Archive of Our Own

TRACK 1

chanyeol

The tape pops out of the recorder with a loud, plastic click. It always feels bigger than it should, that noise, like a door opening or a promise being made. Cassette pinched between two fingers, Chanyeol squints in the lamplight, turning it once, twice, as if the right angle will somehow tell him what to write. The J-card inside the case is blank. And to Chanyeol, that blankness feels like an accusation.

With a sigh, he sets the tape down on the table, nudging aside a stack of half-folded laundry and a bowl with the last few ice cubes melted into a sugary puddle, and retrieves the cheap notebook he insists is ‘lyrics’ even though Jongin once described it as ‘illegible scribbles.’

His apartment is barely an apartment: one narrow room with a tiny kitchenette at one end, a small double bed shoved against a wall, a window that looks out onto another window, and a fan that rattles like it’s trying its best to escape the building. But it’s his. He pays for it with all those long shifts and sore feet and the kind of tired that turns your bones to jelly. But nights like this — recording nights — it always feels different, like the thin walls don’t matter, the tattered linens don’t matter, nothing matters but the way he organises his thoughts and lets them out into the quiet.

On the radio, the DJ is talking too much, his voice slick with late-night charm, rolling through announcement after announcement about traffic diversions and new banners going up near the stadium. Every other sentence seems to contain the word ‘Olympics.’ Outside, somewhere beyond the window, metal clanks and a drill whines and then stops, leaving the night briefly stunned by its own silence. Chanyeol leans over the tape deck. The plastic buttons are scuffed where his fingers have hit them too many times in too much excitement. Pressing EJECT, he shoves in a new tape and closes the lid, then hovers over the controls for a heartbeat, enjoying the tiny power of it. The next move matters.

“Okay,” he tells the room, as if the room cares. “Okay. We’re doing this.”

The trick is to hit PLAY and RECORD at the exact same time. If you time it wrong, there’s always the chance of the machine chewing up the tape, but Chanyeol’s done this enough times that he’s confident. A small red light pings on. This is it. No going back.

He clears his throat, and then immediately regrets it because the tape would’ve picked that up. Shit. But instead of starting again, he just grins.

“Yo,” he says, and then pauses because he’s aware that ‘yo’ sounds funny. Still, he kind of likes how it hits like an opening beat, so he goes with it. “It’s… it’s Chanyeol.” He stops again and snorts to himself. “Okay, don’t make this weird. This is for practise. Junmyeon hyung keeps nagging about recording everything, right? So here we are.”

Really, he’s talking to Sehun. He’s always talking to Sehun when it comes to recording, because Sehun isn’t much of a singer either, and he understands rap in a way the others don’t (or don’t want to). They do this all the time: throwing lines at each other, little rap fragments made up on the spot to try and trip each other up. It isn’t serious. Except it kind of is.

Tapping the edge of the table with two fingers, Chanyeol sets a steady rhythm and the first few lines drop out of him before he can overthink them.

“Got a pocket full of noise,

Got a head full of spark,

City talking too loud—”

I’m not afraid of the dark, he almost says, but that sounds stupid so he stops, veers, changing the flow before it can settle into something too exposed. He toys with a few other lines, the words sliding and bumping into each other; he chases the edge of an accidental rhyme, following instinctively because his mouth likes the way the words feel. It’s not quite right, though. It isn’t quite there yet.

Trying to keep up with his thoughts has always been difficult, even when he was a kid. His mum once said that even as a baby he was burbling little rhymes from his crib, but Chanyeol think she just says that to make him feel good. Still, sometimes he wonders if she unintentionally influenced his musical proclivities, shaping the way he just has to answer whenever the world throws sounds at him.

“—I’m not afraid of the dark?” he says, testing it out loud. It still sounds stupid and it’s kind of a lie. He’s afraid of a lot of things, like being ordinary or being laughed at for wanting too much. He’s afraid that this whole band idea is just another bright, ridiculous thing they’ll drop like a toy when it stops feeling new. “Wait, scrap that,” he adds, and amends it to, “I’m talking back in the dark.”

Better.

“Radio static,

DJ talking too low,

Got a future in my chest,

That I don’t know how to show.”

As he raps, he puts on a voice that sounds tougher than he feels, rougher than he is, and he throws in a few English phrases because it’s fun and shiny, and because it tastes like imported cassettes and glossy magazine covers and a future he can’t touch yet.

“Laugh if you want to,

Say I’m out of line,

I’m just tuning the world,

To the beat in my spine.”

He breaks into a little melody without meaning to, two notes, three, a hook that could be something if he doesn’t kill it with embarrassment. Then he pauses again.

“Don’t — don’t record over this,” he says suddenly, way too seriously and way too close to the mic. “I mean, you can. Whatever.”

But he means it. This one, tonight, feels special. Chanyeol keeps going until his throat has warmed up and his confidence catches, and he hears himself getting better in real time, finding the beat, riding it, getting braver. The fan rattles nearby. The radio DJ fades into static for a second and then returns. Somewhere outside, a motorbike tears through the street like it’s late for its own existence.

Chanyeol hits a line he likes and loops it. He’s mid-flow when the phone suddenly rings. “Shit,” he says, eyes snapping to the handset hanging on the wall. “Wait, wait.” The phone doesn’t wait, just shrills at him, so he scrambles up and across the room to grab the handset. “Hello?”

“Chanyeol-ah. You’re still awake,” comes his sister’s voice.

“Huh? It’s barely night,” Chanyeol says, glancing toward the dark window.

“It’s night,” she says. “Mother asked if you’re coming by this week.” She’s straight to the point. Chanyeol can hear background noise on her end: a television, a kettle, the soft domestic clatter of a home that isn’t his. “She hasn’t seen you in ages, and I’m the one she always complains to about it.”

Chanyeol twists the phone cord around his finger, then unwinds it before it knots. “I’ve been busy.”

“You’re always busy,” his sister says, sounding perturbed. “You work too much, and you don’t visit enough. And when you do visit, you stare at the wall like you’re listening to ghosts.”

He laughs at this because laughter keeps things moving. “I’m thinking.”

“About what?”

About how his life feels like it’s only really beginning now. About how the city is changing around them — banners, cranes, new paint, new rules — and he can’t tell if he’s meant to keep up or carve his own path through it. About how Sehun’s smile looks different when he’s not trying to show it. About how Jongin’s feet never stop moving like stillness is some kind of punishment. About how Kyungsoo’s voice makes the room go quiet. About how Junmyeon catalogues everything.

Instead, he says, “We might start a band.”

He can almost hear her eye-roll. “A band,” she repeats slowly. It isn’t like his sister is cruel or anything, she’s just… practical. The kind of person who checks the stove twice. The kind of person who doesn’t press record unless she’s sure the tape is worth it.

“Yeah,” he says quickly. “We’re practising. We’ve got a system. Tapes and stuff.”

“Tapes,” she echoes, and now she’s definitely frowning. “You’re a grown man. You’ll be considered old soon enough.”

“Hey, I’m not old,” Chanyeol protests. “I’m in my prime.”

“You work at a convenience store and sleep on a mattress that’s seen things,” she says. “That isn’t a prime.”

The red light blinks on the recorder, and he realises the tape is still spinning. Which means everything is being noted. Shit, shit! He takes a couple of steps toward it, but the cord goes taut, and his sister’s voice crackles through the receiver.

“Are you still there?” she says.

“Yeah.”

“Well?”

“It’s temporary,” he insists, nudging his battered mattress with his toe and eyeing the recorder like it has a personal vendetta against him. “When this thing takes off—”

“Mmm,” she says, with the tone of a loved one who doesn’t believe you but also refuses to crush you, which is somehow worse.

Chanyeol closes his eyes, painfully aware that Sehun will hear his half of the conversation.

“Just come home soon, okay?” she says, a little softer now. “Even if it’s only for coffee. Mother misses you.”

“I’ll come,” Chanyeol says, and he really does mean it. “Tell her I’ll come.” He will. He will. He’ll make a note of it somewhere.

Apparently satisfied, his sister hums and then, because she just can’t seem to help herself, adds, “And don’t embarrass yourself.”

“Ah, no promises, sis,” he says.

When he hangs up, the room falls quiet, except for the fan and the soft whir of the tape still running. The red light winks at him, letting him know that, yes, it totally caught him mid-life. He goes back to the cassette deck and leans in close until his mouth is near the mic.

“Okay,” he says, trying to sound casual. “Where was I?” It takes him a moment to find the beat again, tapping it out on the table until it settles, and for a while he forgets to be self-conscious. The words come, rhymes slipping in sideways, and his voice grows bolder as he reaches for something that might one day feel like certainty.

Later,  his finger hesitates over the STOP button because he knows that ending the recording will shrink the world back down to the size of his apartment, the size of his paycheque, the size of what’s currently possible.

The tape clicks off and he ejects it, holding it in his palm.

One copy.

He could make another. He knows how, and he’s got about a million more blank tapes in the drawer. Junmyeon would tell him, gently and with that quiet exasperation, that it’s sensible, that duplication is its own kind of care.

Chanyeol traces the ridged plastic edge instead. One copy feels… honest, in a way, like admitting he doesn’t truly believe in himself yet.

He grabs a pen and writes on the label in large, obvious letters:

PRACTICE (JUNE) 1 - C

Then beneath it:

DON’T OVERWRITE

Shoving the tape into his pocket, he heads out.

The street outside is still warm from the day. Seoul makes its own raps around him: the rumble of traffic, distant laughter, a radio leaking strains of I Wanna Dance With Somebody from an open window, neon signs humming over the convenience store across the street.

Sehun is already there when he arrives, leaning against the wall with his hands shoved deep in the pockets of a bomber jacket that looks better cared for than anything Chanyeol owns. His trainers are almost aggressively white, like he’s taken personal offence at dirt existing at all. He looks up as Chanyeol approaches.

“You’re late,” Sehun says.

“What? No, I’m not,” Chanyeol replies. “You’re early. That’s not my fault.”

Sehun’s mouth twitches in an almost-smile. “Hyung—”

“Don’t,” Chanyeol warns, because if Sehun calls him hyung with that tone it’s going to make his heart do something stupid.

Sehun throws him a curious look but doesn’t say anything else, and they stand like that for a second, close but not too close, held there by instinct and good manners. Behind them, three BMX bikes lie in a careless sprawl near the store doorway, abandoned momentarily in favour of snacks or drinks or whatever their owners went in there for. When the silence grows too thick, Chanyeol digs into his jeans for the tape. It feels unusually fragile, like it could crack if it’s not handled with enough care, even though he isn’t usually precious about cheap bits of plastic.

Sehun is staring at him with that strange tilt to his head, his eyes bright in the streetlight like he knows something is about to be shared.

“This,” Chanyeol says, trying very hard to sound like he doesn’t care all that much, “is for you.”

Sehun’s gaze drops to the tape. “Is it good?” he asks.

Chanyeol scoffs. “Obviously.”

For a bizarre and irrational moment, Chanyeol doesn’t want him to accept it, even though he knows Sehun will (because he always does, eagerly). But it means it’ll be gone, and man, he didn’t expect it to be this difficult. Their fingers brush briefly at the edge of the plastic, and really, it’s barely a touch, but Chanyeol feels it jolt all the way down to his toes. Above them, the light stutters once, then steadies, washing the carpark in sodium gold.

And just like that, the tape is no longer his. Now it’s theirs. Now it’s Sehun’s, really. All of the risk and rawness and realness, sliding into Sehun’s jacket pocket.

“Don’t record over it,” Chanyeol tells him.

Sehun stares at him a second too long. Then he nods and says, “Okay.”

And for reasons Chanyeol refuses to examine, that single word feels like a dangerous kind of promise.

TRACK 2

suho

The first thing Junmyeon always does when he wakes up is brush his teeth. Then he fills the kettle and sets it on the stove, fitting a Melitta cone over his mug, because coffee. He used to check the news next, but there’s a new step in his morning routine now — one he’s slipped in quietly after teeth and caffeine — which is going to the shoebox pushed under his chest of drawers, pulling it out, and checking the tapes.

Morning light slants in through the wide window of his apartment, catching on the clear plastic cases and turning them briefly luminous. His place is bigger than most, with three rooms including a full kitchen and an ensuite, plus a real dining table instead of a repurposed crate, and an air conditioner that actually works.

Carrying the shoebox over to the sofa, Junmyeon flicks on the stereo system on his way, turning the excessively engineered dials until he picks up the local radio station. The stereo was a birthday gift, one he pretended he didn’t need but uses every day anyway. He pushes aside a pile of shirts he hasn’t bothered hanging in his wardrobe yet, and collapses into the plush cushions. As he does, a few pages of sheet music unsettle from the other end of the sofa and surf down onto the floor. People assume he’s more orderly than he is.

Inside the box, though, everything is organised.

Junmyeon runs his thumb slowly along the cassette spines, noticing the variation of the handwriting in the titles and scribbled notes. Chanyeol’s writing sprawls confidently, letters wide and unapologetic. Sehun’s slants with impatience and a hint of defiance. Jongin’s is careful when he remembers to be careful, neat in a way that suggests effort. Kyungsoo’s is compact and tidy, each character considered before it commits itself to the label. Yixing’s stands apart immediately, the Korean characters written with great care, showing the act of on-the-spot translation in every stroke.

He pauses and lifts one tape free.

PRACTICE (MAY) 7 - C

DO NOT TAPE OVER!

Smiling despite himself, he murmurs, “One copy,” because of course it’s only one copy. Only someone like Chanyeol would gamble like that. Junmyeon holds the tape up to the light, checking that the reels inside are wound tight and clean, the magnetic ribbon dark and intact. Then his gaze drifts instinctively to the sideboard, to the tape deck.

He pops the tape in, and after a second, Chanyeol’s voice fills the room, all loud and eager and rushing ahead of itself as if he’s afraid the ribbon will run out before he’s said all he wants to say. Junmyeon smiles as he listens. There’s bravado there, English phrases dropped in like bright, shining tokens, rhymes stretching to almost breaking point before snapping back into place. A laugh interrupts a line that might have landed too close to sincerity, and Junmyeon can’t help but chuckle along. Jokes always seem to cover something more vulnerable, something that doesn’t yet know how to stand on its own. But it will — he’s sure of it. They’ll work hard, and everything will be great.

Beneath the performance, Chanyeol’s tape carries more than he perhaps intends: the underlying buzz of a fan, the scrape of a chair leg on rough wooden floorboards. At one point, a sneeze and a soft curse. Chanyeol never overwrites these imperfections; he just barrels forward, either unaware or unconcerned.

That’s what these tapes do: they keep what you didn’t intend. And that’s partly why Junmyeon keeps every single one that’s handed to him.

Chanyeol’s voice comes to a stop, and Junmyeon catches part of a news segment from the stereo system. Words that leave him a little unsettled drift through his apartment: demonstrations, universities, negotiations, reforms. These terms seem to have become part of Seoul’s voice lately, and he doesn’t know how to feel about it. Sometimes, the idea that they’re trying to start a band while everything around them is in turmoil seems absurd. But Junmyeon also understands that the others need something special to hold onto, and it might as well be this, since they’re far less concerned about reform or referendum, invested only in rhythm and flow and image and the next beat hitting harder than the last.

When the tape reaches the end, the machine stops automatically. Junmyeon dutifully rewinds it back to the start and ejects it, sliding it back into its case where it’ll be safe and protected. Then he reaches for a blank tape of his own.

“They’re saying things are changing,” he says softly into the microphone. “That this is all necessary and long overdue.” He pauses, listening to the soft hiss of the machine under his words. “I don’t know what that means yet, only that everyone seems louder lately. Or maybe I’m just paying more attention.” He shrugs, even though nobody is there to see it. “And they’re building faster than they used to when we were kids. Have you noticed that, too?”

Junmyeon pauses again and stares out the window at the skyline, gigantic metal cranes silhouetted against the blue, Olympic banners lining streets as far as he can see. Change. Reality.

“Honestly, I thought about stopping this band thing many times,” he admits. “I thought we should wait. Be sensible. But I don’t think waiting is what any of us are good at.”

Hitting STOP, he drinks his coffee now that it’s cool enough not to burn his tongue, and thinks about what to say next.

“These tapes, though. They’re not an escape, at least not for me. They’re just proof that we were here and that we’re listening to each other.” He doesn’t know why his throat feels so tight all of a sudden, but he continues anyway. “If everything else is moving, then this can be something that stays. Anyway, you’ll be here soon, so I’ll leave it at that... Uh, annyeong.”

This time when he presses STOP, he picks up another blank and slides it into the second tape slot and begins the duplication process, levels and volume carefully adjusted to catch everything as clearly as possible.

While the tape copies, he moves through his apartment, collecting a shirt from the back of a chair, dropping his used coffee mug into the sink to be washed later, sometime, whenever he remembers.

By the time he’s dressed, the duplication has finished. He takes out the original and quickly writes a label on the J-card:

TODAY THOUGHTS (JUNE 8^th) - SUHO

As he glances at the clock, the doorbell buzzes once. Hah, precisely on time as always.

Kyungsoo stands in the hallway, quietly composed but alert.

“Glad you could make it, Kyungsoo-ah,” Junmyeon says, inviting him in with a sweep of his arm. “Or should I say ‘D.O’?”

“Cute, hyung,” Kyungsoo replies, deadpan. He takes his shoes off by the door and pads across the living room, glancing once toward the tape deck before sitting down. “Did you listen to the one I gave you at the weekend?”

“Yes,” Junmyeon says.

“And?”

Junmyeon considers the question. He can still hear it — the way Kyungsoo’s voice settles into the opening lines of With or Without You, the melody shaped more by breath than volume at first, and the way he shifts keys effortlessly for Careless Whisper, stripping it down to something bare and earnest. “You don’t rush, which is good,” he says. “I like the way you let the silences sit cleanly. And I noticed you held a lot of the high notes longer this time.”

Kyungsoo watches him for a moment and then nods once, seeming satisfied with the feedback. “Thanks,” he says. “The high notes always feel unfinished if I don’t.”

“It’s steady,” Junmyeon says. “That’s what makes it work. Just wait until we’re singing our own songs.”

A pink tinge rises in Kyungsoo’s cheeks at that, and Junmyeon realises just how much this means to him.

“Really, it was great. Oh, by the way,” he holds out his copy of the recording from earlier, “this is for you.”

Kyungsoo accepts the tape and raises an eyebrow. “Singing?”

“Not this time.” Junmyeon heads to the kettle to make Kyungsoo a drink.

“Why me?” Kyungsoo asks from the sofa, turning the cassette over in his fingers before sliding it into his pocket.

“Because you’ll hear what the others don’t want to,” Junmyeon says.

“Ah, okay.”

It’s easy with Kyungsoo; Junmyeon rarely has to elaborate.

“I won’t overwrite it, hyung,” Kyungsoo adds, which tells Junmyeon that he’s received tapes from Chanyeol recently, too. Outside his apartment, more news drifts on the air from somewhere down the street, but this time he tunes it out. For now, he’s content to just spend time with his friend and think about possibilities instead of politics.

Later, when the door closes behind Kyungsoo, Junmyeon stands for a moment in the quiet and listens as the city moves outside in constant forward momentum. It waits for no one. It leaves those who hesitate behind. And Junmyeon understands, deep down, that maybe chasing this new thing isn’t something to fear, after all.

He just hopes they’ll be good, whatever they end up becoming.

Finally, he goes back to the shoebox and, with great care, makes space for the next tape.

INTERLUDE

postmark

He rewinds the tape before sealing it, watching the spools turn beneath the plastic windows. The machine sighs when it reaches the beginning. It’s always tempting to listen again, especially to the ones where they’re all together. Those always sound more kinetic and often end up devolving into chaos, but he knows it’s just the excitement of it all. The bickering is never nasty. The laughter comes so easily, like another kind of language they’ve all learned to speak.

Junmyeon slides the cassette into its case and then slides that into a brown, reinforced paper envelope. On the front, he writes the address slowly, block by block, careful not to let the ink blot. The return address — his own — is printed smaller on the back.

This is where he hesitates, because once it leaves his hand at the postbox, it belongs to fate. He thinks back to when they first met Yixing, back when he was an exchange student and everything came with an expiry date: semesters, visas, those liminal moments between classes when they would all talk excitedly about the future. They always knew Yixing would have to leave eventually, and yet, in many ways, it’s like he’s never been gone.

Junmyeon wonders if the letter will even get there. And if it does, will it get there in one piece and be playable? These are things he can’t confirm, and it’s somehow terrifying to picture the disappointment, to imagine the loss.

Then it’s always a waiting game. Post to and from China takes around six weeks, usually, which is a lot of time for things to change.

Before he seals the envelope, Junmyeon grabs another sheet of paper and writes an additional note:

We called it EXO.

It means ‘outside,’ like an exoplanet.

You’re still orbiting with us.

There’s no need to explain further; he’s sure Yixing will understand it. Hopefully he’ll think it’s cool, too. Carefully folding the flap, Junmyeon seals the envelope and heads for the door, sliding into his shoes.

Outside, midsummer clings stubbornly to the evening, the air catching at his collar as he walks the two blocks to the postbox near the bus stop. An Olympic banner flutters overhead, whispering to him that he probably should be more excited about it, but really, it’s this he’s more nervously excited about. EXO.

Junmyeon stops in front of the postbox and eyes the slot. He runs his thumb along the envelope seam, re-checking it’s secure, and then slips it into the box, hearing the soft thunk it makes a second later.

Weeks. This’ll take weeks. But he knows it’s worth it.

He stands there a moment longer, listening to the city all around him, imagining the cassette crossing water and time and the invisible lines that separate here from there. Somewhere far east, eventually, a tape desk will click, and a familiar man will press PLAY. A room will fill with the sound of five guys building something too large to hold all at once.

Smiling, Junmyeon turns back toward the glow of the streetlights, already thinking about the next label, the next careful decision that will keep this thing moving.

TRACK 3

convenience store

There’s a certain point in an evening where you’re not so tired you space out, but it’s late enough to feel like something interesting might happen. The convenience store glows like a fish tank against the darkening street. Moths circle in the light in erratic loops. Junmyeon counts them — six in total — and wonders when he started looking for meaning in things like that.

Chanyeol appears, pushing his bike the last few feet instead of riding it as if that makes him look less eager. He goes to the stack of crates holding bottles of Crown beer and soda cans that sweat in their wire racks and leans his bike against it. The bottles make a soft chink on contact, like the first note of a song.

“Hyung,” Chanyeol says, and then, almost absently, he checks his reflection in the window glass. “Where are the others?”

“Inside,” Junmyeon says.

As if on cue, the door opens, letting out a blast of cool, conditioned air, and Sehun steps out, all gangly-limbed and fashionable in a loose, open-collared button-down in soft black, the fabric thin enough to cling in the heat, sleeves rolled to his forearms. His fringe falls into his eyes in a way that says casual, but it would’ve been carefully styled earlier. He pauses for a single beat, eyes resting on Chanyeol, before he comes over to join them.

“Saw you checking yourself out in the window, hyung,” he says to Chanyeol, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he speaks.

“I was not,” Chanyeol says.

“You definitely were,” Sehun says. “You did the chin thing.”

“Chin thing? Shut up. I don’t have a chin thing.”

Sehun just snorts, but before Chanyeol can defend his honour, laughter bursts from inside the store. Jongin is at the counter, Junmyeon’s credit card in hand and arms loaded with snacks and drinks like he’s stocking an apocalypse bunker. Kyungsoo stands just behind him in that patient, quiet way that tells Junmyeon he’s in full indulge mode, which, thinking about it, he often is with Jongin.

Chanyeol points at Sehun. “How much product did you use anyway, Sehun-ah? You look like an ad for Mandom.”

Defensively, Sehun goes to touch his hair, but thinks better of it. “The perfect amount,” he says confidently. “As always.”

The door opens and Jongin spills out first, dropping into a crouch at the curb as he unloads a cascade of snacks onto the concrete. Kyungsoo follows, stepping aside to lean against the wall and adjusting his glasses in that small, habitual way.

“Thank you, Suho hyung,” Jongin mumbles as he tears open an energy bar with his teeth.

“Kai,” Junmyeon says, holding out his hand. “Credit card, please.”

With a wink and a smirk, Jongin reaches into his pocket and hands the card over. Nice try, Junmyeon thinks.

“So we’re using the nicknames, then? Like, all the time?” Chanyeol says, grabbing up a Maxim from the snack pile.

“Why not?” Jongin says around his mouthful. “They’re stage names. A lot of performers have stage names.”

Kyungsoo’s voice drifts from nearby, low but always able to hold a room. “I didn’t choose to have a stage name.”

“No,” Jongin nods, glancing back at him, “But D.O just sounds cooler. You should use it.”

Kyungsoo doesn’t argue with this. Yet another indulgence.

Junmyeon looks between them, tucking his credit card safely back into his wallet before his gaze settles on Sehun. “Did you ever decide on yours?” he asks.

Sehun blinks. “Mine?”

“Your stage name,” Junmyeon clarifies.

Sehun wrinkles his nose, considering. “What were the options again?”

Chanyeol lights up immediately, like he’s been waiting for this. “Okay, first of all, you cannot pretend you don’t remember, because you shot down at least three of them.”

“They were bad,” Sehun says.

“They were visionary,” Chanyeol argues. “We had—” he counts them off on his fingers, “—HUN, which was strong. International. Phoenix, because you’re tall and dramatic. Oh, and Prince.”

“No,” Sehun says flatly.

“There was also Seven,” Jongin adds, grinning. “Because it sounds mysterious.”

“It sounds like a convenience store,” Sehun replies, and Jongin devolves into a flurry of giggles.

Kyungsoo hums thoughtfully from the wall. “You could just use your name.”

Sehun looks at him, then at Junmyeon, then back at Chanyeol, who’s still clearly ready to keep pitching increasingly terrible ideas. He shifts his weight, scuffs the toe of his trainer against the ground.

“I think…” he starts, then stops, as if testing the thought before committing to it. “I think I’ll just stick with Sehun.”

Chanyeol squints at him. “That’s it?”

Sehun shrugs, but there’s something quietly certain about it. “It sounds like me. Anyway, you use your name.”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol says, and then, under his breath, “Because it’s the best name.”

There’s a brief pause before Jongin claps his hands together. “Okay, Sehun it is,” he declares. “Boring, but respectable.”

Sehun kicks at him lightly with his foot. “You literally named yourself after a rhythm.”

“Exactly,” Jongin grins. “Memorable.”

Junmyeon watches them with a small smile, something warm settling in his chest. Names matter. So does knowing when not to change one.

They settle along the low concrete curb, and from inside the store, a radio drifts between a western pop ballad and a newsreader talking about road closures near the train station. Kyungsoo leans back and closes his eyes for a moment, as if finding the light too harsh even through his glasses lenses.

Tearing open a choco pie, Chanyeol says, “Okay. Listen. I made something.”

“A mistake?” Jongin says without missing a beat.

“A masterpiece,” Chanyeol corrects, and flicks a crumb at him.

“Is this about the tape?” Kyungsoo asks, leaning forward to snag a packet of Saeukkang from the pile.

“Oh, you heard about it?” Chanyeol flicks his gaze briefly to Sehun, but strangely, Sehun seems to shrink into himself and looks away. It’s odd; Junmyeon assumes at first that it’s just the usual awkwardness he sees in their maknae whenever Chanyeol is nearby, but for a split second he thinks he spots something sharper there. Fear, maybe. Or guilt.

“What tape?” Jongin asks.

“The one I gave to Sehun-ah.”

“Huh.” Jongin thinks about this. “How come I didn’t get a copy?”

“Because,” Chanyeol says, affecting an air of wiseness that definitely doesn’t suit him, “geniuses don’t need to make copies.”

“You talk so much shit,” Jongin laughs.

By this point, Sehun isn’t just quiet. He’s virtually melting into the concrete as if he wishes the ground would just swallow him already. Junmyeon nudges him with his shoulder but doesn’t say anything. In reply, Sehun offers him a hopeless look and shakes his head. Don’t. Please.

“What’s it about?” Kyungsoo asks, the conversation continuing around them.

Chanyeol considers this like it’s a trick question. “Everything.”

“So, nothing,” Jongin says.

“It’s about not being scared,” Chanyeol blurts.

A red-eye bus roars past at the end of the street, headlights sweeping over them, catching and gilding jawlines and hands and grins, before fading. This always happens: the world narrows down to a bubble where they exist together, the ease, the energy, only broken whenever the world interrupts like a slap.

“You going to play it for us?” Jongin asks, opening his second energy bar. “I brought my Walkman.”

Chanyeol looks at Sehun and raises an eyebrow.

“Uh,” Sehun says, fidgeting. “Forgot to bring it. Sorry, hyung.”

“Shit, okay. I’ll play it next time,” Chanyeol says, a little deflated. “When you’re ready for greatness.”

Rolling his eyes, Kyungsoo reaches for a cold drink. Jongin’s gaze follows his movements, and he flicks his tongue out to wet his lower lip.

“Hyung, you’re too quiet,” he says. “You should sing something.”

But Kyungsoo shakes his head. “Not here.”

“Why?”

Gesturing toward the fluorescent glare from the store windows, Kyungsoo says, quietly, “Too bright.”

“Ah.” Jongin grabs the can out of his fingers and snaps the ring-pull, then hands it back. “We’ll find somewhere else soon.”

“We do need a place to practise and write,” Junmyeon says. “If we’re really going to do this.”

“We’re already doing it,” Chanyeol cuts in. “But yeah, we do.”

They eat, they drink, they complain about the heat, the price of beer, rent going up, overtime, looming military service. But eventually, the conversation comes back around.

“So,” Sehun says. “We are EXO.”

Hearing it spoken out loud like that with no warning stops all of them in their tracks. They stare at each other, something bright and unnameable fizzing in the air. Junmyeon doesn’t know about the others, but he feels goosebumps rise up along his arms even though it’s hellishly hot out.

“We are EXO,” he echoes. “We are one.”

“Plus Yixing,” Kyungsoo says.

“Lay,” Junmyeon corrects. “He wants it to be Lay.”

Chanyeol shrugs. “And you were worried about HUN,” he says to Sehun, and everyone laughs, even Sehun.

Above them, the streetlight hums steadily, casting sodium gold across their faces, stretching their shadows long and strange against the concrete. While Junmyeon doesn’t know what’s on the horizon, he can feel it in the air: something has begun, and he’s pretty sure it can no longer be stopped.

TRACK 4

kai

Jongin turns the radio dial back, then forward, then back again, chasing clarity through the static. The room is dim except for the desk lamp angled toward the cassette deck, the bulb casting a narrow beam of light over the controls. His apartment is smaller than Junmyeon’s and larger than Chanyeol’s, nothing special, but comfortable, which is really all he needs. The floorboards are worn smooth near the centre where he practises most often.

There! He catches the station and snaps his fingers away from the dials before he loses it again. The end of a news report comes through at first, something about riot police, but it’s too late in the segment for him to get invested. Then the DJ’s voice comes back in, rolling over the first few beats of a song that’s already climbing the charts. The opening synth of Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now swells through the speakers and Jongin immediately feels happy and buoyant; he’s already tapping his foot in time. He quickly hits PLAY and RECORD and the tape begins to spin.

He shifts his weight before he’s fully aware of it, one foot sliding back as his heel catches the floor, one shoulder tilting. Jongin traces lines instead of cataloguing steps or counting beats; he thinks about how a body cuts through space and how intention can emerge from instinct if you trust it enough to follow through. It’s a slower song, but he finds the rhythm after a few breaths.

When the DJ’s voice cuts in at the end, Jongin lunges for the recorder and switches it off. Another track saved. Originally, he planned to make a walk-to-work mix for his Walkman, but he’s starting to think it might be better to give this one to someone.

He smiles.

Midway through Hyehwa-dong, an ad tries shoehorning its way in early, and Jongin isn’t quick enough to cut it off. He hits REWIND but the tape whirs back too far, the reels overshooting their mark. “Shit,” he mutters, pulling a pencil from the desk drawer. As carefully as he can, he inserts it into the spool and turns gently until the ribbon settles back into place. Tape demands patience, and he’s learned to give it that because respect is the only thing that keeps it from turning on you.

As soon as a song comes on that he isn’t so keen on, he grabs up the plug-in microphone Junmyeon bought him and decides to inject some of his own MCing into the mix. How hard can it be?

“Okay,” he says, his voice pitched a little lower than usual. “Uh. This is… side A. Are you enjoying it? You should be because I put this together for you.” He pauses and laughs at himself. “I don’t know how long this is going to be, so — yeah. Just go with it.” The microphone cord swings lightly against his wrist. “This song’s kind of boring, so I’m skipping it. You can’t like everything, right?”

“I’m making this so I don’t have to fast-forward all the time.” Jongin clears his throat. “And so I don’t forget why I liked some of these songs in the first place. Hey, do you even wonder if we’ll still listen to this stuff in twenty or thirty years? I think about that a lot.”

Rolling the mic between his fingers, he listens to the scrape it makes and then stops because he’s aware the sound might pick up in the recording. “I know I don’t usually talk on tapes,” he says. “But it feels easier when no one’s looking at you. You don’t have to decide what your face is doing.”

Distantly, he hears the DJ come back in, but he doesn’t stop to see what plays next, because now that he’s talking, he realises how easy it is to say what he rarely tells anyone.

“When I dance, I don’t really think about what it looks like,” he says, staring down at the tape spools turning slowly in the machine. “I just think about where I’m going next. I guess that’s how I do everything. If I stop and think too hard about the shape of it, I freeze up. But if I keep moving, it usually just works. Or at least turns into something.”

He hears his own sigh before he’s even aware he’s made it.

“And sometimes when I move,” he says, barely more than a whisper now, “it feels like flying.” For a moment, his thoughts slip back to when he was a kid and his mother enrolled him in ballet classes without much discussion. Jongin had been dubious at first — ballet didn’t seem like the kind of thing boys his age did — and he’d resisted hard enough to sulk the entire way down the alley near the river to the little studio tucked above a row of shops. But once he started practising, once the teacher showed him how to hold himself, how to push off the ground properly, something inside him changed. His movements were awkward at first, all knees and too much momentum, but at the peak of each leap, just before gravity pulled him back down, there was a brief, weightless suspension where the world stopped, and he wasn’t an awkward kid anymore, wasn’t anything in particular, just completely free.

Jongin clicks off the recording, setting the mic back down. His face feels too hot, even though he hasn’t danced that hard yet. He considers rewinding again and recording over that last bit, but… it’s Kyungsoo — that’s who he’s going to give this to — and Jongin knows, more than anything else, that Kyungsoo won’t laugh at him when it matters.

Instead, he turns the radio back up and waits for the next song that’ll fit the mix. If his heart beats a bit faster than it should, it’s probably just the heat messing with his body. Yeah, that’s it.

Adjusting the volume, another song winds in. This one has a faster tempo than the others, so he hits RECORD and backs up to his usual spot at the centre of the room. He moves with the music, rolling his hips, then his shoulders, and imagines what it would sound like layered with a different voice. Something warm instead of dramatic, steady and clear enough to anchor the rhythm.

Kyungsoo’s voice would be perfect.

Jongin records a couple more tracks and eventually ejects the tape. He fills out the label with careful handwriting.

SIDE A (JULY) - J.

Then he crosses out the J and writes K instead, for Kai.

Maybe he won’t like it.

Maybe he will.

Jongin isn’t sure which makes him more nervous.

The sky outside his window has changed from blue to a deeper purple, a scatter of stars tossed across the horizon and streetlights already blinking awake along the block. Somewhere down the road, people are arguing through an open window, and a television blares from the floor above his, but he can’t make out what show is playing, only that there is applause and excited whooping from a studio audience. He grabs his jacket and heads out into the evening, the cassette tucked safely in his pocket.

Kyungsoo is already there when Jongin arrives, sitting on the low concrete wall near the corner with a notebook balanced on one knee, his pen hovering mid-thought. Streetlight always seems to highlight things in a way that daylight doesn’t, the gold glow blurring edges and making things gentler, somehow, almost dream-like. Jongin slows as he approaches, not wanting to interrupt whatever Kyungsoo is doing.

“You’re early,” Kyungsoo says without looking up. His glasses have slid a little way down the bridge of his nose from the sweaty heat. Absently, he nudges them back up.

“You say that like it’s unusual,” says Jongin.

“It is.”

“Oh, so that’s how it is?” Not taking offence, Jongin hitches himself up onto the wall and sits beside him, their shoulders almost, but not quite, touching. Evening traffic hums past.

“I made this today,” he says, pulling the cassette out of his jacket pocket.

Kyungsoo glances sideways at it, squinting slightly behind his glasses. “Oh?”

“It’s just… songs. From the radio.”

“You made me a mixtape,” Kyungsoo says.

“Uh.” Jongin nods, heat rising into his cheeks.

Quickly — maybe a little too quickly — Kyungsoo takes the tape and squirrels it away in his jeans, but there’s nothing rough in the gesture. If anything, it’s almost like he wants to put it somewhere safe, out of sight. He leaves his hand resting against his stonewashed pocket. “I’ll listen to it when I get home.”

Jongin nods again. “Yeah,” he says, because there isn’t really anything else to add to that without tipping over into something he’s not ready to name. Peering down at the notebook on Kyungsoo’s lap, he changes the subject. “What are you working on?”

As if on instinct, Kyungsoo closes the book. “Nothing big. I thought of a song. Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“It’s rough right now,” he says, and hugs the notebook to himself. It’s adorable, and Jongin almost say so, but Kyungsoo continues, “but it could be something. For us. For EXO.”

“Does it have a name?” Jongin asks, even more invested now that he knows it’s about their band.

“Hmm,” Kyungsoo muses. “I was thinking maybe ‘History.’”

“Oh. History.” Jongin ponders it, then smiles. “I like that. Seems fitting, right? Can you sing some of it?”

“Right now?” Kyungsoo seems to hug the notebook even harder.

“Yeah, why not? It’s just me here.” Jongin nudges him with his shoulder. Part of him is chomping at the bit to hear what Kyungsoo thinks about, what’s important to him, what he writes when nobody is around. “Come on. I won’t even react if you don’t want me to.”

Eyeing him sideways for a moment, Kyungsoo slowly opens the notebook and stares down at the words he’s scribbled, crossed out, rewritten again. He’s silent for a long time, and after a while Jongin thinks he won’t share, but then, finally, softly, his voice emerges. And it’s just as amazing and lovely as Jongin remembers, maybe even better because it’s just them this time, just them and the night.

“The day we know we’re one, as vast as that sun. Oh — one heart, one sun. Endlessly, we grow stronger as one…” Kyungsoo sings.

Holy shit. Well, Jongin isn’t expecting that. For a moment, he can’t breathe. Kyungsoo trails off and doesn’t sing anymore, and really, he doesn’t need to. Jongin already knows this is something special.

“It’s excellent,” he says. “You should definitely finish it.”

Kyungsoo nods. “It’ll be upbeat, I think. Not a sad song.”

“Upbeat is good for me,” Jongin says. “As resident dance machine, I insist on at least a few.”

And there’s the smile he’s always chasing, even when he doesn’t realise he is, Kyungsoo’s eyes crinkling behind his glasses, and his mouth…

Jongin clears his throat. “Anyway, yeah.”

“Yeah,” Kyungsoo says, closing his notebook again.

They sit like that for a long time, chatting about nothing important, as if the important stuff is a little too close to the surface and neither of them wants to test it. The streetlight glow catches on Kyungsoo’s glasses again as he talks, and he squints, looking down, like the light hurts.

As Jongin listens, his gaze drifts down the street. Somewhere over there is a café he passes on his way home from work. The place, from what he can tell, is tiny and artisan and they always keep the lights low, probably for atmosphere. He also knows it stays open late. He files the thought away without touching it directly.

When they eventually stand, their shoulders brush and Jongin feels suddenly awkward again. He’s got a good few inches in height on Kyungsoo, but Kyungsoo always feels taller somehow, calmer, more level-headed, like he sees more than he lets on.

“See you tomorrow,” Kyungsoo says.

“Yeah,” Jongin answers. “Tomorrow.”

As Kyungsoo heads off down the street, Jongin watches him until he disappears past the lights and around the corner.

He slips his hands into his jacket pockets and starts walking the other way, already thinking about music, about movement, about how some things are different when you give them room to breathe.

TRACK 5

sehun

Sehun sits cross-legged on the floor with the cassette case open in front of him. He doesn’t own much furniture, mainly just a mattress, a narrow desk that he’s pushed back against the wall, a metal chair that complains whenever he sits in it, and a surprisingly thick pile rug that his mum gave him because she said she wanted him to have something warm to practice dancing on. But everything he does own has been placed deliberately, because when he arranges things it feels a lot like certainty, as if control over his space might compensate for the things he hasn’t learned how to hold yet.

The walls are mostly bare except for two massive posters he’s taped slightly crooked: Top Gun and The Lost Boys. It irritates him how the corners curl in the humidity, but he used transparent tape so he can’t take them down or they’ll get ruined. Tom Cruise and a row of pale, handsome, leather-clad vampires watch the room with identical expectation, stylish and untouchable in a way Sehun understands instinctively. Sometimes, if he stares at the posters for too long, he starts to think that they belong somewhere bigger than this room, somewhere brighter and more expensive and inevitable — like Junmeyon hyung’s place. But he studies them anyway in the same way he studies magazine spreads, memorising posture and silhouette and attitude.

The tape rests in his hand.

PRACTICE (JUNE) 1 - C

DON’T OVERWRITE

Turning the cassette over, he presses his thumb too hard against the plastic window as if the dark ribbon inside might magically shift under pressure and reveal a version of events he prefers. It doesn’t, obviously. The damage is already done, and right now his own voice is stitched cleanly over Chanyeol’s like it has every right to be there. Which it doesn’t. The exact line where Chanyeol’s voice stops and his begins is sharp and sudden enough to hurt if he listens too closely.

Sehun remembers the moment it happened: the red light coming on, the way the rhythm pulled him in, how answering Chanyeol’s lines felt natural in a way nothing else did. He absolutely didn’t set out to erase anything. He only wanted to refine it and pull it tighter, see what lived underneath the noise, so he’d leaned into the mic without thinking about it, voice dropping to a register that felt truer than the one he usually uses around other people.

By the time he noticed the counter, it was already too late.

Leaning back against the wall, he stares up at the posters looming above him, their glossy confidence suddenly unbearable. Ugh, this sucks, he thinks in English, the phrase still new enough to feel novel, borrowed from a movie he watched last week with Jongin. It rolls around his brain, slightly ill-fitting, but he likes to try these things on anyway in the same way he tries on new silhouettes he can’t afford yet.

Sehun dresses carefully even when no one is around, sleeves rolled just so, shirt pressed flat against his frame, because presentation is a language he trusts. Money will come later. Access will come later. For now, he studies himself in the mirror and understands that expensive things fall best on bodies that know they belong in them. And he’s been working really hard on pretending.

Neon bleeds out of shop windows when he leaves his apartment building later. Instead of taking the bus, he decides to walk the side streets and half-lit intersections, dragging out the time as much as possible. He passes a video rental place with its door propped open, past a fried chicken shop where laughter spills out along with grease and smoke. EXO exists in places like this, he thinks — in apartments and practice rooms, in convenience store carparks and street corners.

He finds Chanyeol coming out of the basketball courts by the sports grounds, floodlights haloing his tall, angular frame in bright white. For a second, it makes Sehun think of a stage spotlight. He can see that Chanyeol’s lost more weight, but it’s all been replaced with muscle, and he chews the inside of his cheek, trying not to fixate on the way his sweat-damp vest clings to his body or the way his arms are roped with sinew and muscle. Practice has just ended by the look of it; guys peel away from the courts in clusters, full of adrenaline and loud voices and raucous laughter, but Chanyeol lingers, dribbling a ball lazily as he strolls.

Sehun waits nearby until Chanyeol spots him and makes a beeline for him.

“Yo,” Chanyeol says.

“I did something,” Sehun blurts, and he knows it isn’t exactly a greeting, but it’s the only thing in his head (and has been for the last few days).

Chanyeol narrows his eyes. “That’s never a good opening line.”

Heat flushes through Sehun’s face, and he lowers his eyes as he sheepishly holds out the cassette. “Hyung, I recorded on it.”

The pause that follows is short but devastating.

“… You what?”

“I didn’t mean to, I swear,” Sehun says. He wishes Chanyeol would just take the damn thing so he doesn’t have to hold it anymore. “I was listening and then I was trying something, and I forgot—”

“You forgot,” Chanyeol repeats slowly; he’s gone very still, the basketball tucked under his arm now, completely forgotten.

“It isn’t all gone,” Sehun adds. “The first half is still there. Mostly. Maybe the first quarter.”

Finally, Chanyeol takes the cassette, turning it over and scanning the label like he’s hoping it’s a lie or the wrong tape. “I wrote on it there,” he says quietly. “I wrote don’t overwrite.”

“I know.”

“So you knew.”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“That’s obvious.”

Ouch. It isn’t that Chanyeol’s wrong; it’s the tone that cuts. Over the years Sehun almost caught him up in height, but he suddenly feels stupidly small, uncomfortable in his own skin, like some dumb kid. Still, he doesn’t back away because he’s the one that’s screwed up. Sweat drips from Chanyeol’s jaw, and Sehun finds himself watching it — the physical proof of effort and investment.

This really, really sucks.

“You could’ve made your own tape,” Chanyeol says, and his voice is still too quiet.

“I know. Hyung—”

“You always do this.”

Sehun’s never heard Chanyeol like this, never seen him so terrifyingly still and serious. “Do what?”

“Just… step in,” Chanyeol says, frustration finally breaking the surface. Colour rises in his cheeks, which are already reddened from the basketball practice. This is something else, though. This is something Sehun never wanted to see. “Like it’s yours.”

“I wasn’t trying to take it.” Sehun wishes the ground would open up under him. “I was trying to answer it.” He has the sudden and unbearable thought that he’ll be kicked out of EXO before it’s even really begun, even though Chanyeol isn’t technically the leader — that hasn’t been formally decided yet, although it’s looking probable that Junmyeon hyung will take that role. Still, he might talk to the others, tell them what a screw-up Sehun is and they might decide. They might.

For a second, something like understanding flashes across Chanyeol’s face, before it hardens back into that deep disappointment. That awful hurt.

“Yeah,” Chanyeol says. “Well.”

Sehun opens his mouth, then closes it again as Chanyeol turns away. The floodlights buzz overhead, the courts seeming much larger and emptier than they did a moment ago. He understands that some things can’t be fixed with intention alone. That timing matters, permission matters. Trust matters.

All he can do is watch as Chanyeol stalks away toward the changing rooms without another word.

Sehun stands for a long time, unsure what to do. Should he follow? Should he wait? Maybe being here will just make it worse. Maybe leaving will make it worse. He suddenly wishes Junmyeon hyung were here to tell him what to do. Eventually, he has no choice but to walk away, and it’s only then that he realises just how narrow that moment with Chanyeol had been; the city opens up around him again full of noise and light and places where something new is always starting.

He supposes some things end just as quickly.

Sehun keeps walking, head down, and doesn’t stop until he’s home, painfully aware that there’s no rewinding things now.

INTERLUDE

return post

The envelope is thinner than the one Junmyeon sent. He knows it’s from Yixing before he reads the name, although this time Yixing has written ‘Lay,’ which makes Junmyeon smile and feel warm and proud at the same time. The handwriting leans slightly to the right and it’s careful, each character printed instead of written. The corner is covered in foreign stamps, some of them smudged from travel, and the paper itself smells faintly of something unfamiliar.

It’s been five weeks.

Five weeks of checking the mailbox more often than necessary. Five weeks of pretending he wasn’t the tiniest bit nervous, which is odd, because it’s Yixing, one of the nicest, most laid-back and supportive people Junmyeon has ever known. Maybe it’s just that, deep down, EXO is more important to Junmyeon than he’s admitted to himself. He carries the envelope back to his apartment like he’s escorting an Olympic torch. This moment always feels huge and exciting.

When he gets home, he opens the envelope immediately. Inside, he finds one cassette, clear plastic and an unfamiliar brand logo at the top, no label except a strip of white tape across the spine.

EXO.

That’s it. Junmyeon smiles and inserts it into the machine, then heads to the sofa to settle in and listen. He hears a soft hum in the recording, and for a few seconds, there’s nothing but white noise. Then:

“Junmyeon-ah. Suho.”

Spoken in Yixing’s deep, soft rumble, almost shy in its delivery. His spoken Korean is also careful, each syllable rounded intentionally.

“I heard it.” A soft, breathy laugh follows. “EXO. Outside. I like it. It feels… bigger than here.” There’s a rustle in the background, paper shuffling, perhaps. “You sound happy.” A melody follows, unaccompanied and unfinished. Yixing hums it first before attempting words. It’s beautiful, even though it’s short. The line wavers; it feels like something still becoming.

“As your guardian, I’ll block even the fiercest winds.

Even if the whole world turns its back on you,

I’ll stand on your side.”

Yixing hesitates here and lets out a sigh that the tape picks up. “I’ve been playing with some lyrics. Maybe when I see you all again, we can record it? Only if you think it’s good.”

Junmyeon thinks it’s better than good. His heart feels full, aching in a way he can barely stand. Yixing talks in fragments about his life there, about practising late because daytime is too busy with his job, melodies that come to him on buses and refuse to leave unless he hums them into existence. There are many small pauses and gentle laughs and they leave nothing wanting. He speaks about writing alone and how strange it feels to imagine voices that aren’t there yet. He speaks about how distance is temporary, and what they’re building will hold long enough for him to return to it.

“I don’t know when I can come back,” Yixing says near the end of the tape. “But until then, don’t leave space for me. Fill it. I will catch up.”

Junmyeon doesn’t doubt it.

“And… thank you for sending it,” Yixing says, with another quiet sigh. “I am with you all.”

“We are one,” Junmyeon whispers as the tape clicks off. He knows Yixing can’t hear him, but it’s okay, because he also knows that Yixing understands it anyway.

For a long time, Junmyeon sits very still, the room feeling fuller than before and also strangely empty at the same time. Carefully, he rewinds Yixing’s tape back to the beginning and then ejects it, writing on the label: RECEIVED: MID SUMMER.

Then he places the tape in the shoebox with the others.

TRACK 6

the warehouse

They’ve claimed the back of an old warehouse near the river for rehearsal. It isn’t technically legal, but there’s nowhere else private enough or big enough or sturdy enough to handle Jongin’s choreography. The pale concrete is cracked but mostly level, and one bare bulb hangs from a cord near the entrance, throwing a thin cone of light that doesn’t quite meet the corners. If you squint you can almost imagine it’s a spotlight.

Jongin set his tape deck down on an overturned crate when they arrived, and Chanyeol brought his guitar, which is a good start. Junmyeon stands with a notebook in hand, his pen tucked behind his ear. Sehun leans against a wall nearby, ankle crossed over the other, head lowered, almost passing as indifferent if you didn’t know him better. Chanyeol paces in long, restless strides, chewing up space he doesn’t seem to know what to do with yet. Jongin is already stretching, rolling one shoulder after the other and testing the floor with his heel. He retrieves a small pot of Tiger Balm and rubs some across his ankles as if in preparation for blisters. And Kyungsoo sits quietly on the edge of the crate, his head bent over a folded sheet of paper.

After a moment, Sehun detaches himself from the wall and drops to sit on the floor. From his pocket, he pulls a small white bottle and rests one trainer across his opposite knee. Junmyeon watches him as he twists the cap and then runs the little sponge tip carefully over a scuffed toe, laying the whitener on thick and even.

“You’re kidding,” Chanyeol says, glancing down at him mid-pace.

Sehun doesn’t look up, but Junmyeon notices the way his shoulders hunch. “What?”

“You’re doing that now?”

“It’s uneven,” Sehun replies, blowing lightly across the fresh coat. The chalky layer gleams wet under the bulb. “It’s distracting.”

Jongin’s laugh floats through the cavernous room; he’s poised midway through a stretch. “No one is looking at your shoes, Sehun-ah.”

“That’s because I don’t let them get so dirty that they’re distracting,” he says.

Junmyeon sighs. “Just don’t step in all this dust before it dries,” he says.

Sehun turns his foot, inspecting the coverage. “I won’t.”

He’s very cute, but sometimes he picks the oddest places to clean his shoes. Junmyeon’s given up telling him to do it at home where it can dry properly. “Okay,” he says, feeling that they should at least try to be productive. “We need structure.”

“We need momentum,” Chanyeol says.

“We’ll get both,” Junmyeon assures him. “Eventually.”

“I’ve got something,” Jongin says, clapping his hands decisively. He nods in Kyungsoo’s direction, and Kyungsoo hits PLAY on the tape deck. The first track, something recorded from the radio, crackles to life. It’s mid-tempo and rhythmic, and it’s got teeth, the beat deep and rumbly.

Jongin starts moving immediately, and Junmyeon makes sure to watch carefully, as he always does, already trying to pick up some of the moves. But Jongin is fast and slick and fluid like oil as he dances. He’s improved. A lot. And as always, Junmyeon feels a little flutter of pride low in his gut. Jongin drops his weight low before snapping upright again, a prowling, slinky step that maps tension into the room. It feels raw but true, and Junmyeon can tell he’s not copying anything directly; these moves are stitched together in a choreography of his own making.

Even Chanyeol stops pacing, turning to watch despite himself. “You’ve been practising.”

Jongin doesn’t answer. From the look of him, he’s already in his own world, his brows drawn down in concentration and mouth moving silently, perhaps counting beats. He slides his foot back and pivots cleanly, rhythm catching in his hips and wow, he’s mesmerising. Junmyeon gapes as he watches.

Gradually, Jongin comes to a stop at the centre of the room.

Sehun is back on his feet now. “That last part,” he says, stepping closer. “Do it again.”

Jongin repeats the move, and then, to Junmyeon’s surprise, Sehun mimics it almost perfectly.

“Holy shit,” Jongin says, a little out of breath. “Our maknae’s been holding out on us.”

Sehun flushes and it looks like he wants to retreat into himself.

“It was good,” Junmyeon tells him. “Really good.”

“Uh, thanks,” Sehun says, rubbing the back of his neck. Chanyeol is staring at him with a curious tilt to his head; he clenches and unclenches his hands at his sides, then snaps his fingers gently, then fiddles with his sleeve, and then finally looks away. Whatever is going on with them, Junmyeon hopes they work it out soon. He still can’t tell if they’re angry with each other or if it’s something else.

Only now does Kyungsoo stand up from the crate and go to the centre of the room. “I wrote something,” he says.

Jongin glances at him. “Is it that one?”

“History,” Kyungsoo nods. “I finished it.”

Jongin beams.

“I’ll sing it,” Kyungsoo says, unfolding the piece of paper he’s been holding onto all evening. “The tune might need work,” he adds, and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

Junmyeon finds himself gravitating closer. He knows Kyungsoo’s voice almost as well as his own by now, but this is the first time he’ll hear something original from him. The others have also gone very still.

When Kyungsoo sings it never feels like a performance, more like something fragile that’s being allowed to exist. He starts softly, shaping the words carefully around a melody that rises quick and lands hard, but it’s catchy. It’s really catchy. “After going far, turning and returning, I’ve finally arrived at the place where we begin again. I’m full of errors, but I can learn and grow stronger…”

As more of the song emerges, Junmyeon spots Jongin tapping his foot to a beat only he can hear. Then, to Junmyeon’s surprise, he hears the first few chords of a guitar, and glances over to find Chanyeol perched on the crate now, strumming along and trying to keep up with the words.

When Kyungsoo trails off, he lowers the page. The silence that follows feels electrified, like they’re standing in a machine that’s just starting to wake up around them, only Junmyeon realises that they are the machine, individual moving parts that come together to create something that works. He swallows thickly. It might only be lyrics right now, but it’s a song. It’s their song.

“It needs a beat so we can dance to it,” Kyungsoo says, and he turns to look directly at Junmyeon. “Mid-tempo, maybe. What do you think, hyung?”

“Yes,” Junmyeon says. “Mid-tempo. Something that holds steady underneath it.”

He wasn’t going to tell them yet; he was going to wait until he could invite them all over and show them. But after hearing the first wobbly iteration of History, he can’t wait. He glances around the room, at Jongin who is still vibrating in his own skin, at Chanyeol whose fingers rest against the fretboard, at Sehun who is watching all of it thoughtfully, at Kyungsoo who stands with the page between his fingers like it’s a desperately fragile bird.

“We can’t keep building everything out of other people’s music,” Junmyeon says. “The radio, these tapes — those are fine. But this deserves more than that.”

“What are you getting at?” Chanyeol asks.

“I’ve been saving,” Junmyeon says. “There’s a shop near Hongdae. Second-hand equipment. Nothing fancy, but it works.”

“What did you do, hyung?” Jongin says.

“I bought us a synth. A Roland Juno-106. And a small drum machine.” Before anyone can say anything, he adds, “And I might have got us a multitrack recorder.”

“Holy shit,” Chanyeol breathes, his eyes huge and gleaming. “For real?”

“It’s real,” Junmyeon confirms. “It’s all used and too heavy for me to carry here on my own. But… it’s ours.”

“Hyung!”

Suddenly, Junmyeon finds himself with an armful of a sweaty, laughing, still-vibrating Jongin.

“No way, no way, no way!”

“Haha, yes way,” Junmyeon says and hugs him back.

“So,” Sehun says, grinning. “We wouldn’t have to keep erasing things?”

“We won’t have to worry about anything like that,” Junmyeon tells him.

Even Kyungsoo is grinning now. “That would change how this sounds,” he says. “Make it more like how it should sound.”

“You do realise you just turned this from a hobby into a problem,” Chanyeol says, and then he lets out a deep laugh that makes him sound younger, carefree, like whatever’s been bothering him lately has bled away.

“I know,” Junmyeon says.

For a while, no one speaks. Dust drifts lazily through the air, tiny dark stars caught in the thin cone of light. Outside, the city murmurs, unaware that something inside this old, crumbling, abandoned warehouse has just tipped fully into forward motion.

No, Junmyeon thinks, this can’t be stopped now.

“I started working on another song,” Kyungsoo says after a while. “It isn’t finished yet. It’s called ‘Angel’ and it’s more of a ballad. I think our voices will sound good in that one.”

“Then we should build it,” Sehun says.

“Yeah, let’s finish it. Tonight,” Jongin agrees. “And tomorrow we can go to Suho hyung’s place and record it.”

They gather in the puddle of light and sit on the floor, five shadows stretching long across the concrete. They stay up all night until the first pale beams of sunlight start to creep through the broken windows, tweaking lyrics, discussing meaning, building metaphors. Before they leave, Jongin teaches them a series of moves that, when danced together in formation, really start to look impressive.

They all promise to practise the moves. And they all will, Junmyeon knows, without a doubt.

INTERLUDE

the café

Jongin doesn’t plan it like a confession. He plans it the way he plans choreography, by mapping out the conditions first and trusting the meaning will follow once his body is in motion.

It’s 10pm. The café’s windows carry a permanent tint from years of cigarette smoke, softening the street beyond into something hazy and dream-like. Jongin feels like he’s staring out through an aquarium at night, the shapes of passersby like ghosts or memories of ghosts drifting along. Music curls through the space from small speakers in the corners of the room, slipping between jazz and soft rock and imported pop records the owner clearly likes. Every wall is covered from ceiling to floor in vinyl sleeves. Some of them bow slightly with age and some are so sun-faded they look more like memories than real LPs, while others are glossy with their spines lovingly reinforced with transparent tape. Right now, The Sweetest Taboo is playing; Jongin taps his foot nervously to the beat, and scans the walls hoping the records will tell him something useful about how to behave here.

He tells himself it’s fine. It’s coffee. They drink coffee all the time, on curbs or in rehearsal breaks. Only this time, he asked Kyungsoo and he didn’t ask anyone else.

And Kyungsoo said yes.

The bell above the door chimes when Kyungsoo enters, and even that sounds polite and unassuming. As he heads to Jongin’s table and sits down, warm air folds around them, carrying the smell of roasted coffee beans and frothed cream and burnt sugar. The lights sit low enough that the shadows feel intentional, designed to be cosy instead of a hindrance. It was the main reason Jongin chose this café over the others.

“This is nice,” Kyungsoo says.

Relief floods through Jongin. “I thought you might like it.”

“You thought about it?”

“Well, yeah.” Jongin grins, and that earns him a smile. A small desk fan is perched on the windowsill near their table; he reaches over and adjusts it so that the cool air blows in their direction.

They order. Black coffee for Kyungsoo, something sweeter for Jongin that he insists is balanced. For a while, it’s easy, and they talk about the things they usually talk about, like work, the city, songwriting and EXO. Safe topics. But tonight, Jongin’s chest feels tighter than it ever does before he dances in front of people.

“So,” Kyungsoo eventually says, his tone changing to a lower, quieter register. “You asked me out.”

Jongin almost chokes on his sip of coffee and he splutters. “I didn’t—”

“You said, ‘Do you want to get coffee?’” Kyungsoo says evenly. “Just us.”

Laughing, Jongin sets his cup down, hoping Kyungsoo can’t see the flush in his face in the low light. “That isn’t asking someone out.”

“Isn’t it?”

Man, he wasn’t expecting to get teased like this. Jongin stares down into his cup like the surface might rearrange itself into instructions. “I just,” he says, “wanted to talk properly.”

“We talk all the time.” Kyungsoo is watching him closely, a strange little tilt to his head, like he’s baiting or tempting Jongin, and Jongin doesn’t know what to do with that. Then Kyungsoo smiles and his mouth makes that heart shape and his eyes crinkle behind his glasses and it’s the best thing ever. It’s one of the things Jongin likes about him the most.

“Not like this,” he says while trying to claw back some of his composure. “When we’re all together, it’s loud. Chanyeol is loud. Sehun pretends he isn’t loud but he is. Suho’s always thinking about ten different things at once. And you—” Jongin breaks off and rubs his thumb along the rim of the cup. “You go quiet.”

Kyungsoo considers this. “I’m not quiet,” he says after a moment. “I just don’t talk unless I have something to say.”

“Yeah, that’s generally called ‘being quiet,’” Jongin says with a smirk.

Curious amusement flickers in Kyungsoo’s eyes, like he’s only just learning this about himself now. “Oh.”

A group of teenagers barrel down the street outside, their raucous laughter bleeding through the glass and into the café. Jongin watches their silhouettes fade into the distance, swallowed up by the street and whatever they’re chasing at the end.

“I liked what you wrote,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “For MAMA. For everything.”

Kyungsoo’s fingers are still around his cup. “You listened?”

“I always listen,” Jongin says, pretending to be offended. “I’m already working on some choreo with Sehun.”

Kyungsoo looks pleased at that. “I’ve got a few more in the works. There’s this one,” he says, leaning in almost conspiratorially, as if he thinks someone overhearing might ruin it somehow, “About orbit.”

“Orbit?”

“Yeah, but not planets,” Kyungsoo says. “People. The way they circle things without deciding to.” He stares at Jongin with a strange kind of intensity. “And how they circle sometimes when they really just need to collide.”

“Huh.” Jongin’s heart stumbles. “That sounds good,” he says carefully. Kyungsoo’s cheeks are completely flushed like he’s just told Jongin the biggest secret of his life, and yet Jongin tries not to read too much into it because he could be wrong.

“It might be.”

“It will be.” Without realising he’s doing it, Jongin leans closer. “I know your voice,” he says. “And I know your lyrics. It’ll be amazing.”

For a moment, Kyungsoo sits with this. It’s only now that Jongin realises that Kyungsoo has barely squinted or touches his glasses since arriving.

“Do… you want to hear it?” Kyungsoo asks.

“Obviously,” Jongin says quickly. “I’m mortally offended you even had to ask.”

The laugh that Kyungsoo lets out is warm and deep and incredible, and there it is, his mouth doing that heart shape again. “Okay. I’ll record it. It’s a work-in-progress but you should be able to see the shape of it.”

“I’ll work on some dances for the group,” Jongin says.

But Kyungsoo shakes his head. “No, not this time.” When Jongin gives him a questioning look, he adds, “It’s just for you, okay?”

Just for you. Jongin doesn’t know what to say, so he nods, wishing he were more articulate, more confident about what this is. Sometimes he thinks he senses something, whenever their hands touch or their shoulders brush or Kyungsoo stares at him a moment longer than everyone else. But other times, he thinks it’s in his head and making a move might break everything, like a misplaced step or missing a beat that should’ve been obvious.

Kyungsoo lifts his cup and takes a slow sip, his eyes dropping to the tabletop before lifting again, steady and thoughtful like he’s weighing something that matters.

Jongin almost, almost, reaches for him, but stops himself because he isn’t sure what he’ll do even if he does reach out. Touch his face? No, that’d be awkward. Hold his hand? With so many people still around, he knows that won’t be a good idea.

“I like it here,” Kyungsoo says.

And that breaks the spell slightly. The café snaps back into place around him, and Jongin lets out the rush of air he wasn’t aware he was holding. He shifts in his chair, and his knee knocks Kyungsoo’s, and it’s okay because it was accidental, and it’s even more okay because Kyungsoo doesn’t move away.

Not long after, they finish their drinks and rise, Jongin stretching his limbs as he often does when he’s been in the same position for a long time. Outside, the air has cooled by degrees. They walk side by side down the narrow street until they reach the intersection, where Kyungsoo will go left and Jongin will continue on toward his apartment.

“Thanks for tonight,” Kyungsoo says as they slow to a stop.

You could come with me, Jongin almost says. “We should do it again,” he actually says.

“Yeah.” There’s an awkward little pause, like neither of them particularly wants to leave, but eventually Kyungsoo shrugs one shoulder. “Well, see you at practice. I’ll bring that tape.”

“Okay,” Jongin says, and he knows that it’d be so easy to reach out and take hold of his wrist or step in front of him to stop him from leaving — something, anything. But Kyungsoo is already walking away, and the moment is gone.

TRACK 7

d.o.

The city is never quiet, but if you make the conscious decision to sacrifice comfort and shut all the windows in the summer, you can almost tune it out of recordings, providing no large roadworks are happening right outside the building. Kyungsoo is stripped down to a loose vest and shorts. It’s as far as he can go without sitting there completely naked, and while the idea has crossed his mind, it feels… embarrassing to do that and record when he already knows who he’s giving the tape to.

He leans back against the bed frame, knees drawn up, cassette cases laid out in an arc on the floor in front of him. They’re organised but not in a precious way: rehearsals, radio captures, news commentaries for Junmyeon, fragments of potential EXO songs labelled in small, precise handwriting.

And then there are the ones that are separated from the others into a section he’s mentally labelled ‘private.’ The ones for Jongin. Many, many tapes that he’s never actually given to Jongin, but they are still for him anyway.

Slipping a blank tape into the machine, he starts by recording a few radio songs, because beginnings are often easier when something else is already moving. He hears the start of a song Jongin already recorded on the mixtape a few weeks ago — the mixtape he’s listened to more times than he can count — and smiles as he remembers how carefully Jongin tried to cut out the DJ. Then his thoughts naturally slide sideways to the way Jongin’s body moves when he dances, when he does that snapping thing with his hips, when he spins and then locks into position (which always causes a jolt low down in Kyungsoo’s gut), when his arms flex under his t-shirt sleeves, when—

Kyungsoo hits STOP and blows out a breath. “This is ridiculous,” he mutters to himself. The reason he wanted to record today was to get a full copy of the new song, Orbit, not sit and daydream about the way Jongin dances.

Okay, focus. Kyungsoo unfolds a sheet of paper and scans the lyrics, reading through each verse and the chorus again to be sure he’s happy with it. While he loves all of the songs EXO have written together so far, this one is different.

Steeling himself, he hits PLAY and RECORD and sings before he can overthink it, softly at first, testing the shape of the lines in the intro and adjusting his own vocal volume so as not to overwork any of the words.

“If I move closer, will you turn,

or will you keep dancing in the light?”

The words make him feel exposed, more than if he really were sitting here naked. Part of him wonders if this is a good idea, setting this stuff down on tape, captured forever, but he continues because the only way to find out what this is, he knows, is to let it happen

“I’m not asking for the light—

just the space beside you.”

As the tape rolls, Kyungsoo thinks briefly about Sehun and the way his verse had cut into Chanyeol’s rhythm weeks ago, not as theft but as a response. Tightening something can be an act of respect instead of a correction. Answering doesn’t have to erase; it can reshape things. In many ways, he realises, he’s answering the way Jongin moves, and also the way he’s thoughtful, even when he doesn’t realise it.

“You move like a rhythm I can’t escape,

never still, always near,

every step drawing breath from me—

you don’t have to be louder

to be the centre.”

Once he’s finished, and the whole song is there, laid out on the tape like a soul stripped bare, he presses STOP and for a long time simply sits, palms pressed to his knees, the quiet settling back around him. The recording isn’t polished, but it exists in the way some truths do — a little tentative, a little raw.

Eventually, Kyungsoo reaches for the cassette case and fills out the label.

LATE SUMMER - K (D.O)

Then beneath it:

ORBIT

He knows it’s his imagination, the way the tape feels suddenly heavy as he slides it into his pocket. All that’s left to do is take a quick shower and redress in fresh clothes before heading out.

Jongin is already waiting near the warehouse when Kyungsoo arrives. He leans casually against the entrance doorway, washed in overhead light from a stuttering wall lamp, a tall, languid figure dressed in liquid gold, and Kyungsoo feels dowdy and wishes he’d maybe tried harder when he picked what to wear.

But then Jongin’s face lights up as he approaches, and he pushes away from the door frame and slinks over like some creature made from silk.

“Wow, you’re late, hyung,” Jongin says with a small, careful grin. “Did you bring it?”

“Hello to you, too.” Kyungsoo wonders if Jongin can tell that he’s nervous. It feels like it shows. “Yes, I brought it.”

When he hands over the tape, Jongin takes it and folds it into his palms like it might vanish at any second, or like Kyungsoo might change his mind and ask for it back.

“You didn’t come out of your way, did you?” Kyungsoo asks.

Shaking his head, Jongin says, “I was on my way home from work anyway. Double shift tonight.” With that he yawns hugely and then laughs. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, you should go get some rest,” Kyungsoo tells him.

But Jongin isn’t listening. He’s staring down at the cassette with a strange look, like he’s already decided it’s precious. “Orbit,” he says quietly. “I already like it.”

“You haven’t even heard it yet,” Kyungsoo tells him, heat trickling through his limbs and bleeding down into the pit of his stomach.

They don’t linger tonight, even though it seems like Jongin would like to; Kyungsoo is up early for his data processing job, and by the stubborn way Jongin holds himself upright, he’s about ready to collapse from exhaustion. Still, even as they part again, there’s a tense kind of energy in the air, bright with nervous excitement, and it follows Kyungsoo all the way home.

INTERLUDE

spin cycle

The laundrette is almost empty when Sehun arrives, which is the point. He comes late on purpose because the air has cooled and the neighbourhood has quieted to a languorous thrum, and everything feels vaguely liminal, like he’s here but not really here. In this space between, at this hour, he can sit alone with nothing but the rhythmic clack-clunk of the machines and write in his notebook, sketching out lines that might fit into EXO songs. Nothing holding him but the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, a couple of them flickering like weak strobe lights.

As always, he chooses a machine near the back. Sehun checks the drum even though he already knows it’s empty, then loads his clothes carefully. The place always smells like detergent, a nice, sharp, clean scent that he finds soothing; it reminds him of when he was small and his mother would sit him atop the washing machine at home and sing to him while loading the dirties, and kiss his brow as he tried to sing along, mirroring her words imperfectly.

Whites go in first, in their own load to prevent colour bleed. He feeds a couple of coins into the slot and then settles on one of the benches nearby to wait, watching his reflection distort in the curved glass as the drum turns, fabric blurring into strange shapes. He tells himself he’s here because his apartment machine has been unreliable lately, which is true. He tells himself he’s not here because it gives him something to do with his hands and his eyes while his thoughts cycle in tighter, less useful patterns.

Pulling his handheld recorder out of his bag, he sets it down on the bench beside him. There’s a chance he won’t even use it, but he likes having it nearby. Then he bends his head to the notebook and lets the words come.

I learned how to listen before I learned how to speak,

learned how to stay still, learned where not to be.

If I disappear between the beat and the break,

would anyone notice what I couldn’t say?

Sometime later, the bell above the door rings.

Sehun looks up, irritation already gathering because he chose this time for a reason, because quiet matters. Then he sees who it is, and the irritation gives way to something harder to place.

Chanyeol fills the doorway, all lean and lanky and confident, his hair damp and unruly as if he’s come straight from a post-practice shower. Scanning the room quickly, he spots Sehun and hesitates, his brows lowering before he heads over.

“What are you doing here, hyung?” Sehun asks, painfully aware that some of his dirty laundry is currently stacked up on the end of the bench next to him, though Chanyeol seems far more interested in the notebook perched on Sehun’s knee, his eyes lingering on it. He’s wearing stonewashed jeans that make his legs look even longer than is humanly possible, and a simple white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled twice, outlining all the things Sehun tries not to think about too closely or too often.

“I tried your place but you weren’t there. You mentioned you came here a lot,” Chanyeol says. “A few months back.”

“Oh,” Sehun says. “Didn’t realise you were listening.”

Chanyeol gives him a strange look, almost offended. “Of course I was.”

Sehun tries not to fidget. “So… what’s up?”

Instead of answering immediately, Chanyeol glances at the washer and the clothes tumbling inside, then back at Sehun. “I listened to it,” he says.

Something in Sehun’s chest tightens. “To what?” he asks, but he already knows. Part of him doesn’t want to have this conversation, but another part knows it’s necessary. They haven’t spent any time together alone since the tape incident, only ever seeing each other during EXO rehearsals or whenever the others are also present.

Chanyeol lets out a sigh and comes to the bench, sitting down next to him. “Honestly, I didn’t want to,” he says. “Suho made me. Sat me down and made me listen to the whole thing.”

Sehun swallows. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I know.” Shrugging one shoulder, Chanyeol picks at a small thread that’s come loose in his jeans. “It really pissed me off. Listening to it.”

Wincing, Sehun looks away. “Yeah.”

“Because it was really fucking good,” Chanyeol continues.

If Sehun could hit PAUSE on the conversation right then, he would, because he’s not sure he heard right. “Huh?”

Chanyeol turns to him fully. “It’s good. It works. It sounded like a conversation,” he says. “Like you were answering something I didn’t realise I’d said out loud.”

That was all it was ever intended to be. Sehun lets the words settle around him, feels the warmth of Chanyeol beside him. When he dares to meet his gaze, Chanyeol is grinning — actually grinning!

“Idiot,” he laughs.

“I wasn’t trying to erase you,” Sehun begins.

“No, I mean I’m the idiot.”

“I just—” Sehun stops and closes his mouth, realising what Chanyeol just said.

“A lot of the time, I just say things out loud so I don’t have to hear myself think. And I knew you’d understand that. I knew it, and I still got angry.” Chanyeol lowers his voice, even though there’s nobody else around to hear him. “Sorry I was an asshole. I — I don’t like it when you’re upset.”

“You weren’t an asshole. Not really. I would’ve been pissed too. I was pissed at myself over it.” Oh no, Sehun can feel a familiar heat burning behind his eyes. Everything feels too tense of a sudden and he clenches his jaw, trying to will his face not to crack.

Chanyeol slides along the bench a couple of inches and hooks his arm around Sehun’s shoulders, pulling him in. “The part you recorded over,” he says, “it tightened things. It didn’t ruin anything. I think it made it sharper.”

The washer clicks as the cycle ends, filling the room with a stark kind of silence. The sudden quiet feels heavier than anything ever has. “Thought I was gonna be kicked out of the group,” Sehun admits, his throat so tight he can barely get the words out.

“What? You’re crazy.” Chanyeol hugs him harder. “Do you even listen to Suho? We are one.”

“Uungh,” is all Sehun can manage, and he knows he sounds stupid but Chanyeol only seems to hold him tighter. His face is wet now, and he probably should be more embarrassed about it, and Chanyeol’s arms are so firm and warm and — uungh.

“You’re so cute,” Chanyeol says, staring at him with a strange tilt at the corners of his mouth.

“Hyung,” Sehun whispers, and for a dizzying second he thinks Chanyeol might lean in, and then to his utter amazement, he does. The kiss is wet because of Sehun’s tears, but Chanyeol doesn’t seem to mind it; he threads his fingers in Sehun’s hair at the back (Sehun is glad that he didn’t bother using gel in it tonight), and holds him steady as their lips come together. Sehun lets out a soft, surprised, disbelieving, and wholly contented noise and balls his fingers in Chanyeol’s t-shirt, all the complicated feelings from the last few weeks rushing up, and out, and away in an instant. He can feel the muscles and ridges of Chanyeol’s ribs, the way he’s breathing fast. Still, probably not as fast as Sehun. And when Chanyeol’s fingers come to rest firmly at his thigh, the last threads of coherence spin away, leaving only the smooth, hot slide of Chanyeol’s tongue and the quiet, helpless noises they both make.

When they break apart, Chanyeol sighs. “Next time,” he says, and Sehun feels the heat of his breath beating against his chin. “We’ll record something together. Okay?”

All Sehun can do is nod. But he doesn’t feel like crying anymore.

Chanyeol leans back and points down at the notebook. “What’s that?”

“Uh, nothing important,” Sehun says, trying to gather his thoughts and pull himself back together. “Sometimes I write lyrics while I wait.”

“Show me?”

So he does, and it’s not as embarrassing as he thinks it’ll be because everything has changed again, only this time Sehun understands that even when things are erased, some songs happen anyway.

TRACK 8

demo version

By now, the warehouse feels like theirs in a way it didn’t before. It’s still technically illegal to be here, but it bears the marks of them like any home would: coffee cup stains on the concrete, already bled into the stone; scuff marks from many shoes attempting many tricky dance moves, trying to keep in sync with each other; notches they etched with a penknife on one of the beams after an argument about who was tallest out of Jongin and Sehun; spare cables snaking across the ground, left there because carrying all the equipment every time is exhausting. The floor is still cracked. The bare bulb still throws its imperfect cone of light. But the milk crate has been promoted from ‘temporary’ to ‘official,’ and it feels like their space, especially when Junmyeon’s synth sits on a folding table near the wall, the Roland’s brushed surface catching the light and reminding them that this is real.

Someone has brought food tonight. A paper bag sits near the entrance, bulging with cartons, grease already seeping through the bottom. Fried chicken, by the smell of it. A box of beers sits next to it, the bottles chinking gently when Sehun nudges it with his foot.

“I didn’t know what everyone wanted,” Jongin says, shrugging out of his jacket. “So I basically got everything.”

“Everything is good,” Sehun says, grabbing up the bag and bringing it over to the centre of the room. There’s something looser about him these days, Junmyeon thinks, a sort of ease that wasn’t there before. “Oh, you got radish.”

“I remembered,” Jongin says.

Chanyeol retrieves the box of beers and starts to distribute them around the group. He, too, seems more relaxed these days, though Junmyeon doesn’t ask. He’s pretty sure, from the way Sehun and Chanyeol are behaving, that he already knows.

They settle into their usual huddle and eat, and they eat well because Jongin insists they’re going to need the energy when he’s done showing them the new choreography. Conversation drifts without urgency: someone mentions a late bus, and someone else complains about a blister. Chanyeol tells a story that gets longer every time he reaches the good part. Sehun listens, correcting small details under his breath.

When they’re done, Kyungsoo gathers the wrappers and folds them back into the bag, tying it off carefully before setting it aside. The space feels clearer after. Ready.

“Okay,” Junmyeon says, standing and rubbing his hands together. “Let’s try it again. From the top.”

The demo tape, tentatively titled XOXO, clicks into the multitrack with a soft mechanical sound that feels oddly ceremonial. Junmyeon adjusts the synth, his fingers confident on the controls, and the opening bars of My Lady emerge fuller than they’ve ever sounded before. It’s still a little rough at the edges, but it’s intentional now. There’s a spine to it. A direction.

Kyungsoo’s voice slides in immediately, grounded and steady and more confident than ever, and Jongin starts to move. The others mirror him as best they can, Sehun stepping in to tighten the rhythm, shaping negative space like it’s another instrument entirely. Junmyeon is especially proud of this song because he wrote most of it, with Kyungsoo coming in to provide feedback and include a few ideas of his own. And at the moment when they all sing, together as one, Junmyeon feels weightless and carefree as a child.

They finish the run-through without error. No one speaks for a moment.

“That,” Chanyeol says finally, breathless, “is actually… good.”

“Better than good,” Sehun adds, glancing at Junmyeon. “It sounds like us.”

Junmyeon nods, unable to speak. Instead, he goes to the multitrack again and queues up the next song.

MAMA still feels big, almost unwieldy, but they don’t shy away from it anymore. They let it be what it is, trusting that the scale doesn’t mean losing control. Angel comes next, softer, layered carefully, Kyungsoo and Junmyeon weaving vocals while the others listen for places to pull back instead of add. Jongin adjusts the choreography mid-song, marking counts with his fingers, already thinking three steps ahead, always alert.

Later, during a break, Junmyeon clears his throat. “I should tell you,” he says. “I’ve been… sharing the demo.”

They all turn to stare at him.

“With who?” Chanyeol asks, eyes narrowed.

“Friends,” Junmyeon replies. “Friends of friends. People who know people. Don’t worry, I’m careful. I don’t give out originals.”

Sehun nods. “Copies.”

“Copies,” Junmyeon confirms. “Always copies.”

Kyungsoo considers this for a moment and then nods. “And?”

“And,” Junmyeon adds, “they’re moving. I gave one tape to a guy near Sinchon last week and he made two more. One of those went somewhere else. I don’t even know where now.”

Jongin’s eyes are bright. “Is that bad?”

“No,” Kyungsoo says. “It’s exactly what demos are for.”

“So…” Chanyeol lets out a low laugh, disbelieving and pleased all at once. “It’s already out there. EXO… we’re out there.”

“Yeah,” Junmyeon says softly. “We are.” He watches them, one by one, as the idea settles. Nobody looks anxious. If anything, they look energised. And he thinks about how amazing it is that their music is no longer confined to this warehouse. It’s already crossing hands and pockets and bus routes, already being rewound and replayed by people they haven’t met.

They decide to run through the demo again.

And this time, it sounds inevitable.

Later, when the bulb flickers and the night presses up against morning, they sprawl on the floor, sweaty and satisfied, limbs overlapping without thought or awkwardness. Someone turns the tape over. Someone else hums a line that didn’t make it into the final version but might make it into the next demo.

Lying flat on his back, Jongin stares up at the ceiling. “We should probably start writing some new songs, then.”

“I have this idea for one,” Kyungsoo says. “Called Wolf.”

“Grrr,” Chanyeol says, and Sehun snickers.

But Junmyeon is already opening his notebook. “Go ahead, D.O. I’ll write it down.”

Outside, the city makes its own songs, as it always does, but inside the warehouse, five guys sit in the quiet aftermath of work well done, already building what comes next.

BONUS TRACK

sodium light

Jongin listens to the tape over and over, more times than he can count. By now, he knows by heart where the DJ’s voice tries to break in before it’s cut off, where the floorboards creak beneath Kyungsoo’s feet as he moves closer to the mic. He knows the small breath before the word closer. He knows these things like he knows his own limbs.

And he lets it all move through him, like music always has.

Switching off the lamp, he slides down to sit on the floor, his back against the wall, knees drawn up, eyes closed.

“If I move closer, will you turn,

or will you keep dancing in the light?”

The line doesn’t ache because it’s perfect (even though it is), but because it sounds like something that has learned him.

“I’m not asking for the light—

just the space beside you.”

For the hundredth time, he checks the clock. It’s almost time to leave. When the tape clicks to its end, Jongin doesn’t rewind it to listen again. Instead, he pulls on his shoes, switches off the lights, and steps out into the early autumn air, heading toward the bus stop.

It’s just past 10pm when he reaches the park. It’s mostly empty, with only a couple of late-night dog walkers leaving the gates as he arrives. The grass looks dark as shadow between the tall lamps, and a single path curves through the space, its edges softened by ginkgo trees. Jongin cuts across the lawn instead of following the path, walking until the sodium lights thin out and the city noise fades into something low and distant and dream-like.

Kyungsoo is already there.

He’s lying in the grass with his hands folded loosely over his stomach, his glasses tipped slightly askew, eyes closed like he’s in another world. For a moment, Jongin pauses and watches him, wondering what he’s thinking about. Wondering if he’s nervous, too. Then he steps forward and clears his throat. Kyungsoo looks up, then sits up, rubbing grass out of his hair.

“You wanted to talk?” Kyungsoo says.

But Jongin shakes his head, “No,” and immediately drops to his knees in front of him, and before he can overthink it, he takes Kyungsoo’s face in his hands, tilts his chin up, and kisses him. The rims of his glasses squash against Jongin’s cheeks but he doesn’t care, because after a second, Kyungsoo kisses back, and then he opens his mouth as if he’s been just as hungry for this as Jongin has been. And that’s almost the best part: the moment Kyungsoo confirms everything, sliding his tongue into Jongin’s mouth to complete the kiss, and the small sigh that follows, and the smaller moan that follows the sigh. Jongin breathes in deeply, sliding his fingers into Kyungsoo’s hair where it’s soft at the back and crumpled from where he lay on it. Gradually, a little awkwardly, they find a rhythm.

Jongin couldn’t say, after, when they ended up sprawled together in the grass. He should probably be more concerned about them being in a public park, albeit in a secluded area, mostly in the dark. He presses his body against Kyungsoo’s, careful not to crush him, and thinks about dancing. About how it doesn’t always have to be to music. About how that feeling of flying he often gets can be a shared experience. And then he forgets what he was thinking about because Kyungsoo shifts his hips just a little to the left and — oh, God.

Jongin shudders and pulls him closer, and then it’s nothing but hands and gasps and the occasional low moan, and Kyungsoo’s fingers fisted in the back of Jongin’s t-shirt, and Jongin kissing him hard and rolling his hips helplessly.

Somewhere nearby, a bird calls from a tree, and in the distance, a truck roars down a street, rattling windows in their frames. It’s loud enough to pull them out of the moment, just long enough to become aware of the world around them.

Jongin really, really doesn’t want this to stop, but the trees whisper above them in the breeze, reminding them both of how risky this is. Kyungsoo pulls back first and stares at him, his eyes impossibly dark and fierce in the low light, and Jongin is reminded, once again, that he might be quiet and thoughtful and small-framed, but he is not weak. Not even close.

“Better not…” Kyungsoo says, breathless. “Here.”

“Yeah,” Jongin whispers, easing back a little, as much as he doesn’t want to. They rearrange themselves until they’re lying side by side, shoulders touching, hands clasped.

“You listened to it,” Kyungsoo says after a long time.

“How could you tell?” Jongin replies with a grin.

“I’m glad it was obvious.”

Jongin turns and buries his face into Kyungsoo’s hair and says, “I’m relieved it was obvious. Hyung, you have a way with words.” He feels Kyungsoo laugh more than he hears it. “But I especially like the ones that are about me. Just so you know.”

“I’m sure there will be more,” Kyungsoo says, turning his face to kiss the underside of Jongin’s jaw.

“Come home with me?” Jongin says, before he can stop himself.

Then, to his delight, Kyungsoo mumbles, “Sure,” against his collarbone. Like it’s inevitable. Jongin shivers and squirms and then gets up, holding out his hand to Kyungsoo.

And Kyungsoo takes it.