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Dongmyeong took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment before he moved the chopsticks to his lips, forcing himself to take the bite of kimchi and start to chew, even though his brain was screaming at him to stop. That it was poison. That it was just going to ruin all of the hard work he had done in the gym to get the abs that everyone had been so shocked by during his time on The Unit - all of the hard work he was still doing to keep himself even half as attractive as Dongju.
Dongju was the cute twin - the one that girls crushed on, and that everyone always talked about. Dongmyeong was smarter, but Dongju was attractive and everyone loved the younger boy. And even though Dongmyeong loved his brother, he couldn’t help being jealous at Dongju’s more conventionally attractive features and how easily Dongju seemed to adapt to the life of being an Idol. Dongmyeong didn’t want to be an Idol, per se; he loved being in a band, loved playing his instruments and singing with his members. But he couldn’t help reading the comments and the comparisons on some of the videos, and they hurt.
“Yah… Dolmaengie, try this…” Dongmyeong glanced at the piece of pork in Giwook’s chopsticks, shaking his head as he saw just how much fat was on the piece of meat.
“No, thanks…”
“C’mon, Dongmyeong-ah… you only live once,” Harin replied. “And the company only buys us a barbecue dinner once in a blue moon. You should take advantage of the opportunity.”
Dongmyeong shook his head, smiling at the others. “Really… I’m okay. I’m not a big fan of pork…” Dongmyeong fibbed, using his chopsticks to pick up a piece of chicken that had been pulled off the grill instead. It was like sand in his mouth, but Dongmyeong didn’t dare to refuse to eat in front of his members. Unfortunately, Giwook didn’t seem as easily convinced as the older members. Dongmyeong knew that it was because the bassist had known him longer than anyone else, and the maknae knew all of his deepest, darkest secrets.
“Since when do you not like pork…?” Giwook asked softly, while the others were distracted with their own food again.
“It’s not a big deal…” Dongmyeong replied.
“Are you restricting again?” Giwook whispered.
“It’s just a bad day,” Dongmyeong replied, shaking his head. “Drop it, okay? I’m fine.”
“Then eat… don’t think I won’t get the managers involved if you’re relapsing,” Giwook replied, moving more chicken into the bowl of rice in front of Dongmyeong before turning back to the conversation taking place between their hyungs.
Dongmyeong did his best to force more food into his mouth, but every bite he took felt more and more like a lead weight sitting in his belly. It wasn’t long before he couldn’t handle the feeling any longer, standing up. “I’ll be back…” he began.
“Same… I need to go, too,” Giwook commented, handing over the tongs he had been using to cook to Hyungu with a smile. Dongmyeong forced a smile, letting the younger man follow him to the restaurant’s bathrooms.
“Giwook-ah…” Dongmyeong began, turning towards his friend once they were safely inside the men’s room.
“I know the signs, Dolmaengie. You forget, we’ve been friends for practically our entire lives,” Giwook replied. “Are you really going to make yourself sick with me here?”
Dongmyeong closed his eyes, sighing. “You aren’t really giving me much of a choice…”
“You could just not do it…” Giwook began. “Come on, Dolmaengie… I won’t even pressure you to eat more. Just sit with it for a while, see if you can keep it down…”
“I can’t,” Dongmyeong replied, shaking his head. “Fuck, Giwook-ah… you don’t get it…”
“I’m trying to not take this to the company, Dolmaengie,” Giwook replied. “I’m trying to help you through this without having to involve anyone else, because I know that you don’t want to admit you’re on the verge of relapsing. But you’ve barely eaten anything, and now you’re coming to the bathroom to purge what little you have eaten. I can’t just sit at the table and pretend that nothing is wrong, when I know that you’re in here making yourself sick.”
Dongmyeong shook his head, feeling the bile starting to rise up the back of his throat without any prompting. His body had gotten so used to purging, Dongmyeong didn’t even have to think about how to make it happen. “I need to do this…”
“No, you don’t,” Giwook replied. “You don’t have to do this to yourself.”
Dongmyeong shook his head, turning and rushing into one of the stalls as he realized that his stomach wasn’t going to be ignored. Dongmyeong dropped to his knees, letting everything that he’d eaten come up into the porcelain bowl without even bothering to close the stall door.
“Fuck…” Giwook muttered, sighing and rubbing small circles on Dongmyeong’s back as his body got rid of everything he’d managed to force down since they had come to the restaurant. “Is it really this bad, that you can’t even control the purging any more?”
Dongmyeong closed his eyes, catching his breath for a moment before he tried to spit out the taste of vomit from his mouth. “I told you, I had to do it…” he muttered.
“Aish… Dongmyeong-ah, are you okay?” Dongmyeong didn’t look up at the sound of Yonghoon’s voice from the doorway. “What happened?”
“Are you going to tell him, or am I?” Giwook asked.
Dongmyeong took a deep breath, forcing himself to his feet and trying to ignore the dizzy feeling that always accompanied a particularly bad purging episode. “I’m just not feeling well…”
“Bullshit…” Giwook replied. “He’s purging - making himself throw up on purpose, because he’s terrified of gaining weight…”
“Fuck you…” Dongmyeong tried to push Giwook out of his way, but Yonghoon stopped him before he could get anywhere, holding Dongmyeong by his shoulders. “Let go of me, hyung…”
“Dongmyeong-ah… what is he talking about?” Yonghoon asked softly, refusing to let go of Dongmyeong’s shoulders. Dongmyeong looked down at the floor, shaking his head. “Dolmaengie… please…”
“I’m not sick…” Dongmyeong began, shaking his head.
“He’s anorexic,” Giwook interrupted. “He’s been in recovery for a while, but he’s still fighting it. And right now, he’s starting to relapse again.”
There was a moment of silence, before Yonghoon pulled Dongmyeong into a tight hug. “Aish… what are we going to do with you, Dolmaengie?”
“Please… it isn’t a big deal…” Dongmyeong began.
“You’re hurting yourself… that’s a huge deal,” Yonghoon replied. The leader sighed, finally letting go of Dongmyeong and stepping back to look at him. “How long has this been going on? Not from the beginning, just since things started getting bad again…”
Dongmyeong shook his head. “I’m not even that bad…” he began.
“You’re barely eating, and you’re throwing up what you do eat… I’d call that pretty bad,” Yonghoon replied. Dongmyeong couldn’t help the look of surprise on his face at the leader’s words. “I noticed that you hadn’t eaten much before you guys came back here… and when you didn’t come back, I knew that I needed to check on you…”
Dongmyeong bit down on his bottom lip for a moment, looking down at the floor. “What happens now?” Dongmyeong asked, not looking up at the leader.
“We go back to dinner, and you eat as much as you can without doing this again,” Yonghoon replied. “When we get home, we’re going to have a group meeting, and you’re going to be honest with all of us about what’s going on. And then we’re going to figure out where we go from here.”
***
Dongmyeong wanted to run into his room and hide as soon as they got back to the dorm, but he knew that it would be futile. Not only did he share a room with Giwook, but Dongmyeong knew that Hyungu was more than capable of picking locks if necessary. So instead, he let Yonghoon guide him to sit down on the couch, although he moved away when Giwook tried to sit next to him. “Don’t…” he began softly.
“Dolmaengie…” Giwook began.
“I said, don’t.” Dongmyeong knew that he was being cruel, pushing Giwook away, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at his friend in that moment. It had been bad enough when Giwook was the only one trying to push him about his eating habits, but the fact that the younger man had outed him to their leader was just too much for Dongmyeong to handle.
“Aish… what’s going on that you two are fighting?” Harin asked.
“Just sit down, guys… we all need to talk,” Yonghoon replied, as he positioned himself between Dongmyeong and Giwook.
“What’s going on?” Hyungu asked, as he and Harin sat down as they had been told.
“Dongmyeong-ah… I think you need to tell us all yourself,” Yonghoon commented, putting a hand on Dongmyeong’s shoulder. “We’re going to support you, but we need to hear it in your own words.”
Dongmyeong closed his eyes, taking a deep breath and trying to calm himself down enough to actually address what was going on. “Yah… what is it, Dolmaengie? Are you coming out or something?” Harin joked.
Dongmyeong shook his head quickly, biting down on his bottom lip. “Guys… seriously, no jokes,” Yonghoon commented softly, putting an arm around Dongmyeong’s shoulders. “I haven’t even heard the truth from Dongmyeong-ah himself, yet. Giwook-ah told me what was going on…”
“Is it really that bad?” Hyungu asked softly, putting a hand on Dongmyeong’s knee.
“I’m anorexic,” Dongmyeong replied, not looking at the others. “I’m in recovery…”
“Yah… don’t lie, Dolmaengie,” Giwook replied. “He’s relapsing. Hard.”
“But he ate dinner…” Harin began.
“And threw it all up,” Giwook replied. “Most of the time, he just won’t eat if he thinks he can get away with it. But when he can’t just restrict, he’ll purge whatever he’s eaten. And judging by what happened tonight in the bathroom, I’m not sure that he even has control of that any more…”
“You knew this whole time?” Hyungu asked.
“I’m his best friend… I was there through all of it when he first got sick, and the first time he relapsed,” Giwook replied. “We’ve gone through this together since we were still kids… I kept his secret because he had it under control and he was doing okay. But I also know that he can’t do this on his own, and I wasn’t going to keep my mouth shut once I found out that he was relapsing.”
“Right… so what do we need to do?” Yonghoon asked. “How do we fix this?”
Dongmyeong shook his head. “You can’t…” Dongmyeong began.
“Dolmaengie… we just want to help you,” Harin commented.
“You only care because you need me…” Dongmyeong replied, shaking his head. “If I wasn’t in the group, if we were just friends otherwise, would you give this much of a shit?”
“You’re our friend, Dolmaengie,” Yonghoon replied, squeezing Dongmyeong’s shoulders. “We care about you as more than just one of our members… and this is about the fact that you’re hurting yourself. This isn’t about us, this is about you.”
“You can’t just deflect, Dongmyeong-ah. Pushing us away isn’t going to make this any easier. You know that I’m not going to just sit by and let you destroy yourself,” Giwook commented. “If you don’t let us help you, I’ll go to the managers. And I’ll tell Dongju-yah…”
Dongmyeong looked up quickly at the sound of his brother’s name, shaking his head. “No… please, don’t tell Dongju-yah…” he replied.
“Then let us help you,” Yonghoon commented, squeezing Dongmyeong’s shoulders again.
“We have to weigh you,” Giwook began. “We can’t set the ground rules until we know how bad things have gotten. And you need to take your jeans off, first.”
Dongmyeong could feel the tears starting to gather in his eyes, and he leaned against Yonghoon’s shoulder to hide his tears from the rest of the group. “Hey… we’re just trying to help you, Dolmaengie,” Yonghoon commented softly. “You don’t even have to look…”
“It’s probably better if he doesn’t,” Harin commented softly. “I had a friend with food issues in high school… she never looked at the scale herself, even when she was doing well…”
“Do you think that would help, Dolmaengie?” Yonghoon asked.
Dongmyeong took a deep breath, trying to figure out whether or not he could actually deal with not knowing how much he actually weighed. “I don’t… I don’t know.”
“Can you try it?” Hyungu asked softly. Dongmyeong nodded slowly.
Dongmyeong hated the whole process of getting weighed by his members, and he was thankful when it was all over and he could curl up in a corner of the couch with his arms wrapped around his knees in his sweatpants. “It wasn’t bad…?”
“When did you start restricting again?” Giwook asked.
“A couple of days ago,” Dongmyeong admitted, not looking at the others.
“Three kilograms is a lot for just a couple of days…” Harin began. Dongmyeong took a shaky breath, suddenly realizing just how out of control things had gotten. While he’d only consciously been restricting for a couple of days, it was obvious that his mind had been fucked up for longer than he’d realized.
“Fuck…” Dongmyeong didn’t even realize that he was crying until he felt Yonghoon’s arms around him again. “It’s okay, we can fix this.”
“You’re still over 45 kilograms, Dolmaengie,” Giwook added. “We can still get this under control before you have to go to the hospital.”
“45… is that some kind of magic number?” Hongyu asked.
“He has to stay above 45… that was the deal he made with his therapist the last time he relapsed,” Giwook replied. “If he hits 45, or if he goes below that, she said that she would commit him. No questions asked.”
“Right… so we have three kilograms to get this under control,” Harin replied. “We’re going to have to stay on top of this…”
“Daily weigh-ins,” Giwook replied.
“No…” Dongmyeong replied, shaking his head. “I can’t do this every day…”
“You don’t have to see it. You won’t see it, okay?” Yonghoon commented, reaching out to stroke Dongmyeong’s hair. “But we need to know what’s going on, okay? We can’t help you if we don’t know what we’re up against.”
“It’s not going to be any worse than before, Dolmaengie. You’ve made it through this before, you can do it again,” Giwook added.
Dongmyeong took a deep breath. “What about food…?”
“We’re going to decide what you eat, and how much,” Giwook replied. “We’re going to start small… I’m not going to give you anything crazy, okay? You trust me, right?” Dongmyeong nodded slowly, not looking up from his knees. “And you can’t be alone. Not in the bathroom, not in the practice room, not at home. Someone is going to be with you 24/7 for the next few weeks, until we get you stable again. Until we can trust you not to make yourself sick.”
Dongmyeong took a deep breath, nodding. “Okay.”
“And no going to the gym until you get your weight back up,” Yonghoon added. “You have to at least get back to 51 before you can go back to working out.”
“I don’t get any say in any of this?” Dongmyeong asked.
“You trying to control things too much is the problem here, Dolmaengie,” Giwook replied. “We’re doing all of this because it’s what’s best for you. You can’t take care of yourself right now, so we’re going to do it for you until you’ve got your head on straight again.”
“Come on… let’s go get in bed, okay? It’s been a long day, and we could all use a good night’s sleep,” Yonghoon commented, moving to stroke a hand through Dongmyeong’s hair again. “Do you want to stay with me tonight, Dolmaengie?”
Dongmyeong shook his head. “I just want to go to sleep.”