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eight years ago, christopher bang interrupted his education to board a great white plane by himself. it lifted him up and flew eighteen hours to south korea, and there he has stayed since. it’s not that he stopped learning, the things he learned while training were just different:
how to bow even when your back is on fire from dancing.
how to accept all failures with a polite agreement that yes, yes it was your fault.
how to not cry, instead just lower your head and stare at the ground until you can breathe again.
those were all just in his first few years. once he hit sixteen, he experienced the horrid, breathless feeling of debut slipping out of his hands for the first time. it was like this: one second he was running around the practice room with jackson, and the next he was sitting in the emptied training dorm, watching his friends debut on inkigayo without him.
and again, this time day6. he had his first panic attack in 2015. there went all of his options, all of them, between his fingers like water. his parents couldn’t understand—wasn’t he supposed to debut with those boys? did something happen? does he need to come home? are they kicking him out?
all chris could really say was all that he knew: “i don’t know. i’m sorry. i’ll do better.”
but the years wore on. he felt overgrown and awkward at the weekly dance practices, gangly and clinging like too much climbing ivy, trying to keep up with the newer, brighter, younger trainees. he was only seventeen but he was running out of time. he looked up a list of the oldest members in boy groups and their ages of debut, and made a chart in his notebook for himself. this is how much you decline in worth with every passing second. hurry, hurry.
the twice noonas came and went, sana made him promise they’ll see him with his own group soon. they’ll promote together, promise? chan just grinned and nodded, and shied away from the vow, because he knew the keen sting of a broken promise better each year.
pushing eighteen, now, and his parents say he can’t go on like this, know when to give up, don’t kill yourself for a company that doesn’t care. but he’s stubborn, he still has some time left and you don’t understand mom, i have to do this, i have to.
nineteen brings salvation. nineteen brings jisung and changbin. chan thought: i can work with this. i have to work with this.
he’d spent the last six years watching the gears turn at jyp, and he could do this. twice were successfully celebrating their first anniversary, with no major hiccups, and a boy group was due out soon. soon, but how soon? chan scoured the practice rooms, listened in on vocal lessons, peered over jyp’s shoulder at headshots and charts and notes like, cut next month if no improvement. it’s chilling, and he hates it, and it’s killing him, but he learns it. he learns what to look for. if he could teach jisung and changbin just a little producing on top of their rap ability, it’d make them invaluable to any group. not too much, or they’ll just be producers, though. much as chan loves his friends, none among them had the “put this kid on television now!” faces that get you moved up in priority.
hyunjin did. and the look in his eye told chan that he’d improve in other areas rapidly enough to satisfy. next, voices. voices that could sing chan’s hooks and make people remember them. seungmin was a rock, unshakeable, woojin had already been recommended via rumor, and jeongin was just… chan just liked that kid. he was good. chan could work with him. when minho arrived, quiet and determined and all-too used to standing exactly ten centimeters away from the spotlight, chan grabbed him and didn’t let go. that was good. that was enough. eight is fine, but. but. something was missing. yes, hyunjin had the face, and chan’s vocalists could carry them well enough, and minho was adept at learning and teaching choreography, but if he was honest, really honest, honest like those notes he’d seen on monthly evaluation sheets—it wasn’t enough. they were still leagues behind and nothing—nothing about them was eye-catching. they didn’t have the whatever-it-was that made groups famous-famous. famous like bts famous. famous like hit single famous. plus hyunjin and jisung still hated each other. so. chan was stuck for a few months in negotiations with jyp, in talks with mnet for a survival show, getting more nervous about his lineup with each passing day.
and then: hallelujah. chan is twenty, and lee felix arrives, and his voice is perfect, and his face is perfect, and he’s sweet and genuine and makes fast friends with broken korean, and he’s the whatever-it-is. thank god.
chan tells him, “you got here just in time, mate,” and for the first time in too long he feels himself exhale.
then they debuted, and it was amazing, and his parents stopped sounding worried over the phone, and he lived in bliss for exactly as long as promotions lasted. and then, the engine that had been running chan for the last seven years... coughed. he ignored it. there was still more to do. of course there was. keep writing music, now they could do variety, film content, make choreography—but something inside of chan whispers, “what’s the point?” he ignores it. a year passes and the fuel light comes on. engine maintenance. brake fluid. change your oil, chan. woojin leaves, and he’s running on fumes. then, sometime in the beginning of 2020, his engine sputters, coughs, screeches, and dies.
it's not immediate. he limps along for a while, pretending like there's not something really really wrong with him. it's just that he can't bring himself to care anymore. he can't stop noticing how tired he is. he can't make a song he doesn't hate. their first full album should've come out already, but he keeps delaying, delaying. changbin's anxious, confused and frowning at chan's laptop, like he wants to poke it with a stick to see if it'll play better music.
every time chan thinks of the album, he gets nauseous. his notebook is filled with the same three or four lines that get stuck in his head. they don't rhyme. he feels like he couldn't write anything original if there was a gun to his head. they'll comeback, to what, have another comeback? work even harder? perform for empty audiences at music bank, celebrate a number one on a stage that echoes, run the gambit of end-of-the-year shows, scrape up one award, and go home. then do it all again. chan's head hurts. it only gets worse and worse. he delays the album.
chan has a lot of rules about it.
first, it’ll be neat. really tidy. no puking up pills, no huge mess of blood. he can’t and won’t let anyone, much less his members find him like that. god forbid jeongin pull his body from the tub, or felix find him hanging from—well, it’s not gonna happen. this will not be a case where—where they have to move dorms because channie hyung killed himself in the goddamn bathroom and now no one can go in there. fuck.
chan presses his knuckles into his forehead until it hurts. until it stops hurting.
so, it’ll be neat. he’ll leave a note, so there’s no confusion in case he’s not found right away. no being mistakenly reported missing. also, selfishly, he wants to say goodbye. he wants them to know—to know they didn’t do anything wrong. that this is only his fault. that it’ll be hard, but they can go on. please go on.
he’s almost ready. he’s got a vague outline in his head of how everything will probably happen. changbin will be the new leader, of course, he can do it, probably should have been doing it this whole time. who the hell let chan be in charge for two entire fucking years, jesus.
they’ll fly his parents out from sydney for the funeral, have it here, then let them take his ashes back with them. we must take responsibility for failing the bang family, our condolences, sincerely, jype.
stray kids hiatus, maybe a year. things would be so much easier if woojin was still—but, whatever. they’ll make it through. they’re good kids. chan wonders what the comeback will be. he hopes they don’t do a ballad. not for him. by 2022 they’ll probably be back on track. oh, he hopes they give his parts to minho. maybe they’ll just rearrange everything. the choreography will be fine—better, even, because an odd number is much easier to work with. no one will be hidden behind center, finally. seven will be better than eight. this, he has to believe.
he wants his savings split between his family and a few charities, but he thinks he probably needs an actual will for that to be official. he can just hope. anyway, it’ll be tidy. cleaned up fast, healed with time. this is the last time he’ll cause anyone pain. just a little bit more, chan-ah.
he doesn’t talk much during one kid’s room, mostly because he’s trying to soak everything up like sunlight. he’s just trying to… to hear seungmin’s laugh a few more times. to remember jisung’s shoulder against his. that’s all.
he takes a deep breath before filming his episode. just a little more. he takes extra care to be friendly with the staff and crew, and nothing he says is even a lie. he keeps it light, sweet. easily editable. he almost forgets about the final prompt, though: a writer says, "bang chan is..."
he steals another breath.
bang chan is… almost done. bang chan is… sorry. chan hyung is so sorry for leaving you. but bang chan has done all he can.
he wets his lips.
“bang chan is… bang chan just hopes that everyone is happy,” he says. the truth is so easy, always.
“bang chan hopes that everyone else is happy. then, bang chan will be happy too.”
he smiles at camera two. cut.
for all his rules, chan still doesn’t really know how. the obvious answer is to just jump from banpo bridge; it’s one of the taller bridges in seoul, and close enough that he could get a taxi. god, that conversation would be just lovely:
“just one for banpo bridge, please.”
“um… where… on the bridge?”
“as close to the railing as you can get, and step on it, sir; i can’t stand being alive for another minute!”
chan sighs, lays his head on his desk. working late. he’s trying to bulk up their demo tracks, hopefuls for the album, writing all his lyric ideas down, scarce as they are. he doesn’t want to leave them with nothing. he presses his face into the crook of his elbow.
drowning, pills, hanging, bleeding, jumping.
they circle his head in endlessly bright loops: blue water and green gel capsules, dull ropes and glinting razors, the cherry red o-negative under his skin, and finally the open, cold, nothingness of falling. wonders upon wonders, so many ways to kill this body.
on wednesday the elevator at jyp is broken—the doors on the third floor are hanging half-open, nothing but a yellow line of tape to warn people away from the dead drop down the shaft. chan, undeterred by a yellow line that’s meant for people who want to wake up tomorrow, peers down with mild interest, thinking, moving the toe of his sneaker over the edge and then back, over and then back, and then he thinks of the field day the news would have (in a tragic accident, the leader of stray kids met his end in a Hellevator of his very own) and sighs, stepping back.
“hyung?”
chan turns. ah, hyunjin. chan smiles. hyunjin doesn’t.
oh, did he see? it would suck if he saw. hyunjin is blank, like how he goes when asked to do math, giving chan nothing. chan grasps at things he remembers saying a year ago. what does chan hyung say now?
“pretty scary huh? hope no one got trapped in,” he says mildly, glancing toward the ceiling in reference to the elevator carriage itself, halted somewhere near the seventh floor. there’s a moment where it’s just the sounds of the company building, distant music, footsteps, murmurs of voices.
hyunjin tilts his head, hair brushing the top of his shoulder, and then shrugs. “whatever. i’m the one that has to take the stairs.”
chan laughs, because it’s funny even though it’s terrible, which is the label on the bottle of hyunjin’s sense of humor.
“come on, i’ll race you,” he says, and they work out some terms about the loser buying dinner, and then take off.
their footsteps sound ridiculous; rabbit-quick, and there’s just no way for anyone to look cool while running down a flight of stairs, even hyunjin, so chan can’t stop laughing the whole time. they only make it two flights before hyunjin’s hand grabs chan’s wrist, halting them abruptly—only by luck do they keep their balance—just in time for one of their vocal teachers to step onto the landing just below.
“boys,” she greets, as she passes, and they both bow deeply, trying desperately not to look like they’re out of breath.
as soon as they hear the door close just above them, they collapse on the landing in a heap of laughter. this is how it’s supposed to be. this is good. this is a good memory for hyunjin to have.
“come on,” chan gives him a hand up, and they walk the rest of the way, and minho ends up buying dinner anyway.
kids. no apology can make this better, but still: i’m sorry.
just a little bit more. he writes with changbin, he does movie night, he makes dinner, he braids hyunjin’s quickly growing hair, chan’s room, dance practice, make tracks, eat sometimes, sleep sometimes, laugh when everyone else does, work out with minho, stand in the middle, say your name, hold their hands, make them better, get them ready. don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t—
“hyung?”
he blinks back into the studio.
“yeah?” he says, before he even remembers who he’s sitting with. he glances backwards. jisung, fiddling with the sleeve of his hoodie. right.
“i’m worried about you.”
oops. that’s not good. that’s not supposed to happen. he’s supposed to give them one last comfort, a few more moments of normalcy before he selfishly rips it away. but that all falls apart if they worry.
“oh,” chan says.
think chris, you stupid idiot, just say something normal.
“why’s that?” he turns back to the screen unseeing, keeping his tone flat and neutral. he hears jisung shift in the chair behind him.
“you’re… i don’t know. hyunjin said—i don’t know. nevermind.”
chan frowns, spinning himself to face his friend, that’s your friend, that’s your best friend and you’re going to leave him.
“yeah, i meant to apologize to you guys if i’ve seemed a little distant. just some introspection, i s’pose. don’t worry though, jisung-ah. i’ll be fine.” he reaches to ruffle jisung’s hair, and he watched himself do it from outside his own body. how strange, to be there and to be absent. how strange, to be just on the edge of not being. just a little more.
when minho looks him dead in the eye and says, “don’t do anything stupid,” over dinner, chan knows he has to hurry. when they start learning the new choreo, chan knows he has to hurry. there’s no perfect time for it, but he’d prefer not to interrupt a promotion cycle. there would be so much rescheduling; it would be so public.
no, better to do it now, between. he's run out of time with their executives, no more delays, but the fans don't know about anything yet. they can still just make this an extra long hiatus and then continue as planned. as they practice chan notes how they’ll fill in his places in the formations, and sketches out the changes in the same notebook with his lyrics. this is the best he can give them.
chan knows he has to hurry. but he keeps panicking. he keeps going up to the roof of the dorm, just to test the height, just to imagine the fall, just to prepare himself, and each time he goes the less he wants to jump. it’s not really that things are getting better, he’s just—it’s just that the kids need him. he can’t do it tonight because jeongin has the dentist tomorrow morning. he can’t do it tomorrow because he’s supposed to get lunch with changbin. what he needs is for them all to forget about him for just—for just five seconds.
he takes a deep lungful of the sharp winter air, puts his hands on the ledge again. again. this is probably the fourth time this week. he gets home at four or five in the morning, checks on the kids, walks up to the roof, and sits there. imagining bravery. imagining the rush of air, the fear, the speed of it. he peers over the edge, at the same spot in the alley he’s imagined himself in a hundred times. he’s itching to get on a rollercoaster or go on a run or cut open his skin or jump off of this goddamn roof, chris.
but he can’t really jump from here, because it’s the dorm. they’d see him, or hear him, or hear the sirens, or maybe no one would find him for days and he’d rot in the alley, and everything would be fine.
god, he has to get a grip. he takes another breath. the door to the building opens behind him. the best part about being suicidal is that no one will guess that you’re suicidal. it’s not really the natural assumption. seungmin comes to stand next to him.
“hi,” he says to chan.
“hey,” chan says to that spot in the alley.
“let’s go back in, hyung. you need some sleep.”
for a moment chan is afraid he won’t be able to look away, like déjà vu, like he’s watching a shadow play of the future. he keeps thinking of drowning. he keeps thinking of the funeral. but seungmin tugs on his arm, and chan blinks, and they go back inside.
he knows it’s today. he knows it has to be today, when he has a day off, when the kids are busy. he knows he’s out of time. but he’s scared.
he keeps opening the knife drawer. he keeps opening the medicine cabinet. he keeps going up to the roof, looking over the edge, and coming back down. his head is a terrible riot of banpo bridge, banpo bridge, get the damn knife if you must, just don’t be a fucking idiot chris, come on mate, it’ll be beaut, just jump, jump, jump, jump.
miroh is also stuck in his head. damn, damn, damn.
he opens the drawer again; the knives dazzle, sharp and clean. he grabs the paring knife that he used last night to slice an apple for jeongin. hah. the feeling of metal on his arm is dizzying, dizzying. changbin once taught him to throw a punch:
don't tuck your thumb in, swing hard. don’t think about how much it’s gonna hurt. think about something else.
think about something else, chris.
but he can’t stop thinking about it. he’s breaking the rules. he needs to to go outside or, or back to the roof, he can’t—there’ll be so much blood! but he also knows it has to be today.
he only knows he’s crying when he can’t take a breath and sobs instead.
he only knows minho’s home when he’s already standing in front of him.
he only knows he’s bleeding when he drops the knife.
“chan,” minho says, like he didn’t really mean to say it. he looks like he looks when someone’s asking him a question; completely blank, processing, lips parted.
chan doesn’t have anything to say. minho takes a breath, sets down his bag very slowly. chan looks at himself from above. he’s pulled back in at the sensation of the kitchen towel being pressed to his arm.
“hold that.” chan holds it.
minho walks back to his bag, digs his phone out. he’s biting his lip as the line rings.
“changbin-ah,” he pauses, and his eyes go blank again for half a second, then he blinks.
“it’s chan. we’re okay. get the kids and meet me at the hospital downtown? you know the one? okay.”
then chan is pulled out the door, interrupting their manager’s slow trip up the stairs. one look at them and he’s going back down at double pace. minho’s jacket is draped over chan's arms just before they go outside, and minho waves sunnily at a couple of girls with dslrs.
the car is so silent that it hurts. minho holds his hand so tight that it hurts.
“i’m sorry,” minho says, like he’s trying not to choke on something. “i didn’t think it would be today.”
chan just shrugs. he still mostly wants to be dead. it’s all because he broke his rules. if he hadn’t panicked. if he’d gone to the roof, at least. the cut doesn’t hurt, but the kitchen towel is dripping red when they step into the emergency room. their manager gets someone’s attention, and then a nurse is on them, quickly leading chan behind a curtain.
“he did it himself,” minho says, like he’s choking on something.
“i see,” says the nurse.
“bang chan-ssi, we’ll need to put you on a mandatory suicide watch for forty-eight hours.”
chan wonders how she knew his name. he hopes she’s not a fan. “okay,” he says.
all of a sudden his clothes and phone have been taken and he’s in a hospital bed. oops. this wasn’t supposed to happen.
“bang chan-ssi, did you consciously attempt to end your own life today?”
“yes.”
“do you plan on attempting again?”
“i don’t know.”
“how are you feeling?”
“i don’t know.”
“visitors aren’t allowed until tomorrow. we’ll reevaluate then.”
ah, so jyp already got to them. if he was anyone else it’d be straight to the psych ward, wouldn’t it? after the suicide watch he’ll probably be right back at the company, in a meeting with jyp and the legal team. can’t wait.
he’s awoken by a crumpled piece of paper hitting him in the face.
“you fucking idiot,” says changbin’s voice.
chan blinks once, twice.
“oh,” he says, looking at changbin in the seat next to his bed, a couple feet away and angry like nothing else.
“oh. is that what i’m supposed to tell them? chan-hyung says ‘oh,’ guys, so i guess we’ll ask him to elaborate on that tomorrow. you fucking idiot,” he tacks on, again, like it’s new punctuation.
chan smooths out the paper, and his own crossed out handwriting looks back at him. ah, it’s the suicide note he never finished. he’s really made a mess of things.
“since we weren’t allowed in last night i went back to the dorm and brought everyone’s things so they could sleep in the chairs. and, just because you know, you tried to kill yourself, i checked the studio.”
chan keeps reading the same sentence over and over again.
kids. no apology can make this better, but still: i’m sorry.
“was that supposed to prepare us? make it better?”
“yeah,” chan says, because it’s true.
“you fucking idiot,” changbin says again. then bursts into tears.
well. changbin doesn’t really burst into tears, it’s more like, you notice he’s crying, and wonder how long he’s been crying. so. that.
“what the hell were we supposed to do without you, hyung? what the hell were we supposed to do? what the hell do i tell jeongin? i can’t even do that much, hyung, you have to tell me. you have to tell me what to tell him.”
chan swallows, and refolds the paper, though it remains lined and wilted. “i don’t know.”
changbin throws his hands up and says, “clearly.”
then they just sit together for ten minutes.
“lix is next, chan-hyung. so dig deep for something fucking better than ‘oh.’ i’ll kill you if you fucking say ‘oh’ to felix. i don’t care if you want to die, i’ll fucking kill you before you can try it again.”
“okay.”
the swing of the door makes chan remember his headache. the one he’s had for two months.
felix silently walks in and over, sits down. he’s not crying, but his eyes are red-rimmed, and he looks worse than tired. he takes chan’s hand, the one without the bandage above the wrist. and then he just sits there for a while, and chan is so grateful for it to be quiet for just a little bit. he feels like there’s been ceaseless noise, ever-louder inside his head for years now. the noise predates the headache, but the headache was the culmination. now, with felix’s hand in his, the steady ache slowly fades from his temples, the shout building in his throat scurries away, and he’s left empty. he supposes he’s in the shop for maintenance, now that his engine has finally died. he can’t imagine how they’d fix him, though.
jisung is last.
“how morally reprehensible is it if i say ‘called it’?”
chan blinks at him.
“like,” jisung says, perching on the chair.
“we all kind of maybe knew? but i like, definitely knew. not like i knew what to do about it, but, like. yeah.”
“i’m sorry,” chan says, because it’s in his short list of vocabulary for today. other fantastic entries include: yes, i don’t know, and oh, all of which have seemed to greatly upset his conversation partners.
jisung does a weird little laugh. “sorry i’m just, you know, freaking out. you know how i am. but like, did you think you were hiding it really well? when i was like, having a panic attack every morning i know i was like, ‘oh man… they don’t suspect a thing… i have so much time to figure this out all by myself,’ meanwhile you’re like, already getting me a therapy appointment. thanks hyung. shoulda made one for yourself, too, huh?" he claps his hands over his mouth. "sorry. i’m running on no sleep.”
chan blinks at him. “i was trying.”
jisung laughs again. “oh man, i’m so sorry. but it’s kind of funny. hyunjin’s blubbering to me in the middle of the night about ‘i think chan hyung was gonna jump down the elevator shaft’ and you think you’re double-o-suicide over here.”
chan turns his gaze back to the ceiling. he deserves it, all of it. changbin’s cursing and jisung’s jokes and felix’s silence. he’s sure seungmin, jeongin, hyunjin, and minho will have plenty more sorrow and anger to spare.
“i’m sorry,” he says again.
jisung’s cool fingers wrap around his wrist, again, the unbandaged one. felix’s hands were hot and small and still, but jisung’s jitter and shake, and once secured, hold tight enough to bruise. the feeling, the contrast, sparks something somewhere in chan’s cavernous heart.
“i’m sorry,” jisung says. chan frowns, looks back at him.
“i—we didn’t know what to do. we should’ve just told a manager, or… something. we were gonna talk to you, just me and changbin. then we thought maybe felix should do it. then we—i don’t know what we thought. we thought we had more time.” he blinks and fast tears race down his cheeks. he sniffles.
chan thinks, what have i done to these kids.
jisung bites the tears from his lips and continues, “at least minho-hyung was there. that was good. lucky.” he says the last word quietly, brokenly.
chan can’t bring himself to open his mouth again, and then no more visitors are allowed except for a nurse to check his useless saline IV, and to check his useless beating heart.
then it’s dark.
chan gets discharged in the morning, and a female manager he’s not familiar with drives him back to the company, and then he’s dropped into a meeting with jyp, two executives, and three lawyers. he hates being right.
things he learned numbers two and three come in particularly useful here:
accept all failures with a polite agreement that yes, yes it was your fault.
don’t cry, just bow your head and stare at the ground until you can breathe again.
he’s dealt with in the fumbling way that people deal with pets or babies that aren’t theirs. he’s offered a strange myriad of things—a plane ticket back to sydney here, a contract termination there. a three-month hiatus, a therapist, a prescription for something called a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. an intern scurries in and offers him a water bottle, a cup of tea, coffee, then packet of cashews.
will this help, chan-ah? will that help, chan-ah? we just want what’s best for you. the health of our artists always comes first.
sure, sure. okay. alright. he nods until his headache comes back. he listens well.
in the end he settles for therapy and the hiatus. he wouldn’t be able to face his parents, not like this. and he doesn’t want to make any huge decisions, like quitting the group, or starting medication. as he leaves with a new clause written into his contract and an appointment for tomorrow, all he can think is that he wants to be back in the hospital. he wants to be on life support. he can sit up and say hi to anyone who wants to visit him, but otherwise, he’ll just lay back down, and have the machines breathe for him.
the dorm is silent, the knives are gone. there’s no lock on the bathroom door. chan has ruined everything.
“i understand that there’s been a recent suicide attempt.”
chan blinks; people keep saying that to him, but it feels like a dream he had, months ago. like, did that happen? was that me? where am i, who is that, i’m so tired.
he says, “yeah.”
“loved ones are usually on high alert for the days right after something like this, but in reality, the urgency of the feeling usually fades for a while. it’s two-to-three months after the initial attempt that we start looking for repeats.”
chan swallows, uncomfortable. he hates being a statistic in a textbook that people in medical school refer to in footnotes of essays.
“for the first few days, here’s all i want you to do: find something to look forward to. it can be anything—a new restaurant, an episode of tv, going outside. anything.”
“how’d it go?”
chan shrugs. “she told me to find something to look forward to.”
minho hums and then tosses a game controller to chan, which falls to the floor.
“look forward to me beating your ass at super smash then.”
chan blinks, and then smiles, and then picks up the controller.
so yeah, okay, fine. therapy works or whatever. chan stops wanting to die, just a little bit less each day. like a deep bruise healing. he goes home to australia for a week with felix. apologizes to his parents. he comes back and stops going up the roof. but the breakthrough is this:
they’re walking down the street, just him, jeongin, hyunjin, and changbin, after getting gelato, and jeongin laughs at changbin’s imitation of seungmin with a little pink plastic spoon sticking out of his mouth, and then he almost gets hit by a car.
“jeongin!” the word is ripped from chan’s mouth as he pulls jeongin back from the crosswalk as the car flies past. it’s only a second, and now chan has a handful of jeongin’s sweater instead of a gelato cup, which is now on the sidewalk, burgundy spattered over asphalt. he’d gotten raspberry. also he can’t breathe. he can’t look away from the street. he can’t stop seeing it. he can’t convince himself that jeongin is okay even though he’s right here.
“whoa, thanks hyung.”
he just shakes his head. his breath is still coming too fast.
“hyung?”
he shakes his head again. “sorry, i.” he can’t continue. he can’t let go of the fabric of jeongin’s hoodie. it’s just hitting him. it’s just hitting him, what he almost did to them. he can’t stop seeing the car, jeongin, the car, himself. there and gone. he can’t fucking look away, and when he does, he sees the spilled dessert, and when he looks up, he sees jeongin’s furrowed brows. chan squeezes his eyes shut.
“i’m sorry,” he says again, because he can’t move. because he almost killed himself. god.
“hyung you’re shaking.”
he finally lets go to scrub both hands over his face.
“sorry,” he says, choking on it. changbin’s arms wrap around him, and he hears the little ding from far above that means it’s safe to walk. he clutches at changbin’s shoulders. “i’m sorry. i’m so sorry.”
changbin just holds him and says, “we know. it’s okay, we know.”
when he pulls away, chan sees hyunjin, worried, and jeongin, apologetic.
“sorry, hyung, i wasn't looking,” he says timorously, and chan just pulls on a smile and gives him a short hug as well.
“no worries, kiddo. i just got scared for a second.”
that night, felix climbs into bed with him as he’s been doing for the last few weeks, since they got back from sydney. chan pretends like he’s going to go to sleep for a few minutes, but then he abruptly says, “i’m sorry i put you guys through that.”
felix stiffens beside him, then relaxes.
“don’t apologize. you were in pain.”
“yeah but,” chan says, a tear carving a hot path towards his temple. “i don’t know,” he finishes.
felix just holds his hand tighter. “did something happen today?”
chan huffs a little laugh at how well felix knows him.
“yeah, kind of. i just. realized something, i guess. i want all of us to keep being together. and i’m sorry i almost took that away. from all of us. sorry to myself, as well.”
felix nuzzles chan’s shoulder approvingly.
“feeling better, these days?”
chan wipes the side of his face with his unoccupied hand, and closes his eyes.
“yeah. these days i am.”