet, so we’ll have to bring her with us until we can find a place for her to go.”
“That sounds nice. A baby must have no idea what’s going on right now.”
“Nah. I think she knows enough.”
Ten hums. “Then I’m glad you found her. I’ll talk to Doyoung and ask him to text you when he’s coming by tomorrow, okay?”
“Thanks, Hyung. Let me know when you get home too.”
He wants to send well wishes for the others in Ten’s dorm, promise to drop by sometime, but he knows no amount of hopeful words will make them feel better and he has his own boy full of grief to look out for. Ten loves his members with his whole heart, and Kun has been his person for a long time now—while Jisung is delicate, can be hurt by the smallest of grievances. He’s afraid that both of their suffering in one room might suck them all in until he can’t pull his head above water anymore, until he gains the same sheen to his eyes that Jisung has.
“Will do. Sleep well. Take care of them all, Jaemin, but remember to take care of yourself too.”
“I will. Love you, Hyung.”
“Love you too. Call me if you need anything.” There’s a ripping scream from Ten’s end of the line that’s loud enough to make Jisung flinch, and he can hear someone else’s voice speaking over it, low and desperate. Ten sighs. “I have to go.”
“Okay. Thanks for calling.”
“Of course. Bye, Jaemin. Keep in touch.”
Jaemin gives a noise of agreement, then the line goes dead. Jisung’s eyes are caught on the phone as it falls back into Jaemin’s lap, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Are you tired?” Jaemin asks. “We should go to sleep soon. Doyoung will probably come by early tomorrow.”
Jisung mumbles something, his chin knocked against his chest.
“What was that?”
“My stomach hurts,” he repeats, a little louder, the words still jammed in his mouth by the awkward angle of his neck. “And my head hurts, all the time. And my… my chest. Everything aches so badly.”
Jaemin reaches out to him, plays with the soft hair at the nape of his neck. “I know,” he says quietly. “I know.”
A silence stretches between them as they let the low volume TV chatter fill the room. When Jisung sighs and tips his head back, Jaemin speaks again.
“I live by a field, you know. My house is right in front of it. There used to be kids in it all the time until the neighbourhood started to become empty nest families. When we go home, I’ll take you for a picnic there. We can lie in the grass and see the sun again, breathe in proper air. We can stay there for as long as you want and watch the clouds go by until your head doesn’t hurt so much. Then we can stand by the tree and let Jeno’s ashes be taken by the wind so that he can breathe easier too. Maybe it’ll heal us both.”
Jisung’s face crumples, and Jaemin knows he’s blown it by mentioning Jeno. “That would’ve been so nice,” Jisung says, and Jaemin moves forward to bring him into his chest. Jisung goes easily, more tactile these days, more receptive to Jaemin’s touch. “It would’ve been fun together.”
Jaemin nods, mouth pulling down when Jisung can’t see his face anymore. “I know,” he says. “I know.”
-
Jaemin’s mom wails and throws herself on him when she opens the door, would collapse to her knees if it weren’t for his support.
“I thought you were dead! I thought you dead—why didn’t you call, Jaemin! Why didn’t you come home?”
“I did, Mom,” he reminds her gently. “I couldn’t get here until now, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry you’ve been alone, but we’re here now. This is Jisung, do you remember him? He can stay with us, right?”
“Of course, Jisung, I’m so glad you’re still alive too,” she says, pulling him forward by his sleeve without letting go of Jaemin. “You’re alive, oh, thank heavens, you both made it. What about your other boys, Jaemin?”
“Doyoung-hyung drove us here,” Jaemin says, gesturing to where Doyoung has the baby in one arm and Daegal’s leash in his free hand. He smiles and waves at his mom as she dabs her eyes. “A few of the older ones made it, but… no one else from Dream.”
“Oh, darling,” she says, gripping his arm. “Your father is gone, too. I’m so sorry, but he’s gone. It’s a reckoning upon us all.”
“I know,” he says gently. Mom had told him when he’d first called a few days ago. “It’s okay. At least I’m with you now. I brought us another little friend, too.”
The baby kicks as he takes her from Doyoung, but she’s not cried so much today. Instead she has a fist balled in her mouth, staring at his mom with round eyes.
“Would you look at her,” Mom says, taking the baby into her arms and smiling, tears sitting on her cheeks. “Isn’t she lovely?”
“I really have to get going,” Doyoung says from behind them, handing Daegal’s leash off to Jisung. “Stay safe, all of you.”
“You too,” Jaemin says, watching Doyoung give Jisung a long, hard hug. “Keep in touch.”
“You know I will,” he says, hugging Jaemin too. “If you need anything at all you can call me, okay?”
They bring their bags inside as his mom walks around the house with the baby, endeared, rocking her and humming old songs to her. Jaemin shows Jisung to his bedroom—they do have a spare room, but he would much rather share his bed and keep an eye on Jisung—then shows him where the back door leads into their tiny yard, and beyond that the shared field. He wraps an arm around his shoulders and gestures out to it —it’s smaller than he remembered, not quite as vivid green at this time of year, but there’s still the little apple tree still in the corner and an abandoned football by one of the other houses. It feels more alive than anything in their hole of an apartment in Seoul, and that’s all he was hoping for.
“Can we let his ashes go now?” Jisung asks. “I hate that he’s in that food container.”
Jaemin nods, leaving Jisung’s side for a minute to dip back into his room and pull the container out of his bag. “Are you ready?” he asks, coming back beside Jisung and cracking open the lid. “Anything to say?”
Jisung blows air out thorough his mouth, staring at the box. Then he shrugs, pursing his lips together and looks down at Daegal instead.
Jaemin waits for a moment, but when it becomes apparent Jisung isn’t going to say anything, he walks through his back gate to reach the field. He holds the box up to the sky there, letting the wind take its contents with each breath.
“Love you.” He says it to Jeno, but means it for all of them. “Miss you.”
He has to shake the last of the ash out, and it floats to rest somewhere in the grass, but most of it gets carried further away by the breeze. Maybe only into the hedge running along the back of the field or into the street behind the next row of houses, but Jisung is right. Anything is better than that food container.
When he turns back, Jisung is hastily wiping his face with his too-long sleeve. Jaemin wonders why he still bothers to hide his face when he cries so often these days.
He hugs him tight, patting his back, the food container still in one hand. “If they’re watching over us right now, they’re definitely teasing you for all this crying, you know.”
Jisung nods into his shoulder. “I hope so.”
Jaemin kisses the side of his neck, smiles fondly into the skin there. “I know so.”
-
The authorities come a few days later for the baby. They learn that her name is Minyoung, and that her mother had disappeared from the street a week ago but that she’d already left her family behind a year ago to be a single mother. The authorities couldn’t identify any remaining family willing to take Minyoung in, so she’s being taken to a care home.
“Can’t we keep her instead?” Jisung asks in a small voice.
Jaemin’s mom has already asked the woman from the home if she’d like tea twice, then served her some even though she’d politely declined both times.
“I’m afraid not, dear, you’re not a relative,” she says, holding the baby to her chest. She hasn’t touched the tea, and it’s probably for the best. “You’re free to apply to foster her, though.”
Maybe if their circumstances were different, that would’ve been possible. Jaemin finds wishing for things to be different doesn’t get him anywhere, so he doesn’t cling onto that hope, and waves goodbye to Minyoung at the door even as she starts to cry again. A few hours after the lady leaves with Minyoung, Mom asks them where they’ve put the baby.
-
Jisung has started sleepwalking, so even after Minyoung is gone Jaemin finds himself getting up in the middle of the night to trudge after him and make sure he doesn’t hurt himself. Sometimes he sleep talks too, asks Chenle what schedule they have the next day, asks Donghyuck to help him with a singing part. Sometimes he mumbles the refrain from their half-finished comeback song over and over under his breath, practising for the comeback they’d had on the horizon before the end of the world, then abruptly stops. Sometimes he quietens down if Jaemin replies to him, low voice like gravel in the middle of the night. Between him and the baby, Jaemin can’t remember the last time he got a full night of sleep, but he doesn’t mind it so much. There are worse things.
Then one day, it’s Jisung who wakes up first, getting up and out of bed without any prompting, begging, or dragging needed.
“What are you doing?” Jaemin asks, barely awake, barely believing his eyes at the sight of Jisung pulling on real clothes before midday.
“I’m going to find my family,” Jisung answers, and Jaemin pushes himself up, suddenly more lucid.
“Jisung,” he says carefully. “You said there was no one.”
“I know,” he says, not looking at Jaemin. “But I can’t stop thinking about it. I should least go and check on my house. Ever since Minyoung left, I realised—I have some young cousins, but I have no idea what happened to them. I need to go and find out. What if they need me? It’s driving me crazy. I should at least know who’s left, even if they don’t want to see me.”
“I’m sure they want to know you’re okay too, Jisung,” he says, sitting up and looking around for his shirt. He always ends up shucking most of his clothes off during the night, the bed uncomfortably warm with the two of them pressed together, but he’d never ask Jisung to stop cuddling up to him. “Will you at least call Doyoung?”
“What for?”
“I can’t come with you, I can’t leave my mom. But you shouldn’t go on your own.”
Jisung pauses, almost falling over where he’s stood on one foot to pull his socks on. “It’s okay. I can go on my own. I’m a big boy, you know.”
“No, you shouldn’t go on your own. Not yet, Jisung.”
“I’ll take Daegal, then,” Jisung says. “See? Not alone. I’ll be okay, I know how to get home from here.”
“Doyoung will give you a lift there if you ask him. He said we could call him.”
“I don’t want to go with Doyoung, I don’t want to bother him. I’ll manage.”
They look at each other, Jaemin levelling him with his best unimpressed look as they lock in a staring match. For once, it doesn’t look like Jisung is going to back down first.
“Fine. How long will you be?”
“Depends on if I find anyone there.”
Jaemin sighs, dropping his head back onto the pillows. “I don’t like this.”
“But I can go?”
“You never needed my permission.”
“But it’s nice to have your acceptance.”
He lifts his head again, looking up at him, hopeful face and all. It’s the first time he hasn’t had to drag Jisung out of bed since the Snap, the first time he’s sounded like himself in weeks. There’s no way Jaemin can deny him this.
“Fine,” Jaemin says. “But you have to call me if you’re staying more than one night. And call me if you need me, okay? Just call me for anything at all, actually.”
“I will,” Jisung promises.
He leaves with a packed lunch from Jaemin’s mom and Daegal bouncing with excitement at the prospect of going further than the field. He even manages to give them a little smile as he waves goodbye, setting his shoulders and walking towards the bus stop alone.
-
Jisung calls in the middle of the night. Jaemin is still awake, reading on his phone, comfortably stretched out across the bed for once. He picks up the instant Jisung’s name flashes across his screen.
“Hello?”
A slight pause. “Hyung?”
“Hi. Are you okay?”
“Mmh.” He doesn’t sound completely distraught, like he’s been crying for hours at what he’d found. But he doesn’t sound very happy either.
“How’s the house?” he asks.
“Still standing. I think some other family members have been here since the Snap. Things are too tidy.”
“Any idea who?”
“My aunt doesn’t live far from here. I’m going to go and visit tomorrow and see if it’s her.”
“That’s good.”
Jisung hums back, noncommittal. Jaemin lets the comfortable silence breathe for a moment in case Jisung wants to say something more, but he doesn’t expand on the topic.
“You in your old bed right now?”
“Yeah,” Jisung breathes. “It seems so empty. The house is too quiet. I forgot what it’s like to sleep alone. Daegal is keeping me company, though.”
“I’m glad. Do you miss me?” he asks, teasing.
“Yes,” Jisung responds, deadly serious. “I do. Just wanted to hear your voice. Know that you’re still… there, you know. Still okay.”
Jaemin softens. “I’m still here, waiting for you to come back. I miss you too.”
Jisung doesn’t speak for a few moments. “I’m really glad that you are. You know, that you’re still around and stuff. I don’t know what I’d do if you were gone too.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Don’t even think about that.”
“I know. I—I love you, Hyung, you know that right?”
“Yeah. I do know. And I promise you that all the others knew it too.”
There’s a long pause on the other end, then a suspicious sniffle. “Yeah. Thank you, Jaemin-hyung.”
“Don’t thank me for it. I love you, and the others all loved you very much, too. Don’t you forget it.”
“I won’t,” Jisung says. “I-I’m just really glad I have you left.”
“Nothing’s going to pull us apart,” he promises. “Do you want me to ask Doyoung to come and pick you up? You don’t have to stay there, you know.”
“No, no. I’ll be fine. Will you just talk to me until I fall asleep?”
“Sure. No problem.”
Jaemin tells him about the time he’d last gone out cycling with Jeno, when they’d ridden along the Han River at midnight. They’d taken a circuit around the river, across two bridges and back to the bike station again, only to find that Jeno had lost his phone somewhere on the way. They’d decided to cycle the whole circuit again as the sun was rising to try and find it, but came back with nothing but sweaty shirts and tired eyes. When they’d arrived back home, it had turned out that he’d left it at the apartment all along.
“But no one can stay mad at Jeno for long. He was an idiot for forgetting, but a genuine idiot.”
“Did you forgive him yet?” Jisung asks, voice thick with sleep.
“For the phone? Yeah, sure. I’d forgiven him by the time I’d woken up the next morning.”
“No, I mean for the other thing.”
Jaemin pauses. “He couldn’t help that.”
“None of them could,” Jisung mumbles. “But I’m still upset with them.”
“I know,” Jaemin says, soft. “That’s natural.”
“But I’m upset at myself the most, for not doing more. You know, when we still had time together. I could’ve done better. How do you forgive yourself for something like that?”
“I don’t know,” Jaemin says. “I’m working on that one, too.”
“Let me know when you figure it out.”
“We can work it out together,” Jaemin promises. “Come home soon, won’t you?”
There’s only the sound of breathing on the other end of the line, then a faint hum. Jaemin takes that as a yes, and stays on the phone until he hears the breathing even out.
-
When Jisung returns, Jaemin releases the breath he’d been holding and pulls him into a tight hug. Daegal yaps and jumps up at Jaemin like they’ve been apart for weeks rather than two days.
“Jaemin, dear? Who is this?” his mom asks from behind him.
Jaemin plants a kiss to Jisung’s forehead and turns to his mom with a smile. “It’s Jisung, Mom, he’s back.”
“Lovely to meet you, Jisung,” she says, patting his arm as Jisung smiles awkwardly and nods. “I thought it might be your father, Jaemin, he should be back soon.”
“I’ll get started on dinner for us all,” Jaemin says instead of answering, and Mom tuts at him.
“You think I need you in the kitchen around here? Leave that to me, won’t you?”
“Sure, Mom,” he says, watching her shuffle back into the living room. He turns back to level his smile at Jisung again. “Come on, come and tell me what you found.”
They go into the kitchen together and Jaemin sets a pan to boil, getting out some simple ingredients. He’s thinking of making some mixed noodles, the way Chenle always liked it.
“My aunt is alive,” Jisung starts, leaning against one of the counters and staring at the pan as he talks. “Her husband and kids all made it. She was so sorry when she saw me—she’d seen SM’s confirmation statement that I was alive, but didn’t know how to contact me all this time. She was worried that I’d been living on my own in the dorm, but I told her that I’ve been with you.”
“All alive?” he blows a breath out. “That’s really lucky.”
“Is it? I don’t know. The living have it the hardest, don’t they? We have to bear what’s left, and my mom was her sister, after all.”
“Yeah, that’s true. Maybe you’re right.”
Jisung shrugs. “She offered for me to stay with them—practically begged me, actually. I think she feels responsible. But I don’t feel very comfortable there. I’d rather be here.”
“Really? Even with,” he gestures behind him to the room his Mom is sat in, talking to herself.
“Of course. She’s nice to me.” Jisung tries for a smile, but it looks a little painful. “And she needs us around too, right?”
“Right,” he agrees. “She does. Anything else?”
“Bumped into my brother’s girlfriend,” he says after a moment, looking down at the floor. “She was the one who’d tidied the house. She had come by to return some of my brother’s things, but I guess she saw the way the place looked and assumed we were all gone. So she’s been taking care of it. I told her she didn’t have to do that any more. It’s my responsibility.” He turns to place his bag on the table and starts rummaging around in it. It’s fuller than when he’d left.
“Brought some things back?”
“Mostly my own things. But my brother’s girlfriend gave me this.” He pulls a small ring box out of the bag and pops it open. Inside is a simple silver band. “It’s an engagement ring. She found it when she was sorting through his belongings. He was probably going to propose.”
Jaemin turns back to face the now boiling pot. He hasn’t put anything in it. “I’m sorry, Jisung.”
“I had no idea they were even that serious,” Jisung says, staring at the ring. “She asked me to keep it, because he never got to give it to her, so it’s not really hers. But I think he probably would’ve wanted her to have it anyway.” He closes the box with a gentle click. “Though, what do I know?”
Jaemin opens his arms to him. Jisung walks over without looking him in the eye and hugs him.
“I’m proud of you,” Jaemin tells him. “Really proud. And I’m glad you came back to me.”
Jisung makes a noise into his shoulder, grips his shirt in both hands. “I think you might be the only one left who really knows me, Hyung. And the only one left that I really know, too.”
-
Renjun’s birthday comes around. Neither of them mention it, but Jaemin adds an extra carton of ice cream to his grocery run and they binge a bunch of movies together in the evening. Jisung’s waterworks start in the middle of one of the Star Wars fight scenes, and Jaemin wonders if this is what it will be like on every birthday, every year. He wonders how the world can ever move on when everyone is suffering like this, all at once.
They stand outside the house for a little while afterwards, soaking up the sobering late-night chill. Spring has come, so it’s getting a warmer outside, but the living room had gotten too stuffy somewhere after the fourth hour of movie-watching. They’re both pink cheeked and sleepy from it.
“Renjun would’ve really liked that movie,” Jisung says after a while.
“Which one?”
“The Disney one. Where he visited his ancestors.”
“You’re right,” he says, pulling Jisung in to rest his head on his shoulder. They can’t see any stars in the sky tonight. “He would’ve.”
“I really miss them,” Jisung admits. “I feel like all I do these days is miss them.”
“How can we not?”
“I know, right?” Jisung sighs, holding his hand out to the sky like he’s trying to push the clouds aside and find the stars for himself. “Happy birthday, Renjun-hyung. Wish you were here to celebrate it with us.”
“Happy birthday,” Jaemin says, easy after Jisung’s openness. He’s never heard him say anything like that before. “We miss you.”
“We miss you,” Jisung echoes. “A lot.”
They go back inside after that, deciding to watch one last movie before they go to bed. Jisung barely makes it twenty minutes in before falling asleep on the couch. Jaemin watches over him for a long time after the movie is over, the sun starting to peek through the blinds before he can catch any sleep of his own.
-
Mom never used to be this bad. Sure, he hasn’t lived at home as much over the past few years, but he’s been back enough to track his mom’s gradual descent into forgetfulness, and it had never been this bad. His dad had been good at handling it, patient and kind with her. Jaemin reckons it’s his dad’s disappearance that really sent her over the edge, freefalling into flat out dementia. Jisung takes Daegal out for daily walks now—the two are best friends these days, bonded to the point that Jisung doesn’t even flinch whenever she climbs onto him and starts licking his face—and Mom always acts like she’s never seen him before in her life every time he returns from them. Horrifyingly, once Jisung had walked into the house and Mom had called out his dad’s name, started to go up to him, then burst into tears halfway to the door. Jisung had spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in the field with Daegal, giving Jaemin the space to console her, only to have her do the same thing again when he eventually came back inside.
He’s insistent that Jisung doesn’t stop the walks, though. It’s the only time any of them get out of the house, and it’s helping both Jisung and Daegal to get the fresh air, he can tell. Jisung had abandoned his knee rehab when they’d left his equipment back in the dorm, so getting some easy exercise is really the least he should be doing anyway, and he’s quick to make a new hobby out of it. Where Jaemin hasn’t picked up his camera in months, Jisung takes it up with ease, finding new routes so that he can snap new things, coming back to show the results to Jaemin proudly. Jaemin shows him how to work some basic editing software, and just like that, Jisung has passion for something new. He’s clumsy at it, but he enjoys it, and it’s a passion that doesn’t take them back to the too-big practise room with all the spaces they can’t even begin to fill. Photography is a singular activity.
Taking care of his mom is also a singular activity, and one Jaemin has thrown himself into over the past few months. So when she falls sick—really sick, difficulty breathing in the night, wheezing he only hears because it’s another night of sleepwalking for Jisung—he doesn’t know what to do with himself. She goes into hospital, and suddenly she’s out of Jaemin’s hands, and he has nothing left to hold onto.
Jisung is there, of course, but he’s the one holding onto Jaemin. He’s the one Jaemin has to protect from any more of this grief, so he can’t pass this onto him. Jaemin tells him to go back to the house and feed Daegal in the morning, stays by his Mom’s side alone as the machines breathe for her.
She wakes up somewhere around midday, and Jaemin pulls himself out of his daze.
“Hi Mom,” he says. “How are you feeling?”
His mom looks him up and down, then looks around her. “Where’s Sanghoon?” She coughs the words out, and her chest rattles.
“Dad’s not here,” he says. “Your chest, does it hurt?”
“Who are you?” she asks. “Where’s Jaemin?”
-
Mom gets sick twice more that year. After the second infection, she starts to get angry at the littlest things, starts to fight Jaemin when he tries to feed her, cries because she doesn’t know who either of them are. The doctors recommend she be put into care, but he knows it would do her more harm than good.
The third sickness takes her, and Jaemin finds it’s almost a relief.
-
Jaemin sleeps a lot more after his mom dies. Jisung’s sleep talking doesn’t wake him up anymore—or maybe he’s stopped doing it completely. Jaemin can’t tell.
Jisung takes over their meals when he can’t get out of bed, which is every day. Jaemin can never eat very much of anything no matter how it tastes, which hurts both of them because it’s obvious how hard Jisung is trying, but he’s never discouraged by it. The wave is catching up with Jaemin now, hitting him hard and pulling him under. But at least he still has Jisung and his overcooked vegetables.
A few days after the first anniversary of the Snap and two months after the death of his mother, he and Jisung go and visit the monument set up in Olympic Park; big marble blocks set up in rows along one side of the park like pale, polished gravestones. They have the names of everyone in the country who’d been Snapped away engraved into them, and it’s eerily quiet to walk around, the way real cemeteries always are. The three blocks on the farthest side are for celebrities, easy to find for people who want to lay flowers there.
It’s seeing all their names that breaks him. There they are, all grouped together on the idol block, right along with so many of their other friends from the company and wider music industry. There are so many flowers laid out around this block that they can’t get close enough to touch it, but Jaemin can see their names clearly enough.
He sits down on the gravel and cries for them. Daegal noses at him, concerned, and Jisung is at a loss of what to do, because Jaemin has never shown this side of himself to anyone, has never cried like this for anyone before. But he kneels beside him, holding Jaemin’s shoulders, and doesn’t cry with him. He just holds him. After all those times he’d cried with Minyoung, he manages to hold out this time, for Jaemin.
He’s glad he has Jisung.
-
“We shouldn’t stay in this house,” Jisung announces one day.
“Why?” Jaemin asks, not moving from his position on the couch, curled into one of the cushions.
“Because after… you know. We didn’t want to stay in the empty dorm, did we? But now we’re still here, and—I know this is different, Jaemin, it’s your childhood home, but you don’t have to sell it or anything. Let’s just leave for a while. We’re not doing anything good here.”
Sometimes, when he can pull his head above water for long enough, he can tell that the tables have turned. Jisung is the one taking care of him now, and it makes him feel sick whenever he thinks about it for too long, because Jisung has every right to be in the same position as him. Jaemin is his hyung, he’s supposed to take care of him, supposed to make sure he doesn’t lapse back into that haze he was in for the first few months. He thinks about it until he feels like suffocating with the guilt, but never finds the energy to do anything but sleep it all off again, repeating an endless cycle. Guilt, sleep, being sick to his stomach over it all, sleep.
And here comes the guilt to eat him up again. Jisung has never been the type to make plans like this. It shouldn’t be his responsibility.
“And go where?” he asks into the cushion.
“Anywhere you want. Where have you always wanted to visit?”
Jaemin blinks, slow. “Europe.”
“Then let’s go to Europe. What’s stopping us?”
Jaemin can’t think of anything more exhausting. “Do you want to go to Europe?”
“Yes! I bet we could take some amazing pictures there. I’ve never been, I’d like to go.”
Jaemin looks back at him. He doesn’t have the heart to tell Jisung no, but he can’t even imagine getting up from this position on the couch right now. He can’t go to Europe.
“Don’t worry, Hyung, I’ll sort everything out. You just have to come with me.”
He stays completely still. He wants to sleep this off.
He only realises he’s shut his eyes when Jisung’s hand comes to the side of his head, petting his hair very gently. “I’ll look into it,” he promises. “For when you’re ready.”
-
They fly to France four months later and trek around Paris to tick off every box on the tourist list Jisung has compiled for them. Jaemin goes through the motions without feeling like he’s really there at all. Sunny Spain is a bit better, with the children running around shouting and laughing on the beach, with the tiny crab shells Jisung brings to show him, with their shared ice creams on the promenade. Small things that make him feel present in a way he hasn’t in a while, connected to the world again even if it’s a different world to the one he knows. Daegal is ecstatic about running up and down the length of the beach over and over again, the way Jaemin might if he had any real energy to join her. But it’s enough to watch her go, catching the attention of smiling tourists on the way. Still Chenle’s dog at heart.
It’s the Czech mountains that really shift something in him. Their cottage is in the middle of nowhere, and he only has to step out of the back door to see the climbing green landscape that surrounds them, to hear the birds sing, to hear the trees sway in the wind. If they walk for ten minutes they reach a waterfall, crystal clear and rushing down loud as it likes. When the sun sets the water turns golden, and it might be the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
“I don’t think we have to forgive ourselves,” Jisung says one night, when they’re drinking wine and eating thick buttered bread next to the stream that connects to the waterfall. “I think we might always have regrets, but we have to carry on, right?”
“Is this what carrying on is?” he asks. “Running away to Europe?”
“It can be, if you want it to be.”
They can see the stars so well from here, brighter than Jaemin has ever seen them before. They’re stargazing on their backs in the grass as the stream trickles along beside them, but when he turns his head, Jisung isn’t looking up at the sky.
“Do you want to stay here?”
The regrets and the grief are a burden he can’t shake. But they seem lighter here. Perhaps the pure running water carries them away, or perhaps the feeling of space is enough to ease his heart for a while.
“Just a bit longer?”
Jisung turns to look back up at the stars, but Jaemin doesn’t miss the small smile on his face. “Yeah. Let’s stay a little while longer.”
-
Jisung goes back into rehab when they return to Seoul. He’d been almost finished with it before the Snap, but abandoning the last few weeks of his knee exercises and medication before a year of grieving—only to then go on a month-long trip around Europe, he kicks himself for not asking Jisung about his knees at the time—has obviously set him back again. The company arranges a new album for the group but Jisung isn’t able to dance yet, and Jaemin won’t get back on the stage without Jisung there, so the other eight members have a comeback that’s very successful. No other active groups have as many members left as they do, after all—though no others lost quite so many, either.
They go back to stay in the dorm rather than returning to Jaemin’s empty house. Jeno’s belongings are still there but someone has neatly tidied them away into boxes, while Renjun’s belongings are all gone. Jisung cries when he sees his bedroom so bare, then comes to sleep in Jaemin’s bed like he always does, and they both avoid the room entirely.
Visiting the others after their promotions was inevitable, but it surprises him how much enjoys it. Two and a half years since the Snap, and this is the first time all ten of them have been in the same room at the same time. He thought it would be painful, but even Yangyang seems happy to see them, though he’s quieter than Jaemin remembers. Everyone’s different in little ways—but everyone is also the same too, and it’s comforting to return to. They ignore the gaps between them by cramming into the smallest dorm living room and talking fondly about the ones they miss for hours. Jaemin finds it doesn’t even make his stomach feel bottomless, like it usually does when he thinks about them—instead, he can actually laugh when Taeyong recalls Donghyuck’s antics during their last promotions in the week before he’d fallen into dust. He hadn’t seen Donghyuck or Mark much during that last week, but it’s a small comfort to know that they were as happy as they could be.
After a while, Daegal gets bored of playing with Bella and having people coo over her and exits the conversation to sniff around Mark’s room. Jaemin jogs after her, happy to take a breather from the crowded 10th floor dorm living room. Unlike the rooms in their own dorm, Mark’s bedroom looks almost untouched, like he might come out of the shower any moment now and say hello, might smother Daegal as she yaps and jumps up at him. Even his friendship ring is sat on the bedside table, gathering dust—he and Jisung still wear theirs, but he’d assumed the others had all disappeared in the Snap. Mark must’ve been getting ready for bed at the time.
“How’s the knee coming on, Jisung?” Ten is asking when he returns to the group again, Daegal in his arms.
“Good! They think I’ll be discharged in a few more weeks!”
“Maybe we could all have a comeback together next time,” Doyoung says, finger trailing the rim of his glass. “I think it would comfort some people to see you both again.”
Jaemin stands at the edge of the room scratching behind Daegal’s ears, but he can feel Jisung’s eyes on him. Jisung had told him while they were in Spain, breathed into a pillow when they’d still been waking up to the sun, that he wanted to be back on stage. That he missed it, and he wanted to go back to it again even if only for their friends that couldn’t anymore. Though they’d cited Jisung’s injury to avoid this comeback, it’s really Jaemin who’s not sure if he can face it. When he’d said as much to him then, Jisung had reached across the mattress, cupped his hand gently and said,
“I couldn’t go without you. I’ll wait for you, if you want.”
He wasn’t sure if he wanted to go back at all without his best friends at his side, but now that he’s here, he’s reminded how much these remaining eight mean to him, too. Everything he couldn’t give his friends in their lifetimes can’t be changed no matter how much he regrets it, but everything he can give to his living friends is still in his hands. The small happiness he could give to people around the world who love him and his band is, somehow, still in his hands.
And then there’s Jisung, of course. Jaemin would do anything to make him happy.
“I hope we can,” Jisung says, and Jaemin looks up at him. He’s smiling, so Jaemin sends him a small smile back. “I really hope so.”
-
They release an album as a ten-member band at the end of the year. When he gets up on stage and starts to dance, the screams and smiles for him in the audience are the starkest displays of happiness he’s seen in three years. He wonders how he ever thought of not coming back to this.
Jisung cries the first time he steps into the practise room again, the first time he goes back for recording, and the first time they step out on stage to perform. He doesn’t realise the third time is happy crying until he clutches Jaemin’s shirt and tells him,
“I bet they’re really proud of you, Hyung. I’m really proud of you. I’m so glad we came back.”
Jaemin feels warmth in his chest for the first time in three years.
-
When Jisung’s birthday comes around the next year, he’s officially older than Mark ever got to be. He’s surpassed the age of everyone in Dream apart from Jaemin himself, and Jaemin is now the same age Sicheng was when he Snapped. Sometimes he watches videos of Sicheng to compare himself to him, wonders if he seems as mature as Sicheng when he danced, or as kind as when he took care of others. Jisung still can’t really stand to watch things like that, so he doesn’t do it often, but it’s a secret comfort to Jaemin. To know that years of his friendships are documented and kept safe online, available to look back on whenever his memory fails him, to remind him of the details he’s starting to forget.
They have more breaks now between comebacks. Empathy and living life to the fullest became trendy since losing half of everyone gave the world more perspective. The rookie groups tend to be favoured in entertainment anyway—they don’t have any of the holes established groups inevitably do. Jaemin doesn’t mind it, because it means that the foreign members go and visit home a lot more often, and he and Jisung get to go on a lot more trips together.
They’re on a beach in Busan when Jisung makes the suggestion.
“Do I what, now?” Jaemin asks, brushing the hair out of his eyes. He surely didn’t hear him right over the wind.
“Do you want to move in together?”
“Jisung, we already live together.”
Jisung huffs impatiently. “No, I mean like properly. We currently share a bed in a dorm that has two empty rooms we can’t even face going into. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a space that’s really our own?”
Jaemin stares at him, squinting into the sunlight. “Are you asking me to buy an apartment with you?”
“I was thinking of a house, actually. Real estate is cheaper than ever, you know! And if it goes well, then who knows…”
“Who knows what?”
Jisung averts his eyes, bunching his fingers into the picnic blanket underneath him. “Don’t laugh at me, okay? I was looking into the requirements for fostering recently, and owning property shows that you’re capable of providing for a child. You don’t actually need a mother involved either, like I thought you might, or to be married or anything—you just need to be a capable adult who can provide for a child.”
Jaemin gapes at him. “Jisung, are you asking to start a family with me?”
“I—no! Not like that!” Jisung flushes red. “I was thinking about Minyoung!”
“Minyoung? After all this time?”
“Yeah,” he says, digging his heels into the blanket and staring ahead instead of at Jaemin. “Of course! What if she was never adopted? She’ll be all alone right now. But wasn’t it kind of nice, having her around? And we were the ones who found her and took care of her at first, so it seems like fate or something. Anyway, this isn’t about that. I just got ahead of myself thinking about buying a house. Or an apartment, if you prefer that.”
Jaemin is so fond of this boy it hurts. “As I remember it, I was the one doing most of the work with Minyoung. You were deathly afraid of breaking her.”
“She was very small then,” Jisung protests. “She’d be nearly five now. Talking and everything. I know she won’t remember us, but I still remember her.”
“Nearly five,” Jaemin muses, hands slowly pushing into the sand. “I suppose she would. It doesn’t feel like it was that long ago we had her around.” And the others, too. Somehow it keeps surprising him that time keeps moving, that the years since he last saw so many loved ones keep piling up.
“Maybe we could try and find her in a few years,” Jisung says. “When we’re done with the idol thing. The new groups are doing really well these days, so I don’t know how much longer people will want us around.”
“I can’t believe you’re planning our house, child, and retirement at age twenty-two, Jisung,” he says, though he can’t help but grin about it. Jisung somehow never fails to surprise him.
“Well,” Jisung says, flustered, throwing up some sand with an agitated movement. “I’m just saying! We can’t stay in that dorm forever, you know!”
“No,” he agrees. “We can’t. But I don’t want SM to sell it either. They would throw out all of Jeno’s things, and that was their last home with us.”
“We can keep it part-time, go back and live in it for work. I was thinking we would get a place further out from Seoul anyway.” He stretches his arms out, falling back into the sand. “Maybe here?”
“In Busan?”
“Near the beach. You like it here, don’t you?”
He hadn’t said anything, so he wonders how Jisung could tell. The sea calms him like nothing else can, and the space the beach offers him to walk around and swim and sit in clean air is the closest he gets to breathing, sometimes. He likes their seaside trips the best. To live here?
“I would really like that,” he says. He looks at Jisung, who’s smile grows as he looks back at him. Jaemin’s heart swells. “I love you a lot, you know.”
“I know,” Jisung says, cheeky. “I’m the best.”
Jaemin tackles him into the sand, and Jisung shouts in surprise. “What, you aren’t going to say you love me back?”
“Ow, ow! You already know I do!”
Jaemin releases him. “Doesn’t mean I don’t like to hear it.”
“Love you too, Hyung,” Jisung says petulantly, brushing sand out of his hair. Daegal comes running up to them, proudly placing a large piece of driftwood at Jisung’s feet. “Thanks, Daegal. Good girl. I’m going to move in with you instead of Jaemin.”
Daegal yaps at him, and Jaemin picks up the driftwood to throw it as far as he can down the beach. Daegal goes running after it as fast as little legs on soft sand will take her.
“She is more likeable than me,” Jaemin agrees. “But neither of you would survive without me.”
“That’s right,” Jisung says, soft. “We need you there.”
“Then I’ll go with you wherever you want, Jisung,” he says. “You matter to me the most.”
Jisung beams at him, ducks his head, then stands to go after Daegal. Jaemin watches him as he goes, then imagines doing this for the rest of his life.
It would be enough.
-
They have a house within six months. On the first weekend there they hold a housewarming party with everyone they can think to invite, get way too drunk, and Jaemin kisses Jisung’s cheeks way too many times (or so he tells him). They sleep the next day away in the same bed even though they have separate rooms now, and Jaemin cooks them breakfast as the sun sets. Then they take a restless Daegal for her walk along the beach, not ten minutes away from their house. Somehow, this new life feels like the easiest thing in the world to Jaemin, who can’t remember the last time something felt easy even before the Snap.
It’s a new kind of happiness. Maybe he’ll never be able to feel the way he did before the Snap—maybe the person he was then has been swept away with the wind, too. Trying to take back what he had before is useless, his old loves now an invisible ash that have burned him away from the inside out. A new Jaemin, though, reborn with his new joys, with his Jisung and his Daegal and his house by the beach—maybe he can have that. Maybe he can even enjoy it.
-
The second time it happens, they’re on a flight home from Indonesia. They’d visited the caves, the forests, the temples, the beaches, the villages and cities. Eaten the food and bought new clothes, picked up souvenirs for the others. It’s his favourite trip they’ve been on since the Czech Republic.
When they land, the airport is mayhem. They walk right through immigration—there’s no one there to check their passports. Everyone is running around, abandoning their posts, crying into phones. The arrivals area is packed with people who don’t seem to know where they’re going or what they’re doing—and some who most certainly do, barrelling through the crowd to leave as quickly as possible. The chaos reminds him of the night he tries not to remember.
“Jisung—” he starts, turning to look behind him, where Jisung had been just a second ago. He’s there no longer, leaving Jaemin in the path of too many people trying to get by him. “Jisung?”
He turns his head, but he can’t see him anywhere. The airport is too full of afraid people—he feels ash flutter by his face, turns around fast to catch it. Not ash. A woman’s hair as she pushes by him.
“Jisung?” he shouts, panic rising high in his throat. “Jisung!”
Someone moves out of his line of sight, and just between the crowd he spots Jisung’s dark head looming over a group of women. He’s gazing up at one of the high-mounted televisions showing the news.
He pushes his way through people and grabs Jisung’s arm, who belatedly turns to face him. “What are you doing?” he shouts. This airport is too loud. “I thought you were gone!”
“Hyung!” Jisung says, gripping him back, eyes so round they’re almost bugging out of his head. “Look!”
He points up to the screen. The newscaster is crumpled in her chair, not reading the news but talking into her phone, in tears. There’s a flashing headline that takes up half the screen underneath her.
BREAKING NEWS: THE SNAPPED POPULATION RETURNS
Jaemin stares. He looks at Jisung, who looks back at him, then looks around—the clothes on some of these people, just a few years out of fashion—the confusion, the tears, the phone calls and rushing to get out. It is just like that night—it’s exactly like it.
“Hyung,” Jisung says, and Jaemin gapes back at him. “Let’s go home.”
-
The drive back to the dorm is a haze. The streets are even worse than they’d been before—rather than too many static vehicles, there are way too many speeders taking dangerous turns and running lights. They pass by more than one crashed vehicle, but don’t stop for anything.
He’s shaking when they come to a stop outside the apartment building, Jaemin not even bothering to park properly. Jisung rips his side door open and starts to run inside, and Jaemin thinks it’s a miracle that he’s keeping up with him, step by step, headed for the elevator.
Jisung punches the code for their apartment in with fumbling hands. The door chimes when it opens, and three faces turn their way.
“There you are!” Chenle says, hands on his hips. He’s stood just inside the doorway, right in front of him and Jisung, really there in the flesh. “This random lady just kicked us out of my house! She kept saying it wasn’t ours anymore, but she must’ve broken in somehow, I’ve never seen her in my life! I don’t know how she did it, but my room was all different too. Also, I couldn’t find Daegal, so she’s probably kidnapped her, but I couldn’t get through to the police line to report it. There’s something really weird going on out there.” He squints up at Jisung. “Where have you two been? Why do you look taller than usual?”
Jisung crashes into him with a hug so forceful that it sends Chenle walking several steps backwards until they both fall onto the couch. He’s laughing and hitting Jisung’s back, shouting to try and get him to move his weight off him as Jisung bursts into tears on Chenle’s shoulder.
Jaemin stares at Renjun and Jeno, who are standing together in front of the TV. He and Jisung haven’t been back to the dorms in a few months now, and the place is covered in dust. He can distantly hear Chenle’s aunt muttering about it in the kitchen.
Jeno stares at Jisung. “Why does he look bigger?” he asks. “And why is he crying?”
Renjun is looking straight at Jaemin. “Jaemin? What’s wrong?”
Jaemin can’t move. He stares, doesn’t blink, taking their faces in. In case this is a trick, or a delusion, in case this isn’t permanent too—he just wants to take them in. To see them like this, the exact same way they looked five years ago.
Jeno is looking at him too, now. “Jaemin?”
Renjun walks over to him, and Jaemin tracks his movements, still stood in the open doorway. Renjun waves a hand in front of his face. “Earth to Jaemin? Are you okay?”
He reaches out to place a hand on Jaemin’s arm, and Jaemin flinches away, still staring. It’s hard to draw in a full breath. “Don’t touch me,” he says, and his voice doesn’t come out with it. He tries again, blinking once, twice, eyes feeling hot. “Don’t touch me if you aren’t real.”
Renjun looks back at Jeno, then to Jaemin again, with real concern now. This is the second time in his life Jaemin has let someone see him cry.
“Nana,” he says gently. “Of course we’re real. What else would we be?” He opens his arms to him for a hug, but Jaemin brings his hands up to Renjun’s face instead, cupping his cheeks very, very delicately. He doesn’t fall to ash when Jaemin touches him—he smiles, a little confused, a little embarrassed, but lets him touch. He’s here. He’s real.
Jaemin goes into the hug slowly, carefully, and Renjun squeezes him back. Jaemin’s legs finally give out at that, and suddenly Jeno is at his side, helping Renjun lower him to the floor.
“Alright,” Chenle says, finally free from Jisung’s grasp, who switches to giving Jeno a tearful hug instead. “What’s actually going on? Does this have something to do with all the shouting people on the streets when we were coming here? I thought I was going to die crossing some of those roads. Has the apocalypse finally come?”
Jisung leaps onto Renjun next, who accepts his hug even when it pushes him back onto the floor opposite Jaemin. “What’s wrong with the two of you?” he asks. “What’s happening out there? Is it related to why all my belongings have disappeared from the apartment?”
Jaemin can’t stop staring at him. When Jeno’s face comes into his line of vision, he happily stares at him instead, and then at Chenle, who’s surveying Jaemin warily.
“You’re alive,” Jaemin says. “You’re back.”
“You’re in shock or something,” Chenle tells him. “Of course we’re alive. We haven’t gone anywhere.”
Jisung is struggling to say much past how hard he’s crying, but he buries his face in Renjun’s shoulder as Jeno rubs his back. “I—I love you,” he manages between gasping breaths.
“Who are you talking to?” Renjun asks, half-amused, half-concerned.
“You,” he stammers. “All of you. I m-missed you so m-much, Hyung—”
“Well, we’re back now,” Jeno says, going for soothing but sounding mostly alarmed. “Wherever we’ve been. Where—where have we been?” he asks Jaemin tentatively, like he’s not sure he wants to know the answer.
Jaemin continues to stare. “Doesn’t matter now. Come and hug me.” His phone is going crazy in his pocket, and he doesn’t protest when Chenle takes it out to investigate.
“Why is Ten-hyung calling you?” he asks.
“Answer it,” Jaemin grins, then bursts into laughter, gripping Jeno in his arms. “Oh, please answer it. You’ll make his day.”
“These two have lost it,” Renjun mutters under his breath, Jisung still in his arms. Chenle answers the call, and from the phone there’s a shout so loud that Jaemin can hear Ten hollering Chenle’s name down the receiver.
“I love you guys,” Jaemin says, cradling Jeno’s head to his chest. “I love you so much.”
“We know, Nana,” Jeno says, muffled into his shirt. “We know.”
-
Meeting the others is easier, after the initial shock gives way to actual elation. Mark gives him a hug, long and hard, like he’d felt each of the five years too. Donghyuck takes it well when Jaemin runs and jumps onto him, laughs out loud right before they both fall over, because Jaemin is a little taller now, a little broader. Jisung is a lot taller and broader, and everyone keeps looking at him the most, but Jaemin knows he doesn’t mind the attention.
They all separate again to go and see their families. It makes his heart ache, having to let them out of his sight again, but the heroes have given the world their assurance that this is permanent, this time. His friends will stay alive and well, as if the last five years had never happened at all. They did happen, of course—Jaemin will never be rid of them. But he’ll bear their aftermath if it means everyone he loves will get to stay with him for good, a gift he never imagined he would earn, not in a million years. But here he is. Here they are.
Even he and Jisung have to go their separate ways for the first time in years. Jaemin drops Jisung off at his family home, watches him cry the same way his mother cries as she envelops him in a hug, then drives back to his own home.
His father is there, looking at the picture of his mother on the mantlepiece, covered in dust.
“My son,” he says, smile small but warm. “You’re home.”
Jaemin comes up to him and hugs him. “We missed you so much, Dad. I’m sorry Mom’s not here to tell you herself. I did my best with her.”
His dad puts a hand to the top of Jaemin’s head, grounding him. “I know it was difficult, but you can rest now. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere again.”
He holds him tighter. “I love you a lot, Dad. I missed you.”
“I love you too, Jaemin. So much. I’m sorry for leaving you alone all this time.”
Jaemin releases the hug, leaning back out without breaking physical contact.
“It’s alright,” he says. “I was never alone.”