Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

June 13, 2022 (Monday)

It’s raining today.

Yeonjun tips his head against the cool window, letting out a sigh. He can see his own reflection in the glass, smudged by fingerprints. These days, it’s difficult for him to step out of his apartment without someone noticing him. Everyone tells him that he has the aura—or, rather, the face—of an idol. Even people who don’t know his name somehow know that he’s famous.

Right now, he struggles to understand that vision. His cheeks are puffy, there are dark circles under his eyes, and without makeup, all of the imperfections in his skin are starkly visible in the unpleasant grayish light. He should’ve worn makeup. What if someone sees him like this?

He can already imagine the headline: Soloist Choi Yeonjun spotted disheveled on mandatory break, delayed fourth comeback.

He doesn’t even want to think about the half of his face hidden under his mask, or shadowed by his cap. His face is hot and damp and sticky, but he refuses to take it off. It’s an essential part of his disguise, since the company wouldn’t let him dye his hair back to black before his trip, and it’s impossible to hide bubblegum-pink hair under a simple baseball cap. Maybe the fact that people keep assuming he’s famous has less to do with his aura and more the fact that he could stand in for the mascot of a candy store.

He has no choice but to get used to it. As soon as he reaches his hometown, one stop away, where everyone knows his name, stares will be the least of his concerns.

The train rumbles into the station right on schedule. Yeonjun stretches his aching legs, his knees cracking, and yanks on the wire of his earbuds to pull them out. He tucks them into the pocket of the jacket it’s too warm to be wearing, alongside his phone.

The remaining passengers on the train spill out the doors. Yeonjun follows, shrugging his bag over his shoulder. The wheels of his suitcase catch on the gap between the train and the station, and he hurries to pull it out, scanning over the crowd for the exit. There’s a staircase to his right, and he adjusts his grip on the suitcase to prepare for the arduous task of lugging it to his destination.

He doesn’t need to pull the route up on his phone. The ten-minute walk from the train to his childhood home was one he memorized when he was fourteen. He knows he could walk it in his sleep, even though it’s been three years since he stepped foot onto the platform.

The crowd begins to thin as he descends the last step, the suitcase rattling beside him. The heat of rush hour has begun to simmer. His ears fill with the white noise of voices, blending into a seamless void. One is discernible above the rest, so soft and somehow unfamiliar that, for a second, Yeonjun dismisses it as a figment of his imagination. “Yeonjun-ah?”

Yeonjun turns on his heel to lock eyes with his mother, and the world screeches to a halt.

“Eomma,” Yeonjun breathes, immediately dropping the handle of his suitcase and holding his arms open for his mother. She melts against him, her much smaller form fitting under his chin. Smaller than he remembers, but his mother’s embrace means home, no matter how old he’s grown. “I told you not to come.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t?” she asks. It’s so odd to hear her voice without the echo of a phone that Yeonjun’s eyes instantly turn misty. He holds onto the hug for one extra second before relaxing his arms, allowing her to step back and survey him.

His mother says she watches all of his performances, but Yeonjun imagines that it must come as a shock to see him in the flesh. He barely recognizes himself in his pre-debut photos, his cheeks rounder and eyes warmer and everything about him less… manicured. It’s difficult to face his younger self, honestly, but teenagers are typically fledglings without their feathers, not swans.

“You’ve grown so much,” his mother says. She rests a hand on his shoulder, giving it a firm pat, and brushes her fingers through the straw-like strands of Yeonjun’s bleached hair. It was platinum before it was pink. “What did they do to you?”

Yeonjun laughs. “I like it, eomma. So do the fans. But really, what are you doing here?”

“It’s been three years, Junie. I would have picked you up in Seoul if you’d let me,” she says. “And I thought I could help you carry your things.”

Yeonjun would never let her, not in a million years. Especially not after she made the walk to the station to begin with.

“I don’t have much,” Yeonjun says, hoping that that will appease her. Only a small backpack and suitcase.

“You can start fresh while you’re here,” she says. It fills him with combined relief and unease, waging a war within his soul. “Let’s get going. I meant to start dinner sooner, but I wanted everything else to be ready for you to stay….”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll help you.”

“Nonsense. You’ve had a long trip.”

It’s a handful of degrees warmer here than in Seoul, and summer has arrived in full force. Even under the gray sky, the leaves are aggressively viridian, neighborhood gardens bursting with a rainbow of hydrangeas and roses and lavender. Far from the smog of Seoul’s skies, Yeonjun feels as though his lungs can finally, properly expand.

It’s not quite home, after so many years, but these streets are familiar. The mid-afternoon light is warm, deep shadows cast by full branches. The streets are busy with people finishing work for the evening, carrying on with their errands and other tasks. Yeonjun isn’t used to walking like this—he hardly feels the wind on his face before his manager urges him from one car to the next. 

“I can’t believe it took them this long to give you a break,” his mother scoffs. “It’s been three years, and you haven’t had more than two days off in a row—”

“I was training for one of those years. That doesn’t count.”

“It counts! You know what they say… if you don’t give yourself a break, your body will make you take one. I know you’re strong, but how could you be taking proper care of yourself?”

“I don’t push myself that hard. Besides, I got my work ethic from you.”

He pushes himself far too hard by any normal person’s standards, but when he assesses his own progress, it’s difficult to see anything other than his shortcomings. This is the price of his job—but it’s also his dream. He gets to sing for audiences around the world, dance to his heart’s content without wasting away in a sterile corporate wasteland. One day far too soon, his body will collapse under the weight of it all, the sleepless nights and torn muscles bending sooner than his will. That’s when he’ll rest.

His mother shakes her head. “I’ll see to it that you rest properly while you’re with me. A whole month, you said?”

A month is how long UVIC says they can sustain Yeonjun’s social media with pre-recorded content, although Yeonjun knows that it’s actually much longer. Regardless, as soon as he returns, he’ll be thrust into days of filming to make up for his time off—variety show recording, vlogs, album preparations, dance practices….

“Yeah, a month. But they’re not calling it a break, just… a creative retreat. They want me back sooner if I can actually write anything.”

“What? You write lyrics all the time.”

Yeonjun grimaces. Lyric writing has always been a highlight of the job for Yeonjun, but it was the first domino of his process to tip over, leaving his career in a dusty heap. He’s gone through creative ruts before, brief spurts of writer’s block that he managed to shake off after a brief battle, but nothing like this: a complete inability to produce anything other than dismally soulless, bland lyricism.

It’s been two years since Yeonjun’s debut. He hasn’t been in the industry for very long, but this is when he should begin to show more of his true colors. Not retreat to the safety of his company’s producers, handing full creative license over to someone whose vision rarely aligns with his.

First the album preparations halted, then he couldn’t concentrate on the choreo. Fans noticed that he’d lost too much weight. His mind was elsewhere, and although they tried to coach him through it at first, his managers soon insisted that he take time off, and not show his face around the building until he steps back into the shoes of the polished idol, Choi Yeonjun. This isn’t the person his CEO chose to debut.

“Well, I bet you won’t be able to write anything until you’ve gotten rest,” his mother says. “Give yourself a week, at least. Get settled in. Then we can see where your heart takes you. For now….”

She flashes him a smile. “It’s good to have you back.”

Yeonjun’s heart twinges. Leaving his mother was one of the most difficult parts of becoming a trainee. They’ve only ever had each other—Yeonjun has no memories of his father, who left before his second birthday, and her family lives across the country. Leaving home meant abandoning his support system.

The memory of his staff sitting him down and telling him, We need to sort this out as soon as possible, by any means necessary, is hauntingly clear in Yeonjun’s mind. An outsider might assume the break is a reward—his company finally treating him like a human, giving him his hard-earned rest, and allowing him to properly recharge.

But Yeonjun knows the truth. He failed, and this is his punishment. Dozens of people work together to make his career a reality, and he’s letting every single one of them down. He’s letting down his fans, too. They’ll start to worry when UVIC releases their statement.

He didn’t know where to go other than his childhood home. He drifted from his high school friends after his debut, and he isn’t close enough with other idols to ask them if he could stay with them. Besides, most of them live in dorms, and his manager wanted him out of Seoul. He doesn’t know what to do with this level of freedom.

It barely counts as freedom when he’s trapped in the cage of his uncertain future. Debut was a challenge, but this has easily been the most troubling period of his career.

Yeonjun swallows hard. Home is the safest place to be, even if it isn’t the home he remembers. “It’s good to be here."

Yeonjun’s mother’s gardens lack the grandeur of her neighbors’—the front yard is adorned with the skeletons of scraggly bushes that clearly haven’t been pruned since Yeonjun left. The rest of the exterior is remarkably unchanged, the paint of the door chipping around the handle, the stairs bent and creaking under his feet.

The inside is where things diverge from his memory. There’s a new table in the kitchen, polished dark wood. The living room has been rearranged to accommodate a larger television and smaller but less ragged couch. The curtains are new, too, drawn back with the windows open to allow the breeze indoors.

“I’ve moved some things around,” his mother says bashfully. “What do you think?”

“I like it. Feels more open.” There’s a set of framed photographs in the narrow hallway—a few childhood photos, cousins, high school graduations, Yeonjun’s debut stage and first concert. A laugh sticks in his throat.

“It was starting to feel a little too empty,” his mother says, surveying the space with him. “This is as much change as I could handle.”

As soon as Yeonjun began receiving regular checks from his debut album, he started sending money back to his mother. To pay off the mortgage, to upgrade her car, to attend to the endless utilities that had been neglected while she poured her funds into raising Yeonjun. He’d insisted that she should make improvements to her life now that she has his income, but leaky ceiling and all, she was far too attached to the house to even consider selling it.

“I think it’s good.” Yeonjun adjusts the strap of his bag. “Where should I….”

“You’re not a stranger here, Yeonjun-ah. I’ve barely touched your room. You should get settled while I start on dinner,” his mother says.

Yeonjun carries his suitcase the rest of the way, nudging the door to his bedroom open. He blinks a few times—it’s like he’s looking at a picture from the day he left. His bed is neatly made, the blankets free of wrinkles. The desk is neatly organized, neater than Yeonjun himself would have left it.

Yeonjun left most of his belongings at his childhood home when he became a trainee, only bringing along necessities, a few beloved trinkets, and a handful of other items that could fit within his suitcases. His accommodations from the company are more than spacious enough to hold everything, but his belongings there are part of another lifetime.

Yeonjun sets the suitcase down. He’ll unpack later, maybe tomorrow. For now, he sits on the edge of his bed, taking a sip from his water bottle.

There are pictures hung from string lights beside his bed, their colors paled from the sun. They feature high school friends he hasn’t spoken to in months, blurry shots of zoo animals, a beach at sunset, and other scenes from years past. But there’s one face that appears in every other photo, a sheepish smile, gangly limbs and unkempt brown hair, his arms almost always around Yeonjun….

Yeonjun unclips one of the photos, bringing it closer to his face as his heart somersaults in his chest. Confronting the other consequence of returning home is like taking a knife to a rigid scar.

What happened to you, Kai-yah?

Yeonjun thumbs over the photo. It’s from middle school, a summer that Kai went camping with Yeonjun and his mother. The trip was a complete disaster—Yeonjun’s mother isn’t exactly a nature lover, but she complained that the two of them were only getting into trouble around the house, so she got permission from Kai’s parents to take him on an adventure.

The evidence of their trouble is visible even within that photo. There’s a scrape on Yeonjun’s chin from where he walked into a tree. Their arms are dotted with mosquito bites, raw from scratching. Kai’s hair is soaked—he ended up in the river during a poorly-timed wrestling match.

Yeonjun isn’t looking at the camera, his face squashed against Kai’s shoulder. He hasn’t seen this kind of unadulterated joy on his own face in a while, the kind that reaches his eyes, exposing his crooked smile.

All of the pictures are the same. Yeonjun is youthful and carefree, accompanied by his best friend. The best friend—the lover he left behind when he chose to become an idol, hours and hours and miles and miles from his hometown.

Kai isn’t Yeonjun’s anymore. He came to terms with that after months of silence and messages that received no response. Once, Yeonjun even tried to message Kai’s sisters, but neither Lea nor Hiyyih responded. Yeonjun was completely removed from their lives.

It didn’t matter that Kai had promised that they would keep in contact and find some way to continue their relationship. Kai had let go of him in the end, and Yeonjun had no choice but to continue.

Grief sinks like a stone in his belly. He clips the photo back up, so it rejoins the dozen other photos from happier days.

The room is full of similar relics. Yeonjun’s collection of vinyl records, the nearest one gifted to him by Kai on his nineteenth birthday. It was one of several items he regretted not bringing to Seoul. On his desk: seashells from a beach trip, souvenir pins, and a stack of sketchbooks from his days as an artist. The room is emptier than it was when he was a child.

Yeonjun flops onto the too-soft old mattress, laying on his back to stare up at the mottled ceiling.

Two years of pretending it doesn’t hurt, and the grief hasn’t gone away. Not fully, although he imagines it would hurt less if he had another companion—if the starless skies and bright lights of Seoul had offered him solace, other than what he finds in his own lyrics. Does he have the right to grieve?

On impulse, Yeonjun’s hand goes to his pocket. He wrestles his phone out, struggling to recall the password for the personal social media that he hasn’t been allowed to log into for months. He has no use for it, anyway. It’s too risky an avenue of communication with his childhood friends, whose intentions he’s forced to second guess. His Instagram is dismally layered in cobwebs. 

There’s no point in checking Kai’s account. Yeonjun has checked a thousand times since Kai stopped messaging him, delighted that Kai hadn’t blocked him. Kai was never very active on social media, but his posts subsided altogether in September almost three years ago, less than two months after Yeonjun left home.

The most recent photo, from a week before Kai stopped messaging Yeonjun, is of Kai posing with the flowers on their old university campus. It’s a small, old school, but the gardens and flowering trees are beautiful. Yeonjun had loved them before he dropped out. Kai is the prettiest part of the photo, the embodiment of vibrant youth. There’s another person just out of view, a second pair of hands disappearing into the frame. The comments are mostly empty. A bamgyuuuu left a heart six months later, then page.soobin wrote I miss you the year after that.

Yeonjun turns his phone off and lets it fall from his hand, closing his eyes and exhaling deeply. He has a dozen pieces of his life to sort out before he worries about Kai.

There are footsteps down the hall, and his mother’s voice comes a moment later. “Yeonjun-ah.” Her head pokes into the room, eyes landing on Yeonjun. “I have to run to the store. I forgot sea salt.”

Yeonjun sits up. “How did you forget sea salt?”

“I don’t know! I thought I had another container.”

Yeonjun stretches, suppressing a yawn. “I can pick it up. You already went to get me.”

“Are you sure? You’ve just gotten settled.”

“I’ll go. I don’t need to unpack right now.” Yeonjun slides his phone back into his pocket, feeling the other to check that his wallet is still there. “Is there anything else you need?”

“I started a list for my next shopping trip, but you don’t need to get those things now. I can go this weekend.”

“No, eomma. I don’t mind.”

Yeonjun stands, adjusting the fit of his cap. He follows his mother to the kitchen, where she hands him a grocery list scrawled on a pad of sticky notes. Sea salt is underlined at the bottom.

“I’ll be right back,” Yeonjun promises. He hasn’t gone grocery shopping for himself in a long time. “Are you sure you don’t want to order out instead?”

“I’ve already started the prep,” his mother says. “I’m sorry. If there’s anything you need, you should pick it up now.”

Yeonjun nods. He’ll have to make the trip fast if he doesn’t want to be noticed, but he’d rather deal with that than make his mother go out again. She’s only forty-five—they celebrated her birthday over the phone last month—but her days are long and stressful, and Yeonjun is acutely, guiltily aware of how that affects her physically. He’s caused enough trouble by requesting to stay with her.

The thought crosses his mind just once, as Yeonjun steps outside. Their town isn’t small, but they used to live close to each other. What would Yeonjun do if he ran into Kai, crossing the street or standing in line at the store? Where would he begin? There’s no way Kai doesn’t know what Yeonjun has been doing for the past three years, which means that he doesn’t want contact.

Should Yeonjun… ignore him? How could he ignore the person he thought was the love of his life?

The grocery store is a five-minute drive. Yeonjun hasn’t driven since he left home, and if he weren’t in a rush, he’d walk instead—he doesn’t trust himself with his mother’s car. But there’s something freeing about driving on his own, without a manager’s watchful eye on him. It’s peaceful, and quiet, and he doesn’t bother turning on music. He cracks the window, and his nose fills with the scent of rain.

Yeonjun rarely used to borrow his mother’s car when he was living at home. It was a beaten, older vehicle that they tried to make it last as long as they could. Yeonjun would take public transportation to university when his mother was working, so he rarely drove, although he’d sometimes go out with his friends or Kai on the weekends.

Going out with Kai was the highlight of being able to drive. They didn’t need to stumble on the last train late at night when they could sit together in the car instead, talking about anything and everything, holding onto each other and dreaming of a future laden with possibility.

They used to do more than talk. But never anything that would leave evidence in the car, because Yeonjun didn’t think he could bear the humiliation of facing his mother afterwards.

Enough about Kai. Yeonjun can’t rid himself of the thought fast enough.

He crumples and smoothes out the sticky note in his hand as he walks into the store, grabbing a basket for the handful of items he needs to gather—the largest pack of sliced tteok that he can find, a tub of gochujang, dangmyeon. The cabbages on display are undersized, so he takes two. Finally, sea salt.

Do I need anything for myself? Yeonjun wanders the aisles of snacks aimlessly. I deserve a treat, don’t I? Today was so long…. Should I try to keep up my diet, so it’s not hard to start again after I go back to work?

His eye catches on bright packaging. The next aisle: every type of instant noodles a man could dream of.

His mother would chastise him for not eating healthier when he has all the options in the world, an echo of his managers, but all he can think about is comfort food. Not just homemade food, but the kind of comfort food he relies on after long days of filming. Yeul? Shin?

“Yeonjun? Choi Yeonjun?”

That was fast, is Yeonjun’s first thought. His CEO will be pissed when rumors begin spreading even before UVIC releases their notice tomorrow. Grocery shopping isn’t the most humiliating place to be caught, he supposes, but the fact that he’s hours from Seoul is damning. Does he have a pen on him? An autograph would only provide more evidence….

The voice is familiar, a windchime in the breeze. Yeonjun lifts his head.

It’s Lea. Her hair is longer than it was three years ago, but her dark eyes are the same. Her expression is just as shocked as Yeonjun feels, her eyebrows raised, mouth slightly open. “It is you. I thought I was seeing things.”

“It’s me,” Yeonjun says weakly. Running into Lea is almost as devastating as running into Kai. Lea and Hiyyih were the only two people who knew of Yeonjun and Kai’s relationship, the only people they trusted with it. Their plan was to wait some time, then tell their families, but Yeonjun’s idol training complicated their plans.

Lea and Hiyyih were always welcoming, at least. They pretended to threaten Yeonjun, and teased them in private. Their relationship was never a big deal with Hiyyih and Lea, and Yeonjun was forever indebted to them for that.

“What are you doing here?” Lea asks. “It’s been forever. I thought—you’re supposed to be in Seoul!”

“I’m on a break. I thought I’d stop by home,” Yeonjun says.

“I’ve seen you on the news,” Lea gushes. “You really did it. We always said… if anyone could do it, it’d be you. You’re amazing, Yeonjun-ah.”

Yeonjun smiles, torn between embarrassment and terror and relief. Lea is from a distant part of his life, but Yeonjun couldn’t have forgotten her kindness.

“Will you be here for long?” she asks.

“A month. Maybe more, probably less.”

Lea gives Yeonjun a bright, sweet smile, exactly the way Yeonjun remembers.  She was the closest thing Yeonjun ever had to a sister, even though he always regretted not becoming closer with her.

“I’m sorry. I meant to reach out more. Everything’s been so busy… but I’m proud of you. He’d be proud of you, too,” Lea says, adjusting her own basket.

What?

“I’m sorry?” Yeonjun says.

“Kai. If he… if he saw what you were doing now, I know he’d be proud of you. He’d never tell us what you were up to when you were a trainee, but he was proud even then.”

Something isn’t right. Lea must know that Kai isn’t speaking to Yeonjun anymore. At least, she knows that Kai doesn’t know what Yeonjun is doing now. Why involve Kai in the conversation at all?

“Lea, did you get my messages?” Yeonjun asks. He was so busy as a trainee, but he still managed to speak with Kai most days, exchanging messages during his breaks or just before sleep. He only lasted a week before snapping and finally reaching out to his relative.

Lea’s eyebrows furrow. A dozen emotions flicker across her face, each more agonized than the last, bewilderment and horror and heartbreak together. “You mean… you don’t know?”

Some kind of animal instinct overtakes Yeonjun, even though he tries to run from it. He can sense her response deep within his soul, the incoming disaster, and wishes to cower. He doesn’t want to ask. He doesn’t need to ask. “Know what?”

Lea sets down her basket and reaches for Yeonjun’s hands instead, consoling him. Her voice is thick with emotion, glass about to shatter.

“Yeonjun… Kai died three years ago.”

Lea pays for Yeonjun’s groceries, even though he insists that she shouldn’t—he has more than enough money to pay for them, but he’s too weak to properly refuse. She carries both of their bags out, and they sit together on the damp curb, illuminated by the sunset and golden glow of the parking lot street lamps.

“I’m so sorry,” Lea says, over and over again. “Hiyyih and I talked about it so many times… which one of us would tell you. We planned to call, but we went back and forth, and…. I promise we didn’t forget about you. I could never forget about you.”

Yeonjun only has the power to shake his head. He trembles uncontrollably, as though it’s midwinter rather than the dead of summer. His ears feel like they’re full of cotton, his vision blurred like he’s underwater.

“I just really, really thought that Hiyyih already told you. I should have asked. I’m sorry.”

“…How?” Yeonjun croaks.

“After it happened, everything went so fast,” Lea says weakly. “Hiyyih and I had to take care of our mother. Our father came home to help with the funeral, but he… he wasn’t very helpful, honestly. He was devastated. Everything got mixed up.”

The funeral. Kai is dead. He’s been dead for years, and Yeonjun had no idea. He thought Kai abandoned him, when in reality Yeonjun was the one who abandoned Kai. He left home to chase his own dreams and wasn’t even there when Kai died.

Nobody thought he was that important to me. I had to wonder for all these years. He was always out of reach.

“When?” Yeonjun asks.

“September 2019. It feels like yesterday.” Lea’s eyes shine in the dim light, brimming with unshed tears. She turns her face away from Yeonjun, wiping her eyes with her hand.

Yeonjun’s surroundings reel around him. He curls in on himself, tucking his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them.

He can’t breathe. In through his nose, hold, out through his mouth, the sound rattling in his ears.

Kai is gone. He hasn’t been Yeonjun’s for years, but now he can never be Yeonjun’s again. No more stolen afternoons, relaxing and passing time. No more adventures, exploring the world together, making mistakes and piecing each other back together. No more nights spent figuring out how to smuggle drinks into their parents’ homes, only to waste the evening exchanging kisses under the stars instead. Nobody to share a lifetime of memories with.

They won’t get to see each other grow up. Kai never saw Yeonjun debut, his biggest accomplishment in life. He never got to achieve his own dreams, or even start reaching for them. He never will. He’ll never get to watch another sunrise. He could’ve been an artist, or a teacher, or pursued something Yeonjun couldn’t have imagined. All of that is gone now.

“Yeonjun-ah,” Lea says. “Are you okay?’

Once you know, you can never go back. Would knowing hurt more than wondering?

“I need to know how it happened,” Yeonjun gasps. “Noona, what happened?”

“We… we didn’t find him until early in the morning,” Lea says. Yeonjun can’t bring himself to look at her, but he can hear the tremble in her voice. “He was with a couple of his university friends…. It was a week after the semester started, so they were getting ahead on work. They said he left late at night, and then we think he was attacked after that.

“He was stabbed. A—A few times. We’re still not sure who did it. There wasn’t evidence where… where they found him. And no cameras.”

“But how?” In this century, how could there be nothing? Distress and fury rise up in Yeonjun together. How could Kai slip away, without anyone beside him, anyone to comfort him or protect him?

I never should have left.

“There was one guy they questioned. One of Kai’s friends said he was cruel in the past, and… I guess that made him think that man would’ve attacked Kai. But the police couldn’t keep him, because there wasn’t enough evidence. So, we still don’t know. It could’ve been anyone.”

Lea’s voice wobbles at the end, but she finishes the story without a hitch. Yeonjun wonders how many times she’s had to tell it over the years.”

“Are you okay?” Yeonjun croaks. “You and Hiyyih.”

Her lips press into a line, eyes watery. “We’ve managed to hang on. It’s harder knowing that the person who did this is still out there. We might never know, and we’ll never get justice, but I….” Her chest rises and falls with a heavy breath. “It doesn’t matter. The thing I really want is what I can never have.”

Because Kai is gone. Nothing can bring back Kai.

Yeonjun lowers his head, breathing in deeply even though it stings. It’s too unbelievable. Yeonjun has been living his life of intertwined glamor and tribulation, completely oblivious to and disconnected from the suffering back home.

This can’t be it.

“I’m sorry that you had to hear it like this, Yeonjun-ah. I’m sorry that nobody told you sooner,” Lea says. “I know he was… special to you. You made him so happy.”

“I—I thought he’d be waiting for me.”

“He wanted to be here. I know he would have been.”

Yeonjun presses his palms into his eyes to stave off the tears that threaten to overflow. He doesn’t want to cry here, in front of someone who is virtually a stranger to him now. He doesn’t think he can truly cry, even as he chokes down sobs.

“Let’s keep in touch from now on,” Lea says. “You should come visit while you’re in the area. If you have more questions, I’ll do my best to help.”

“I don’t want to bother you,” Yeonjun whimpers.

 “You could never be a bother. It’s really good to see you again.”

Lea gives him a tight hug, rubbing his back. Yeonjun tucks himself into her arms, allowing her to hold him. Nobody has held him like this in a long time.

Minutes pass. Yeonjun realizes he’s trembling, his muscles stiff with anxiety. He pulls away from Lea, trying to get the shivers under control.

“Are you able to get home?” Lea asks. “You’re staying with your mom, right? I can drive you.”

“I have—I have her car.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

He needs to get out of here as quickly as possible. He doesn’t need the car. He can just run, run until his legs give out and his lungs stop working. Run until he can grab hold of the promise he made Kai.

“Let me walk you to your car,” Lea says. She holds her hand out for Yeonjun and pulls him to his feet. Yeonjun’s knees nearly give out all over again. “It’s getting late. You shouldn’t stay out for too long.”

“You don’t need to dote on me,” Yeonjun says.

Lea’s smile is wrapped in melancholy. “Kai would want me to look after you.”

Stop. Stop saying that.

Lea places Yeonjun’s bags in the back seat. She gives him one more hug before she heads in the direction of her own car. “Get home safe. Tell your mom I said hi.”

“I will.” He won’t.

Yeonjun watches Lea as she departs. Her car is on the other side of the lot. I should be the one walking you to your car. Why are you all alone?

Numbly, he climbs into the car. He jams the key into the ignition and stares at it.

A primal wail builds up in Yeonjun’s chest and lodges in his throat, escaping as a broken sob. He doesn’t know whether to scream or cry or curl up and never open his eyes again. Maybe if he doesn’t have to move from here, none of this will be real.

Yeonjun’s fingers rake through his hair. His nails dig into his skin, a too-real, refreshing shock of pain.

He can’t stay here forever. He has to go home to his mother, so he can deliver the groceries. So he can pretend his career isn’t falling apart, too. Wasn’t he supposed to fix everything here?

He never expected to find Kai again. Their days together are long in the past. The last thing he could have imagined, though, was that one of them would never have a future.

It’s fully dark outside once Yeonjun pulls into the driveway. The lights in the house are a warm yellow beacon. Yeonjun checks his reflection in the mirror—his eyes are red-tinged, but he doubts his mother will notice.

She didn’t know that Yeonjun and Kai were dating, but Kai was Yeonjun’s best friend. She probably assumed that one of the Huenings told Yeonjun, and didn’t want to rub salt in the wound. Did she go to the funeral?

Does Yeonjun have the strength to ask her about Kai? He imagines himself saying the words. Kai died. You didn’t tell me?

Yeonjun has to rest his head against the steering wheel for a minute, allowing the nausea to pass before he steps outside.

There are only two bags. Neither is particularly heavy, but Yeonjun staggers as he carries them into the house. His mother opens the door for him, relief washing over her expression as though she had sensed that something was wrong with Yeonjun’s arrival.

“Here,” Yeonjun says. He sets the bags on the kitchen table, and his mother reaches for them. “I got everything. A few extra things, too.”

“Thank you so much, Yeonjun-ah,” his mother says. “Did something happen? You took longer than I thought you would.”

“Nothing. I’m alright.” Nothing is alright. It never will be again. “I’m sorry. I ran into an old friend.”

“That’s good to hear,” his mother says. She’s wrapped up in removing the groceries from the bag and lining them up on the counter. “It’ll feel good to see them again, right?”

I’ll never get to see the only person I wanted to reunite with.

“Do you need help with cooking?” Yeonjun asks, abruptly switching the topic.

“I don’t need it, but I would appreciate it, if you need something to do,” his mother chirps. “Here, take these and measure….”

Yeonjun can’t remember the last time he cooked for himself. Even after his activities were suspended, he ordered takeout, unable to muster the strength to follow a recipe. You’re taking care of yourself, right? Eating well? his mother would ask, and he’d lie through his teeth. There was always someone looking out for him. Someone watching him. Surely that counted for something.

He chops vegetables for a grand total of five minutes before his finger slips. It nicks the tip of his finger, and instantly a drop of ruby pools at the surface of his skin. Yeonjun watches, transfixed, as it drips onto the cutting board.

Stabbed. He was stabbed.

“—Yeonjun? Are you alright?”

His mother is staring at him. She must have noticed his silence.

“Just cut myself,” he says.

“How badly?”

“I don’t think it’s deep.”

“Clumsy,” his mother says. She pats his shoulder affectionately. “Go wash it out. There should be band-aids in the cabinet. And antiseptic, you shouldn’t forget that.”

Yeonjun drags himself to the bathroom, switching on the tap and allowing the water to run over his finger until the water runs clean. He dries his hand, wraps the wound, and exhales. He can’t bring himself to look in the mirror, but he ties his hair up, hoping he isn’t too disheveled.

Yeonjun returns to the kitchen and tries to offer help again, but his mother pushes the knife out of his reach and makes him sit at the table instead. “Next time. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how exhausted you are.”

Exhausted.

If she thinks it’s exhaustion, Yeonjun won’t correct her. Exhaustion is the perfect excuse for why he has nothing to contribute to the conversation as his mother chatters about her schedule for the week, for why he struggles to convey his gratitude. The food smells good, but the sense of taste has left him altogether. His stomach roils, protesting every reluctant bite, even though he’d been starving when he stepped off the train.

“Yeonjun-ah, are you sure you’re okay?” his mother asks eventually. Yeonjun nearly jumps at the sound of her voice.

“Eomma,” Yeonjun says. “There’s actually something I meant to ask you about.”

“Hm?”

“I heard about, um, what happened to my friend Kai. I was wondering if you knew anything about… that.”

For a brief second, his mother appears confused. Recognition flashes across her face, followed by sympathy. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. Didn’t you see the news? It was everywhere.”

Yeonjun was busy in September 2019, but he should have seen that kind of news. Murders like this tend to receive extensive media coverage. If Yeonjun had thought to type Kai’s name into Naver, he would have learned everything a long time ago.

Yeonjun nods stiffly. Telling a white lie is easier than having to recount his conversation with Lea. “I didn’t see the whole story, though.”

His mother sets down her chopsticks with a sigh. “He was walking home late, his friends said. Neighbors found him, and… since then, there hasn’t been much progress on the case. Some people say he must’ve gotten caught up in the wrong crowd.”

“But… that doesn’t sound like….”

“That’s what his family said, but I suppose there’s no way to know for sure….” His mother shakes her head. Fierce protective energy boils in Yeonjun’s chest. “What reason would someone have to attack a college kid? Kai was always a shy one.”

“He was….” …perfect.

“It sent the whole neighborhood into uproar,” his mother says. “Nobody saw anything, and everyone worried that they might be next. There were rumors about a serial killer.”

“Nobody else was attacked?”

“No. He was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time. You just can’t make sense of why violent people do what they do.”

So that’s all he was to the person who did this? A victim?

“But Kai would never hurt anyone,” Yeonjun blurts. “It shouldn’t have been him.”

His mother’s expression softens, full of pity, and something inside Yeonjun crumbles. “I’m sorry. It’s hard when something like this happens to someone you know. He was a good kid.”

Why is everyone talking about him in past tense?

“Are the police still investigating?” Yeonjun asks. Did they give up on him?

“They can’t continue until they find more evidence,” his mother says gently. “It’s difficult to talk to the Huenings about it. They became more… reclusive after it happened. I don’t see them around very often. They used to talk about moving, which I understand. I wouldn’t be able to stay here if something happened to you. I can’t imagine it.”

You can’t imagine it because it doesn’t seem real, but it is. Selfish.

Yeonjun quietly returns to his dinner, and their conversation trails off. His mother doesn’t push him when he dismisses himself for the night.

The sight of the polaroids on Yeonjun’s bedroom wall nearly makes him vomit. He pulls a fresh outfit out of his suitcase and hurries to the bathroom instead of laying down like he intended. He turns the shower on hot, stepping out of his clothes and into the spray before it has the chance to warm up.

A shock to his nervous system would probably be good for him, but he’s gotten used to cold showers after years of dyeing his hair. Without his stylists to nag him to use pink shampoo or paint his roots with bleach every time a touch of black begins to show, he doesn’t have to worry about proper maintenance. He grits his teeth, hopelessly trying to massage the tension from his shoulders.

None of Yeonjun’s self-soothing techniques have worked tonight; his brain won’t stop moving faster than he can form any single complete thought. The motions of showering are automatic. He towels himself down, dresses in dry clothing, brushes his teeth, and drags a brush through his hair. It drips flamingo onto his white shirt. He should’ve tried harder to dry off.

Yeonjun can hear his mother walking around somewhere in the direction of the kitchen, but he slips back to his room unnoticed. He pulls the curtains shut and flicks the bedside lamp off so that he doesn’t have to look at his belongings. Instead, he pulls the covers back, curling into the fetal position with the blankets wrapped tight around him.

The blue glow of his phone stings his eyes, and his heart pounds a vicious rhythm as he opens Naver. Three syllable blocks. It’ll only take a second to type in.

A single second can damage a person’s life irreversibly. He never understood that before.

I have to know. I don’t have a choice. If nobody will help me, I have to answer my questions on my own.

He clicks on the first article without risking a second glance at the others that follow it.

Yeonjun reads it three times. Over and over again, until his vision is too blurry to make out the words, until he has them memorized and doesn’t need to read them. He shouldn’t have taken his contacts out.

Yeonjun frantically clicks backwards, scrolling down the page. A dozen articles with similar headlines, essentially identical in the story they tell, from different reporters and news stations. Yeonjun’s heart sinks lower and lower with every article he scrolls past.

It’s real.

Substance abuse?

It’s just an excuse not to investigate. There's no other explanation.

Shouldn’t the police have tried harder? Did they care that Kai died alone, in unfathomable pain, struggling through his final moments knowing that nothing could be done for him? That nobody was there to take away his pain, or comfort him?

Yeonjun skims three more articles, but none of them mention the same suspect. The other descriptions are general, speculating about a potential motive connected to someone living a life as simple as Kai’s.

Yeonjun searches the name instead: Lee Kyungsoo.

It's the only other article Yeonjun can find. It must be a dead end—a money-hungry reporter grasping at straws, exploiting the grief of a broken family to earn a few extra won.

Yeonjun shuts his phone off and closes his burning eyes. He can’t stop replaying the words in his mind. It wasn’t even a quick, painless death. He knew he was going to die, and he suffered.

How could someone hurt a person like Kai?

Why wasn’t I there?

If Yeonjun failed his audition, he would have been one of the first people to receive the news. Maybe Kai wouldn’t have spent that night with his friends—he may have spent it with Yeonjun instead. Their houses are close together, but Yeonjun wouldn’t have let him walk home in the middle of the night. He’d have bribed Kai with kisses, whispered, Think of what we could do in the morning. He’d have held him until they fell asleep.

Yeonjun’s decision to become a trainee was unequivocally selfish. Asking Kai to wait for him, when he’d known that he wouldn’t be able to properly date even after debut, was the worst part. If love was all they needed, they could have worked through anything. But Yeonjun’s career choice made them incompatible.

They were foolish, starry-eyed kids when they made those promises. They never would have succeeded.

Kai never was Yeonjun’s—no other person ever should have had power over him. But after three years, Yeonjun can’t say for sure that it was worth it, and he doesn’t even have Kai to return to.

If I didn’t leave, could I have saved him? Or would I have had to watch him die, and spent the rest of my life wondering how I could have done better?

Yeonjun buries himself in the blankets and presses his face into his too-flat pillows to block out the light. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep tonight, not with nightmares of Kai’s grisly last moments lurking in the back of his mind.

The darkness swirls into a starless midnight sky. Smoke curls around Yeonjun’s ankles, around his eyes. Not smoke. Steam. It’s cold, cold like the spray of a waterfall, but the haze of summer is only a short distance away. It’s behind him, with a canyon between the two.

Yeonjun is tired. He’s going to collapse, but an unseen force compels him to move forward. Something bad will happen if he stops moving, if he stops looking for….

He doesn’t remember his objective, but it doesn’t matter. The hair on the back of his neck stands on end, and there’s a hissing in his ear, a whisper of some eldritch horror. Blue like the sky and green like the trees.

It's the most terrifying thing he’s ever encountered in his life, but he knows it as intimately as an old friend.

Do you want another chance?

Of course I do. I lost everything.

What can you do for me?

Me? I’m nothing.

I’ll let you off easy. Three years.

What?

Three years. Give me those three years, and you’ll get your chance.

That’s all?

Don’t squander it.

June 14, 2019 (Friday)

The sun is shining directly into Yeonjun’s eyes when he wakes. He rolls over with a groan, pushing his blankets away.

What a fucking weird dream. It’s still so clear in his mind: spinning darkness and blood and startling feline eyes, like chips of celadon. He rubs his eyes and squints out the window. Wasn’t it raining last night?

He flings a hand out to fumble for his phone. He’s sure he’d fallen asleep with it in his hand last night, but he finds it attached to its charger on the nightstand rather than tangled up in the sheets.

There’s one unread message, sent half an hour ago. Yeonjun blinks a few times, struggling to make out the words. I have to put contacts in. And see an optometrist. Never had time when I was at work. He’ll get to it later. It’s a silly thing to be worrying about this early in the morning. Who would have messaged him before sunrise, anyway?

I don’t have an audition today. Yeonjun hasn’t had a proper audition since his idol audition. Even when he received his one short cameo in a drama, the role had simply fallen into his lap. Besides, he’s supposed to be on leave. Somebody would have stopped him before he walked out the door if he had an audition.

It’s only then that he reads the contact name: Kai ♡

Yeonjun nearly barks a laugh. Why today, of all days, would his phone play such a sick joke on him? He’s never even heard of a technological malfunction like that. His messages with Kai aren’t saved on the phone he started using after debut.

This isn’t right.

Somehow he knows that that explanation is incorrect. The alternative, though, is far more unbelievable.

The date and time on his phone suggest otherwise: Friday, June 14, 2019. 8:05 AM.

Yeonjun sits bolt upright. He looks around his room: the suitcase is missing, but everything else is overflowing—the desk is a disaster, there’s a hoodie he doesn’t remember thrown over the end of his bed, and the desk chair is similarly covered in unfolded clothes.

In his phone: his lockscreen wallpaper is class schedule, Fall 2019, and the homescreen is a picture of him and Kai. He never would have dared to keep that on his work phone.

Yeonjun opens the camera to check his reflection. Where he expects highlighter pink, he’s met with shiny, short, undamaged black hair. In his camera roll, there are clips of dance covers, some a few minutes long, others botched second-long recordings. Practice for his audition song.

What the fuck?

There’s no reasonable explanation for how, but there’s only one conclusion that Yeonjun can make from this evidence. There are no signs of his idol life, only a nineteen-year-old version of himself.

It’s June 2019, not 2022. One month before Yeonjun officially becomes a trainee and leaves home, one year before his debut, three years before his mandated vacation.

And, most importantly, three months before the murder of Huening Kai.