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Jeongin woke to the absence before he woke to the sound.
The bed was cold on Chan’s side. Not recently empty, not a body that had slipped out for water or the bathroom and would return before Jeongin’s hand finished searching for it. The sheets had gone flat beneath his palm. The pillow had lost its warmth. The only evidence Chan had been there at all was the faint dip in the mattress and the edge of the blanket turned down neatly, carefully, as if leaving without waking him somehow counted as staying.
Then Jeongin heard the typing.
Quiet and Intermittent. Coming from the living room.
He rolled onto his back and stared at the dark ceiling, already knowing what he would find. The clock on the bedside table read 3:46 in the morning. He had an early schedule. Chan had an early schedule. Both of those facts had stopped mattering to Chan somewhere in the last month, replaced by the constant glow of his laptop and the same distracted answer whenever Jeongin asked when he was coming to bed.
'Soon.'
'Just one more thing.'
'I’m nearly done.'
Jeongin pushed the blankets off and stepped into the hall.
Chan was sitting on the floor in front of the couch, his back pressed against it, laptop balanced on the coffee table. He had taken a blanket with him, at least. It was draped over his legs, gathered at his waist like a mockery of rest. His hair was flattened from whatever brief attempt at sleep he had made, glasses low on his nose, one hand buried in the sleeve of his hoodie while the other moved over the trackpad. Beside him was a mug of coffee that looked untouched and a notebook filled with lists Jeongin could not read from the doorway.
Chan did not notice him.
That made Jeongin’s stomach turn.
“Chris.”
Chan startled hard enough that the cursor jumped across the screen. For one split second his face was naked: guilt, exhaustion, something almost frightened. Then it rearranged itself into softness.
“Hey,” he whispered. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”
Jeongin stepped into the room. “The empty bed did.”
The smile on Chan’s mouth faded, but only for a moment. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“So you left.”
“I was just going to work until I got tired.”
Jeongin glanced at the coffee. “That must be why you made caffeine.”
Chan followed his gaze, looking almost embarrassed. “I didn’t really think that through.”
“No.” The word came out sharper than Jeongin meant it to.
Chan’s shoulders lowered immediately, all quiet apology, and Jeongin hated that too. Hated how quickly the anger inside him turned into guilt when Chan looked tired enough. Hated how the exhaustion became a third person in their home, always there, always requiring more gentleness than Jeongin sometimes had left.
Chan reached for the laptop screen. “I can stop.”
Jeongin almost laughed. It would have been ugly if he had. “That’s not what I want.”
Chan looked up at him, confused in a way that hurt more than defensiveness would have. “Then what do you want?”
Jeongin stood there in the half-lit living room and felt the answer rise too large for four in the morning.
I want you to want to be in bed with me more than you want to be useful to people who are not even awake.
I want to stop waking up and feeling like I am sleeping beside your abandoned shape.
I want you home, not just physically inside the apartment.
Instead, he said, “I want my boyfriend to come back to bed.”
Chan looked at the laptop.
The hesitation was tiny.
It was enough.
Jeongin swallowed hard. “Please.”
Chan closed the laptop carefully, like the work inside it might bruise if handled too quickly. He lifted the blanket from his legs, picked up his phone, and followed Jeongin back to the bedroom with an expression that looked too much like obedience and not enough like choice.
Once beneath the covers, Chan lay on his back with his phone resting face-down against his chest. Jeongin curled toward him, waiting. Chan did not reach for him. His eyes remained open, staring at the dark ceiling like sleep was another task he could not finish correctly.
After a few minutes, Jeongin reached across and took the phone from his hand.
Chan’s fingers tightened around it instinctively before letting go.
“I wasn’t working,” he whispered.
“I know.”
“I was just holding it.”
“I know.” Jeongin placed it on the bedside table, too far for Chan to reach without moving.
Then he returned his hand to the bed between them, palm open, not demanding.
Chan stared at it for a long moment.
Slowly, he threaded their fingers together.
His hand was cold.
Jeongin closed his eyes and held on, trying not to think about how tired he was of feeling grateful for crumbs of the man lying beside him.
Chan never fell asleep.
Jeongin knew because every time he surfaced from his own restless half-sleep, Chan’s thumb was still moving faintly over his knuckles, tapping out a rhythm for a song that did not exist yet.
Minho noticed Chan’s right side first.
The practice room was hot and crowded with music, the mirrors smeared at the edges from sweat and movement. They were on the fourth full run of the choreography, bodies working past fatigue into muscle memory, when Chan came out of a turn and landed heavier on his left foot.
Minho caught it immediately.
He watched the next sequence without breaking count. Chan covered it well. He always covered things well. Adjusted his weight through the transition, pulled the next movement bigger through his shoulders so nobody would look at his legs, smiled toward Felix when Felix nearly clipped Han during a change in formation.
On the next run, Chan did it again.
Minho cut through the others’ complaints when the song ended. “You’re limping.”
Chan had already bent to reach for his water. He did not look up. “I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m sore.”
“You’re limping.”
Chan straightened with a strained little grin. “Thank you for the medical diagnosis.”
“I’m not diagnosing you. I’m watching you stand wrong.”
Han laughed weakly from the floor, but it died quickly when Minho did not smile.
Chan twisted the cap from his bottle. “I’m fine. We only need to clean the second chorus again.”
“No.”
Chan finally looked at him. “No?”
“No second chorus until you sit down.”
The room quieted around them.
Minho saw the flash of irritation that crossed Chan’s face before he hid it. He almost preferred the irritation. It looked alive, at least. Then Chan gave him the patient expression he used when someone was being difficult and he was trying very hard not to make them feel bad for it.
“We do not have time to stop every time someone is tired, Minho.”
“That would be a useful sentence if I had said you were tired.”
Chan’s jaw tightened.
Changbin shifted his weight near the mirror. Felix looked down at his water bottle. Jeongin had gone very still.
For a second, Minho thought Chan might actually argue. Instead, Chan laughed softly, shook his head, and called for a ten-minute break like it had been his own idea.
Minho wanted to throw something at him.
He did not.
He left the room without a word, came back three minutes later with a small container of rice and chicken from the fridge down the hall, and set it beside Chan’s bag.
Chan glanced at it while checking something on his phone. “You don’t have to mother me.”
“Good. Because I don’t want to. Eat.”
“I will.”
Minho stared at him.
Chan softened the promise with a smile. “I will.”
Minho walked away before the lie could make him angrier.
At the end of practice, when everyone was dragging their bags toward the door and Chan was already apologizing for needing to go straight to the studio, the container sat exactly where Minho had left it.
Unopened.
Minho picked it up.
The food was cold through the plastic.
He did not say anything then. Chan was already out the door, moving quickly enough that the limp nearly disappeared if no one knew to watch for it.
Minho knew to watch now.
Changbin knew the song had been finished six versions ago.
It was still good, technically. Chan was too talented to make something genuinely terrible just because he was exhausted. But the track had lost its teeth beneath everything he kept piling onto it. Another kick under the drop. Another distorted layer. Another chopped vocal threaded through a space that had been better when it was allowed to breathe.
Changbin sat behind him in the studio, arms crossed, listening to the same section loop for the ninth time.
Chan stopped it, adjusted something, played it again.
“Too much,” Changbin said.
Chan did not turn. “The drop?”
“All of it.”
“That’s helpful.”
“It was better before.”
Chan clicked back through the timeline. “It needed more weight.”
“It had weight.”
“It needed more.”
Changbin’s eyes moved to the folders lining the left side of the screen. Files upon files, all marked with dates and version numbers. Future units. Alternate arrangements. Guide tracks. English demos. Songs for changed schedules. Songs for different lineups. One folder simply named later, filled with enough work to occupy a year.
His stomach tightened.
“We are not leaving tomorrow,” he said.
Chan’s hand went still on the mouse.
The room remained full of the faint electronic hum of equipment, the unfinished beat idling beneath the silence.
Then Chan said, without looking at him, “But you will.”
Changbin had expected defensiveness. A joke, maybe irritation.
He had not expected that.
“Hyung.”
Chan clicked the track closed too quickly. “Forget it.”
“No, I didn’t mean-”
“I said forget it.” His voice was not raised. That made it worse. It was flat and careful, all feeling drained out before Changbin could touch it. “You were right. It’s crowded. I’ll pull it back tomorrow.”
“Chan.”
“I have another file to check.”
Changbin stared at the back of his head, at the shoulders rounded over the desk as Chan opened something else without even listening to the track he had just abandoned.
His mouth filled with everything he did not know how to say without making Chan shut down harder.
We are not dead.
You do not have to write around our ghosts while we are still in the room.
Instead, he reached forward and saved the earlier version of the track under a different name.
Chan did not stop him.
That scared Changbin almost as much as the folder titled later.
Hyunjin noticed on camera.
The interview set was bright in the clinical, flattering way that erased imperfections until only movement could betray them. Hyunjin had always been good at movement. Better at the thing beneath it. A body could lie if it knew where the lens was, but timing gave everything away eventually.
Chan sat two chairs away, listening as Han told a story that grew more dramatic every time he repeated it. Seungmin interrupted with something dry. Felix laughed so hard he folded forward. The room followed.
Chan smiled half a second late.
Hyunjin looked at the monitor instead of him.
There it was again when Changbin made a face. When Jeongin nudged Chan’s shoulder. When the staff complimented the group and Chan responded warmly, perfectly, his eyes bright in exactly the way a leader’s eyes should be bright.
Every expression arrived after the decision to wear it.
After filming wrapped, Hyunjin stayed by the playback monitor while the others collected their things. He rewound one clip twice, then a third time, watching Chan laugh after everyone else had already laughed.
“Studying me?”
Chan’s voice came from behind him, light and amused.
Hyunjin turned. Chan had pulled a hoodie over his stage clothes, his makeup still smooth enough to soften the exhaustion beneath it. His smile was already in place.
“You’re smiling wrong,” Hyunjin said.
Chan blinked, then laughed. “That might be the most insulting thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“It isn’t an insult.”
“Then what is it?”
Hyunjin looked back at the frozen screen. “I know what it looks like when someone performs being okay.”
For a moment, Chan’s smile fell.
Not gently, it simply disappeared, leaving his face blank and tired beneath the lights.
Hyunjin felt his chest seize around the sight of it.
Then Chan rebuilt it. A small smile at first, then a soft laugh. “You think too much,” he said, reaching over to squeeze Hyunjin’s shoulder. “Go change. We’re going to be late.”
Hyunjin watched him walk away, stopping twice to speak to staff, once to hand Felix the water bottle he had forgotten, once to pull Han gently out of someone’s path.
By the time he disappeared through the door, he looked completely fine again.
Hyunjin turned back to the monitor.
Paused mid-laugh, Chan looked like someone no one had thought to rescue because he was smiling while he drowned.
Seungmin heard it through the talkback.
“Again?” Chan asked from behind the glass.
Seungmin kept one side of his headphones pressed away from his ear and stared at him through the booth window. The vocal take had been fine. Better than fine. Clean, warm, settled exactly where the song needed it. Chan knew that. Normally, he would have nodded, praised it, maybe asked for one safety take if he was being obsessive.
Tonight he sounded frayed around the edges.
Seungmin took the headphones off. “No.”
Chan blinked. “No?”
“I gave you the take.”
“I just want another with a little more lift.”
“You do not know what lift means anymore.”
A faint smile appeared on Chan’s mouth. “That is hostile.”
“Your ears are tired.”
“My ears are fine.”
“Your voice is not.”
The smile faded. Chan reached for the water bottle beside the computer, though he did not drink from it. “I’m not recording vocals tonight.”
“You recorded the guide.”
“That does not matter.”
Seungmin opened the booth door.
Chan seemed to realize his mistake only when Seungmin crossed the room and stopped beside the desk. His expression changed into that patient, reassuring calm Seungmin had started to hate.
“It is just a guide track,” Chan said.
Seungmin looked at him. “You still matter when you are only guiding someone else.”
Chan stopped breathing for a moment.
The monitor threw pale light across his face, revealing how exhausted he really was without the glass between them. For one fragile second, Seungmin thought he might answer honestly.
Instead, Chan looked down at the session and clicked save.
“Fine,” he said. “We’re done for tonight.”
His voice had gone smooth again.
Seungmin stood beside him while he packed up with quick, practiced movements, unable to shake the feeling that he had found the exact note that hurt and Chan had simply removed it from the song.
Han noticed the cursor.
It blinked on the document while Chan sat motionless in front of it, the studio silent except for the computer fan and Han’s own fingers tapping aimlessly against his knee. They were supposed to be writing. Or maybe they had been writing two hours ago and neither of them had been willing to admit the night had ended.
Chan typed one sentence.
Read it.
Deleted it.
Han tilted his head. “What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing had a suspicious number of syllables.”
Chan gave him a tired huff of amusement but did not answer. He typed again.
A fragment appeared on the screen before disappearing beneath his finger. Han could not read all of it from the couch, but he caught the rhythm of the deletion.
He stood and wandered behind the desk under the excuse of finding his charger.
Chan wrote one more line.
This time Han saw it before it vanished.
'If I’m not needed, do I still have a shape?'
Han’s stomach dropped.
He leaned forward and pressed CTRL F.
Chan caught his wrist so quickly the chair wheels rolled backward beneath him.
“Don’t.”
Han went still.
Chan released him immediately, but his face had gone rigid, color draining beneath the harsh studio light. “Sorry,” he said. “Just leave it.”
“Hyung-”
“Please.”
That word silenced Han more thoroughly than anger could have. He slowly drew his hand back. The line remained on the screen between them, too plain to hide behind production, too honest to pretend it was only a concept. Chan stared at it like it had humiliated him.
Han sat on the edge of the desk instead of returning to the couch.
“You don’t have to make it pretty before we’re allowed to see it,” he said.
Chan’s jaw flexed. For one heartbeat, Han thought he would answer.
Chan selected the line and deleted it again. The blank page returned. He smiled faintly at Han without looking up. “I’m going home soon. You should too.”
Han knew a dismissal when he heard one.
He gathered his things slowly, watching Chan open a new document before the door even shut behind him.
The next morning, Han could still see the deleted line every time he closed his eyes.
Felix found the notebook before he found Chan.
It was open on the kitchen table at nearly five in the morning, surrounded by two empty mugs and a laptop charger wound too tightly around itself. The page was covered in Chan’s handwriting, practical and cramped, arrows connecting song concepts to names, units, potential schedules. Several of the members’ names had been circled. Some were crossed through temporarily, then moved somewhere else.
Felix did not need to read every word to understand what he was looking at.
Plans for when the shape of the group changed.
Plans for when Minho left. Changbin. Hyunjin. Han. Seungmin. Jeongin.
Plans for what came after six separate absences.
“Looking for something?”
Felix looked up. Chan stood in the kitchen doorway with wet hair and a clean hoodie, as if a shower at dawn erased the fact that he had not slept. His eyes moved immediately to the notebook, then back to Felix.
“I woke up,” Felix said.
Chan smiled faintly. “Sorry if I was loud.”
“You weren’t.”
That was what made it lonely.
Chan moved to the table and closed the notebook. “It’s nothing serious.”
Felix’s voice came out softer than he intended. “You keep planning like you’ll be the only one left.”
Chan’s hand stayed on the notebook cover.
The silence between them held an entire country, an entire childhood neither of them had shared but both of them understood. Australia existed differently inside each of them, but it existed. It lived in their accents when they were tired, in the private ease of English, in the fact that when the others eventually went to fulfil something neither of them would have to, Chan and Felix would remain on the same side of the absence.
“I’m just preparing,” Chan said.
“I’m going to miss them too.”
Chan looked up sharply.
Felix swallowed. “When they go. I’m going to miss them too.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” Felix asked. “Because you’re planning around me like I’m not staying.”
Chan’s expression bent for one second, guilt striking through the exhaustion.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.” Felix sat down slowly across from him. “But it’s what you’re doing.”
Chan looked at the closed notebook. His hand rested over it almost protectively, like Felix had accused him of something cruel when all he had done was read the fear written plainly across the page.
“I don’t want you to have to worry about it,” Chan said.
Felix laughed quietly, painfully. “I already do.”
Chan shut his eyes.
“You’re making songs for when they’re gone,” Felix said. “You’re making plans. You’re making schedules. But you are not talking to me about what it is going to feel like when we stay.”
Chan’s throat moved.
For a moment, Felix thought the truth might finally come. The kitchen was quiet enough to hold it. The dawn light had barely started touching the windows. There was no one else awake for Chan to manage, no camera, no staff, no member asking him for anything except honesty.
Chan stood.
He picked up the notebook and the charger in one practiced motion.
“Chris.”
“I have to go in,” Chan said, voice gentle and empty. “I’ll see you later, yeah?”
Felix stared at him. Chan reached out and squeezed his shoulder as he passed, a touch meant to comfort Felix, a touch that made the loneliness so much worse.
The front door clicked shut a few seconds later.
Felix remained at the kitchen table, looking at the ring one of Chan’s mugs had left behind.
It was not work Chan was preparing for.
It was grief.
And somehow, he was trying to grieve early enough that nobody would have to watch him do it later.
Dinner was supposed to be ordinary.
That was why it became unbearable so quickly.
Jeongin had not asked everyone over because Chan was struggling. He had asked because the week had been long and Felix had mentioned wanting to cook and Minho had immediately said Felix would ruin the portions by making enough food for a village unless someone supervised him. The group chat had filled with insults, then times, then Han asking whether there would be dessert and Seungmin replying that he could have ice if he behaved.
Normal.
It had been meant to feel normal.
By seven, their apartment was warm with cooking and voices. Felix stood at the counter tearing lettuce with more care than the task required. Minho was at the stove. Changbin and Han argued over something that had started as music and somehow become a claim that Han could win a fight against a goose. Hyunjin sat cross-legged on the living room rug, helping Jeongin arrange dishes because he had been banned from touching the actual food. Seungmin was scrolling through his phone from the table and offering criticisms nobody requested.
Chan was supposed to have been home twenty minutes earlier.
Jeongin checked his phone again.
His last message still sat there, delivered and unanswered after Chan’s earlier response.
Be there in ten. Love you.
That had been thirty-seven minutes ago.
Felix saw him looking. “Nothing?”
Jeongin locked his screen. “He said he was coming.”
Minho’s spoon stopped against the pot.
Changbin’s argument died mid-sentence.
It should not have been enough to change the room. Chan being late was not unusual. Chan saying ten minutes and taking longer was so common it had become part of the structure of their lives.
But maybe everyone was too tired of pretending separately.
“He said he was leaving the studio an hour ago,” Changbin said.
Jeongin looked at him. “You talked to him?”
Changbin hesitated. “Earlier.”
Something entered the room then.
Not panic, but recognition.
Hyunjin lifted his head from the stack of bowls. “Was he working on the same track?”
Changbin’s expression tightened. “What do you mean, same track?”
Hyunjin looked toward Felix, then away, as though he had said too much.
Seungmin put his phone face down on the table. “How long has this been going on?”
Nobody answered.
Because the answer was suddenly visible everywhere.
In the container of food Minho had brought home unopened because Chan never ate it. In Changbin’s irritation whenever someone mentioned the studio. In the way Hyunjin had gone quiet during the last filmed interview. In Seungmin refusing to record again last night. In Han’s knee bouncing so hard it shook the couch. In Felix standing at the counter with tears threatening before the conversation had even begun. In Jeongin’s own exhaustion, the deep private humiliation of missing his boyfriend while sleeping in the same apartment.
Han’s voice was unusually small. “He deleted something last night.”
Changbin looked at him. “What?”
Han pressed his lips together.
Before he could answer, the lock turned.
Everyone went silent.
Chan stepped inside with his bag hanging from one shoulder and his phone in his hand. He kicked his shoes off carefully, still looking down at the screen, then glanced toward the living room.
The expression he wore when he saw all of them was immediate and bright.
Too immediate.
“There you are,” he said, smiling. “Sorry, sorry. The session ran longer than I thought. Smells amazing.”
Nobody moved. Chan’s smile remained fixed in place.
His gaze travelled around the room, quick and attentive. Minho beside the stove. Felix holding lettuce he had stopped tearing. Han and Changbin side by side on the couch, suddenly quiet. Hyunjin on the floor with his hands folded in his lap. Seungmin watching him from the table. Jeongin standing nearest to the hallway, his phone still clenched in his hand.
The smile slipped.
“What happened?” Chan asked.
Jeongin felt something inside him crack.
Not what did I miss.
Not why is everyone quiet.
What happened.
As if seven people looking unhappy could only mean there was a problem he had failed to solve before coming through the door.
“Nothing happened,” Jeongin said.
Chan looked at him carefully. “Then why do you look like that?”
Jeongin opened his mouth, but nothing came.
Minho turned away from the stove and wiped his hands on a towel. “Put your bag down.”
Chan blinked. “What?”
“Your bag. Put it down.”
The brightness returned, smaller and thinner. “Is this an intervention?”
“No,” Changbin said.
Chan looked at him.
Changbin swallowed. “No one planned anything.”
“That is very reassuring.”
“Chris,” Felix said softly.
Chan turned toward the sound of his name.
Felix looked like he was trying not to cry, and Chan’s entire body shifted in response, concern waking instantly through the fatigue. He took one step into the room. “Lix, what’s wrong?”
Felix shook his head.
Minho’s voice went sharper. “Bag. Down.”
Chan stopped.
For one moment, irritation surfaced. Real irritation. Jeongin almost welcomed it, because it was better than watching Chan turn into comfort for someone else while falling apart in the doorway.
“I just got home,” Chan said.
“Yes,” Jeongin said, his voice too quiet. “You did.”
Chan looked at him then.
Jeongin saw them land in the slight widening of his eyes, the way his hand tightened on the bag strap. For a second the apartment held only the faint bubbling of the pot on the stove and the traffic far below the windows.
Then Chan lowered the bag to the floor. “What is going on?” he asked.
This time he did not smile.
Jeongin could not answer first. If he started, he was afraid the hurt would come out wrong. Too loud and accusing. Too much like begging, when he had spent weeks trying not to beg Chan to choose a life with him over the endless list of things he could do for everyone else.
Seungmin spoke from the table instead. “You sound terrible.”
Chan stared at him. “That’s what this is about?”
“No.” Seungmin’s fingers laced together in front of him. “It is what I noticed.”
Chan’s expression shifted, confusion replacing caution.
Seungmin kept his gaze steady. “Your voice changes when you are lying about being fine. It gets thin. You sound warm, but there is no weight underneath it.” He paused. “It has sounded like that for weeks.”
Chan looked down.
Hyunjin spoke before he could answer. “Your smile is late.”
Chan let out a quiet breath through his nose. “Hyunjin.”
“I watched you on playback.” Hyunjin’s voice was soft, but he did not retreat from it. “Everyone laughed, and then you smiled because you knew you were meant to. I told you I noticed, and you did it again while walking away from me.”
Chan’s jaw worked once.
“It is not that you are bad at pretending,” Hyunjin said. “You are frighteningly good at it.”
“Guys,” Chan began.
“No,” Changbin said.
The force in his voice made Chan turn.
Changbin stood from the couch. He looked angry, but Jeongin knew him well enough to see the fear living beneath it, making his shoulders too stiff and his hands curl at his sides.
“You are putting panic into every track you touch,” Changbin said. “You keep ruining finished songs because you think empty space means something is missing. You have folders full of music for when our schedules change, for when lineups change, for when we go.”
Chan’s face went blank.
Changbin’s voice broke around the next words, and that was worse than if he had shouted. “I said we are not leaving tomorrow, and you looked at me like I was stupid because tomorrow is not the part that scares you.”
Chan drew in a shallow breath.
Han looked at the floor. When he spoke, his voice was almost too quiet to hear. “The line you deleted.”
Everything in Chan stilled.
Jeongin felt Chan retreat without moving an inch.
Han wiped his palms against his sweatpants, eyes fixed anywhere but Chan’s face.
“Han,” Chan said softly, almost pleading.
Han looked up then, his eyes already wet. “If I’m not needed, do I still have a shape?”
The words settled over the apartment.
Chan looked like he had been struck.
Felix shut his eyes.
Minho took one step away from the stove, then stopped himself, giving Chan space even as every line in his body looked ready to move if Chan folded.
Chan laughed once. It was a horrible sound, too breathless to be humor. “That was a lyric.”
“It was a question,” Han whispered.
“I write things all the time.”
“And you delete the ones that are true.”
Chan looked away.
Minho crossed his arms. His voice, when it came, was controlled and blunt. “You’re limping.”
Chan blinked at him, as though the switch in subject confused him.
“You have been limping for days,” Minho continued. “You are not eating unless someone puts food in front of you, and even then you leave it unopened. You keep moving like your body is an inconvenience you can discipline into silence.”
“I ate today,” Chan said, too quickly.
Minho’s eyes sharpened. “That is not the defense you think it is.”
Chan’s mouth closed.
Felix had not spoken yet.
Jeongin knew that Chan had noticed. He could see it in the way his eyes kept returning to Felix, caught between dread and the automatic need to help him. Felix set the abandoned lettuce down on the counter and wiped his hands against his trousers, though there was nothing on them.
“You keep planning like you’ll be alone,” Felix said.
Chan’s face crumpled for a fraction of a second. “Lix-”
“No.” Felix’s voice was gentle, but it stopped Chan completely. “I told you this already, and you left. You keep making plans for when they’re gone like I will not be standing in the empty rooms too. Like I will not miss them. Like I am not also losing a boyfriend. Like I won’t need you to miss them with me.”
Chan closed his eyes.
Felix’s voice dropped, roughened by the tears he was trying to hold back. “You are so busy preparing to be needed that you are not letting anyone need you honestly.”
No one spoke after that. Every piece was there now.
A limp. A ruined track. A late smile. A strained voice. A deleted lyric. A closed notebook. An empty bed.
Chan stood in the middle of the apartment with his bag abandoned at his feet, surrounded by seven people who had each watched him vanish in a different language.
Jeongin stepped toward him.
Chan opened his eyes.
There were tears gathered there, but he had not let them fall. He looked terrified, not of them, but of the room having become something he could no longer fix with one apology and a bright enough smile.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” he said.
The words were so small that Jeongin’s anger collapsed beneath them. He moved close enough that their hands nearly touched, but he did not take Chan’s yet. Not until Chan chose it. Not until he stopped turning contact into another thing he had to give.
“The truth,” Jeongin said.
Chan shook his head faintly. “I don’t know what that is.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I don’t.” His voice caught, and he pressed his lips together until the break disappeared. “I’m tired. Is that what you want me to say? I’m tired. I’m working too much. I’ll sleep tonight. I’ll eat. I’ll take a few days off when schedules let up. I’ll-”
“Stop,” Jeongin whispered.
Chan stopped.
“That is not the truth. That is a plan.” Jeongin’s eyes burned, but he kept speaking because he had already swallowed the words too many nights in a bed that felt emptier with Chan in it than without him.
“You are already leaving me,” he said, “and you are still standing right here.”
Chan went completely still.
Someone behind Jeongin made a small, broken sound. Felix, maybe. Or Han. He could not look away from Chan long enough to know.
Chan stared at him as if Jeongin had said something impossible, something crueler than he deserved and truer than he could survive.
“I come home,” Chan whispered.
“You come into the apartment.”
“I sleep next to you.”
“You lie down once I’m asleep, and you leave before I wake up.”
“I love you.”
“I know.” Jeongin’s voice broke then, despite everything he had done to keep it level. “That is why it hurts.”
Chan’s first tear fell.
He wiped it away immediately, but another followed, and then another, his breath hitching around the humiliation of being unable to stop them.
“I’m not trying to leave you,” he said.
“I know.”
“I’m not trying to shut anyone out.”
“We know,” Seungmin said softly.
Chan looked around at all of them, desperate now. “I’m not doing this on purpose.”
Felix finally cried, Hyunjin walking over and wrapping his arms around him, rubbing his back gently.
Minho looked down hard at the floor.
Changbin pressed both hands over the back of his neck like he was physically trying not to fall apart alongside him.
“We know,” Jeongin repeated.
Chan wiped his face with his sleeve, shaking his head as though their understanding made the pain worse. “Then why does it sound like I’m hurting all of you?”
“Because you are hurting,” Hyunjin said, his own voice wavering. “And you keep making us watch from outside it.”
The words took the fight out of Chan.
His shoulders sagged. His eyes dropped to the floor. For a few seconds, he looked not like a leader or a producer or someone who had carried a group through more years than any of them liked counting, but simply like a man who had been running so long he did not know what happened when his legs finally stopped obeying.
“I don’t know how to stop,” he whispered.
Minho’s jaw tightened.
Chan laughed wetly, bitterly. “I’ve been working since I was thirteen. Do you understand how stupid that is? Thirteen. Seven years before debut, trying to be good enough to stay. Then debut happened and suddenly it wasn’t about staying anymore, it was about making sure all of us stayed. Making sure we had songs. Making sure we had a sound. Making sure everyone was okay. Making sure I was worth the decision to trust me.”
Changbin shook his head. “Chan-”
“But I liked it,” Chan said quickly, as if someone had accused him. “I love it. I love the music. I love being your leader. I love taking care of you. That is the worst part. Nobody did this to me. Nobody forced me to become like this. I chose it over and over because it was the only time I knew exactly who I was.”
The room was silent.
Jeongin reached for his hand then.
Chan took it so tightly it almost hurt. “When I’m making something,” Chan said, eyes fixed on their joined fingers, “I know why I am there. When one of you needs something, I know why I am there. When there’s a problem, I know what I am supposed to do with myself.”
His breath shuddered.
“But when nothing needs fixing, when nobody needs me for anything, I don’t feel peaceful.” His voice dropped until it was almost gone. “I feel blank.”
Felix covered his mouth.
“I feel like I’m waiting to find out there isn’t anything underneath it,” Chan continued. “No leader. No producer. No person worth missing. Just a body in a room with nothing useful to do.”
“Chris,” Jeongin whispered, devastated.
Chan looked at him, crying openly now and unable to hide the shame of it. “And you love me so much. You do. I know you do. But I lie next to you and all I can think is that eventually you’re going to look at me when I have nothing to offer and realize you could have had someone easier to be with.”
Jeongin gripped his hand with both of his. “You think I love you because you’re easy?”
A watery, helpless laugh escaped Chan. “I know I’m not.”
“No,” Jeongin said. “You are not.”
Chan flinched.
“Listen to me.” Jeongin stepped closer until only their hands remained between them. “You are not easy. You are stubborn, and you are terrible at resting, and you turn every emotion into a task until I want to throw your laptop out the window.”
A wet laugh broke through Chan’s crying.
“And I am tired,” Jeongin said. “I am tired of waking up without you. I am tired of having to miss you while you are in the next room. I am tired of watching you think love is a salary you stop receiving if you stop working.”
Chan’s face crumpled.
“But tired is not gone,” Jeongin whispered. “Tired means I need you to let me stand beside you in this. It means I need the truth before you are so far away I cannot reach you anymore.”
Chan could no longer answer. His mouth opened once, then closed around a sob he tried and failed to swallow.
Jeongin moved into him, arms wrapping around his waist.
For one second, Chan remained rigid. Then he folded.
His forehead dropped against Jeongin’s shoulder. His hands caught at the back of Jeongin’s shirt, gripping hard, and the sound that left him was small and raw enough that every person in the apartment went quiet around it. Not because they were shocked. Because it was the first thing Chan had allowed to be ugly without immediately trying to clean it up.
Jeongin held him tightly.
“I’m sorry,” Chan choked out.
“No,” Minho said.
Chan’s shoulders shook harder.
Minho moved now, coming around the edge of the table. He stopped close enough to be present, far enough not to crowd. His eyes were red, his expression stern with the effort of staying steady.
“You do not apologize for finally letting us see the thing we’ve been worried about,” he said.
“I made everyone cry.”
Han laughed through his own tears. “Yeah, well. You’re talented. We knew that.”
The laugh Chan made into Jeongin’s shoulder came out half broken.
Changbin stepped closer next. His voice was low, rough with emotion. “You don’t get to write the next few years alone because you’re scared of them.”
Chan turned his face slightly, not leaving Jeongin’s hold.
“We built the songs together,” Changbin continued. “We built the group together. When things change, it is not going to be your job to make it painless for us.”
“But-”
“No.” Changbin shook his head. “There is no track you can make that will stop us missing each other. There is no beat heavy enough to cover an empty chair. And I do not want one.”
Chan squeezed his eyes shut.
“I want it to sound different when we’re not all there,” Changbin said. “Because we mattered in the sound. You do not have to erase the evidence that we are loved just because losing time with us scares you.”
Han wiped his face against his sleeve and pushed himself up from the couch. “Also, for the record, the lyric was good.”
Chan gave a tearful, exhausted groan. “Jisung.”
“I’m serious.” Han hovered near Changbin’s shoulder, face wet and open in a way he usually protected with noise. “It was awful to read, obviously. Ruined my whole evening. MInho had to hear about it all night. But you should not have deleted it.”
“It was pathetic.”
“It was honest.”
“That is worse.”
“No.” Han swallowed. “It is scarier. Not worse.”
Chan looked at him.
Han’s voice shook. “You let all of us write the ugly thing. You sit there with us through every stupid, raw line until it turns into something we can keep. You do not get to decide yours are the only feelings too ugly for the room.”
Something in Chan’s expression shattered all over again.
Felix moved in from the kitchen. His tears had not stopped, but his mouth held steady when he spoke. “And you are not staying behind alone.”
Chan pressed his face briefly back into Jeongin’s shoulder.
Felix crouched beside them, his voice softening into English without seeming to choose it. “I know it’s going to hurt. I know it’s going to be quiet. I know there are going to be days we look around and feel like half of us are somewhere we cannot reach. But I’m going to be there too, Chris.”
Chan’s breath hitched at the name.
“You do not have to fill the silence for me,” Felix said. “You have to be in it with me.”
Chan nodded once against Jeongin’s shoulder, barely a movement at all.
Hyunjin wiped angrily beneath one eye and tried to laugh at himself for it. The sound failed him. “And I don’t want the version of you that looks fine the prettiest.”
Chan lifted his face slightly, eyes swollen, cheeks wet.
Hyunjin looked straight at him. “I don’t want you to give me good angles while you fall apart somewhere I can’t touch. I would rather see the ugly face. The exhausted face. The angry face. Any face that is actually yours.”
Chan’s mouth trembled.
Seungmin was last to move. He stood from the table, crossed the room, and picked up the mug of water Felix had poured earlier but forgotten on the counter. He pressed it gently into Chan’s hand once Jeongin loosened his grip enough to allow it.
“Drink,” Seungmin said.
Chan gave a helpless, tearful laugh. “Right now?”
“Yes.”
“I’m in the middle of something.”
“Your emotional breakdown does not exempt you from hydration.”
That pulled a real sound from him. Small, ruined, but real.
His hands were shaking too badly around the glass, so Jeongin steadied the bottom while Chan drank. Nobody looked away to spare him. Nobody stared to punish him. They were simply there, witnessing the fact that he needed help holding a glass of water and allowing it to be no more humiliating than the truth already was.
When he lowered it, Seungmin sat on the coffee table in front of him.
“You still matter when you are quiet,” he said.
Chan’s laughter vanished.
Seungmin’s own eyes shone, but his voice stayed level. “You still matter when your throat hurts and you cannot sing. You still matter when your ears are too tired to produce. You still matter when you have nothing reassuring to say. You do not disappear just because you stop guiding everyone else through the song.”
Chan looked down at the water.
“I don't know how to believe that,” he admitted.
For the first time, no one tried to answer with reassurance.
Because that was the truth too.
One conversation could not reach backward through fifteen years and teach a thirteen-year-old boy he had been enough before he ever earned anything. It could not undo seven years of training, or the years after debut, or every night Chan had reached for work because being exhausted felt safer than being empty. It could not stop enlistment from eventually reshaping their days. It could not promise that fear would not return the moment the apartment quieted and the laptop started feeling like an answer again.
Jeongin brushed his thumb over Chan’s knuckles.
“Then don’t believe it perfectly tonight,” he said.
Chan looked at him.
“Just let us believe it loudly enough for you to hear.”
That did it.
Chan bent forward, the water glass rescued quickly by Seungmin before it spilled, and cried with both hands pressed over his face. Jeongin held his shoulders. Felix pressed a hand gently against his knee. Changbin stood close, head bowed. Han sniffed openly, too devastated to perform embarrassment about it. Hyunjin watched with tears slipping freely now, not trying to make his own face prettier either. Minho turned back toward the stove for only long enough to turn the burner off before the food burned, then returned to the edge of the room.
They let Chan cry until the sound softened into exhausted breathing.
Then Minho placed a bowl of rice and stew in front of him.
Chan lifted his face from his hands and blinked at it, completely disoriented. “What?”
“Eat.”
“Minho.”
“Eat.”
Chan looked around at all of them, tears still clinging to his lashes. “I just ruined dinner.”
Minho handed him a spoon. “You are about to improve it by eating some.”
A weak laugh shook through the room.
Chan accepted the spoon, but his hand hovered above the bowl. He looked suddenly overwhelmed by it, the simple act of feeding himself made too large by everyone knowing he had not been.
Jeongin covered his wrist lightly. “You don’t have to finish it.”
Chan swallowed.
“Just start.”
He took a bite.
Minho looked away immediately, granting him the dignity of not making it a victory.
The others moved carefully back into the room around him. Felix sat on the floor near his feet. Han lowered himself beside Changbin on the couch. Hyunjin reached for a tissue and then, after a second’s hesitation, offered the box to Chan without comment. Seungmin carried the water to the table and placed it within reach. Minho began serving the rest of the food because food was ready and bodies still required care even when hearts had been torn open.
Jeongin remained beside Chan.
Chan ate slowly. Not much, but enough.
The food had gone lukewarm, but nobody mentioned it. For a while, the only sounds were spoons against bowls and the occasional wet breath someone tried to disguise. It was not comfortable. Comfort was too simple a word for a room full of people trying to make space around a wound they had all been touching from different sides.
Halfway through the bowl, Chan spoke without looking up.
“I’m scared I’ll mess this up too.”
Jeongin knew what he meant.
Rest. Honesty. Letting them in. Coming home.
“You will,” Seungmin said before anyone else could soften it.
Chan looked up at him, wounded amusement briefly crossing his face. “Thanks.”
Seungmin shrugged. “You asked.”
“He’s right,” Jeongin said.
Chan glanced toward him.
“You’re going to leave the bed again sometimes. You’re going to work too long. You’re going to say you’re fine when you aren’t. You’re going to forget that being loved is not something you clock in for.”
Chan’s throat moved.
“And when you do,” Jeongin continued, “we’ll tell you.”
Changbin nodded. “Repeatedly.”
“Loudly,” Han added.
“Annoyingly,” Hyunjin said.
“While feeding you,” Felix murmured.
Minho pointed his spoon at Chan. “Against your will, if necessary.”
A shaky smile appeared on Chan’s mouth.
It was small.
Uneven.
It arrived on time.
Hyunjin saw it and lowered his eyes with a private, tearful smile of his own.
Chan took another bite. Then, quietly, he asked, “What am I supposed to do when I feel like I need to work just to stay in the room?”
Jeongin leaned closer until their shoulders touched.
“Stay in the room anyway.”
Chan laughed softly, painfully. “That sounds impossible.”
“Then stay badly.”
The spoon stopped in Chan’s hand.
Jeongin reached over and gently curled Chan’s fingers more securely around it. “Rest badly. Eat badly. Need us badly. Be scared and restless and awful at accepting help. Just stop disappearing because you cannot disappear perfectly.”
Chan stared at him.
A fresh tear rolled down his cheek, but he did not wipe it away.
Felix leaned his head lightly against Chan’s knee. Han made a choked noise and pretended to cough. Changbin reached over to smack the back of his head with no force behind it. Hyunjin wiped his own face again, giving up entirely on appearing composed. Seungmin looked down at his bowl as though it had personally betrayed him by making him emotional. Minho got up without a word and returned with more tissues.
Chan looked around the table.
His members were red-eyed and tired. His boyfriend’s shoulder was pressed against his. His dinner was not finished. His work was still in the bag by the door. Nothing had been fixed. Not the future. Not the fear. Not the blankness waiting for him in every unfilled space.
But nobody had asked him to fix any of it.
They were still there.
After a long silence, Chan set the spoon down and whispered, “I think I need to sleep.”
No one made a joke.
Not even Han.
Jeongin stood and held out his hand.
Chan looked toward his bag by the door.
The movement was automatic, barely conscious, but everyone saw it.
Changbin stood and quietly nudged the bag farther beneath the entryway bench with his foot.
Chan let out a wet, startled laugh. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Changbin said.
“My laptop is in there.”
“Yes,” Seungmin replied. “That is the danger.”
“It’s not a weapon.”
Minho looked at him. “Debatable.”
The laughter that passed through the room was fragile, but it helped Chan stand.
He wavered slightly when he got to his feet, exhaustion rushing into the space where panic had kept him upright. Minho’s attention immediately dropped to his right leg. Chan noticed and corrected his weight with a sheepish grimace.
“Tomorrow,” Minho said.
Chan nodded. “Tomorrow.”
Jeongin did not know whether that meant a doctor, rest, food, an argument, or all of them. For now, it was enough that Chan did not say he was fine.
Chan took Jeongin’s hand.
Before they could move toward the bedroom, Felix stood and hugged him.
There was no graceful way for Chan to receive it. He dropped Jeongin’s hand only long enough to wrap both arms around Felix, closing his eyes when Felix pressed his face into Chan’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Chan whispered.
Felix pulled back just enough to shake his head. “Not for being scared.”
Chan nodded weakly.
Changbin hugged him next, quick and tight, one heavy hand at the back of his neck. “Leave the tracks alone tonight.”
A breath of laughter. “I will.”
“I know where you live.”
“You are currently in my house.”
“Exactly.”
Han did not hug him at first. He held out his fist, face scrunched with the effort not to start crying again.
Chan stared at it.
“Emotional damage fist bump,” Han said thickly.
Chan laughed, pressed his fist to Han’s, then pulled him into a hug anyway.
Han clung immediately. “I knew you wanted one.”
“Shut up.”
“No.”
When Hyunjin stepped close, he did not say anything. He just touched Chan’s cheek briefly, wiping away the tear Chan had left there, his fingers gentle.
Chan smiled at him.
Hyunjin studied it for half a second, then nodded. “That one is yours.”
Chan’s eyes filled again, but he managed to laugh. “You’re so weird.”
Seungmin gave Chan a water bottle and waited until he drank again before allowing himself to be hugged. Even then, he kept it brief, patting Chan’s back once with unnecessary firmness.
“Sleep,” Seungmin said.
“I’m going.”
“Without vocalizing your apology again.”
Chan shut his mouth.
“Good.”
Minho was last.
Chan stood before him with a sort of nervous exhaustion, as though he expected a lecture. Minho looked him over once, from the swollen eyes to the hunched shoulders to the leg he was favoring no matter how carefully he tried to hide it.
Then he reached out and pulled Chan against him.
Chan made a tiny sound of surprise.
Minho held him for only a few seconds, one hand firm between his shoulder blades.
“You don’t take care of us by dying slowly in front of us,” he said quietly.
Chan stopped breathing.
Minho released him before the sentence could become larger than either of them knew how to handle.
Chan looked down, face crumpling again.
“I’ll try,” he whispered.
Minho nodded. “Good.”
Jeongin took Chan’s hand again.
This time, Chan did not look toward the bag.
They walked down the short hall to the bedroom while the others remained behind, beginning the quiet work of clearing dinner. Bowls clinked against the table. Water ran in the sink. Han’s voice rose too loudly in a complaint about being forced to clean during a period of emotional fragility. Minho told him his fragility could hold a sponge. Changbin laughed. Felix said something Jeongin could not make out. Hyunjin began humming under his breath, soft and absent. Seungmin told him he was in the wrong key, earning a muffled insult.
At the bedroom doorway, Chan stopped.
Jeongin turned toward him.
The laughter behind them had faded into the ordinary movement of the people he loved continuing without him. Jeongin saw the moment it caught him. The fear flashing through Chan’s face, the old thought entering before he could stop it.
They are fine without you.
You are not needed in that room.
So what are you now?
Jeongin squeezed his hand.
Chan looked at him, ashamed to have been read so easily.
“They can do dishes without you,” Jeongin said softly.
Chan tried to laugh, but his eyes had filled again. “Apparently.”
“And they will still want you here tomorrow.”
Chan breathed in shakily.
From the kitchen, Minho shouted, “If you come back out here, I’ll break your laptop!”
Chan startled into a real laugh, wet and helpless and warm.
Jeongin smiled. “See?”
“That is a threat, not love.”
“With Minho, it is both.”
Chan looked back once more toward the living room. He could not see all of them from here, only the edge of Felix moving past the doorway and Changbin’s shoulder as he reached across the table. Enough to know the room had continued.
Enough to know it had not closed behind him.
He let Jeongin lead him into the bedroom.
The bed was still unmade from that morning, the blankets twisted where Jeongin had slept alone long after Chan had left. Chan stared at it for a second with guilt tightening his mouth.
Jeongin did not let him apologize.
He pulled back the blankets and climbed in, then looked at Chan expectantly.
Chan hesitated.
“I may not fall asleep,” he admitted.
“Then be awake next to me.”
“I might be restless.”
“Be restless.”
“I might want my phone.”
“You can want it.”
Chan swallowed.
Jeongin held out his hand again. “Come stay badly.”
Chan’s face softened around the words.
Then he climbed into bed.
He lay stiffly at first, on his back, hands folded over his stomach as if rest required formal permission. Jeongin rolled onto his side and moved close enough that his forehead nearly touched Chan’s shoulder. After a moment, Chan lifted one arm and let Jeongin tuck himself against him.
The motion was hesitant.
It was also a choice.
The apartment hummed beyond the bedroom. His members were still there. Their laughter still rose occasionally between the small domestic sounds of cleaning. Work waited quietly in the bag beneath the bench. The future waited farther away, filled with absences Chan could not produce his way out of.
His breathing remained uneven.
Jeongin laid a hand over his heart.
“You don’t have to sleep yet,” he whispered.
Chan’s arm tightened around him.
“I know.”
“You don’t have to be okay.”
A long pause.
“I know.”
Jeongin waited.
Chan stared at the ceiling in the dark, eyes wet, heartbeat slowly settling beneath Jeongin’s palm.
Then, in a voice so quiet it was almost swallowed by the room outside, he said, “Thank you for still wanting me here.”
Jeongin’s chest broke cleanly around the words.
He lifted his head and kissed Chan softly, once, the kind of kiss that asked for nothing back. “Always,” he whispered.
Chan closed his eyes.
For once, the word did not make him search for what he needed to do to deserve it.
He only held Jeongin closer and listened to the proof of his family living in the next room without needing him to hold it together.
For tonight, he let himself have no job at all.