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The first time Wumuti actually noticed, he was making tea.
It was a Sunday afternoon, lazy and peaceful. Haru had been sprawled on the couch, scrolling through his phone, and Wumuti had asked if he wanted anything from the kitchen.
"I'm good, hyung. Thanks though."
Wumuti had nodded and turned back to the kettle. It was only later, hours later, when he was lying in bed, that it nagged at him. It was a feeling like he'd forgotten something important, left the stove on.
Haru had called him hyung. Which, on its own, wasn't unusual in the slightest. Haru called him hyung all the time, had been calling him hyung since they'd met two years ago when Haru was seventeen. But he also called him eomma. Had been calling him eomma for most of the past year, since they debuted.
Wumuti stared at the ceiling of his room, trying to remember the last time Haru had referred to him that way. Tried to think of the last time he’s said without thought or preamble, ‘Eomma, where's my jacket?’, ‘Eomma, did you see what Rui’s wearing?’, ‘Eomma, do I have chocolate on my face?’.
He couldn't remember when exactly had been the last time which is strange because surely it couldn't have been so long ago that he wouldn't remember. But he doesn't and the realisation sits alone in his chest like a stone in perfectly still shallow water, not sinking, but displacing all the same.
Wumuti started paying attention after that. Listening for the absence, which was its own kind of madness. Because instead it was, ‘Hyung, do you want anything from the convenience store?’, ‘Hyung, have you seen my charger?’, ‘Hyung, we're ordering in, do you want your usual?’.
Haru had been back from Japan for three weeks now, back from his coming-of-age ceremony.
And he'd stopped calling Wumuti mom.
It shouldn't matter. Haru still smiled at him the same way, still came to him when he needed advice or couldn't sleep. Nothing had actually changed.
Except Wumuti kept waiting for that word and the waiting was starting to make him feel insane. He found himself replaying conversations in his head, editing them, inserting the missing word as if it would resolve the dissonance.
He knew he was being ridiculous with his fixation. But knowing that didn't stop him from listening for it and didn't stop the small drop in his chest every time Haru said hyung instead.
---
Wumuti had been eleven when he first understood that he was good at taking care of people.
His ana worked doubles at the textile factory on the edge of the city, came home with fabric dust in her hair. She loved him, loved him fiercely, in the way she'd iron his uniform before school, in the way she'd save the best cuts of lamb for him even when money was tight. But love couldn't keep her home.
His grandparents lived in the apartment next door in their housing complex, one of those Soviet-era buildings where the elevator only worked on Tuesdays and the hallways smelled like cigarettes. They were the ones who watched him after school, though watching was generous because his grandmas memory had started to slip like sand through his fingers.
So Wumuti had learned. Learned to sort her medications by day, learned which neighbors needed help carrying groceries up the stairs, which old women liked company for their afternoon walks.
And the women in the building had made sense to him in a way the men never had. They'd let him into their world without question. Had taught him to make laghman and etken chai, to mend clothes whenever he sat quietly and paid attention. They taught him how to cheat at cards and they let him dance and play in their clothes and makeup, they let him be. They’d encouraged him to be.
The men had been more opaque to him. They'd sat outside in good weather, smoking and talking about things that seemed distant, politics, work that was decades behind them, observations about the world that felt from time disconnected.
Wumuti had wanted to be like the women. Had felt himself oriented toward their competence, their centrality, their beauty, their motherhood. But he'd had a boy's body, a boy's name, a boy's life.
He thinks it was the beginning of the dissonance.
Regardless, he'd grown up in a community of people three times his age. Being young and capable meant being the one who remembered, who anticipated and who helped.
His ana would come home to find her mother's medications sorted, the apartment tidied and dinner started. She'd pull Wumuti close and call him her good boy, her responsible boy. And Wumuti had glowed under the praise even as something in him twisted.
—
When Wumuti had joined his first group at sixteen, he'd expected things to be different. He'd left behind that building and his ana's exhausted love, had thought that maybe in a new place, with people his own age, he'd finally learn how to be young, maybe. How to be careless
Instead, he'd found five boys who needed someone to keep track of their practice schedules, to make sure they ate, to mediate fights and smooth over tension. The company had put them in a dorm and expected them to figure it out, and they'd been children, all of them, even the oldest who was only eighteen, playing at being adults. He'd been the youngest, barely sixteen when they'd debuted, but somehow he'd still been the one everyone came to.
‘You're like a mom’, one of them had said, laughing. The others had agreed, started calling him it like it was a joke, like it was ironic, the youngest member being the maternal one.
Except it hadn't felt like a joke to Wumuti. It had felt like being seen and misunderstood in the same breath, like they'd noticed the shape of him but mistaken it for costume rather than skin.
And there'd been something else too. Something he'd noticed but hadn't known how to name. The other boys had a way of being together. They'd roughhouse and shove and talk about girls. They'd walk around shirtless after showers, would change clothes in front of each other without self-consciousness, would wrestle and make crude jokes with ease that seemed foreign to Wumuti.
He'd watched them like a zoologist studying monkeys. Had taken notes on how boys were supposed to act, what they laughed at, how they showed affection.
He'd taken care of them, had loved them even. But he'd never felt like one of them. Never felt like a boy the way they were boys. Never been a boy the way they were boys.
The group had disbanded after two years and then Wumuti had been eighteen and anchorless, had felt the loss of the role more than the loss of the group itself.
Then he put himself on survival shows because he wasn't ready to give up this life yet. Then he'd met Rui, Hyun and Haru. Had seen the talent in them, yes, but also the need. They'd been raw, unformed, looking for someone to tell them what to do next. And Wumuti had slipped back into that role he’d missed.
And Wumuti had been eomma again. Not as a joke this time.
---
The tour started in Helsinki. At the airport, Wumuti had wandered through the duty-free shops while they waited for their gate to be called. He'd been looking for a keychain, something small to add to his collection, he'd started picking one up from every country they visited..
He'd been scanning the display of Finland-themed trinkets, flags mostly, when his eyes snagged on something at the edge of the shelf. A small blue axolotl, no bigger than his palm, with a dopey expression and shiny finish. He bit his lip, a warmth blooming in his chest from looking at it. It was objectively garbage, the kind of cheap plastic toy that would end up in a landfill within a month, purposeless except for being cute and sparkly.
Yet Wumuti picked it up and turned it over in his hands.
He should have put it back. Should have grabbed the keychain he'd come for and moved on. But there was something about the axolotl's blank painted face that made him put it in his basket along with a small Finnish flag keychain.
Wumuti bought it. He didn't know why. Or he did know why, but the knowing made him feel insane, so he tried not to look at it directly. Just paid and slipped the axolotl into his pocket, and kept walking.
When he'd gotten back to the others, Hyun had glanced at his bag. "Find something good?"
"Just a keychain," Wumuti had said. He didn't mention the axolotl yet. Didn't know how to explain why he'd bought it when he couldn't quite explain it to himself.
His hand found it again and again throughout the flight to Spain.
---
When Wumuti had been twelve, his grandmother had started forgetting his name.
She'd call him by his dads name, or sometimes just "boy," or sometimes she'd look at him with cloudy confusion like he was a stranger who'd wandered into her apartment. His ana had explained that it was normal, that memory went like that sometimes, that it didn't mean his grandmother didn't love him.
But Wumuti had felt erased in those moments all the same like he was Tursun and not Wumuti. Like he'd disappeared and all the care he'd provided hadn't created enough of an impression to stick, like who he was, who she’d allowed him to be had been erased from her mind and he was suddenly just the “boy” again.
He'd started doing more after that, trying harder. As if it would cement him in her memory.
But It hadn't worked and she'd continued to forget, continued to look at him with that polite confusion, and Wumuti had continued trying anyway.
There was something similar happening now, he recognised. Haru had stopped and Wumuti was scrambling to fill the space. To make himself necessary again, to create a version of himself that couldn't be forgotten or discarded, to cling to that role that was so fundamental to his being, just so that he had somewhere to channel these feelings.
The axolotl was part of that scrambling. He could see that clearly, he was well aware. But it didn't stop the behavior. Didn't make him put the axolotl down, didn't make him stop checking his phone for comments on his posts, didn't make him feel any less crazy.
---
"What's that?"
Rui was leaning against the lamppole as Wumuti crouched down in the snow, taking the axolotl out of his pocket. Wumuti didn't even notice that he’d pulled his phone out and was recording him arranging the toy next to the small snowman he'd made. Wumuti had been trying to get the angle right for a photo.
"Nothing," Wumuti said, not looking up. "Just taking a picture."
"Of your toy?" Rui's voice was amused, "Should I be worried? Is this a cry for help?"
The question was joking, but it landed uncomfortable.
"It's for B-stage," Wumuti said, which wasn't exactly a lie. He had been planning to post more of it. The fans seemed to like it when he posted soft things, domestic things, “and her name is Yuyu.”
Rui laughed and continued recording until Wumuti got the picture he was looking for.
He watched the video on repeat at the hotel that night with Yuyu on the counter next to him. He looked at her blank painted face. Completely stagnant and that was the appeal, Wumuti recognised. She would never grow up, never change, never decide she didn't need him anymore. Would never look at him with confusion and forget his name. Never call him hyung when she used to call him something else.
—
The thing about his grandmother's memory loss that had terrified Wumuti most wasn't the forgetting itself. It was the randomness of it. Some days she'd remember everything; his name, his favorite foods, the story about how he'd cried on his first day of school and clung to his mothers pant leg as if that would save him. Other days she'd look at him like he was a helpful stranger.
There was no pattern to it and no way to predict which version of her he'd encounter. And Wumuti had learned that you could do everything right and still be forgotten.
His first group had seemed to prove that right, two years of holding them together, and then disbandment, and now he couldn't remember half their names clearly.
Xlov had felt different. Had felt like maybe he'd finally found people who would see him clearly enough that the image wouldn't fade.
But Haru had stopped calling him eomma, and Wumuti was twelve again, watching his grandmother's eyes cloud.
–
Wumuti’s mother worked, always worked. She'd worked because she'd had to, because money was always tight.
Wumuti had understood that, even as a child. Had understood that her absence was a roundabout way of showing her love. Though she'd come home exhausted and dead on her feet she’d hold him tight and ask about his day, and he'd tell her the version where everything was fine, where he wasn't also tired, where taking care of his grandmother was easy.
He'd never told her how it felt to grow up in a building full of people waiting to die. How he'd absorbed their grief and their loneliness and how sometimes their wisdom didn't feel like an even trade-off.
His ana had wanted better for him. Had scraped together money for his audition and dance classes, had held his face in her hands and told him to be good, to work hard, to make something of himself. Had cried when he'd left, had called every week to make sure he was eating, had sent money when she could afford to even though he'd told her not to.
She'd tried to mother him from a distance, and Wumuti had tried to let her, had tried to be the son who needed mothering. But it felt preformative on both sides. They'd both known that he'd stopped being a child years before he'd left and that the mothering was compensatory.
When his members had started calling him eomma, it had felt correct. Like the universe offering him the role that fit better, the one he'd always known he’d been more suited for.
---
After Helsinki it was Madrid, Warsaw, Renens, Milan, Athens, Sofia, Bucharest, London each city blurring into the next like watercolors left in the rain.
Wumuti stopped going to the group dinners after the third city. Said he was tired, which wasn't untrue. Said he'd already eaten, which usually was. The hotel rooms were easier, the silence easier than Rui's probing looks, Hyuns concern or the way Haru would glance at him and then away.
Yuyu came everywhere with him. In his pocket during sound check, on the bathroom counter while he did his makeup, propped against the hotel alarm clock at night. The members had thought it was funny, at first.
"Is that thing like, glued to you now?" Rui had asked in Warsaw, spotting Wumuti adjusting Yuyu into the front pocket of his purse before they left for the venue.
"She gets lonely," Wumuti had said, which was supposed to be a joke but it didn't really come out like one. By Milan, Rui had stopped commenting on it entirely though he still sent him concerned looks, which was worse somehow.
Wumuti knew it was weird. Knew that carrying around a plastic toy in this way was the behavior of someone who was not doing well. But Yuyu was predictable in a way nothing else was. And all of it was perversely soothing.
He got to take pictures of her everywhere they went, got to draw on little outfits for her so they were matching, gave her bubble baths in the hotel sinks so she wouldn't get all dirty from the lint in his pocket sticking to her.
He just needed to get through the tour. Just needed to cope until he could find it in himself to get over this, to be normal about Haru again.
Except in his distance he'd stopped as well. He'd stopped noticing things. Small things at first, then bigger ones. Stopped noticing that Haru had gotten quieter. Stopped noticing that Haru was checking his bag compulsively at airports, patting his pockets for his passport even though it was always in the same place, had been in the same place for five cities now.
Wumuti had always been the one to handle that. Had always been the one to do a final sweep of the hotel room, to remind Haru about his phone charger, to know where everything was. But he'd stopped, had been too lost in his own head.
It was Rui who found Haru's hoodie in the hotel in Greece. Hyun who reminded him about the interview in Milan. Rui who sat with him on the plane to England when Haru couldn't sleep.
Wumuti saw it happening in the sideline, the way you see movement in the corner of your vision but don't turn to look. He registered it as something that should concern him, that would normally concern him, but couldn't quite make himself feel the concern. He was too tired, too hollowed out, too focused on making sure Yuyu was still in his pocket.
They had twelve hours in Manchester before they flew to Paris. Thirteen cities in three weeks, barely a day between countries, and Haru was nineteen and doing his first international tour and Wumuti wasn't helping as much as he could. He knew he wasn't helping.
—
Then it was the hotel in Copenhagen.
They had two hours before they needed to leave for the venue. Wumuti was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, Yuyu balanced on his chest. He was trying to muster the energy to shower.
Then he heard, from the next room, Haru's voice. High and frantic, audible even through the wall, cutting through the fog immediately.
Wumuti was on his feet before he even gave himself a moment of thought, Yuyu falling to the floor as he crossed to the connecting door and didn't wait for an answer before opening it.
Haru was standing in the middle of the room surrounded entirely by the contents of his bags. His clothes were everywhere, toiletries scattered across the bed, his suitcase overturned on the floor. His face was blotchy, eyes red and his breathing was coming too fast.
"I can't-" Haru's voice cracked when he saw Wumuti in the doorway. "I can't find them, I can't- they were- I know I packed them, I know I did, but they're not-"
"What are you looking for, love?" Wumuti's voice came out calm and warm, even though his heart was hammering.
"My headphones." Haru was shaking now, hands trembling as he picked up another shirt and then put it down, like he'd forgotten what he was doing, or like he'd already looked there. "The- the apple ones, I need- I can't sleep without them and I think I left them at the last hotel, I think I- fuck, I can't do this, I can't-"
"Okay," Wumuti said, and he crossed the space between them. "Okay, it's okay. We'll find them."
"I've looked everywhere-”
"Then we'll look again." Wumuti was already crouching down next to the overturned suitcase, checking the pockets and then the zippered compartments. His hands were steady even though guilt was crawling up his throat because how had he not seen this coming, how had he been so absent that Haru had gotten to this point.
Eventually, he found the airpods in the large inner pocket of Haru's backpack, folded and tucked into a fold where they'd probably been all along.
"Here they are." Wumuti said with soft eyes, holding the device up.
Haru let out a sound and took the headphones with shaking hands and just stood there, still trembling slightly from the stress.
"Sit down," Wumuti said gently as he hovered, and Haru sat on the edge of the bed immediately, obedient in the way he always was when he was overwhelmed, when the world had become too much input and he needed someone else to make it smaller.
Then Wumuti started gathering the scattered clothes, refolding them and putting things back in proper order. The familiar motions were soothing. He'd done this a thousand times before, for his grandmother, for his first group, for Haru.
"Thank you," Haru said after a moment, and his voice was so small, so young. "Thank you, eomma."
Wumuti's hands stilled mid-fold, and he felt the impact ripple through his entire body, a jolt that started in his chest and spread outward until his fingers tingled with it. He looked up sharply.
Haru's eyes went wide immediately, the panic returning, "I'm sorry, I didn't- I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-"
"Why are you apologizing?" Wumuti asked, setting the folded shirt aside and moving to cup Haru's face, thumbs brushing away the tear tracks on his cheeks.
"I need to stop-" Haru's voice was choked. "I need to stop being a baby. I'm supposed to be able to handle all of this by now and- and I can't even keep track of my stuff without-" He stopped there and took a large shaky inhale of air.
"You're not a baby," Wumuti said, meeting Haru's eyes. "We've been in a different country almost every day and you're exhausted. Of course you're exhausted, love."
"I'm sorry," Haru said again, the apology automatic, a reflex. He continued before Wumuti could counter. "I needed to stop relying on you so much- after the ceremony I- I don't know, I thought I should stop calling you eomma."
"Why?"
"Because it's weird. Calling someone who's not your mom that. When you're almost twenty."
"It didn't bother me."
"It bothered me," Haru said, and his voice broke on the words. "Everyone at the ceremony kept talking about how I have responsibilities now and how I- I'm a man now, and I kept thinking about how I still call you eomma like I'm a kid. How I still need you to check my bags and remind me about shit."
"It's okay to need help, love," Wumuti said.
Haru was crying again now, tears sliding down his face unchecked. "I thought maybe you were tired of taking care of me, so I tried to- to handle things myself, but I'm so tired, I'm so fucking tired and I can't sleep and I keep thinking I'm forgetting things-" His breath hitched. "I keep losing things and forgetting where I put them and I can't- I can't keep track of it all and I thought if I just tried harder-"
Wumuti felt something crack open in his chest. He'd been so consumed with his own grief that he hadn't seen this, hadn't seen him struggling under the weight of expectations he'd placed on himself.
"I missed you calling me eomma," Wumuti admitted, the words scraping out of him like they'd been lodged behind his ribs for weeks. "I thought… I don't know what I thought. That you didn't want me anymore. That you'd grown out of it."
The guilt that had been crawling up Wumuti's throat broke through. "I've been neglecting you," he said, and his voice came out raw. "I've been so lost in my own head that I didn't see that you were struggling."
"I stopped because-" Haru's voice was thick. "Because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. Everyone kept saying I was an adult now and adults don't- they don't need their moms. They don't call people mom when it's not even their real mom, they don't-" He made a frustrated sound. "I thought you'd think I was being childish."
The absurdity of it would have been funny if it wasn't so painful because Wumuti would never think that.
Wumuti was quiet for a moment, still holding Haru's face in his hands, feeling the warmth of his skin, the dampness of tears. He thought about his grandmother, he thought about his first group, about how he'd held them together until there was nothing left to hold.
"I don't want you to grow out of needing me," Wumuti said quietly, and saying it out loud felt like confessing to something shameful. "Is that selfish?"
Haru's expression shifted, “I don't think so," he said. "Because you need me too, right?"
And that was the thing. He needed Haru's smile when he came into the kitchen in the morning, needed the way he'd sit next to Wumuti on the couch and lean against him without asking.
"Yeah," Wumuti said, his voice rough. "Yeah, I need you too."
Haru made a small sound and surged forward, wrapping his arms around Wumuti's waist and pressing his face against his shoulder. Wumuti held him, one hand coming up to cradle the back of his head, the other rubbing slow circles on his back. He could feel Haru shaking, could feel the way he was breathing too fast, overwhelmed and overstimulated and exhausted.
"You don't have to be a man the way they told you to be a man," Wumuti said softly, speaking into Haru's hair. "You don't have to be anything you dont want to."
"I don't know what I want to be," Haru mumbled against his shoulder.
"That's okay too."
They stayed like that for a while, Haru's breathing gradually evening out, his grip loosening slightly but not letting go. Wumuti thought about all the ways he'd tried to be, all the roles he'd inhabited and discarded. Good boy, responsible boy.
But eomma, that one had felt different. Because Haru had looked at him and seen someone worth calling that.
"I didn't know how to tell you," Wumuti said eventually. "That it hurt when you stopped. I didn't know how to say it without sounding- I don't know. Pathetic."
Haru pulled back slightly to look at him. "You're not pathetic." Then, after a pause, "I've been sleeping with the same hoodie for the past two weeks because it smells like the dorm. I can't sleep in hotels unless I have my headphones and my specific pillow and the curtains have to be closed in a specific way."
Wumuti swallowed thickly, understanding what Haru was trying to say but not having it in him to respond so he changed the subject, "We have an hour before we need to leave," Wumuti said, glancing at the clock. "Let me help you repack. And then you're going to try to sleep for forty-five minutes."
"I don't think I can…"
"I'll stay," Wumuti said. "And I'll wake you up in time, I promise."
Haru nodded, tired relief washing over his face. He was good at trusting, even when things were hard. Especially when things were hard.
And then Wumuti repacked Haru's bag, his hands busy folding his clothes, tucking his toiletries away. Haru was lying down on the bed, curling onto his side with his headphones on. The anxious tension was slowly leaving his face.
When Wumuti finally went back to his own room to get ready, he found Yuyu on the floor where she'd fallen. He picked her up, looked at her dopey painted face, and then, carefully, set her on the nightstand instead of putting her back in his pocket.
She'd served her purpose. But he didn't need her the same way anymore.