Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Okay, here's the math: 

It's 2018. There are almost 31,600 undergraduate students at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), just over 6,240 of which are first-year students. Roughly 9,900 undergraduate students identify as Asian or Pacific Islander. There are over 3,600 international students overall and exactly 319 international students from South Korea, over a hundred of which are new students to UCLA. 

In the Greater Los Angeles Combined Statistical Area, there are more than 300,000 Korean Americans. Los Angeles hosts over 226,000 Korean Americans born in Korea. Fifteen percent of America's Korean American population lives in Greater Los Angeles, making it the largest Korean American community in the United States. Koreatown is apparently quite large, over 2.7 square miles, hailed by many as the best Koreatown outside of Korea. Supposedly, it's the closest a person can get to being in Korea without actually being in Korea. 

Wooyoung is only one person. One. He's not special, no matter how many boxes he checks off, there has to be at least one other person like him. It can't be that hard to find the place where he belongs, not when there are so many people just like him all around. He's done the math (meaning Yeosang has done the math). He's one of hundreds, one of thousands, he is not special. 

He's going to find the place where he belongs. It won't be hard at all. 

(It is.) 

"How's America?" 

"It's different." 

"Good different or bad different?" 

"Just... different."

Halfway through his first week of classes at UCLA, Wooyoung finds himself wondering if it would be better to drop out. He is clinging to the unbroken strap of his years-old backpack, laden with an out-of-date Macbook and more college-ruled spiral-bound notebooks than he cares to admit, halfway to running up Bruinwalk as he legs it to class because for some reason unknown to God or Man it takes almost half an hour to walk from Hedrick to North Campus. He's only barely not behind on readings and two days ago a homeless man screamed at him to shut the fuck up, and he hasn't heard from his mom since classes started. Not to mention that his English isn't good enough and he has to write everything in hangul before translating to English and he has never felt like he was drowning on dry land before this. Wooyoung is running at a million miles an hour while the rest of UCLA and Westwood and Los Angeles laugh at his mania and tell him to chill. 

Life in America moves so quickly that sometimes Wooyoung thinks he is about to fall off the face of the Earth itself. 

But there is no time for second-guessing or playing the "what if" game, so Wooyoung hitches his backpack up his shoulder and steps into a sprint, praying he makes it to class on time. 

"What if we drop out?" Wooyoung asks Yeosang a few days later. Wooyoung came home to Yeosang curled sideways across Wooyoung's bed, phone five centimeters from his face and eyes filled with so much longing Wooyoung thought it was his own. He curled beside his best friend unceremoniously. 

(Yeosang wanted to come to UCLA first. He wanted to leave the past behind and pursue the American Dream that so many poor children hear whispers of. And Wooyoung would go anywhere that Yeosang went because that is how they've always been. 

They came here together. They stay here together. They'll leave here together, if it comes to that.)

"I don't think we'd get our money back," Yeosang responds. "We should at least finish the quarter." 

"Always the voice of reason." 

"Sorry. Next time, you can have the brain cell." 

The smile spreads softly across Wooyoung's face, half a wheezing laugh as he knocks his forehead against Yeosang's bony shoulder. Wooyoung is still adjusting and so is Yeosang, but when they're together there's that small piece of South Korea. The lilt of an accent, the rounded edges of Yeosang's satoori, the pitching wheeze of Wooyoung's laugh. 

"How was class?"

It's enough to keep them alive. 

It's something to whisper to the night, to the quiet that no one will ever hear. Something to chant because it makes their racing hearts slow just a little, makes each breath a little less harsh. 

As long as we're together, everything will be okay. 

It's a prayer. 

The decision to go to UCLA had been fairly simple. The journey to that decision was far less so. 

Friends since fourteen, two of the million or so ex-trainees out there, holding onto each other because it was all they had left of a broken dream. Or maybe just because they felt like it. Attached at the hip since they realized they could be, even when Yeosang said he wanted to go to school in America. 

"You're never getting rid of me." 

"Of course not." 

And then everything had slowly fallen into place, the pieces of a puzzle they didn't know had gone missing. Yeosang's immaculate grades and Wooyoung's good grades (which translates to fucking amazing by American standards) all but guarantee the acceptance letters that come in March. Yeosang chooses UCLA and the rest is history. 

(The rest is not history. The rest is still happening. The rest is figuring out how to afford the absolutely insane tuition without going into crippling debt and wrestling the visa application form on uscis.gov and signing so many different forms and agreements and loans that Wooyoung feels like he's sold his soul. The rest is not easy. The rest is never easy. The rest still is, and will continue to be for years to come, constantly waging war in the back of Wooyoung's mind, that lingering wonder if he made a mistake.)

They fly from Incheon to LA at the beginning of September as the west coast of the United States is engulfed in the flames of some of the worst wildfires ever seen and Wooyoung tries not to think about what kind of beginning that is. 

When Yeosang chose UCLA the first thing that Wooyoung did was research the dance teams UCLA had to offer. Wooyoung is never going to be an idol, he's never going to piece together that broken dream, but he'd rather die than stop dancing. He's picked the crew he wants to join before he's bought a plane ticket. 

"You're ridiculous," said Yeosang. 

("You don't have to come with me," he did not say.)

"And you love me," Wooyoung said without looking up from his laptop. "Just look at these fucking isolations, holy shit!"

("I know, I want to," is not said either.)

Months later, Wooyoung has found his way to the studio for his first official ACA practice. He showed up thirty minutes early, a habit formed from three years of fighting tooth and nail for studio time at BigHit. It’s a good habit, at least that’s what the members of ACA leadership who are already in the studio say, but it gives him a bit too much time to get lost in his head.

(Before, he had Yeosang. He’s always had Yeosang, almost since the first day he was a trainee. They’ve always practiced together, danced until obscene hours in the morning just to prepare for monthly evaluations. When they quit being trainees, they still danced together at smaller studios around Seoul. Yeosang danced with Wooyoung at the audition workshop, the review session, and all the individual practice that happened in between. And when it was time for the actual audition, Yeosang went to Lot 4 with Wooyoung and cheered at the top of his lungs when Wooyoung’s group auditioned, somehow cheered even louder during callbacks, and took Wooyoung for milkshakes afterward. Yeosang was the first person Wooyoung called when he found out he got into ACA. Now, he’s alone. For the first time in four years, Wooyoung has to dance without his best friend and it feels wrong.)

And it’s strange to think about how far he’s come since he was curled up with Yeosang, lost in the deep pit of YouTube channels for dance teams at a school they were only accepted to a few days prior. Here he is, going through his warm-up routine and very carefully stretching his back so that he doesn’t injure it further, preparing for a performance that doesn’t determine his career for once. Here he is. 

“Listen up!” Leadership shouts over the chatter. “There’s just over one month till Prelude. We’ve got a long way to go.” 

There are a couple of laughs at that, a joke or a reference that goes over Wooyoung’s head. That’s okay, for once he doesn’t mind. Yeosang or not, it’s time to dance. 

The thought almost makes him smile.

“Shit,” Wooyoung hisses in Korean when he’s reviewing choreography two days later, yet again half an hour early for practice. 

The person closest to Wooyoung, a staggeringly tall Asian American kid that Wooyoung doesn’t know the name of, stops to blink at Wooyoung. 

“Are you okay?” he asks in Korean. 

In Korean. 

Wooyoung could cry. 

“Ah, I just keep fucking up the chest isolations,” Wooyoung admits, a mix of sheepish and eager, the familiar shape of his mother tongue a desperate cry for help. “I keep rushing the movement and it doesn’t pop the way it should, y’know? I need to actually isolate.” 

“It happens to me all the time,” the other laughs. It’s pure dialect, the kind of Korean you can only have if you grew up speaking it at home. Wooyoung is delighted. “Wanna go through it together?”

“Please,” Wooyoung begs. 

And they dance.

The boy’s name is Jeong Yunho. The two of them don’t know it yet, but they’re going to become as close as two best friends without being best friends. It will just take time to get there.

“Have you made any friends yet?” Wooyoung asks as they sit on the floor of their dorm room.

(They eat in the dining halls when they want to get their money's worth, but they prefer to eat on the floor of their dorm room. They sit across from each other with Yeosang’s laptop-stand-turned-dinner-table in between them bearing packages of microwave rice and overpriced kimchi from Ralphs that doesn’t taste quite right. They eat a lot of microwave rice and overpriced kimchi, mixed in with cup ramyeon and frozen hipster tteokbokki and anything else they can get their hands on that tastes vaguely like home.)

“Friends are overrated,” Yeosang says. Wooyoung kicks him. “Yes and no. I think the classmates that talk to me are more interested in cheating off my work.”

Wooyoung frowns at that, scraping the plastic bottom of the microwave rice container with his favorite plastic spoon. Sometimes, he forgets how much of a genius Yeosang is. Yeosang is, after all, a dumbass. “I thought we’d left the days of people trying to beg off your genius behind in Korea.”

“Apparently not,” says Yeosang, words muffled by a mouthful of noodles. “I’ll be fine,” he continues before Wooyoung can begin to voice his concerns. “It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before. Besides, some of them actually want to study together, not just cheat.”

“Okay.” Because at the end of the day, Wooyoung trusts Yeosang. He knows that Yeosang can take care of himself. Yeosang’s good at creating boundaries and making sure people don’t get too close unless he wants them to and actually saying no to people, a skill Wooyoung has yet to develop. Still, they’re best friends and “I’ll kill anyone who tries to steal your work again.” 

Yeosang smiles at Wooyoung, something amused and indignant and grateful in his lips, and does not ask how Wooyoung is doing in the friend department because he knows the answer.

There is a difference between being friendly and being friends. 

Wooyoung has always known this, because Wooyoung is very good at being friendly but not as confident when it comes to being friends. He likes to "skip steps in friendship" according to Yeosang, fall and wrap his arms around strangers amidst shrieking laughter or bite people on the shoulder in curiosity. Wooyoung does all that and more, talks to the random people he sits next to in lectures, goes out drinking every weekend with the international students, hollers and laughs like a hyena at the top of his lungs in ACA practice. Wooyoung is loud and outgoing and friendly with every person he comes across. 

Wooyoung goes to parties and drinks himself into oblivion. Wooyoung times the walk to class so he's sliding into his seat just as the lecture begins. Wooyoung collapses into his bed at the end of existence, insecurities clawing blood red at his lungs, and takes shuddering breaths that no one sees, sure that he is going to fall apart at the seams. 

Wooyoung sews himself back together and says "get over yourself," as if that mends the cracks in his porcelain mask. 

Wooyoung is friendly, but he does not have friends. 

Wooyoung is drowning in his own loneliness. 

Routines, according to Google (which is still so weird, Wooyoung would choose Naver over Google any day), are good for the mind and body. Having a routine is a good foundation for other good things to come, namely happiness. 

By the middle of October Wooyoung’s settled into something that can probably be called a routine. He wakes up, he goes to class, and he eats at the right intervals. In the afternoons he doesn’t have class he studies in Powell Library or procrastinates by scrolling through Instagram, also in Powell Library. He always has dinner with Yeosang, even if they’re too busy to do much more than eat across from each other while Wooyoung attempts to finish readings and Yeosang works through problem sets. At night he dances, either with ACA or by himself, drilling the choreography for Prelude until it feels like his feet will fall off. Then he dances for another hour. He goes back to the dorm and he studies or catches up on the K-dramas his mother is watching back home or plays video games with Yeosang. He goes to sleep. He repeats. 

Wooyoung has a routine and it’s a good routine and if he tries hard enough, he might just be able to convince himself that he’s happy. 

(He isn’t.)

(It’s just different.

He buys a corn dog from the 7-Eleven in Westwood Village and it is one of the grossest things he has ever had the misfortune of putting in his mouth. He tries a slushie and his teeth ache from the sugar. The convenience stores of America are cursed.

He misses Korea so much that he aches .)

It's 11:00 PM on a Wednesday when Yeosang starts crying on the floor in front of the microwave. It scares Wooyoung, because Yeosang is not the kind of person who cries often, much less in front of other people, and never without prompting. It's 11:00 PM on a Wednesday and life is objectively shit, but there's nothing in particular to cry over. 

“Are you dying?” Wooyoung asks lamely as he passes Yeosang their roommate's box of tissues. 

“No, you asshole,” scowls Yeosang. Yeosang loudly blows his nose and Wooyoung does his best not to wince. 

“Then why are you crying?” 

“Because if we were still in Korea, we could’ve gone out and eaten at a pocha instead of making really bad cup ramyeon in our dorm microwave. I’m tired of eating dogshit that Americans seem to think is the best instant food Asia has to export! I want tteokbokki and dakgangjeong! I want rice!”

“Rice?”

“Rice, Young-ah, rice! I just want a bowl of my mom’s rice!”

Yeosang cries and blows his nose and cries some more. Wooyoung sits by Yeosang’s side, patting his shoulder in awkward intervals. And it’s just rice, it’s easy to make and hard to fuck up, but Wooyoung can’t help but understand. 

If he was given a bowl of rice made by his mother right now, he would cry too.

Wooyoung is dancing in the Hedrick Movement Studio with Yeosang when he sees Yunho outside of ACA practice for the first time. They’re goofing off the way they (rarely) used to when they were trainees, wrestling to choose the next song and performing choreo from monthly evaluations long past and their favorite k-pop songs. They’re dancing to I Need U when Yunho comes in. 

“Oh my god, is that BTS?” he shrieks in high-pitched English before he tosses his bag to the side and steps into the choreography with them as if he was there the entire time. 

It’s clear that Yunho doesn’t know the dance that well, probably only knows what he does from watching the music video or dance practice enough times. His moves aren’t nearly as sharp as Yeosang’s or powerful as Wooyoung’s, but it’s okay. It doesn’t really matter, because it’s easy to laugh at Yunho’s exaggerated expressions and the obscene way Yeosang rolls his body. It’s fun to dance without fearing evaluation. There’s a warmth beneath Wooyoung’s skin, one that doesn’t find him too often. 

“I didn’t think I’d find anyone here,” Yunho admits when Yeosang has run over to turn the music off. A glance at the clock on the wall tells Wooyoung it’s past midnight. 

“Advantages of living in Hedrick,” shrugs Wooyoung, half a breathless grin on his face. There are other things he could admit to, the habits from their trainee days that they’ve never properly kicked, but that’s neither here nor there. “What are you doing here?” 

“Ah, I wanted to blow off some steam,” he responds and Wooyoung knows . 

Instead of pushing, Wooyoung smiles wider. “Wanna meet my roommate?”

Yunho grins.  

(In hindsight, Wooyoung will look back on this moment with a kind of wonderstruck awe over how life-changing a single night can be. 

At that moment, Wooyoung was so desperate to be friends instead of friendly that he didn’t realize how significant it was.)

Yunho enters their life rather seamlessly. It starts with trading KakaoTalk IDs and grows into fast food runs after ACA practice, pregaming on the weekend, hanging out between classes. It grows fast, as fast as friendships with other trainees used to grow, and some part of Wooyoung that was struggling doesn’t consume him the way it did before.

He’s good, Yunho. He makes it easier to smile. Wooyoung is thankful for their budding friendship. 

There’s also Song Mingi. 

Yunho and Mingi are a package deal, just like Wooyoung and Yeosang. There is no world in which it was not all four of them together, no smaller numbers exist. And that’s okay, Mingi is easy to like. Mingi is too tall for his own good, a bit more prone to dramatic outbursts on the injustice of whatever it is they’re teasing him about. He and Yunho are protective of each other in a way that Wooyoung and Yeosang find achingly familiar. It’s not quite as natural as befriending Yunho, there’s a little bit more of a language barrier that has Wooyoung grasping for the English vocabulary he doesn’t have and Mingi tripping over Korean grammar, but Wooyoung’s beginning to have faith. Friendship is inevitable, they just have to find out how they fit together. 

They grow from two to four. Yeosang sings along to Spotify while he’s coding, Wooyoung messes up in ACA practice and doesn’t cry afterward. They breathe a little easier than they did before.

Another part of it is this: 

Everything they could not do before. 

Walking up the hill with Yunho after ACA practice and finding Mingi and Yeosang smoking on the side of the road with two others that Wooyoung doesn’t know, Yeosang’s skateboard propped against the curb. Learning to take a hit from the blunt that Mingi rolls, fingers fumbling as he passes it to Yeosang who holds the blunt with the assurance provided with thirty minutes more experience. Coughing a bit, laughing a lot. 

“We’d be so fucked back there,” Yeosang drawls in an unfamiliar way, low and heavy and cocky and utterly gone . “Can you imagine the look on their faces?”

“I don’t want that picture in my head,” groans Wooyoung. He tips his head towards the sky. Dark and smoggy. “We never would’ve pulled half the shit we have here.”

Smoking, drinking, partying. Sleeping through class once. Eating without dieting. Laughing during practice. Procrastinating work. 

Being young. 

“Good thing we didn’t stay.”

Yunho presses his lips to Mingi’s and pulls smoke from the cavern of Mingi’s mouth. In the midst of his first high, it doesn’t seem so strange an action to Wooyoung. 

A life they’ve never had the chance to know.

(Wooyoung likes Yunho and Mingi, he really does. Yeosang likes them too. 

But Yunho and Mingi are different. 

Yunho describes himself as “first-gen,” meaning his parents immigrated to America and he was born and raised in America. His parents only speak Korean, which is why Yunho’s fluent to the point of being properly bilingual. Mingi is even more different, supposedly “third-gen,” with a family that’s been in America since the Second World War. His parents’ first language was Korean but they lost most of it when they were American school kids desperate to fit in, so Mingi didn’t grow up speaking Korean at home. His Korean is pretty okay, the product of years of studying and having Yunho as a language partner, but not truly fluent. 

They’re Korean in the sense that they speak the language and look the right way. But Yunho and Mingi are, at their core, American. They’re not Korean in the way that Wooyoung and Yeosang are. 

(Sometimes, it makes Wooyoung worry that it doesn’t matter how hard he and Yeosang try, they’ll never belong with Yunho and Mingi. They’re similar, but they’re not the same.)

They’re not Korean, but they are Korean American, and Wooyoung isn’t picky enough to complain about where the first two people he can actually call friends come from.)

Mingi asks “What’re you wearing for Halloweekend?” at 10:55 PM in Chick-fil-A on a Tuesday and literally screeches when he learns they’ve never heard of Halloweekend before. 

“You poor deprived souls,” Mingi is lamenting and Yunho is equally unhelpful, snickering at Yeosang’s concerned confusion. Neither of them provides answers in favor of laughing at Wooyoung and Yeosang’s expense until they’re all kicked out at 11:00. 

“You need a costume for each night,” insists Mingi.

“You really don’t,” counters Yunho. 

“You don’t, but it’s more fun if you do,” admits Mingi. 

They all skip their afternoon lectures the next day in favor of taking Yunho’s car to the thrift stores on Santa Monica Boulevard because buying brand new clothes for Halloweekend is “not the move.” Wooyoung finds a hilarious off-brand version of the “Daddy’s Lil Monster” shirt from Suicide Squad and is ecstatic when Yeosang loses rock paper scissors, his costume decided. Mingi buys nothing, having had his Gangnam Style-era Psy costume ready for weeks. Wooyoung agrees to be a Twilight -style vampire, complete with excessive hair gel and white foundation courtesy of Halloween City. Yunho selects several articles of bright yellow clothes (none of which are the same shade of yellow) and announces he’s going to be a Teletubby. Mingi offers Yeosang forty bucks if he wears fishnets and the group spends ten minutes debating the merits of regular black versus neon pink.

“I feel like it depends whether or not you want to go full Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way.”

“Who?”

“Oh my GOD.”

Afterward, they drive east up Venice Boulevard to La Brea Avenue and they’re met with an enormous taco truck taking up the majority of a gas station parking lot. There are no tables, the tacos cost two dollars each and come on foil-covered paper plates (the toppings in tiny plastic bags), and it is one of the best things Wooyoung has eaten in his entire life. Yeosang eats six and swears to never diet again. Somewhere between his fourth and seventh taco, Mingi wonders aloud if it’s weird to eat pico de gallo with his fingers. They only leave when it’s time for Yunho and Wooyoung to go to ACA practice, knowing they face certain death if they skip. 

The ride home is calm, Yeosang humming along to Yunho’s driving playlist and Mingi talking about the new trailer for Sony’s animated Spider-Man movie. Wooyoung wonders if this is what happiness feels like. 

Wooyoung doesn’t remember most of Halloweekend but what he does remember is this: 

ACA leadership cackling as they waterfall tequila straight from the bottle into his and Yunho’s mouths. Mingi dancing to Gangnam Style on top of someone’s dining table. Yeosang squatting in his Harley Quinn outfit and nearly splitting his skinny jeans down the seam. Leo’s Taco Truck. Opening the door of the Uber at a red light on the way back to campus and puking on the pavement.

His hangover lasts all of Sunday and he wouldn’t trade this for the world.

The Monday after Halloweekend, Hell begins. 

Hell is Week 5, the heat of midterms season, the beginning of Wooyoung’s residency in the Powell Reading Room. When he’s not attending classes, practicing for Prelude (which is in less than two weeks, holy fucking shit), or eating, he’s in Powell. He picks a table that he likes, far enough back that he won’t get distracted, with a working outlet for his out-of-date Macbook. He falls asleep on Wednesday night around 12:30 in the morning, thankfully awoken by the boy who always studies two tables over. He hasn’t seen Yeosang since Sunday, the other camping in the computer labs. 

Being in hell means that Wooyoung’s professors are demons who don’t care about scheduling their midterm exams on the same day. Wooyoung luckily only has two on Thursday, a far cry from the three Yunho had to endure on Tuesday. He texts Yeosang “I’m in the middle of a Hell sandwich” after the library boy wakes him up on Wednesday night. (Or is it Thursday morning?) Yeosang responds with a simple “mood.” They’re fucking dying, or at least that’s what it feels like. 

They study and they study more, they go to exams with bruised bags under their eyes and Wooyoung’s hands shake when he finishes his last one. It is terrible and when he and Yeosang finally end up in their room at the same time, Wooyoung has to actively fight the urge to burst into tears. College sucks. 

College sucks and Wooyoung never wants to take an exam again. He sleeps till one in the afternoon on Saturday (Yeosang sleeps till two) and they only leave their room because Mingi (who only had essays that he had mostly finished before Halloweekend, screw him) promises to buy enough McDonalds for all four of them. Yunho takes them to the roof of Engineering 5 and they eat McDonald's and talk about everything and nothing. 

Wooyoung cannot see the heavens above him, but he doesn’t feel like he’s in hell for a few hours and that counts for something. 

(There was one other moment during the hellscape of midterms that wasn’t entirely terrible. It was Wednesday night, or maybe Thursday morning, once Wooyoung had been woken from his nap. He dies, texts Yeosang, and prepares to dive back into it, when he sees it. 

His chosen drink of the week: an iced Americano, condensation building on the outside, the ice inside still whole enough to avoid watering down the drink. Next to it: a Monster energy drink. 

It wasn’t there when he fell asleep, he knows that much. He asks the boy who woke him up, who stares at Wooyoung briefly and claims it was there when he woke Wooyoung up. “If you won’t drink them, I will.” 

So Wooyoung gives the boy the Monster and keeps the coffee for himself, content to sip the drink as he reviews lecture recordings, smiling because it doesn’t have any sugar in it but it still tastes sweet.)

Prelude is in one week. 

The entirety of Sunday is spent reviewing choreography with the rest of ACA, a last-ditch effort to perfect their routine before they compete at the end of the week. Wooyoung has a center part during Heads Will Roll and it’s not good enough, he’s not good enough, no matter how many times Yunho tells Wooyoung he’s doing great.

(“Your facial expressions are better than anyone else,” Yunho will say. “You’re like an idol.” 

And Woooyoung resolutely ignores those words and the way they make his stomach turn.)

Come Monday and he practices with Yunho in Hedrick. They get rug burns from how many times they drill the floorwork, trying to perfect the counts where they push themselves across the ground with their legs in one clean movement. They only stop when Yeosang shows up and takes away their speaker, pickpocketing both their phones while he’s at it. Soaked in sweat and legs aching, they call it a night. 

On Tuesday, they host a fundraiser selling spam musubi and do a showcase for friends and family of the Prelude setlist. Yeosang and Mingi come, cheering at the top of their lungs around mouthfuls of spam. Wooyoung is half a beat late during his center part and he wants to bury himself six feet under the ground. Leadership doesn’t even scold him, one of the dance captains just raises a single eyebrow and Wooyoung knows that he has to do better. 

Wednesday brings a handful of hours in Wooden for an open practice ACA’s booked. He works with the Heads Will Roll group until the timing is impeccable. By eight he’s ducking out, well aware of the reading quiz he has the next day that he has not done the reading for. He studies in Powell, nods to the boy who studies nearby, and goes back for a full set run at midnight. 

On Thursday there’s the regularly scheduled ACA practice. They go past midnight, they run the program a million times. They go with mirrors, without mirrors, regular dress, show dress. They take videos of themselves to analyze, ACA leadership sits out to watch them critically. Each inch of movement matters and it has to be perfect and Wooyoung thinks of being a trainee again. At the end of it, they’re reminded that they have the Bridge competition three weeks after this, so don’t forget the new choreography they learned last week. 

Friday is the day they travel to the Bay Area. There is not enough money to fly, so they carpool between student-owned vehicles and ten-passenger vans borrowed from the university. Wooyoung manages to grab a seat next to Yunho and he doesn’t mind dealing with the other’s long limbs if it means having a friendly shoulder to sleep on during the six-hour drive. 

On Saturday, there’s a practice in the morning and then they’re free to spend the afternoon as they like before the final run-through that evening. Yunho takes Wooyoung across the water to San Francisco and a neighborhood called Inner Sunset, the streets where Yunho grew up. He does a formal insa to Yunho’s parents and their eyes soften, pulling Wooyoung into their arms like he’s the child who’s finally come home instead of Yunho. But Yunho doesn’t seem to mind, just smiles like he knows how badly Wooyoung needed it. 

(“Such a good boy,” Yunoh’s mother praises when Wooyoung moves to do the dishes once everyone’s finished eating. “Such good manners! Unlike someone that I know…”

“Yah, Eomma!”

Wooyoung laughs, high and building in the pit of his chest, even though he aches for his own family.)

On Sunday, Wooyoung rises before the sun. He stretches out his limbs and does a gentle warm-up for his body, ready to go before most of his teammates have pulled themselves out of bed. Yunho finds him drinking water instead of coffee, tossing an apple from hand to hand, headphones blasting the setlist, and eyes trained straight ahead. They breathe. They smile at one another.

They dance.

They don’t place. 

Wooyoung didn’t mess up and neither did Yunho. The formations were near-perfect. They were as synchronized as SEVENTEEN. Each move, each step, each breath was taken as a team. 

It wasn’t enough.

When Wooyoung returns, Yeosang is waiting for him and something in his heart wrenches out of place. He’s throwing his duffel to the ground so that he can wrap his arms over Yeosang’s shoulders and cradle the other’s head, Yeosang’s arms a steady weight around Wooyoung’s waist. 

“We lost.” 

“I know.”

They curl together on Wooyoung’s bed that night, whispering everything they don’t want to tell everyone else. What not placing means here versus what it meant at BigHit, every thought of what could’ve been done differently, the hug Yunho’s mother had given Wooyoung on his way out the door. How different they feel here, how other, like something lost that will never be found. How much they miss home. How they don’t know if they made a mistake, at least not yet. 

They don’t know anything at all. 

Wooyoung misses the rain. 

He’s never been big on rain before, but there are only 36 rainy days in LA annually and it upsets him more than he’d like to admit. It’s just wrong. Sometimes the sky will gray with clouds, but the clouds never pour. Then it’s back to the sunshine, golden warm and filling his skin with melanin. And he shouldn’t hate it, but sometimes he does. It should be fine, but it isn’t. 

It should seem right, but it’s wrong. 

He remembers his mother cracking open a window to hear the rainfall and the dew that collected underneath the patio railing. He misses the crackle of pajeon cooking on the stove. He remembers hurricane warnings and taped windows, the howling wind knocking on the door and monsoon downpours flooding the streets. He aches for cups of green tea and cuddles with his brothers underneath a blanket on the living room floor. 

Wooyoung misses the rain. 

He misses home. 

Everything should be okay, but it isn’t.

“Are you coming home for Christmas?” 

“I don’t know. Isn’t it too late to buy a ticket?”

“You know Eomma, she’d drop a billion won just to have you home for a day.”

“Eomma’s not in charge of the family finances.”

“Appa wouldn’t mind.” 

“...”

“Just think about it, Young-ah. I’m enlisting in the new year and I want to see you before I go. And you need to spend time with Kyungmin-ah.” 

Your baby brother isn’t going to be a baby for much longer. He’ll forget you if you aren’t careful.

“I’ll think about it.” 

“You better.”

Two days later, one of his professors announces the requirements for a project which replaces the traditional final exam. It is so unbelievably, stupidly excessive for a GE class that Wooyoung actually groans out loud. His classmates are in similar states of agony and disbelief. The girl next to Wooyoung is rubbing her temples and valiantly trying not to cry. A boy seated two rows down digs through his bag until he finds a container of (what Wooyoung thinks is) edibles, which he takes in the middle of the lecture hall. By the end of the class, Wooyoung’s halfway to dropping out. 

Sometimes, he just wants to go home.

“What if we drop out?” he asks Yeosang at the end of the school week. They’re smoking outside of Yunho and Mingi’s dorm, the taller pair inside in search of more weed, and the night is dark around them. The sky is clear, Wooyoung thinks, but it’s hard to tell because they’re right under a lamppost. 

“We’d be home for Christmas,” acquiesces Yeosang. Smoke pours out from his nose as he exhales. He looks like a dragon. “Do you want to go home?”

Wooyoung really doesn’t know the answer to that question. All he knows is that his little brother gets bigger every day and it rained in Ilsan this week. “I don’t know. I miss it, y’know?”

Yeosang hums in agreement. He offers Wooyoung the blunt, Wooyoung grimaces and shakes his head. Wooyoung prefers being drunk to being high, he doesn’t smoke that much. 

“What do you think?” prompts Wooyoung when the silence has stretched on a little too long. 

“Mmm,” begins Yeosang before he pauses. He tilts his head, closing his eyes as he searches for the words that can’t be seen. “I think that I miss it a lot and that sometimes I get tired of feeling like I don’t belong here. And I would love to see my noona again.

“But I also think we’re starting to have something good here, y’know? Yunho-ya and Mingi-ya are really good friends, you’ve got ACA, I’ve been getting along with the other CS majors really well in the last two weeks. Plus, we’ve been seeing more of LA and that’s really cool. You even went to the Bay Area! We wouldn’t have those opportunities back home.”

Yeosang scratches the end of his nose, considering his next words. “I miss home, but I’m starting to like it here. And I know that… that it’s better here than it would be back there. I think I would die if I was back there. At least here, I can breathe.”

And Wooyoung knows that much is true. No matter how much he aches for his family and misses his home country, it’s easier here. They can breathe here. He’s not truly happy, but he’s happier here than he would be in Korea. 

(He’d forgotten, for a moment, that they came here for a reason.)

“I wouldn’t mind going home for Christmas,” is all Wooyoung says in response, knowing that Yeosang understands. 

“Yeah,” laughs Yeosang. “Christmas would be nice.”

And they promise each other they’ll have another talk about going home for Christmas, one where they look at the price of plane tickets and their final schedules and what they need to do for next quarter. They pay the next quarter of tuition, they sign up for classes. They plan to go home, if only for a bit, before they continue to stay here. 

They think they’ll do all of that. 

They won’t do any of it, but they don’t know that yet.

Sometimes, Wooyoung watches Yunho and Mingi and he is filled with jealousy.

Yunho and Mingi have friends other than Wooyoung and Yeosang. They spend the most time with Wooyoung and Yeosang, but they have friends outside of their little circle. They have friends from their high school and their childhood, from their university classes and the dorm halls. It’s not uncommon to see Yunho eating with someone that Wooyoung doesn’t know, always with an easy laugh and natural banter. And Mingi’s always flitting between the three different clubs he actively participates in, finding community in every interest he’s truly passionate about. 

More than that is the way they hold themselves, the way they tower over everyone else unashamedly. How Yunho can switch from Korean to English without taking a breath and doesn’t have a trace of an accent in either language. The inside jokes and references that Wooyoung never gets but everyone else does. That no one stares at Mingi like they’re not sure why he’s here and no one asks him. Nobody ever doubts that Yunho and Mingi belong here: at UCLA, in Westwood, in Los Angeles, in America. 

It seems so easy for them, belonging.

Wooyoung watches them and his heart aches, tight from the compression of his chest. It feels like a heart attack. It feels like he’s been stabbed. It feels like his whole being is going to be drained through the black hole where his heart should be. They are his friends and he cares for them so deeply, is so grateful for their friendship in every fiber of his being. They are one of the main reasons he hasn’t dropped out of school.

Wooyoung watches them and has never known loneliness so well.

“My mom is inviting you and Yeosang to San Francisco for Christmas,” Yunho says during the last ACA practice before Thanksgiving break. “She wanted to invite you two for Thanksgiving too, but Mingi-ya said that you guys would probably get overwhelmed on such short notice. (Plus we’ve got Bridge the week after and I know you’re gonna be living in the studio.)”

Inexplicably, Wooyoung feels like crying. His throat is tight, his eyes are burning, and he is momentarily afraid that if he opens his mouth, traitorous sounds will spill out. Yunho is staring at Wooyoung out of the corner of his eye, respectful but curious. 

“They haven’t met Yeosang,” he manages to respond. 

Yunho shrugs. Carefully says, “Dad liked the way you talked about him. I told them that Yeosang’s way more polite than you (which is true, don’t even try to fight me on this, you know I’m right) and now they keep asking when I’m bringing you both home. Something about knowing how homesick you both must be.” 

And it’s almost enough to push Wooyoung over the edge. Voice tight, he promises Yunho, “I’ll talk to him about it.”

(“I didn’t overstep telling Yunho not to invite you guys for Thanksgiving, right?”

“No, it’s okay, you were right. How did you know?”

“Ah, I get overwhelmed pretty easily, especially when I’m in a new environment. I can act pretty normal and hold a conversation, but on the inside, I’m kind of freaking out? I mean, I’m pretty much always freaking out on the inside, a byproduct of the anxiety and everything, y'know? Oh shit, not that, like, I’m assuming you have anxiety or anything, like, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“Oh, so you have anxiety too?”

“I…I don’t know? I don’t think so. They didn’t tell us a lot about anxiety back home.”

“Oh… Well, if you ever want to know more or talk to someone about it, you can talk to me. Only if you want to, though. No pressure or anything.” 

“Thanks, Mingi.”

“Anytime.”)

Choi San enters Wooyoung’s life with some fanfare and untied shoelaces. 

It is the day before Thanksgiving. Yunho and Mingi are in San Francisco. Wooyoung and Yeosang, having no plans to celebrate a holiday they are entirely unfamiliar with, have gone to their respective study spots to get through their work. Yeosang has just texted Wooyoung that he won’t be back till after midnight and to not wait up. Unsurprisingly, Wooyoung is fairly upset about Yeosang ditching him. 

At this exact moment of time, Choi San is walking past Wooyoung’s corner of Powell to his own nearby corner of Powell. San steps on his untied shoelace and trips forwards, tries to catch himself by moving to the side, and promptly crashes into Wooyoung’s table with a single shrieked “Shit!”

Wooyoung, now with a table full of the boy who woke him up during midterms that he says hi to every now and then, forgets that he’s upset. He laughs. 

“You good, man?” he asks, still snickering. 

“Physically or emotionally?” the boy quips, head hanging between his arms. “Physically, I’m fine. Emotionally, I’m never going to recover. My pride has never been so bruised. I might just die.” 

He hasn’t attempted to get off the table yet. Wooyoung can’t stop laughing. They’re going to get kicked out of the library. Wooyoung doesn’t really care. 

“I’m sorry,” he offers when he gets off the table after a few minutes of their combined stifled laughter. 

“It’s okay,” smiles Wooyoung and it is okay. It’s more than okay. And then, because he likes to skip steps in friendship and ignore social etiquette, he asks, “What’s your name? I see you here all the time, but I don’t know your name.”

A smile, shy and small and beautiful. “My name is San. It’s nice to meet you…”

“Wooyoung. It’s nice to meet you, San. Wanna sit?”

The rest is history. 

The rest is history. 

Late that night, when one day has become another, they leave Powell side by side. They have been talking for hours and it has never been so easy for Wooyoung to connect to someone. Neither of them has completed a single assignment. It’s okay. 

It’s the technical beginning of a new day, dark and almost neighboring cold, and there is no one else on Bruinwalk. 

It starts to rain. 

Wooyoung watches San tilt his head to the sky, eyes closed as he lets the first handful of raindrops splash against his cheekbones, and Wooyoung’s breath catches. 

“I love the rain,” San says. 

Wooyoung reminds himself to breathe, his heart squeezing stupidly in his chest, singing and dancing and all the good things he forgot he could feel. He can’t help but smile at San and then he can’t stop smiling. 

And Wooyoung knows in his soul that it’s fate or destiny or some English word he doesn’t know. It’s silly and it’s childish, but Wooyoung looks at San and he just knows. 

They were meant to know each other. 

On Thanksgiving, San takes Wooyoung and Yeosang to Gushi. 

Gushi is a small road-side restaurant, barely more than a shack and its porch of scattered sticky tables and chairs. It’s a mile away from Hedrick, but San claims it’s the only decently-priced place to get not terrible Korean food in Westwood and Wooyoung misses his mom’s cooking so much it hurts. So they make the trek to Gushi and Wooyoung focuses on not crying when he smells soondubu jjigae cooking. 

(It’s not a traditional Thanksgiving meal, nor is it entirely authentic Korean food. But it tastes almost like home and that’s what Thanksgiving is supposed to taste like, he thinks.)

They sit at the table closest to the sidewalk, Wooyoung’s backpack tucked between his legs and Yeosang’s glasses fogging from the jjigae steam as they slip down his nose. San claims that if they wait for a bit and look pathetic enough, the old man who works the last shift will bring them the good kimchi that’s been fermenting for more than half a day. They sit and they people watch, chatting easily in Korean about everything. Mostly about San, because Wooyoung wants to know everything about San and Yeosang doesn’t mind. Together they pull San’s life story out of him: his birth in Korea, moving to Sacramento in elementary school where he’s lived ever since, his transfer to UCLA after a horrible fall semester at West Point last year, a love of EXO, his prowess in Taekwondo, an older sister, if he misses Korea when he can’t remember it, how long it took to think of America as home. 

“You know what they say,” San waves his chopsticks in the air, chewing on a bite of the good kimchi. “Home isn’t a place, it’s a feeling. It’s a fucking slippery-ass feeling, but it’s a feeling.”

Not a place, a feeling. 

They didn’t know that at all. 

Sitting at Gushi, eating food that tastes almost like home with Yeosang on one side and San on the other, Wooyoung wonders if this is what home is supposed to feel like.

Everything is better on a roof. Pizza, photoshoots, kickbacks, fireworks, hook-ups (for those who are more sexually daring than Wooyoung); everything is better on a roof. 

It is the Saturday before Wooyoung’s birthday and he has climbed onto the roof of Powell, drunk enough to not be afraid of the edge with San, a dozen people he sort of knows through San, and Yeosang. One of the girls has produced a snack-sized ziplock of weed with the glee of someone who won the lottery and Wooyoung doesn’t complain when Yeosang waves off the offer of a hit on his behalf. Wooyoung doesn’t need weed to feel high, he’s already high. Not on life or anything as cheesy as that, just high. High on the Saturday before his birthday on the roof of the library with his best friend at his side and homesickness pushed to the side of his mind. 

“There are no stars here,” Wooyoung warbles to Yeosang in slurred Korean. “Yeosangie, the stars are gone .”

“They’re there,” says Yeosang with the patience of a saint, wrapping an arm around Wooyoung’s shoulders and pulling him away from the edge. “They’re always there. We just can’t see them.”

And somewhere in the recesses of Wooyoung’s mind, he knows that Yeosang is right, even if he doesn’t totally understand it at the moment. Gone but not gone. There but not seen. Waiting, maybe. Waiting for the night when Wooyoung clambers onto the roof of a house far from here and stares at the sky. Waiting, maybe, for the night when they’re seen again.

The next morning, San empties his stomach into Yeosang’s trash can. Wooyoung snorts at the sight of San, tank top pulled askew and hair sticking upright, holding onto the baby blue mini trash can like a lifeline. 

“Baby,” he teases, voice scratchy and soft, and San’s ears go red. Wooyoung is ready to tease San some more when his own stomach turns and he’s falling out of his bed towards his own mini trash can. Yeosang finds them curled over their respective trash cans when he opens the door, flanked by a newly returned Yunho and Mingi. He doesn’t even look hungover. He loudly laughs at both of them, uncaring of the way they groan at the noise. 

“Idiots.”

Wooyoung throws the nearest shoe at Yeosang. He misses.

It’s just so easy with San. 

San shouting to Wooyoung across De Neve Drive, throwing his arm over Wooyoung’s shoulder and pulling Wooyoung into his side. Conversation leaping from video games to the choreography of EXO’s Growl to the best mandu filling in half a breath. Words that seem to never run out, smiles that never falter. Shrieking laughter as San whines in Korean. Wooyoung has known San for half a week. 

Giggling at the closet-sized room that San has in an off-campus apartment shared with seven other guys. Hugging San from behind, standing on his tiptoes so his chin perches on San’s shoulder. Fingers brushing, tickling, reaching over one another side-by-side. The easiest silence he’s ever known. Wooyoung feels like he’s known San for half his life. 

Somewhere between arguing about snow and making a secret handshake, Wooyoung realizes that maybe Yeosang did the math right. Despite all the boxes that Wooyoung checks off, he’s not special at all. There’s someone just like him.

You’re just like me, Wooyoung thinks desperately, and cannot wipe the smile from his face. 

Being friends with San is just so easy. 

Everything is good. 

Wooyoung wakes up on his 19th birthday to San throwing confetti in his face, Mingi jumping on the bed, and Yunho blowing into three party horns with all the air in his lungs. Yeosang shows the whole thing to Wooyoung’s family via FaceTime. His mother fusses over him through the phone and his baby brother shrieks at the top of his lungs and Wooyoung feels their love from across the ocean. 

He didn’t think it was possible for him to feel this good.

San refuses to leave Wooyoung’s side all day, linking their arms together and talking about everything under the sun. ACA sings happy birthday to him at the beginning of practice and shoves his face into a cupcake. Mingi and Yeosang show up with takeout from Leo’s Tacos (Yeosang deadly pale from the life-threatening experience of Mingi’s driving) and they eat in the empty stands of Straus Stadium. There’s a group present largely funded by Yunho, a sorely wanted pair of Jordans that cost way too much money, and a cake made out of choco pies. Wooyoung smiles so widely that he thinks his face is going to split in two. 

And everything is good, so good. Drinking games in public and singing at the top of their lungs to Fantastic Baby and no thoughts of everything he left behind. Wooyoung wants this feeling to last forever.

Naturally, the feeling ends a few hours later.

While the five of them celebrate Wooyoung at dinner, Twitter starts exploding. When they’re packing up for the night a few hours later, Wooyoung and Yeosang get a message from someone they haven’t seen in over a year. 

It’s the 27th of November in Korea. 

BigHit Entertainment has an announcement. 

It feels wrong to do this without you, jagiya.

Twitter informs the world that Bang Sihyuk has confirmed that BigHit will debut a new boy group at the beginning of 2019. There is no set date, no group name, no members yet announced. It is, objectively, a somewhat insignificant announcement. 

“Yo, BigHit’s debuting a new boy group,” says Yunho, mindlessly scrolling through his phone. With aborted shouts, San and Mingi rush to look over Yunho’s shoulder. “Bet you ten bucks they’ll be the next BTS.”

Wooyoung and Yeosang fall apart. 

How do two teenage boys, bright, brilliant, talented, driven, go from some of the most promising trainees on the idol circuit to ordinary college students in America? 

These are the facts: 

It’s the beginning of spring in Seoul in 2017. BigHit Entertainment has announced to its trainees that it's going to debut a group in two years. Among the trainees who receive this announcement are Kang Yeosang and Jung Wooyoung, who have been training for almost three years at this point and are 17 years old, fast approaching the older side of debuting idols. 

Yeosang finds out he won’t debut until he’s almost 20 years old and something in him breaks, something inexplicable. Suddenly, he does not want to spend the rest of his youth like this. He does not want to surrender any more of that precious time to the insanity of being a trainee, the terror of debuting. He is 17 years old and suddenly his priorities change and enjoying his youth is more important than becoming an idol. He could fail and then all of that time would be wasted and gone and that is terrifying. 

In the dead of night at an empty playground, he admits this to Wooyoung as they rock back and forth on the swing set. “It’s not that I don’t want it anymore, I think I’ll always want it. I just…I realized I don’t want to give up my youth for this. My life is worth more than that.” 

Wooyoung listens, because Wooyoung always listens, and Wooyoung understands, because Wooyoung is not the person everyone thinks he is. 

Wooyoung says “I don’t think it’s worth it either” and later “What will we do?”

Yeosang and Wooyoung stop being trainees not long after the announcement and, in the summer of that very year, Yeosang announces his desire to go to university in America. And they do not think of all the people that they are running away from, the teenagers that still have baby fat clinging to their cheeks and cry out “hyung” desperately, the friend they call “jagiya” and how lonely he must be now that they are gone. They run to America because they are young and they are in pain and they cannot stand to be in Seoul any longer. 

That is how they came here.

Some fall apart quietly. 

Yeosang does not cry or scream or punch the wall. His despair is the silent sort, that noiseless agony which only comes from years of practice. Shutting down completely. Hands feet arms legs head body heavy heavy heavy. Unable to move, to speak, to cry. He skips classes, he skips study groups, he skips meals. He cannot sleep, only float between states of consciousness, trapped in his head. Only able to think about how terrible this ache is, how hollow his heart feels. 

Others fall apart loudly. 

Wooyoung goes to tech week and dances with a reborn ferocity that died when his trainee days did. He cuts his performance with harsh critique, curses slipping from his lips because no matter what he does, no matter how he tries, it’s never good enough. He dances and growls and snaps at the other ACA members until until until; his ankle bends in a way it shouldn’t and he falls to the ground. Forehead pressed to the wood floor, hot and heavy tears dripping from eyes that refuse to open and face the reality of a broken dream. 

(ACA leadership tells him very softly, very carefully, that they’re pulling him from the line up. They can’t let him compete in Bridge with a twisted ankle.) 

They fall apart. 

They do not know how to stitch themselves back together. 

They don’t know what they’re doing. 

“I can’t do it,” Wooyoung gasps. “I can’t fucking do it, Yeosang-ah.” 

Yeosang fists tighten in the fabric of Wooyoung’s sweatshirt, his arms hiding Wooyoung away from the rest of the world. “Yes, you can. You have to.” 

(Wooyoung doesn’t know it, but Yeosang is crying too.)

“I can’t fucking do this without you,” Yeosang confesses to the dead of the night. “So you have to do it. We have to do it. We’ll do it together and everything will be okay. Fuck. Everything has to be okay.” 

Together. 

As long as we’re together, everything will be okay. 

Prayer is all they have left. 

They haven’t spent time with their friends since they fell apart. Wooyoung does not know if he has the strength to see them when he’s too devastated to hide how broken he is. Yeosang is too used to hiding behind Wooyoung and never asking for help. 

Mingi shows up at their dorm and quietly asks to be let in when they’re ready. He sits outside the door for three hours before Yeosang opens the door to go to the bathroom. They thought he’d left. 

“Hi,” he says from the floor once Yeosang has squeaked in surprise. “I’m worried about you guys.” 

Wooyoung looks up from his spot on the floor at Yeosang. They look at each other and, at Wooyoung’s nod, Yeosang goes to the bathroom. He leaves the door open.

“You can come in,” Wooyoung says as loudly as his tired body allows. 

Mingi pokes his head in first, blinks at Wooyoung, and then crawls across the ground until he’s situated across from Wooyoung.  

“Hi,” Mingi repeats. “I’m worried about you. But you don’t need to talk about what’s wrong if you don’t want to. I just need to know if you and Yeosang-ah are safe.”

“Safe?” 

“Yeah, safe.” Mingi stares at Wooyoung without averting his eyes once. It’s more eye contact than Wooyoung has ever had with Mingi before. “Are you at risk of physical harm?”

“I twisted my ankle,” Wooyoung responds, somewhere between apathy and deadpan. “I’ve already been physically harmed.” 

“Yes, I’m aware. It’s incredibly concerning. That’s why I want to make sure you and Yeosang-ah aren’t at risk of further physical harm. So, Young-ah, are you safe?” 

Slowly, Wooyoung realizes that there is a layer to Mingi’s questions that Wooyoung isn’t ready to face. But it’s a layer that can be ignored, that Mingi is letting Wooyoung ignore. Mingi, Wooyoung realizes, has far more tact than Wooyoung thought. 

“I’m safe,” he says and it doesn’t even feel like that much of a lie. “We’re safe. We’re just…we’re sad.” 

Mingi nods. “Okay. Thank you for telling me that. I know that can be, like, really hard to say out loud. I’m sorry you’re feeling sad. Do you want to be alone?”

“No,” says Wooyoung, surprising himself. “You can stay.” 

“Cool,” Mingi smiles. It’s Mingi’s sideways smile, the lopsided one that he usually reserves for Yunho. “Have you watched Goblin? Eomma says I’m not a real Korean until I’ve watched it.” 

And Wooyoung smiles, soft and unguarded, for the first time that week. 

They sit and watch Goblin. Eventually, they order take-out and Wooyoung goes downstairs to pick it up so Mingi can talk to Yeosang. When they’ve eaten dinner and watched over eight hours of Goblin, Mingi leaves for his own dorm with an offer to drive them to Bridge.

Yeosang quietly asks “Do you want to go to Bridge?”

And Wooyoung, surprising both of them, says “Yes.”

On the day of the Bridge competition, when the pain and ache and hate have faded into numbness (or at least begin to fade), Yeosang says, “I’m not flying back for Christmas.”

Wooyoung doesn’t have a ticket home. He misses his brothers and his mother’s rice and the way his dad’s sneezes make the whole house shake. He misses good kimchi and reading books in hangul and the rain. He misses a lot. 

He misses a lot, but he knows that Yeosang’s right. 

It’s not worth it. 

“Me neither.”

The streets he used to run through, the buses he fell asleep on after practices. The birthday ads on every surface under the sun and then some. The music and awards shows. The posters on his bedroom walls, the photos on the cork board over his desk. Everything in Korea, a reminder of what will never be. 

It’s just not worth it.

ACA places 3rd at Bridge. 

Wooyoung wants to die, feels like he’s already six feet under.

They’re better off without him. 

(Remember the routine? Sleeping, eating, studying, dancing, and all the other parts of that vicious cycle? There is one more part of Wooyoung’s routine. 

On the weekends, Wooyoung has the habit of drinking his problems out of existence and his liver into submission. The habit started at the party held for the end of international orientation week by upperclassmen who lived in a house off campus and had the ability to obtain alcohol from around the world. Who would say no to that? 

Wooyoung is nineteen (was eighteen) and young and eager to fit in and it’s so, so easy to drink. Drinking makes Wooyoung feel good, like he’s floating away from everything and all he can think of are the laughs refusing to hide behind his lips and the warmth that lingers under his skin. And maybe he doesn’t remember everything the next morning, maybe he loses his stomach in the dorm bathrooms every single time, but he can’t help it. 

When Wooyoung drinks, he forgets that he has problems to drink away.)

He wakes up in San’s bed the morning after ACA’s after-party and doesn’t remember a single thing from the night before. San is half asleep, leaning against the bed, one hand tangled in Wooyoung’s hair and a foul-smelling pot of (probably Wooyoung’s) puke by his side. 

“Hey,” San says softly. His eyes are bleary, unfocused, and he kind of makes Wooyoung want to cry. “Welcome to the land of the living. You scared me for a little bit.” 

Wooyoung responds by gagging, throwing himself over San’s lap and towards the pot to puke again, nothing but stomach acid and bile left to eject from his body. San holds Wooyoung in his arms, rubs his shoulder with a soothing hand, and whispers promises to “Let it out, everything’s gonna be okay.”

And Wooyoung doesn’t believe San, not really, but it’s nice to be held so he doesn’t say anything.  

And then, even though Wooyoung didn't think it was possible, life gets even worse.

Yunho asks about Christmas and Wooyoung can’t handle it. He just can’t. 

“Ask Yeosangie. He can decide for the two of us.”

“Yeosang said to ask you.” 

“Oh…”

“You don’t have to come if you’re not comfortable, my family won’t be offended. We just want you to know the option’s there, if you want it. We don’t want you and Yeosang to be lonely.” 

Wooyoung doesn’t know how to tell Yunho that no matter where he spends Christmas he’s going to feel lonely, so he doesn’t say anything at all. 

He studies and he drinks and he studies and he drinks and occasionally he remembers to sleep. He eats, probably, because if he wasn’t eating he’d be dead. He exists on the edge of every interaction, the border of every conversation, and doesn’t see the horror and concern that fill his friends. 

It’s not a fight, because there’s nothing for Wooyoung and San to fight over. It’s not a discussion, because there’s nothing to be discussed. Whether or not Wooyoung drinks too much too often is Wooyoung’s business alone. San can fuck off. 

They haven’t fallen out. They don’t stop talking and hanging out, there are plenty of words exchanged and time wasted together. Nothing has changed. It doesn’t feel hollow at all.

San doesn’t shout across the street. Wooyoung wakes up with his stomach in his mouth and no one to hold him.

Most days Wooyoung wakes up wishing he hadn’t, chest tight from something he doesn’t know how to loosen, tongue heavy lead and ash in his mouth, wanting nothing more than to turn over and curl into a ball. Most mornings, he does just that. Curls into a ball and wishes he didn’t have to exist. 

There’s just too much. BigHit and everything he gave up. ACA placing. How little he’s spoken to Yunho since rejecting the Christmas invitation and learning about Yunho’s feature in the ACA Christmas videos. The bags beneath Yeosang’s eyes, how rarely his best friend comes back to their room. San’s eyes fill with frustration every other time they talk. The sound of his mother’s heart breaking when he said he wouldn’t come home for Christmas, the disappointment in his hyung’s voice. How concerned Mingi seems, stretched thin being pulled from every direction, trying to be everyone’s friend. Lately, he can’t listen to BTS without crying. How stupid he feels compared to every single one of his classmates. The loneliness that sits in the pit of his chest, an all-consuming otherness because no matter what he does how hard he tries and tries he’s just never enough-

But Wooyoung drags himself out of bed, sheets wrinkling beneath his fists, because there’s no time to drown in his head, no space for a day off. 

It’s finals season. He’s not special. Everyone is falling apart. 

Yunho falls apart on the first day of finals week, slamming his head against the table, caught somewhere between caring too much and not caring at all. Mumbling about how all the words are just blending together and his argument is unraveling faster than he can stitch it together. It’s 11:14 pm and Yunho’s final is due in less than nine hours. 

And Wooyoung doesn’t know what to do, not really, because as often as he experiences the exact same feelings Yunho is going through, he doesn’t have a solution for it. 

“Can you call Mingi-ya,” Yunho asks, quiet and defeated and so unlike the Yunho that Wooyoung knows that it hurts. “Tell him ‘Yunho’s lost it.’”

Mingi appears with San in tow, glasses streaked by wayward fingerprints and expression devoid of its usual smile. He kneels next to Yunho and speaks so softly that Wooyoung and San can’t hear a thing, left to do little more than stare at each other helplessly. 

(And Wooyoung knows he will never say anything to anyone about how intimate Mingi and Yunho look at that moment. Mingi’s arm wrapped around Yunho’s back, thumb kneading soft circles into Yunho’s shoulders. Mingi nosing at Yunho’s cheek, forehead to temple, free hand entangling with Yunho’s clenched fists. Words that no one is meant to hear, a moment that no one is meant to see. And Wooyoung knows he will never say anything even if he does not understand what exactly is happening.)

The first words that slip through Mingi’s lips loud enough for Wooyoung to hear are “You know I hate this.” 

Words and embraces are traded for a bright orange bottle filled with an abundance of tiny round pills. Mingi shakes two into his hand and looks pointedly at San’s sharp breath, daring them to say a word. San shakes his head from Wooyoung’s side and Wooyoung doesn’t know what’s going on. Yunho swallows the pills, Mingi settles in the seat next to Yunho, and they get back to work like nothing ever happened. 

Wooyoung doesn’t know what happened, but there’s no space to ask. 

Later, Wooyoung will learn about ADHD and its accompanying medications. Mingi’s lifelong diagnosis of ADHD and a three-year history of letting Yunho abuse his medication during finals season. How pills like Ritalin give people without ADHD laserlike focus and how high the demand is amongst college students. 

“It’s like, impossible to be an Asian American kid and not use dexies at least once in your life,” Yunho explains when he’s come down from his panic and finished his final in four hours of very intense typing. “There’s so much pressure to do well, y’know? Get straight A’s and graduate top of the class and everything. It’s hard to not use dexies if you have access to them.” 

“Ritalin isn’t a dexie, it’s methylphenidate,” Mingi says with the tiredness of someone who has had this exact conversation too many times to count. “You’re welcome to try, just don’t take more than two.” 

Wooyoung adds prescription abuse to his ever-growing list of shit he’s pulled in America and takes Ritalin. “What’s the harm in trying?”

(Apparently, there’s no harm at all. 

Wooyoung has undiagnosed ADHD.

Yunho laughs so hard he cries.)

There’s one last ACA practice in the middle of finals week, something between a study break and a freestyle competition, all loud laughter and joyful trash-talking. Wooyoung smiles even though it feels empty, mostly sticking to the sides and hollering when everyone else does. 

“How much longer do you need to keep your ankle wrapped?” a member of leadership asks, crouching next to Wooyoung’s spot by the aux. 

“Just another week to be safe,” says Wooyoung. “Honestly, I’m probably fine, I just don’t want to risk it.” 

I don’t want to waste your time with my mediocre dancing, he doesn’t say. 

“Better safe than sorry,” she nods sagely. “You’ll be back next quarter, won’t you? There’s a lot of good shit lined up for the spring competitions.” 

Wooyoung is never going to be an idol, but he’d rather die than stop dancing. But he’s not good enough for ACA, not really, and he’d never forgive himself if he dragged the rest of them down with him. Surely she must know this too. 

“I don’t think so,” he says. It’s quiet enough for the others not to hear and loud enough to drown out the noise of his heart cracking. “Maybe I’ll find a non-competitive group. I don’t think I’m that useful in competition.” 

Silence. It stretches long, too long. When Wooyoung finally gets the courage to look at her, she looks upset. 

“If you truly don’t enjoy competing, that’s one thing. You’re in the wrong group if you don’t want to compete and if you want to leave because of that, we’ll understand. But quitting because you think you’re useless in competitions is complete bullshit.” Her words are soft and her eyes are vicious, Wooyoung could not look away if he tried. “You’re not useless. We want you in ACA, okay? Don’t quit just because we happened to place in the one competition you weren’t a part of.”

“You don’t need me,” he tries to protest. 

“We don’t need any particular member, all of us are replaceable,” she fires back. “We want you.”

She walks away and Wooyoung is trying not to fall apart at the seams. He is holding his breath, fighting back tears and the sob that wants to wrench its way out of his throat. It’s the first time since his birthday he’s felt something akin to joy. 

No one has ever wanted Wooyoung before. 

Wooyoung doesn’t see Yeosang for four days and everything is fine. 

(This is a lie.)

They normally eat dinner together every night, but they haven’t done that at all during finals. They’d been falling off their game for a few weeks, schedules lining up the wrong way around, and the unexpected awkwardness of their third roommate actually being around. Yeosang is drowning in code and Wooyoung’s barely treading water, things like dinner together have to be sacrificed. 

(This is not something Wooyoung ever wanted to sacrifice.)

Lately, Yeosang’s been talking to the people in his classes. Actually talking to them, memes over Messenger and last-minute invites to kickbacks celebrating the end of the quarter. And it’s fine because Wooyoung has ACA and their other friends and Wooyoung is too busy drowning in schoolwork to be properly social anyways. So Wooyoung doesn’t mind that Yeosang goes to a party without him at the end of finals week, he’s happy that Yeosang is finally putting himself out there even if they're not a package deal anymore. 

(Wooyoung has always wanted this for Yeosang. He just didn’t think it would hurt this much.)

Wooyoung goes to bed after his last final, no tears of frustration left to cry, his heart wrung dry in his chest. 

Finals end and the five of them get together for one last trip to the roof of Engineering 5. It feels a little tense, a little awkward, and Wooyoung kind of feels like he should leave. Yunho’s walking on eggshells and Mingi looks like death warmed over and San’s frustration is tangible. Yeosang, at least, doesn’t seem to harbor any particularly strong feelings toward Wooyoung. 

(Yeosang is, however, high out of his mind.)

Wooyoung sits on the edge of the conversation. He thinks about friendship, about wanting people versus needing them. And Wooyoung doesn’t want to need anyone, but he knows he needs his friends. Knows that without Yeosang he would be dying in BigHit, without Yunho and Mingi he’d be lost in America, without San he’d be aching for Korea. Wooyoung needs them and it’s terrible because his friends?

They don’t need him. They probably don’t want him, either. They’d be better off without him. 

Wooyoung sits on the edge of the conversation, ready to run away again.

It comes to a head eighteen hours later. 

San is on a flight to Sacramento, Yunho and Mingi are on the road to San Francisco, and Yeosang is out with friends. Wooyoung is walking to Ralphs and trying not to think about how much he misses his hyung. 

If he’d been paying attention, he would have noticed the homeless man carrying a huge garbage bag halfway up the block. If he’d been paying attention, he would have crossed the street and walked on the other sidewalk. 

But he wasn’t paying attention. He was thinking about the fact his hyung is enlisting in the military and how he won’t see his hyung for at least two years. 

“Fucking chink.”

Wooyoung freezes. 

(“Never freeze,” his hyung warned him. “If you freeze, you give them power.”)

The man spits on Wooyoung’s jacket. Wooyoung’s hands are shaking. 

“What,” comes out unbidden, a whisper, a reaction more than anything else. “I’m, I’m not-“

“Not a fucking chink? You a goddamn jap then?”

Wooyoung’s knees feel weak. He can’t stay frozen. He has to move. He has to leave. 

“I’m sorry,” Wooyoung breathes. He stumbles backward, barely avoids tripping over his own feet, his eyes heavy and hot. 

“Fuck you! Fucking yellow bitch! Fuck you! Go back to where you came from!”

Wooyoung runs. 

Wooyoung doesn’t realize he’s crying until he’s locked himself in his dorm room, sinking to the floor with his back to the door. He’s choking on fear and shock, unable to breathe because he just can’t get enough air in. His cheeks are hot and itchy no matter how harshly he scrubs the tears from them. It’s not a big deal, it was just one person who wasn’t in their right mind, Wooyoung wasn’t even injured. 

Collapsed against the door, Wooyoung doesn’t move until he’s run dry. Until his eyes are swollen and bleary and he can’t see straight. There’s skin and blood and hair under his nails from how violently he scratched himself. His chest is wound so tight he doesn’t think it will ever untangle itself. 

“I’m okay,” he whispers, voice hoarse. There is no one to hear him cry. “I’m fine. It’s fine.”

Go back to where you came from.

Wooyoung’s lips tremble. 

He made a mistake.