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The key wasn’t something Gunwoo hyung had made a big deal of, when he’d pressed it into Moondae’s palm and folded his fingers over it.

“For convenience,” he’d said, putting his own hands in his pockets. The scarf covering his mouth had done little to protect him from the cold or hide the redness of his face. Moondae had seen the syllables form in the air, puffs of white fog in the frigid air.

He’d walked away soon after, waving a hand over his shoulder on the way to his own train. Moondae had stood in the space he left behind and watched him go.

And then he’d followed Gunwoo hyung home the week after, eyeing his feet all the while, narrowly dodging puddles and stepping over dilapidated concrete sidewalks. He’d barely known when they’d arrived at their destination, an unassuming officetel in an unassuming neighbourhood, three storeys up from the ground floor.

They’d taken to the stairwell, their footsteps ringing, and it seemed that Gunwoo hyung only remembered he was there when he shouldered through his front door and turned around to close it.

His eyes had widened and he’d frozen for a telling second. Moondae had just smiled and lifted his plastic bag, still full of the gukbap they’d ordered only half an hour prior. Moondae’s appetite, absent or not, hadn’t mattered. Not when Gunwoo hyung had offered, and especially not when he’d stuck to his word.

So, Moondae had understood his inattentiveness. He was also new to this.

[CUTEPID’s first comeback of the year: Will their success lead to an old-gen resurgence?...]

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[TeSTAR’s Kim Raebin and Bae Sejin dazzle the audience with their new…]

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[Any updates on the LUCILLE situation?]

…?

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[TeSTAR’s hot new manager?]

Ugh…!

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[Popular beauty product RECALLED after mass hospitalisations: Is this the end…]

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[[NEW] TeSTAR’s Park Moondae’s explosive return!!!! Watch as a star idol shoots back into the public eye!]

…

…

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[[NEW] TOP 10 SHORT EXERCISE ROUTINES THAT WILL BUILD MUSCLE IN ONLY 30 DAYS…]

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[[NEW] Celebrating the homecoming of a long-lost puppy dog!]

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Click.

It must be one of the company’s more used green rooms, but there’s still enough dust in the air that Park Moondae sneezes twice, and then twice more as he scrambles to cover his face. He pulls back from the crook of his elbow to find products smearing into the fabric, glittering under the intense lights.

He weathers another series of careful brushstrokes and bows in apology to makeup artists and mask-clad staff members alike as he follows their instructions out of the room. He spills into the studio-greater, trailing onto the centre stage with feet that scuff the white floors with their drag. He only notices the marks he leaves when he looks down, an unbearable disorientation clinging to his insides as he reckons with his existence before the diffusers and LED bulbs and camera lenses alike.

It’s another TeSTAR schedule, in another studio with another company, whose name had slipped from his grasp despite his careful recitations, and it’s finally time for Park Moondae’s solo photos.

A flash of light blinds him, searing green and blue and purple outlines into the backs of his eyelids. He blinks back the blurriness clouding his vision.

It never feels natural, being on this side of the camera.

The body keeps the score, or something, and when he closes his eyes there’s a camera in his hand, vibrating with each click and shutter. When he opens them, he’s back in the studio, standing under blinding lights and the attention of at least two dozen people, all prepared to jump in at a moment’s notice.

And they do. One call from the photographer and Park Moondae is stuck accepting careful hair corrections, letting TeSTAR’s hairstylist manoeuvre his face this way and that. He submits to the contact but he finds his fingers curling into the hems of his sleeves more often than not over the next half-hour.

He straightens them out, conscious that someone will call him out for it.

No one says a word.

In fact, when he finds himself positioned closer to the staff on stand-by, the murmurs he overhears seem to be more complimentary than anything. He feels himself blush on principle and then tries his best to ignore whatever faint cooing may be coming from the sidelines.

He pads over to the main monitor when the photographer deems his role complete, pulling his fingers out of the gaps in his knit sweater and hunches over in front of a monitor when told to. He watches as a folder appears and he’s subsequently presented with a slideshow.

Park Moondae’s face glows under the studio lights, the sparse glitter on his cheekbones adding a fantastical quality to the photos. They’ll play with this, they say, using a few filters to blur the harsher edges and accentuate the dreaminess of his expression. He registers their words, but they leave his mind quicker than he can memorise them. His gaze traces the dark hair peeking out from behind Park Moondae’s ear, and the plaintive curve of his lips, and the way his hands curl into themselves, his manicured nails pressing into the plush flesh of his palms.

He frowns.

‘Oh no…’

A nudge startles him out of his apprehension.

The photographer gives him a terse smile and a pat on the shoulder. His hand remains there. Park Moondae tries not to eye it too obviously.

“There’s no need to be so nervous. You always do a great job Moondae-ssi. In fact…” He pauses, leaning in. Park Moondae’s shoulder protests under the added weight. “You may even want to consider doing some modelling on the side.”

His voice trails off. Park Moondae can hear the shill from a mile away. He’s been getting better at it.

Still, he’s unsure if this is the kind of overfamiliarity he should be wary of. He twitches his lips into a
smile and bows regardless, shuffling off the set.

Ryu Chungwoo meets him at the border, clasping his shoulder in a warm, firm grip.

“You did well.”

Maybe it’s the age difference, but Ryu Chungwoo’s smile has a comforting quality to it. Park Moondae returns this one more easily and slinks past him with an unsteady wish for good luck.

He finds himself in one of the corners of the studio shielded by moveable barriers and stacks of chairs.

He sinks into a crouch with his back against a wall, and then adjusts himself into a proper sitting position when the burn of his shins grows to be too much. His pounding heart slows to a less nauseating rhythm.

It’s dark here, much darker than any other place in this location and yet, with the lights bouncing off the white floors and the constant chatter echoing throughout, it’s still too much. With his feet flat on the ground and his knees bent, he rests his arms on them and stares into the shadow between his legs. If he could jump in there, into that compact dark space, maybe time would stop.

Before long, footsteps sound their approach and a pair of loafers enters his field of view, stopping right in front of him.

He drags his gaze up slowly, along slacks and a plain shirt until it reaches the person’s face, also cast in shadow. The only exception to this darkness is the metal frame of their glasses, peeking out.

He’d picked those ones out months ago.

He accepts a water bottle from an outstretched hand, moisture immediately clinging to the pads of his fingers and his palm as he twists it around. It leaves a cool trail, so he brings it up to his forehead with a sigh. The person clicks their tongue, reaching down to adjust it upward, away from the makeup he can still feel caked above his brow.

He laughs.

“Thanks, Gunwoo hyung.”

He presses the bottle to his hairline once more before cracking it open and having a sip.

The water is chilly. It goes down intrusively, starkly contrasting his warm insides. He feels it reach his stomach, as cold as it was when it entered his mouth.

Suddenly, an inexplicable thirst grips him. He takes another sip, swirling it around his mouth before swallowing.

The itch has yet to be satisfied.

He runs his tongue along the underside of his canines, then his bottom teeth. He’s become sensitive.

Ryu Gunwoo remains standing.

Would it be cruel to say that the key was probably part of Gunwoo hyung’s plan?

It was a habit of his that Moondae had managed to clock early, somehow.

Subtleties in his expression and wording that would convince you of one thing or another, without realising you were being convinced of anything at all.

A habit takes twenty-one days to form, according to Gunwoo hyung.

When Moondae thought about it, much later, it was clear that Gunwoo hyung had spread those days out over a period of months.

First it was the occasional invitation to dinner, which Moondae had had no means or intention to decline. He'd taken it as a kindness typical of Gunwoo hyung..

Then, it became a routine. A night of companionable silence once a week. A roulette of locations; It was a park in the spring and Gunwoo hyung's apartment every other season.

At a certain point, three years had passed and Moondae had felt the phantom grooves of the key imprinted into his palm. The fingers of his other hand had curled around the familiar weight of a carton-laden plastic bag, handle stretched to its limits. The walk to the apartment the key would unlock felt faster than normal. They’d already evolved past the need to text each other, but the silence had felt suffocating that day.

In another world, they would’ve cleared Gunwoo hyung’s increasingly cluttered table just enough that they could set their containers down and eat together. In that world, they’d share a drink or two, and Gunwoo hyung would see him off as he stumbled back down the stairs. They’d meet again the next week and Moondae would be running late, but Gunwoo hyung would’ve already gotten takeout from Moondae’s favourite place hours prior, so they’d warm it up and have a room-temperature drink or two, and Gunwoo hyung would see him off.

And Moondae wouldn’t have had to find his unresponsive body in the living room.

Gunwoo hyung wasn’t the type to bother others needlessly. Moondae had chalked it up to similarities in their upbringings and life experiences, the expectation of taking up as little space as possible while the world walked on around you.

It had been comforting, knowing that there was someone just like you right there, close enough to touch.

In the pockets of time found in hospital hallways and empty apartments, he realised that that feeling had persisted.

Maybe they were too similar and the boundaries of "self" had crumbled after years of cohabitation. Moondae was no longer just part of the greater world, but now some part of Gunwoo hyung, liable to all the same things he’d do to himself.

And wasn’t that almost kind? To take something into yourself and make it part of you.

In that way, it really was convenient. Gunwoo hyung had inconvenienced no one but himself.

Applause echoes around the studio as the shoot finally finishes. Park Moondae stifles a sigh and drifts over to the others as they collect their belongings and bow to the staff members. They congregate near the entranceway, waiting for their general manager–a man whose name Park Moondae had been too panicked to remember during TeSTAR’s crash course, and was now too embarrassed to ask about–to carefully bid the staff a courteous farewell.

In the meantime, Park Moondae sways on his feet and blinks back his exhaustion. He rubs his eyes, his hand brushing against a makeup-free cheek on the way back down.

‘Just a few more hours…’

However, inevitably, the bright blond beacon of Cha Eugene’s hair ensnares Park Moondae. He finds himself pulled to Cha Eugene’s side through his intrigue alone, stuck listening to another one of his and Kim Raebin’s insightful discussions.

“...Yeah, but you put the milk into the bowl first and then add the cereal later. [That’s just common sense].” Cha Eugene tilts his head back. From his side profile, Moondae watches his eyebrows scrunch.

“You won’t be able to achieve the perfect milk-to-cereal ratio that way, idiot. You’ll be using way too much milk!” Kim Raebin leans forward to frown at Cha Eugene. “Wasteful!”

Cha Eugene swipes at the air in front of him as if disregarding Kim Raebin’s words.

“Pshh, [skill issue]. You just have to eyeball it. And it tastes better in that order!” He sticks his tongue out at Kim Raebin, to which Kim Raebin readies a fist.

Park Moondae leans in from Cha Eugene’s other side, suddenly nervous.

‘If they got into a fight here…’

“It’s…It’s crunchier if you pour the milk in first…” He forces out, wiping sweat from his temple.

Kim Raebin and Cha Eugene blink at him, then at each other.

Cha Eugene’s mouth breaks into a grin as he fingerguns at Park Moondae.

“Heyyy! Moondae hyung gets it!”

He slings his arms over both of them, pulling them into him and ignoring their simultaneous groans. The three of them hobble forward, their debate delaying them to the point that the others have already started to follow their general manager out of the studio.

Park Moondae can’t help but lean into it, smiling into Cha Eugene’s arm and allowing himself to be dragged through the doors.

Instantly, the slight breeze passing through the parking lot feels like heaven on Park Moondae’s overheated body. There’s something about studio lights and their propensity towards attempting to cook their subject alive that really puts him on edge during these schedules. Not to mention the cameras.

Speaking of them…

A crowd stands in the distance, forming a barrier around the building. Park Moondae’s ears can pick up the sound of clicking from here.

‘Paparazzi…’

He tries not to grimace, and then feels a little guilty at his reaction.

A van approaches them with a familiar paparazzo in the driver’s seat. Park Moondae grimaces a little this time.

“Oh! Ryu Gunwoo-ssi, good thinking.” Their general manager waves them forward, sliding open the back doors as soon as the van comes to a halt.

The members promptly pile in, with Cha Eugene and Kim Raebin clambering into the back seats without a moment’s hesitation.

And yet, Park Moondae halts as soon as he steps up into the car. His hand rests on the folded seat.

He glances between the back seats, where the younger members are now adjusting their seatbelts, and the middle row just as Seon Ahyeon slides open the opposite door. A quick look to the driver’s seat finds Ryu Gunwoo, already staring back at Park Moondae.

…

Park Moondae settles down in his chosen seat, shuffling further toward the center when Lee Sejin plops down next to him.

Seon Ahyeon’s eyelashes flutter rapidly as he takes in Park Moondae’s proximity, but he simply fluffs his neck pillow and sends a sweet smile Park Moondae’s way.

The van rumbles once as it peels out of the parking lot and onto the main road. Faint chatter between the managers and members fills the confined space. Someone’s turned the heater on, for some reason, but Park Moondae’s position in the center of the car gives him no leverage to turn off any of the vents. He also can’t bring himself to open his mouth, the sticky warmth and fatigue in his limbs working together to render him silent.

The van takes a turn that causes Lee Sejin’s head to droop onto Park Moondae’s shoulder. A quick look at Seon Ahyeon reveals a slack face and an open mouth.

He presses back against the seat, discontent, which is when he feels a tap on the back of his head. Pressure lingers there for a moment, and then his hair is ruffled enthusiastically.

“Pssst.”

He looks over his unoccupied shoulder.

Cha Eugene’s wide eyes are only inches from him.

“Eh!” Park Moondae gasps, inhaling spit. He coughs, jostling Lee Sejin back into wakefulness.

When Lee Sejin is sufficiently situated against the car door, Park Moondae swivels back around to see Kim Raebin, wearing headphones, pinching Cha Eugene’s side. Yellow streetlights flash through the windows, illuminating Cha Eugene’s pained expression.

“Ouch.” He swats at Kim Raebin. He noticeably perks up when he sees Park Moondae. “Hey, hyung!”

His voice is surprisingly hushed, even as he defends himself from Kim Raebin’s attacks. When Park Moondae fails to respond, they both look at him, expectance in their faces.

“Huh?”

“Tell Kim Raebin why he’s wrong.”

“What?!” Kim Raebin shoves Cha Eugene, his voice pitched too loud. Cha Eugene slaps a hand over his mouth in retaliation.

Park Moondae flinches, glancing around at the pinched expression on Seon Ahyeon’s face.

‘Oops…’

He leverages himself up to peek over the seat and listen to the younger members’ complaints. Kim Raebin chimes in periodically but otherwise seems engrossed in his music, bobbing his head between clamorous interjections and furiously typing into his phone. The occasional direct light from the windows accentuates the bags under his eyes, yet his artistic fervor is hardly dampened.

Park Moondae, if only to ignore the sudden pang in his chest, turns to check on the other members.

From between the headrests of the front seats, he makes brief eye contact with Ryu Gunwoo in the rearview mirror. Ryu Gunwoo’s gaze quickly returns downward, back to the road, just as the van enters a tunnel. Lights flicker above them, periodically engulfing most of the tunnel in a darkness combated by their headlights.

It’s like the reprieve from the streetlights has given Park Moondae’s body an opportunity to finally express its fatigue. He yawns suddenly and achingly, feeling his jaw click.

He turns to the back seats to find Cha Eugene in a similar state, resting against Kim Raebin’s shoulder with half-lidded eyes.

And then it’s like a bubble pops as soon as they exit the underpass.

The heat returns at full force. He itches to take off his jacket but can’t, not with the way Lee Sejin’s migrated back over to him and is clinging onto his arm.

He thinks he hears someone snoring, which is when he finally resigns himself to the idea of sleep and pulls out Park Moondae’s phone.

There were a few sites he’d frequent for news on TeSTAR. As a Loviewer, the first test of fanhood was knowing where to find the best info.

He’s sure Ryu Gunwoo would agree. He starts scrolling.

The water in the glass ripples with every minute motion.

He can’t help the shaking hands, or the bouncing knee, so he sets the glass on a side table and stares at the couch beneath his thighs instead.

Keundal twists his hands back and forth, staring at smooth palms and unfamiliar scars, the one on his thumb knuckle stretching with each flex of his joints.

A voice is talking.

Blink.

The doorbell rings.

Lee Sejin, laying on the ground, hauls himself up and saunters to the front door. Keundal hears Cha Eugene’s distinctive syllables call out from one of the other rooms, tone questioning, words lost to the rushing of blood through Keundal’s ears.

The slam of the door is a death knell.

Keundal’s gaze swings up to see Gunwoo hyung, hair flat and glasses askew, in the entryway.

Lee Sejin pushes past him, sparing them both a quick glance, mouth curving downwards. He disappears into one of the bedrooms.

Gunwoo hyung drops into the space next to Keundal. The couch dips sharply and Keundal tilts into him.

Bodies congregate around them soon after, followed by an eruption of noise.

Keundal thinks he’s bowed to someone at some point. He stays put for the most part.

Blink.

“...I’ll talk it through with him and–”

Gunwoo hyung suddenly stops speaking. Even the idle chatter from the other members immediately halts, an uncomfortable silence forming from the absence of his low voice.

Keundal watches the creases on his temple deepen.

“...Hyung?”

Gunwoo hyung doesn’t answer. His eyes flicker from side to side, nostrils flaring.

“Gunwoo hyung.” Keundal leans in to stare at empty air. “What does it say–?”

“Ha.”

Keundal feels his own eyebrows furrow. From his periphery, the others have similar expressions.

“Haha.” Gunwoo hyung’s face is pale as he takes a heaving breath. He blinks rapidly and bows his head.

Keundal’s fingers twitch. He curls them into a fist and sets it in his lap.

“Moondae, what happened?” Ryu Chungwoo’s tone is careful, his voice quiet. His attempt at projecting stability is thwarted by the stressed faces of the other members. Keundal makes a conscious effort to continue breathing.

Gunwoo hyung clears his throat.

“The…” He swallows before continuing, “The punishment timer…”

It rings a bell.

‘Was this like the Mission Failure that led to that building collapsing…?’

Keundal exhales, his shoulders dropping unconsciously. Familiar territory, at last.

“How long will this one last?” He means to continue speaking, but the blankness of Gunwoo hyung’s expression stops him in his tracks.

“How long, Moondae?” Someone asks, but Keundal can’t bring himself to look away from Gunwoo hyung’s face, which has been tilted away from the others for minutes now. It’s only Keundal’s proximity that allows him to see the subtle trembling of his lips and the wild bobbing of his Adam’s apple.

He sees the moment Gunwoo hyung’s lips part to form words so undesirable they fail to compute in Keundal’s mind for several moments. His brain revolts against what they express.

‘…’

‘...How many months…?’

When he’d insisted on going through with this comeback, much to everyone’s displeasure, Keundal hadn’t taken touring into account, let alone travelling.

“...Plane…” It leaves his mouth in a croak. He clears his throat, trying not to be too obvious as he wipes his palms on Park Moondae’s sweatpants. “Uh. Plane…?”

“Yes, hyung.” Kim Raebin turns his Macbook around. “This is our flight path.”

Kim Raebin does something impressive with his keyboard and a map suddenly appears on the screen, a bright yellow line connecting the points parked ‘SEOUL’ and ‘DAEGU’ in large letters. More coloured lines indicated connections from ‘DAEGU’ to another location, and from there to somewhere else. Keundal tries to shove the entire concept of air travel out of his mind, even as Kim Raebin continues to extrapolate about the optimal weather for travelling and how to most efficiently plan a trip with multiple stops.

Keundal’s hands curl into the fabric in his lap.

“We’ll be leaving from Gimpo International Airport and arriving in Daegu after roughly 3 and a half hours–”

His view of Kim Raebin’s monitor is abruptly obstructed by a wall of paper. It’s a notebook. Bae Sejin shakes it in front of his face a few times, until he gets the message and grabs it.

“Read through that and make sure you have everything. We’re going shopping later.”

With Bae Sejin’s back facing Keundal, it takes him at least ten seconds to register Bae Sejin is talking to him, and then another 5 to realise that he should have already said something in response.

‘Another thing to ruminate over in the middle of the night…’

He feels his face heat up.

“Ah. Thank you!” He says to Bae Sejin’s shoulders, and then hightails it out of there to Park Moondae’s room, which is thankfully empty while Ryu Chungwoo is out meeting with the managers.

The moment the door closes behind him, his legs threaten to give out beneath him. He props himself up against the wall perpendicular to the doorframe and his sweaty palms sticking to the paint is one of the only things keeping him upright. He presses his forehead to the wall for good measure and tries to pull himself together.

Keundal unclenches his jaw.

Bae Sejin’s notebook digs into the soft skin of his underarm, where he’d stashed it while running to this room. He fishes it out and opens it to squint at the bookmarked page.

‘Neck pillow, comb…’

He drifts over to Park Moondae’s closet. Swinging it open, his gaze switches between its contents and the checklist.

‘Shirts… How many shirts…’

Keundal sifts through the drawers, comparing button-ups and t-shirts, finding abstract turtlenecks and singlets with too-deep necklines. His ears feel warm again.

The rest of the list sends him to Park Moondae’s bedside table, where he searches the surface for earplugs and eyemasks, among other miniscule items. He locates them in the trolley bag under the bed, only half-unpacked from the last trip it took.

‘...And finally, a powerbank.’

After a moment of hesitation, he opens one of the bedside drawers. It’s filled with envelopes and miscellaneous receipts held together by rubberbands, still shiny to the eye and smooth to the touch. There’s a set of wired earbuds, an Apple laptop charger, a tiny keychain in the shape of a yellow dog.

And there, below it all, is a government ID card.

Keundal stares at it.

It’s still attached to the lanyard it came with.

He turns it around in his hand, thumb ghosting over the pristine plastic cover once, twice.

The shine of the overhead light reflects off of it at such an angle that the words on it are obscured. It doesn’t matter. He knows them by heart now.

A name, a date, a set of numbers with no particular meaning.

But it’s his face. That’s his face, there in the photo.

That’s his face on an ID card that expires in four months. He won’t get the chance to renew it.

Keundal must be in some kind of time rift.

He’s been staring at the ceiling for what feels like twelve hours, and yet the full moon is shining high in the sky and Ryu Chungwoo is still fast asleep.

His roommate’s faint snuffling should have, in theory, lulled him to sleep at this point, but perhaps years of sleeping alone is still his default, even months into his stint as Park Moondae.

The idol, Park Moondae.

The thought alone makes his heart race, as it has for the last few hours. He’s awake on unpleasant shots of adrenaline and anxiety alone, though his eyes are begging for some form of reprieve. They’ve long since adjusted to the dark, so he’s spent his time in this prison of a room tracing the uneven lines of the wall perpendicular to his bed.

He’s tried other sleeping positions. Curling up on both sides, laying on his stomach, but the ache spreading through his body makes him wonder how Gunwoo hyung had ever managed to sleep while keeping a consistent workout and practice schedule. It was possible he’d had some kind of skill to give himself a few more hours in the day, though Keundal couldn’t remember.

And that’s a weird feeling. Keeping his body in shape for someone else’s sake.

And he knows he should just try to stop thinking, because part of staying healthy was keeping normal hours and that meant sleeping, but every time he closes his eyes, there’s flashes of green and purple behind his eyelids, or the image of water rippling in his cup, or the way Gunwoo hyung had held his face in his hands and stayed that way for far too long.

Then he’s back to thinking about his day, whether or not he managed to smile wide enough, normal enough, whether he remembered to update his Bubble account, when his next live stream is, if he’s practiced enough that he can maintain the new Park Moondae’s public image without majorly slipping up the next time he opens his mouth.

Even with his experience as a Loviewer and knowing Gunwoo hyung for years before his debut, Keundal quickly realised he’d still underestimated the extent of his professional persona: There was an almost obsessive quality to Gunwoo hyung’s approach to being Park Moondae, his insistence on perfecting certain mannerisms to the point where he’d even adjusted his own handwriting. It wasn’t unwarranted, but it also wasn’t something he’d put into practice during the months he spent as Ryu Gunwoo.

It wasn’t hard to think back to when reactions to Keundal-as-Park-Moondae had filtered in and the common consensus was… ‘cute’.

It wasn’t the end of the world. Park Moondae had been vaguely cute since debut. It was totally okay to be a little cuter now.

Sure, Gunwoo hyung had stared down at his new phone, and then he’d looked at Keundal for a while, and then he’d started to type something. And he hadn’t said anything.

Keundal presses his knuckles into his eyelids.

No one could blame Seon Ahyeon and Lee Sejin for naturally gravitating toward Gunwoo hyung, or Keundal for doing the same to the younger members. It also wasn’t their fault the media had managed to pick up on it.

Keundal swallows the saliva pooling in his mouth and slows his breathing, staring into the ceiling with unblinking eyes.

There is no means of distraction. It’s just him and Ryu Chungwoo’s soft breathing.

Looking at Park Moondae’s phone compels his fingers to reach for familiar territory. Closing his eyes brings no respite.

More images flash through his mind: Years spent in a disembodied limbo, barely aware of himself, and then suddenly he was back in a body that wasn’t his, living a life he never wanted, a bystander in his own skin.

This was the routine he’d established. Night after night, thought after thought about how much his legs hurt, how sore his throat would likely be the day after, what he could do to mitigate the worst of it and make it through another 24 hours without crashing. Mortification taking the form of sickly mucus, lodged in his throat after failed practice session after failed practice session after days of staring into bowls full of food he had neither the desire nor the energy to choke down.

All the while, Ryu Gunwoo.

His presence, his eyes on Keundal, the implicit feeling of camaraderie had turned sour the more he had thought about it. The more he thinks about it, even now.

Because it’s his fault, isn’t it? None of this would’ve happened if it wasn’t for Keundal. Ryu Gunwoo had hung himself of his own volition, but it was Keundal’s propensity to find something he loved and to dig his nails into it, to cling on even if it begged him to let go. And then he’d gone and died and made a wish that put Gunwoo hyung onto the path to somewhere greater, at the expense of his privacy and the promise of a secure life. Of course he had chosen the idol survival show. Of course Keundal’s decision had put every one of those random trainees at risk too.

And then there was the issue of Ryu Gunwoo. Stuck as a corporate drone, no friends to his name, living day to day with no particular idea in mind about what the future would be like, let alone what he’d be eating for dinner the next day. Convenience store kimbap, by the way, because civil servants were paid pittance and Ryu Gunwoo, piloted by Keundal, had been barely more than an intern. Nothing he touched had ever been worth much of anything, never mind himself. After all, old habits die hard.

So, how could he possibly complain?

He pries his tear-crusted face off of Park Moondae’s pillow the morning after and tries to disregard the way Bae Sejin scrutinises him when they run into each other in the bathroom.

It’s hard to do. Bae Sejin is fortunate to have such a piercing stare.

He just smiles as best he can and shuffles down the hall to the kitchen, where Lee Sejin seems to be conducting an early orchestra using his utensils, his bowl and Cha Eugene’s mouth, dutifully crooning the approximation of a trumpet… Or a cello? He’s too lethargic to ask.

And so begins the next few weeks of his life, as TeSTAR gears up for a very ill-advised and tense first comeback under their new label.

He spends his mornings being shoved around in dance practice. Muscle memory is a beautiful thing, especially after he finally understands how to move this body again. Prospects for the success of the group had only gone up from there, albeit in minor increments.

Afternoons are dedicated to the bottomless sinkhole he’s learned is called ‘planning’. Choreography, costumes, lyrics; Kim Raebin seems to be sleeping in the studio at this point, though Seon Ahyeon manages to drag him back to the dorm at least a few nights a week. It’s the best they can manage.

Evenings are devoted to whatever they can manage to do. Vocal practice, eating, more dance practice, it’s an infinite loop of preparation that makes his head spin. At this rate, he’s convinced he’s developed an ulcer. He thought he lost his voice the day before they started recording the title track. He spends his showers crying his eyes out, wrapping himself in Park Moondae’s fluffy towels and curling into Gunwoo hyung on the couch when everyone else is asleep, because there’s still a distinct learning curve to this and his expressions are just… foreign, on Park Moondae’s face.

It’s a blameless situation that leaves him without an appetite most days, even though he makes an effort to shovel down as much as he can.

He scoops up the last of the salad on his plate, grimacing at the feeling of overfullness in his stomach but knowing he’ll be burning off most of this meal come tomorrow morning. His chopsticks squeal against his plate, the sound almost lost under the zealous conversation occurring overhead.

A flick of Lee Sejin’s wrist sends a noodle flying directly onto Gunwoo hyung’s plate.

TeSTAR erupts again, a cacophony of stomping feet and unrestrained laughter filling the room around them in the way he’d only experienced for what felt like a few short years.

He drains his cup and loosens the drawstring of Park Moondae’s pants. When he surveys the table again, he finds Gunwoo hyung doing much the same.

Lee Sejin notices, bumping his shoulder against Gunwoo hyung’s with a smile that exudes amusement in the lift of his eyebrows and the broad curve of his lips. It’s a familiar expression, pasted across each of the members’ faces in subtle ways.

He swallows to soothe his dry mouth. He could really use a drink.

Collecting everyone’s dishes is a battle he approaches with determination to win, and win he does. He sets the stack onto the kitchen counter with a huff, fatigued from the short trip, and steps back to survey his task.

When he counts seven pairs of chopsticks, he considers going back for the stragglers, but a burst of laughter leaking from the open door has him halting in his tracks.

He returns to the sink and begins to fill it.