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Sanghyeok remembers getting his first mark. Who doesn’t? He’d woken with the knowledge that he was sixteen and that colors would soon bleed over his skin, whether he wanted them or not. His door had creaked open, his father peeking through.
“Happy birthday,” he’d murmured, eyes crinkling up into a smile, motion tugging at the dull gray streak over his cheekbone.
Actually, he doesn’t know which is his first. He’d gotten two. One from his father and one from his grandmother. He doesn’t know which was first, but he doesn’t care.
As tradition, he’d gotten his on his torso. He hadn’t cared about what shape they took, so instead, they’d hugged him.
And when they pulled away, his grandmother’s proud silver and his father’s gentle green splashed across his chest and back, he’d looked up to see bright blood red staining their arms and hands.
It was supposed to be a happy moment—whatever higher power responsible for the marks recognizing the bond shared between them—and he supposes it still is, but in that moment, for just a second, all he could think of was how violent his love looked, painted across the skin of the people he loved most with the color of an open wound.
The problem with the colors was that no one knew how they really worked.
Many people gain them on purpose—a careful touch, reverence in the movement to see whether the high power responsible for the marks would deem the bond, one already forged or one to be, strong enough.
Many more people gain them by accident—a careless brush of the hand against a stranger’s, leaving nothing but color stained on the knuckles as a reminder of something that could have and should have been. Some of those stories have happy endings. Some of them don’t. Some of these stories aren’t with strangers.
Sanghyeok gets one from his brother, from his aunts and uncles, an explosion of bright color, but beyond that, he gets nothing.
Part of that is his fault. He’s careful—maybe too careful, and he doesn’t touch anyone else unless he has to. Maybe he’s scared of the violent color that trails from his fingertips.
There are plenty of myths about what the colors mean. Shades of red for the passionate and furious, shades of yellow for the cheerful and happy, and so on. He isn’t deaf either. He can hear the whispering that starts every time his family explains who the violent shade belongs to.
Stone-faced and awkward Sanghyeok, who keeps quiet in class and hides away in his room or in dark corners of PC bangs, preferring the click of his keyboard and mouse over any friends. And people are cruel with their words. They don't really bother hiding what they say from him.
So maybe it’s that. Or maybe he’d just taken to heart how precious and almost sacred these colors were. He can’t remember too well.
But what he does remember is the first non-familial mark he gets.
The fact that this honor belongs to one Bae Seongwoong shouldn’t come as a surprise.
SK Telecom T1 2 has been together for a little less than seven months at this point.
Throughout all of it, through the awkward introductions, scrims, the spring season where they’d managed to make a name for themselves, and through the Champions Summer, Sanghyeok has been careful.
Out of everyone on the team, he is the only one still unstained by any other color.
The others are already colorful—Byounghoon’s light gray shimmering besides Eonyoung’s bright blue, Jeonghyeon’s orange and Gwangjin’s coral meshing in beside them, Jeonggyun’s dark purple striking in its vibrancy.
And then there was Seongwoong, whose easy and casual touches leave behind the purest gold. “Almost like Midas,” Eonyoung would tease sometimes, raising his arm to reveal the broad streak left behind on the side of his bicep when Seongwoong had accidentally knocked into him, staining a portion of Seongwoong’s inner forearm the color of the summer sky.
“We should paint your mouse and keyboard,” Jeonghyeon would add. “Sell the image, you know?” Seongwoong would laugh, rubbing the back of his neck, the skin there stained indigo from when Jeonggyun had hugged him for the first time, palm coming away gilded.
Most of Seongwoong’s marks are accidents or just the result of him being him. Most.
Not Sanghyeok’s mark though.
It’s his fault.
It happens right before a match. He’s maybe a little too comfortable, guard down, and he’s careless. He doesn’t check to see where he’s stepping when he backs up and Sanghyeok trips over Gwangjin’s leg. Seongwoong, the closest to him, tries to catch him.
He’s just a little too slow and Sanghyeok falls backward, crashing onto the cold concrete, accidentally backhanding Seongwoong, punching into his throat on his way down.
The fall wasn’t too bad, half broken by the chairs and when he picks himself up, Seongwoong coughing and bent over, hand over his neck, Sanghyeok reflexively looks down. And he freezes.
“Sorry,” Gwangjin says hurriedly, legs now tucked under his chair. “Are you okay? You—” His eyes widen. “Holy shit.”
The back of his right hand is bathed in gold, bright and vibrant.
Feeling a little dazed, he touches it, half hoping it would come off because otherwise…he rubs at the color. It doesn’t come off.
Seongwoong looks up and Sanghyeok flinches when he lowers his hand, baring his throat. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Jeonghyeon shouts, half sprinting forward, the door slamming fully open as he charges through. “Seongwoong, what the fuck did you—” He stops in his tracks the moment he spots the soulmark over Sanghyeok’s hand. And in an echo of his lane partner, he says, “Holy shit.”
“What? What’s wrong,” Seongwoong asks, clearly unaware of the bright blood red covering his neck, starting from the underside of his jaw and ear and slashing across to the other side. He looks like a dying man, like his lifeblood is moments from dripping down and staining the uniform he’s wearing.
Gwangjin and Jeonghyeon both stare at him with wide eyes. Eonyoung pokes his head into the room. “Hey, what’s—” his mouth clicks shut. “Um. Is that…?”
Seongwoong looks between the four of them, looking increasingly alarmed. Sanghyeok, still frozen to the ground as he stares at the violent color staining Seongwoong’s skin, doesn’t move when he hurriedly pulls out his phone, opening the camera.
“I—oh.” He tilts his head, baring more of his throat to the light. And his face breaks into a grin. “We’re soulmates!” He scrambles to his feet, almost bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Can I see?”
He extends a hand, stopping before he actually touches Sanghyeok, and something bitter blooms on his tongue.
They’re soulmates, but Seongwoong’s soulmark makes it look like he’s dying.
They’re soulmates, but the color of Sanghyeok’s love can only look beautiful in a morbid kind of way.
They’re soulmates, but Seongwoong still won’t touch him without permission.
It’s his fault.
Wordlessly, he holds out his right arm.
Seongwoong’s hand is warm and he is gentle as he traces over the gold spilling over the fingers and down his wrist. “It’s normally not this bright,” he wonders.
He looks up at Sanghyeok, happy smile still on his face.
And he is still a dying man, death wound stark on his throat.
Sanghyeok doesn’t get much time to get over it before people are rushing into the room to usher them on stage, all of them recoiling at the red on Seongwoong’s neck. His heart does a strange little squeeze when Seongwoong waves off all efforts to try and cover it up. “I’m fine,” he’d said, smile still on his face.
Seongwoong’s gold shimmers beneath the spotlights.
It’s beautiful.
It flashes in the corner of his eye every time he moves his hand and he has to stop himself from staring at it and the way it glitters. Still, he keeps it together long enough to win the series, bowing to each member of the opposite team before hurrying off stage.
“Good job,” Jeonggyun says to him, a soft smile on his face. Carefully, he puts his hand on Sanghyeok’s shoulder. “And congratulations,” he adds. “You have a beautiful color.”
Initial scare gone, the others are now poking at Seongwoong’s throat, even as he shies away, laughing.
Silently, he watches them, dark royal purple staining Gwangjin’s wrist and Eonyoung’s elbow, splashed across Jeonghyeon’s upper arm and cupping Seongwoong’s neck.
And he’s curious. Maybe selfishly so.
Jeonggyun raises his hand, presumably to pat him on the shoulder once, and Sanghyeok takes the chance to shift in his chair. Jeonggyun’s hand comes down on the juncture between his neck and shoulder.
He jerks back, surprised, but Sanghyeok only turns, eyes narrowing, searching for a stain of color he hopes he won’t find.
Jeonggyun’s left palm is stained brilliant gold. And now, his right is a deep bloody red.
Sanghyeok drags his eyes up to meet Jeonggyun’s gaze. “I’m sorry,” he says.
By the time he reaches his dorm, he’s been thoroughly lectured at for long enough that the words what are you sorry for? circle around his head like cartoon birds, twittering away by his ear.
He also has a sunset bleeding across his arm, light cloudy gray melding into sky blue and into soft coral and orange.
And there’s tension.
He supposes that it’s…fine if they want to touch him, their colors already inked into his skin, but they still carefully give him his space and he doesn’t know how to get rid of the awkwardness hanging around him.
It’s probably his fault again. He’s too used to avoiding them, and whenever he tries, he sees his red splashed across Seongwoong’s neck, staining Jeonggyun’s hand, marring the rest of his team’s arms and a bitter taste blooms over his tongue.
They have to have picked up on his aversion to his own color, he thinks, because they start to almost flaunt their marks.
They drape their jackets over the backs of their chairs, citing the hot summer air as if the studio didn’t have air conditioning so cold the date might as well be November, they never shy away from the ever watching cameras, and they twist their arms so that the spotlights catch on the patches of bright colors on their skin.
Or maybe he’s overthinking it. They’d done this before, hadn’t they? Shown off the blue and gold, the gray and the purple, the sunset gradient off to anyone who looked up at the stage? The only difference now is that his red is there too, bared for the world to see.
He tries to ignore it. For the most part, it works. He’s always been good at focusing and League of Legends is his job.
Then again, things are different backstage. He can cover most of his marks with his jacket sleeves, adjust the collar and not look in mirrors to avoid the purple crawling up his neck, but he can’t hide his hands.
Some of the older generations wore gloves—still do, but they interfere with his dexterity and it isn’t as if there is much to do backstage besides scroll on his phone or play games.
The gold sparkles up incessantly at him, flashing no matter how low the light as if determined to grab his attention.
If anyone notices how he tries to do things with his left hand, they don’t comment on it.
None of them ever say anything, though he sees how they inch closer as the summer season closes out and they get ready to head into Worlds.
Jeonghyeon taps the top of his monitor instead of just calling his name until he breaks out of the game-induced haze when it's time to eat but it's not the casual nudges he’ll give the others. Gwangjin and Eonyoung will sidle up to him, almost compressing him into a sandwich but not quite, heads craned over to peer down at his phone and Jeonggyun and Byounghoon still wait until he’s shrugged on his jacket after games if he’d taken it off to pat his shoulder. As for Seongwoong…
He has a habit. It’s a strange one, but Seongwoong’s always been strange about touch, giving it freely and never shying away from it—never being afraid of what colors might stain his skin.
Sanghyeok’s walked in or looked up countless times to see him idly tracing the edges of his color, cuddled up to Eonyoung or Gwangjin or Jeonghyeon, when he wasn’t annoying the support, brushing his fingers or even his mark from them over it. It’s not uncommon to see him close to Jeonggyun either, leaning back into the hand cradling the back of his neck, even if that’s not how he’d gotten that particular mark.
He doesn’t ask, with the others. He just cheerfully pushes himself into their space if they haven’t pushed into his and the others never seem to mind.
It’s only with Sanghyeok that he hesitates. He doesn’t ask, just like the others, but everywhere he goes, he can feel Seongwoong’s gaze drift to the irregular splotch of gold dusted over the back of his hand and knuckles.
He never asks. Sanghyeok kind of wishes he would.
He doesn’t bother stopping the grin that stretches over his face as his screen freezes over with the customary victory blue, taking his headphones off to the cheering of the crowd.
To his right, Gwangjin shouts, pulling away from his PC, Jeonghyeon taking one of the AD carry’s raised hands as an opportunity to high-five him.
To his left, Eonyoung is already out of his seat, practically vibrating.
And then there’s Seongwoong.
The bright blue light of victory and the smile on his face speaks for him enough.
So does the way his hands twitch upward before he stops himself.
Maybe he’s just a little high off the win or maybe he just wants to try.
Sanghyeok closes the gap.
Seongwoong is stiff with surprise for only a second before he’s returning the hug.
And in that moment, it’s just the two of them beneath the bright stage lights.
Still, Sanghyeok can’t help but laugh when Eonyoung ruins the moment, practically bowling them over, shrieking with excitement.
It breaks some kind of barrier, Sanghyeok thinks. Or, at least, something starts to crack. On the ride back to the hotel, they squish into the car, a little tighter than they might have dared to on the way here.
They’re still careful, but maybe a little less so. Eonyoung twists in his seat, resting his chin on the back of the seat in a way that can’t be comfortable as the car dips and bounces. Jeonghyeon has elected for comfort, facing the right away, even as he tosses words over his shoulder.
And then there’s Gwangjin, leaning on Seongwoong so heavily that he’s nearly pushed Seongwoong on top of Sanghyeok.
Sanghyeok sends him a flat look, one that he knows, by now, would send the American crowd roaring and cheering, but that only gets him a cheeky grin from Gwangjin.
“Sorry,” Seongwoong says, sounding at least a little genuinely apologetic. He pushes weakly against Gwangjin’s head.
“It’s just gravity,” Gwangjin says, still smirking. “Centrifugal force, you know?”
Jeonghyeon sighs. “The road is completely straight,” he says. “And how do you know that word?”
Gwangjin makes an offended noise, but Eonyoung breaks in. “Do you even know what that actually means?”
“You’re all ganging up on me,” Gwangjin complains, turning pleading eyes onto Sanghyeok, still pressed against the car window. “How could you bully your AD carry?”
“Oh, no,” Jeonghyeon mutters, deadpan. “What a travesty.”
Gwangjin heaves a dramatic sigh, twisting to flop against Seongwoong, who squeaks when it tips him further onto Sanghyeok’s arm. “Sorry,” he says again.
The car turns around a bend and the dying sunlight flashes through buildings. Sanghyeok looks down at his hand, the gold glittering, then at Gwangjin and Seongwoong. And for the second time today, he decides that he wants to try.
Keeping his face blank, he shifts his hands under Seongwoong’s shoulder and shoves.
And Gwangjin immediately sits up.
He manages to catch Seongwoong when he topples over, holding him upright and within the blink of an eye, Sanghyeok finds himself half lying in Seongwoong’s lap, the seat belt tight around his waist.
Eonyoung cackles at them and from the front, Jeonggyun sighs. “Don’t fight in the car,” he chides.
“Too slow,” Gwangjin teases, and Sanghyeok flushes.
“I meant to do that,” he says, crossing his arms, stubbornly staying in the awkward position.
“I’m sure,” Jeonghyeon says skeptically.
“That’s so cute,” Eonyoung coos, and Sanghyeok has to be deep red now when Eonyoung takes out his phone, but he’s in too deep to back out and so he just glares back defiantly.
Seongwoong stares down at him. Sanghyeok ignores the way he can feel the tips of ears burning from embarrassment and stays there.
When Seongwoong finally unfreezes, it’s just to tug gently on the seat belt digging viciously into Sanghyeok’s waist, loosening it enough to let him breathe.
They’re all too high off the win, so they pile into Jeonghyeon’s room. He rolls his eyes at them and shoots them an, “Oh, fuck all of you,” but he opens his door further.
Gwangjin immediately claims the bed, racing in and throwing himself onto the messed up sheets, though he doesn’t get to really celebrate because Eonyoung proceeds to blithely flatten him when he jumps up onto the bed too.
“Ow,” Gwangjin wheezes. “I think you broke my ribs.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Eonyoung chirps, shifting, digging his elbows further into Gwangjin’s ribs when he rolls off of him.
“I hate you.”
“You’re fine.”
Jeonghyeon sighs. “Fnatic and Royal Club are tomorrow, right?”
“Yep! And we—” Gwangjin yanks Seongwoong down onto Eonyoung, cutting him off.
“That bed cannot be big enough for all of you fuckers,” Jeonghyeon says critically.
Eonyoung exchanges a glance with Gwangjin and Sanghyeok finds himself eyeing the door.
“This is the dumbest thing I’ve done.” To shut him up, Eonyoung flaps a hand in Jeonghyeon’s direction and judging by the yelp, he finds his mark. “Wow,” comes the muffled reply, sarcasm dripping from his words, “so much respect for your elders.”
“You’ve done dumber,” Gwangjin dismisses, ignoring the jab about respect with his typical respect-less manner.
Jeonghyeon tosses Eonyoung’s hand off his face. “True. I’ve played with you and I’ve got your ugly-ass pink on my arm.”
Gwangjin squawks indignantly at that. “I’m the best AD carry you could ask for! And it’s coral, not pink!”
“Looks pink to me.”
Sanghyeok very carefully does not laugh. He lies still, half hanging off the bed. He could leave, he knows, leave his team to this tangle of arms and legs that’ll no doubt make Jeonggyun burst into laughter and Byounghoon heave a tired sigh. Seongwoong’s grip on the edge of his jacket’s sleeve is loose, just tight enough for him to actually be able to hold it, but not enough to stop Sanghyeok if he wanted to leave.
And they are all still so gentle, even though Sanghyeok’s seen Gwangjin try to body slam Eonyoung like an overeager Gragas for stealing his food and Jeonghyeon pick Seongwoong up like a naughty puppy.
Speaking of Seongwoong—he lets out a muffled sigh, crushed between Gwangjin and Jeonghyeon. “Can you let me out,” he asks piteously.
Jeonghyeon shoves Gwangjin, Eonyoung rolling off his edge of the bed, and Gwangjin hits the carpeted ground with an oomph. “Party’s over, get out of my room,” Jeonghyeon says. “You proved your point.”
“Would have been easier if you weren’t so fat,” Gwangjin snipes back, sitting up and rubbing the back of his head.
“The next time someone ganks bot, I’m just going to let you fucking die.”
Gwangjin, like the child he is, just flips Jeonghyeon off.
Sanghyeok can’t help it. He laughs, the sound soft and quiet, smile half hidden by the rumpled blanket.
Surprisingly, or maybe not that surprisingly, none of them actually leave Jeonghyeon’s room, though they do untangle themselves, settling for lying parallel to the shorter side of the bed, arms and legs pressed in close because none of them want to sit on the ground.
He’s been shunted to the end, given enough room that he’s not in any danger of falling off the edge unless Seongwoong decides to do a full body roll, and he cranes his head up to look over his four teammates.
In contrast, the four of them are packed together like sardines, Jeonghyeon on his side with his back against the headboard, arm folded and half resting on Eonyoung’s torso, thumb idly rubbing along the splotch of orange running along the edge of Eonyoung’s wrist, Jeonghyeon’s own matching sky blue mark washed out in the low moonlight peeking through the still unclosed shades.
“If you’re going to turn the lights off,” Eonyoung grumbles, “we might as well just sleep over.”
“Fuck no,” Jeonghyeon says immediately, though he doesn’t move and neither do they. “You’re not sleeping here.”
“But hyung,” Seongwoong says, a yawn punctuating his next words, “we’re tired.”
“So go back to your own room.”
“Come on,” Gwangjin wheedles, though he mostly talks into Eonyoung’s ear, “We won’t bother you.”
“You’re literally on my bed. I have maybe ten percent of the space to myself.”
Sanghyeok’s a little too aware of how much space he’s taking up. “…You can move over closer this way, if you want,” he offers quietly.
In the dark, his eyes glittering, Seongwoong turns his head.
There’s a beat of silence.
Then Seongwoong yelps as Gwangjin shoves him. “Scooch,” he orders, and there’s the rustle of bedsheets.
Sanghyeok nearly flinches off the edge of the bed when Gwangjin twists, flinging an arm over Seongwoong’s chest, but he manages to tip forward. Gwangjin’s fingertips brush accidentally against his right arm, right across where the streaks of coral are. “Oh, shit, sorry,” He says, quietly, snatching his hand back.
The four uneven lines spark with electricity, lightning burning a gentle warmth through his veins, turning hot enough to feel freezing cold. “It’s fine,” he replies. He kind of misses it. Gwangjin doesn’t move back, hand resting on the chest of Seongwoong’s chest instead, rising and falling with Seongwoong’s breathing. This all seems so easy, Sanghyeok realizes. The four of them and the easy way in which they move and talk and touch. “Do…do you do this a lot?”
Eonyoung cranes his head up. “Do what?”
Gwangjin snorts. “What? Crawl into each other’s beds? Who do you take us for, Sanghyeokie? What’s going on in that head of yours—” Jeonghyeon hits him lightly with a pillow and he breaks off, sputtering. “Hey!”
“Shut it. No, these three just like to be spontaneous.”
“But you’re nice, hyung,” Seongwoong pipes up.
Jeonghyeon makes a face, barely visible from the heavy shadows thrown over his face. “Stop sucking up to me, it’s weird.” He raises his arm, shadows rendering the colors monochrome. Still, Sanghyeok can trace the edges of them. Peeking under the edge of his sleeve is Jeonggyun’s, the half-ring on the crook of his elbow that’ll stay a soft gray even under sunlight is Byounghoon’s. Eonyoung, Gwangjin, and Seongwoong’s colors are on his other arm, and Sanghyeok’s eyes drift to his.
Even in the dark, it’s easily visible, a deep red running along the inside of Jeonghyeon’s forearm.
Maybe he feels Sanghyeok’s stare, or maybe it's just those strange habits they all seem to have, but he puts his arm down, other hand lifting to rub against the violent color.
Sanghyeok looks away. Seongwoong doesn’t seem to miss any of this, tilting his head. “It’s not that weird,” he whispers, shrugging. “We’re soulmates after all.”
Gwangjin makes a vaguely disgusted noise in the back of his throat. “Don’t get all sentimental on me, I’ll shove you off the bed,” he threatens. “Besides, they’re just colors.”
“Great, so you don’t mind if I call your pink ugly,” is Jeonghyeon’s immediate retort.
“It’s coral!”
“To be fair,” Eonyoung points out, “that is basically just pink.”
“I’m going to int in the finals, I swear to God.” He groans. “Why couldn’t I have gotten a cooler color like Sanghyeok’s?”
Sanghyeok startles. “Huh?”
“Gwangjin wants your color,” Eonyoung says.
He blinks. “Why?”
Gwangjin bolts upright. “What do you mean, why? It’s a cool color! Better than this—” he picks up Seongwoong’s arm, gesturing at the splotch of coral decorating the skin just beneath the hollow of his wrists “—at least.” He pauses. “Wait, do you not like your color?”
Sanghyeok clamps his mouth shut and there’s the loud rustle of sheets as all of his teammates sit up. Reluctantly, he props himself up too.
The gold covering his hand glitters.
He doesn’t say, I thought you knew? Wasn’t it obvious?
Jeonghyeon and Gwangjin’s faces are nearly blank, save for their furrowed brows, the bot lane united in the strangest moments. Eonyoung just looks confused and Seongwoong…looks sad.
The dull moonlight is still strong enough for Sanghyeok to see the dark red slashing across his throat.
He looks away.
“For what it’s worth,” Seongwoong says softly, turning to face him fully and crossing his legs, “I like your color.”
He nearly laughs at him, because that’s Seongwoong, who can’t be mean to save his life and would rather let himself get steamrolled than get into a fight outside of League of Legends.
But then he looks up, at his four teammates, at the naked honesty there, and the sound dies.
His hand twitches upward, fingers stopping before they can touch the mark on his neck and Seongwoong doesn’t move, doesn’t blink. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I am,” he replies immediately.
For the third time that day, he decides he wants to try.
Slowly, he puts the back of his hand against Seongwoong’s throat, almost in a reverse of how he’d gotten the mark in the first place.
His knuckles press against the steady beat of Seongwoong’s pulse and like he’d seen Jeonghyeon do, Sanghyeok ghosts his thumb across the line of Seongwoong’s jaw, along the edge of the mark.
Gentle lightning sparks up through his fingers, up his arm, a warmth he instinctively misses. He keeps his arm raised, gold meeting red, for another moment.
And Seongwoong just closes his eyes, chin dipping down a little, as if to rest on Sanghyeok’s hand.
Sanghyeok can hear the announcer finish Royal Club’s introductions and on cue, the booth rumbles as it begins to rise.
Fog sprays up from behind, but he remembers to wave when the announcer starts again, lights flashing and illuminating their booth. He sneaks a glance to the side at his bot lane, gaze turning into a flat look when he spots the rolled up sleeves.
Gwangjin ignores him in favor of standing up from where he’d been leaning against his chair, suddenly aware of the audience and the thousands of eyes on them as the fog dissipates, and Jeonghyeon shoots him a smile.
Sanghyeok turns away, watching one of the cameras zoom in closer to Eonyoung, the announcer dramatically reading his IGN out loud. He lets out a cheer, even as the camera moves on.
There aren’t spotlights like the Summer Finals, but the lights catch on the patchwork colors on his arms.
Sanghyeok can’t help the smile that tugs at his mouth, no matter how he tries to force the corners of his lips down into stoicism.
They make their way—run, basically, down the steps and to the cup, fallen confetti from earlier underfoot and then there are spotlights.
They flash over the screaming crowd, sparking off the trophy with silver flashes.
Sanghyeok puts a hand against it, the metal cool under his fingers and the gold glitters up at him.
He looks up, his teammates, crowding around the trophy as well and back down at his hands.
Before anyone tries a countdown, before they can really lift it up, Sanghyeok makes his decision.
He yanks up his sleeve and the sunset painted across his forearm reflects back at him from the mirror-like surface.
Someone laughs, even amongst the cheers Eonyoung and, surprisingly, Byounghoon burst out into, and Sanghyeok looks up, past the heavy trophy held up in his hands.
Seongwoong’s at the front, facing the crowd as the spotlights dance across the stage.
And with the eyes of the world on him, he tilts his head up triumphantly, proudly, baring his throat.