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part i.
…and when Aprodite’s human lover was killed, she wept; and from her tears, mixed with blood, sprouted a red anemone. Let it be the flower of love, the goddess said, let it be the flower of loss…
February 2024
Phú Quốc is beautiful at night.
It is beautiful at any point during the day, but Beomgyu likes it the most after sunset, when the island lets go of its heat and settles into something quieter. There is a certain tranquility, when the churning mass of water loses its sharp edges and mellows down into a slow, endless rhythm of waves folding into each other like they are trying to forget where they began.
The sand under their feet is soft and still warm from the sun, grains clinging to the edges of his shoes. Beomgyu has the sudden thought to take them off, to feel the terrain under his soles, skin to earth, but he doesn’t.
When he looks towards the water again, the horizon stretches out into nothing, the line between sea and the sky dissolved into a dark gradient of blues. Behind them, the lights of the resort flicker through palm trees in a hazy blur, like they belong to another world entirely.
Maybe that’s why their nightly walks are his favourite part of the day.
It’s nice to just exist in this liminal space that is not here nor there, where you can just slip out of the expectations and schedules and roles; where you are not an idol (or a performer or someone who is constantly being watched, judged, dissected).
Just a body moving through space, a pair of footsteps echoing softly against the shore. Soobin and Beomgyu.
"The moon is the eye of the night." Soobin’s voice cuts through the quiet, to his left.
His eyes involuntarily move to the sky. It’s not a full moon, with some part of it missing, but it’s enough to be at the point where the imagination completes the picture in his mind. Beomgyu has never thought about it like that, but now that the idea has been placed in his head, it slides into place too easily.
He drags his gaze away before it can linger too long, the sensation prickling faintly at the back of his neck.
"Are you trying to scare me?"
Soobin turns in his place, scoffing back. "How can a moon be scary, silly? No, it’s just something that I read a while ago. You were the one who wanted to take a romantic walk? I’m trying to build up the atmosphere."
"Then why are you suddenly turning it into a horror movie?"
Soobin laughs, the sound light and unguarded in a way Beomgyu doesn’t hear that often during their days in Seoul, and playfully swats a hand at him. The contact is barely there, but it lingers in the form of a faint pressure, like the afterimage of light when you close your eyes.
"Take a picture for me? The company wants us to post something." He steps a little closer to the water, where the tide laps at the shore, and turns back.
Soobin looks ethereal, washed in the moonlight. The pale glow settles over his features, turning something already beautiful into something almost unreal. The wind lifts a few strands of his hair, and for a second he doesn’t feel like a person Beomgyu has known for years, but a part of the landscape itself.
He raises his phone, but his hands hesitate just a fraction longer than necessary.
Through the screen, everything seems sharpened, framed by the limited rectangle of the display, and Soobin’s figure becomes the focal point. His eyes land somewhere higher than the device in Beomgyu’s hand, and then his expression softens in a way that looks dangerously close to amorous.
He wonders how it feels to be the true recipient of that gaze. Not this version, filtered through the glass and distance, but the real one.
What it would feel like to stand there and know with certainty, that all of it is meant for you.
Lately, Beomgyu’s been having a lot of complicated thoughts that refuse to settle into anything solid. He chases after them, and when he finally thinks that he has caught up, they dissolve before he has time to pin them down, leaving behind nothing but the echo that there was something important.
"Choi Beomgyu, hurry up," Soobin calls out, shifting his weight from one foot to another. "I feel awkward just standing here."
"I’m trying to find a good angle. It’s not my fault your face is too big."
"Yah-" The shutter clicks before he can finish protesting.
The first picture comes out of Soobin mid-reaction, with an offended pout on his face. Then it’s the kaleidoscope of expressions that settle on a wide grin which showcases the dimples on his face.
The shots turn out to be beautiful, because no matter how many times Beomgyu jokes, Soobin is someone who is meant to be captured by the camera. He keeps the first photo to himself, thumb hovering over the screen, before forwarding the rest.
Soobin glances down at his phone, scrolling through them with a small hum of approval, "Now it’s your turn."
They shuffle places, and now being on the opposite end of the camera Beomgyu feels bare. He wonders how he comes out in the picture, if it also manages to capture the unadulterated surge of affection and happiness that is bubbling in his chest. I wouldn’t mind staying here, in Vietnam, with you forever, he thinks.
Somewhere between the sound of the shutter and the moment when Beomgyu looks at the camera lens, he raises his gaze back to the sky.
The moon is the eye of the night. Sole and cold in the blackness of the night, it overlooks everything beneath itself.
Let the moon be the only witness to his thoughts, then. Let it be impartial and kind.
The shutter clicks again.
May 2024
Since their return to Seoul, Beomgyu’s been feeling… off.
A headache here and there, a random sprout of migraine that has never happened to him before. One day he has a coughing fit that doesn’t stop until he has to excuse himself during the filming to drink some water.
It finally catches up to him when one evening, after the recording of their variety episode, he wakes up drenched in sweat and parched, with sheets tangled around his legs.
For a second, he doesn’t know where he is.
The room spins slowly, like it’s lagging behind, and when he tries to sit up, something pulls tight behind his eyes in a spurt of pain.
Everything just hurts so, so much. Not even in the way that he can point out, like a single point in his body Beomgyu can press his fingers against and say, You see, it’s here, please fix it. The pain is everywhere, sinking into his bones. Even breathing feels like an effort, with every inhale dragging something heavier along his lungs.
He fumbles for his phone with clumsy fingers, using his last strength to send a message to the groupchat. Does anyone have medicine? I think I’m dying.
The pings of the notifications come immediately, one after another, but his eyes are too tired to even properly look at the screen. The words blur together, so he lets the phone fall down near his head and hopes that someone shows up.
There’s a knock not even ten minutes later, and the door opens before he can answer, and he’s grateful for that, because Beomgyu’s not entirely sure that he can produce a sound louder than a whisper.
"You look awful."
The voice is familiar enough to settle something in his chest, even if everything else still feels wrong.
Soobin stands in the doorway with a plastic bag in one hand with his hair still damp like he came straight out of the shower. He steps inside without even waiting, closing the door behind himself with his foot. Beomgyu mentally high-fives his past version, who had enough foresight to give Soobin an extra key card to his room.
"I didn’t know what you needed exactly, because someone didn’t reply to the group, so I just brought everything," he says, dropping the bag onto the bedside table. The rustle of plastic and blister packs seems especially loud in the quiet, and Beomgyu winces when the sound causes another flare of pain in the back of his head. "Here you have fever reducers, painkillers, eh, this I think is something meant for the throat? Let me check- No, it’s the coughing syrup. Aigoo, why don’t they make different packages?"
He keeps going, pulling things out one by one, until they form a small pile on the side of the bed, where he sits. Beomgyu doesn’t pay attention to the words, letting them blur into the string of words, and tries to focus on the sound itself.
Soobin’s voice is nice.
Of course, it’s nothing new. He’s an idol, having a nice voice is one of the many requirements, but now it sounds fuller and softer somehow.
And Beomgyu especially likes how his name sounds in his mouth. He doesn’t know if Soobin himself has ever noticed that before, but every time he calls his name, the syllables tilt upwards at the end, like they’re pleased to exist.
Beomgyu. Yes, see? This is exactly what he means. Beomgyu. Beomgyu-
There’s a palm on the side of his face, forcefully tilting his head up before he can resist. Their eyes meet, and the feeling of his cold fingers on his feverish skin is enough to cut through the haze, dragging him back into the room. It’s actually quite a nice contrast of temperatures, so he nuzzles his cheek deeper into his hold. "Beomgyu, did you hear a word of what I just said?"
Oh, so it wasn’t in his head.
Soobin looks displeased, but the expression doesn’t last long. "...Don’t cry, you’re going to look ugly."
Beomgyu blinks.
Only then does he realise that his vision has actually gone watery and something warm is already slipping down his cheek without permission.
He doesn’t know why — because normally this would make him snark back in return immediately — but everything just hurts so much that the external acknowledgment of his state opens something else instead. The floodgate gives in all at once, and the tears that come quietly at first start pouring from his eyes, like his body has been waiting for a moment until it felt safe, before letting go.
"Why are you such a baby, come here," Soobin sighs, but there’s no real exasperation in his voice. The mattress dips beside him, and then there are hands, warm and steady, guiding him forward.
"I was joking. You are the most handsomest boy in this world — no, the whole universe," he murmurs, in a lowered voice like he’s trying to coax him back into a calmer state. "Don’t cry."
In his moment of weakness, Beomgyu lets himself fall into it.
His forehead presses into the soft wool of Soobin’s sweater, the fabric slightly rough against his skin but grounding in a way that nothing else is. He tries to focus on the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath his cheek to anchor himself.
"Choi Soobin, do you want to die?" Is what he tries to say, but it comes out in a quiet string of unintelligible words that are muffled from the snot and the inability of his throat to cooperate.
Soobin huffs out a quiet laugh, one hand coming up to cradle the back of his head, fingers carding loosely through his hair. The slow circular movement eases the pounding in his temples, smoothing over the sharp edges just enough to make it bearable, so Beomgyu allows it. Begrudgingly. "Yeah, yeah, don’t threaten me with a good time if you can’t finish what you started."
They fall into a lull after that, until there is a faint humming that he mistakes initially for a part of his fever delirium. It’s quiet at first, and then louder and more solid, until the melody threads itself in soft, familiar notes; and when Beomgyu finally recognises what it is, he lets himself smile.
"Why do difficult things happen all at once?" Soobin croons to the top of his head. Beomgyu lets the soothing lullaby overpower his senses, until it becomes the only thing he can focus on. "...Even if no one else cares about your sadness; I’m always cheering for you, you’ve worked hard today, Beomgyu-ah.”
Somewhere between the hiccups and soft humming, he thinks, Huh, I think I’m in love with Soobin. He can almost feel it, even in his sorry state, — the way the thought snaps into place that has always existed, long before he had the name for it, and something in him takes root. His lips part slightly, like he might say it out loud-
But his brain is still in that fuzzy state, where it might melt in the next moment, and there are fingers, drawing lazy patterns in his hair, and he’s just so tired, — wow, on that note, when was the last time they had a day off? Doesn’t this seem like a violation of a contract, what a stingy company…
And so Beomgyu lets the moment go, drifting to sleep.
When he comes to his senses the next day, there’s a wet towel resting on his face.
It’s still damp and heavy, pleasantly cool against his forehead. The fever has broken sometime during the night, leaving behind a dull exhaustion that gives a faint twitch in his bones. He feels like shit, but at least the world is clearer and more vibrant. There’s also a glass of water on his bedside table and a half-empty strip of medicine that he doesn’t remember taking.
Oh, and there’s also Soobin.
He looks up the moment Beomgyu shifts, straightening his posture from the hunched way he adopted, leaning on the headboard. "Welcome to the realm of living, how do you feel?"
"Like I went through ten rehearsals at the same time," he croaks back, pushing himself up on his elbows. "...and all of them were supervised by Yeonjun hyung."
"Heol, that bad?" Soobin sighs, letting his head fall to one side. He watches him for a second longer than necessary, trying to establish the state "...Do you remember anything from last night?"
The words are said in a light tone, more a conversation starter than anything else, but they make Beomgyu actually think back to the events that took place last night. And that, oh-
Fun fact about him that perhaps not many know, Beomgyu is actually an amazing runner.
It all started when his hyung got annoyed at him for breaking his toy soldier, so the moment he raised his fist, little Beomgyu understood that there were only two options: run or hit back. Unfortunately, being on the smaller side as a child, meant that realistically he could only begin to fight back when he turned ten years old, and so the first part of his childhood before then was spent running.
The same exhilarating feeling of rushing past anything that is not pleasant to him translated neatly into something less physical over time, because at some point he caught himself doing the exact same thing to his feelings.
He lets them exist just long enough for himself to register, then slips around, before they can catch up. Is it perhaps the healthiest method of processing his emotions? Not really, but please show him a single person who has their life all figured out.
"From last night? I don’t think so," he finally replies, shrugging. "I was kind of out of it. Fever and all that, well you know…"
"Why? Did I do something embarrassing?" He continues a little bit too quickly and receives a questioning glance in return.
"No, just your usual self." Soobin nods, and then he stands up, rolling his shoulders. "I’ll go check up on others. Please, stay in and take the medicine that I left on the table. We have the next stop in a few days, so you better be healed by that time."
"Okay, eomeoni," he drags out, stretching the word just to get a reaction, and smiles when he gets a roll of eyes in response. Beomgyu pushes himself out of the bed, ignoring the way his body protests, and follows him to the door, because it’s the least he can offer after Soobin had to take care of him the whole night.
Soobin pauses after the threshold, turning back slightly, like he wasn’t expecting to be followed. Silly him. "The floor is cold, go back to bed," he says sternly, but there’s no real bite in his words.
"Thank you for staying, hyung." The words slip out before he can overthink them, softer and maybe a little bit vulnerable.
Soobin blinks, like the thought has never even crossed his mind of that being something to be grateful for. "Where else would I be, if not with you?" he breathes out, almost puzzled. "You’re my best friend."
The sentence lands gently between them in the space, separated by the doorsill. Beomgyu clears his throat.
You're also my best friend, he thinks, oh, also I think I maybe be irrevocably, utterly in love-
Nope, like we established earlier, Beomgyu is an amazing runner, and here is the perfect example of something that he would like to run from.
So the next time when the thoughts try to rise to the surface, he does what he knows how to do best – buries them so deep inside of his soul that he himself doesn't know they exist.
Overall, it’s been going pretty well.
Every day is a carousel of rehearsals, getting ready, performance, back to the hotel, and then it’s the same cycle all over again. More often than not he stumbles to his room and blackouts from the utter exhaustion, unless they have an arranged live or a variety content to film.
It’s a demanding schedule, but, strangely enough, he is grateful for it, because it takes away from the panicked thoughts that lurk just beneath the surface where he pushed them
In his head Beomgyu has put up an invisible limit of how much he can stare at Soobin, without consequences. Scientifically — and he prides himself on that discovery! — it takes him approximately twenty seconds of direct eye contact, before an uninvited, Soobinnie looks so good with this hair colour, I’m so in love with-, pops up in his mind and then he’s forced to snap his gaze elsewhere, shooing the cursed thought away.
So, yeah.
Even though he has these occasional, highly concerning lapses of judgement, overall, he thinks that he’s been doing quite well.
They are in Atlanta, and it’s been a week and something, since he got better, which is exactly why it catches him off guard when his body jerks awake from the harsh coughing that wrecks his whole body.
He tries to inhale, but it feels like there’s something blocking the path from the inside. His chest spasms, forcing his body into the short, broken attempts of taking in more air. There’s a building up pressure behind his sternum, that doesn’t seem normal.
Beomgyu barely manages to drag himself to the bathroom on unsteady legs, before another cough rips through him. His vision starts to blur at the edges as his body continues to heave again and again. There’s something that is rising up his windpipe, and this time when he coughs, it finally dislodges itself from his throat. He looks down, half-expecting to see a disgusting chunk of phlegm or whatever it was, but-
Oh, huh-
So-
There are petals in Beomgyu’s sink.
They are red with a white base at the bottom, withered and almost pathetically sad, covered with bits of saliva and small droplets of blood. They also seem familiar, as if he has seen them somewhere before, but, frankly, it’s a little bit hard to utilise his full brain power when it feels like his throat was being choked from the inside a mere minute ago, so please cut him some slack.
Fucking Choi Soobin, Beomgyu has only time to think, before the next wave of nausea urges him to retch for the second time.
Okay, so this might be a problem that he won’t be able to just ignore.
Hanahaki.
It’s not uncommon enough to be considered an urban myth, but also not common enough to be a valid concern. It exists more as a concept that your parents scare you with as a cautionary tale; a joke between friends, Oh, do you maybe like me? Are you about to start coughing out flowers?
Well, it doesn’t seem funny anymore after Beomgyu had to flush down the evidence of his repressed feelings down the sink at three in the morning and hope that it didn’t clog, because that would demand one hell of an explanation.
Don’t worry, manager-nim, I just found a creepy flower arrangement near my door and decided to get rid of it. He imagines himself saying, yawning on the couch in Kai’s room. Between getting rid of the evidence and waking up for their variety shoot, he only managed to snag out two hours of restless sleep full of talking plants.
It’s all that asshole's fault. Fucking Choi Soobin with his stupid dimples and his stupid face and lips and-
"Why do you keep glaring at me?" Soobin grimaces back, from where he’s sprawled on the other side of Kai’s couch with controller in hand.
"Your face is pissing me off," he snaps in response. "I think all of our lives would be easier if you came out deformed."
There’s a bit of silence for him to process the words, and then his mouth hangs open. "Wow. If it’s about that last round yesterday, you know that we had a schedule, it was too late-"
"Choi Soobin, stop talking."
Soobin slides his gaze to Kai and mouths, What’s up with him? Kai, mid-bite of whatever snack he found in the mini fridge, just shrugs back, equally lost.
Okay, okay, let’s not panic right now. Maybe it was a one time occasion, or, or maybe, the entirety of yesterday evening has been a figment of his overworked brain or a psychotic episode.
Beomgyu decides to treat it as an experiment, and well, what is the most logical solution, when you’re forced to confront something that you genuinely don’t want to confront? Of course, avoiding it!
Apparently, easier said in theory than in practice, it’s a little bit harder to ignore your enormous feelings for your best friend slash groupmate, when you’re contractually obligated to spend every minute of the day glued at the hip.
Beomgyu stays a few first days in this half-state, when he tries to pretend that everything is the same while trying to consciously rearrange his focus, and the effort of it is almost more exhausting than the feeling itself.
He acts weird around Soobin for a total duration of one week, until he has enough and pulls him aside, saying, quite rudely, "I don’t care about that one time you cried, why are you being so weird?"
And then, he has the audacity to flick his forehead.
I’d like to look at you, asshole, Beomgyu pouts, rubbing the stinging skin on his head, if you had to throw up flowers at the crack of dawn. And also, what are those flowers? Couldn’t you be something small and cute, like a daisy. This shit is going to ruin the pipes.
So, his one-sided cold shoulder abruptly ends before the experiment could even officially begin. Well, to be honest, it’s not that there was any use to it, because the next day after Soobin does something ridiculously mundane, like reaching over to fix the crooked microphone on his collar, he excuses himself to the bathroom and spits out another petal.
At this point, unfortunately, even Beomgyu has to admit that it wasn’t a fluke.
Lying late at night, he finally gives in and searches for the information about Hanahaki. He could have done it days ago, that one night when the first coughing appeared, but remember? Beomgyu is very good at avoiding his problems.
The actual information on the web is not that useful, generally scattered and inconsistent, and the majority of the posts are a part of some niche subtweet space, but still he manages to piece together the most important points. Hanahaki has two possible solutions: receive a requited confession in return, or undergo a surgical procedure that removes the flowers in your body.
The unrequited confession does not remove the disease, which, in Beomgyu’s opinion, is a very shitty joke from the universe. Shouldn't there, at least, be a consolation prize for a heartbreak?
The second option doesn’t seem that bad, until he sees a small addition after the main text. Forceful removal of the flowers, however, causes a permanent loss of romantic feelings towards the object of affection.
Beomgyu rereads the sentence twice, and when it still doesn’t change, he closes the tab on his browser.
The only positive thing he finds out is that apparently it's a very slow disease, so at least he’s not going to kick the bucket tomorrow.
He sighs, moving his gaze towards the window, where the half-formed moon is barely visible behind the fluttering curtains. Through the open frame the wind carries the last breath of spring. Beomgyu is a little bit sad to be letting go of it, if he’s being honest, — it is his favourite season, after all.
The summer always comes with a sticky humidity that leaves your body flushed and damp, and then the autumn follows. It’s a beautiful time, but something about the withering leaves and the slow fading of green into the brittle shades of gold gives a painful pang in his chest.
Surprisingly, he likes winter.
The snow softens everything, blurring the harsh days into something gentler, and there’s always a Lunar New Year that carries an idea of new beginnings. Winter is also the season when Choi Soobin was born, which might have something to do with his biased rankings.
But well, right now, the summer is only starting and he still has time.
Autumn 2024
Having stepped into the first week of September, Beomgyu can rightfully say that he was right to hate on summer.
Summer for him, as it turns out, was full of broken things and dreams.
His injury happens in the middle of June in the most unremarkable way possible, which somehow makes it all the worse. It’s a hairline break, something totally manageable if it wasn’t for the timing of it, because Tokyo Dome performance arrives anyway two weeks later.
And well, he doesn’t really like to go over bad memories, but let’s just say that standing there, on that stage with the knowledge that this was the moment that they all had been waiting for and not being able to perform to the extent of his full abilities, yeah that…
Shit, anyway, he tries not to think about it.
If there was anything remotely positive about the situation, it is that he didn’t have to push his body as hard as he usually does. In any normal circumstances, there would be a restless ball of energy, brewing under his skin, but now the reduced physical strain gives him fewer opportunities to trigger the episodes that have begun to weave into his days as the usual part of the routine.
Soobin touches his hand? Beomgyu coughs out a petal. Soobin leans his head on his shoulder during their car rides? Beomgyu coughs out a petal. Soobin says that he looks pretty today, guess what? Bingo, Beomgyu coughs out a petal.
Yes, summer was, to put it simply, just awful, so when his phone finally displays the first of September, Beomgyu lets out a barely audible sigh of relief.
With the beginning of autumn, unfortunately, comes another change. It’s been a year since any of them had a proper rest that lasted longer than a few days and while overexertion has long since become something expected, lately Soobin has been looking tired in a way that is starting to ping an alarm somewhere in Beomgyu’s head.
There is a slight delay to his reactions now, like he’s not actively here and it takes him a second longer to adjust, to calibrate himself to the world that seems to be moving on another frequency. He still laughs when it’s needed, still smiles in that practiced idol manner that makes way to the covers of magazines and fulfills every high expectation placed upon him, but the strain behind it becomes more visible with each passing day.
Even the petals that he has been spitting out lately look duller, like they can feel the veil of exhaustion coming from their source. The red at their edges is no longer a vivid blood shade of ruby, but a muted maroon, like the colour itself has been drained out of them.
Beomgyu knows they are killing him from the inside, but the way they pathetically look against the white porcelain of his sink makes him almost pity the withering flowers.
Maybe because it’s hard for him not to love anything that comes from Soobin.
He catches himself thinking one day if it was the right decision to make him the leader.
The moment it forms, the idea tastes weird in his mouth, like a sort of betrayal, because if there’s anyone who is meant to carry that role it’s Soobin. He is someone who holds others together without asking for anything in return, like a mother hen looking after its chicks. Soobin cares deeply, loves fiercely, but when the time comes to direct the same energy towards himself he always brushes it off, like it doesn’t matter.
He wonders, sometimes, if Soobin gets lost in that high unreachable place, where he has put himself on.
Beomgyu wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him hard, until he finally snaps some sense into him. Be selfish for once in your life, he wants to say. Just once. You don’t have to be the one stitching everything together, you can lean on us too.
Stop going, where I can’t follow.
But well, it’s Soobin, and Soobin is just so good, and maybe Beomgyu would be struggling less right now if he was a worse person.
The members grow restless, until it becomes usual for them to exchange worried glances over Soobin’s shoulder when he’s not looking.
They never really say it out loud, but after a while they develop an unspoken system of monitoring him. Yeonjun, Taehyun and Kai take the first three days of the week, and Thursday has an open rotation of whoever happens to be free to step in. From Friday to Sunday, it’s Beomgyu’s turn, because… Well, just because, okay.
It’s another late night of waiting for Soobin to come back from his filming. The lights in the living room are dimmed, casting soft shadows on the couch where Beomgyu sits, leaning towards one side. His phone screen lights up intermittently with the flashes of a new game Huening Kai made him download to get some bonuses for himself from the friend invitation.
It’s something bright and not really his style, but it does the job of helping the time pass faster. Beomgyu taps through it without much thought, focusing more on the mechanics and occasional You did well! than any conscious decisions, so he doesn’t immediately notice when the front door finally opens.
He snaps out of his daze, when the couch beside him dips and a solid body collapses against his side.
Soobin leans his head on Beomgyu's shoulder. "Can we, please, stay like this for a moment," he murmurs, barely there.
"Of course, hyung," Beomgyu answers automatically, subconsciously angling his shoulder to make it easier for him to lower himself. "Do you mind giving me water? It’s right by your side."
He takes a sip from the bottle, soothing his throat which already has started scratching with the first sign of the irritation. The weight of Soobin against him is probably more grounding than he has felt in a while. "Have you been doing okay?" he asks eventually. "I’m worried about you."
Soobin takes Beomgyu’s hand, turning it gently in his own as he brushes over the skin. He starts with the middle finger, pressing lightly at the knuckle, and then moves to the one next to it, tracing an invisible circle with slow movements. "Have you?" Soobin asks back, without lifting his head.
"It’s okay, it’s just autumn," he says, like it’s enough of an explanation, and Soobin nods back.
"Yeah, you with your seasonal flare-ups. Choi Beomgyu, you know it’s a sign of the psychopaths."
Before Beomgyu can nudge him back, Soobin shifts again, sliding down until his head comes to rest in his lap instead. There’s a faint flush on his cheeks, either from the cold outside or the strain of the day, and his hair looks slightly disheveled, falling into his eyes in that boyish way that shouldn’t look as endearing, but it does.
His fingers slip into Soobin’s hair, threading through the soft strands to push them away from his face, thumb pressing against his temples in the way his eomma has shown him when he had headaches as a child. "I’m alright," Soobin adds after a moment, eyes already half-lidded. "I think I’ve been having awful migraines those past days."
"It feels like we haven’t really talked lately," he continues, almost hesitant.
Beomgyu lets out a small laugh. "Hyung, we have dinner every evening."
"I know, it’s just…" Soobin trails off. "Is it strange to say that I’m constantly missing you? You’re right there but you’re also not, or I don’t know. I’m sorry for talking nonsense, I think I’m falling asleep."
Beomgyu lets his fingers come to a rest against the side of his head, tapping a pattern, something that he has learned during their debut days during long breaks. Dot, dash, dot, dot.
"No, you’re not saying nonsense," he says softly. Dash, dash, dash. "Me too."
Dot, dot, dot, dash.
"I constantly miss you too." Dot.
When he looks down, Soobin is already asleep, the earlier tension smoothed out of his features.
Regardless of what many people on the internet think, Beomgyu is not stupid, he doesn’t want to die. He knows that dying is permanent, that it doesn’t come with a reset button or a checkpoint like in one of his games; that there is no starting over with one less life.
There was a time during July when he thought that maybe Soobin loved him back, that they were on the same page when he turned to him, during their car ride to Tokyo Dome, and said "Even though you cannot perform to the full extend of your abilities, it doesn’t take from your ability to shine on stage."
Beomgyu had to blink twice to hold back tears, if only because it was something that he really needed to hear at the moment, and Soobin looked so beautiful, bathed in the light of the passing streetlights, and he had already opened his mouth to confess — and then he heard, "I’m so thankful that you are my best friend, I don’t want us to ever change."
He could only say, me too, hyung, at the moment, crushed by the sudden realisation that he never really had a chance.
And there it is, the real reason for him hating that summer.
Instead of fully enjoying the Asian leg of their tour, for Beomgyu, the last two months of that season were spent in mourning of something that he hasn’t yet lost, but again, he prefers not to think about it.
So yeah, Beomgyu knows that there is only one logical solution, that some day along the year he will undergo an operation — just not right now. It’s not really his romantic nature, or some misplaced sense of stubbornness that makes him hesitate every time he reaches the same conclusion.
It’s just that loving Soobin is such an intrinsic part of his being, that it hurts to imagine himself without it. Like an amputee with a phantom feeling of their limb, Beomgyu’s love for Soobin materialises somewhere along his body, tangible in the way that makes it almost impossible to ignore. Will he feel an absence of it after an operation?
Beomgyu looks at Soobin’s sleeping face, and lets the tips of fingers slide along his cheek. The skin is slightly warmer to the touch, and he makes a mental note to check his temperature after he wakes up from his nap.
Will I still miss you after the feelings are gone?
"I’m going to take a hiatus."
The announcement happens one evening, when all of them are having dinner together. It doesn’t come as a surprise, because, if he’s being honest, it’s something they have all been expecting. Beomgyu doesn’t really know what to say, when Soobin stands up and bows to the rest of them.
"Yah, what are you doing?" Yeonjun scoffs immediately. "Get up. Take your time to get better, we’ll manage."
When he straightens up, for a second he looks younger and almost uncertain, but it disappears after Yeomjun gives his arm a light shove. Kai clings to his side and refuses to let go, when Soobin continues to talk about the logistics of it, like the possible duration and the events that he’s going to miss.
Beomgyu understands that it’s a necessary intervention for Soobin’s health in the same logical way that he understands that one day he has to get rid of the flowers stuck in his lungs, but understanding something, unfortunately, doesn’t make it hurt any less.
When they enter the elevator to go back to their own dorm, Soobin stands close enough for their shoulders to almost touch. "You’re being quiet," he says softly. "I’m sorry for not telling you first, it happened very fast. I went to talk to management today and they immediately proposed this solution."
"Choi Soobin, it’s okay, don’t worry," he says, clenching a spit-covered petal in his fist that he coughed up, while nobody was watching. "You can go wherever you want, as long as you promise to come back."
And maybe by the time you come back, I will already deal with my own thing.
The elevator dings, and the doors open two floors lower. Soobin steps out first, grinning back. "You’re my best friend," he says, "Where else would I go?"
Maybe the flowers will finally disappear, Beomgyu thinks miserably on his first night alone, after Soobin packs his things and leaves. It does seem like a plausible theory with the source of their origin so far away from him. Maybe the distance is enough.
Late November 2024
The flowers don’t disappear.
Beomgyu still continues to hack out petals every day before and after their daily phone calls with Soobin. After his Beomedio episode, he rushes to the bathroom and finally throws up a full blossom for the first time.
Anemone, huh. He honestly should have known.
It’s a beautiful flower.
December 2024
Beomgyu has never noticed this before but their dorm is actually quite big. You can be in one space without knowing what is happening in the other room, because all the noises are swallowed by the walls.
He can measure his own room by taking six steps from both sides. After the fourth step there’s a floorboard that always creaks if you step on it at the right angle. There are ten steps and a half to go to the living room, and from there it's an additional two steps to the kitchen.
It takes Beomgyu exactly five steps to go from the door of his room to Soobin’s.
The distance seems infinitely bigger when there’s no one on the other side.
During one of the better days, when Beomgyu still carries an echo of his usual positivity, he catches himself thinking at least he has never been writing as much as he does now.
Honestly, call him a musical genius with how many new melodies that have been spilling out of him lately. Beomgyu develops a new habit of keeping a blank sheet of paper and pencils within reach now in every room, because you never know when a new idea might come.
There are drafts, and drafts, and drafts of unfinished lyrics and half-formed compositions lying on every available surface of their dorm.
Maybe it is getting a little bit difficult to walk around without stepping on some random piece of paper, but there’s something about the chaos of it all that actually brings a small happy smile to his lips.
It only becomes a problem when it takes Beomgyu a solid fifteen minutes one day to reassure their dormitory ahjumma, who comes once a week to tidy up their rooms, that no, please don’t call the police! the place hasn’t been broken into, it’s my own mess.
It works out, mostly, because the older generation tends to adore Beomgyu, but even then, he does not escape her scoldings about careless idols and their terrible habits.
"You’ve been writing a lot lately," Soobin notes, during one of their videocalls. They don’t happen as often as their regular chats, and when they do, more often than not it ends with them doing their own thing silently with the company of another.
Beomgyu hums in acknowledgement, not lifting head from where he’s scribbling down another stroke of the verse. He tries to find a word that rhymes with flower, but finds his head to come short. Glower?
"Hey, Choi Soobin, do you know anything that rhymes with flower?" he says absentmindedly.
Shower? No, shower sounds awful. Please, give me a flower and let’s screw in the shower, he snickers.
Hour is not bad.
"Lover," Soobin says, and he raises his eyes to glance back at him.
Soobin looks… You know what, Beomgyu is maybe thankful for the presence of a screen between them that dulls everything, because he’s not sure what that look would do to his heart in real life.
Through the eight years that they know each other, it’s inevitable that Beomgyu has seen nearly every version of Soobin’ gaze. There’s the bright, easy ones that he learned for the stages, the attentive ones, oh, also the softer ones that are not as common, but they are actually a personal favourite of his.
Beomgyu is not sure that he can name the one on Soobin at the moment.
He actually looks downright sinful, watching him with those deep, deep eyes that seem to swallow every speck of light, pulling him in. It’s not loud, but there’s a presence to it, because of how fully his attention rests, like he’s the center of gravity that Soobin cannot dare to look away from.
If he tried to find a better word for it, well, Beomgyu would say that Soobin looks at him, like a lover might.
Don’t be cruel, Choi Soobin, he wants to scold, when his heart gives a painful pang, or I might think that you love me back.
And the problem isn’t this, because Beomgyu knows that Soobin loves him. It’s one of the things that he adores about his members, the sheer sincerity of how much they all love each other.
The problem is that Soobin is not in love with him, and that’s totally okay. He’s learnt how to live with that.
"Hmm, yeah," he agrees softly, lowering his eyes back to the page. "Lover is a good one."
"Have you been feeling okay?" Soobin asks after a while. "You only write when you have something to say."
"It’s not bad," he stacks the papers into a pile, moving them away. He lost his inspiration, for some reason. "I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately."
Beomgyu shifts, letting himself fall back against the pillow, adjusting the phone down on the other side where Soobin can still see, so they can continue to talk for a few more minutes.
"I wish I was there," he hears then, the sound of Soobin’s voice so faint that he has to strain himself to catch it. "I don’t know how to explain it, I’m so proud of you when you write, but then I actually remember there’s a reason for it, and that’s just…"
Beomgyu stays silent, letting him gather his thoughts, because he knows how hard it is to say something, when you’re not really sure what it is exactly that you’re feeling.
He’s actually so sleepy, it’s been such a long time since he had a restful night without waking up at least once.
"I’m not saying I don’t want you writing, that’s not it. I know you’re the happiest when you’re creating, so I wouldn’t want to take it away from you." He sighs, forcing the air out.
There’s a pause, and Beomgyu thinks that he’s not going to say anything more, and then Soobin continues. "I guess, I just want to be there to hold your hand when you’re feeling sad."
Beomgyu turns his head to the side to look at the screen, where Soobin has taken a similar position in his childhood bedroom. For just a moment it feels like there aren't 37 kilometers separating Seoul and Ansan.
"I wish you were here too," he mumbles before the sleep begins to pull at him.
There’s a click of a picture being taken and he thinks that he hears, Goodnight, you’ve worked hard today, Beomgyu-ah, but maybe it's just a figment of his hopeful mind, Beomgyu will never know.
He has adopted a habit of staying in Soobin’s bed.
It starts one time, almost accidentally, when Beomgyu wanders into his room to clean up the dust, and then gets a tiny bit overemotional about the fact that Soobin has been gone long enough for dust to settle on his things, but no one has to know about it. He’s a man from Daegu, and they have a reputation to uphold.
He’s already turning back, but there’s a new picture frame on the bedside table that wasn’t there the last time when he barged into Soobin’s room to annoy him.
It's a beach at night, the moon hanging low in the middle of the sky with its reflection fractured along the surface of the water. It doesn’t really look anything special, more of a general landscape that could belong anywhere, but something in Beomgyu immediately recognises it as Phú Quốc.
Maybe because everything looked a little bit kinder in Vietnam.
He sits down at the edge of the bed without thinking, tracing his fingers along the photo frame, pressing the smooth line of the wood to ground himself. Beomgyu sighs softly and lets himself sink into the mattress, turning his face into the pillow that still has the traces of Soobin’s clothes conditioner.
Their dormitory ahjumma uses the exact same fabric softener for both of them, something clean and generic that shouldn’t carry any special scent, but for some reason from Soobin’s clothes it always smells softer and warmer, like the first rays of sun after the spring starts.
Here, surrounded by bits of Soobin, the pressure in his chest seems to ease just slightly, and he lets himself give in to the feeling without questioning it too much.
When he wakes up the next morning, it takes Beomgyu a moment to understand that it’s the first time in weeks that he hasn’t woken up in the middle of the night. So then the following day he does the same, and then the next one, and the next one, and, honestly, he’s sure that Soobin wouldn’t even mind if he actually knew how much it was helping him.
Beomgyu is lying with the plush toy tucked loosely against his chest, and watches the display slowly change into December fifth. Today marks exactly three weeks since Soobin finished his last scheduled live and left for Ansan to recuperate with his family. It’s been such a long time since they celebrated their birthdays separately, and Beomgyu wonders if this is how it’s going to be from now on.
At least, his physical state has been slowly improving, like the flowers lay dormant, acknowledging that this is where they belong. How can he not be in love with him, if even when Soobin is not next to him, he makes his life a little bit more bearable.
Maybe this is why he’s typing, 'Hyung, you are my life’s greatest blessing' under the official post.
January 2025
Somewhere along the change of months, Beomgyu understands that winter doesn’t seem as beautiful this year.
It’s one of the gentle ones, empty of piercing winds and extreme drops in temperature. The streetlights shine through the snowflakes that keep falling around in that white out veil that makes everything softer. When he takes a walk after one of their schedules one day, Beomgyu grabs a fistful of snow and watches it melt down the exposed skin of his palm, red and cracked from the dryness of the air.
The only thing he can feel is the cold.
Beomgyu wonders if winter is more beautiful in Ansan.
Day-offs used to be something that he was always looking for, but now they stretch endlessly, filled with nothing but lying in bed and staring at the ceiling of his room for too long, before he gives up and takes those five extra steps to the other door. There is only so much time a person can spend feeling sorry for himself, before going insane, so Beomgyu cannot wait for the holiday to end and to finally jump back to work.
It’s their last free day, so all of the members are piled on the couch, watching the second season of the kdrama on netflix that came out last week. Lately Beomgyu has started to spend more time in another dorm, because the silence of his own walls presses on him in a way that makes it almost harder to breathe.
Yeonjun has his arm lazily slung around his shoulder, and he himself absently kneads at Kai’s calves where they’re draped across his lap.
It’s nice, just being in the middle of it, tangled on the old sofa, that they all talked about replacing for at least a few times. Beomgyu especially loves those moments when you can’t even understand when one person begins and another ends, because in his mind it’s how it’s supposed to be. Even if they are temporarily missing a piece of the puzzle.
The ring at the door cuts through one of the tenser scenes, and a disappointing boos sound from both ends of the couch when Taehyun pauses the series.
"Did you order something?" he asks, glancing up from the remote.
"Nope," Yeonjun replies, equally disinterested, wanting to go back to viewing as soon as possible. "Maybe it’s one of the staff members."
Kai is already pushing himself up from the couch before he even finishes the sentence. "I’ll get it," he says, hopping to the hallway.
"Don’t forget to check first who it is," Taehyun calls after him. "Seriously, we don’t want a repetition of last time! Aigoo, when is this kid finally going to grow up?"
Kai grumbles under his breath about hypocrites and freaking difference of six months, but he still makes sure to look through the peephole, if only to prove a point, and then snaps the door open with an excited, "Soobin Hyung!"
There’s a pause, and then the rest of them move almost all at once, piling out into the hallway. Kai is already hanging off his side, trying to hold onto him like he might disappear again if he lets go, but it’s unmistakably Soobin, standing in their doorway.
Beomgyu catches his breath.
It’s been such a long time since he saw Soobin not as a collection of pixels on the screen of his phone, but as a tangible presence that it takes him a moment to adjust himself to the weight of it.
He looks healthier, he realizes, and that thought actually makes everything that he had to go through since November a lot more bearable.
It’s all going on so well, and then Soobin finally looks at him, and the pressure rises in his throat faster than Beomgyu can think about masking it.
The bathroom door slams shut behind him just in time as the cough tears through him, dragging something up, until he heaves into the toilet bowl, spitting flower after flower until they start piling in a small mount. There’s something that doesn’t give way, so Beomgyu sticks his fingers into the back of his throat and pulls out a half-formed stem.
That’s a new one, he thinks with tears in his eyes. A few more of those and I can make a whole bouquet.
When he flushes the water down and opens the door, Soobin is already on the other side of it.
"Are you okay?" The question comes without hesitation in that soft Soobin voice, that only shows up when he genuinely cares, and Beomgyu actually wonders what it would mean to answer it honestly.
No, I’m not. I’m turning into a house plant, and it’s all your fault, you idiotic, stupid-
"Yeah," he lies instead for both of their sakes, stepping past him to avoid the question. "I think I ate something, I’ve been feeling unwell the last few days."
Soobin hums softly, allowing them to move past it, and reaches forward to press his palm against his forehead, almost absentmindedly. "Oh, I thought you just got too excited to see me, and your stomach couldn’t handle it."
"Dream on." Beomgyu swats his hand away immediately, because the idea of his body reacting the same way sends a quiet wave of nausea through him.
"Well, it’s good that I’m leaving, then. I see I’m not welcomed here," he shrugs, stepping back to restore the distance between them.
"You’re leaving?"
He hates how his voice nearly cracks at the last syllable, how it’s actually very easy to pry the word up and see the writhing mass of sadness that is hiding behind it.
"Yeah, I drove with my uncle from Ansan to practice and wanted to say hi," Soobin softens his tone. He actually sounds apologetic. "He’s waiting for me downstairs right now."
"Choi Soobin-ssi, can’t you stay?" He pouts in an exaggerated way, trying to pass it off as a joke, but it doesn’t really take away from the dread of having to say goodbye to him as soon as he gets him back.
He wants to take his words back, he’s actually willing to throw up thousands of flowers if it means that Soobin would simply stay.
"Choi Beomgyu-ssi," Soobin echoes, slipping into the same teasing voice, meeting him halfway. "You know that my hiatus is not permanent, right? I’m going to come back and we’ll spend a lot of time together."
"I know, I know," he says, nodding too quickly. The motion is slightly out of sync with the rest of his body, like he’s agreeing with something that doesn’t quite settle.
He doesn’t know how to say that he cannot bear to see him leaving, that the image of his turned back does something to him that cannot be undone, maybe in all of the time that they have left.
"Can you please stay just for one day?" he asks softer this time, fingers curling around the cotton of Soobin’s shirt. "Just one day. It’s my last day-off and I want to spend it with you."
"Yeah, of course," he says eventually. "Don’t look so sad, of course, I’ll stay."
They go down the road, where Soobin leans into the open window of the car, speaking to his uncle in low apologetic murmur. Beomgyu steps forward as well, and bows deeply to the ground, saying, "Sorry for the inconvenience, ahjussi."
For some reason, when he sees who it is, he lets out a quiet half-laugh and shoos them away, revving the engine to turn back to the main road.
They go back to the dorm and Soobin grumples that he’s still on the second episode with his dad, so Beomgyu promises to tell him all the missing details.
They sit flushed against each other's sides, and at some point Beomgyu leans his head on Soobin’s shoulder, quietly summarising to him the events of the previous episodes.
After the rest of members pad to their rooms, Beomgyu keeps his gaze straight ahead on the darkened screen, like looking away would be admitting that the moment is over. Soobin stands up first, already reaching for his jacket, and Beomgyu follows without the words being exchanged between them.
He stays silent for the elevator ride back to their floor, because he doesn’t really know how to open his mouth without begging Soobin to stay for longer. The doors open and he exhales.
"Do you want to go to the internet cafe?" The question comes gently from behind, when one of his feet is already suspended above the threshold. Beomgyu nods, and Soobin presses the ground floor button.
The doors slide shut again.
They had another snowfall during the day, so maybe that’s the reason why the frozen streets look lovelier today than they were yesterday.
"Look, the moon is exactly at half," Soobin points out, nodding towards the sky when they turn onto the wider street that leads to their usual spot.
The moon is the eye of the night.
Beomgyu wonders if it affects its ability to see the world somehow, if the missing half makes it mellower and not as harsh around the edges; or if it, instead, stays more vigilant in constant search for the piece that is not there anymore.
What does it feel like to exist, missing a half?
He doesn’t know yet.
Soobin’s visit, as much as it fills something in him, also makes Beomgyu remember the ticking clock, hanging over his head. He finds himself growing groggier in the days that follow and almost meaner, because he keeps snapping at his members for no real reasons, and then feels all the more guilty for it.
The guilt is almost worse than the anger, because the only one who is actually doing anything wrong is him.
Sometimes he starts viewing passing days not as a present, but as a sequence of moments leading to the inevitable conclusion that he wrote in his head. It’s during episodes like that he feels the worst, throwing up flowers that resemble more and more complete plants.
He stays in his room during those times because it feels unfair to carry the mess of his feelings into Soobin's space, which he now avoids like plague.
He’s just so tired of everything. There aren’t a lot of things that make him happy lately and he wants it all to go back to last year when everything was still okay. Or actually, to the time before he was in love with his best friend, if the time like that has ever even existed. He’s not sure about it.
Beomgyu’s been getting lost in his own head more often, and when he snaps back to reality he finds that more than several hours have passed without him noticing. It only happens at dorms or when he has free moment to spare, but then it starts bleeding into his working days, which is a less than ideal setup when each of his behaviour is immortalised in gifs and recordings.
It’s scary at first, but then it also provides a needed sanctuary, so he lets those moments last longer and longer. Maybe he should have stayed more vigilant, because it’s entirely his fault when he finally slips up.
"Beomgyu, are you sleeping?" The voice reaches him beyond the walls. "We tried to call you but you weren’t responding to the group chat."
"Wait-"
The doors open before he can tell Taehyun not to come in. Both of them freeze looking at each other, and his mind immediately clears just enough to think shit.
"Is that-" Taehyun stops.
Well, it’s a bit hard to dispute anything, when he’s sitting in the middle of bloodied tissues and half-formed flowers that look like a mess, straight from the horror movie. They don’t have to say anything else, because the answer is pretty obvious.
Taehyun looks flustered, and if the situation wasn’t so horrifying for him, Beomgyu would have already reached for his phone and snapped a picture of it, because of how rarely it happens.
Unfortunately, it’s gone in another moment, and then an understanding dawns on his features. "Is it Soobin?"
"No," Beomgyu denies, when his throat spasms from the oncoming coughing attack. There’s a solid object pressing on his windpipe, lodged too deep to ignore, and then his body folds forward to reject the foreign item.
He finally spits it out with a final, strained motion, and a fully formed anemone falls down to the floor, landing next to Taehyun’s legs. They both stare at it under the awkward silence.
Fuck you, Choi Soobin, Beomgyu thinks.
"Please, don't tell him," he begs, when Taehyun raises his unimpressed gaze back.
"You know I can’t do that," he replies. "Not when you’re doing this to yourself."
And no, that absolutely cannot happen. From the moment Beomgyu started coughing out petals, he knew that he’d have to deal with it on his own. He was the only one dumb enough to fall in love with his best friend, so why would he hurt anyone else with it?
"Please, not for now," Beomgyu grabs his hand, like he might leave if he doesn’t hold onto him. "I’m not ready for questioning, I will tell them myself."
"I promise, I will, I promise. I just need a little bit more time." He softens his voice. "Taehyunnie, please."
He doesn’t answer straight away, and then his eyes flicker over Beomgyu’s face, looking for something, with his jaw set. Beomgyu thinks that he’s not going to budge, when Taehyun exhales from his nose. "I want you to know that I do not approve, but okay."
He knew there was a reason why Kang Taehyun has always been his favourite dongsaeng.
"But we are going to the hospital tomorrow, and that is non-negotiable."
Well, nevermind.
Stage 2, the doctor explains, pointing at the x-ray that is pinned to the wall, is the period when the roots are starting to attach themselves to the internal organs. Coughing, muscle fatigue, insomnia are some of the common signs that are present during this period. It’s highly uncomfortable for the person, but still not unbearable, like the blood clots and persistent vomiting that appear in stage 3. The important thing, he continues, is not to let yourself get to stage 4.
This is the moment when things are, to put it simply, are truly bad, because it can leave long-lasting aftereffects. And you’re a singer, he adds, so it’s important to think about your lungs.
Beongyu looks at the fragile shapes blooming inside of his body and wonders how something so beautiful can be killing him from the inside.
"Is there no possibility for the acceptance of the object?" the doctor asks, scribbling on his report card.
Bomgyu shakes his head. "I don’t think so."
"Then there is only one option. You’re lucky, it’s the most favorable period to undergo the surgery. For reasons we don’t fully understand yet, hanahaki tends to respond better to treatment during the winter. It may be related to the seasonal cycles, but there is still ongoing research about it."
"Your memories won’t be erased, so don’t worry, that's just a tale to scare kids. However, you will lose any romantic inclination toward that person forever." Beomgyu has always known this, but the clinical confirmation of it still hurts a little bit.
"We are still studying the exact mechanics, but removing the roots forcefully appears to disrupt part of the brain that was responsible for the neurons, transmitting the response associated with a specific trigger."
When he sees that Beongyu doesn’t respond, his face softens in a sympathetic expression. "Aigoo, don’t get dispirited, kid, it happens more often than you think. You are still so young and, look at yourself, you are like one of the male leads in those dramas that my daughter likes to watch, you will fall in love again."
It’s actually uncanny how fast his condition deteriorates, when he finally makes up his mind to undergo the surgery.
Beomgyu starts throwing up flowers every other hour, but most of the time they come out half-formed and unfinished, like his body cannot regrow them by the time the next wave of nausea forces them out, so at least there’s that. The doctor advises that it’s better to complete the operation within the next month, and Beomgyu sets himself a time limit to deal with it before Soobin comes back from his hiatus.
Beomgyu from a month ago couldn’t wait for the date to come faster, but now it sits heavy in his chest, like a death sentence that he cannot escape, and isn’t it just sad.
Taehyun tries to help him in any way he can, so maybe that’s why he brings out the cassette to record a message to Soobin during one of their lives, after Beomgyu tells him that sleeping in his room actually helps.
"Think of it as an exposure therapy," he says before turning on the camera.
He looks at the plastic box, and tries to think of a thing that he would like to tell Soobin. There’s too many of those and not enough time for any.
"Soobin hyung, I-"
I love you, it’s true but it doesn’t really matter. I wish you were here, again true, but he doesn’t want Soobin to feel burdened.
For Beomgyu, Soobin is the sun, someone who deserves to be eternally happy. His best friend. Beomgyu may be in love with Soobin, but will always love him more, so this is why telling him about any of this has never been an option.
Do you know there are flowers in my lungs? Isn’t it funny? That one is a big fat no, so nevermind.
"I am sleeping in your bed these days," he settles on, when the silence stretches for a bit too long to be comedic. "...Just kidding."
Taehyun looks at him with something uncomfortably close to pity, and Beomgyu regrets for a moment that it was him, and not Yeonjun hyung that has found him. Would he most probably get a beating for not telling them earlier? Definitely, but it would be preferable than dumping his worries on his younger member.
For Beomgyu it has always been important to be a reliable hyung, and now it's just another role that he has been failing at.
When he starts singing to record a message for a cassette, there’s a petal lodged in his throat, and he’s glad that it seems that his voice is strained only because he’s on the verge of tears. "Even if no one else cares about your sadness; I’m always cheering for you, you’ve worked hard today,” he finishes together with Taehyun.
He doesn’t know if it’s actually Soobin who needs to hear it or himself, but nonetheless the song makes it easier to breathe.
February 2025
In Beomgyu’s mind, February is warm sand slipping between his toes and evening walks under the moonlight. He cannot quite believe that it’s been a whole year since their trip, that his body is still the same body of himself that he was back then.
They say the human body needs a cycle of seven to ten years to completely renew all of its components. The skin turns over in two to four weeks, being the fastest, followed by liver and blood that replace themselves within the year. The longest of it all, the skeletal and fat tissues, take their time but even they are eventually regenerated in ten years. The neurons are never truly replaced, but he doesn’t have to worry about those, because the procedure will do it for him.
There’s a possibility that all of the blood cells that he had in Vietnam are no longer there, replaced by something that has never known a version of himself in Phú Quốc.
Will his bones, too, forget how it felt to love Soobin in another nine years, then?
He’s in Soobin’s room, facetiming him.
Beomgyu again has started spending his time here, allowing himself that last chance of indulgence. His glance follows the photo on the bedside table, and he excuses himself to the bathroom to spit out a flower. Lately he’s been coughing out stems and leaves more often, and he wonders what it means for the state of his lungs.
It doesn’t hurt him as much, as it did in the very beginning when his body was still getting used to the sensation of having something foreign inside of it.
It honestly makes him a little bit sad, because even though he doesn’t have a good pain tolerance, it gives him a reminder that there’s still something in him to hurt; that his heart is still his own.
"I miss Vietnam." The words slip out of him, unintended.
Vietnam is where I still had you, he doesn’t add. Where I could still love you without knowledge of its expiration date.
"I’ll take you for another trip." Soobin’s voice sounds distant from where he’s sitting on the floor, brushing Tori’s fur. Beomgyu touches the screen with the tip of his finger, tracing the outline of his face in that blind area where it’s safe to linger. "When we have a longer holiday, I‘ll take you. Think about where you want to go."
"That would be nice," Beomgyu murmurs. He wipes a tear that slides down his cheek after they hang up. The next time we go somewhere I won’t be in love with you anymore, he thinks.
And wow, what a scary thought. To have Choi Soobin in your life and not be in love with him.
It’s nice to be finally spending time with someone who knows. He doesn’t have to hide the coughs that go through his body or rush to the bathroom every ten minutes, so maybe after all Beomgyu is glad for his slip up that day. He was starting to feel awfully lonely.
Even when Taehyun keeps sending judgemental glances his way, Beomgyu knows that it only stems from his worry about him, and honestly? After a while it gets old, so he’s not as affected anymore.
"How are you feeling?" he asks, when Beomgyu sneezes out another petal.
"It’s alright," he lies, because any other answer is going to end up with him being dragged to the hospital, which he would very much like to avoid.
He waits for it, and right on cue, "I think you’re being stupid," Taehyun says once again for the tenth time in the span of two hours that they have been spending together.
"Tell me something I haven’t heard before."
"Maybe," he shrugs lightly, "but now it’s actually justified. I’m not going to sugarcoat, when I think that you’re making a mistake by not thinking it over."
"You don’t have to repeat the same thing, Taehyunnie, I know. Don’t worry, I’ll get rid of the disease soon, and we’ll go back to how things were before."
Taehyun opens his mouth like he wants to argue, then closes it again, hesitating.
Beomgyu almost wants to tell him to just go or finally blow up at him, like he knows he wants to. It’s a little bit unnerving to sit still under one of his sharp gazes, that makes you feel like he can actually see through your shit, and just wait for your execution that you know is coming.
"Beomgyu-ah, do you know that from the moment we started talking, you haven’t ever named it for what it is?"
"What?" he repeats, confused.
"Every time when you mention it you say a disease, or a curse, or whatever other degrading term you can find for it, but you do know that it’s not what it is, right?" Taehyun continues.
"Even if Soobin hyung doesn’t feel the same way, which I personally doubt, your feelings still have the right to exist. You’re not doing anything evil, so stop treating it like something forbidden or bad — cause it’s not. Even if the love is unrequited, it exists because your heart is big enough to carry it, so why are you so ashamed?"
The question lingers without the response.
"I need to go check on Kai. He’s been wondering why all of his hyungs don’t want to spend time with him anymore," Taehyun adds after a moment, straightening up.
When he passes by, he pauses briefly enough to squeeze Beomgyu’s shoulder. "Just think about what I said, okay? For what it’s worth, I think it’s an honour to be loved by you."
It takes him another ten minutes after Taehyun leaves to gather his thoughts. Beomgyu has never viewed it like that before, but well, maybe it’s true.
From the moment he coughed out that first petal in Atlanta, he’s been treating it as something parasiting — something dirty, something that doesn’t belong — because why else would he be punished by having flowers inside of his lungs?
For the past year, all he’s been doing is run from it, because that was the only way he knew how to face his problems.
But Beomgyu has never actually stopped for enough time to ask himself how Soobin made him feel; and, Taehyunnie is actually right, he’s been such a fool.
Because if loving someone is beautiful, what makes falling in love be any different from it, even if it’s unrequited?
The answer, he finds out, is not that complicated.
After all, Beomgyu’s dad always said that he had too much love to give, so wouldn’t it be a matter of time before it had to bloom somewhere?
"I’m in love with Choi Soobin," he whispers out loud, tasting the words on his lips, and then repeats louder, "I’m in love with Choi Soobin."
Beomgyu cleans out the room and opens the window to let the fresh air in. It’s one of the warmer days, and the gust of wind scatters the petals, stacked on the windowsill.
From where they pile up on the floor, Beomgyu picks up an anemone, and turns it over in his hand. The first time he saw it he was right.
It is a beautiful flower.
"I’m going to miss Tori. I wish I could take her with me."
"Choi Soobin-ssi, it’s still not too late. I’ve said that I’m willing to be a co-offender and hide her from the management, but you’re being a coward."
"Choi Beomgyu-ssi, I know you’re full of shit. Plus, she’s not a city dog, and we don’t really have enough time with our schedule to properly take care of her right now. Maybe after we open our cafe and hide somewhere in the countryside, she can be our mascot and attract customers."
"Hmm, that sounds nice."
…
"Beomgyu-ah, I’m finally coming home tomorrow."
"I know. I will wait for you, hyung."
When the call ends, he stands in one of the hallways of headquarters, lighter than he felt in months.
It’s been a year. It’s been enough. Beomgyu tried to run, and he tried to hide, and maybe it’s time to finally hit back. Because being in love with Soobin has never been anything bad. It’s actually so, so beautiful, it’s the happiest thing that has ever happened to him.
After their group, of course.
Beomgyu collects all of the papers that he organised yesterday, and knocks on the door, leading to the production team. “Do you have time? I want to show you something.”
It takes him another two weeks to go over the details of his first solo mixtape. He spends hours shut away in the small practice room, recording and trying and creating, and then starting all over again, when something doesn’t work out.
Is it tiring? A little bit, but he loves doing it, and he’s done running away from the things that make him happy. He’s a man from Daegu, and they have a reputation to uphold.
When Beomgyu finally leaves the room, his gaze drifts, almost unconsciously, to the calendar, hanging on the wall.
Tomorrow marks the start of the last week of February. And then-
Ah, and then, spring is finally coming back to Seoul.
interlude. panic by choi beomgyu
Beneath the dark night
Let's not stay here, but move on
In the days of bruises
Every step we take
You and I
Will find our way through
…
This is my answer
This cold winter too
Shall pass