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“It’s snowing!”
Minho glanced up as Jisung called out. Jisung had his hands against a window in the room they were filming in, staring wide-eyed out of it. The other members quickly crowded around him, their voices blending together.
There was always a huge fuss over the first snow of the season. Minho could never find the same sense of wonder in it.
Instead of joining the other members at Jisung’s window, Minho made his way to one of the other windows in the room, leaning against the windowsill. He watched the delicate flakes drift from the clouds. He could see some beginning to gather against the glass, though it would be a while before it started to build and blanket the city in white.
Minho rested his chin on his folded arms as he continued to gaze out the window. The staff members present weren’t trying to regain their attention, probably getting shots of the crowd at the window and the falling snow. It was fitting to what they were doing.
He watched as the snowflakes began to grow thicker, white blurs obscuring the view of the skyline. So pure now, it would soon turn into mud and ice, something to disrupt traffic and bite at hands and faces. Starting out so pure and innocent, tiny and delicate, and later crushed, kicked, and moulded into something harsh and disruptive.
There was a fragile beauty in the soft snow for now, but it was only a matter of time before they began to despise the biting cold, the icy pavements and salted roads, praying for spring to come and melt it all away.
If Minho was snow, he was the muddied kind. The kind everyone would get tired of eventually. The kind everyone would wish away.
He found no joy in watching the snow, but he couldn’t take his eyes off it; an odd sense of jealousy. He wanted to be innocent and unbroken again, fresh snow instead of a flake tossed aside, beaten and muddied. He’d never be like that again. Time had drifted away like snow to the busy street below. It was hard to notice how fast it had all slipped away, too focused on a single snowflake to notice how much else there was to it. He could grab one moment, a memory, and try to keep it from melting away, only to miss the thousands more he’d never be able to hold onto again. It was peaceful and scary at the same time.
Life was so stupid. He felt so far away.
He felt a tap on his shoulder, and looked up to see Felix glancing down at him, gentle concern in his eyes. He seemed to make no noise when he opened his mouth, but Minho understood him anyway. Staff had called for them, but Minho hadn’t heard. Minho returned to the others, to the smiling and joking, pretending he didn’t feel like he was drifting with the snow.
It didn’t get better, even after filming had finished for the day. Minho found himself drifting from task to task, barely present, barely alive. He danced to silence, spent his sleepless nights staring out the window and wishing for something he couldn’t change, ate only what he had to to satisfy the other members who tried and failed to hide the worried glances they would send him when he didn’t respond to his own name and didn’t talk any more than he had to. Minho blamed the snow, blamed for looking out the window that day, told himself that once the snow melted and winter ended, it would get better.
But it wasn’t really the snow that caused it. He didn’t realise it until the video they had filmed that day came out. Minho stared at the shell that was supposed to be himself, distant from the start, trying to match what the others put out and miserably lagging behind. He hadn’t realised the cameras could even see him when he was watching the snow, but the camera panned from the crowd surrounding Jisung to Minho’s face where he stood in solitude, zooming in on his distant, misty eyes. Minho didn’t watch any more after that.
The snow hadn’t caused it. It was just what it took for Minho to realise it had become worse.
He watched the other members from a distance. How were they so present in the moment, in their dancing and singing and just being there when anything Minho did felt so devoid of everything? Had he ever really been present like how he could always see the others being? He was letting more time slip away from him, more snowflakes melting away without him even trying to grab at them. Or experience them at all.
Despite him pretending it was the snow that caused everything to get worse, Minho, of course, found himself in it again, drifting to the rooftop after a dance practice he barely felt like he actually attended and lying in the barely-touched snow there, staring up at cloudy sky and letting new snowflakes begin to cover his arms and chest, trying to soak up the cold and feel something.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been lying there before a figure blocked his vision of the sky, Kim Seungmin’s face peering down at him.
“Are you coming inside?” Minho felt him ask. “You’ve been out here for a while.”
Minho couldn’t bring himself to respond.
Seungmin didn’t seem surprised at this, crouching beside him. “Your lips are blue. You’re gonna get sick like this.”
When Minho still said nothing, Seungmin tugged him to his feet, brushing snow off his jacket and leading him inside. Minho just drifted along, expecting to be taken to Chan or a manager who would scold him from being out in the snow for however long he was out there–maybe that would finally make him come to his senses–but Seungmin stopped just inside of the door.
“Are you alright?” he asked softly, looking Minho over, still holding him by his wrist.
Minho felt himself nod and tried to get out of Seungmin’s grasp, but he tightened his grip and pulled him back.
“No, seriously. You’ve barely talked to us in months. You constantly look like you’re not all here and we keep having to call you ten times before you respond to us.”
Had it really been months? It didn’t feel like that.
“Talk to me. What’s wrong?”
Minho hesitated before responding. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice embarrassingly shaky.
Seungmin frowned. “So you’re struggling and just keeping it all to yourself. Give me a bit more than that.”
“I…”
Minho wasn’t used to being so vulnerable in front of the younger members, especially not in front of Kim Seungmin. Their interactions on camera had them acting like a divorced couple, and while they were close despite that, Minho couldn’t deny that their dynamic was strange. But Seungmin wasn’t one to judge someone struggling, and he looked at him so earnestly…
“I just… don’t really feel like I’m entirely here.”
Seungmin blinked. “Explain,” he said gently.
“I don’t know– I feel like I’m just watching everything from somewhere else. I feel like I’m drifting away, like I’ve been taken from what I used to be and turned into something people will pray away, like…”
His gaze drifted to some clumps of snow that had been dragged in, muddy and half-melted.
Seungmin followed his gaze. “Like you’re snow?”
Minho managed to nod.
“The thing about snow,” Seungmin began, still looking at the greyish clumps by the door, “is that it doesn’t stay that way forever. It melts and becomes something beautiful. Like a river or a stream.” He looked back up at Minho. “You’re… going through a rough time right now, but it won’t be like this forever.”
He wouldn’t. But how long would it take for him to feel like his life wasn’t drifting away from him? The others were worried about him. He was slowing them down and holding them back.
“You don’t have to feel whole or fully present right now, hyung,” Seungmin said quietly. “Just don’t disappear. Don’t drift too far away. We’re here if it’s hard, you know.”
“I know,” Minho whispered.
“Come home,” Seungmin coaxed. He released Minho’s wrist and offered him his hand instead. “We don’t have to talk about this if you aren’t ready for that right now. But let us warm you up a bit. You’re freezing.”
Minho may not be as pure and clear as the season’s first snow. But maybe Seungmin was right, and he just needed to wait for spring to come and melt the snow away.
“Okay, just–” Minho exhaled shakily and took Seungmin’s hand. “Okay.”