Chapter Text
The feeling of the cold floor against his overheated skin had become so familiar to Soobin that sometimes he thought that if he laid there for a few minutes too many, it would merge with his body and become an extension of him.
Sometimes, when he closed his eyes at night, he swore he could still hear the sound of shoes squeaking against the wooden surface of the practice room, like a buzzing in your head that doesn’t go away. It had been four hours since they had started practicing their choreography and his legs were showing the first signs of defeat.
When their choreographer shouted for a break, all five of them had collapsed on the floor, not even considering the idea of moving to the chairs on the other side of the room, fearing they were not going to make it.
“I can’t believe it’s still two weeks until comeback. I don’t know if I can keep my hair covered for much longer.”
Taehyun was talking to the ceiling, too tired to move his head to the side to direct his words to someone in particular.
They were thrown out there for whomever wanted to grab them.
“I don’t think your hair is what you should be worried about, Taehyun-ah. MOAs have realised you spoiled the song on VLive.”
Beomgyu reprimanded his friend jokingly, only noticing with the corner of his eye that he was scoffing at his dig.
“I told you it’s fine. They won't know.”
Taehyun just grumbled, not wanting to have that conversation again, he was already too embarrassed as it was.
Soobin giggled, thinking this was going to escalate in an argument if Beomgyu was feeling like picking on him, which lately, it seemed to be all the time.
He closed his eyes, trying to gather the little strength he needed to get up and grab a bottle of water, but he noticed the bright lights of the dance studio become dimmer in front of him, as if something was blocking them all of a sudden.
He opened one eye slowly and noticed Yeonjun standing in front of him, holding his arm out to hand him a bottle of water.
“Thank you, Hyung.”
Soobin sat up to grab the bottle that Yeonjun was handing him and took a sip quickly. Yeonjun only smiled and sat down next to him, taking a sip out of his own bottle.
“How are you finding the choreography?”
“I think I am getting the hang of it now, but I am still bumping into you in the first verse, I am sorry about that.”
Soobin explained, knowing how precise their eldest member was about choreography. Yeonjun just shook his head with a small smile.
“Nah, you’re doing a good job. At least you’re not murdering my feet like Hueningkai over there.”
Yeonjun teased the youngest, who still hadn’t moved a muscle since they had stopped practicing.
“Here he goes, Mr. First Rank in Everything.”
Beomgyu had decided to let Taehyun breathe for a minute to move his teasing to a new target.
“What? I didn’t say anything mean.”
Yeonjun grumbled to himself, acting offended to the implication that he was back to his old ways.
He had admitted that in the past he hadn’t been exactly the most understanding during choreography when he got really worked up, but he had worked on it and was trying his hardest not to come off as harsh.
“Oh my god, do you remember him during trainee days? I think everyone was on the receiving end of his wrath at one point.”
Taehyun had obviously decided that if they all focused on mocking Yeonjun for a while, Beomgyu would forget all about the VLive incident and leave him be.
“Yeah. Soobin-Hyung used to call him ‘Seargent Diva’ back then.”
Soobin suddenly remembered the thought of melting through the practice room floor, and wished it would happen right about now.
He glared at Beomgyu, who had called him out like that in front of everyone.
“It was you who started that?! Ya, Soobinie. Everyone started calling me that after a while.”
He hit him over the shoulder lightly, his lips sticking out in that pout that many times before had made Soobin wish he could solve all the problems in his life.
He shook himself out of that thought and pushed Yeonjun’s shoulder right back with a smile, trying to lighten the mood.
“Hyuuung, come on. That was so long ago. Plus, you knew I didn’t like you back then.”
Soobin couldn’t help but smile at Yeonjun’s furrowed eyebrows, thinking he looked extremely adorable and not at all menacing when he was pretending to be offended.
How did any of them find him scary when they were younger? That was the true mystery that needed to be solved.
He noticed Yeonjun’s expression mellow slightly and he smiled wider, happy he wasn’t really mad at him.
“That is for sure. I remember how much Soobin-hyung used to not like Yeonjun-hyung, but I always told him you were a good guy.”
Hueningkai, who had finally managed to get himself up in a seated position, was giving Yeonjun the thumbs up with a cute smile.
Yeonjun laughed, ever so fond of Hyuka, like they all were since they were trainees. He was really impossible to dislike.
There had been many times were Hyuka had tried to patch things up between Soobin and Yeonjun during their trainee days, in the most innocent of ways.
He was probably happy with the result, Soobin thought, even if he didn’t know half of it.
-
The trainee experience can be really brutal when you’re going through it alone. Often, it has you wondering how many of these people are really your friends – who are the ones that will stick around even if you debut before they do?
Are they even being genuine, or is it just to keep an eye on the competition? Those were all questions that for a long time had bounced around in Soobin’s head, making it very difficult for him to create a relationship with anyone at Big Hit.
He had never been a very extroverted person to begin with, and the environment he was in put a lot more pressure on him in finding the right people to hang out with. Not that they had a lot of time to hang out, anyways.
All they did was dance, study, sing, eat and sleep when they managed to get the time. But on the odd occasion when they didn’t feel to exhausted before going to bed, it was important to have someone you could unwind with.
When Soobin finally got asked to join a few of his fellow trainees in the cafeteria for a soda, he was extremely happy, but somewhat nervous.
He didn’t consider himself to be someone that could charm people into liking him straight away. He had joined quietly while Do-Hyun, Jihan and Seo-Jun chatted away about music they would like to do, groups they would like to be like and so on.
Every time a conversation would pop up, he thought of a million things in his head that he could have added.
He liked pop music, but he also listened to a lot of soulful R&B. He was always inspired by Bangtan’s Seokjin, as he found him to be not only extremely talented, but a person that he aspired to be more like in the future. Oh, and he had recently gotten obsessed with a western singer called Bebe Rhexa.
The problem was he couldn’t really get those words out of his mouth.
Everything felt too silly, too pointless, something that would gain him a few disapproving looks and a laugh or two.
So he just sat there, thinking that he had probably ruined this for himself, and it would be the last time they would ask him to join them.
He sipped on his soda silently, until he felt a hand on his forearm, distracting him from his train of thoughts. He lifted his eyes to meet Seo-Jun's, a kind smile painted on his lips as his deep brown eyes met his.
“I think you will be on my side with this one. The choreography for Fire is much easier than Boy With Luv. I’ve seen you dance to Fire before, and it came really easily to you.”
Soobin had to bat his eyes quickly a couple of times before realising that the sentence had actually come out of his fellow trainee’s mouth, and hadn’t been just in his head.
He felt his cheeks burn slightly at the compliment and managed to get a quick smile out.
“Ah, thank you. I think it’s only because it was my audition song, though. I must have practiced it a million times in my room.”
He confessed, hoping that it didn’t sound too stupid, but Seo-Jun smiled big again and this time he noticed a small dimple forming right next to the right corner of his lip.
“You must have done a great job, then. But you might have to teach me a few things about the second verse.”
Soobin was sure that he was probably just trying to be kind.
He had ranked low on dance so many times, that nobody would have ever wanted to learn something from him in terms of dancing, but the effort he had put into involving him in the conversation was something that he appreciated.
Soon, he was able to feel more comfortable talking to him at practice, they would keep each other a spot when at the cafeteria when they were serving kimchi stew, and they had regular hang-outs during the evenings when they weren’t too tired to even speak.
He had even managed to strike up multiple conversations with the other guys, and somewhere along the line he had stopped thinking of himself as the quiet kid in the corner, but an actual part of this group of people.
One Tuesday evening Do-Hyun had insisted they met up in the cafeteria despite the 12 hours in the studio they had that day.
It was always hard to say no to him, he would push and push until you’d give in eventually, and Soobin had never been one to say no to anyone, let alone his friends.
He was sitting at his usual seat in the cafeteria and he was playing with the tab on top of his can, too exhausted to engage in conversation.
A few voices distracted him from what Do-Hyun was saying, and made him turn his eyes to the door.
Every trainee had become a familiar face at that point, they spent too much time in the studio together not to remember each other’s faces, but it was much harder to remember names when you weren’t close to them, unless...
Unless you were Choi Yeonjun.
Ever since joining the company Soobin was sure he had heard Yeonjun’s name more times than he did his.
There were too many of them for the teachers to learn their names, so they would only use the numbers on their bibs to address them when they made mistakes.
That was always reassuring to him as nobody really remembers any numbers outside of the practice room except for their own.
There was one exception, though, and that was Yeonjun.
He didn’t need to be called by number because everyone knew him. All the teachers, all the managers, every single trainee knew of the Legendary Trainee Choi Yeonjun.
They would read his name at the top of every single ranking every week, cursing him under their breath and thinking that he was either a legend or a threat to their existence.
Because everyone knew who he was, the people he used to hang out with also became familiar to most trainees, so when Yeonjun walked in the kitchen with his loyal sidekick, Wooyoung, Soobin recognised him too.
The room went quiet for a second, and then immediately noisy again as everyone pretended they weren’t staring.
There was something about the way that Yeonjun acted that had always made Soobin curious, everything about him screamed confidence – from the way he danced to the way he walked – and he brought that aura with him in every occasion, even now just walking into a room full of people.
Soobin would have probably studied how busy it was from the little window on the door and decided to come back later, rather than having to enter and have all those eyes pointed at him suddenly.
He felt more captivated by the inaudible conversation that Yeonjun was having with Wooyoung three tables away from his than he did with what his friends were saying next to him, until he felt a slap on his arm coming from his left.
“Soobin-ah, are you listening?”
Do-Hyun had finally taken notice that his 20-minute monologue had fallen on deaf ears. Soobin nodded vigorously, not wanting to upset his friend.
“Anyways, that’s why I can’t stand him. He’s so full of himself. Always thinking he can do whatever he wants because he’s top of the class.”
Luckily, Soobin didn’t really have to ask who they were talking about because there was really only one person he could have possibly been referring to. He opened his mouth to say something, but then decided against it. What was the point in trying to defend someone he really didn’t know?
“Honestly, I am so tired of all the losers who kiss his ass just because he thinks he’s all that. I don’t want to have to deal with those people.”
The conversation moved on and Soobin decided he was going to make up an excuse to leave as soon as possible.
He finished his soda, and prepared himself mentally to say that he was going to sleep, knowing he was going to get annoyed by his friends who would have suggested another round.
A tap on his shoulder coming from behind startled him, seeing that all the people that he really knew where sitting around that table.
He turned around and found Choi Yeonjun standing inches away from his face. He batted his eyes a couple of times, feeling his cheeks turn redder because of the sudden closeness between him and this stranger.
“Excuse me, but you have the last bottle of ketchup, could I get some?”
Yeonjun’s tone was pretty calm and polite, nothing like what his friends were making him out to be.
There was no trace of arrogance in his voice, which wasn’t something you would expect from someone who carried himself that way.
Soobin turned around to reach for the ketchup immediately, but felt his friend’s eyes burning his flesh.
He stopped in his tracks as his tired mind tried to process the scene that was unfolding in front of him.
He had just heard his only friends ranting about how they did not like the person standing in front of him. Was he going to look like one of those people kissing Yeonjun’s ass if he just did exactly what he was asked to do?
Soobin hated being impolite, but he hated the idea of being sidelined by the only friends he had managed to make even more.
He got up suddenly, gaining himself a few confused looks.
“You can get it yourself. I am leaving, see you guys.”
He grabbed his sweatshirt and quickly left the room, only faintly hearing the laughter and cheers coming from his friends as they praised him for not being a pushover, thinking to himself whether that was really something to be proud of.
His face was burning red up to his ears, so he rushed through the corridor as quickly as he could to quickly go hide away under the covers of his bunk bed to avoid thinking about what had just happened.
-
The dance instructor had finally allowed them to go home for the day, and Soobin was sure that nothing had ever felt as good as the warm water hitting his body in the shower.
That day had taken its toll on him, between the pressures of the comeback right around the corner, the exhaustion from their long days, and now thinking about the past... He felt like he could crumble at any minute.
He had quickly dried his hair with a towel and put on his favourite hoodie. The maknaes had left some dumplings for him in the kitchen, and after devouring an entire portion he had just grabbed his phone and decided to go on the terrace.
He sat down on the floor, back resting against the building wall, hood pulled over his dump hair. He closed his eyes, taking in a breath of fresh air and feeling it hit his lungs.
That was it: the reminder that at the end of the day, even if sometimes it felt harder than anything else, he still could breathe.
It really wasn’t the maknaes fault for bringing it up without knowing anything.
How could they imagine it was such a difficult subject for him, when he hadn’t breathed a word of it to anyone?
It was all safeguarded at the back of his mind, safely hidden away, rarely accessed anymore.
It hadn’t been easy to get to a point where he wouldn’t think about those days so often, but one day at a time he had managed to make it hurt less.
He grabbed his phone to check the time: One fifteen in the morning.
He probably should have gone to bed, but that annoying voice at the back of his head was getting louder and louder. He opened Instagram and started typing Lee Seo-Jun's name in the search bar.
He hadn’t changed his profile picture in over a year...
“Ya, what the hell are you doing out here with your hair wet.”
Soobin jumped on the spot as he heard Yeonjun’s voice echoing in the air.
He had been so lost in thought that he hadn’t even heard the door opening.
He locked his phone and put it in his pocket quickly before Yeonjun could see what he was doing.
“Jeez, Hyung. You scared me. What are you doing out here?”
“What do you mean what I am doing... I am looking for you, you idiot. You weren’t in your room.”
Soobin opened his mouth to say something, but before he could respond, Yeonjun had already occupied the spot next to him against the wall.
“Are you okay?”
Yeonjun’s voice was now mellower, a veil of concern on his face.
“Yeah. Just tired.”
Soobin looked over the edge of the balcony, focusing on Seoul’s silhouette instead of his friend’s face.
He knew well enough that if he had let Yeonjun look in his eyes he would have understood way too quickly that he wasn’t being honest.
“You’re doing a great job, have I told you that yet?”
Soobin wasn’t telling him the whole truth, and he knew that Yeonjun had pieced it together.
He knew very well how much Yeonjun had grown to know him, every side of him, and maybe that was what scared him the most.
He had someone he thought that would know him like that forever before too.
He tried to push away that intrusive thought again, forcing a smile out for his Hyung.
“Everyone is so exhausted. I feel like this is ten times worse than the last one...”
Soobin sometimes struggled with the responsibility of being the leader and needing to keep everyone in check, whilst at the same time having to see his closest friends with icepacks on their joints at all times of the day, or being too exhausted to take their shoes off before bed.
He wondered if you really had to give up a part of being a decent friend to be able to keep everything under control.
“It’s just the long day talking. Kai almost has the whole routine down, Beomgyu jokes around but you know he’s got it memorised already. Taehyun hasn’t made a mistake since the second rehearsal.”
Soobin’s smile grew bigger, lifting part of the weight Yeonjun was feeling off his chest.
“What about me, then?”
“You? Eh, you’re okay I guess...”
Yeonjun joked, making Soobin laugh out loud as he hit his shoulder in protest.
Not just a giggle, a full blown, snorting-type laugh. To someone else it probably would have sounded like the most annoying thing in the world, and Soobin had tried to hide it behind his hands in the past when they looked at him weird, but Yeonjun had mentioned so many times before how he loved his laugh, so he had grown comfortable.
“I didn’t even step on your feet once this week.”
Soobin calmed down from his laughter, keeping his hand on Yeonjun’s shoulder.
“Thanks, Hyung. You always know what I need.”
Yeonjun smiled at him, reaching up to touch the lobe of his ear and slightly tugging at it, something that Soobin had grown used to by now, although he didn’t quite understand the obsession the oldest had with his ears.
“Anything for my Soobinie.”
Soobin tried to ignore the feeling at the pit of his stomach as he heard those words, knowing that they didn’t mean anything more than what a Hyung says to his Dongsaeng.
Yeonjun was like that with everyone, he had so much love to give to all the people he cared about, that was just what it was. Soobin smiled at him, this time more sincerely, before pulling his hoodie closer to his chest.
“Let’s go inside. We don’t want to catch a cold.”
-
The song that had been playing loudly in the stereo of the practice room had become annoying to Soobin after the sixth listen.
Now that they were probably on the fifteenth, he felt like tearing his hair out.
He was pretty confident with the choreography they were practicing, only missing a few steps that he needed to practice on his own with the whole room to himself, but the dance instructor was annoyed by some trainees who were not taking this very seriously.
Soobin looked over at Seo-Jun who was sitting on the floor next to him, struggling to get up.
He had been struggling through the rehearsal for the whole morning, his body still not having recovered from what was likely a late night with the rest of the guys.
He had declined the offer and managed to actually stick to it this time, knowing too well it would have ended exactly like the scene he was witnessing right now, with Do-Hyun and Jihan being scolded by the instructor on one side, and Seo-Jun probably being next on the list.
“Hyung, why did you go? You knew it was going to be like this...”
Soobin tried to complain lightly, his hand reaching out for Seo-Jun's to help him off the floor.
His tone was still sounding more concerned than annoyed, although it was starting to get to him how they couldn’t leave the practice room because of them.
“I just really needed a break. I am not like you, Soob, sometimes I just need to switch off.”
Soobin wanted to open his mouth and say something at the farfetched assumption that he never got tired and always wanted to focus on work.
That was obviously not the case, but he knew how to limit himself and prioritise what was important.
The loud sound of shoes squeaking against the floor and then a sudden thump distracted everyone from what they were doing, just in time to see one of the youngest trainees – Soobin was sure he’d heard someone call him Kai – falling on the floor.
The sound of giggles filled the room, but it got immediately drowned out by the sound of Yeonjun’s shoes crossing the room to help him up.
“Thanks, Hyung. Don’t worry, my legs are just tired.”
Yeonjun’s eyes moved from Hueningkai’s body to the direction Soobin and Seo-Jun were standing so quickly, it almost scared Soobin, but he tried not to show it on his face.
“Of course they are. We should have been out of here fourty minutes ago if it wasn’t for those idiots over there.”
The room filled with whispers and gasps, cause the words that someone else would have muttered under their breaths, Yeonjun had spoken loud and clear for everyone to hear.
He had been included in this narrative, for one, which he didn’t belong to and he had insulted his friends without a second thought.
He felt his cheeks get redder as a mixture of anger and embarrassment took over his body.
“Excuse me, Mighty Yeonjun, are you calling me an idiot?”
Seo-Jun hadn’t wasted any time to seek the confrontation he longed for with him.
He took a step forward towards the brown-haired guy, eyes full of anger.
Yeonjun wasn’t one to back down from a confrontation, especially one where he knew to be right, so he scoffed and took a step forward, silently accepting the challenge.
“I couldn’t think of any other way to call you and your loser friends, you have been ruining rehearsal for everyone because you can’t keep your feet straight.”
Seo-Jun's shoulders grew bigger, a sign that the situation was escalating even more, and Soobin hated being in the middle of it more than he hated anything in the world.
If he could have suddenly disappeared into the wall behind him, he would have done so right now.
“And you’re here to judge everyone because you’re the Legendary Trainee of Big Hit. You think you can just run your mouth and say whatever you want to say...”
“At least what I will be remembered as is that. You’ll only be known as the one guy who washed out cause he couldn’t keep on his feet.”
Seo-Jun's face changed expression completely; a mixture of hurt, angry, embarrassed and somewhat exposed.
Soobin could reason with his head and find a million reasons why Yeonjun was right in this conversation, but those were not strong enough to beat the feeling at the pit of his stomach seeing that expression on Seo-Jun's face.
Finding strength he didn’t know he had, he put one foot in between the two before they could take another step further, and placed his body in front of Seo-Jun's.
He was standing so close to Yeonjun again, like that day in the cafeteria, and he wondered to himself why he always ended up in this guy’s personal space.
“Ya, that’s enough. You may be good and all, but that doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole.”
Murmuring started again around the room, and Soobin had to dig his nails in the palm of his own hand to fight of the urge of bowing to everyone in apology and walking out of the room.
Yeonjun, on the other hand, had an expression on his face that was unreadable. He took a step back, a small sarcastic smile appearing on his face.
Soobin felt exposed, as if Yeonjun had suddenly figured something out about himself he didn’t even know.
“I could have expected a lot of things, but you calling me an asshole... Now that’s rich. I guess there’s some people we’d always defend”
Before Soobin could speak again and question what he was talking about, the dance instructor had become aware of the situation and had raised his voice with them so they would stop.
Soobin and Yeonjun exchanged one more look, before Soobin could turn around and put a hand on Seo-Jun's shoulder to walk away with him.
-
Soobin cursed at himself for going outside with his hair still wet as he felt a shiver going down his spine as he wrapped himself in a warm blanket.
He didn’t want to give Yeonjun the satisfaction of saying “I told you so”, but maybe that was what he deserved.
He grabbed the phone out of his pocket and unlocked it to quickly text goodnight to his mum, finding himself in front of the profile he’d tried to check earlier.
Lee Seo-Jun's face hadn’t changed much except for looking more like one belonging to a man than the one of a boy. His eyes were always smiling and the dimple on the left side of his mouth was always visible in the pictures he posted.
He thought back to when he would reach up with his finger to poke it, and he would giggle and poke his right back... He almost dropped the phone on the desk in front of him as he realised in what kind of memory he had fallen back into.
He took a deep breath in, trying to push away all those feelings forming at the pit of his stomach.
He looked up to the pictures of his family on the wall, focusing on those memories as he thought back to when they were taken. One picture with his older sisters, one with his grandma.
He took another breath in, and he moved his gaze to the napkin that had been pinned to his cork board right next to those pictures.
It was a white napkin with some chilli stains, and the messiest handwriting on it using a black marker that read: “You’re still here. And you’re doing your best”.
So many times before he had looked at those words and found comfort in them.
They were always there to remind him that despite everything that he had gone through, he was there. He was breathing.
And he was doing everything that he could to have no regrets.
He smiled lightly at the post-it one more time before climbing up his bunk bed and hiding underneath the covers to finally switch off his mind after a long day.