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"Dowoon, this is so good." says Younghyun from the car's backseat.
Next to Younghyun, Wonpil pipes up, "And this is the first full song he's written himself!"
Dowoon has to crane his neck from the passenger seat for them, allowing himself to bask in their enthusiasm for a moment. They're on the way to their second radio show of the day and he can already picture the midnight rehearsal stage later that he knows will make him feel like shit tomorrow, but Dowoon enjoys being busy.
Well, sometimes he does. Well. It's not like he's got another option, and it's better than sitting around.
"So," Wonpil starts, tapping Dowoon's shoulder to get his attention as though he's not already looking at him, "how long did you take to write this?"
Three weeks, but it's kind of embarrassing to say. He's seen them finish songs in under an hour.
"Uh, I don't know." He forms his mouth into what he hopes is a sheepish grin. "At least an entire day." They look awed, but it's the way they're grinning at him with something akin to pride on their faces that makes him turn away. As he faces the road ahead he pretends to massage his nape like it hurts, like that's the reason why he doesn't want to look at them while they continue showering him with praise.
"You're so cool now, seriously," Younghyun teases. "What's up with you these days?"
"What can I say? I'm a celebrity, I can't help it," he says in his most pretentious voice. They all burst into laughter.
Back when he was still a university student delivering pizzas part-time, there were these massive LED screens he'd have to ride past whenever he left the restaurant, a series of dazzling stars all smiling down at him with their perfect teeth and perfect skin. Beautifully sculpted faces that were plastered all over Seoul for everyone to scrutinise.
That could never be me, he thought without a smidge of self-pity (and a hint of moral superiority), but all twenty-year-old Dowoon dreamed of was to graduate from university and maybe, maybe become a drum teacher one day, so he figured that he of all people wouldn't need to worry about the woes of stardom.
And then at twenty-one, he debuted in a rock band at JYP Entertainment, so in hindsight, maybe he should've started worrying at that point.
Dance lessons during training were mercifully short-lived, but--
"All you're doing here is slowing everyone else down," their dance instructor told him matter-of-factly after (in his opinion) one particularly gruelling and (not just in his opinion) largely futile practice session. He can't remember any of the wretched so-called basic dance moves they tried to teach him yet he remembers this for some reason.
Way to point out the obvious, he thought then, out of breath from the dance sequence while the rest of the class had recovered. To his surprise, he didn't take it personally. He was mostly confused as to why he was spending hours in this spacious practice room with mirrored walls instead of one with a drum set like they'd promised him when he passed the audition.
One thing comes true, another one doesn't. He gets used to it.
Especially the latter.
All the tracks on their most recent album are charting on Bugs' top ten. He refreshes the page again, partly to see if the rankings will change and partly just out of habit, to have something to look at as he gets his dinner ready.
Don't forget you have that cooking show schedule tomorrow, says a text notification from his manager. He swipes it away. Maybe if he pretends he missed it he won't be faulted for waking up a little late.
The bowl of leftover soup turns slowly in the microwave, and Dowoon eats in silence.
"Do you have any TMI for today?" the fan asks him, one of the first people on his list of fansign video calls this afternoon. Under the table, he bounces his leg, keeping his hands clasped in front of him so he doesn't mess with his meticulously styled bangs that are starting to poke his eyes.
"Today's TMI? Uh..." He wracks his mind for something to say aside from what time he woke up in the morning or what he had for lunch, but the timer goes off to signal the end of the call. The word sorry comes to him like second nature, the camera-ready smile less so, though he knows their two minutes were coming to an end anyway.
"No, no, it's okay," the girl on the screen fusses, waving both hands. "I'll see you next time, oppa!"
He waves back as he tries to blink the wisps of hair away. The call ends. In a rush, the ring light is adjusted, his bangs stiffened with strong-smelling spray so they hang just past his eyebrows. Dowoon really needs a haircut.
During his brief window between one call and the next, he wonders what that fan, or what any of them expects from him and whether he's ever come close to fulfilling those ideas after six years. It isn't like he's not thankful for the overflowing support; of course he is. Of course he has to be. He's never sure what to do with all of it, though.
To which his dad would say: stop thinking, go wash up and sleep.
"It just never feels like--like I'm doing enough," he tells Younghyun in the living room that evening.
"I guess," Younghyun muses, stirring patterns in the remnants of his stew, "it doesn't ever really feel like enough. That's why it's important to know when to stop."
"Do you know? When to stop, I mean."
Chuckling, Younghyun shakes his head. "I'm still here, aren't I?" He takes another morsel of braised chicken, the last dish left on the table. "And in any case, you're already doing well."
That's what you guys always tell me, he thinks.
"If you say so. Well," he nudges the half-empty plate of chicken towards the other, "I'm not hungry anymore, so eat up." Younghyun declines but eyes it longingly. "Come on, I've got a lot of solo filming the next few days. Do you want me to puff up on camera?" Dowoon has no filming scheduled until next week, at which point any bloating in his face would have subsided, but Younghyun doesn't need to know that. Dowoon prefers to be kind when no one is aware of it.
Younghyun gives him a funny look as he reaches for the food. "Since when have you cared about stuff like that?"
Dowoon pauses mid-chew and contemplates if he should admit that he doesn't, not that much anyway. That this is just one of Dowoon's flimsy attempts to repay past kindnesses, that he feels uneasy taking credit for things, whether they're small ones like giving a shit about a good friend, or bigger ones like the growing popularity of a band that for the longest time he felt he made no difference to.
In short, the inner workings of his mind that never make enough sense to be voiced aloud.
"Since always," he replies instead.
A few days past his birthday, Dowoon's sorting through laundry in his childhood bedroom with his dog curled up beside him.
Somehow, twenty-seven is still not much more than the kid sitting in the back of his friend's car forgetting the directions to his own house as he was being dropped off after the sixth-grade funfair. He usually laughs when he tells the story.
I'm so proud of how you've grown, his parents tell him, but sometimes if he's had a tiring day and gets distracted he misses his train and feels like that kid again, fidgeting in his seat while his friend's mom tapped her finger on the steering wheel, the patient smile on her face slowly slipping as day faded to night and he still wasn't home.
Tap, tap, tap. "Take your time," she'd say, sounding tired. He remembers how all the lingering excitement from the school fair had dissipated, replaced by an uncomfortable warmth creeping up his neck, how he'd told her to turn left on a street he didn't even recognise.
He doesn't like to burden people.
Dowoon folds the last of his clothes, gets ready for bed and lies awake on his side until two. Tomorrow he'll be back at the dorm, in the room where he scribbles songwriting ideas on scraps of paper and buries a good number of them in the trash, although that number has been decreasing these days; he supposes that's a relief. His manager will come over early and drive him to a show guesting, but for now he stares at the posters he put up on the wall when he was fourteen and wonders where the time went.
There is a package with Wonpil's name waiting for the three of them when they get home after band practice.
"That was fast." Wonpil shuffles through the door with the box first. "Actually, I--it isn't mine, I got this for a friend," he adds rather abruptly.
Dowoon finds it funny that he's trying to cover up his shopping habits now, several years too late, especially considering that one time they returned from a world tour to a towering pile of packages that literally had Kim Wonpil written all over them blocking the dorm's entrance.
"Oh, really? Which friend?"
Wonpil doesn't seem to notice his scorn. "One of my closest," he replies, "but I don't think you've met."
"I see," Dowoon nods, not knowing what else to say. Wonpil walks away.
When Dowoon peels himself from the couch hours later and retreats to his room, the package is on his desk with a post-it stuck to the top saying for the world's best drummer (and ex-leader), hbd. He can't help but snort out a laugh.
To keep the band afloat, declared the higher-ups in the conference room last year. Three members instead of five. Dowoon wasn't sure what this would mean for them.
As it turns out, it meant less time needed for hair and makeup, fewer cars for group activities, and having to rearrange some old songs. Nothing they hadn't done before. It also meant more eyes on Dowoon, more variety programs, more responsibilities. He still isn't sure what they meant by that last one, but he does as he's told, knowing that there's hardly ever any certainty for them to cling to. It's in the job description yet it's always an unfriendly reminder.
The decision to go forward with the subunit first disheartened and then motivated Wonpil and Younghyun, though at different paces. Meanwhile, Dowoon just tried his level best to take his dad's advice from his trainee days. Two promotional cycles and two departures from the dorm later, at times it feels like this is all he's ever known.
"There's really not much to life at all," sighs Wonpil from the dining table right as Dowoon walks out of the bathroom, "but I think to be able to spend it enjoyably with your loved ones is enough. Don't you agree, Dowoon?" Younghyun snickers across from him.
"If you peek at my phone while I'm peeing again, I'll kill you." Dowoon snatches it from Wonpil and taps out of the fan-messaging app where he'd sent those exact words earlier, covering his burning face with his hands. It only seems to further delight the other two.
"You're so cute," Younghyun wheezes. Dowoon wants nothing more than to pull a face at him and storm out of the kitchen. The only thing stopping him is the knowledge that if he does, he'll only be proving Younghyun's point. "I've never heard you call us your loved ones before." Dowoon's ears grow impossibly warmer.
"That's because you're not," he deadpans. "I was talking about my family."
Younghyun has that shit-eating grin Dowoon despises. "Did you just call us your family?"
"Oh my God," he groans but knows there's no point in arguing back and throws his hands up. "Whatever, sure." At that, Wonpil flings his arms in the air too, though he looks much happier than Dowoon.
There's hardly ever any certainty he can cling to; he learned that at some point between the old dance practice room and his first songwriting lesson. But this, he laments as he lets his hair get ruffled viciously, this much is certain.
As the sun continues to set, the bright flashes from Wonpil's computer game become the sole light source in his room.
"That song I showed last time," Dowoon says from where he's sitting on the beanbag, then checks to see if Wonpil's paying attention. He isn't, so Dowoon pelts him with a wad of tissue. "Do you remember, in the car? The one I wrote--for fun."
"I do! You know how much I like that song." Wonpil lets the piece of litter roll off his head, unaffected by the assault. "It's the first one you did alone too."
"Well, it's not really my first. I just said that because I thought that would make it seem better," he chuckles. Because I thought that would make me seem better, he doesn't say.
Wonpil spins in his chair to look at him, though he keeps the headphones on. "You wrote more songs before that?"
"A few. They weren't that good."
Wonpil tosses the crumpled tissue back at him. It lands on his lap. "They don't have to be good, dummy." He swivels himself back to the desk.
"Aren't you going to ask me why I lied to you guys?"
"You're too much of a perfectionist, that's why," states Wonpil, already clacking away at the keyboard again. "Are you forgetting how long I've known you?"
It's a rhetorical question, but Dowoon finds himself caught off-guard by it. He likes to think he's gotten used to his bandmates after all the time they've had to spend together, but he tends to forget that they feel the same way about him.
"You did great today," Younghyun says to him from their fridge, pressing the cold beer can onto Dowoon's forearm on purpose as he hands it over. Usually Dowoon would take it as an opportunity to curse him out, but he's drained after wrapping up their online concert so he lets it slide.
"So did you, hyung."
They crack open their cans, letting a minute pass as they take quiet sips by the open window. A moth buzzes in through the tear in the mosquito net that they keep forgetting about.
"I mean it, you know," says Younghyun lightly. "And there's nothing--wrong with accepting praise, or admitting that you did good."
Dowoon opens his mouth to retort, closes it. He didn't even say that his own performance was unsatisfactory, or that Younghyun did better than him today, just that he did great too. Maybe he doesn't need to say it out loud for Younghyun to hear it.
After all, Younghyun never points out how Dowoon lets him have the last bit of food whenever they eat together, but Dowoon can always hear him saying thank you for it anyway.
"I don't know about that." He cringes a bit at how small he sounds. At least he doesn't hate it anymore.
Down the corridor, Wonpil's door creaks open. A buzzing noise fills Dowoon's ears as he goes to get another beer.
Younghyun claps a hand on Dowoon's shoulder. "Admiring yourself again?" They've just made their way out of one of the company's studios. Wonpil joins them and laughs upon seeing what prompted Younghyun's comment.
It's a poster of them a few doors away from where they were working. The contrast between him and poster-Dowoon, he thinks, is emphasised by the dreamlike, hazy quality of the shot and the fact that he's presently wearing socks with sandals.
When he backs away from the wall he notices that they're mirroring the photo, Younghyun and Wonpil on either side of him because life imitates art like that. The two of them don't exactly measure up to their unmoving counterparts either, Younghyun's dyed hair looking like it'll disintegrate with a single touch, Wonpil clearly unshaven for days when he lifts the bottom of his facemask to sip his coffee.
They remind him more of tourists dawdling at a museum display, except they're staring at an A2 Wong Kar Wai-esque photo of themselves airbrushed to perfection. The idea is oddly comforting.
"Wow." Wonpil points at poster-Dowoon, slurping loudly. "You really are an idol now, aren't you?" His tone is playful, but Dowoon contemplates the question.
In the space between Wonpil and Younghyun where he was standing, his own face stares back at him. He's never really felt like an idol, whatever that means, not in the way the others do. It doesn't matter--or it matters less right now, with Younghyun's arm still outstretched behind him and the weight of his hand on Dowoon's shoulder, while Wonpil's idle chatter continues to fill the silence. Keeping Dowoon afloat.
He hums, watching them from behind like he always does. "Something like that."