Archive of Our Own

Han Yujin would like the record to show he is not, in fact, a raging narcissist. However, nobody becomes an idol at the age of fifteen if they don't enjoy being admired at least a little bit. Standing on stage and knowing everyone there is there because they think you're cool and pretty and want to be you or fancy you is a very heady, powerful feeling. So is arriving to school on Pepero Day (deliberately, learnedly late) to find your desk covered in a fair smattering of little boxes with their notes attached.

Yujin does not go to school often anymore, only as much as the company need to let him without him needing to drop out. He's not excessively bothered by this- he chose this career knowing it would cut off a lot of options for him, knowing that he had chosen a path that was very much a straight and narrow one that it was all too easy to fall off into abyss if one stepped too far out of line, if one wasn't careful enough or fast enough, or even sometimes just if an unexpected and uncontrollable storm came along to whip you up in the wind and drop you off the side. All the same, its the only career he wants, so he's kind of stuck with it now. Not that he'd want to be stuck with anything else.

This is the only Pepero Day since Boys Planet (and therefore since starting high school) that Yujin has actually been to school on, usually busy off filming or performing somewhere, so he tries to tamp down the excitement and expectation a little as he plays on his phone in the car there. Maybe people don't make as big of a fuss as they used to in middle school. Maybe his friend Jungmin's tales of clearing mountains off his desk from the last two years have been wicked exaggeration.

The car spits him out in the car park. He feels stupid as he cringes away from people staring at him, pretending to look at his phone as he makes his way up to his homeroom. More than one group of girls turn and giggle as he walks past, and it takes a good amount of internal effort not to speed up when they do.

As it turns out, Jungmin is not guilty of any kind of wicked exaggeration at all. His desk is piled, surface covered, with little cuboid boxes, sharpie messages or neat post-it notes on them all. The deep green of almond pepero shines from most of the pile— it's the craze right now, everyone agrees its the superior flavour. Everyone except Yujin. It's fine, he likes it well enough, but it isn't as good as the original, so he's happy to see red peeking out, and even one glorious white box signalling the cookies and cream version he's never got round to trying.

Jungmin is leaning on his own desk in the far corner of the room, and he smirks when Yujin makes eye-contact, raising his eyebrows and jerking his chin at, yes, a veritable mountain sat atop his desk. Yujin rolls his eyes in capitulation. It's not like anyone could blame him for being sceptical: Yes there were millions of pepero boxes on your desk and no I didn't take a picture and yes I ate them all before you could have them isn't the sort of attitude that inspires trust. Jungmin pushes himself off his desk and saunters over, producing a plastic bag which he offers obnoxiously to Yujin to sweep the boxes into. It's both pleasing and embarrassing, as he tries to then fit the bag into his backpack, with Jungmin watching and doing nothing to help, and then having to endure the eyes on him as he carts it around the school that he hasn't spent enough time in to navigate instinctively. He doesn't know his timetable, not from muscle memory, has to stand and think for a moment when everyone else is already walking. It all feels ill-fitting now, a jumper he's growing out of, and he goes through the day clumsily like an actor in a play still trying to learn his lines, but at least his eagerness to leave at the end of the day makes him the same as everyone else.

There's not even a twinge of guilt, really, when he tears open a red box without looking at the note written on the front and chomps his way through a little chocolatey biscuit stick the second he gets in the car. He loves the idea of the mountain, that people are taken enough with him to leave them there, but the thought of actually reading the notes is uncomfortable. By the time he's deposited in the car park below the WakeOne building, he's finished half the packet. The plastic bag gets hauled up with the rest of his stuff, and he drops it on the floor of the dance studio while the others are having a break before going to change.

It's only when he returns that he realises his mistake.

"Yujin-oppa fighting! I hope this gives you strength. From Choi Yeojin in Class 2-3."

"Yujin-sunbae I hope we can be close, please think of me when you eat,"

"Yujin-ah eat well, Eat it deliciously, Please accept my gift, Please accept my affections—" Taerae is rolling off the messages and tossing the boxes to the side like an auctioneer.

"Look how popular our maknae is," Gyuvin coos. "All these admirers. Will he share his spoils with his poor unloved hyungs? Hmm?"

He's grabbed hold of Yujin to squish his cheeks as he babbles in a baby voice at him, and Yujin pushes him away with a scowl. He's literally nineteen years old. In just over a month he'll be able to drink and vote and go to the army like the rest of them. He does not deserve this.

After it's agreed upon that yes they can share but also that their break is over and it's time to fit Yujin into the choreo for the third of their year-end award show stages, they leave him alone to concentrate. He snatches the lone white box from the jumble and shoves it in his jacket pocket before being scolded to hurry up, because there's generosity and then there's stupidity.

Yujin loves dancing more than pretty much anything else on the earth, and slamming into the middle of a choreo rehearsal is a good way to clear his mind of all other matters, slowly trickling away until the stream is clear as crystal, nothing but the movement of his limbs and the music and the ache in his muscles to trouble him. He'd thought he'd lost that clarity, for a time, when the thing that cleared his mind and the thing that clouded it became one and the same, when the worry and pressure overtook the love. That had terrified him more than the threat of being eliminated— the thought that that association, that anxiety and burden, might ruin his safest space forever. He's lucky beyond belief that it didn't. If this hadn't worked out, he's not sure what he would have done.

They're all too tired to tease him on the way back to the dorms, napping or curling into themselves for a minute's uninterrupted scrolling on their phones.

He manages to dodge everyone to get to his room, climbing over his car simulator to wait for his turn in the bathroom and finally looking through his stash. He organises the boxes into piles of flavour, the green of almond taller than the red of original chocolate, methodically removing attached notes and putting them straight in the bin. Is that cold? Maybe. But it's not like he asked for these. It's not like any of them can be expecting some sort of reply. And, more to the point, it's the Suneung in two days and everyone has far, far more important things on their minds.

The single, glorious box of cookies and cream shines its bright white at him from its own little pile. He finds, as he flips it over to open it, a message scrawled on the back in black sharpie over the ingredients list. The handwriting is atrocious, he can hardly make it out, and something in his stomach twists unpleasantly.

Now you can finally try them. Eat well, Yujin-ah.

There's no name attached, but Yujin doesn't need one. He would recognise Jungmin's god-awful handwriting anywhere.

He trips over the paraphanalia obstructing his passage to the doorway when a voice calls that the bathroom is free, wondering absently why he manages to collect so much utter shite in his room, and tries to tamp down an irrational flush of panic.

He doesn't know what it means, is the problem. Is it just a friend cheering him on? It could be. It's not like it's impossible, it's not like people don't do that, he assumes. But somehow, he knows, because he knows that Jungmin doesn't do that. They aren't sappy or gentle with each other, they're every stereotype known to man about teenage boy friendships, they tease and needle and annoy each other and shout over headsets about videogames. Would Jungmin have his back in a fight, if it came to it? Absolutely. Has he been there to listen on the very odd occasion Yujin has needed serious advice? Sure. But they don't do this. They don't talk about their feelings, or give each other words of encouragement, and they certainly don't give each other thoughtful little gifts on romantic coded days.

There's no question then, really, what the intention was here.

Yujin shampoos his hair twice by accident, mind lost in a haze as he tries to figure out what to do. He's spiralling with the water down the drain, swept along with the suds. The panic isn't leaving him. Everytime he pictures it, Jungmin picking up a pen and thinking about what to write, he can only speed through thinking about what this must mean about things he hasn't noticed, what Jungmin must think about, how he must look at Yujin when Yujin isn't looking at him.

It all terrifies him. A roll of nausea settles into his stomach alongside a bizarre, hot spike of betrayal, and he's angry at Jungmin for feeling this way, even moreso for letting him know about it and making this a burden he has to bear, and that's— that's not right. He shouldn't feel angry. He shouldn't feel betrayed. The idea of Jungmin being upset by it makes him want to cry but the idea of talking to him, of acknowledging or confirming any of it makes him feel sick.

It's a horrible thing, to realise you don't know yourself as well as you think you do.

Han Yujin is not a raging narcissist, no. But, as it turns out, he might just be a raging homophobe.

If anyone had asked Yujin, at any time in the last few years, whether or not he had homophobic tendencies he would probably have laughed loudly and given a vague gesture at the culture of extreme homosexuality in which he has become embroiled, then walked away still laughing. He doesn't tell anyone, either about the note or about the revelation it has prompted. How can he? It's bad enough that he's feeling this way and having these thoughts; to speak them out into the open where they can actually hurt people would be unforgivable. He has visions of the look on Hanbin's face, sad and disappointed, if he were to ever mention it. No. This is his problem. He needs to work through it and get over it himself. Changing and becoming a better person is his responsibility and his alone.

He starts testing himself. In breaks at practice or schedules, whenever Hanbin and Hao are being themselves about existing in the same five square metre space, he makes himself look at them rather than studiously avoiding them. He tries to find where the level is. Sitting on knees— ok, he can handle that. Holding hands is fine. A sly joke about a sore back or a sleepless night doesn't really bother him, nor does a peck on the cheek. A kiss on the lips makes him wrinkle his nose and want to look away, no matter how chaste it is. Anything more makes him deeply, unavoidably uncomfortable.

He's always thought the PDA grossing him out was more like how no-one wants to watch their parents being lovey-dovey, or even that they're just a bit excessive and overly affectionate with each other. It's not, he had reasoned, like as a fifteen year old he had been forced to exist in proximity to adult couples that weren't his parents or grandparents before. But he's not fifteen years old anymore, and he needs to grow the fuck up and overcome this. He can't make excuses for himself any longer.

Success has afforded them space, at least for this last leg of their time as a group, so he doesn't actually share living quarters with Hao and Hanbin now, but it doesn't seem to stop them all living in each others' pockets half of the time. It doesn't, therefore, surprise him to find Hao on the couch in his apartment (in which Hao does not live) eating something from a takeout container (which Hao did not purchase) and watching a drama on their telly ( which Hao does not pay the subscription fees for).

"Hanbin and Gyuvin are both at schedules, I was lonely, I thought I'd hang out with you for the evening."

Yujin suspects it has more to do with wanting to use their significantly larger screen, but he's not going to say it. He's been trying to be better to the hyungs, a better dongsaeng, a better teamate. It's not as though a sudden surge of confucian respect will make up for his internal shortcomings, but it's something he can do while he fixes it, at least. They've all got more important, still unresolved things to worry about right now anyway, even if some of them have very little say in the matter. He doesn't want to press Hao about it, or remind him of it at all.

The drama isn't Korean, but it doesn't sound Chinese either. There are subtitles across the bottom of the screen that Yujin can't read, and it takes him a second of listening to place the language as Thai. The two men on screen are standing in a room shouting at each other, and then shouting turns into crying, and then crying turns into very intense eye contact, and then they're nudging towards each other until their mouths meet.

Yujin refuses to look away from the screen. It sounds wet, which is gross, and he wonders whether that's a normal thing to think about other people kissing or if it's part of his whole problem. He watches, stubbornly, even as the kissing gets more heated, even as one of them gets pushed against a wall and the space between their bodies reduces to nothing, the sounds building in intensity with the picture. He desperately wants to look away as the taller one picks up the smaller and moves from the wall to the bed, but he won't. If exposure therapy is what it takes to become a good person, then that's what he'll do.

He tries not to feel the relief when the picture changes to a morning scene, sunlight on the bed and two figures curled together under the sheets, as the taller man opens his eyes to look at the smaller one curled against him with wonder, and then the smaller does a really bad job of pretending to wake up. Yujin isn't sure if it's the character or the actor doing a bad job. He's fine with this bit, he finds. Maybe his self-inflicted training is working after all. Maybe he really can fix this.

It's after a few weeks, in the midst of the worst of the year-end schedules in which no-one is entirely sure what day it is or where they are or what event they're doing, when everyone is curled up in a corner of a temporary dressing room in some arena or another trying to find a few moments of peace, that Jiwoong pulls him aside.

"Shall we go for a walk?"

It's rehearsedly casual, and Yujin gets the terrible feeling he is in for a very important conversation. He grabs his padding coat, because the back halls of this arena, wherever it is, are fucking freezing. They seem to wander aimlessly, politely skirting around people doing challenges, until Jiwoong finds what he obviously deems an appropriately private slice of hallway.

"Is there anything you want to talk about, Yujin-ah?"

This could be about a lot of things, any number of them, Yujin reasons with himself. Jiwoong does not have mind reading powers, in fact, he's actually kind of an idiot most of the time. He does not have any special insight into the deep shame of Yujin's soul. He doesn't.

"Yujin," Jiwoong sighs. "You've been acting weird for weeks. Was it the exam? You didn't really get a chance to tell us how it went, and I know everything around it was hectic. If it didn't go so well it's really ok, you know?"

Well. Now Yujin feels like even more of an asshole.

It didn't go particularly well, no, but he isn't exactly bothered by it. He did it. He probably scraped a pass on the compulsory sections. He has never had any ambitions of continuing education in an upward direction, nor been under any illusion that it was a likely outcome for him, and he's fine with that.

"It probably didn't, but I don't really care. Honestly, I'm fine."

There's this face Jiwoong pulls, almost pantomime like in nature, whenever Yujin says something which he doesn't believe, or he isn't quite sure how to feel about. His eyebrows pull in, and his jaw and mouth set, and he looks like a caricature of himself.

"Are you sure?"

He says nothing else, just lets the question hang in the air like the world's most awkward fart, clogging and choking Yujin's airways until he can't bear it anymore.

"IthinkImightbehomophobic."

"Come again?"

"I think," Yujin says, gritting his teeth, "That Imight, maybe, possibly, be homophobic."

He closes his eyes and braces for impact, and then keeps them closed and waits, because this asteroid is taking an abnormally long time to land. Clearly projections were off somewhere, so he opens one eye to find Jiwoong looking at him with that same expression: eyebrows pulled in, jaw and mouth set hard, lips pursed out.

"Right," he says slowly. "And what, exactly, is it that's making you think this? Because whatever it is has clearly come as something of a surprise."

And it's there, in the only free corner of a freezing cold corridor in an arena he isn't even sure of the name of, that Yujin finds himself spilling the whole thing, right from the beginning. Jiwoong listens patiently as he explains what happened, finding the box, how awful it felt, and that he hates the way he's feeling but can't help it, that he doesn't understand how he could have never realised all this time. It takes him a minute or two to exorcise it all, and Jiwoong doesn't interrupt, just waits for him to finish, before humming contemplatively. There's none of the disappointment or disgust Yujin has been fearing, just a ponderous expression and quiet consideration.

"That's been eating you alive, hasn't it?" he says eventually, voice gentle. "Thank you for telling me."

Yujin looks away from his eyes to stop his lip from wobbling.

"Yujin-ah," Jiwoong prompts him. He doesn't meet his gaze again, but he continues anyway. "Can I ask— how would you feel if it was one of your female friends?"

Yujin nearly scoffs. He doesn't have any female friends.

"I mean, what if… you and Leeseo are close, aren't you? You always seem to have lots of fun filming together, and I know she texts you a lot. What if she had given you that box?"

Girls do those sorts of things for their friends, though, Yujin thinks. If Hyunseo had done it he wouldn't have even thought about it, wouldn't have thought anything of it at all. He would have assumed the gesture was purely platonic.

"She clearly likes you a lot, so what would you do? How would you feel if she asked you out?"

Alarm bells start ringing in the distance.

"What do you mean she likes me a lot?"

Hyunseo doesn't. She can't, he would know, wouldn't he? But he hadn't known with Jungmin. He hadn't even known Jungmin liked boys that way, which maybe would have made him more aware, he supposes, but then he isn't a hundred percent certain whether Hyunseo even likes boys that way, it's not something they've ever talked about, and maybe she got a little googoo eyed over J-Hope sunbaenim but then so did Yujin and he doesn't like boys that way, but what if she does, and what if she likes him, and what if it's just there with them everytime they film or text and he doesn't even know, and one day she tries to—

"Yujin-ah."

Jiwoong's voice cuts through and he blinks into awareness.

"How would you feel if you found out she liked you?"

"Does she? She doesn't, right?"

"Does the idea scare you? How would you feel?"

Terrified. Betrayed. Disgusted.

"The same," he hears himself say. "It feels the same."

A hand slides gently around his elbow, and then he's being pulled in and wrapped carefully in Jiwoong's arms as he stands there awkwardly.

"Do you think," Jiwoong says quietly, without letting go, "that maybe the way you feel has less to do with Jungmin being a boy and more to do with the fact he's your closest friend? I think, maybe, you just don't want any of your friends to see you that way, because you don't want your relationship with them to change. Am I right?"

He's—

It would be so easy to agree, because it's not entirely wrong, and it's something like relief to recognise part of the fear in the idea. But he knows. He knows. And he can't, he cannot take the easy way out of this.

"It's not just that," he says, the words muffled into the padded shoulder of Jiwoong's coat. "It was the other stuff as well."

"Mm?"

"I… I was testing myself. With— with people, you know, at home, and the TV, finding what made me feel— bad. "

Jiwoong sighs. When he speaks next, there's a distinct edge in his voice.

"Do you hate gay people, Yujin? Does my existence make you uncomfortable? Do you think Hao and Hanbin should break up, and be normal? Do you want Taerae to change who he is?"

"What the fuck, no, why would you—" he grinds his forehead into the seam of the padding, and he'll get wrong for it, because it will definitely rub at his foundation, but he kind of needs the grounding right now. "I don't want that. But seeing it, you know, there in— in real life, seeing them, or on the telly, it feels bad. I don't like it. I told you, I'm a—"

"Yujin-ah." Jiwoong cuts him off firmly. "If you think that being uncomfortable when our bandmates are sucking face in shared spaces makes you a homophobe then I am also a homphobe, and I literally had sex with a man last week. Maybe you need to think the same way again: if it was a straight couple making out right next to you, if, I don't know, Matthew brought a girl home and you saw it or heard it, how would that feel?"

It's hard to think, at first, because he's just so desperate for Jiwoong to listen to him, but then he does. He tries to picture it. And that same, toe curling, shoulder rolling feeling of mild sickness comes over him.

His breath shudders on the way in.

"Oh."

He can hear that it comes out wet. When Jiwoong speaks next, his voice is a gentle, comforting murmur, and a hand cups his neck, brushing through his hair as he's cradled close.

"You see? You're not a monster, Yujin-ah. You're just young, and you're uncomfortable with seeing those things, and that's fine, do you hear me? You're fine. You're good, baby. You're good."

There are times when Yujin wonders if, somewhere in the universe, some god or fate or other force was having a big fat belly laugh at his expense when he put Seok Matthew and Kim Taerae in the same group as him. Sure, he loves them or whatever, but he also hates them and wants them to die, and for once it's not because they're having a weirdly sexually charged conversation that neither of them actually means, because Taerae has an issue called being in weird complicated love with someone else and Matthew has an issue called being a slut who flirts with all of his friends. Today, of all days, when they are running on approximately five hours of sleep between them and Yujin has a massive aching spot right under the skin on his hairline, they have decided to turn their weirdness on him.

"Ah, jagiyah, I think our baby is mad at us," Taerae coos. "It's ok baby Yujinie, we're only teasing, I'm sure you could have any girl you wanted."

Yujin, falling on the safety net of teenage stereotypes, grunts in a displeased fashion and turns his back on them in the uncomfortble plastic waiting room chair.

"I'm sure they're lining up to date you, hmm?" Matthew joins in, clinging to his back.

"No," Yujin mutters, trying to bury himself far enough in his phone game that he can no longer hear them. It doesn't work.

"Oh I don't think thats true," Taerae singsongs, "You forget I saw your pile from pepero day."

Yujin doesn't like thinking about pepero day, because it inevitably sends him thinking about the crisis, and about Jungmin, and about how he still feels awkward and how he still feels guilty even if he accepts Jiwoong's logic that he probably isn't an irredeemable bigot. He doesn't really like thinking about the rest of it either, now the material spoils have been eaten, only the uncomfortable knowledge of why he got them in the first place remaining. He doesn't know why it's different when it's fans and when it's peers, or why it felt different in middle school, before there was any danger of real expectation. He doesn't really like thinking about it.

"Ah, this kid, when will you bring someone home to us? We're not getting any younger, I want grandchildren you know."

"I'm an idol," Yujin says blandly, trying to keep his back to them, and refusing to spend any brainpower figuring out when this became an old married couple skit.

"Leave him alone," Hanbin says from across the room, Hao napping on his shoulder. He's using his leader voice, but then he looks up, and his dimple has taken on a mischievious attitude. "He'll bring someone home when he's ready, he needs to finish his schooling first."

"I'm an idol," Yujin stresses again, ignoring the fact that they all know, despite the contract extension, it wouldn't be them he would bring anyone home to anyway, because all too soon home will mean different things to each of them.

"And how do you plan to get married if you don't start making the effort to find someone?" Taerae scolds him in some strange blend of satoori Yujin can't quite identify the intention of. "The universe won't just drop them in your lap, you know."

Yujin glares at him, then stares pointedly at where Hao is starting to drool onto Hanbin's jacket, but says nothing.

And then his mind starts to go, which in recent months has been proving rather dangerous.

Taerae is joking, of course, it's all part of their joint effort to piss him off more than waking up at 2.30am did, but he also, maybe, possibly, has a point. Yujin has always considered the egregious display of soulmatism before him to be an act of god, but that isn't entirely true, is it? Sure, maybe fate put the pair of them in the same place at the same time and crafted them perfectly for each other, but they still had to do something, didn't they? They had to decide to talk to each other, had to make a concerted effort to be in the same group, to make it through to the end together, to flirt and converse and agree on what they wanted, and then to keep agreeing and deciding on all the various advancements and compromises since. Results require actions, and actions require decisions, and decisions require…

Something. He's not sure what the something is, exactly, or whether anyone else knows what it is. Maybe they don't have to know, or maybe it's one of those things you only find out when it happens, when it's relevant. When you're old enough. When you're ready.

Yujin has always assumed that he'll be married one day— it's what everyone assumes, isn't it, that they'll end up sometime in adulthood with a wife, kids, a house, the lot. He's just never really put any thought into how he would get there, or the fact that it might require… well. Something. But that'll be later, of course, being an idol and everything, so it's not something he needs to worry about for a good long while.

Really, he doesn't need to think about it yet at all.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that men in large numbers have a collective organisational skill lower than the sum of its parts, and this is why, Yujin thinks, there is still mistletoe blu-tacked to the kitchen ceiling in mid-February. It really needs to come down, because they are supposed to be moving out soon, into new dorms for their new starts— at least, they are. The ones who are leaving. The ones who are being taken away.

Yujin is trying not to think about it.

For some reason, the dog and both its parents are in their flat, where none of them live. Yujin isn't complaining, exactly— Sansan is adorable and fluffy and affectionate, and he never turns down a chance to hang out with him, however the fact that he's brought both Hanbin and Hao and all their gayness with him into Yujin's home is a little much. He's not even sure what they're doing here, aside from flirting loudly, and then, far worse, flirting quietly as they argue over delivery food for the evening. Yujin isn't put out, exactly, at being basically ignored after they've said hello, but they are in his house, and really it's him they should be paying attention to. Right?

"Yujin-ah, I ordered you yukhoe," Hao calls from the other sofa. "What kind of drink do you want, or do you have some here?"

There's cold barley tea in the fridge, in amongst Taerae's concerning collection of energy drinks, so he declines the offer, and Sansan complains loudly about his momentarily divided attention until he resumes aggressively petting his ears. Hao's hand glides over his head as he passes, Hanbin trailing behind as if pulled by a leash. He lets them get on with pulling drawers open and retrieving kitchenware to eat with, given they invited themselves into his house for no good reason, although he does remind them of where the others keep the alcohol, because he's filial in that way.

He hears the giggles before the words, and is mostly resolved to ignore it, but there's still something lingering from last year, this little vestige of guilt or curiosity or the need for self-flagellation, so he turns in order to see the kitchen.

"Oh? There's mistletoe?"

Hao is pointing at the ceiling, face poised in an exaggerated 'O' of surprise, a smile tugging at his already contorted cheeks. Hanbin mirrors his expression, cocking his head to one side as he does, before they both break into giggles again. It is, Yujin has to admit as he wrinkles his nose, disgustingly cute.

"What are you going to do about it?"

Part of him wants to interrupt, because he knows it would annoy them and also because he kind of wants attention, and he doesn't like the association that brings him to with their year old puppy who keeps whining everytime Yujin forgets to keep petting him, but he also can't deny it, either. He doesn't interrupt. He knows the toll the imminent separation is taking on them both, and he knows they're planning practically for it, but he also knows that for the first time these two brilliant, ambitious people are going to have to focus their amition on something entirely separate from the other, and it just—

It fucking sucks.

So he resists the urge to be a brat and ruin their moment. He lets them treasure this little pocket of time they have, even if they are ignoring him in order to treasure it in his kitchen. Instead, he watches as Hanbin puckers his lips comically, and Hao takes the invitation with an exaggerated noise and a grating laugh that's quickly silenced when Hanbin pulls him back in by the waist. All of a sudden, Yujin feels this surge of something he can't identify, something not quite jealous and not quite wanting, but strong and melancholy all the same. It must be nice, he thinks, to have a person who sees an out-of-season plastic plant and only thinks of it being an excuse to show they love you.

He tries to picture it, tries to feel it in his body, what it would be like, and can't quite help the shiver of revulsion as he imagines the wet brush of another person's lips on his. He turns away from the kitchen and sinks down to the floor next to Sansan, burying his hands in his fur as an odd fuzz builds beneath his sternum and a creeping, warning sense of loneliness passes through him.

He doesn't know what it is, exactly, but there is an instinctive buzz that tells him this is somehow important. He's felt it before, he thinks, the sinking, jolting realisation of being just a step out of time with the rest of the world.

As the extension of their contract comes to an end, as they all start moving and preparing for their respective new beginnings, Yujin finds himself on a short fuse. He doesn't like that his response to the approaching split from half of his members is to get snippy with them, but he can't quite help it— there's a resentment there, maybe, that they get to stay, even if he knows logically they'll be starting over just as much as the four of them leaving will.

It isn't helped by the building anxiety that there is something… something different about him, and an annoyance towards himself for still not quite understanding what that is. It feels like he's looking at a jigsaw, like all the pieces of the puzzle are there before him and he's just too stupid to put them all together, and he needs to sit down and look at them but he's scared of what the picture will turn out to be if he does. Yujin has been set apart from his peers for a while now, and perhaps by some logic that should make it easier— he's always lived in contrast with his hyungs, always been a baby by default, by sheer juxtaposition. But with the start of the university term, watching people who were kids with him suddenly talk like the people who had seemed so ahead and who they've somehow grown into the age of, it's— it's jarring. He knows what it means when Jungmin goes out drinking but won't tell him where, and what the pixellated bruises on his neck when his hoody slips down on facetime are, even if neither of them acknowledge it.

He's always felt older, in comparison to his agemates, working as he has since being fifteen, aware of the world in ways they weren't. Suddenly, he finds they are aware of the world in a way he doesn't seem capable of, and it all makes him feel very, very young.

All this to say, Yujin isn't doing well with teasing right now, moody and sensitive in a way no-one is used to with him, which is particularly unfortunate in a group of people who think the sixth love language is roasting the shit out of each other. Gunwook especially has been weird, in these last few weeks, and Yujin knows his forced boisterousness is a response to the same stress as his own moodiness, but it doesn't make it any less annoying. He's bouncy in a way that verges towards manic, constantly bothering people, and his flirtation with Matthew is crossing the line from irritating to indecent.

Despite knowing he should be treasuring every second they can spend together, truthfully the last thing Yujin wants right now is Gunwook helping him pack up his things. He just keeps needling, making stupid comments about privacy in their new dorm arrangements, wiggling his eyebrows like Yujin is in on the joke when he's never felt more out of it.

He bears with it as long as he can, telling him to shut up in as good humour as he can, then grunting in response when he can't pull appropriate words out, but he just doesn't stop, and Yujin is so sick of it, and eventually he bites out at him.

"Jesus, hyung, good for you you get to fuck Matthew in peace or whatever, but I don't want to hear about it, so can you shut the fuck up? God."

He feels bad immediately, and is ready to apologise, but Gunwook just smirks, throwing a sweaty arm around his shoulder.

"Ah, our maknae, I shouldn't trouble you with grown-up matters, should I? Not ready to be a man yet, I—"

"No," Yujin snaps, shoving him back violently. "I'm not, I'm not ready and I don't want to be and that doesn't make me less of a man so just shut the fuck up about it!"

They both stand frozen in place, shell-shocked in the wake of the explosion. Then Gunwook moves and raises his arm and for a wild, panicked moment Yujin thinks he's going to hit him, but he pulls him in instead, wraps him in his arms until Yujin's head is tucked under his chin, and when Yujin's knees wobble he tips back until he can slide down the wall, until they're seated in a tangle at the foot of it.

"Sorry, Yujin-ah," he says eventually. "Hyung is sorry. It's ok if you aren't ready, it's— I shouldn't have said that. I'm really sorry. I've been… it's rough right now. I hate seeing you move out. I hate all of this. I'm trying not to but I do, and it's making me— sorry."

It takes a moment for the words to sink in for some reason. There's something disconcerting, about how serious Gunwook is all of a sudden, when he's been so annoying, and how still everything is, when Yujin feels like his pulse has been speeding and speeding up for hours. He has to give himself a minute to realign.

"I'm sorry," he says. It comes out clumsy. "For being mean about Matthew."

"That's ok. I was being a dick."

He was, but still. There's a temptation to leave it there, no harm, no foul, just a fight that they shouldn't have had, but Yujin's said the words. A thread somewhere has started to unravel, and he doesn't want to leave it. He wants to keep pulling, even as he's scared of what they'll find at the end of it.

"I'm not ready," he says eventually. It comes out shaky. "For that. For any of it."

"And that's fine, Yujin-ah, seriously. I really was just being an asshole."

Yujin shakes his head. He can hear it, where the still hairsprayed strands rasp against Gunwook's stubble.

"No. I mean… I don't— I don't think I ever want to be ready."

There's silence, for a moment.

"Oh."

He almost starts to fidget, but Gunwook doesn't let him, thick arms holding him still. Yujin is hardly weak— he's wiry and strong but he's still idol-thin and Gunwook is so big and wide and solid in comparison. He's all encompassing and stable in a way that feels like you can surrender all your bodyweight to him and know he will hold it safe, cradle it carefully until you can take it back again. He kind of gets it now, why Matthew is always finding excuses to hug him. And he gets the other thing too, in a clinical way— how Gunwook looks good in all his outfits, his huge presence onstage and on camera, the way he looms and smiles at the same time, the way his muscles fill his shirts. And yet, wrapped in his arms like this, he can't quite understand why anyone could think this body is best suited for anything other than hugging.

"You know I'm not actually sleeping with Matthew-hyung, right?" Gunwook says. His chin is pressed into the crown of Yujin's head, and Yujin refuses to allow the whining, childish voice that is complaining that he thought they were talking about him, or the even more childish voice insisting that he really just doesn't care. "I don't— it's ok if it's a joke. But if it was real— even just a little bit, just a tiny bit of it— I don't think I'd survive that. I couldn't just be that to him. And he doesn't— well. You know."

Yujin does know, and also he doesn't, not really, which he is starting to realise is maybe the entire problem. Why is he supposed to be interested, like this, when it's sad instead of funny? And why is it a whole thing— if having sex with Matthew would make Gunwook sad, why does he sound like he's also sad that it's not happening? Why do so many people seem to want things that do nothing but hurt?

Why doesn't he understand?

Not ready. That's what Gunwook had said, and that's what he thinks, or what he's always thought, that one day the clouds would part and he'd suddenly understand it all and he'd catch up to everyone and all the mysteries of the world would be revealed in shining technicolour and the line between child and adult would finally be erased.

But what if-

Surely, in order for that to happen, you have to want it to. And he doesn't. He doesn't want it. He doesn't want it at all, and he's not sure how he hadn't realised that until it fell out of his mouth.

What does that mean? What does that make him?

"Hyung?" He's horrified by the lump in his throat and and the stinging in his nose and the way he can feel his mouth wobbling as he tries to get the words out. "Am I going to be alone forever?"

He hears the breath that Gunwook sucks in, and those big arms tighten around him until he can hardly breathe, like a straightjacket, like swaddling bands.

"Yujin-ah…" He sounds choked up, and like he's scrambling for how to answer, saying his name just for something to say. "If you— you know if you never want it that's ok, right? That's fine. It doesn't make you wrong, or deficient, or fucking… fucking broken. Or anything. There is nothing wrong with you."

It's hard to describe the feeling that floods him. Maybe relief, but also something else too, something cold, because if Gunwook has said it, if someone else has seen it and named it, this gap inside him, then that means it must be there. He'd thought maybe, maybe it was like when you can't find something, when he's misplaced a sock or his phone or his school bag and he's looked everywhere and then he asks his mum or his manager or Hao and they find it first time and scold him for not looking properly even though he really honestly tried. And the possibility that the sock is not just gone, but has never and will never exist—

It's a hard one to swallow.

"The right person… they won't care, Yujin. They will love you as you are, I promise, you will be enough for them."

They're nice words— the perfect words, really. It should be reassuring. It should be exactly what he needs to hear, he should feel bolstered by this love and support and optimism.

He doesn't quite know why he feels disappointed instead.

The revelation, when it comes, is not a burst of light, or a sudden penny dropping. It's quiet and gradual, something shifting slowly into place. A house settling on its foundations. Continents drifting, centimetre by centimetre, until mountains are pushed up between them. The slow, constant deposition of sediment by a river until you look one day and go oh, there's a bank there.

It takes a while to understand. In all honesty, it takes another while to accept.

How do you prove the absence of something?

He wonders about that for some time. Not constantly, just, semi-regularly, odd moments here and there when there's nothing more pressing to wonder about. It's like something he keeps in his pocket and forgets it's there, and then every now and again he takes it out and turns it over and ponders it a little. Life is busy: two groups are split unwillingly apart, a third is built up from the spare pieces, they have to start over and work and Yujin has to grow into his adulthood, still the baby but not a baby, not any longer. It's a relentless roll onward, through releases and variety and tours and solo endeavours, and it's a shock when they look around realise that And2ble has now existed for longer than their tenure in ZB1 did. Life is busy, and he is busy living it, which is also his excuse for not doing the other things that everyone else seems to be doing.

I can't date now, are you crazy, I barely have time to see my own bed let alone someone else's.

It's pretty good, as excuses go.

But there are little moments, little points in time that seem to crystalise and let another chink of light in, add another pound of sediment to the river bank.

Like when his manager points out one of the new dancers seems like she has a crush on him, and why doesn't he give her his number, she's pretty, and seems polite, and he can't connect the fact to the suggestion, can't figure out where causality happens there.

Like when he meets Hanbin for dinner, and he's talking about missing Hao while he's away working in China, and tipsily looking forward to the day they can live together full time again.

"That'll be the best part. Going out and knowing that when I get home, he'll be there, everyday. Not having to ferry the kid between houses, never waking up alone again, never eating alone again, never going more than a few hours without seeing him. I'll just be able to turn around and there he'll be, all the time. God. I'll be complete again."

It's an odd, nonsensical notion to him, that a person can be incomplete on their own, can be somehow made not-whole just by the absence of another.

Hanbin looks so happy, flushed red, eyes closed as he imagines it, this life lived entirely shared, and all Yujin can think is how that sounds genuinely psychologically unsettling. He's not a loner. He's shy, but he has friends, family, people who he wants to see often and tell his news and misses when they're apart for long. But the idea of there just always being some person in his house? And you can't kick them out because they also live there? And you don't even get the bed to yourself?

It's not his worst nightmare, but it isn't too far off.

He tries to picture Hanbin without Hao and he shudders. He tries to picture anyone, literally anyone, an imagined dream roommate who does all of the chores and cooks all the food and pays all of the bills and makes him laugh, being with him all of the time and he also shudders. Even all of that doesn't seem worth them always just being there.

He's getting better at the mind experiments. He tests things out and visualises them, and he's slowly building this picture, this dataset, this big complicated 3D model with strings and graphs and ping-pong balls on sticks and shit. It's a pretty complicated mental process for what turns out, in essence, to be a startlingly simple concept. There are even words for it, and he's training himself into using them. They're growing on him. He thinks that one day he'll call himself them and it will feel as natural as telling someone his name.

Yujin has grown out of any childish anticipation for his service. He looks forward to it about as much as one looks forward to a dentist appointment— it's necessary, and things will probably be better afterwards, but it doesn't make it any more appealing. He has to admit, though, it suits some people. Jungmin has filled out into his uniform, his lanky teenage figure giving way to something more adult, more grounded in itself. He greets his friend with a hug, too old now to pretend to be too cool for it, and shoulders his army issue backpack on the way to his car (finally, his own, that he can drive for himself!) to drive them both back to his apartment (also his own, that he can live in himself, if only when they don't have promotions!).

Yujin had been a little surprised when Jungmin had asked for this. Not to meet up, they try whenever he has leave and Yujin doesn't have schedules, but it's weird for him to come and see Yujin before he even goes to see his family.

"I need to become myself again," he says, as he accepts a bottle of beer. "It… I'm so used to hiding away in the barracks. It's like high school all over again. Need to prepare myself for my mum's questions about Sanghyeon hyung, too."

He grimaces at the name, and Yujin joins him out of solidarity. In truth, he always quite liked Jungmin's ex, and doesn't really understand why they've broken up. It seems Jungmin's mum feels the same.

He lets Jungmin decompress, and complain, and fill him in on what's been happening since his last bout of leave. He's nearly through with it now, nearly ready to go back to university and pick up where he left off with his degree. The complaining fades into a grim foreshadowing of what his mother is going to say about the breakdown of his most serious ever relationship.

"Why did you break up with him?" Yujin asks. "He seemed nice."

Nice is a nothing word, a filler for other qualities, but it really does describe Jungmin's ex. He was nice, pleasant and easygoing, had seemed caring without being too intense. Yujin had never felt uneasy or awkward hanging out with the two of them.

"He was nice. He is nice, he's great, he's a really great guy. I just, I was planning out my leave and thinking about who to meet with and where to go and I found myself thinking oh, yeah, I'd better go and see hyung as well. And I realised I wasn't excited about it, like, at all. I wasn't dreading it, I just— I was desperate to see my parents, excited to see my friends and my cousins and trying to figure out if you were here or off on tour, and I honestly wouldn't have cared if I didn't manage to fit him in. I sound awful. I dunno. I guess I just fell out of love with him. Fuck," he sighs, tipping his head back to finish off bottle number three, before reaching for a fourth. "What's wrong with me, man? I had the only decent man in Seoul and I didn't even want him. My mother's right. I'm going to grow old alone."

The cola in Yujin's bottle sloshes gently as he tilts it one way and then the other, thin foam fizzing pathetically when it hits the glass.

"Would that be so bad?" he wonders aloud. He doesn't have the blanket of alcohol, but Jungmin is tipsy and loose with it, and there's a calm, a stillness in the room. For some reason, finally, he feels ready to bring it up. "Jungmin-ah, can I ask you something?"

Jungmin waves his permission, now busy fishing rice crackers out of a packet with a pair of disposable chopsticks.

"In our last year of highschool. Did you give me a box of cookies and cream on pepero day?"

Jungmin chokes on his rice cracker. He coughs, red in the face, and thumps himself on the chest.

"Jesus fuck, Yujin-ah. You bring this up now?"

He feels kind of bad about it, or at least about the timing. He probably should've waited until he'd finished the bag.

"Why did you do that?"

Jungmin levels him with a look, flat and unimpressed despite the flames still licking up his neck and ears.

"You know why." When Yujin continues to stare at him, he rolls his eyes. "Because I had a crush on you, dumbass."

It doesn't freak him out anymore. He still thinks, maybe, if the past tense weren't there to protect him, he'd feel that same grip of panic again. But it lives behind them now, academic and nostalgic and safe.

"Sorry for springing it on you, I just never quite… I wasn't sure."

"I honestly thought you'd never realised," Jungmin sighs. He tips his head back again on the sofa to look up at the ceiling. "I was too chicken to put my name on it. It was like that fucking— that evil German guy we learnt about in physics, the one who tortured cats? Like I could live in both worlds at once. You knew and you didn't, and everything was still fine anyway. It's not like— I mean, I didn't expect anything from you, you know? I knew you were straight."

"I'm not straight."

There's a sound, when Jungmin whips his head back upright, as if he's cracked his neck doing it.

"What the fuck?"

"I'm not gay," he hurries to clarify. He doesn't want Jungmin to think he's left him alone in it all this time. "I'm not… I'm not anything. I'm not gay or straight or bi or any of them. I don't want those things. I never have. Not just sex, either, I mean all of it. It's like there's this thing everyone else is programmed to do and I just never got that code."

Jungmin's eyebrows are in his hairline, mouth pressed in on itself. He blows his breath out, nods a few times, and takes another swig of his beer.

"Well, shit. So you've never…? Any of it?"

"No."

"Huh." He sits still, nodding slowly as he stares into space, clearly trying to rearrange his perception of reality, and then he startles. "Wait, you're coming out to me. This is you coming out, what— what am I meant to say? What did you say when I came out to you?"

That incident had involved an inadvisable amount of soju, his unfortunate reaction to it, and the subsequent discovery of Yujin's alcohol allergy. He hadn't even remembered it happening until a few weeks later, but seeing as he had already known, had managed to bluff his way through the conversations about it.

"I honestly have no idea, what did I say? Was it like, inspiring?"

Jungmin is pinching the bridge of his nose, now, leaning forward with his eyes screwed shut in an effort to drag his memory.

"You told me your dads were gay. And then I got confused, and then you got confused why I was confused, and then like two days later I realised you meant your hyungs. Which is weird, by the way."

It is deeply embarrassing, is what it is. He has no recollection of ever saying that.

"But I guess… it was your way of saying that it was normal. That I was normal, that you already lived in my world, or whatever. So if you need me to, then I'm saying that to you. You're normal."

"I don't know if I am."

"Give me a fucking break, man. Fine, you aren't normal, but you're… you're ok. You're good. I love you, or whatever."

Yujin smiles into his bottle, embarrassed and avoiding eye contact.

"Or whatever," he repeats.

Soon enough, he tips Jungmin into a taxi and sends him back to his mother, hopefully too late to be interrogated about his inability to keep a relationship longer than a stick of deodorant.

He stands and watches as the taxi crawls through traffic and disappears around the corner. It's a balmy night in late September, and he shoves his hands in his pockets and wanders off down the road. The streets are busy with cars, people escaping the city to get back to their hometowns for Chuseok, but Yujin can't quite go aywhere yet; idol schedules don't tend to follow a normal calendar, red days much the same as any other for the most part, so he can't leave for home until filming finishes tomorrow evening.

His feet carry him further than intended, down to the great black slash of river that cuts the city in half. The bridges seem at standstill, taillights glowing red, backed up into infinity as everyone swaps out their adult lives for their grown-out-of childhood homes and the family villages they can cross in a single stride, just for the holiday. He has that schedule tomorrow, but he'll go to his parents' afterwards. His mother will fuss that he isn't eating enough and his father will ask how many hours of sleep he's gotten in the past week and his grandparents will ask when he'll be settling down and getting married and he will lie to all of them, and they'll know it, and it will be fine.

Before him the traffic stretches on endlessly, inching forward in determination. His feet take him down and along the pedestrian path below the bridge, out into the middle of the river where autumn is making an attempt at a breeze, carried downstream from the mountains to the east and out to the sea.

He looks out at the city and considers his lot.

There are things, things for some people that are more important than anything else, that Yujin will never have. There will always be a difference in how he sees the world, in how he experiences it, in comparison to everyone else he knows. He knows that there will come a time when all of the most important people in his life find their most important person, a time when Han Yujin ceases to be anyone's first priority. He knows it will be difficult. But there are many ways to live a life, and live a good one.

He might get a dog soon. It's something he's been thinking about for ages, and he feels like it's time. Maybe after the New Year, though— the group has a bit of a break and he thinks there's a gap in his individual schedule then too, and he wants to go away, a trip overseas just by himself for the first time. He's eyeing up a new couch, and the highly hypocritical cookbook that Hao bought him for his last birthday, and considering going running somewhere that isn't the treadmill at the company gym. There will never be anyone with whom he has to negotiate these decisions. There will never be anyone to whose happiness he is more beholden than he is to his own. He knows that to some people, that looks like loneliness, but he has come to understand it as freedom.

Han Yujin is often alone, and he is, occasionally, lonely. But he is never, and will never be, incomplete.