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Juhoon used to be able to tell what day it was by the way James breathed next to him.
That sounds insane. But Mondays were lighter—shorter exhales, like he was bracing himself for the week but still pretending not to care. Fridays were heavy, drawn-out, like he was letting the tension leak out slowly so it wouldn’t spill everywhere. Sundays were the worst. Sundays meant he stayed awake too long, staring at the ceiling, breathing like he was counting something he didn’t want to name.
Juhoon learned all of that without meaning to. You learn things when you share a life with someone in fragments. A room. A schedule. A secret.
Now he wakes up and the silence is so complete it feels curated.
The dorm is different. Not just because his bed is gone—though that’s its own kind of violence—but because the air doesn’t anticipate him anymore. It doesn’t hold space. Nothing hums with the expectation of his return. The walls don’t lean in when footsteps pass the hallway. Everything is neutral. Professional. Empty in the way only something once-full can be.
They told us it would be easier this way.
They always do.
The breakup didn’t happen in a dramatic explosion. No shouting. No slammed doors. No tearful confession under rain like a drama writer with a god complex would script. It happened in a conference room that smelled like coffee that had been reheated too many times.
It happened with our managers sitting too straight, hands folded, eyes sliding away from us like they didn’t want to witness the damage they were about to authorize.
They didn’t say break up, of course. They never do.
They said words like “risk” and “trajectory” and “long-term brand sustainability.” They said “fans are perceptive” and “rumors compound.” They said “we can protect you both if you cooperate.”
James’s knee bounced under the table the whole time. Juhoon remembers wanting to reach over and press his palm against it, ground him, like he always did. He didn’t. He kept his hands folded like they taught them. His face neutral. He nodded in the right places.
He was good. Juhoon was so good.
James wasn’t.
He asked questions they didn’t like. He asked how love could be a liability. He asked why honesty was dangerous only when it was inconvenient. He asked what it meant to build a career on connection if the connection itself was forbidden.
They answered him with smiles sharpened just enough to cut.
The decision came a week later. Not officially, of course. Officially, everything was mutual. Amicable. Strategic.
Unofficially, James was told he could either suffocate quietly or leave loudly.
___
He chose to leave.
Juhoon found out from the news.
Juhoon was brushing his teeth when his phone started vibrating like it was panicking. Messages stacked on messages stacked on messages. Headlines. Screenshots. Speculation already blooming like mold in the corners.
“James terminates contract.”
“James to re-debut under new label.”
“Sources say internal conflict played a role.”
He stared at his reflection, toothpaste foam frozen at the corner of his mouth, and felt something inside him go hollow in one clean motion.
He didn’t tell him.
That’s the part people don’t understand. They think the pain is the betrayal, or the loss, or the jealousy. Those are loud. Manageable. What actually wrecked Juhoon was the silence. The fact that James made the biggest decision of his life without letting Juhoon stand next to him while he did it.
Later, he would tell Juhoon it was to protect him.
Juhoon hates that sentence. He hates it in every language.
They met three days after the announcement. Not in public. Not in secret either. Just… privately. A borrowed practice room in a building neither of them belonged to anymore. Neutral ground. Like Switzerland, if Switzerland had mirrored walls and scuffed floors.
He looked different. Lighter somehow. Like someone who had finally taken a breath after being underwater too long. That made it worse.
“You didn’t tell me,” Juhoon said, because if he said anything else he was going to break character entirely.
“I wanted to,” James started. He always did that—started with the truth and hoped it would be enough.
“But you didn’t.”
He nodded. No excuses. That hurt too.
“They would’ve used you against me,” he said quietly. “Or me against you. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“So you let this happen instead.”
That was when James looked at Juhoon like he’d struck something vital.
They didn’t touch. They stood three feet apart like strangers practicing restraint. Like professionals.
The breakup had already happened by then. Not only officially, but emotionally. It had happened in increments—missed glances, hands that hovered and dropped, words swallowed for safety. This meeting was just the paperwork.
“I’m joining another group,” he said. “Different concept. Smaller. Less… surveillance.”
Juhoon laughed, sharp and humorless. “You make it sound like witness protection.”
“Feels like it.”
Juhoon wanted to ask if he would be happy. If he would miss him. He wanted to ask if there was a version of this universe where we didn’t have to choose between love and oxygen.
He asked none of it.
“Congratulations,” Juhoon said instead, because he’s very good at surviving.
James stepped closer then. Just one step. Enough that Juhoon could smell his shampoo. Same as always. That detail almost took him out at the knees.
“I didn’t stop loving you. Probably never will,” he said.
That sentence is a loaded weapon.
“Don’t,” Juhoon said, finally losing composure. “Don’t say that like it fixes anything.”
“I’m not saying it to fix it. I’m saying it because it’s true.”
Truth without utility is just pain.
He left first. Of course he did. He always walked away like he trusted the ground to keep holding him.
___
After that, everything blurred into maintenance mode.
Schedules changed. Choreography shifted. His parts were redistributed with surgical precision. His name became something we didn’t say unless necessary. The others tried. He knows they did. They hovered, offered distractions, filled the silence with noise. He appreciated it. Juhoon really did.
But grief isn’t loud when it’s real. It’s meticulous.
Juhoon found James’s hoodie in his closet two weeks later. Navy blue. Slightly stretched at the cuffs because he liked to hook his thumbs there when he was nervous. He pressed it to his face like an idiot and hated himself for how fast the tears came. Hated that his body still reacted to him like oxygen.
He didn’t post about him. Didn’t like or comment or acknowledge. He followed the rules. Unfollowed his new group from his private account even though it felt like ripping off a scab he hadn’t earned.
And yet.
At three in the morning, when sleep refused to cooperate, He stalked himself on the internet. Typed his own name into search bars. Read opinions from strangers who thought they knew him because they knew his face. He searched James’s name too, pretending it was accidental.
“James looks happier lately.”
“James fits this concept better.”
“James finally free.”
Free.
He closed the app and stared at the ceiling, counting breaths that didn’t belong to anyone else.
Sometimes Juhoon imagines what James’s new dorm looks like. Whether he still leaves mugs everywhere. Whether he still eats around the nuts in trail mix like it personally offended him. Whether someone else notices the way he hums under his breath when he’s focused.
That thought is the one that hurts the most—that someone else might learn him the way he did. That his habits will be catalogued in another heart. That Juhoon will become a footnote. A before.
They say time heals. That’s a lie we tell ourselves because the alternative—that some wounds just scar over and change the way you move—is scarier.
Juhoon performs better now. That’s the cruelest joke. The pressure that crushed them polished him instead. Fans comment on his intensity, his emotional delivery, the way his eyes linger like he’s searching for something just out of frame.
They’re right.
He is.
Every so often, their schedules overlap in the same building. Different floors. Different elevators. They never run into each other. Someone is always careful enough to prevent that.
But once—just once—he heard his laugh echo down a hallway he wasn’t supposed to be in.
His chest seized so fast Juhoon had to stop walking. For half a second, instinct took over. His body angled toward the sound like a compass needle finding north.
Then he remembered who he was supposed to be now.
Juhoon turned away.
That night, Juhoon dreamed of a room filled with all the things he left behind. Hoodies. Notes. Shared jokes that no longer landed. He stood in the middle of it, holding everything, missing him so completely it felt like a second career.
Juhoon woke up exhausted.
Loving him was never the problem. The world just demanded a sacrifice, and it turns out it was us.
Somewhere out there, James is starting over. Becoming someone new. Leaving everything behind like it’s easy.
He stays.
He carries.
He performs.
And in the quiet moments—between breaths, between songs—Juhoon lets himself miss him like it’s a secret he’s still allowed to keep.