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The song wasn’t that good. Or good at all for that matter.
I don't even care 여긴 우릴 태울 stage
Left to the right
We gon' make it, make it bang
His little brother looked delighted as he danced along to the song playing from his t-phone. His two other siblings watched him curiously, smiles of endearment spread across their faces. And yes, there was something cute about it, but he was growing tired of listening to the same awful song for days on repeat, so he wasn’t especially charmed. Mikey discovering kpop was the worst thing to ever happen to this family, and that was saying a lot.
Put your hands in the air
Let me see you bounce
To the left, to the right
시작되는 round
Leo rolled his eyes, preparing himself mentally for that damn chorus.
That fucking chorus.
“Cause when we jumping and popping, we jopping!” His brother sang with enthusiasm. Raph chuckled, clearly amused by his brother's antics. Usually, he would be the first to make fun of Mikey for something like this, but Raph had suddenly decided this was the funniest thing in the world to him and chose to be entirely supportive of his fixation on the song. What a traitor. Right when Leo needed him the most.
“This song is stupid,” Leo said as if his brothers hadn’t heard him complain about it a million times already.
“Leo, we’ve been through this.” Mikey sighed in exasperation. “That’s part of what makes it so good! Don’t you like it just a little bit?”
“No, it’s awful.” He frowned. “Is this really the type of music being made these days? How isn’t that sad? There are artists out there putting their heart and soul into their work and then this band of pretty boys who don't even write their own music come out with this and it gets millions of views. How is this not more offensive to you guys?”
“So you think they’re pretty?” Raph asked, his tone teasing. Leo flushed but didn’t reply. He would rather die before admitting he was attracted to the members of SuperM of all people. He had better taste than that.
“I mean, there’s stuff about it to like,” Donnie joined the conversation. “I like the instrumental, it’s very fun.”
“Donnie, I thought you said you didn’t like it!?” Leo looked at him, feeling betrayed. Was he really the only turtle in this family with any reason left in him? “And it doesn’t sound good. It makes me feel like I’m watching a shitty Marvel movie.”
“The lyrics are stupid,” Donnie conceded. “But I guess I see the appeal. It’s kind of funny. And you have to admit it’s catchy.”
Leo was about to argue against this when Mikey suddenly pressed his hand against his mouth.
“Hush!” Mikey exclaimed, looking way more excited than he should. “Here comes the best part!”
Uh, you think ya big boy, throwing three stacks
I'ma show you how to ball, you a mismatch
Opinionated but I'm always spitting straight facts
Throwback, I might throw this on an eight track
“What does that even mean?!” Leo said, shoving Mikey’s hand away from his face.
Mikey scoffed at him. “You don’t understand real music, Leo!”
“How did you even find this song, Mikey?” Donnie asked before Leo could call him out on how ridiculous he sounded. “I’m curious.”
“I like listening to kpop once in a while. I’m not crazy about it like Raph is, but the songs are fun and catchy, and SuperM was a huge deal when they debuted.”
“Right. I forgot Raph is a kpoppie.”
“I’m not a kpoppie.” Raph glared at Donnie, who didn’t seem convinced at all.
“Sure. What’s the name of that group you’re always listening to? Monster Sex?”
“ Monsta X ,” Raph corrected him. “And sure, I like kpop. The girls are cute. The boys are… also cute. The music is fun. But I’m not crazy about it.”
No one really believed him, but they weren’t about to start an argument on that.
'Cause when we jumping and popping
We jopping
“Finally, it’s over.” Leo sighed. “I hate that song.”
“Aren’t you exaggerating a bit? I don’t think it’s that bad,” Donnie said to him. Leo groaned. He hated feeling like he was the weird one here.
“It fucks,” Mikey added. Leo chose to ignore him.
“I’m not exaggerating, it’s genuinely so bad. I feel like you guys are gaslighting me into thinking this is good.”
“Whatever, yeesh.” Mikey rolled his eyes. “Maybe if you stanned SuperM.”
Leo scoffed.
“As if.”
The song wouldn’t get out of his head and Leo was horrified. Mikey had stopped playing the song constantly, thank god, but somehow Leo’s brain had latched onto it and memorized it as best as it could. He constantly had to resist the urge to hum the melody of it when his brothers were around, knowing they’d rightfully mock him for it.
There was no way Jopping was growing on him. It was just a weird side effect of Mikey constantly tormenting him with it. He didn’t like it.
And yet here was, watching the music video for it when his brothers were out of the lair.
It looked bad, he was willing to admit that. But it wasn’t what it looked like.
He wasn’t listening to Jopping because he thought it was good .
His eyes didn’t linger on Ten’s part of the music video because he thought he was pretty.
And he certainly didn’t know his name was Ten because he sat down and watched a 30 minute long introduction to the group he found on youtube.
It wasn’t like that at all.
Sure, maybe he got curious and listened to the rest of SuperM’s discography and liked a fair amount of what he heard. Maybe he’d watched a couple of live performances and dance practices here and there, and maybe he was now curious about what the rest of the kpop genre had to offer. Was that such a crime?
It felt like it.
He tried not to think about what this might say of his dignity, determined to take this secret to his grave without his brothers ever getting the satisfaction of knowing that he thought Jopping was kind of a banger. This was just a phase. He’d grow out of it and no one would ever find out.
It wasn’t until one fateful evening that everything went to shit.
Leo and his brothers were all hanging out. One of Mikey’s music playlists was playing in the background as Raph and Mikey bickered about something silly. Donnie watched them in entertainment, but Leo wasn’t very interested, instead scrolling through his t-phone without paying too much attention to the world around him.
And then a song he knew started playing.
It was none other than We Do, the most recent song in SuperM’s discography. Leo had been listening to it a lot lately.
“Oh, I love that song!” he said out loud, not thinking about what he was talking about or looking up from his phone. “It suits Baekhyun’s voice a lot. Not my favorite thing from them though.”
His brothers went quiet.
Leo’s brain finally caught up with him.
Oh, no.
“Leo, have you been listening to SuperM lately?” Mikey asked, sounding unsure of it himself, like it was such an unbelievable concept.
And it was.
“No!” He said almost immediately. If there was any chance of him getting out of this situation his visible anxiety had completely killed that opportunity. “I just, uh. I’ve heard this song before. Just this one.”
“You said this wasn’t your favorite thing from them. Implying you’ve heard multiple songs,” Donnie pointed out, and Leo wanted to kill him right then and there.
“Holy shit,” Raph exploded in laughter. “You’re kidding me. After all that talk about how much you hated them and their silly song, you’re now a fan? You even know their names.”
Leo’s face was completely flushed by now, Raph was holding his stomach as he died from laughter on their couch and Mikey just eyed him curiously.
“SuperM has songs other than Jopping?” Donnie asked, not as interested in the fact Leo had just been outed as a SuperM fan (a spermie, if you will). “I thought they released that song and then disappeared.”
“They're more of a side project I guess, so they don’t release too much. But they do have other songs,” Mikey explained to him. After that, he turned to his oldest brother, who was frozen in place. “Since when have you been listening to them? Didn’t you say they were the downfall of the music industry or something?”
Leo sighed, hiding his face with his hands. “I’m just… I was curious! It doesn’t mean anything.”
Mikey giggled, clearly delighted by this turn of events.
“So what do you say, bro? Do you now see the poeticism of Jopping?”
“Not really,” he said, then chuckled. “I do kind of see the eroticism of it, though.”
His brothers burst into laughter and Leo couldn’t help but giggle too.