Chapter Text
Jihoon learned very early that some rooms had centers.
Not official centers, because adults loved pretending rooms belonged to schedules, mirrors, evaluation charts, bottled water boxes, and whatever laminated sheet had been taped to the wall that week. Adults did this because adults were cowards, and also because adults had mastered the incredible art of looking at seven boys vibrating with exhaustion and calling it development.
But Jihoon knew better.
The practice room had a center, and most days, the center was James.
It was not because James was serious. That was the lie people who did not know him made up because he had a face that looked expensive when he was quiet. From far away, James could seem composed. Elegant. Almost untouchable. A boy with pretty eyes and clean lines and the kind of calm that made adults think, incorrectly, that he could be trusted with responsibility.
Up close, James was a deeply unserious person wearing the face of someone who might understand tax law.
He made up songs about losing his socks. He narrated other people’s stretching like a nature documentary. He once spent an entire ten-minute break pretending a rolled-up towel was a royal baby and asking everyone to greet Prince Toweliam with respect. He could hear one weird sound from the speaker and immediately turn it into a full musical about a haunted microwave. He was silly in the way truly creative people often were, which meant with full commitment and no instinct for shame. Even as a trainee, even when he was tired, even when the adults called his name with that special exhausted tone they reserved for boys who were both talented and a public safety hazard, James stayed bright somewhere underneath.
Childlike, not childish.
That was the difference Jihoon did not yet know how to explain.
James could lead a count, fix a formation, translate a joke, catch a mistake before the choreographer opened his mouth, and then immediately turn around and say, “Everyone stop. The water bottle is giving main dancer energy,” with the grave authority of a person delivering national news.
People drifted toward him because he was beautiful, yes, but also because he made exhaustion feel like a game for five minutes. He made the room less sharp. He made the ceiling lights less mean. He made being young and hungry and scared feel briefly like something they could survive by being funny about it.
That was worse than beauty.
Beauty was one thing. Beauty could be ignored if you had discipline and possibly poor eyesight.
James being funny was impossible to survive.
Jihoon survived many things by moving.
This was not something he had decided. It was just how his body handled information before his mouth could get involved and make everything worse. If the room got too quiet, his foot started marking counts against the floor. If someone asked a question he did not want to answer, his shoulders loosened like he was about to freestyle his way out of the conversation. If he was happy, he jumped. If he was embarrassed, he spun away. If he was sad, he practiced until sadness had no choice but to become muscle memory.
His body was honest in a way his mouth found deeply disrespectful.
Today, his body was doing a very poor job of minding its business.
James sat down on the floor with his back against the mirror, hair damp from practice, face still soft with teenage exhaustion, and within five minutes the room rearranged itself around him like furniture in a haunted house. Not because he demanded attention. Because he invented a situation and everyone else, against all better judgment, wanted to be included.
Today, the situation was that his left shoe had been “emotionally compromised.”
“No, listen,” James said, holding the shoe up like evidence in court. “This shoe has betrayed me. It squeaked on count four.”
Woochan lay flat on the floor, one arm over his eyes. “Maybe your foot betrayed the shoe.”
James gasped. “Victim blaming.”
“It’s a shoe.”
“And yet it has a journey.”
JJ, who had already abandoned the concept of personal space, slid behind James and draped himself over his shoulders. “What’s its backstory?”
“Born in a factory,” James said instantly. “Raised by ambition. Sent to Seoul to become a star. Unfortunately, it developed jealousy issues because the right shoe kept getting compliments.”
Jihoon laughed before he could stop himself.
James’s eyes flicked to him in the mirror, pleased.
That was when JJ climbed fully onto James’s lap.
Which, in Jihoon’s opinion, was rude timing from the universe.
Jihoon’s foot tapped once against the floor.
Then again.
Count one. Count two.
He stopped it with his hand pressed flat over his knee.
It was not a problem. Jihoon knew that. He was not insane. He was young, which was worse, but he was not insane. JJ and James were friends. Everyone was friends. They were all trainees. They shared water, snacks, floor space, sweat, bad sleep, worse jokes, and the kind of hope that made people stupid on purpose. Physical closeness was normal. Lap-sitting was normal. Throwing your whole body onto someone after a run-through and announcing that your legs had resigned was normal.
JJ sitting on James’s lap was normal.
Jihoon told himself this so many times that the words became useless.
“Move,” James said, voice muffled because JJ had thrown an arm across his face.
“No,” JJ said. “You’re warm.”
“I’m a person.”
“You’re a heated chair.”
James went very still.
Then, with the slow horror of someone discovering his destiny had been reduced to furniture, he whispered, “I trained for this.”
JJ laughed into his shoulder.
“I left my family,” James continued, deadpan. “I learned choreography. I developed cheekbones through hardship. And now I am a chair.”
“A premium chair,” Woochan offered.
“Thank you,” James said. “That helps nothing.”
Jihoon pressed his lips together so he would not laugh too loudly. He failed. James looked pleased again, and the stupid warm thing in Jihoon’s chest stretched like it had been fed.
JJ remained on James’s lap, fully shameless, grinning like he had won something important. Like James was a chair, a territory, a joke that belonged to him first.
Jihoon rose without thinking.
“Where are you going?” Woochan asked.
“Stretching,” Jihoon said.
“You stretched already.”
“I’m flexible.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is if you believe.”
James’s head turned, eyes narrowing with delighted recognition. “That’s my line.”
Jihoon pointed at him. “You made it public domain.”
“I’m suing.”
“You’re a chair.”
Woochan made a noise like a goose being emotionally attacked. JJ collapsed sideways, still half on James. James stared at Jihoon for one second, betrayed and proud at the same time, which was such an unfair expression that Jihoon’s body immediately needed to do something with it.
So he danced.
Not properly. Not performance. Just a little footwork near the mirror, light and quick, the kind of restless shuffle he could pretend was nothing if anyone asked. Heel, toe, slide, reset. A small bounce in the knees. A turn that went nowhere. His reflection moved with him, younger than he wanted, face bright from laughter and something else he refused to name.
Movement helped.
Movement took the hot, strange thing in his chest and gave it somewhere else to live.
JJ sitting on James’s lap became count four.
James laughing became a shoulder hit.
Woochan watching too closely became a step back.
The feeling became choreography.
That was safer.
Feelings were suspicious. Counts were honest.
“Maknae,” JJ called, without moving from James’s lap. “You have food?”
Jihoon stopped mid-step. “No.”
JJ looked directly at the chips lying beside Jihoon’s bag.
Jihoon looked down at the chips as if betrayed by packaging.
James opened one eye. “He has food.”
“Hyung,” Jihoon protested, because betrayal was one thing, but betrayal from James had special lighting.
James’s mouth twitched. “Share with the court.”
“What court?”
James lifted one hand weakly from under JJ’s weight. “The Supreme Court of Snacks.”
“You made that up.”
“All courts are made up, Jihoon-ah. That is society.”
“Bro,” Woochan said from the floor. “You need sleep.”
“I need justice.”
So Jihoon shared.
Of course he did.
He crossed back over and handed over the bag, and JJ took a handful before passing it to James, who took exactly two chips and returned the bag to Jihoon with a tiny nod of thanks that felt, stupidly, like a medal. Then James held one chip up to the light.
“This one looks like a fish.”
Jihoon looked despite himself. “No it doesn’t.”
“It does if you believe.”
“I don’t.”
“That’s why the fish left you.”
Woochan sat up halfway. “Why is there fish lore now?”
“Because Jihoon lacks faith.”
“I’m eating,” Jihoon said helplessly.
James nodded with fake sorrow. “Without imagination.”
Jihoon held the bag against his chest and tried not to smile too hard.
“Why are you smiling like that?” Woochan asked.
Jihoon’s entire soul attempted to leave the building through the ventilation system.
“I’m not.”
Woochan lifted his brows. “You are.”
“I’m chewing.”
“With your feelings?”
“Shut up.”
Woochan laughed, delighted because same-age boys found suffering nutritious. He was stretched out near the speaker with his legs crossed, one sneaker tapping against the floor in rhythm with music that was no longer playing. He had James’s hoodie over his lap, though Jihoon was fairly sure James had been wearing it before the last break. That was how it was with Woochan and James. Things migrated between them without discussion. Hoodies. Chargers. Earbuds. Bottles of water. Private jokes. The whole quiet language of people who shared a room and therefore knew too much about each other to be normal in public.
Woochan threw the hoodie at James. It landed on JJ’s back.
“Your laundry,” Woochan said.
James did not move. “That’s not mine.”
“It was on your bed.”
“Everything is on my bed because you dump things there.”
“Sounds like your bed has community value.”
JJ lifted his head, still on James’s lap, and said, “This hoodie smells like both of you. Gross.”
James turned his head slowly. “Why did you smell it?”
“For science.”
“Science is suffering.”
“That’s school,” Woochan said.
“Same thing,” James replied, then pointed solemnly at his hoodie. “Also, that hoodie is not laundry. That hoodie is a witness.”
“To what?” Jihoon asked before he could stop himself.
James looked at him with absolute seriousness. “To Woochan stealing my bed space like a colonial power.”
“You sleep diagonally,” Woochan said.
“I sleep artistically.”
“You sleep like punctuation.”
“Elegant punctuation.”
The room laughed, and Jihoon laughed too, because it was funny. It was. It was funny and warm and easy, and that should have been enough. The room was full of bright clothes and messy hair and boys lying on the floor like fallen game pieces after choreography had murdered them with style. Outside the windows, Seoul was turning blue with evening. Inside, everything smelled like sweat, chips, fabric spray, and too much ambition for one small room.
It should have been enough to be there.
Jihoon was there. He was included. James teased him. JJ stole his food. Woochan noticed his facial crimes. Leo called him over when he needed the younger boys to stop pretending dinner was optional. Sangwon sometimes ruffled his hair. Yorch asked if he had eaten in a soft voice that made the question sound less like management and more like home. Jihoon belonged here.
He knew that.
He knew it in the way young people know facts adults had explained to them, which meant the knowledge was technically present and emotionally useless.
Because belonging to the room was not the same thing as belonging to someone’s lap.
The thought arrived without warning.
Jihoon hated it immediately.
It was ugly. It was dramatic. It was the kind of thought that would make Woochan point at him and go, “Bro, that’s crazy,” if it ever escaped his mouth. It was not even fair. James did not owe him a lap. Nobody owed anybody lap rights. This was not a government benefit. There was no form to submit. No trainee entitlement package labeled One Unit of James Attention, Redeemable During Breaks.
Still, something small and hot pushed against Jihoon’s chest.
Not sadness exactly.
Not anger.
Something stranger.
Like one day, without asking permission, a part of him had started growing in the wrong direction.
Jihoon looked at the mirror.
His reflection looked younger than everyone else’s. That was rude of the mirror, but mirrors had always been company property and could not be trusted. His hair fell into his eyes. His cheeks were still rounder than he wanted. His hoodie sleeves covered half his hands. Behind him, James and JJ were tangled together in the reflection, laughing at something Woochan said, and Jihoon saw himself there too, small and bright and off to the side.
His body moved before his brain could stop it.
A step. A pivot. A soft hit of the shoulder. Something from the routine, then something that was not from the routine at all. His sneakers whispered against the floor. The mirror caught him in pieces: foot, hand, cheek, mouth pressed into a line like he was trying to hold a secret between his teeth.
“Freestyle era?” Woochan called.
“No,” Jihoon said.
“That was a question.”
“And I answered.”
James smiled. “Let him cook.”
Jihoon almost tripped.
He recovered too quickly for anyone normal to notice.
Unfortunately, James was not normal.
James’s smile widened by one unbearable millimeter.
Jihoon spun away.
He wondered if everyone could see it.
The thing growing.
The want.
He wondered if it showed on his head like horns.
“Jihoon-ah.”
He stopped too fast.
Leo stood by the door with a plastic bag in one hand and that expression older boys got when they had decided the younger ones were idiots but also, unfortunately, theirs.
“Food,” Leo said.
Every boy in the room reacted like the word had been delivered by an angel, a government agency, and their mothers at the same time.
JJ rolled off James with indecent speed. Woochan sat up so fast his knee cracked. Sangwon appeared from the hallway like he had been summoned by the sacred bell of carbs. Yorch followed him, quiet and smiling, holding another bag against his hip.
“Don’t run,” Leo said, as everyone immediately ran.
“I’m speed-walking,” Woochan claimed.
“You’re spiritually running.”
“That’s legal.”
James pushed himself up last, slower than the rest, rubbing at his neck. He looked tired in that specific James way, where tiredness made him prettier instead of worse, which felt unfair and possibly illegal. Then he saw the food bags and immediately straightened with theatrical dignity.
“Finally,” he said. “The kingdom provides tribute.”
Leo stared at him. “You said you didn’t want anything.”
“That was past James. He was weak and uninformed.”
Yorch smiled. “Present James is hungry?”
“Present James is a growing boy.”
Woochan made a face. “You’re not growing. You’re just annoying.”
James nodded. “Emotionally growing.”
Sangwon caught James’s hoodie before it slid off his shoulder and hit the floor.
“You’re going to lose everything you own,” Sangwon said.
James tilted his head back to look at him. “Then stop picking it up.”
“Then stop dropping it.”
“Hyung, you love helping me.”
Sangwon’s face changed.
Only for a second.
Jihoon saw it anyway, because being young and left slightly outside made him very good at noticing. Sangwon’s smile softened at the edges. It became something more careful than teasing, something warmer than habit. He reached out and tapped the hoodie lightly against James’s head.
“Eat first,” Sangwon said. “Talk less.”
James put a hand over his heart. “Cruel. Silencing an artist.”
“A hungry artist.”
“My people suffer.”
“Your people need protein,” Leo said.
James pointed at him. “That too.”
Jihoon looked away, smiling despite himself.
This was another kind of closeness.
Not JJ’s visible kind, all lap and limbs and loud ownership. Not Woochan’s daily-life kind, all borrowed hoodies and roommate timing. This was softer. Older. Sangwon looked at James like James was a younger brother until suddenly, without warning, the look held too much light. James looked back like he trusted the attention before he understood what shape it might become.
Jihoon did not know what to do with that either.
So he ate.
That was a strong strategy. Historically, many emotional disasters could be delayed with rice.
They sat on the practice room floor in a loose circle, plastic containers open between them. The food was not glamorous. It was convenience-store warm, slightly squashed, and perfect because everyone was hungry enough to believe in miracles. Yorch sat beside James and passed him a small packet of sauce without looking, like he already knew James would reach for it. James took it with a quiet thanks in Thai.
Jihoon did not understand the words.
He understood the feeling.
Yorch smiled. “You sound tired.”
James answered in Thai again, quicker this time, tone dry. Yorch laughed softly, shoulder bumping his.
Then James, because he could not leave tenderness alone without putting a stupid hat on it, switched back to Korean and announced, “Yorch-hyung says I sound like a dying mosquito.”
Yorch blinked. “I did not say that.”
“Emotionally, you did.”
“I said your voice is tired.”
“Dying mosquito.”
Leo sighed. “Why do you translate like a liar?”
James lifted his chopsticks. “For entertainment.”
There it was again. Another door Jihoon could not enter, but this one was open enough for laughter to spill through.
Not because anyone locked him out. That would have been easier. Villains were useful because you could hate them and move on. This was worse. The door was simply not built for him. It belonged to language, to being far from home, to the old ache James carried differently around Yorch, to something quiet and cultural and soft enough that it did not need an audience. James made it funny, because James made everything funny when it hurt or when it might. Jihoon was beginning to suspect this was not a habit. It was survival wearing clown shoes.
Leo watched them from across the circle with a small smile. Sangwon leaned against Leo’s shoulder while scrolling on his phone, casual enough that nobody reacted, intimate enough that Jihoon’s eyes caught on it anyway.
All around him, the room was full of little kingdoms.
James and JJ, bright and obvious.
James and Woochan, messy and domestic.
James and Sangwon, gentle and confusing.
James and Yorch, familiar in a language Jihoon did not have.
Leo at the center of the older boys, making all of it feel held together for now.
Jihoon sat with his rice and his chips and his oversized hoodie and felt something press against the inside of his skin.
His knee started bouncing.
He pressed one palm over it.
It bounced harder.
“You good?” Woochan asked.
“Yes.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m digesting.”
James looked delighted. “Aggressively?”
“Athletically,” Jihoon said.
JJ pointed at him with his chopsticks. “That’s not digestion. That’s emotional footwork.”
Jihoon choked on rice.
The entire circle erupted.
Leo handed him water with the resigned speed of a man who had seen too many boys nearly die from embarrassment and carbohydrates. Yorch patted his back. Sangwon laughed behind his hand. Woochan looked proud of the disaster despite not causing it, which was his usual moral position.
James leaned forward, eyes bright. “Emotional footwork is a good title.”
“For what?” Jihoon croaked.
“Your villain debut.”
“I’m not a villain.”
“Not with that attitude.”
Jihoon wiped his mouth and glared at him. “You’re so annoying.”
James smiled.
It was not the biggest smile. It was not JJ’s smile, or Sangwon’s smile, or the private Thai smile he gave Yorch. It was just a quick thing, amused and warm, a small light flickering across his face before he turned back to his food.
Jihoon held very still.
His chest hurt.
Not badly. Not in a way that would make anyone call a manager or hand him water or tell him to sit down. It hurt in the way a new bruise hurt when you pressed it because you could not stop checking if it was still there.
Maybe this was normal.
Maybe everybody had strange little horns growing inside them at sixteen. Maybe wanting was just a body being dramatic. Bodies were known criminals. They grew taller without warning, changed your voice, made you hungry at inconvenient times, betrayed you during evaluations, and sometimes, apparently, decided another boy’s smile was a national event.
Maybe this was just puberty.
Puberty, Jihoon thought, was incredibly cringe.
After dinner, they practiced again.
This was the other thing people did not understand about youth. From the outside, it looked effortless. Five, six, seven boys in bright oversized shirts and bad hair, laughing between counts, dancing like their bones were made of music and poor decisions. People saw the freshness first. The round faces. The color. The cute mistakes. The way choreography looked playful when performed by boys young enough to still grin when they nearly fell.
They did not see the math.
The hidden timing. The weight changes. The tiny delay before a turn. The way trust had to be rehearsed until catching someone’s shoulder became less a choice than a reflex. The choreography looked easy because the difficulty had been buried under smiles.
James made it worse because he could make even the hard parts feel like a game.
“Again,” the choreographer called.
Everyone groaned.
James clapped once and said, “Excellent. We have entered the punishment dimension.”
“I hate this dimension,” Woochan said.
“The choreography hates you back.”
“Why are you like this?”
“Gifted.”
“Cursed,” JJ corrected.
James nodded. “Also gifted.”
They ran the chorus again. Then again. Then again until everyone’s shirts clung damply to their backs and Woochan declared he had become soup.
“You were soup before,” James said.
“You’re soup,” Woochan shot back.
“That means nothing.”
“It means your face.”
“My face is soup?”
“Expensive soup.”
James blinked. “That’s worse.”
“Premium broth,” JJ added.
“Stop describing my face as liquid.”
Jihoon laughed so hard he folded over, hands on his knees. When he looked up, James was laughing too, open and young and less guarded than usual. For one second, nobody was standing in anyone else’s place. Nobody was more chosen. Nobody was outside. They were just boys in a practice room, dizzy with exhaustion and nonsense, wearing colors too bright for the hour.
Jihoon loved that second.
He did not call it love.
He was not stupid enough for that.
He was only stupid enough to want it to last forever.
It did not.
Nothing at that age lasted forever except embarrassment, which had the survival instincts of a cockroach.
After practice officially ended, Jihoon kept moving.
It was not a choice exactly. The music had stopped, but the counts were still inside him, knocking around his ribs like they wanted out. The others had collapsed near their bags. Someone opened another drink. Someone complained about shower order in advance, because suffering was more efficient when scheduled.
Jihoon stayed in front of the mirror.
Step. Slide. Turn.
James’s laugh still lived somewhere near count two.
Step. Hit. Recover.
JJ on James’s lap became a drop in the shoulder.
Step. Step. Pivot.
Woochan’s hoodie became a turn away.
He was not confessing anything.
He was not even thinking.
He was simply putting the feeling somewhere the room could not accuse him of having it.
“Jihoon-ah,” Leo said, not unkindly. “Pack up.”
Jihoon finished the phrase.
Leo waited.
Jihoon added one more eight-count because he was a professional and also a liar.
“Jihoon,” Leo said.
“Coming.”
James leaned against the wall, watching him with his head tilted. “You always do that.”
Jihoon grabbed his towel. “Do what?”
“Dance after everyone stops.”
“Because everyone stops too early.”
“That sounds fake.”
“You sound fake.”
“Excellent argument.”
Jihoon looked away first.
He would not know until years later that this would become a pattern so obvious even security guards could understand it. That when his mouth had nowhere to put grief, stress, restlessness, love, or the strange glittery pressure of being looked at, his body would take over. He would dance too late. Talk too long. Lose track of time under practice room lights. He would be interrupted by building adults with badges and tired faces, and people would laugh because it was funny.
They would not always understand that the dancing was not the interruption.
The interruption was being asked to stop feeling.
But he was sixteen here.
He did not know any of that yet.
He only knew that when he moved, the horns stopped hurting for a while.
By the time they returned to the dorm, it was late enough that the city had gone silver around the edges. The van ride was quiet. JJ fell asleep with his head against the window. Sangwon and Leo shared earphones in the back. Yorch stared out at the road, thumb moving absently over his phone screen. Jihoon sat near the front and tried not to look at James and Woochan.
This was impossible because James and Woochan were right there.
Roommates had a way of making closeness look unimportant. That was what bothered Jihoon most. JJ’s closeness was loud enough to fight. Sangwon’s was soft enough to ache. Yorch’s was private enough to respect.
Woochan’s closeness was daily.
He nudged James awake when they arrived. James grumbled and leaned into him for half a second too long before catching himself. Woochan did not react because he was used to it. He just pushed James upright and said, “Walk, zombie.”
“I’m not a zombie,” James muttered.
“You look dead.”
“I’m a limited-edition night creature.”
“You’re wearing one sock.”
James looked down.
He was, in fact, wearing one sock.
There was a long silence.
Then James said, with perfect calm, “Fashion.”
Woochan wheezed.
“Don’t laugh,” James said. “You’re witnessing culture.”
“I’m witnessing sleep deprivation.”
“Same outfit.”
They shuffled upstairs together, bickering quietly, shoulders knocking in the hallway.
Jihoon followed behind them with his backpack slipping off one shoulder.
He wondered what it was like to know James when he was half-asleep. To know which side of the room his charger was on. To hear him complain before he had arranged his face for the day. To be ordinary with him in ways Jihoon had only seen from doorways.
He hated that thought too.
His brain was collecting hated thoughts like photocards. Tragic little hobby.
Inside, the dorm dissolved into late-night chaos. Shoes kicked off. Someone complained about shower order. Someone else found a forgotten snack and declared it communal despite it obviously belonging to a person with feelings and a label maker. Leo told everyone to keep it down. Everyone ignored him at lower volume, which was technically obedience if you had flexible morals.
Jihoon brushed his teeth too hard and stared at himself in the bathroom mirror.
No horns.
Obviously.
His hair stuck up on one side. His face looked tired and too young. Toothpaste foam clung to the corner of his mouth. Very majestic. Very romantic. The nation’s maknae, caught in 4K by his own reflection, losing a fight with dental hygiene.
He leaned closer anyway.
Still no horns.
But the feeling was there.
Something had grown. Something he had not chosen and did not know how to cut off. It made him aware of every place James looked, every person James touched, every version of James that belonged somewhere Jihoon did not.
The worst part was that James was kind to him.
If James had been cruel, Jihoon could have built a whole personality around moving on. He could have become mature and aloof and possibly worn more black. But James was kind. He handed Jihoon water during practice. He reminded him to stretch. He laughed when Jihoon made jokes. He noticed when Jihoon got quiet.
And then, because James was James, he made the quiet funny without making Jihoon feel mocked.
He just did all of that while belonging to everyone else too.
Jihoon rinsed his mouth and turned off the tap.
When he stepped back into the hall, James was standing there, rubbing one eye with the heel of his hand.
Jihoon froze.
James blinked at him. “Bathroom free?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.”
Neither of them moved.
This was because the hallway was narrow, and also because Jihoon’s soul had left his body without submitting the proper paperwork.
James looked down at him, tired and soft, hair falling over his forehead. In the practice room, under mirrors and music, James could become almost unreal. In the hallway, barefoot and sleepy, wearing one sock like a fashion war crime, he looked like a boy. Just a boy. The kind who got sauce on his face and lost hoodies and needed Leo to remind him to eat. The kind who invented fish lore from a potato chip and called himself premium broth. The kind Jihoon could maybe survive loving because he was real enough to be ridiculous.
“You okay?” James asked.
Jihoon nodded too fast. “Yeah.”
James narrowed his eyes slightly. “You’ve been weird.”
“No.”
“That was fast.”
“Because it’s true.”
“Suspicious.”
Jihoon panicked and said, “You’re suspicious.”
James stared at him.
Then he gasped.
“Finally,” James whispered. “The baby threat attacks.”
Jihoon wanted to evaporate. “Hyung.”
James lifted both hands in surrender. “I respect your villain era.”
“I don’t have a villain era.”
“That’s what makes it scary.”
Jihoon tried not to smile.
James saw it anyway, because James saw too much when he was not busy being absurd. He smiled back and reached out, ruffling Jihoon’s hair once before slipping past him into the bathroom.
The touch lasted maybe one second.
Jihoon stood in the hallway long after the door closed.
His hair was messed up.
His chest was worse.
He pressed both hands over his head, as if holding something in place.
No horns.
Still no horns.
But something had changed shape anyway.
In the bedroom, JJ was already asleep across his blanket like a dramatic corpse. Woochan’s laugh drifted from James’s room, low and familiar. Sangwon murmured something in the kitchen. Leo answered. Yorch’s soft Thai floated after that, gentle as a nightlight in another language.
The dorm was full of rooms Jihoon could hear but not enter.
So he went to the living room.
Not because he was avoiding bed.
He was absolutely avoiding bed.
He placed his phone face-down on the table, shoved the coffee table two inches to the left, then started marking the chorus silently in socks. No music. No mirror. Just the window reflecting him faintly back at himself, a ghost of a boy in oversized clothes trying to outrun a feeling without waking anyone.
Step. Slide. Turn.
No horns.
Hit. Recover. Breathe.
No confession.
Pivot. Drop. Reset.
No problem.
He danced quietly enough that nobody came out.
Or maybe they heard and chose kindness, which at sixteen felt almost the same as being invisible and almost the same as being loved.
After a while, his phone lit up.
A message from his noona.
why are you awake
Jihoon stared at it.
Then typed:
studying
The reply came immediately.
liar
Jihoon smiled despite himself.
There were some people who did not need to be in the room to catch him. His noona could ruin his dignity from a different location entirely. Family was terrifying like that. Not poetic. Not polished. Just someone telling you to sleep before you became stupid enough to text something life-changing.
He typed:
i’m fine
His phone sat silent for a moment.
Then:
wash your bowl if you ate
Jihoon’s laugh came out small and helpless.
He looked toward the kitchen.
There was, unfortunately, a bowl.
He washed it.
Romance, grief, destiny, mysterious horns of adolescence, all of it paused because his sister had remotely detected a dirty dish. This was probably good for him. This was probably what kept people from becoming completely unbearable main characters.
When he finally crawled into bed, the room was dark and warm and full of breathing. JJ was still asleep across his blanket. Somewhere down the hall, Woochan murmured something and James made a muffled annoyed sound in reply. The sound was domestic. Familiar. Another small door closing softly.
Jihoon pulled the blanket up to his chin.
He was included. He was loved. He was the maknae. The baby. The tiny threat. The official snack supplier. The kid everyone teased and looked after and called over when dinner arrived.
That should have been enough.
It was almost enough.
Jihoon closed his eyes and saw James laughing in the mirror, JJ on his lap, Woochan’s hoodie in his hands, Sangwon’s smile softening, Yorch speaking Thai beside him, Leo holding the whole room together like it was easy.
Then he saw James in the hallway, sleepy and ridiculous, saying, The baby threat attacks.
Maybe Jihoon had been weird.
Maybe weird was just what happened when a want grew before the person wearing it was ready.
His foot moved under the blanket, marking one last count against the mattress.
One. Two. Three. Four.
He stopped it.
Then let it start again.
Jihoon turned onto his side, hair still faintly warm where James had touched it, and decided he would be normal tomorrow.
This decision was brave.
This decision was doomed.
Because outside the blanket, outside the room, outside the bright trainee days that looked simple from far away and were secretly full of impossible counts, something had already started growing. It was small now. Hidden. Embarrassing. A tender little disaster pressing upward from inside him.
Jihoon did not know yet that one day, he would stop calling it wrong.
He did not know that one day, the dancing would become a language other people recognized. That there would be different rooms, different members, different hyungs trying to feed him, film him, scold him, tease him, and make him rest. That one day he would stand under brighter lights with a new name around him and old hallways still living in his bones.
For now, he only knew that it felt like horns.