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Somewhere in between the release of their first and second album, Youngkyun wonders if he’s growing up too fast.
His friends tell him that they’re stressed. They’re somewhere in that awkward, lost stage of growing up, caught up in examination after examination and the rush of college applications. Then they tell him they’ve seen his face on their television screens, and that it feels surreal to them. He can’t tell if they’re envious of him or if they’re just envious of a life that isn’t theirs, but all he knows is that it feels a little surreal to him, too. His friends say that he’s living the good life. He doesn’t have to worry about getting into a prestigious college, he doesn’t have to worry about his career prospects, and he gets the fame and flashing camera lights that all the youths always dream about.
No one ever told him, though, that fame’s a famine and the incessant lights blind you in more ways than one.
Eighteen or nineteen’s too young of an age to be ruminating over life this much, his parents say to him, but that’s what they said when he was sixteen, too. His older sister’s a little more sympathetic, but there isn’t much she can say to him. She isn’t an idol like him, and there’s nothing she can do to help him, and he knows that, too.
He’d signed up for this, after all. He’d set down the pen for the microphone and the results slips for the chance at having his name displayed across banners; the shot at an ordinary life for a shot at hearing his song echoed out across the stadium lights.
He’d signed up for this, Youngkyun knows, but he didn’t know he’d signed up for this.
There’s no real word that can perfectly encompass it all—or if there is, he isn’t aware of it. It’s a curious mix of determination and desperation both, of hunger and then rupture, of soul-searching and the all-consuming feeling you get when you’re reaching out for something but you never really come close enough to touch it.
He hadn’t had grand dreams when he’d first auditioned to become an idol. In fact, he’d barely expected anything at all; go with the flow, he’d told himself then, but no one ever told him the river’s always been a force of nature and there’s only a fixed distance you can drift along it for before you start drowning.
And now that he’s here, he doesn’t know where to go.
But it’s strange. It’s strange, because there’s no one out there to help him. In the past, there used to be someone—through the stumbling earliest years of his life, where his sister picked him back up each and every time he fell; his mother had been there through his adolescence, guiding him home, and throughout his schooling years he’d had his friends with him, all suffering the same inevitable toil and turmoil that came with countless academic reports and examination papers.
Everything is so different now, and Youngkyun finds himself gasping for air so far from the surface. Everyone is so different now, like they’re all standing across different shores. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever make it through the tide.
They’re a team, but it’s not the same as it was back then. Everyone seems like they’ve got their lives sorted out, both his own team and everyone else, all half-familiar faces united under a familiar dream, and Youngkyun’s starting to find it harder to breathe. It’s strange. They’re all along this same river, so why does it feel like he’s the only one thrashing?
He would normally turn to Chani at times like this, but he doesn’t. Can’t. He can’t find the words to say any of the things he wishes would come clean off his chest like water out his lungs, and he doesn’t know if Chani would understand, either. Chani signed up for this far earlier than he had, and despite their similar age, he seems to be taking everything into stride with just the right combination of effort, perseverance and laidbackness that Youngkyun can’t even hope to mimic.
Growing pains, he’s come to realise, aren’t as the textbooks and storybooks say. There’s more to it than the aches and awkwardness that comes with growth spurts and there’s more to it than mood swings and realisations at too-young stages of life. At some point, growing up becomes less about growing up and more of finding that there’s still space to grow, and at some point, too, that space becomes less about finding out and more of searching for what’s within.
And there’s loneliness in that, Youngkyun thinks. There’s a terrible, barely explainable loneliness that comes with asking questions no one can answer but yourself, with reaching out only to find there’s no hand to guide you home, with falling down and realising you have to stand back up yourself, even when your heart’s aching and your legs feel like they’re on fire.
It’s not something that hits all at once, like a revelation. It’s something that creeps up, tendril by tendril, like a vine coming up round his neck and twisting his life away from the light mid-bloom. It’s an almost surreal feeling, in the best and worst ways possible—it’s walking down empty streets at three in the morning, watching the gold of the street lamps fall across the river and feeling impossibly alone; it’s having a longing that can’t be placed, throbbing against his ribcage hard enough to dislodge his heart; it’s washing the dishes at ten in the evening and fighting the urge to cry for no good reason.
He doesn’t know where to go from here, and it’s a little ridiculous. He knows that there’s only one way for him to go. He knows he’ll wait for the company to give the okay for their third album, their fourth, then their fifth.
He knows, but ambition’s an all-consuming fire sometimes, and he doesn’t know if he’ll end up drowning to put it out.
Youngkyun thinks that perhaps it’s not that he’s growing up too fast. Perhaps he’d entered a different stage of growing up somewhere along the line when he hadn’t been paying enough attention to notice.
At some point, Youngkyun realises, he’d started to dream.
“I wrote a song,” Youngbin tells Sanghyuk, sometime after their second comeback. They’re sitting in his room in the dark, the faint glow of the laptop screen illuminating their frames.
“To be submitted to the company?” Zuho’s been submitting more lately in hopes of them getting approved. Some of the other members have started exploring songwriting, too.
Youngbin blinks, his fingers tapping against the edge of the laptop. “I don’t know,” he confesses, a short laugh following his words. “I didn’t really write it for a specific purpose. I think it’ll be nice to perform it on stage someday, though.”
Sanghyuk hums, a noise that’s half encouragement and half curiosity. “What’s it called?”
“Sic parvis magna.” The pronunciation rolls off Youngbin’s tongue more smoothly than he’d expected it to.
“What does that mean?”
Youngbin’s eyes trace the words on his screen, bolded and blinking back up at him. “Greatness comes from small beginnings,” he says. “That’s going to be us one day, Sanghyuk.”
And the way he says it sounds like he’s already made up his mind. Like he’s going to make it happen, no matter how the storms rage against the shores and no matter what the waves may take away from them. Like he’s stoutly, resolutely, unfailingly going to reach the sky he’s been dreaming of someday, and Sanghyuk wonders, at the back of his mind, if he’s ever heard anything quite so comforting before.
So he smiles, barely visible in the gloom of the night but present anyways.
“I hope it comes true, hyung.”
“Yeah?” Youngbin’s finger stills against his laptop, and Sanghyuk finds himself fighting down the sudden urge to reach out and wrap his pinky around Youngbin’s. “We’ll make it someday.”
A promise.
“Yeah,” he replies softly, “someday.”
The glow of the street lamps outside colour the window panes a soft orange, like candlelight.
And they don’t know when someday will be, but maybe there’s something out there that’s worth holding onto.
Someday, they’ll get what they wished for.
Sanghyuk stands, looking at the reflections against the glass. The two of them—his figure, and then Youngbin’s hunched one, still focused on the lyrics on the screen—remind him of how they were back then, when they’d only just stepped into the company for the first time, wide-eyed and blissfully unaware of what the industry would hold in store for them.
So much has changed since then, but Sanghyuk knows, too, that some things never will.
A quietly-burning dream, the colour of flame-red and shooting star gold mixed into one.
Someday.
Youngkyun doesn’t see it coming.
In retrospect, though, he’s never been that good at hiding things from others. He’s never bothered pretending that he didn’t cry each time he did, but he wasn’t expecting to cry like this.
He doesn’t know what caused it, or where it came from. He thinks it’s something that snuck up on him without him realising, like the gradual erosion of rocks by the riverside. But one moment he’s fine, and then the next he’s crying over orange slices on the floor of his shared bedroom with Taeyang.
The older of the two, understandably, looks bewildered at Youngkyun’s abrupt shift in mood, orange peels hanging in his hand. “Is… something wrong?” he ventures, a little hesitantly, and Youngkyun sucks in a breath that comes out sounding more like a garbled mix between a whimper and a sniffle.
“I don’t know,” he manages to get out between hiccupy pauses, and he’s being honest. He doesn’t know what’s wrong. If anything’s wrong. But for whatever reason, he’s crying on the floor of their shared bedroom like a river that’s been over-rained for a little too long.
Taeyang lowers the orange peels to the mattress. “Is it something you can’t tell me about?”
“No,” Youngkyun replies immediately. He tells Taeyang everything. Taeyang knows everything about him.
Except this. Even Youngkyun doesn’t know. The words form and then die again against his lips, drowned away in the silence that tides over them. Youngkyun doesn’t know what to tell Taeyang. Can’t.
Taeyang’s hand comes up to brush the tears from his face. It’s a sudden motion, and Youngkyun blinks, stilling out of surprise. Taeyang is a little clumsy, but his fingers are cool against the warmth of Youngkyun’s cheek as they wipe the tears away.
For some reason, the look on Taeyang’s face makes him want to laugh. He looks helpless, almost, even though this was never meant to be his problem to solve.
But Youngkyun neglects to realise, too, that there are some things he doesn’t have to tell Taeyang for Taeyang to know.
“Come on,” Taeyang says, voice gentler now. Less panicked. “Have an orange slice.”
He pries the one from between Youngkyun’s fingers and presses it to his mouth. Youngkyun allows his lips to part, and then he bites down on the orange slice. The citrus tang mixes with the salt of his own tears, and it’s a curious taste, but not a bad one. For a moment, he forgets to cry, and Taeyang takes the opportunity to wipe some more of his tears away.
“Is it good?”
Youngkyun nods, even though he doesn’t really need to. Taeyang already knows that, from all the other times they’ve had oranges in the dorm. He’d made it a point to buy only from this specific brand because Youngkyun had mentioned once, in passing, that it tasted the nicest to him.
“Have another one, then.” Taeyang reaches over to the drawer where their clothes are folded into, pulling a plastic bag from within. There’s only one orange left inside, and Taeyang takes it out and begins peeling it, lowering the peels onto his side of the mattress. “Here.”
I saved it for you, the touch of Taeyang’s hands against Youngkyun’s says as he hands it over.
Youngkyun takes it, a little shakily. It’s still hard to talk, so he doesn’t. Thank you.
And then, at last, when the tears have more or less gone away and it’s a tiny bit easier to get the words out, he settles on, “it doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” comes Taeyang’s reply immediately, “it matters to me.”
Youngkyun blinks, stopping halfway through chewing on the last of the orange slice. The flavour spreads across his tongue and remains where it is, just the right mix of biting and sweet. “Why would it matter to you?”
Taeyang looks at him like he’s answering the obvious. “Because it’s you,” he responds.
Youngkyun swallows. The acidic tang lingers along his throat, sharp but not scouring. “I’m scared,” he admits, finally, when he’s found the words to. And maybe it doesn’t truly encompass everything that he’s feeling, but the fear is definitely there, thrumming like a caged bird between his ribs. “Where do I go from here?”
The look in Taeyang’s eyes softens, and Youngkyun knows he doesn’t have the answers, either. “Did you know what you were doing at twenty, hyung?”
Taeyang laughs, brushing shoulders with Youngkyun. Their dim bedroom lights fall across his eyes and illuminate the warmth within with a quiet—quiet but present—gold, meeting Youngkyun’s own. “I don’t even know what I’m doing at twenty-two, Youngkyun.”
“Really?” He blinks again. It’s strange, because it always feels like everyone else has everything sorted out. Like he’s the only one struggling to keep his head above the water, like the tides are merciful to everyone but him.
“Really,” Taeyang promises, picking the orange peels up from the mattress and placing them inside the empty plastic bag. “But I like to think that one day, we’ll end up where we’re meant to be. Do you believe in fate, Youngkyun?”
Youngkyun smiles. He doesn’t know how or when or why, but all of a sudden, he can sense the corners of his lips rising just slightly enough to reach the edge of his eyes, reflecting the same one on Taeyang’s features.
“I’ll believe in ours,” he says.
“Hyung,” Jaeyoon asks one night, staring up at the ceiling, “do you ever wonder where you’d be now if you weren’t a singer?”
From the other end of the room, Inseong stretches in Youngbin’s bed like it was his to begin with. “I think about it a lot. I think everyone does, you know? About what life could be like if they weren’t this.”
There’s a note of wistfulness and something else that Jaeyoon can’t place in his voice, and Jaeyoon shifts to lie on his stomach instead, tilting his head to look over at Inseong. “You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“Isn’t it, sometimes?” Inseong throws back, and Jaeyoon falls silent. He doesn’t know. It’s crossed his mind plenty of times before, particularly on days when the rain’s pouring down outside and blurring the windows just enough for the glow of the cars and street lamps to mimic the roads of Busan, just enough for the rush of homesickness to take over, but he doesn’t know if it’s a good thing. If he’ll ever want to be anywhere but here.
It isn’t a bad thing, he knows, though sometimes he wonders if life would be easier if he hadn’t chosen this path to walk down. If the waves would crash a little less hard and if the shores would be a little less slippery to navigate.
But, Jaeyoon thinks, for better or for worse, it feels right, and that’s all that matters.
“Then,” he says, changing the question slightly, “if you could go back in time and do this all over again, would you?”
For a long time, Inseong is quiet.
And then he laughs. “I think I would. Maybe I’ll change a few things here and there, chase my dreams a little sooner, but I wouldn’t change this. Us.”
Us. Jaeyoon likes that.
“What about you?”
He grins over at Inseong, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “I would do it all over again, too,” he answers. Outside, the drizzle that had crept over them gets heavier, fogging up the windows with scattered raindrops, but he doesn’t spare the street lights a glance.
Inseong doesn’t have to face him directly for him to hear the smile soft in his voice. “Why’s that, Jaeyoon?”
“Because,” he replies earnestly, a chuckle bubbling against his lips, “it led me to you, hyung.”
“You’re thinking too hard again,” Taeyang comments as he walks into the room, leaving a cup of coffee by the desk.
Youngkyun doesn’t look up from the screen. “You’ve only been in here for two seconds.”
“And I already know, so what does that say?” the older of the two counters, and Youngkyun sighs.
He’s right, although Youngkyun doesn’t actually admit it aloud to him.
“I’m writing lyrics,” he says, eyes skimming over the words that start and end one and a half lines in. It’s been like that all afternoon. “Or at least, trying to.”
They have another comeback lined up at last, and there’s that familiar buzz of apprehension and anticipation both, but more so the former than the latter. It’s not usually like him to be stuck on lyrics for so long.
Taeyang plops himself down on the bed, taking a sip of his own coffee. “No inspiration?”
“More like inspiration that’s not good enough,” he mutters, fingers tapping idly against the keyboard. The lyrics aren’t coming out right today (or yesterday, for the matter), and it’s frustrating to say the least. “I can’t write good lyrics.”
“Are they not good?” Another sip. “Or are you just not satisfied with them?”
Youngkyun reads the lines over again. “Is there a difference?”
“There is, we just tend not to realise,” Taeyang tells him. “Sometimes you’re so scared of not living up to expectations that you end up devaluing things. Or you’re so wrapped up in getting things perfect that you don’t give yourself room to be satisfied with good enough.”
Good enough.
Youngkyun reads the lyrics a third time over, then a fourth.
Are they good enough?
Is he good enough?
His friends have gotten into their respective universities by now. Most are in the midst of their courses, others approaching graduation. They tell him they still haven’t had the chance to get the jobs they’ve dreamed of, not yet, and how lucky he is for starting so young. He wonders if they know it’s not all as glamorous as it seems. He wonders if their dreams will take from them as much as it gives, too.
“Are you scared?”
Taeyang’s question comes out of nowhere, but it’s relieving to have an answer, even more so to be able to admit it freely. This time, he doesn’t hesitate before he replies. “I am.”
The bed creaks as Taeyang gets up, walking over to the desk where Youngkyun’s laptop sits. “You haven’t written anything since yesterday.”
He’d noticed. “I couldn’t,” Youngkyun responds, and Taeyang lets out a hum, lowering his coffee cup to the table. It’s empty, and Youngkyun belatedly realises he hadn’t touched his own at all. The ice inside has melted, pushing the coffee level dangerously close to the top of the cup.
“You can always go back and edit it if you think it’s not good enough, you know.” Taeyang’s finger traces the line he’d stopped at mid-sentence, the words hanging awkwardly on screen. “But you can’t build a benchmark with nothing. There has to be something there, whether good or bad, for you to come up with something better.”
There’s a half-bitter tone to Taeyang’s voice. Youngkyun knows that he, too—if anything, he, in particular—is no stranger to perfectionism; that on nights he tries to sneak into their room at hours-past-midnight o’ clock he’s been out in the practice room the entire time, working tirelessly on that one stubborn move he couldn’t seem to get down the afternoon before.
In a way, it’s comforting. It’s comforting to know that someone out there’s the same, or maybe not the same but close enough to be enough, and there’s hope in the idea that he’ll be able to make it through, too, someday.
“Alright,” he says, a faint sigh following his words, but it’s not a heavy one. “Thanks, hyung. I’ll start from somewhere.”
Taeyang’s right. It’s not like he only has one shot at all of this. He can go back, over and over again, and refine all these lines on the screen as many times as he wants before the deadline’s up. It makes him think of the hometown friend he’d had since middle school who recently dropped out of his university course to go for a less prestigious one. Sometimes you don’t get it right in one shot, he’d told Youngkyun over the phone one night, laughing, and sometimes you’re so caught up with trying to do what you think everyone thinks is the best that you lose sight of what you’re really trying to do.
Youngkyun’s fingers tap against the keyboard a little more. This time, the words come out, forming a complete sentence and finishing the line he’d started.
You know, all of this is meaningless.
From the corner of his vision, he sees the corners of Taeyang’s lips lift in a smile. Taeyang pushes the cup of coffee towards him and he takes a sip, relishing the bittersweet flavour that spreads against his tongue.
Instead of always indecisively drifting around / draw a period and end it.
“See?” Youngkyun takes another sip of his drink as Taeyang speaks. The coffee lies more safely below the lid now, without risk of spilling over. “Don’t hold yourself back just because you don’t know the right answer.”
Youngkyun reads the lines again. “Is there ever a right decision in life?”
Taeyang reaches out to pat him on the shoulder, and he leans into the older’s warmth. “Of course there is. You just made one, didn’t you?”
His eyebrows furrow, eyes skimming over the lyrics again. “How do you know that’s the right choice?” It could get rejected for all he knows.
Next to him, Taeyang laughs. “Because it’s yours,” he says, and then he leaves the room, shutting the door behind him. The click resonates through the room like a period demarcating the end of a long sentence, and for a while after that, Youngkyun is silent, mulling over his words.
Later, a singular memory crystallises in the after-dark hours, lying on his side of the room and staring over at where Taeyang’s hair has fallen across his eyes in his sleep: I like to think that one day, we’ll end up where we’re meant to be.
Maybe someday, Youngkyun ponders, turning his gaze up to the ceiling instead, they’ll become the people they wanted to be.
And when that day comes, he thinks, every moment that led up to there would have been the right one.
Do you believe in fate, Youngkyun?
“I’ll believe in ours,” he whispers, soft but audible in the silence of the night.
From across the room, the corners of Taeyang’s lips curl up just a little bit more.
It’s not the first time something like this has happened, but it’s the first time something like this has happened to Chani.
They’re all used to those days—those ones built mostly on failure and topped off with frustration—when nothing really seems to go their way, and they’re all used to having their bouts, too. It’s not usually Chani, though, rarely. He’s better at holding it in. Most of the time, it’s Youngkyun. On particularly rough days, it’s Zuho, especially when it’s one of those later-night training sessions that pull him from his studio. Sanghyuk, too. Maybe Jaeyoon, once, but not Chani.
Perhaps it’s the number of times they’ve had to cycle through the same set of dance moves because someone, at some point, slips up. A different person each time, but that doesn’t make it any better. Not after the first four times, at least. Perhaps it’s the way the clock’s already ticked past three in the morning and they’ve still got half the song left to go, or perhaps it’s everything at once. Between drama filmings, recordings, and ruthless practice sessions, Chani lets the geyser trapped somewhere between his lungs and throat grow with each passing day until it finally explodes.
Taeyang is the first to notice. He freezes where he is, hand still half-raised in the air midway through a dance move, and it only takes a few seconds for the rest of the group to come to a halt, too.
Seokwoo acts the soonest. He reaches out, pulling Chani towards him, and Chani gladly buries his head in the older’s shoulder. It’s a rare occurrence, but so is the sight of the tears rolling down his face, and Seokwoo lets out a quiet sigh as he runs his hand along Chani’s back.
The practice room has gone silent, an awkward, sombre mood settling over them, punctuated only by Chani’s hiccups which he tries his best to dampen. “You can cry,” Seokwoo tells him, holding him a little closer. Chani clings to him, fingers curling round the fabric of his clothes, and lets the tears fall a little harder.
“We’re going to be okay,” he promises. Chani sniffles in response. Seokwoo knows he’ll be embarrassed later, and that they’ll probably go a couple of days without talking for that, but it’s okay. He’d rather bear the weight of Chani’s silence than have him bear it by himself. “It’s hard, but we’re going to be okay, alright?”
It takes a while, but Chani finally nods. His breathing is more stable now, and his tears have stopped soaking through Seokwoo’s shirt, but he still doesn’t lift his head from his shoulder. Seokwoo continues tracing circles against his back.
He’s been there too before, after all. He knows that Chani usually comes after words like celebrity and actor (and most recently, Woojoo), but he’s been there enough times to know that most people have got it the wrong way round. Before Chani was anyone, he was himself—the same self Seokwoo is the most familiar with, bleary-eyed in the morning but with a mouth laden with teasing wit, bright smiles and laughter that comes out when he’s playing arcade games he never got to when he was younger.
Seokwoo will always see Chani as the boy who stumbled into the practice room on fourteen-year-old limbs he hadn’t quite gotten used to yet, harbouring a dream he’d been so intent on reaching someday. Seokwoo will always see Chani, before the dancing and the singing and the acting, as the boy with the bright smile and the bleary eyes sleeping in the mattress just across from his who grew up too fast.
Maybe that’s what makes this all the more harder for him to see. What makes him hold Chani a little closer, even after the tears have run dry and the tension over the practice room has faded away.
Chani never used to cry, not even when he was growing up.
But maybe it’s for the best that he did, Seokwoo thinks, feeling the damp of his shirt press against his skin.
Maybe now time will be kinder to them.
“We can take things slow,” he says, hearing his voice echo out around them. He doesn’t know if he’s saying it to Chani or to the group. Maybe to himself. “One step at a time.”
It takes another minute and a half or so before Chani detaches himself from Seokwoo and looks up. His eyes are tinted red round the corners, but they’re less harsh now. The tear-filled glare within has been replaced by something softer, more forgiving. He takes a breath, and then another, and then smiles briefly (briefly but brightly, still).
“One step at a time,” he agrees.
Seokwoo’s finger traces warmth in the shape of a heart against Chani’s back.
Youngkyun’s lived with Taeyang for long enough to have seen it all. He’s seen the days where Taeyang’s come home too exhausted to even talk, collapsing onto the mattress a minute after stepping out from the shower and falling asleep before he’d even had the chance to utter goodnight. He’s been there through the mornings where Taeyang’s slipped away without notice to the riverside on too-stressful days. He’s been there through the happy and the sad and the scared and the in betweens, but he comes to learn that being there isn’t synonymous with being prepared.
Because he’s not. He isn’t prepared for the day Taeyang slips up on stage, just the slightest, just enough for him to tell. He doesn’t think the cameras catch it, nor the fans, unless they’d been paying an inordinate amount of attention, but he knows that doesn’t matter when it comes to Taeyang. He’ll beat himself up over secrets, too, and Youngkyun’s heart splinters in two at the knowledge.
For the entire car ride home, Taeyang is silent. They’re seated at the back of the van, knees bumping against one another’s, but he doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t check his phone, either. Youngkyun lets the sound of Jaeyoon’s and Inseong’s chatter fill the air for a few moments more before he finally speaks.
“Are you okay?” He keeps his voice low, and in the silence that follows, he wonders if Taeyang had even heard him.
But then Taeyang turns his head, just the slightest, a smile flickering across his face and then fading. It doesn’t come close to meeting his eyes. “I’m fine,” he replies, although Youngkyun knows he’s lying.
“Do you remember what you told me that day, a long time ago?” he dares to venture, and Taeyang’s gaze shifts to him a fraction more. “Do you believe in fate too, hyung?”
Taeyang leans his head against the headrest in the back of the van, a small chuckle falling from his lips. “There’s no use in holding yourself back,” he says, tone holding an odd, sentimental note to it, thin and sharp enough to split Youngkyun’s heart right in half all over again, “but what do you do when you try your best and it still isn’t good enough?”
In the unsaid, a little desperate, a little like a child crying to be seen: am I still doing the right thing?
Youngkyun doesn’t know what prompts him to, but he finds himself reaching out. His fingers wrap against Taeyang’s, the older’s skin cold against his, and Taeyang turns his eyes fully on Youngkyun, eyebrows raised in surprise.
Taeyang is merciless sometimes. Sometimes, at nearly-four in the mornings, his tongue takes on the shape of a knife and stabs a tiny bit too ruthlessly at the slip-ups they make in the practice room mirrors. Most of the time, though, he’s merciless towards himself. Perfectionism does that to people, and Youngkyun would know. He’s been there before, and he’s been next to Taeyang for long enough to see how long it’s been haunting him for, too.
“You said you tried your best,” he murmurs, voice coming out a little strained. “That’s more than good enough already, don’t you think?”
His knee bumps a fraction harder against Taeyang’s, as if he’s willing him to say yes. Taeyang’s lips press together, and Youngkyun fights the sigh that springs to his. And it’s funny, he thinks, the way people are always so forgiving until it comes to themselves.
It’s heartbreaking.
“Hyung,” he says, softer now, “making mistakes doesn’t mean you’re doing things wrong.”
Taeyang closes his eyes, but Youngkyun knows he’s listening.
“Hyung—”
“I know.” Taeyang cuts him off, and Youngkyun hears the words lingering within. I know, but the thoughts don’t go away.
He swallows. “It’ll be better tomorrow, Taeyang-hyung.”
The ghost of a smile crosses Taeyang’s face, barely illuminated in the late-night gloom. Just a few seats ahead of them, the sound of Jaeyoon’s laughter pierces the calm of the van. He’s laughing at something that Inseong had said, and then Youngbin joins in, and in front of them, Chani scoffs, but he’s really smiling.
“Yeah,” Taeyang responds, leaning closer to Youngkyun to speak over the newfound ruckus. His knee brushes Youngkyun’s, and Youngkyun curls his fingers a little tighter around Taeyang’s. His hands aren’t quite as cold anymore. “It’ll be better tomorrow.”
Tomorrow, and then the day after, and then the days after that, too.
Always better, Youngkyun vows. And there are no stars to be found in the night, but he closes his eyes and makes a wish anyway, holding Taeyang’s hand in his. The van moves across the bridge over the river, where the waters lap gentle at the shores.
One day, they’ll be where they were meant to be.
In the summer of 2019, Sanghyuk watches Youngbin perform sic parvis magna on stage for the first time.
The stage lights swathe him, angel wings unfurling across his silhouette, and the blue of the concert hall welcomes him like the storm into the shore. Sanghyuk hears the cheers crashing over the stage like waves over the waters; and it’s a little funny, because they’re not for him, but it’s still the most comforting thing he’s ever heard.
Youngbin’s fingers close around the microphone, his gaze cast out to the crowd with his name on their lips. This is where I belong, his footsteps against the stage say, his hair and the overhead lights falling into his eyes and colouring them in speckled shades of heaven-gold.
Smoke rises up around him like burnt-out candles, and from the gloom of the backstage, Sanghyuk feels the smile unfolding on his face. The lyrics ring out across the hall, the same one he’d seen on the screen of Youngbin’s laptop all those months ago, and he holds onto them like they’re something worth holding onto.
Maybe there’s no real definition to greatness, Sanghyuk thinks, looking out past the stage lights to where the crowd is waiting for them. Maybe this is greatness enough.
They’re doing everything that they dreamed of, one by one.
“Hyung,” he says later that night, standing in Youngbin’s room and tracing his finger across the window glass, “do you believe in wishes?”
Tonight, the light of the moon falls in glimpses of silver across the river’s surface. The waters are moving fast today, but not roughly. There is something comforting about the way the moonlight dips and then comes back in rhythmic waves; not slowly, maybe, but surely.
“I think I do,” Youngbin replies. Above them, the stars smile through the clouds and trace little patterns of unseen gold into the city. “Why?”
Sanghyuk turns to him, grinning. Half his makeup is still painted across his features, and there’s a remnant piece of confetti from the concert left in his hair. A piece of the concert, lingering with him for just a little longer. “I don’t know, hyung,” he says, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “But somehow, it feels like ours just came true.”
Youngbin laughs. “It seems so,” he agrees readily. “I guess I’ve still got some favour left in this world. It’s the second time my wish has come true, then.”
Through the faint reflection on the window glass, Sanghyuk sees Youngbin looking over at him. “What was your first?”
“Us,” Youngbin answers, and Sanghyuk stills, their eyes meeting across the glass.
And then he smiles, wider this time. The night is warm at this time of the year, but there is something warmer still, throbbing quiet in the corner of his chest where his heart is supposed to lie.
The seasons change all the time, but some things never do.
“My wish was us too, hyung.”
There’s something different about Chani these days.
Maybe it’s because of the comeback that’s on its way again, but unlike the last time, Chani doesn’t seem anywhere near the edge of a breakdown. If anything, he’s begun to approach things more doggedly than before, and Seokwoo’s caught him sneaking out to the practice rooms after dark more times than Chani thinks he’s been caught.
Seokwoo breaches the topic a few mornings after Youngbin scolded Chani for returning home far too late without telling any of them where he’d gone. I’m not a kid anymore, Chani had retorted, smelling of practice room air and polished floors, and he’s right, but it doesn’t stop the rest of the members from worrying anyway. Seokwoo thinks that, like him, there’s a part of them that still view Chani as the boy from all those years back, growing into his limbs and the image that the industry demanded of him.
He breaches the topic by pure accident, but he breaches it nevertheless, and in hindsight, he’s glad that he did.
“You’ve been busy lately,” he mentions. Chani’s sprawled out across his bed, eyes closed, but Seokwoo knows he’s awake. Somewhat, at least. Enough to listen. “You’ve got acting projects lined up.”
His words are cautious. They both have a similar story, and Seokwoo finds himself wondering how the chapters will end.
Chani doesn’t respond, so Seokwoo continues speaking. His words fill the silence between them, but in exchange it drives a faint emptiness into his heart, like the tide rolling away and then never returning. Today the distance they chase feels less like ambition and a little more like a far-off dream.
“Do you think we’ll end up where we’re meant to be?” he asks, and Chani’s eyes snap open and over to him. He takes it as a sign to carry on speaking. “Do you ever wonder what we’re meant to be?”
He doesn’t say it aloud, but the implication is there. On the left side of the room, a pile of drama scripts rest against the desk, an old programme booklet jammed midway along the pages to mark where he’d left off. Chani sits up, his gaze crossing the room to the desk, and then to the albums stored carefully on the bookshelf on the right.
“We’ll be what we’re meant to be,” he replies sharply, “not what they want us to be.” His tone harbours that same amount of storm-like intensity and fierce determination that it had in the practice room through relentless dance training sessions, half rebellion and half resolution, and Seokwoo draws a breath.
The tide washes against the surface like time, slower now, but with enough force still to sweep the shores. When had Chani grown up so much?
The thought brings a chuckle to his lips, and across from him, Chani’s features soften a fraction, dampened by confusion. “Thank you, Chani.”
Chani tips his head, amusement curling at the corners of his mouth. “For what?”
A chuckle bursts free from Seokwoo. “You know,” he replies, voice light, “just for being you.”
In the corner of the room, the morning light cuts across the glass and falls across the albums lined along the bookshelf.
It’s warm.
Seokwoo isn’t the only one who sees it. A few days on, Zuho pipes up from where they’re seated on the floor of their practice room, watching Chani through the mirror. “He’s all grown up now, huh?” Zuho comments, his shoulder brushing Seokwoo’s.
Chani stops the music, goes back to the beginning, starts again. Seokwoo smiles. “He’s got something worth fighting for.”
The grin on Zuho’s face stretches a bit wider. His eyes are laden with dark circles from too-long nights at the studio, and Seokwoo knows that this is his third night in a row with barely any time to rest, but he looks more cheerful than he has in weeks. “Don’t we all?”
“I suppose we do,” Seokwoo agrees. It’s as easy as ever to fall into conversation with Zuho, and it’s jarring to realise how long it’s been since they’ve been able to chat like this. At the same time, though, there’s a small but significant comfort to it all—to the fact that perhaps some things just never seem to change. “What’s yours?”
“Mine?” Zuho’s laughter blends with the sound of their comeback track across the practice room, his shoulder bumping against Seokwoo’s a little more playfully. “Us.”
Us. Seokwoo knows that all of Zuho’s far-past-bedtime studio sessions have been spent on songs meant for them. Seokwoo knows, too, that there’s a lot that Zuho doesn’t tell them; that some days he says he’s out eating lunch but he really means lunch with the CEO, asking for a second shot at a rejected song; that some nights he says he’s going to bed but he really means staring up at the ceiling wondering what it means to craft wings that would allow them to fly.
“Does it ever get hard?” he finds himself asking. There’s a lot that Zuho doesn’t tell them, and there’s a lot that he wishes Zuho did.
Zuho chuckles softly, his head coming to rest on Seokwoo’s shoulder. From across the practice room, Chani shakes his head at a move that’s half an angle off and starts again. Youngbin gets up to join him, perspiration making his hair stick to his forehead and his clothes to his skin.
“Of course it’s hard,” Zuho responds, watching as the two dancers play the song back from the beginning, eyes fixed on the mirror and their every move. One step at a time. “But you know what, Seokwoo?”
Zuho’s hair tickles the side of his neck, but he doesn’t mind. “What?”
This time, Youngbin is the one to slip up, clearly exhausted from their hours of practice. An apology wisps from his lips, but Chani smiles over at him. The music starts from the beginning of the section they’d stopped at; it’s familiar now, like a lover of four years.
They try again and again, until they finally get it right. And when it happens, Youngbin’s cheer rings out across the room, and if Seokwoo had any energy left in him, he’d cheer too. He settles for watching Youngbin high-five Chani, the grin on Chani’s face brightening. From the other corner of the practice room where he’s lying on the floor, Jaeyoon lifts his hand in a thumbs-up.
“It’s worth it,” Zuho says simply, “it’s worth it if it’s for us.”
“I’m nervous,” Youngkyun confesses. The glow of the dressing room lights reflect his face back at him in the mirror and he drops his gaze away.
Next to him, Taeyang keeps his eyes closed as his makeup artist dabs eyeshadow across his eyelids. “Stage fright?” he asks, a little teasingly, and despite himself, Youngkyun cracks a smile.
It’s no secret that all of them get their fair share of nerves before every stage (many things do come with experience, Youngkyun’s learnt, but some things take longer than others to go away, and some never do), but it feels different this time. Like something’s changed, somehow, but he can’t tell if this is the calm before the storm or the storm itself.
“It’s our first full album,” he says. His makeup artist dabs blusher across his cheeks, and all of a sudden, there’s a weight on them that makes it harder for him to smile. “That makes me nervous.”
“Why?”
Youngkyun is glad for the lipstick that’s applied across his lips. It gives him an excuse not to speak, if only temporarily. He doesn’t know what to say.
Perhaps it’s less about the fact that it’s their first-ever studio album and more about the way it’s finally hitting him after all these years. That this is it. That this is the stage he’s chased for so long, that these are the songs he’d dreamed of singing for so long, that this is the life he’d thought he’d wanted for so long. And the microphone cord is starting to look a little like a lifeline and a noose both, the stage lights a blur between burning and heaven-warm, his heart beating against its cage a mix between a steady rhythm and a shout for help.
He’s—they’ve—finally made it this far, and it terrifies him as much as it thrills him.
He’s learned to stop holding himself back now, but stepping on the accelerator isn’t the same as taking your foot off the brakes.
Will they be okay from here?
His makeup artist takes a step back, and he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His eyes are wide, concealer hiding the circles that had formed underneath from the sleepless nights leading up to their comeback. They’re not visible against the glass, but he can feel his hands shaking in his lap. He knows Taeyang’s do, too. He’d seen it during their rehearsals, cold hands trembling around microphone metal, though Taeyang doesn’t know he’d been looking.
“It’ll be okay,” Taeyang states simply, and Youngkyun realises that he never ended up responding to Taeyang’s question. “If not today, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then someday.”
Taeyang says that, but Youngkyun knows that the one who’ll take it the hardest if their comeback doesn’t go well is Taeyang. He’s keeping his eyes fixed resolutely on the mirror as his makeup artist touches his makeup, but Youngkyun lets his wander until they find their way to Taeyang’s hands, clasped together against the fabric of his clothes.
They’re shaking, too.
That’s what the industry does to them, Youngkyun supposes, lifting his hand and watching the way it trembles against the glass, the ring on his finger catching the dressing room lights and shining a faint shade of silver-gold, like stars across the surface of the sea. Breaks them to make them.
He’d signed up for this, he knows. They all had.
And yet, selfishly, he wishes the world could be theirs, if only just for a moment. If only just to stop time where it stands for the briefest of seconds, just enough for them to stop growing up quite so fast. No one told him that growing up continued even after the first digit of their ages hit two, and no one told him that growing up would someday reach a point where it was less growing and more breaking and putting the pieces back together.
But that’s the problem with growing up—to grow, you can’t put the pieces back together the same, because they’ll end up shattering the same, too. The reflections of them are made of different fragments each time he checks, and he knows it’s just life, but it doesn’t make it any easier on him.
A quiet warmth comes up around his hand, and he blinks. Taeyang has stood from his seat, standing just centimetres away from his own, fingers curling around his.
“There,” Taeyang says, their hands clasped together before the glass, “now they’re not shaking anymore.”
He’s right.
And this place may break them over and over again, Youngkyun thinks, staring at the reflection of them, but maybe there are some parts of them that aren’t made out of mirrors.
Most things change, he knows, but maybe some things never will.
Nine beating hearts, and an unwavering dream.
The day they win for the first time, Zuho is the first to cry.
Seokwoo doesn’t notice this until he watches the replay two days later, because he’d been too shocked to do anything but stare into the crowd when the result came out. Everything passes by in a blur of lightstick-white and onstage-blue and the screaming of fans and the screaming of his own heart in his chest. Youngbin’s voice is shaking as he gives his speech, tears barely hidden between the gaps in the syllables, but Seokwoo barely catches what he says.
At some point, the camera pans to his face. He only notices it after Chani elbows him in the side, and he tries to force a smile, but it cracks halfway and he’s glad the camera moves away before it catches the tears spilling down his cheeks. Later, while watching the replay, he notices it ended up panning to Sanghyuk instead. Sanghyuk had been crying just as hard as him. Maybe harder.
There’s a hand that comes up round his waist, silent but warm. He’s crying too much to lift his head, but from the corner of his vision, he sees the hint of Chani’s smile. The youngest of them has his gaze fixed on the crowd, his smile as bright as the glow of the stage lights, and there is something about the way he pats Seokwoo’s back that says, unseen to everyone but the two of them: we’re right where we’re meant to be.
So Seokwoo cries even harder, and Chani lets him. Next to them, Youngbin’s voice cracks into the microphone as he finishes his speech, and the cheers around them roar all the more louder. Sanghyuk’s smiling out at the crowd through the tears down his face, the blur of his vision making the white of the lightsticks look like a thousand shooting stars.
They don’t stop crying, not even after the emcees finish their speeches and the song starts playing across the stage again. “Come on,” Chani says to Seokwoo, close by his ear, giving him a slight push. “Let’s get to our positions.”
Chani’s touch doesn’t leave Seokwoo until they’ve made it to centrestage, one step at a time.
A quiet warmth in the shape of a heart, traced against his back.
The rest of the day passes a little like a dream, a little like a hallucination. It’s all so overwhelming, as though a wave had crashed overhead and pulled them under the surface, but he isn’t sure whether he’s sinking or swimming. It feels like he’s floating, really, suspended twenty-three metres above the clouds, bathed in the heaven-gold of the stage lights, and his lips are wet with salt, but this time it’s that of his tears and not the sea.
His eyes meet Zuho’s across the stage. There are tearstains all over Zuho’s cheeks, and his eyes are still glossy, like he might start crying again at any minute. And they’re all red, too, but Seokwoo knows that this time it’s not from sleepless studio sessions and anxiety-filled nights anymore.
Something swells in his chest, euphoric and barely-contained, threatening to burst out at any given moment.
“You were right,” he tells Zuho, breathlessly, as they’re stepping off the stage. Zuho laughs, even though there’s a crack in his voice, some leftover tears still stuck between his throat and lips. “It was worth it. Don’t you think?”
Zuho grins, looking out at the stage one more time, bathed in haloed light and the cheers that still echo with every step that they take.
“Every moment of it,” he replies, and the way he says it sounds a little less like a wish and a lot more like a promise.
And they know that the day is ending, but this never will.
(An unfaded dream, shining brightly.)
Inseong doesn’t cry onstage when they win for the first time, or the second, but Jaeyoon knows it doesn’t mean he’s any less happy than the rest of them. He’d heard it in Inseong’s voice as he took the microphone and gave his speech; in the way he’d tripped over his words, and in the way he’d looked in the car a little after, not bothering to contain the smile on his face or the laughter in his tone, either.
So he asks on the night of their second win, heart still thrumming in his chest like it had on the stage, “hyung, can I ask you a question?”
Inseong’s lying on the couch, hair messy and eyelids heavy with sleep, but there’s a smile in his voice as he speaks. “You just did,” he replies, and Jaeyoon snorts. “But of course you can.”
“If you could go back in time and do this all over again,” Jaeyoon mumbles, hugging one of the cushions they have in the dorm to his chest, “would you?”
The response comes without hesitation, spoken a second after the words leave Jaeyoon’s mouth. “I would.”
Jaeyoon smiles. “And when you go back, would you change anything?”
Inseong leans his head against the armrest, eyes meeting Jaeyoon’s. “I don’t think I would.”
“And why’s that, hyung?”
“Have you heard of the butterfly effect, Jaeyoon? They say even the smallest of changes can result in a big change somewhere down the line.” A few notes of drowsiness have crept further into Inseong’s tone, but the smile never fades. “I don’t want to risk changing any of this. Any of us.”
Jaeyoon thinks back to what constitutes us. There are the too-early schedules and the practice room breakdowns. There are the arguments and the slamming doors and the crying into each other’s sleeves long after night’s fallen and there’s no one left but the nine of them, searching for meaning in the dark. There are the stage lights and the sound of their names rolling off a thousand lips and there are the songs and the way they look just before their comeback rolls around, nine hearts all wishing on the same stars.
There’s that, and there’s a lot more beyond that.
“Even the bad?” he hears himself ask.
Inseong chuckles. “Even the bad,” he responds readily. “Because it’s us.”
He says it like it’s the easiest thing in the world, and for some reason, Jaeyoon understands it perfectly.
“Back then, you said you’d chase your dreams a little sooner if you could.” Jaeyoon sees the flicker of surprise in Inseong’s eyes as he speaks; he probably hadn’t expected him to remember, but it’s easy for Jaeyoon to remember. It’s easy when it comes to them. “Has that changed, too?”
The corners of Inseong’s lips lift a fraction higher. “That’s changed, too.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because,” Inseong replies, eyes never leaving his, “that led me to you, didn’t it?”
Outside, the glow of after-dark bakeries and lamps lining the streets cast gold across the river. The waters are still tonight.
“Even if we didn’t win?” he whispers, softer now, like he’s afraid of hearing the answer. The delight in his voice has ebbed away, replaced instead by something dimmer, weighted down with an amalgamation of curiosity and insecurity both.
“I’d still choose you,” Inseong replies without pause, and Jaeyoon hears the sound of his own breath catching in the air between them. “In every universe, no matter the outcome.”
Jaeyoon doesn’t have to search far to find the truth hardly-veiled between the sleep clouding Inseong’s eyes.
“Because it’s us,” Inseong says, answering the question sitting unasked by the corners of Jaeyoon’s mouth.
Slowly, Jaeyoon’s smile widens across his face.
“I wouldn’t change a thing either, hyung.”
And he means every word.
The wind picks up, tossing his hair against his eyes, but he doesn’t mind. The January air is biting as he pushes the door open, nipping at bits of exposed skin lying between the layers of his clothes, but he doesn’t let that bother him, either.
His footsteps ring out against the wooden floorboards of the rooftop, and in front of him, Taeyang turns around. Their gazes meet across the winter morning sunlight, and Youngkyun is the first to break the silence this time.
“We made it, hyung.”
The air is colder than it ever was, but Youngkyun doesn’t care for that anymore. The waters are all frozen over by now, the tides locked across the surface like pieces into place.
And at last, they’re standing on the shore, looking at the way the dawn spills over the city.
The corners of Taeyang’s lips rise just slightly enough to reach the edge of his eyes, reflecting the same smile on Youngkyun’s features.
“We made it,” he agrees, and Youngkyun crosses the rest of the distance between them to Taeyang’s side, leaning against the railing and watching as the sunlight spreads across the grey of the buildings on the other side of the company’s gates. The slopes leading back to the main road are empty in the winter, and all the flowers are still waiting to bloom again, but this time he doesn’t feel quite so alone anymore.
“I guess I didn’t misplace my belief after all,” Youngkyun says softly, watching the sunlight dip into Taeyang’s eyes and trace the warmth within. “You were right.”
Amusement fills Taeyang’s voice, and he turns to lean against the railing too, his gaze meeting Youngkyun’s again. There’s a light dancing in his gaze, mischief and fondness both taking the shape of a deep-brown glimmer. “I’m always right.”
Youngkyun rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t bother hiding the laugh that bursts free from between his lips. “Whatever you say.”
And then, quieter, just only loud enough for Taeyang to catch: “I’m glad you were, hyung.”
Taeyang’s eyes crinkle by the edges. “I’m glad, too.”
Youngkyun looks out over the city. The golden sunlight falls in the cracks between the buildings and spreads across the grey of the streets, out to where the bigger pavements lie hidden behind concrete and to where other people roam, all a mix of different stories and different roads.
There’s a lot waiting for them out there, he knows this now, many more storms to weather and many more shores to reach. And maybe he’ll never really get used to the feeling of getting swept along by the tides, but maybe, he thinks, that’s okay.
He’s not going to drown. And maybe some days he’s still going to cry halfway through washing the dishes and maybe some days he’s still going to replace the taste of his own tears with that of orange slices, but maybe, he thinks, that’s okay, too.
They’re right where they’re meant to be.
Today, the distance the waves chase feel a little less like a far-off dream and a lot more like coming home.
And just like the tide sweeping the shores, they’ll come back over and over again, never the same, but just as beautiful as always. As beautiful as they are now, like this, dappled in the dawn across Seoul and standing still by each other’s sides.
“I hope,” he says, because no one else is around to hear it but the two of them, “we can stay like this forever.”
Taeyang smiles. It’s a bittersweet one, longing rounding the tips and a gentle sadness sitting right in the middle. Youngkyun knows, too, that there aren’t any dreams that last forever. That even if they’re living this one with their eyes wide open, one day they’ll have to wake up, anyway, and then it’ll all be different, all over again. He knows, but Taeyang taught him that there’s no use in hanging onto nothing, so he doesn’t.
“No matter where we go from here,” he settles on instead, leaning in just a bit closer to Taeyang. The January air is cold, but they are warm right where they are, the sunlight falling across their forms and the river where the waters have stopped crashing against the shore. “Can we go there together?”
For now, there is no moment more beautiful than this.
Taeyang’s voice comes out quiet, half a whisper and fully a promise. “I may never be able to walk your path for you,” he says, his fingers brushing Youngkyun’s, “but for as long as you need me, I will hold your hand as you walk.”
And nothing has ever sounded so comforting before.
Do you believe in fate, Youngkyun?
“Me too, hyung.”
And perhaps there is hope in the way the sun traces the warmth of their smiles into the winter and melts it away into something brighter, something more radiant, like dreams crystallising under snowflake-light: that they will change, but always for the better.
“For as long as I need you?”
Youngkyun wraps his fingers around Taeyang’s, hand into waiting hand.
“For as long as you want me.”
I’ll believe in ours.