Chapter Text
Seungmin had been slumped on the couch for a long time, his phone was in his hand but the screen was dark. He had been staring down at it for a while as the vibrations for a new notification popped up.
He was deciding between reading them or just ignoring it and putting it on mute. But he knew if he didn’t respond they were going to try calling him and if he didn’t answer the call they would appear in front of the dorm door.
Let's say Seungmin didn’t have a great relationship with his relatives from his father’s side. He had in the past but not anymore, not since his mother died.
Seungmin’s mother was his greatest supporter when he told his parents he wanted to pursue a career as a kpop idol. She had been the first one to pay a tutor for him to practice his vocals, who had gotten him into dance classes and prepared him a warm cup of tea when he came back tired from practice while she bundled him in blankets during the coldest seasons as she told him stories from her childhood.
She had been the first one to know he had been accepted as a trainee under JYPE and the first one to let her tears fall as he moved to the dorms in the company because they lived too far away to make an everyday trip there.
But now it was all gone, no cup of tea, no baked goods, no scent of her cooking through the air. She had at least seen him debut and have success as an idol before she passed away, that’s when the messages came.
At first it had been harmless requests; ‘Could you help me pay something?’, ‘Sorry for bothering, can you help me make ends meet for this month?’, ‘Do you have some cash I could borrow?’. Seungmin didn’t care to help some of his relatives, he wasn’t even using his money, the majority being paid by the company.
But then the notification became too frequent and it wasn’t just one relative, it was several of them and they were no longer asking for a small amount, they started demanding a large sum of his money.
When the request became too much he had just told them no. And he was thankful when the knock to the dorm door came when he was alone, the other members spending time in the other dorm.
Standing on the other side of the door was his father with one of his aunts. When he had opened the door and his father had seen it was him he had slapped him across his face, his face whiplashed to the side with the force. He had held his stinging cheek with his hand as his father yelled at him while his aunt watched him with mocking eyes.
When his father finally left he had immediately gone directly to bed, locking the door behind him, not caring about putting ice on his cheeks nor going to spend time with the rest of the members.
After the incident he had transferred money monthly to his relatives, learning how to live with the least amount of things possible as he could barely afford anything for himself except what the company gave him.
It was not like he couldn’t go and stop sending him money but after the second incident he was against saying anything else in his defence. It had been during the Christmas holidays, all the members had gone home and he didn't want to be left alone in the dorm so he decided to go home too.
He had been wanting for some time now to buy a new record player and had been saving what little money was left after giving it to his relatives. He thought it would be a perfect opportunity to treat himself to something nice.
♩♪♩♬ ♬♩♪♩
The house had been quiet all morning, they weren’t used to celebrating Christmas in his house, not even when his mother was alive, and only used it to see each other because of their free days. Normally they wouldn’t have come at all but when they heard Seungmin was coming they decided they were going to come too.
It was still pretty early in the morning to be up on a holiday but he had things to do. He had been getting ready to go out shopping all alone. He hadn’t had his alone time for a while now, thanks to his members who seemed to have a private space problem and never left him in peace.
He got out of his room, not before grabbing his car keys , and walking towards the direction of the entrance to get his shoes on but before he could arrive he was interrupted by one of his cousins.
“Where are you going?” Minseok asked him. Seungmin looked behind him because he knew if he was here the other wasn’t too far behind.
Right after he thought of that the other one appeared, perching himself on the shoulder of Minseok. “Yeah, where are you going?”
“I was just going to go for a walk,” Seungmin said quietly. Even though they were cousins he had never been close to them like they were.
“Oh, okay” Doyoon sounded disappointed with the answer and Seungmin could only feel relieved, they weren’t going to bother him any more.
But apparently Minseok wasn’t having it the same way as the other. Seungmin was about to pass next to them to continue with his way when he was stopped by a hand intercepting him.
“Do you have any money we could borrow?”
Seungmin didn’t look at him as he kept his gaze to the wall before him. “No.”
He took his arm and set it aside so he could pass but before he could get farther someone grabbed his wrist.
“If you’re going for a walk, why do you have car keys?” Seungmin had forgotten for a moment he had them in his hands.
“If you have car keys it means you are going somewhere, which means you are going to spend money.” He felt his presence looming behind him.
Seungmin didn’t dare to turn around and instead opted to get his wrist free, the quicker he got out of here the better. But before he could do anything Doyoon helped him turn him around, now Seungmin was facing them.
“You know? It isn’t so difficult to just give us money.” Minseok says. “We only ask to be polite but it’s not like you have many options either.”
“But it’s my money, I earned it.” Seungmin says confidently. “You have a job to make money so spend that money”
Seungmin freed his hand from his grip but before he could even think of taking a step he was shoved against the nearest wall.
“Wha-” His face whipped to the side when his cousin slapped him across his face.
He felt something wet down his cheek and when he brought his hand to his cheek he saw red on his fingertips, the mark of the ring of Minseok.
Seungmin was still in shock when the front door opened and his father stumbled in. Seungmin scrunched his nose at the smell of alcohol emanating from him. His father clumsily attempted to get his shoes off before he noticed them there.
“Oh, hey boys” he said tipsyly. “What…are you doing here?” He nearly tripped with the entrance mat on the floor.
“We were having a chat” Doyoon responds rather cheerfully for Seungmin.
“Oh, what about?” His father asked as he placed a hand on the wall to support himself.
“Seungmin is refusing to give us money” Minseok accused him with a smirk, like he already knew what was going to happen.
Seungmin could say the way his fathers demeanor changed 180 before he was punched in the stomach by his father. Seungmin let out a huff and he fell to his knees, he had not been expecting that.
After the first punch it all felt like a blur, he was kicked and hit several times by his father before his cousins joined him. He tried to cover his face with his arms to get damage done there but it didn’t seem like they were targeting it either.He didn’t know how many time passed by just him laying on the hallway floor before they stopped, and when they did they just shoved his phone to his face to transfer them more money.
Seungmin did with the best of his abilities to do it fast just to get them to leave him alone for once and for all. Once his cousins were satisfied with the money transferred they left him there alone with his father.
His father took one look at him before deciding to do nothing about him.
“Go to your room” His father spat at him before deciding to disappear.
Once he was alone Seungmin took his time to take a deep breath even though everything hurt. He closed his eyes for a moment to relinquish the peaceful moment before he got up. He stumbled through the hallways to get to his room and if in one moment he crawled on all four through the halls it was between him and the pictures on the wall.
When he got to his room he didn't bother doing anything else than just getting under the covers and passing out.
He would deal with the rest when he woke up.
♩♪♩♬ ♬♩♪♩
Later on, they had added him to a family group chat where the only thing they did was being fake nice with him so he would give them money but it was not like he had a lot of options. He would ignore the group chat all day and only respond late at night apologizing for not answering sooner but life was hectic as an idol and didn’t have much time to himself.
His relatives from his mother’s side never knew of this because he kept it a secret from them. They were nice but he wasn’t close enough to them to ask for help, there had been once upon a time where he was close to them when they met for the holidays but life moved on and became more difficult they couldn’t meet as much, making him lose contact with them. The last time he had seen them was at his mothers funeral and they were still as kind as always but they were all too heartbroken to ask for how he was doing and he couldn’t blame them because in a similar situation he would have done the same thing.
He hadn’t told any of the members of his situation, not of his relatives, not of his father, not that his mother had died. But he had an underlying suspicion Chan knew there was something going on with him and his phone because he was always very private. Of course each of them had their privacy but he never lended his phone to another member or left it forgotten on a table.
His phone lit up with a new notification again and Seungmin stared at it until the screen faded to black again. He hadn’t noticed someone walking in, too zoned out to notice.
“-min, Seungmin!” A hand waved in front of his face, Seungmin blinked a few times as he put his phone away in his pocket.
“You okay?” Hyunin asked him when he finally looked at him.
Seungmin only nodded. “You wanted something?”
Hyunjin stared at him for a moment deciding if he was really okay or just covering the truth. When he saw he wasn't going to say anything else he continued speaking.
“We were all going to eat at the restaurant in the corner, do you want to come?”
Seungmin thought about it, wanted to be in their company but didn't want to go outside or have the energy to move anywhere else than his room. He wanted to eat yummy food after such a long and hard practice Minho had put them through but his relatives had taken his will to do anything productive.
“No”
“Okay, I’ll tell the rest” Hyunjin said he wanted to say something else but refrained from doing it, leaving the room to inform Chan.
Seungmin felt his phone vibrate once more in his pocket. With a sigh he took it out and risked entering the group chat, it didn’t even have an original name, only ‘Kim family’ and that was it. He opened and scrolled up to start reading at the first message which said unread.
They all greeted him good morning everyday, followed by worries from his aunts to see if he had eaten for breakfast, then his uncles telling him if he needed something they were there although he knew it was fake because they didn’t expect him to respond. Then it was his cousins asking if they could hang out with him even though they didn’t have a space to meet with him. And then there was his father who didn’t send him any messages except if he needed more money than necessary. The last messages were all the family saying goodnight to each other.
He turned off his phone, he knew the others were going to see he had read their messages but hadn’t responded. He just didn’t feel like socializing with their fake personalities right now.
He heard two pairs of padded footsteps enter the living room, when he looked up Chan was staring at him with gentle eyes.
“You sure you don’t wanna come, Minnie?” Seungmin nodded. “You okay?” Seungmin nodded again. “Don’t forget to eat Min and call us if you need something.”
“Okay” he whispered, he sometimes liked how much Chan worried for them all.
Chan retreated to get his shoes on as Hyunjin lingered a while longer but seeing neither of them were going to say anything, he left to get his shoes on too.
He heard a few hushed voices coming from the entrance but after a few minutes he heard Chan shout. “We’re leaving, don’t forget to eat!”
Seungmin didn’t respond back but Chan knew he heard him.
Seungmin didn’t know how much time he spent sitting on the couch feeling the vibrations of his phone with each notification now that they knew he was awake. He knew he had to eat something, not because Chan had reminded him to but because his stomach was rumbling.
He got up, phone in hand, and dragged himself to the kitchen. He didn’t want to cook something at the moment so he settled on eating ramen.
He sat down on the couch again even though he knew he should be eating on the table. He finished one quarter of the cup before he was full. He placed the cup of ramen on the coffee table and took a deep breath.
He risked reading the messages one more time because for once they were not stopping. He clicked on the first new notification which popped up, who in return directed him to the group chat.
Kim Family
Uncle Kim:
Seungmin, are you going to visit your mother?
Minseok:
It’s going to be her birthday soon, isn't it?
Doyoon:
Yeah, I remember it’s around this time of the year.
Aunt Kim:
Are you going to bring her flowers? I could go shopping for them with you if you want.
Aunt Ahn:
I could go too if you want.
Father:
I don’t think he has the time to go visit her mother.
Uncle Ahn:
He still has to work.
Minseok:
Yeah, he must be very busy.
Minseok:
But at least it’s worth it.
Doyoon:
It pays off the hard work.
Seungmin scoffed in disbelief, they knew he was going to read or was reading the messages and still told him indirectly he should be working for them. Right now, he didn’t know if he could take it any longer and should just tell someone to help him get out of the situation or if he should just ignore them like always and keep going with his life.
Although he made it seem it didn’t affect him it really did deeply, the cracks inside him getting bigger as he tried to keep them together with a flimsy band-aid.
Growing up Seungmin had his father by his side too but not like his mother. His father hadn’t been the one to stay up late to help him with the homework, hadn’t been the one to treat his wounds when he fell, hadn’t been the one to show up to school events. His father had been the one to buy him presents on his birthday, and basically do everything for him but from the side, which wasn’t what Seungmin needed. He needed someone who cared for him and was by his side, he needed a father figure not a man who was always at work and not at home.
He had always been pressured by his father to get good grades at school so he could have a good career. Sometimes when he didn’t get a perfect score in an exam his father would yell and slap him whenever his mother wasn’t home, he’d said he could do better than that. Which led to him staying up every night studying even though he knew the topics like the back of his hands and to having breakdowns before going to school when there was an exam to be taken. He didn’t tell his mother he didn’t want to worry her and his father would do something worse about it if he knew how weak he was for not enduring life.
But now his mother’s birthday was approaching and he knew his relatives would only show up to his mother's grave if he sent a message he was going, they never really cared for her. And the relatives from his mother lived back in Busan and only came to Seoul once a year on his mother’s funeral day. He really wanted to go and see his mother but not if he was going to be pestered by his father saying how he should be working instead of staring at a rock with his mother’s name.
Seungmin was deciding if he should respond to their messages or if he should just wait until the conversation died out. He decided for the latter as he turned on the television and put on a movie he had wanted to watch for some time.
Half way through the movie he took his phone and started reading through the messages again, when he was nearly finished reading them and was going to respond to them an incoming call appeared on his screen.
On top of the screen in bold letters his father's name was displayed. His hands started to get clammy as he took a deep breath. His thumb hovered over the red icon on his phone and for a moment he thought of pressing it and forgetting about this until tomorrow. But memories of what happened last time flashed through his head and he did not want to repeat them.
He closed his eyes and took another deep breath before he accepted the incoming call and put it on speaker. The moment he answered his father’s voice filtered through the phone, sounding too loud in the quiet room.
“Seungmin”
“Sir” He clenched his hand on his pants, his tone coming out as neutral.
“You took your time to answer the phone” It was not an affirmation, it was an accusation.
“Sorry, I was busy cleaning up,” Seungmin said, lowering his head even though his father couldn’t see him.
He heard his Father tsked on the other side of the line. “You were reading the messages, don’t lie to me.”
“I-Yes, sorry Sir” Seungmin stuttered out, not wanting to disrespect him for their future encounters.
“You didn’t answer your uncle’s question. Didn’t respond to any of our messages.” He firmly stated to Seungmin. “Are you going to visit your mother? I don’t know how you are going to do that when you don’t even have time to answer our messages. If you have time to go and see her, when are you going to see your living relatives and not some ashes and bones buried six-feet underground which doesn’t help you make more money.”
“I-I was going to visit y-you over the holiday,” Seungmin said, trying to ignore what he had just heard of his mother, his heart beating loudly in his ribcage.
“Look at you lying twice, if you were going to make time to visit your mother” He spit her name like venom. “you would’ve made time for us too.”
“S-Sorry Sir” Seungmin hated how he stuttered by only hearing the voice of his father, silent tears coating his cheeks without his father knowing.
“Look at you stuttering,” his father sneered at him. “How do you expect to keep your job as an idol if you can’t even stop stuttering, what do you want, eh? To get hate just because you can’t speak properly? Do you really want to quit that badly?”
“I-I” Seungmin tried to defend himself but the words were stuck to his throat, he couldn’t say anything. His breaths were coming in short and he could hear clearly his heartbeat in his eardrums.
“You ungrateful child, I raised you and paid everything for you and this is how you repay me, abandoning me for a fucking career you are not suited for. I didn’t know what crossed your mother’s mind to enroll you into dance classes when you could’ve become a lawyer or a doctor. You could’ve brought us more money than just this, do you think we have enough to live off this amount of money?”
A sob rippled through Seungmin’s body as he let the phone fall to his lap, his hands gripping the clothes of his chest as he tried to keep at bay the tears and stop his hands from shaking.
He wanted to hang up the phone and cut out him out of the picture but he knew he couldn’t risk it knowing that if he had come once to the dorm he wouldn’t doubt to do it again when his members were present and he didn’t want to put such burden on them, he just kept listening to his father’s words.
“You are pathetic.” He mocked him. “Crying so easily over such measly words, not even a 5 year old kid would cry so easily. If it were me you would have been studying in the library instead of singing in some wretched studio. This would only last you for a few more years, not much longer and you think we can survive with such little money?”
Seungmin tried to muffle his sobs with his hoodie but it didn’t help. His chest was rising and falling rapidly as his father’s voice became more and more distant, the room blurring at the edges with tears.
He tried taking deep breaths but hearing his father’s voice wasn’t helping. He attempted to get his phone and hang up but he ended up hitting the phone to the floor. He fell to the ground, his knees slamming to the floor to search for it but it only made the air get knocked out of his lungs. His shaking hands came up to grip his head as he crumpled over trying to breathe.
Breath.
Why couldn’t he breathe?
You are pathetic.
His body was trembling as he strained to take measured breaths. His vision was blurry and a wave of dizziness crashed over him. His breath felt uncontrollable as he tried to focus on taking deep breaths. His heartbeat was louder than ever and beating fastly against his chest he thought it would burst open.
Then, he heard distant noises and padded footsteps, his head turned towards the sound on the hallway as light flickered. He thought he heard someone calling his name as firm hands held him upright, he fell onto a chest as he gasped for air.
Another warm presence made its way to his other side as someone took his hands and placed them on their chest. A hand cupped his jaw as he clenched his fingers on the other person's chest.
“-minnie, Seungmin!” He opened his eyes, he hadn’t noticed he had closed them. “Can you hear me?” He blinked a few times to get the tears off.
When the other person saw he was responsive he started to try and calm him down.
“Hey Minnie, look at me.” Seungmin gasped for air again before his brain catched up to what they were asking him. He looked up to meet Jisung's eyes full of worry.
“We’re here puppy, just breathe.” Changbin said to him, trying to bring him back to reality.
Jisung started breathing evenly, making the hands of Seungmin rise and fall over his chest. “Slow breaths, focus on that.”
The two of them stayed by his side as his wet stained face dried and his eyes remained unfocused, as his clenched fingers started to lose its grip and his shaking subsided. Slowly but surely they were grounding him with their presence and steady words.
The last thing he heard before falling asleep was Changbin’s voice whispering in his ear as he settled aside his bangs.
“We got you Minnie.”