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Rowoon is shivering next to a dying campfire as he rubs his palms together in a valiant attempt to warm them, with little success. He looks up at the glittering night sky and decides the stars were brighter in Patagonia than Seoul. In the distance, he could hear the snores of his fellow Law of the Jungle castmates as they slept fitfully in their makeshift hut.
“Can’t sleep?”
He looks up just as one of the younger PDs amble over and sits next to him. She smiles sympathetically as he shakes his head vehemently.
“Too cold. My legs start cramping as soon as I lay down.” Rowoon attempts a smile, though he fails miserably. It’s the second last day of the shoot and everyone was running on fumes at this point. He hasn’t slept well in three days on the cold hard ground in the Patagonia wilderness.
“Hang in there,” the PD grins ruefully. “Two more days till home.”
Home. It was an ambiguous concept. He hasn’t seen his parents for three months, what with the new comeback and his individual schedules. Even the dorms were just a temporary respite for him to collapse into a dreamless sleep after every exhausting dance practice or drama audition.
Maybe he had been running on fumes even before being thrown into the literal wilderness.
Rowoon stares into the crackling flames . “I miss it.” He says quietly.
“What, Korea?”
“No,” he struggles to put into words the inexplicable. “I miss...home.”
The PD stares at him in confusion. “Aren’t they the same thing?”
Rowoon closes his eyes. He thinks of the world tours, the fifteen hours plane rides and the numerous hotel beds in the foreign lands. Somehow, they never elicited the distant ache in his chest the way it did now.
“No, not really.” He struggles to put the inexplicable into words. “Home is... being with people you care about. The place itself doesn’t matter.”
“Ah.” The PD says and shoots him a knowing look. “Hold on, I got something that could help.” She squeezes his shoulder and stands up, disappearing into the staff tents. Rowoon stares after her in faint confusion as the fire crackled emptily in the silence. The PD reappears moments later, with a phone in her hand. She heads over back to him and pushes the phone into his palms.
“Here.” She grins. “For the homesickness.”
Rowoon fumbles to hand the phone back, glancing nervously in the direction of the dozing camera men in the corner. “The director said we’re not supposed to contact anyone during the trip - ”
The PD rolls her eyes, and presses the phone into his hands. “What the director doesn’t know, can’t hurt him.” She whispers, turning to leave. “There should be enough minutes for you to make one international call.”
Rowoon stares blankly at the phone. “Wait - who do I call?”
She looks at him meaningfully before turning to leave, a conspiratorial smile on her face. “Call home.” She says, shrugging. “Whoever ‘home’ is to you anyway.”
“But I - ”
She waves a dismissive hand and yawns, patting him companionably on his back as she heads back to her tent. “You worry too much, kid,” she snorts, “I promise your sordid late night booty call isn’t going to end up on the front page of Dispatch.”
Rowoon blushes furiously. “Noona!”
The PD simply laughs as she disappears back into her own tent. Rowoon stares at the innocuous device cradled in his palm. A small biting gust of wind blows, and he lets out a small breath, watching it form a mist in the cold air. He looks around the campsite with half a suspicion that this was simply some extensive hidden camera prank on him, and three cameramen plus a lighting director was waiting to pounce on him from the bushes like rabid coyotes.
Minutes past, and the desert night remains still. No directors come bustling out of the darkness scolding him for breaking the rules, and no cameramen leap out behind cactuses to shove a camera in his face. He was well and truly alone. With shaking fingers, he taps the number well-worn into his brain and presses the call button.
It seems to take a lifetime for the dial tone to connect, and Rowoon almost ends the call early because the pounding of his heart was growing louder than the sound of the dial tone.
But then the line connects, and his heart soars.
//
“Hello?” The voice is faint and the static is terrible. But he feels the ache in his chest slowly lift.
“Hey - it’s me.”
There’s a slight pause on the other end. “Seokwoo hyung? Is this you?”
Rowoon feels a sudden burst of warmth. “Chani-ah,” he whispers into the phone, “of course it’s me.”
A familiar laugh crackles through the receiver. Rowoon desperately presses the phone closer to his ear to soak the sound in.
“How did you even get a reception?” Chani asks, “Aren’t you literally in the middle of nowhere now?” Rowoon hears the rustling of bedsheets in the background.
“I’m technically in the Patagonia desert” Rowoon corrects, resisting the smile that threatens to bloom across his face. “Are you still in bed? Isn’t it already 12pm in Seoul?”
“Manager-hyung said I could sleep in. Perks of being the birthday boy I guess” Chani yawns, and Rowoon imagines him rolled up under his duvet in his tiny single bed in the dorm - hair mussed up and eyes still bleary. It’s honestly a heart clenching mental image.
“I saw a bit of your birthday vlive.” Rowoon hums, “I wish I was there.”
It had been difficult convincing his manager to slip him his phone when they had made a pit stop in a rural town before filming officially started in the desert. Rowoon had spent twenty minutes camped in a coffee shop with what seemed to be the world’s spottiest wifi connection, watching the blurred and buffering vlive of Chani’s birthday celebration back in their dance studio. He had only been able to send out a hurried text message of congratulations on the groupchat before the wifi finally sputtered out and he was forced to hand over his phone back to his manager.
Chani chuckles. “Don’t worry, Sanghyuk hyung got to smash cake on my face on your behalf.” He pauses, and Rowoon almost checks to make sure the phone connection hadn’t dropped. “But it was weird not having you there, hyung.”
“Missed me did you?” Rowoon teases. And despite the campfire burning low into a soft ember, he somehow felt warmer than ever. Chani laughs again, and Rowoon desperately wants to bottle that sound and keep it safe in the crevices of his heart. Save it for the times when he feels this weird distant ache, so he can open the bottle and let Chani’s laugh wash over him like a soothing balm to an aching soul.
“And what about you?” Chani says, “Did you miss me?”
Rowoon pauses to consider the question, and it suddenly clicks. Why hotel rooms thousands of miles away from Seoul never felt as empty as the Patagonia desert, why standing on stages in foreign countries with fans screaming at him in languages he didn’t understand never felt as scary as it should be. Because home isn’t so much a place or a geographic location. Home is the feeling of waking up jetlagged next to the warmth of a sleeping body in a hotel room. It is the feeling of assurance and constancy of looking out at the screaming crowds, and back to the smiling face next to him on stage. Home is the person that makes you feel safe, no matter where you are in the world.
And maybe that made Chani Rowoon’s little slice of home.
“Seok-woo hyung? Hello? Are you still there?” Chani’s voice crackles over the receiver and jolts Rowoon out of his thoughts. He blinks back the tears that suddenly form and the weird emptiness that permeates his chest.
“I…I miss yo - home.” Rowoon whispers, and it feels like a confession almost – even though he can’t bring himself to say the actual words. The kind of words you should be able to say when there’s 18,000km of distance between you and the person you love, but it’s just so damn hard sometimes. To say things that matter, to say things to the people you love, to tell them you miss their laughter, their warmth and just them.
I miss you. I love you.
There’s a brief silence, and Rowoon thinks that the reception had finally given out when the phone crackles back to life.
“Home misses you too, hyung.”
I love you too, idiot.