Chapter Text
There’s a very specific memory Changkyun has, from when he was leaving home for the first time, bright-eyed and excited for the future in front of him.
Changkyun’s pretty sure he was eighteen then, just barely. He still has baby fat on his face and his hair falls in his eyes because his mother hasn’t cut it in a couple of weeks. The company told them that they wanted him to be a blank canvas for them to work on. He feels like something that went unsaid was that they wanted a clean slate rather than the person he spent eighteen years becoming.
He didn't think it back then, of course. He was just far too excited to have something so exciting so close to him, in his grasp. He barely realized what he was leaving behind while chasing his dreams.
He has this memory, when the skies were gray and his mother was seeing him off, his father shut away in his room because he couldn’t see him leave, his brother punching him in the shoulder and slinging an arm around him in the vague impression of a hug before leaving to go out with friends.
His mother cups his face with her palms, soft and unmarred by time. Changkyun wants to joke that the moisturizers he’s constantly buying for her from corner stores are worth the money and that she should stop losing them, but she’s staring at him so reverently that the words don’t even float to the front of his mind.
Changkyun doesn’t remember what she says. He wishes he could say he did—every picture-perfect movie scene is always committed to his memory when he’s watching it through a screen. It’s like living in the moment doesn’t let him ever experience just how important it is. He’s left grasping for straws where he wishes he could dig bloodied nails into the moment and never let go; he only ever comes to this realization in retrospect, when time’s already done away with anything worth remembering.
He remembers the look in her eyes, he remembers a vague reminder of her love for him. He remembers her hands on his cheeks and he remembers her eyes wrinkling at the corners when she smiles at him, straining as his father yells something from his room.
Changkyun leaves, and he doesn’t come back for a long, long time. Sometimes he feels like his mother never went back inside after watching him leave at the front door, clothes swaying in the light spring breeze as cold bites her skin and Changkyun walked on, oblivious.
He thinks if he turned back and went home, much later, he’d still see her waiting for him. It’s a pipedream but he finds himself wanting it more than dreams he’s just barely accomplished.
Changkyun wishes he turned back, sometimes. If only just for a moment.
Changkyun’s phone buzzes in his pocket insistently, though he does little else but silence the call before he tucks it into his bag and makes his way into the recording studio.
Hyunwoo is sitting behind the vocal director, keeping an eye on every member’s recording, and Jooheon sits next to him, flipping through papers and writing notes. Changkyun’s sure he’s fixing up things in his lyrics that he doesn’t need to, nitpicking at grammar and half-rhymes Changkyun deliberately mixed in.
Jooheon never shows anyone these notes, his own copies of their lyrics tucked away in his room, notebooks, backpacks, spilling out of every crevice, but Changkyun can see the space of stress between his eyebrows pinched in concentration, an expression he recognizes from their survival show. He’s seen it in every session they had writing together, though the only difference from then is that his anger isn’t as palpable.
Changkyun doesn’t think he’s any less irritated by him, but when he’s away from the stressful environment No Mercy brought, he’s sure that all superficial resentment is given away for cold anger.
He wishes, sometimes, that he could bury the hatchet for the both of them; ignore the fact that it’s a two-man job and just get it over with. Changkyun’s starting to hate the constant hazing, but he still feels guilt in his lungs when he scrolls through social media and sees outcries for justice for Gunhee by various fans. They garner thousands of likes and Changkyun’s own name is dragged through the dirt multiple times.
All they serve to remind him is that these people had a bond before he got there and he disrupted it for the sake of his own want to muscle his way into a group that didn’t want him. Changkyun can understand their frustration but he hates it a little bit and he can’t tell Jooheon to just stop grieving but he wants to be welcome.
It’s an awful intersection of conflicting desires. Changkyun feels like he’s the only one trying to find a compromise within the tangled mess it brings.
“Can you go over this part once more?” Their vocal director, Hyunsuk, asks, Changkyun lowering the paper he holds in his left hand to look at the man through the glass before nodding, turning back to the microphone. The backing track runs and he raps the first verse before the man’s voice cuts in again.
“Okay, good. Next verse?” He asks. Changkyun hums, inclining his head once.
“Can I listen back to it once?” He requests boldly. Hyunsuk nods and Changkyun hears his voice play back to him. There’s something off about it, something he’s not happy about. His diction is a little strange with some words and they don’t flow together the same way they did when he practiced along earlier. The man seems to notice, a half-grin on his face as he pushes a button and his voice filters through the booth again.
“Do you wanna go again?” His voice is a little teasing, as though expecting Changkyun’s answer.
“Just once,” He requests, biting back his own sheepish smile. The man nods, tapping at something on his keyboard before giving him a thumbs up through the glass. Changkyun returns it and the backing track plays again, giving him a ten-second berth to roll his shoulders back and try again.
He raps again and this time is infinitely more satisfied, letting out a quiet ‘Okayyy,’ once the music cuts, giving the producer a thumbs up from behind the glass. He sees the man nod out of the corner of his eye and flips the page, moving into the next verse.
“Uh, Changkyun,” He hears Hyunwoo’s voice cut in, surprising him. He turns to the glass, taking the headphones off one ear to listen. Changkyun hopes the surprise doesn’t show on his face just from being spoken to.
“I’m going to have to go, our manager is calling me for something. Jooheon’s going to monitor you from back here, okay?” Hyunwoo’s voice tilts upwards in the impression he’s asking a question at the end, but Changkyun knows well enough that this is just something done for the sake of semantics, inform rather than ask his opinion.
“Yeah, that’s fine,” He answers, agreeable as always. Hyunwoo nods and begins to pack up, taking his things with him before the door shuts behind him and it’s just him, Jooheon, and their producer there. The air feels much more awkward, though Hyunsuk doesn’t seem to notice, just pressing his button to speak to Changkyun again.
“We’ll go from the second verse. Jooheon-ssi, feel free to offer advice where you can. I want to see if there’s anything you can spot to be worked on. You’ll need to get better at seeing places for each other to improve as you work on more music instead of leaving everything to your leader or me, okay?” Jooheon nods, eyes a little wide as he shuffles forward, sitting in an empty chair nearby Hyunsuk.
Changkyun’s nerves spike and he curls his fingers into the fabric of his hoodie in an attempt to self-soothe before nodding as well.
He barely makes it four seconds into his verse before he pauses, sighing in frustration before shaking his head.
“Sorry, sorry. Just tripped up. Go again in a second?” He apologizes before either Jooheon or Hyunsuk have time to scold him, though he knows it’s much less likely to be coming from the latter.
Hyunsuk gives him a thumbs up and Changkyun raps his verse under his breath with his eyes closed once before giving one back, the man playing the backing track once more before Changkyun tries again.
He gets through it, but it doesn’t sound right. Before he can voice this, Hyunsuk holds a hand up to him, one finger outstretched in a motion to shush him. Keeping his finger on the button that lets Changkyun hear into the studio, he speaks to Jooheon.
“Did you notice anything that run-through? Other than him getting through it?” Jooheon looks at Changkyun for a moment, making eye contact before turning back to Hyunsuk.
“His voice was too tight,” He says, though it’s more hesitant than Changkyun thinks he’s heard the man sound before. It’s humanizing, in a sense, to know that there are people that Jooheon, too, gets nervous around. “And he sped up a little bit too much, so there was space after the verse that shouldn’t have been there.”
Hyunsuk nods in approval, turning back to Changkyun. “And that’s why you were going to ask me to let you redo it, right?” He asks. Changkyun nods, sheepish again. Hyunsuk nods back, rolling his shoulders.
“This type of directing you two should get more well-versed in. Self-directing and helping your peers is important. Especially as the two rappers of the group, right?” The two of them agree to this. Jooheon looks less disinterested in him now, at the least.
Hyunsuk seems pleased by this, and the rest of their studio session goes fine, with Jooheon sensibly critiquing him, bringing up points that Changkyun probably wouldn’t have considered if it weren’t for a pair of outside ears listening in.
He would’ve done the same for Jooheon if the man hadn’t finished recording his lines the day before, tagging along today for the sole purpose of accompanying Minhyuk, who left ages ago. Then he was here to critique Changkyun on paper before being surprised by the opportunity to do it aloud as well. Changkyun feels like this breaks down a wall but he’s not sure if that’s a good thing, in this case.
They wrap up fairly quickly, about fifteen minutes later, and Changkyun grabs his things as he gets ready to leave. Hyunsuk doesn’t make a move to leave but Jooheon drapes his coat over his elbow and they exchange an awkward look as they realize they’ll most likely be walking home to their dorms together.
They’re silent most of the way home, barely speaking past a few murmured apologies when they bump into each other. Jooheon seems reluctant to talk to him, even with his earlier help.
Despite that, Changkyun can see there’s an opportunity here. An attempt for him to bridge the gap between them because he knows that no one else will do it unless he tries to reach out first. Despite Jooheon’s qualms with him, his advice earlier was helpful, even if he was only doing it in front of someone who wasn’t cued into the tension between the group of them and someone they had to put a front on for.
Changkyun needs to grasp onto every inch he’s given, though. Given an inch and taking a mile was the saying and for this to work out, he’d need to be unyielding in that mindset, if only to not sink under the surface in the face of adversity.
This could very easily go wrong. Changkyun’s never quite known where to give up, though.
“Thank you, for earlier,” Changkyun says. They’re five minutes away from the dorms now, but Jooheon pauses in his steps, forcing Changkyun to slow as well.
“What for?” He asks. There’s something in his eyes that Changkyun can’t parse the meaning out from. He continues tentatively, anyway.
“For your comments, earlier. In the studio. They were insightful and I appreciated them, I’m glad you could help me when I was struggling. I enjoy working with you, I hope you do as well.” He thinks he might have been going a bit too far with the last addition, but he doesn’t flinch as Jooheon meets his eyes.
Jooheon stares at him, as though dumbfounded, for a few moments. He blinks, then speaks, and—
“What are you talking about?” He sounds genuinely taken off-guard—as if he wasn’t expecting this reaction at all. Changkyun falters in his false confidence then, feeling something uncomfortable bubbling in his chest.
He shouldn’t have said anything he shouldn’t have said anything he shouldn’t have—
“What are you talking about?” Jooheon repeats. He sounds almost helpless in his muted anger. “We aren’t friends, Changkyun-ah. I only did that because Hyunsuk-ssi asked me to. I don’t know—It’s like—You do this every. Time.”
“I just… I wanted to…” Changkyun tries interjecting, trailing off a moment later at the look he gets.
Jooheon continues, “You just, you don’t know where to stop, man. It’s—I’m nice to you once and you act like I’m giving you permission to do all this other stuff and you think we’re suddenly friends, it’s almost creepy, man—” He cuts himself off there, lips pursed. “Maybe creepy is harsh, but. You don’t listen unless we’re harsh. Do you get that? It’s—I don’t even know, dude, it’s so frustrating just having to say this.”
Changkyun’s silent now. Shame pools in his stomach.
“Can you stop?” Jooheon asks finally. “Just stop intruding? Stop acting like we’re friends. We aren’t friends. Just stop.”
Quietly, he nods.
Jooheon stares at him for a moment more before walking off toward their dorms. Changkyun stands and watches him go. Just the act of staring makes tears sting in his eyes and he crouches down to press the heels of his hands against his forehead.
He sits for two minutes. Those two minutes are quiet in two ways and Changkyun just. Thinks, for a moment.
Things will not get better.
It’s a scary thought. He knows it’s not realistic. He knows that, but he bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes iron and screws his eyes shut tighter before sighing. Then, he straightens up again before rolling his shoulders back, face turned upwards with his eyes closed as he just takes a moment to breathe.
Finally, he follows Jooheon. It’s all he can do now, really.
When they’re closer to the dorms and Changkyun’s caught up to Jooheon, they walk side-by-side for the last few moments. It takes a while, but he speaks after the pressure on his throat lifts enough for him to squeeze out a few words.
“I’m sorry,” Changkyun says as they step into the elevator to their floor. Jooheon says nothing and gets off of the elevator at his floor without so much as looking at him.
Changkyun is alone again. He stares at his reflection in the metal door and doesn’t miss its absence when they open to his floor.
Changkyun’s world ends at 1:37 in the afternoon on a Thursday.
It’s not sunny, but it’s not raining, either. Rather, the weather is at a precipice where it can’t decide between blue skies and puddles for miles, settling on gray skies and warm breezes. He barely sees outside today, anyway, so it doesn’t matter. Dance practice for the morning is coming to a close and Changkyun knows they’ll have a brief, hour-long break for lunch before throwing themselves into the thick of learning again.
There’s barely been any time between other things to sort out, so he’s glad they’ll have this brief break, at the very least. Despite this being his fourth, he’s still surprised by how hectic everything is on the cusp of a new album, EP or not.
The stress hasn’t hit him full force, yet, but he can see it curling around the seven of them with how Hoseok gets snappier at their dance practices and how Kihyun always seems to have bags under his eyes in the morning when he makes them breakfast. Even people who are usually a little softer in his presence compared to the other are slowly crawling back into their shells around him. It hurts, a little, but Changkyun can cope.
When their choreographer finally calls for a break, Changkyun wants to collapse to the floor immediately. Jooheon does, earning tired chuckles from the others around him as Hoseok grabs him by the arm and tries pulling him up, despite Jooheon letting his entire body become dead weight. It’s the type of joking around Changkyun’s a little jealous of, but he leaves it.
Jooheon’s words from the week before stick with him.
He never really considered that his actions could be seen as creepy, but once the word was ascribed to him, despite Jooheon saying that it might have been harsh, he couldn’t get it out of his head. He found himself replaying almost every interaction he had with the others and he kept cringing, kept hating himself for every attempt to reach out that turned awkward. Changkyun hardly considered it could be because they were uncomfortable because he was coming on too strong, he always just. Thought it was old untouched resentment from the show.
Of course, in retrospect, it was silly to assume that they would be holding onto that grudge with such vigour that they would still hate him now, but now, it makes more sense. He was just too much, or something. He invaded their boundaries, made them uncomfortable.
Something under Changkyun’s skin crawls at this, old insults flung at him years ago, almost a decade, floating around his mind before he crinkles his face into a frown.
Changkyun hates it. He hates this new lens that Jooheon’s introduced into his life but he can’t forget it now that he’s wading in waist-deep waters of uncertainty.
He retreats to his corner, grabbing his bag as Hyunwoo calls for attention from the group.
“What do you guys want to eat?” He asks. Changkyun ignores the man, not bothering to answer. It’s routine by now. He’s fine with it. Changkyun isn’t picky. At first, he might’ve tried voicing his opinion, but he’s learned at this point that he’s very low in their hierarchy and he might as well be invisible.
“Chinese?” Hyungwon asks, sounding a little wistful. They haven’t had it in a while. Jooheon shakes his head, looking very insistent on something.
“Fried chicken,” He says, voice very clear. This gets a wave of complaints from the rest of them.
“Yah, are you serious—”
“We have a comeback in three weeks, we can’t have all that grease—”
“Speak for yourself, I think that—”
Changkyun tunes the group of them out, pulling out his phone to flip through notifications he hadn’t gotten to in a couple of days. His attention is immediately grabbed by the dozens of missed phone calls piled up in his notification centre.
They’re from his dad. And his brother. Changkyun’s anxiety spikes.
He fumbles to call back, pressing the phone to his ear and picking at the fabric of his shorts, the material flexible under his fingers. He twists it between his forefinger and thumb, self-soothing in a way.
The sound of the phone ringing echoes in his ears until it stops, abruptly. There’s silence, and Changkyun thinks that the call’s dropped without being picked up before he hears a voice.
“Changkyun?”
His father’s voice is grainy and a little static.
“Hi, Abeoji,” Changkyun greets him. He hopes that his anxiousness doesn’t translate over to him. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get back to you when you called earlier. I was really busy with the company and went straight to bed most days when I got home. How are you?”
There’s silence from the other end. It’s cutting, somehow, and Changkyun feels his calm demeanour crumble slightly.
“Abeoji?” He questions.
“You should’ve called back,” He says instead of anything Changkyun was expecting. “Why didn’t you?”
“I—I didn’t have time, I—”
“Didn’t have time for your family?” His father questions harshly. Despite that, it sounds crackly. Changkyun starts to get the feeling that something is wrong.
“What happened?” Changkyun asks, ignoring his jab.
“Why didn’t you ever call back?” He asks. This time, the question loses its anger. “She always waited for you to call back.”
“What happened?” Changkyun whispers. He feels such acute dread in his ribs that it hurts to listen to the man right now. His father breathes in deeply over the line.
“Eomeoni had a heart attack,” His father says. Changkyun waits for more, but nothing comes. His anxiety spikes again and he feels tremors in his hands. Changkyun sits up, almost aggravated.
“Is she okay? What hospital is she at? Is she still there?” He fires the questions off rapidly. Changkyun’s eyes flick over to the others, still arguing about food. He feels so removed from their reality that it’s a little frightening.
“She’s dead.”
Changkyun—
“What?” He asks. His lips are numb.
“She’s dead,” His father repeats. “She had a heart attack.” He sounds tired.
“She—” Changkyun cuts himself off. “What?” He questions in a whisper. Desperate.
“Why didn’t you call back?” His father asks again. Changkyun can tell he isn’t looking for an answer.
“Are you serious?” He tries.
“Why would I joke about this?”
There are so many things running through Changkyun’s mind.
You’re lying what are you talking about are you serious when did it happen did it hurt why did she how did you not know you could’ve where was hyung was she alone was she alone was she alone did she miss me did she say anything what were her last words I need to see her was she alone—
“Her funeral,” Changkyun says instead. He feels several things shift in his head and chest but none of them register.
“On Saturday,” His father says. Changkyun makes a noise in the back of his throat.
“Isn’t that too far off?”
“It was on Saturday,” His father corrects. “I tried calling you.”
What?
“What?” Changkyun repeats, something coming crashing down around him.
“If you weren’t so busy with that company you could’ve—” His father cuts himself off.
“Changkyun-ah,” He sighs.
“I need to. I. Can I—”
Can I come home?
The words are on the tip of his tongue, but he stops, because—
He has the comeback. And six people who will hate him if he misses it. And a grieving father who hates him at home. And his mother at home, haunting the walls, clinging to his clothes, her breath in his ear.
“Changkyun-ah?” His father questions.
“Did I really miss her funeral?” Changkyun questions, his voice barely a breath.
There’s silence. Then.
“I’m sorry, Changkyun-ah.”
Changkyun hangs up.
Numbly, he turns back to stare at the other six, finally settled as they scroll on their phones and chat with each other.
Unbidden, he thinks that if he was with Nu’Bility, he would have told them immediately. Then, the thought fades.
There’s no space for anything trivial, now. Endless confusion and denial swirl in his mind and he can’t gather them. Snatches of things flit by before he can spare them even a moment. It’s a whirlwind of everything and nothing.
Somewhere in the mess, the food they ordered comes. The others sit together, breaking wooden chopsticks and opening packages. Changkyun doesn’t even know what they ordered.
“Changkyun-ah,” Hyunwoo calls. “Come eat.”
It feels like it takes a long, long time for him to register the words in his head. It could have been the blink of an eye at the same time.
“It’s fine,” He says, lips numb. “I’m not hungry.”
Hyunwoo looks at him, for a moment, before shrugging and returning to his food. Changkyun stays in his corner, eyes staring at nothing,
A week, he thinks. She’s been dead for almost a week and I didn’t know.
Something quiet inside him dies then, too.
Time barely passes.
Everything is a sludge to wade through, a swamp that Changkyun has to cross with no end in sight.
His feet get sucked into puddles and dirt pulls him down as he sinks knee-deep into his grief and his face is mud-streaked with tears at any given chance but he makes it through because he has to, he has to.
It’s barely been two weeks and he feels like he’s going to fall apart at a light breeze but he’s taken a wrecking ball to the stomach and he’s still standing so Changkyun thinks he’s just waiting for something to give. For something to wet his eyes and something to bring forth anything from him than numbness.
It’s a strange journey, something quiet and simultaneously begging to be so loud that it can be heard from the mountaintops. Changkyun’s wrestling down the howling of wind banging against his window begging to be let in—desperate to wrap him in cold warmth just so he won’t feel foreign touch against his face, living in memories forever passed.
The wind swirls in his head, instead, but he feels like he’s in the eye of the storm, watching everything collide and twist around him. He stares and pretends nothing’s happening because he can’t feel it when he is the storm, he’s sitting in the centre and he refuses to reach out a hand for help because he knows he’ll get sucked in.
The others pay him little mind over the week, despite Changkyun’s much more quiet demeanour. With Changkyun’s luck, they’re probably celebrating his long-awaited silence, waiting for something that they say to stick until he learns not to speak, unknowing that the only person who could’ve taken his voice is the same person who gave it to him.
Meals fall to the back of his mind, low on his list of priorities. It’s almost laughable to imagine himself getting out of bed for anything other than work, now. He’s sure that his weak mask does little to hide if anyone would examine it thoroughly, but no one here cares so he can go in and out of the dorms for schedules with little issue.
Ironically enough, he somehow performs a little better in the aftermath of everything. Changkyun hates himself for it, but he’s been throwing himself into everything around him to avoid confronting anything swirling in his head.
Dance practices, beforehand, where Hoseok would have some criticism for him, turn into ignoring him once more, Hyunwoo telling him he’s doing good once in a while. His vocal practices are short and concise because he doesn’t stop to waste time by fooling around with the directors the way he used to, when they were receptive to it.
Really, it’s the quiet that scares him more than the others' ignorance ever could. Changkyun doesn’t think he ever wants to be left alone with his thoughts, even for a moment, so whenever there’s nothing to do, he sleeps.
It’s simple enough. No one misses his presence and he needs the rest, anyway. When he’s not working and when he can’t get away with dancing for hours after hours, he sleeps instead of letting himself succumb to thoughts he would rather not confront.
At the end of the night, he always ends up staring up at the ceiling before passing out. His only relief is that he never seems to dream, now.
Changkyun drops his bag at the door, shutting it behind him a moment afterwards. He stares into the living room with half-open eyes, exhausted beyond belief. He’s sure that sweat is still sticking to him, even after the long walk home in the cold.
Minhyuk watches TV on the couch, sitting in the corner with a blanket thrown over his feet. He belatedly notices Hyungwon opposite him, legs stretched out and feet in Minhyuk’s lap, visiting from the dorm above. Changkyun can hear Kihyun cooking in the kitchen. No one pays him any mind as he slips his shoes off, one hand pressed against the wall as his head spins.
Changkyun stumbles inside, putting a hand around the doorknob to the bathroom and twisting, only to meet resistance. His bleary eyes snap upwards to blink, once, hearing Hoseok’s voice call back.
“Showering, I’ll be out in a bit.” Changkyun bites his tongue and shuffles back outside. His head swings around, looking for a free seat before slumping against the wall of the hallway, eyes sliding shut as he drops to the floor with a quiet thud.
He blinks, trying to stay awake, deciding to pull out his phone to distract himself until Hoseok is done. Changkyun scrolls aimlessly before clicking on YouTube and playing a random video to grab his attention.
It’s a variety show, one he recognizes but can’t place a name to. He watches through blurry vision as his head jerks when it starts to tip forward.
After what feels like twenty minutes in a haze close to sleep but not at all, Changkyun jolts awake at a gentle kick at his knee. He looks up, eyes suddenly wide as Hoseok stares down at him, hair wet with a towel around his neck.
“You’re blocking the hallway,” Is all he says, one thumb gesturing to the now-empty bathroom before continuing to the living room. Changkyun glances over and sees Kihyun plating dishes, slowly filling the folding table they’ve set up on the floor.
The smell alone makes Changkyun feel sick, so he clambers to his feet and stumbles into his shared room, finding a pair of shorts and a t-shirt that he doesn’t recognize before making his way to the shower.
For a moment, he stares at himself in the mirror, blinking slowly.
He doesn’t look like himself. He doesn’t recognize who’s staring back at him.
It should be a scary thought, but he finds comfort in it, instead. Changkyun’s always been told he looks like his mother, by relatives and old friends alike. When all he sees is parts of a face put together like an odd jigsaw puzzle instead of finding her smile in the crinkles of his own eyes, he feels a comforting neutrality similar to when he noticed his previous resemblance to her.
Changkyun shakes the thoughts away and steps into the shower, letting hot water patter against his shoulders and face. He scrubs at himself until he feels like his skin should be red and doesn’t take note of how time seems to pass in a strange limbo.
Then, he dries himself off and puts on the clothes he left for himself, grabbing his sweat-soaked outfit from earlier and walking out of the bathroom with a towel around his neck, similar to Hoseok, earlier.
Just from the hallway, he can hear multiple voices overlapping. The others must have visited for a joint dinner, but Changkyun’s not sure what the occasion could be. He tries to flick through his muddied thoughts for important dates, but he can’t figure it out.
He puts his clothes in the laundry and rubs his hair dry in his room once more before leaving it on his bed and making his way outside.
Changkyun’s sure he must still look like a mess, even after showering and rubbing sleep out of his eyes, but from the way the rest quiet when he steps outside to get a glass of water, he decides that he must look much, much worse than he had previously thought.
The tap runs as he looks for a glass before he finds a half-clean one, orange juice pulp almost cemented on the inside. He changes the temperature to scalding hot and sticks the cup under, letting the stinging water fall over his hand unflinchingly.
When the last of the pulp’s washed off, he fills the cup and drinks the hot water. He can’t be bothered to wait for it to cool. Changkyun turns the tap off and turns away from the sink, but his hand cramps, suddenly, and the glass slips from his grasp and hits the floor with a large crack, shattering against the tiled floors.
The noise has him frozen. For a moment, he thinks this is it. This is the breaking point. When nothing happens, he blinks, slow and quiet.
Changkyun looks to the small crowd eating in front of him, their heads turned to look at the mess. No one moves to help him clean it up.
As expected as it is, it makes him bite back a sudden rush of anger that he only manages to smother after closing his eyes for a very long minute.
He turns back to the sink, crouching without moving in case he steps in the glass with bare feet, and finds a dustpan to begin to clean up the mess around him.
“Are you okay, Changkyun?” Hyunwoo calls as the small group resumes their chattering.
“I’m fine,” Changkyun says. It sounds mechanical. Hyunwoo takes it at face value.
Changkyun sweeps. He gathers pieces of glass coated in water and he tries to sweep out pieces from under the counters that escape his notice but not every piece glints and whichever don’t are practically invisible. Most of the big, jagged bits of glass are in his dustpan and when he shakes the brush out over it, small dust-like increments sparkle on their way to join the rest of the mangled mosaic of glass.
When he straightens up, mess carefully contained, he doesn’t get acknowledged past the odd look from the others. He drops the mess into the trash and looks back to the floor.
Practically spotless. Almost as though nothing happened at all, if not for the spots of water, now warm, in one spot by the sink. Changkyun leaves it. He makes his way inside.
“Changkyun!” Kihyun grabs his attention before he can go too far. Changkyun turns back to the man, who’s holding a piece of chicken in his hand and lifts it beckoningly to him. “Join us?”
“...I’m not hungry,” Changkyun says blankly. Kihyun seems to wither at his words, though it’s barely noticeable. It’s more of a wince that he nods at without words.
“No need to be rude,” Minhyuk scolds from next to him. “Kihyun-ah made all this food for today and you’re practically snubbing him.”
“Sorry, Kihyun-hyung, Minhyuk-hyung,” Changkyun amends a moment later. “What’s today?” He asks.
There’s a beat of silence.
“Our first anniversary. Since debuting,” Kihyun tells him. His eyebrows are furrowed, as though he doesn’t expect Changkyun to not know this, at the least. Changkyun supposes that’s reasonable.
“Oh,” He says, looking over the meal again, with new understanding. Why they all came here, why Kihyun cooked and why they still brought take-out despite that. Why there were soju bottles on the table, some open and half-empty.
“I’m not hungry,” Changkyun repeats. “I’m going to sleep. Have a nice night.”
His eyes slide from person to person before landing on Jooheon, who looks strangely… guilty.
Changkyun doesn’t understand why. He leaves before trying to decipher anything. His thoughts are slowly starting to creep up on him again, a tsunami against a dam made of stone barely able to block off a river.
When he gets to his and Minhyuk’s shared room, he does little else besides flicking the lights off and climbing to his top bunk, pulling his threadbare blanket over top of himself.
Unlike before, he doesn’t fall asleep the moment his head hits his pillow.
A full year’s passed, Changkyun thinks. A full year, and things are barely better than when they began. He would be more upset about it if he hadn’t settled into a comfortable numbness that was better than any amount of sadness that could overwhelm him, now.
He can’t really bring himself to feel bad about turning down Kihyun’s invitation, either. Maybe if he didn’t feel so empty inside, he would’ve, but now, it seems like it doesn’t even matter, in the grand scheme of things. What’s the point in sparing someone’s feelings for a moment of reprise? All Changkyun thinks he’s doing is intruding, now.
He thinks that in any other universe, he would have sucked it up and sat down with them to eat, no matter how guilty it would have made him feel. He would’ve pushed himself into the situation, made himself comfortable and told himself that if he reached out, someone would take his hand.
Now, he thinks that he’d be happy never to speak to anyone again.
His phone goes unanswered as it buzzes again, suddenly, vibrating next to his head. When it stops, Changkyun picks it up to look at the notification. It’s a missed call from his brother. He’s been calling infrequently over the past two weeks, trying in earnest to reach out while Changkyun’s ignored everything.
It’s like—
Here, he lives in a bubble. It’s normal for their families not to be here. His mother’s absence makes sense.
At home, he has to confront that. He has to see spots his mother takes up, couches and dining tables and gardens with missing pieces to all of them. He can’t stand it.
Changkyun stares at the notification until his screen blacks out and he takes it as an excuse to put the phone away, laying it down on the mattress face-down and turning back to face the ceiling, again.
He doesn’t bother calling back. Instead, he stares up at his ceiling and waits for grief and exhaustion to heavy his eyelids.