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Heeseung spent the majority of high school hidden away in spare music rooms writing in his lyric book. They were always run down, not much thought had been put into the music program—or arts in general, Heeseung found out when he took his first and last art class because he needed the credit to graduate, the only senior in a class full of freshman, which was probably the first domino knocked down that got him here—but Heeseung loved his little home away from home.
He always felt a bit dorky walking down the mostly empty hallway to his room; backpack strung haphazardly over his shoulder, headphones plugged into a cracked phone, cuticles perpetually bleeding from picking at them during the classes he hated, but he liked his routine, so he gritted his teeth and made the walk every day during lunch.
Two weeks into his senior year, he opens the classroom door to find someone else in his spot.
"Um," he said hesitantly, yanking his headphones out of his ears. "Who are you?"
She turned to him with a look of surprise on her face, like it never occurred to her that someone else had made a safe haven in the dingy classroom at the end of the music hall. "Shit." The book she was reading flopped closed around her finger. She looked down at it in offense.
As far as first impressions went, it wasn't the best, but Heeseung understood that he wouldn't have been much better if the situation were reversed. He shuffled his feet nervously, avoiding looking at her for longer than three seconds at a time. She muttered to herself as she shoved a scrap piece of paper in between the pages.
"Sorry," she said, tossing the book onto a nearby desk, and then apologized again when the noise made Heeseung jump. "Um, hi?"
"You're in my spot," Heeseung replied, shimmying his backpack up higher from where it fell down in his surprise. "Are you new?"
"Yeah." She smiled at him, nervously tucking her hair behind her ear. "I'm Jennifer."
"Jennifer?" he questioned, settling down into a desk on the opposite side of the room. He frowned to himself, already missing his seat by the window.
"What?" Jennifer asked, offended. "You don't like my name?"
Heeseung shrugged.
They sat in silence after that, Heeseung scratching away at his notebook, Jennifer tapping on her phone. He snuck glances at her periodically, watching as she got bored of whatever she was doing on her phone, instead choosing to pull out a sheet of what looked like chemistry homework, teeth grinding down on her mechanical pencil while she tried to figure out the calculations in her head. Eventually, she gave up on that too.
"Yunjin," she said over her shoulder after packing her things, feet planted in the door way.
Heeseung looked up in surprise. "What?"
"You can call me Yunjin," she replied again, flipping her long black hair over her shoulder, and then disappeared out the door, leaving Heeseung to stare at the door and wonder where she came from.
✩
High school relationships never last, but Heeseung almost hoped he'd be the exception. He fell his heart in her hands, tunnel vision of love, in love with Yunjin even though they only dated for a little less than a year. It was the longest he'd ever dated anyone; before her, he'd only ever had two week long relationships that never got past first base.
First meeting aside, Yunjin kept popping up in Heeseung's life, everywhere from his second period to the music store down on 12th street, thumbing through sheet music like she was on a mission.
"Hey," Heeseung greeted her on the fifth time he saw her there, in between the stacks, hands knuckle deep in the K's.
Yunjin looked up at him distractedly. "Hi," she replied, eyes quickly flicking back down to the papers.
He watched her search for another minute or two before he cleared his throat and awkwardly said, "Do you like, need help, or something?"
"I'm gonna be honest," she started, straightening up her back, hands falling back to rest on the front of the wooden box holding the sheet music. "I don't even know what I'm looking for."
Heeseung opened his mouth, struggling over a few syllables, before closing it again.
Yunjin deflated. "I have an audition and I have this irrational fear that everything I have in my binder sucks and won't be up to the school's caliber, and it's like, my senior year show so I need to get a good role, but I'm new so—" she cut herself off, cringing when she saw the expression on Heeseung's face. "Sorry. That was a lot, wasn't it?"
"Just a little," Heeseung said slowly. "Mrs. Ebel seems scary, but she's usual really impartial with her castings. She does prefer good technique over personality, so…" he trailed off, scratching the back of his head.
"Do you do theater?" Yunjin asked.
Heeseung shook his head. "I do stage tech," he replied, and then tacked on, "I have stage fright," when Yunjin narrowed her eyes at him.
"But you sing," Yunjin said, more like she already knew the answer than a question.
Heeseung nodded.
She was silent for a moment. Heeseung waited on her, the first time of many.
"Are you maybe free to help me?" Yunjin asked, carefully picking her words. She avoided his eye, but her ears were tinged with pink at the tips.
It made Heeseung flush too. "Yeah," he said, "I am."
✩
How they got here, shoved into some tiny ass apartment with thin walls, getting noise complaints from their neighbors every day because Riki will die if he doesn't shred on his guitar once every hour, Heeseung doesn't really know.
Well, actually, he does.
THE OFFICIAL LIST OF EVENTS THAT LED TO THE CREATION OF HEEPLY, IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
1. Heeseung spends all of highschool writing shitty songs with, what his ex-girlfriend called, "no real emotion."
2. Jay's mom and Riki's dad marry when they're 15 and 12 respectively. It was a spring wedding. Their first real bonding moment as step-siblings was Jay teaching Riki to play the guitar, which led to the unfortunate happenstance of him never getting the chance to play the instrument again. He picks up the bass in it's place.
3. Jungwon becomes hyper fixated on the drums at 11 because "I wanted to." That's about all he'll tell them, for some reason.
4. Despite Heeseung, Jay, and Jungwon all meeting long before Riki ever came into the picture, he's the one who descended the basement stairs on that fateful day with the idea to make a band.
5. "Make a band? You can't just make a band," Heeseung said, completely and utterly wrong, which he found out a week later when he realized, oh, yeah, you can make a band.
Riki isn't even old enough to be put on the lease. He's in his final year of highschool and commutes to the city every weekend for band practice. He was also the first person Heeseung told about the breakup.
"Damn," he said, eloquent as always. He played a sad sounding riff on his guitar and then went right back to playing the Weezer riff over and over again until Jay grew murderous enough to snatch the guitar away from him.
"I bought this thing for you," Jay fumed when Riki complained. "I can take it away if I want."
"It was a present," Riki replied, arms crossed, lips set in a pout.
"I don't care."
Heeseung is used to Jay and Riki bickering. He almost welcomes it; it makes him miss his own brother, who is off in the world being a responsible adult, not chasing a pipe dream that is making it in the music industry. Of course, his family doesn't tell him it's a pipe dream, at least not in so many words, but he knows they worry. He enrolled in college courses just to appease them, it visibly relaxing his mother so much he spent two weeks feeling like a shitty excuse for a son.
Well, okay, if Heeseung's being honest it's not really a pipe dream, more like a question of morality, because Jay's parents may or may not have a couple connections that could get them in talks with a label. He's not sure how he feels about it. Yunjin made her nepotism jokes while they were together and they always made Heeseung's cheeks burn red with shame, for some reason.
Maybe he wants to prove they can do it without handouts. Maybe he wanted Yunjin to think they didn't need to stoop that low.
✩
They give into Jay's vague nepotism two months into the semester. He finds them a gig at some random dive bar and really, the place should've made Heeseung feel all slimy and gross, but it was his first time on stage since Yunjin helped him through his stage fright, and he's determined to make it work.
Riki is nowhere near old enough to be there, but they let them play anyways. He sets up recording equipment in the sound booth. "For CD's," he says, flashing Heeseung a giddy smile.
"Are we gonna send our set to every entertainment company like they did back in the day?" Heeseung jokes, but he's excited too.
They play all the songs they've finished, even the bad ones, because by the time their tentative set list comes to an end none of them want to leave. All of the bars patrons seem to enjoy their music, and it gives them all a much needed boost of confidence.
On their final song, Heeseung swallows thickly and says into the mic, "This is for my ex-girlfriend." Someone near the back jeers, a comment that sounds like fuck that bitch just barely audible over the rest of the crowd.
Jungwon named the song, but Heeseung wrote it. They all contribute to the instrumentals, and sometimes the lyrics, but Heeseung is their main lyricist. This one, Heeseung wrote in one sitting, hand cramped but unable to stop. Jungwon read over his shoulder until he finally let go of the pen and said, "Love Me Better."
Songwriting wears Heeseung out in a way sports has never. Something about pulling words and emotions from the deepest recesses of his brain, and taking a bit of his soul with it, leaves him with a bone deep exhaustion at the end of the day.
Before he met Yunjin, songwriting never made him feel that way.
"None of this is real," Yunjin said the first time Heeseung showed her his music. They were in his classroom—their classroom, really. It became both of theirs after she transferred.
It was a good month before they started dating, but even her saying it as his friend offended him. "What?"
"Like, it's good, but where's the emotion? The heart?" She hopped down from the windowsill, face set in a frown. "I know you. All you do is think. I know you can write something meaningful."
"Does a song have to be deep and poetic to be worth listening to?" Heeseung retorted, face heating up.
Yunjin shook her head. "That's not the point."
"Then what is?"
"Why are you afraid to write something personal?" Yunjin asked him. "Why are you afraid to be seen?"
Truth be told, Heeseung didn't have an answer to that at the time, and never really got closer to one after the breakup. He did start writing real songs based on real things he felt, though, so maybe that's enough.
✩
Out of all the ways to be signed by a label, Heeseung never expected it to come from a drunken frat boy's TikTok account. They go viral, a shittily recorded version of Love Me Better becoming the top sound. In his drunken stupor he had actually remembered to tag their profile, and soon their comments flood with people begging them to release the song.
They're reached out to by a subsidiary of Sony with a focus on indie musicians. Heeseung doesn't know if they count as indie, but he's not about to shoot a gift horse in the mouth, so he rolls with it. Jungwon's lawyer dad looks over the contract and helps them negotiate.
Heeseung feels like he's floating. He's sure he's not the only one.
On the final day of negotiations one of the heads runs them through a plan of action. Tease Love Me Better, gain momentum, finish professionally recording the rest of the album, release the first single, then the second, then the third; music videos, talk show appearances, Good Morning America at ass o'clock in the morning; and best of all:
"We want to grow you where you began, if that makes sense," Important Guy #1 says.
Jay furrows his brow. "In a bar?"
"No, on TikTok."
They all visibly freeze. The man doesn't seem to notice; he continues on jabbering about potential videos and how they need to get a finalized version of Love Me Better done ASAP so they can push a snippet as an audio.
"The live version has already done so well," he says, "Imagine what the studio version will do.
"TikTok is where music goes to die," Riki says later, shaking his head.
They're taking a break, approximately halfway through the meeting. It should never have ran this long in the first place. Jay has his head in his hands. Heeseung can tell he's on his way to a migraine. If he's being honest, so is he.
"That's objectively not true."
Heeseung does a half-hearted turn towards the voice, sighing when Jungwon levels him with a look that says please, for me, just agree to this. He can't, because what they're agreeing to is bullshit.
Riki opens his mouth to argue, but Jungwon interjects, maybe because he feels for Jay, who's a little closer to that migraine, or because he actually cares about the subject.
"I know, trust me, I know. You think all that what they're telling us to do is gonna screw us over; give us a shitty, poser fanbase that makes us embarrassed when we see who's lining up for us, but fuck, if we want to go somewhere, this is what we have to do." Jungwon looks caught off guard by his own words.
Heeseung offers him a small nod. "Jungwon's right," he says, rolling his eyes when Riki throws his hands above his head, muttering about sell-outs and we're never gonna be cool, because Riki is very much a boy with no sense of the real world.
"Let's just try it out," Heeseung offers, side-eyeing Riki, who has migrated to the ground next to Jay, chin nestled on top of his knees. He gets an eye roll in response, which is as good as a yes when it comes to Riki, so Heeseung counts it as a win.
✩
Heeseung blacked out every time they worked on the record. Be it post-breakup blues or just plain mental illness, every single second he spent working on the album got wiped from his brain the second they stopped. Until they finished it.
"Damn," Riki said, sat back on their ratty old couch Jay found on FaceBook Marketplace. "What do we do now?"
What they should've done was call up their contact at their label. What they did went a little like this:
"I miss you," Heeseung said into his phone shoved uncomfortably to his ear. He was in the bathtub, drunker than he'd ever been, and on a call with the last person he should've been speaking to.
"Well," Yunjin said, her monotone voice soothing Heeseung in a way a bottle of expensive red wine Jay snagged from his parents could. "Don't."
"Yunjin." The wine stopped him from being embarrassed over how whiny he sounded. "I'm serious. Why couldn't we have tried?"
She laughed at him, bright and so, so heartbreaking. "You know why." Yunjin left it at that, bidding him a quiet but earnest, "Be sure to drink some water, okay?" before hanging up on him.
Heeseung headbutted the shower wall a few times before tossing his phone onto the probably moldy bathmat and pulling himself out of the tub. By the time he reached the kitchen he had already resolved to not listen to Yunjin, because what good had listening to her ever got him? He cursed her name as he opened another bottle of wine, vehemently ignoring how constricted his chest felt, and chugged while Riki cheered him on, voice washing over Heeseung from somewhere over in the living room.
Listening to Yunjin actually always brought Heeseung good things. She's the reason he wrote the album in the first place, so really, love me better by heeply, stylized in all lowercase at Riki's insistence, sitting pretty at top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart for five straight weeks after its—and the band's—debut is entirely thanks to her.
She texts him a congratulations after three weeks. Heeseung doesn't respond, but he stares at the text for so long he sees it burned into his eyelids when he closes his eyes at night.
✩
Yunjin does well for herself post breakup with Heeseung. The act itself doesn't seem to hinder her much. Three weeks after she dumps him, a little too brutally than he thought he deserved, the usual it's not you, it's me not even having enough time to fully sink into Heeseung, her face is plastered everywhere, on billboards, ads on his Twitter timeline, people from high schools' Instagram stories, added texts losing their minds over omg I went to school with her and now she's FAMOUS. He sees pictures of her in their yearbooks on Jay's Pinterest homepage and unsuccessfully stifles his scream with his lyric book.
He finds out after a night of tequila induced sadness that the final audition he helped her prep for ended up going well enough to get her booked on some HBO Max original about talented people.
"They're Broadway actors and someone keeps killing off the leads," Riki explained to Jay and Jungwon the one time Heeseung brought it up in a moment of bitter weakness.
"Huh," Jay said, nodding his head approvingly. "Good for her."
Jay and Yunjin got along well. Actually, they all got along well; it was one of those things Heeseung used to feel satisfied about at night. His best friends got along with his girlfriend and vice versa. That's like, nearly unheard of in this day and age. He's 85% sure Riki still talks to her. Jay is too loyal to stay in contact. Jungwon is the wild card, but the way he hangs onto Riki's overdetailed explanation of the entire season like he'll be quizzed on it later, he doubts it.
Heeseung is not at all afraid of her success, or whatever bullshit Riki says. He's actually really happy for her. Nobody knows just how talented she is, not like Heeseung does. He was her very first fan.
"That was amazing," Heeseung said to her, breathless, after the first time he watched one of her opera performances.
She had blushed prettily at his words, visible through the thick stage makeup. This was a week before he finally asked her to be his girlfriend, and it was an ego boost for him. From then on he went to every show, helped her learn lines, listened to her sing. Everything a good boyfriend would do, and he was more than that, he was—
"You're the best boyfriend ever," Yunjin said, beaming up at him, on their sixth month anniversary after he sang her the first song he ever wrote about her; the one he wrote a week after meeting her. There were tears in the corners of her eyes and he wiped them away before pulling her into a kiss.
He wrote so many songs about Yunjin he has about three whole notebooks filled with them. All sixteen tracks on heeply's debut album 'window shopping' were taken from those three tattered notebooks. Heeseung isn't narcissistic, not by a long shot, but he knows they're good songs. They have to be, with how well they're doing. Their label said something about submitting to the Grammy's the other day and Heeseung had to shove his head under the tap and drown in the cold water for a moment to convince himself all of this is real.
Another thing that's horrifically real: he leaves that meeting only to open his phone up to a text from his mother, a TikTok link to a video Yunjin posted, with his song in the background.
Heeseung watches it on repeat, the song eventually melding together into nothing more than indistinguishable sounds. He memorizes it—each clip, the order of them, her little GRWM video set to a song he wrote two days after she broke his heart. She moved into a nicer apartment after she booked the HBO show. It's bigger and white all over, granite countertops he can vividly picture her preparing meals on. She got good money from the show, it's an ensemble cast but all the articles refer to her as the star. The final girl.
It hurts, the fact that both of their lives are going so well even though they're apart. Heeseung wants to celebrate their individual success together. A part of him worries that maybe the only way they'd ever be able to be successful is apart. He hopes it's not true.
✩
The day the Grammy nominations are announced they all gather around in their shitty little apartment and drink themselves silly. Heeseung tells himself it's because the alcohol will soothe the disappointment when they don't get one. Jay says it's to celebrate when they do. In the end, Jay ends up being right.
Two hours later, Heeseung decides to never trust Jay again, because talking to that many of his family members while absolutely hammered would've made his ancestors weep.
Riki cries. So does Jay, but Riki is more unexpected, so he gets more shit. Heeseung doesn't let himself cry until he's alone. He stares at Yunjin's contact in his phone and debates calling her, even though he knows she probably wouldn't pick up, not after last time. He wonders if she sees the nominations and hopes she does.
✩
Heeseung loses himself after nomination day. It's a constant cycle of meetings, appearances, interviews, and fittings. He barely has time to sleep. For a moment he wonders how Riki is handling school on top of everything until he finds out he dropped from public school and is now taking online courses. Jay tries to hide his disappointment, but at night, when they're all exhausted and wondering if it was all worth it, Jay tells him he thinks it's for the best.
It's like he's awake for the first time during their final fitting for their Grammys outfits. Riki and Jay go first, leaving Heeseung and Jungwon to lounge around while they wait for their turn. Jungwon eyes him like he wants to say something. Heeseung beats him to the punch.
"Is it about the Grammys, Riki dropping out, or Yunjin," he asks, not looking up from his phone.
Jungwon hums. "Yunjin."
Heeseung shuts his eyes and counts to three. Jungwon's openly staring at him when he opens them. "What about her?"
"She's going to be there."
That stops Heeseung in his metaphorical tracks. "What?"
"She's on a show about Broadway. Half of her job is to sing," Jungwon replies. "Plus, she tweeted about it the other night."
Heeseung groans. "You still follow her on Twitter?"
Jungwon shrugs. "She's funny."
Heeseung doesn't really get the chance to reply before the door is opening and three assistants usher them into the fitting room. He zones out through the entire process, the only thing on his mind Yunjin and what it'll be like to see her for the first time since the breakup.
✩
The Grammys red carpet is the scariest thing Heeseung has ever experienced. It's a sensory nightmare, and he's sure the only reason he makes it though is because Jungwon, Jay, and Riki are there beside him. He answers the press questions to the best of his ability, tries not to pose in a way that will disappoint his mother, and shakes like a leaf the entire time.
He doesn't see Yunjin, not even once they get seated, and he's not sure if he even will. There's a twinge of disappointment that flares in his chest before he can squash it down with the shot Riki hands him. Heeseung quirks an eyebrow at him.
Riki shrugs. "I can't drink it. You might as well."
They sit through the awards show still unable to fully compute that they're there. It's the most fun Heeseung's ever had, but as time goes on and they get closer and closer to their award he starts to feel that pit of anxiety in his stomach.
Yunjin flashes on the screens at some point and Heeseung is handed three shots by each of his members.
It's so surreal Jay leans over to whisper in his ear, "Can you pinch me?"
"Just take a tequila shot," Heeseung replies, "Same difference."
Heeseung about shits his pants when their award is up. Best New Artist. He almost runs away to the bathroom to hide or throw up or call his mom—he's that nervous. A large part of his brain has convinced him that there's no way in a million years they'll win, but the smaller part that desperately wants to is infinitely louder.
When Yunjin walks out on stage, shiny gold envelope clasped in her hand, Heeseung actually does make to stand up from his chair. Jungwon grabs his wrist tightly.
"What the fuck are you doing?" he hisses, and it scares Heeseung more than the prospect of Yunjin not announcing them as the winner.
He doesn't pray, not the way his mother does, but in the seconds leading up to Yunjin revealing the winner he does.
"And the Grammy goes to…" Yunjin starts, hands shaking as she pulls apart the envelope. There's a pause as she reads it, once, twice, like she has to confirm it before she speaks. She looks up and Heeseung swears she's looking right at him. "Heeply."
Riki's hands on his shoulders is the only reason Heeseung makes it onto the stage. His legs are like jelly and he can't really think or feel. He's a leaf being carried by the wind.
Jungwon speaks first, because he's the only one of them that can quickly process things like this. Jay is in tears and Riki is bouncing up and down on his heels like an excited child. Heeseung can't hear a word Jungwon is saying, and then Jay is talking, probably thanking their parents and the fans.
When it gets to his turn, Heeseung takes a deep breath.
Yunjin's staring at him as he says his part of the speech. Heeseung can't really see, eyes blurry from the back to back shots Riki goaded him into taking, but he can feel it the same way he felt it every time she looked at him when they were together. Maybe it's what possesses him to say it in the first place, that familiar gaze on him, twisting his head until he can't remember what's right and what's wrong. But what is the difference between right and wrong in a situation like theirs? In all those months it took him to write, produce, and record the album he never thought she did anything wrong. And in this moments, up on stage at the goddamn Grammy's, he doesn't think he did anything wrong either.
Life isn't black and white—it's one hit after the other, with someone you love on the other side ready to bandage you up. And maybe it takes a bit longer to reach them than usual, but they're still there at the end of the day.
Tomorrow, when he's sober and rewatching his speech over and over again while the guys laugh in the corner, he might feel a twinge of regret or embarrassment, but right now, it's the first thing that's felt right since Yunjin left his life.
"Wow. This is—I mean, wow. Never in a million years did I think this would happen to me—to us. Thank you to everyone that loved the record. We're here right now because of you. And thank you to…to Yunjin, for teaching me what real heartbreak feels like. You were right; you were always right, about everything. What is music if it doesn't come from the heart? Garbage, that's what. I hope you lov–liked the record too. It's all about you."
✩
The morning after the awards ceremony, Heeseung wakes up with the worst hangover he's ever had, and a dozen new voicemails. He scrolls past them, uninterested, until he sees the one from his manager. It's only ten seconds long. He presses play and listens to it while he tries to gain the strength to get out of bed.
"Hey, man. Uh—Twitter's pissed at you. Or obsessed with you? I can't really tell. Anyways, you might want to make a statement about the whole Yunjin thing."
Heeseung groans, the memories flooding back to him. The award show, the winning, the telling the entire world the album is about Yunjin while she stood on stage not five feet away from him.
There's banging at his hotel door, but Heeseung ignores it in favor of pulling the comforter over his face. Whoever it is must have a keycard, because he hears the beep of the lock giving way and the door opening.
"Hey," someone says, their voice muffled by the blankets practically shoved into Heeseung's ears. They poke his leg. "Heeseung."
People he's expecting to see when he pulls the comforter away from his face: his manager, Jungwon, Jay, Riki, his mother—even though she's on the opposite side of the country right now.
People he's not expecting to see: Yunjin.
They make eye contact. Heeseung whimpers.
"Hey," he says after clearing his throat, careful to not look at her directly again.
Yunjin doesn't like that. She reaches a hand out to knot through his hair, turning his head forcefully to look at her. "What the hell was that?"
"I have no idea," Heeseung replies truthfully, and a little miserably. Her hand in his hair hurts, and not in the good way it used to. Now it just feels like failure. "I was drunk."
"You have this nasty habit of thinking about me when you're drunk," Yunjin says lightly. She lets go of his hair, folding her hands in her lap.
They're both silent for a moment, Yunjin looking at him expectantly, and Heeseung wishing the ground would swallow him whole. This wasn't how things were supposed to go; Heeseung was supposed to win his Grammy in front of her, proving to her that he's worth something.
But that was never something that was up for debate with Yunjin. As much as he was her biggest fan, she was his. She smiles at him kindly.
"Do you wanna get lunch?" Yunjin asks him, biting her lip. The tips of her ears are tinged pink.
Heeseung feels lightening course through his veins, violently hot, but under control. "Yeah."
"Okay," Yunjin replies, getting up from the bed.
He lies there for a moment longer, briefly wondering if this is just something his brain has conjured up to make himself feel better about last night.
"How did you get in here?"
She grins at him. "Riki."
When he doesn't say anything in response, she turns on her heel and heads for the door.
"Hey," Heeseung calls out to her back. "This means something, right?"
Yunjin levels him with a look, the same one she used to use when she had Heeseung exactly where she wanted him. "Yeah, Heeseung. It does."
✩
("You're telling me," Riki asks two weeks later, GED textbook splayed open in front of him. Not like he's paying it any mind. "That Heeseung embarrassed himself so fucking hard on that stage that you just had to have him again?"
"Is that so surprising?" Yunjin retorts, spooning her yogurt into her mouth. And then one into Heeseung's, who hums appreciably around it.
Riki crumples his face in disgust. "You two are so fucking weird.")