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The dead of the night really lives up to its name.
It’s silent, much more than it usually is on a weekend, and all Minki can hear is the rustling of the trees outside and the occasional rumble of a car passing by. But louder than that is possibly the absence of sound inside the dorm.
It’s two in the morning, which is late, he supposes, but there’s usually someone or the other awake around this time. It’s usually not Minki; he falls asleep relatively early. It’s often Jonghyun-- playing video games in the living room, or sometimes even Minhyun-- who’s kind enough every now and then to stay up to make a snack for someone. They have a rule-- whoever stays up the latest has to turn off all the lights-- so the darkness that surrounds Minki as he walks to the refrigerator means that everybody’s gone to sleep.
And, well, Minhyun isn’t here right now, but he’ll be back soon.
It’s been very strange coming back and getting used to the Nu’est dorm again, especially with one of them missing. Leaving Minhyun’s room lying around empty seems like a waste, so Minki takes residence in it instead, leaving Jonghyun with the room they previously shared to use as his own.
That’s not the only thing that’s changed since they came back. A lot of the changes are positive. Produce 101 gave the boys an opportunity to make a bunch of new friends, and Minki especially takes time out of his day to text everyone.
There’s a bunch of them he’s become quite attached to.
Justin, whom Minki had taken under his wing during the Replay performance, is one of them. He’s gone back to Yuehua, which is coincidentally the same company Nu’est had promoted with when they were in China.
Then there’s Gunhee, who was there with him during not only during the Replay stage, but also Oh Little Girl. His partner in crime.
Moonbok is another one he texts every now and then; they already knew each other from before the show started, of course, but Minki makes sure to congratulate him on recently becoming a model for L’oReal.
Seonho also almost aggressively keeps in touch, and Minki sporadically drops top secret Minhyun-related information for him. Seonho’s a chatty little thing, and generally also has updates about a bunch of the trainees they were on the show with.
There’s Hyunbin too, whom Minki also knows from beforehand due to their modelling stints together.
Hyunbin had taken a while to ask Minki about Jonghyun.
Minki knows what Jonghyun must mean to Hyunbin, at least to a certain extent. He knows what it’s like to be mentored by Jonghyun upon making one too many errors in their choreographies. To have had Jonghyun help him had been quite an assistance to Hyunbin, to say the least, so when just a few weeks after they get back to their dorm, Hyunbin asks how Jonghyun is and if he’s doing okay after the results, Minki isn’t the slightest bit surprised.
He says yes and that Hyunbin shouldn’t worry. However, the answer isn’t as simple as that.
After the one night they go drinking right after Produce 101 ends, they don’t really talk about the results that much anymore. They’d spilled out whatever they’d had to say to each other then and there, getting it all out and over with. They’d all ended up crying, watching their old songs suddenly rise on the charts as an outcome of whatever had transpired.
They’d all cried together, and because they were together and eventually would be regardless of everything, they knew everything would be okay.
People still ask him about Jonghyun, though. Hyunbin asks him, Seonho asks him, Loves ask him-- and Minki really does want to give them a proper reply.
But in order to explain how Jonghyun felt about the entire situation, he’d have to explain the kind of person Jonghyun is entirely, and Minki doesn’t know if he’s capable of doing that.
What can one say about Kim Jonghyun?
Maybe if it was five years ago, before they’d even debuted, maybe then Minki would have been able to talk about Jonghyun at length. Then again, thinking that is a bit of a contradiction in itself, because the reason for it would have been that he didn’t know Jonghyun well enough. And because he didn’t know him enough, if he’d gotten started, maybe he’d actually be able to finish. Frankly, the same goes for any of the other members too. They’ve become a part of his life in a way he can’t really comprehend, and they remain so, even now. Minki has his family—his brother, his parents, his grandparents. But ‘family’ is still the only word that even comes close to describing what Nu’est is to him.
But that’s going off on a tangent.
Right.
What can he say about Jonghyun?
Lately, the world has a lot to say about Jonghyun.
It’s important to Minki to frequently look through posts about Nu’est. It was easy a few months ago, because there were barely any. He’d just go through the old ones in the hopes of finding new comments.
Now though, there’s so many, and Minki couldn’t be happier.
Jonghyun arguably gets the most posts and articles written about him, alongside Minhyun (the thought never even occurs to Minki to stop reading posts concerning Minhyun). Dongho gets a bunch of posts too, and recently, people have been noticing Aron’s appeal as well.
The ones about Jonghyun are very interesting to go through. Sometimes fans are able to catch onto things in their performances that even Minki wouldn’t have been able to. It’s amazing. Some posts talk about the hardships he’s been through as a leader—how unfair it was for him to not get into Wanna One, some talk about how perfect his smile is, some talk about how considerate and humble he remains, and some are just gif compilations of how well he dances.
But that’s nothing.
That’s not even a fraction of what Kim Jonghyun is.
And it isn’t that Minki’s offended or anything. It’s the opposite, really. But he wants to sit down with every single person that says they love Jonghyun, and just talk about him with them. He wants to tell everyone about exactly how mind-blowingly spectacular Jonghyun is, because they don’t even know half of it.
It’s why he didn’t cry, all those years ago, during that one particular concert they had in Japan.
No, that’s a lie, he did cry.
But not nearly as much as he would have cried had he been hearing Jonghyun’s words for the first time.
Perhaps it's part and parcel of being close to him. There have been more than just a few instances when Jonghyun’s confided in Minki, and Minki knows it isn’t something that Jonghyun particularly likes doing, because he’s always been under some sort of stupid impression that as a leader, he’s the only one responsible for the group.
That’s why it’s so important to Minki when Jonghyun talks about the group with him. A lot of the time, Minki doesn’t even know what to say. He doesn’t know what to do, and he wants to naively proclaim that it isn’t always in their hands. That sometimes people do fail, regardless of how hard they try. But Jonghyun wouldn’t be Jonghyun if he agreed with any of that. Jonghyun, who believes that hard work is the one thing that can get anyone anywhere, would never agree with that.
It’s one of the things Minki loves about him.
And so they’d hold each other. Whenever Jonghyun was feeling low, a shoulder was something that Minki could give him. Tears were something that Minki could shed with him.
I didn’t ask to be the leader, but that’s what I am
The day Jonghyun had said that to the fans, Minki had refused to break down.
I feel so sorry I couldn’t keep my promise
That day Minki hadn’t even needed to turn to know that the other members were also all in tears. Love You More had started playing, and Minhyun had struggled to sing his part through his sobbing. Minki’s part had been next, and he’d sung. He’d sung, because once again, in that moment, that’s all he could have done for Jonghyun. After Minki’s part was over, Jonghyun had wordlessly shared a look with him. It had only lasted a few seconds, but within that tiny a time frame it spoke volumes that words simply would not have done justice.
At the apex of it all, he had been telling Minki the same thing he’d said to the fans there at their concert that day.
Thank you for staying.
He’s about to go back to his own room, but the door to Jonghyun’s room lies slightly ajar. Minki pushes it open, fully expecting to catch Jonghyun watching some shitty anime or the other in the dark. Nothing in the room stirs though. Jonghyun is asleep.
Minki walks up to the bed.
It’s still the bunk bed the two of them had shared till just a few weeks ago. Jonghyun would sleep on the bottom bunk, and Minki on the top. Leaning over from there to quietly take reassurance in Jonghyun’s presence used to calm him on many a restless night.
A lot of Minki’s possessions still litter the room, because he’s been too lazy to move them. It isn’t like he doesn’t end up passing out in Jonghyun’s room half the time after practice anyway, be it just a force of habit or anything else. But the promise of having an entire room to himself, to finally be able to fit everything he owns comfortably into one room, is also nothing to underestimate. The number of gifts they’ve been receiving nowadays is not a joke, and Minki wants to utilize all of it. And besides, there’s only so many late-night anime marathons he can stand when he’s tired.
Even then, he was kind of touched when in one of their recent fansigns, Jonghyun still wrote “roommate” for Minki when asked for one word to describe each of the members, even though Minki had officially moved out of the room weeks ago.
“It’s not like half your stuff isn’t still lying around in my room,” Jonghyun had said, when Minki had enquired about it. “Your Chucky dolls still stare at me till I fall asleep.”
They’re there right now too—Minki’s Chucky dolls. One day, Jonghyun will see their true beauty.
He’s wrapped up in his blanket. Maybe Minki’s imagining it, because he knows they’re all just still working just as hard as they did before, even after Where You At’s success, but tonight Jonghyun’s face is just a little more at peace as he sleeps. It’s dark and late, and Minki probably really is imagining it, but the glow of hard work paying off radiates off of Jonghyun even through his slumber.
He looks a little like an angel.
Minki leans down to kiss his forehead. Jonghyun doesn’t open his eyes, but Minki can tell he’s woken up.
“Sorry,” Minki whispers, “couldn’t help myself.”
Jonghyun mumbles something into his pillow, and moves to the side, only to mumble something again.
What he's trying to say is still pretty clear, though.
Minki laughs. “That’s not my bed.”
“Stay,” mutters Jonghyun, turning his head away from the pillow and towards Minki. His eyes are now half open.
Minki hesitates, and then puts a hand on the ladder leading to his old upper bunk.
“That’s... not your bed either, right?” Jonghyun argues almost like a child, his voice befuddled with sleep, and nudges Minki with his knee. “Stay here today,” he moves a little more, “there’s space.”
“There’s no space,” Minki argues back, but finds himself climbing in next to Jonghyun anyway.
It’s cramped, but Minki has always fallen asleep a little faster pressed against Jonghyun’s chest.
Jonghyun breathes into his hair, and even after all these years, especially after all these years, Minki knows exactly what he’s too tired to put into words.
…
…
…
Thank you for staying .