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“It’s not that it’s a bad thing. I just worry.”
“You think I don’t?” Moondae said dryly.
Raebin darted back against the wall so they wouldn’t see that he had almost walked by, then carefully peered around the corner. Moondae and Chungwoo were in the kitchen, Chungwoo preparing his meal and Moondae already eating his.
He was just going to listen long enough to make sure there was nothing wrong, he told himself. Eavesdropping was bad, but… otherwise, he would never find out anything! The hyungs never told the youngest ones what was going on with Moondae.
“That’s ‘cause they don’t know,” Eugene had told him. “You think they know exactly what’s wrong and what to do about it all the time and they’re keeping it from you on purpose, but actually they just don’t know as much as you think. Older people aren’t always smarter!”
It was all well and good for Eugene to think that. Raebin had even thought he might be right at the time, because Eugene had a way of convincing you he knew what he was talking about when he actually knew nothing at all. But here was counter-evidence! Chungwoo and Moondae were worrying about something together, and no one had told Raebin.
“Well… you worry too much,” Chungwoo said. “That’s not good either.” He grinned as he joined Moondae at the table. Raebin averted his eyes – this felt private, he shouldn’t be here – but he didn’t avert his ears. “Why don’t you just leave the worrying to me? I’ll do it the exact right amount.”
Moondae snorted. “Sure, hyung.”
Strange. He wasn’t normally that loose or casual with Chungwoo. Even Raebin knew that – even though he didn’t know why it was that Moondae struggled to even look Chungwoo in the eye for a while last year (because no one ever told him anything).
Chungwoo asked, “So did you read it? The article I sent about dragons?”
And that was an abrupt change of subject… unless they had been speaking about being dragons already. If that was the source of them worrying.
“Mm… yes. But it was stuff I already knew.”
It sounded to Raebin like Moondae didn’t want to talk about the article. There was just something in his tone. Telling Chungwoo he already knew all of it was an attempt to end the conversation.
“I see. I wasn’t sure, since you have memory gaps.”
Raebin nodded to himself. Another reminder of why he had to eavesdrop. The hyungs had known about Moondae’s memory problems way before he and Eugene did. That was why he needed to keep an ear out for anything else they were keeping to themselves.
“Also,” Chungwoo said thoughtfully, “there were things in the article that I didn’t know, so I thought you might never have been told, either. When I found it a few years ago, it made me realize how little I really knew about my heritage. My father said that kind of thing didn’t get passed down so much in our branch of the family. The tradition was stronger in other branches.”
Moondae made no reply.
“So… I guess dragon blood runs stronger in your family?”
“I don’t remember.”
“My parents thought the only dragon lineages left in Korea were Ryus, so I wonder if the Park lineage got it from intermarriage at some point. We could be distantly related.”
“I don’t know.”
Chungwoo was pushing. Raebin didn’t know why. Moondae’s parents were an understandably sensitive subject, and he was touchy about what he could and couldn’t remember too. Repeatedly asking him about his family necessarily combined both. Raebin was considering revealing himself just to cut the tension, when Chungwoo took care of it himself.
He said jokingly, “I’m about to get thrown out, aren’t I?”
“No.” There was a pause. “If it were that easy, I’d have thrown out Lee Sejin already.”
Chungwoo laughed.
So it didn’t seem that there was anything wrong after all, as they fell into easy conversation about recording the new album, but somehow Raebin was left with more questions than answers.
They both had worries, it had something to do with dragons, and Moondae’s reaction was to withdraw into himself and stonewall Chungwoo’s probing with those clipped responses that reminded Raebin of the time following the summer package incident. And yet, unlike during that time, Moondae opened back up as soon as Chungwoo stopped pressing.
Raebin felt… disappointed. He wanted to join the conversation now but he’d missed his chance by eavesdropping instead. And he wasn’t even sure what he’d learned from it.
After much thought, Raebin opened with this: “Moondae hyung is a dragon.”
“I know that.”
“I know you know that.” Ugh, Cha Eugene! He was so irritating.
Raebin had been keeping in third place of this round of Mario Kart on purpose – because maintaining exactly third place was actually much harder and therefore more impressive than finishing in first – but now he hurled red shells at the cars in front of him and sped past Eugene’s Yoshi, to teach him a lesson.
“I was building up to ask a question.”
“Don’t build up. You’re all build and no up. Just ask.” Eugene was hot on his heels, more interested in regaining his place than in the conversation.
“Now I don’t want to.”
“Ugh, Kim Raebin! You’re so annoying!”
“I wish you wouldn’t get mad at each other over a game…” Ahyeon said anxiously from the doorway.
“Nah, we’re not arguing over the game.” As soon as Ahyeon moved on, Eugene demanded, “So? Spit it out!”
“Moondae hyung being a dragon… isn’t bad, right?”
“No. It’s cool.” Yoshi clipped in front of Raebin’s Luigi at the last second, stealing first place. “Why would it be bad?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“Well, I don’t know why.” Eugene’s good mood was restored now that he’d won. “Why do you need to find a reason it’s bad?”
“You’re misunderstanding.”
“You’re misexplaining.”
“That’s not a word!” Raebin tossed himself onto the couch like a forlorn ragdoll and lay where he fell, limbs splayed. “I think something’s wrong and I think it has to do with Moondae hyung being a dragon but I don’t know.”
“Chungwoo’s sort of a dragon too,” Eugene said.
“I know that.”
“I know you know that. I was giving you a hint.”
“Don’t give hints. You’re not good at it. Just tell me.”
“Well, now I won’t.”
“Ugh!”
Moondae came to the doorway and looked in silently. Eugene, noticing, stopped trying to pull Raebin off the couch. “Did Ahyeon hyung tell you we were fighting? We weren’t.”
“Alright.” Moondae accepted that, at least enough to leave them alone again.
Raebin asked, “What’s the hint?”
“It’s to stop asking someone who doesn’t know and ask Chungwoo instead. He’ll know if there’s a dragon issue.”
Raebin sighed. “I knew your idea wouldn’t be any good.”
“Why not?” Eugene demanded. When Raebin just grumbled, Eugene threw himself on top of him.
“Oof!”
“It was good advice!”
“I can’t ask Chungwoo! Then he’ll know I eavesdropped on them!”
“Ooh.” Eugene slid off him, mostly. There wasn’t enough room on the couch to lay side by side, so they were still squashed together, Eugene’s elbow digging into his side. “I didn’t know you eavesdropped. You should have started with that.”
“When I start with context, you tell me to stop building up!”
“You give the wrong context,” Eugene said, unrepentant. He was a fundamentally unrepentant person. He was annoying all the time and never apologized for it.
“Forget it. You can’t help.”
“If you’re not going to forget it, I can’t either.”
Raebin was almost touched.
It was nice to have someone on his side. They were allies in being the youngest and the left out, after all. Raebin thought about Chungwoo’s joke from earlier, the casual offer to take the weight off Moondae’s shoulders for him, and bashfully tried it on for size. “You can do some of the worrying for me, then.”
“But I’m not worried,” Eugene said, shattering Raebin’s dream of having a loyal friend who would help to shoulder his burdens and understand his concerns with maturity and empathy. “I bet you’re overthinking whatever it is. You usually are.”
Cha Eugene…!
But for all that, Raebin did forget. He was busy with the album. Album preparations were always stressful, but also fun because the whole team had to work together. No one could split off and keep things to themselves forever, because whatever they did on their own eventually had to be shared. And Raebin never felt so much on the same page as his team as when they were making music together.
“That’s badass.”
“Right?”
“Yeah. Scrap what we had for my verse, it’s way too corny to come after that.”
Raebin obediently cut Eugene’s rap from the document, though he did paste it into a different document where he saved all their scrapped lyrics, just in case they could be useful for another project later. In reality, they never remembered to look in the scrapped lyrics document when writing songs, but they sometimes had fun scrolling back and laughing at their terrible old ideas.
“How can I top that?” Eugene wondered aloud. “It’s such a mic drop. Maybe I should go first instead, so it ends with your bars.”
Raebin had envisioned the rap section ending with Eugene, though. His high energy was better for that. “How about you do this part, and we write something else for me to rap before it?”
Eugene sighed so deeply that his head flopped onto Raebin’s shoulder to fully express his exhaustion with this. “Raebinnnnn, stupid Raebin! You can’t just offer your best stuff to other people! What if I actually took it?”
“Then you’d do it, and it would be good.” Seemed fine to him.
“Then you wouldn’t get to do it, even though you wrote it!” Eugene bonked the back of his head. “Think for a second! Don’t you have any self-preservation in there?”
That… what was he saying? Raebin took a second, but then he decided it was obvious what Eugene meant, and was offended. “If you don’t want it, just say so.”
Eugene took the huffy wind out of his sails immediately. “Of course I want to deliver the coolest bars in the song, dummy. But they’re yours.”
Raebin deflated. “They don’t have to be. I’m offering since you like them. And it’s not like it’s a bad choice artistically. Fans would probably love how you’d deliver the lines.”
“I like how you deliver them, though. I want to hear you do this part when we perform the song. So write me something cool to go with it.”
“Well, okay.” Raebin started typing, working backwards from what they had for his lines. If his part was the mic drop, then Eugene’s part should be the hypeman – a role he was perfect for, anyway. He shrugged his shoulder once to try to dislodge Eugene’s head, which had migrated back to his shoulder, but it didn’t budge.
Behind them, he heard Lee Sejin say, “It’s nice how all their fights pop into existence and then resolve completely within five minutes.”
Raebin, shocked, craned his head around to see the same age trio relaxing on the studio’s couch.
“Huh? You’re here?” Eugene voiced Raebin’s thoughts.
“Yeah, we’ve been here for half an hour. You guys are oblivious. Don’t worry about us, though, keep going.” Lee Sejin settled in more comfortably on the couch, turning sideways to kick his legs over into the other two’s laps.
Moondae gave him an exasperated look – Raebin remembered, suddenly, If it were that easy, I’d have thrown out Lee Sejin already – but he didn’t push Sejin’s legs off. Instead, he braced one elbow on his knees, so Sejin couldn’t pull his legs away even if he wanted to. Moondae’s other arm rested around Ahyeon’s shoulders.
There was a rightness to the picture. A few minutes later, Bae Sejin drifted in and perched on the arm of the couch. Then Chungwoo arrived, waved off Ahyeon’s offer to get up, and sat on the floor. Then Eugene abandoned his swivel chair at the desk, and Raebin’s shoulder, to plop down next to Chungwoo, leaning back on Moondae’s legs, and Raebin turned again to look at the whole composition. Each part of the team casually tucked against each other like parts of a song linking together, verse and chorus and bridge. A song’s structure had to be sturdy, had to make sense. No part could be missing without destabilizing the whole thing. The whole truth of the world could be found in the metaphor of a song.
Moondae caught his eye and gestured him over with a tilt of his head.
“Oogh!” Eugene sprawled out dramatically when Raebin lightly nudged him aside to insert himself between Eugene and Chungwoo. Raebin rolled his eyes and rested his head against Moondae’s knee – a little smug to have stolen the prime spot.
“Photo time!” Sejin exclaimed, phone already out. He took several selfies of them all, before Moondae held out an imperious hand for the phone. Then Moondae took several better selfies, which actually included all their faces and weren’t blurry.
“Should we post it with an album spoiler?”
“The company said no leaks until they announce the comeback. We’re not even supposed to let anyone know we’re recording something.”
“Just post it without comment. Loviewers will figure out we’re in the studio from the background. That’s none of our business.”
“I love when Moondae’s in a ‘screw the company’ mood.”
“I always am. I just choose to hide it sometimes.”
Directing any member to bring to life a song he’d written was an experience unlike any other in Raebin’s life. It polished the bond he had with them to a high shine, made it reflective, something he could see himself and his members in more clearly. It made him feel safer and braver.
While recording Moondae’s lines for the title track, Raebin even had the guts to ask him, “Is being a dragon… nice?”
He wasn’t sure if it was a mistake, when Moondae looked at him like that. His expression was complicated. Wistful, if Moondae was ever anything as impractical as wistful.
In the pause before answering, Moondae reached out and settled a hand on Raebin’s head. Not like Chungwoo sometimes teasingly patted the maknaes' heads, or even how Ahyeon sometimes patted their heads genuinely, in a way that reminded Raebin of his grandma. It was just like, for a second, Moondae was reassuring himself that Raebin was still there, within reach. Tangible as Lee Sejin’s legs thrown over his lap or Ahyeon’s shoulders under his arm. Raebin half expected to be pulled into an embrace.
The moment passed.
“I guess so,” Moondae said. “Yeah. It’s not bad.”
Raebin felt complicated too. Maybe wistfulness was catching. But he didn’t know what it was he felt that tug of yearning towards.
The conversation he’d overheard stuck in his throat. He wanted to ask, is there something to worry about? But he didn’t want to admit he’d eavesdropped. Not even because they’d be mad. He didn’t really think they would be.
But if Moondae knew he’d eavesdropped, he’d also know why. He’d find out about that scared, selfish, insecure core of Raebin that always reminded him he was sometimes left out and obsessed over why that was. He didn’t want that. He couldn’t help curling up around that vulnerable spot at his center, hiding it and protecting it.
“Hyung, I wanted to learn about dragons but I don’t know where to start. Do you know anything good I could read?”
“I don’t really… well, Chungwoo sent me something the other day. I’ll send you the link.”
Raebin was a little surprised that Moondae gave him Chungwoo’s article. It must have been Chungwoo’s probing that bothered him, and not the article itself.
Raebin scrolled through it and came to a few conclusions.
On one hand, it made sense for Moondae to say he knew it all already. The article was clearly geared toward readers with no prior knowledge. It even included a glossary of basic terms. But on the other hand, who had taught Moondae even the basics? It wasn’t surprising that Chungwoo had been led to ask about his family. Raebin was curious about Moondae’s family too.
Scale-like structures below the skin, unusually prominent shoulder blades… Raebin had never noticed anything of the kind on Moondae. The article included a photo of the faint impression of scales visible on the thin webbing of skin between someone’s finger and thumb, which interested him, but he was sure he’d have noticed if Moondae had something like that.
Raebin scrolled some more. Hoarding is considered beneficial… Was it bad that Moondae’s room was so bare, then? For a second, he thought he’d hit on Chungwoo’s concern: Moondae wasn’t hoarding properly, so the hyungs were worried.
But Moondae’s room had gotten more cluttered and colorful with time. Moondae didn’t own that much, not compared to Ahyeon’s clothes or Eugene’s games, but one thing he collected was handmade momentos from fans. Raebin decided that was probably what he hoarded, as unusual as it seemed compared to the examples the article gave: The most commonly-recorded hoards were gold, jewels, and beautiful humans, whom dragons would supposedly demand as sacrifices and then keep as companions.
Raebin smiled to himself, imagining Moondae demanding tribute from ancient villages full of baffled humans. It was a good thing Moondae lived during the time of idols rather than the age of legend. He would have found it much more difficult to collect artifacts from fans if he burned down forests instead of singing and dancing.
Anyway, if Moondae hoarded fan gifts, his hoard was probably doing okay. And it made Moondae’s proclivity for arranging little gifts for their fans even cuter. He was basically trying to help them hoard too.
In the end, Raebin enjoyed the article, but he learned more about dragons than about what might be troubling his hyungs.
“Hold on, Raebin. Moondae’s not feeling well.”
“Huh?” He stopped short of knocking on Moondae’s door and let Chungwoo gesture him away.
The other members had gathered in the living room – the ones who had just come back from a schedule, and the ones who, like Raebin, had already been here. Only Moondae, who had gone right to his own room when they got home, was missing.
“Are we having a team meeting?” Eugene, thankfully, looked just as confused as Raebin felt.
“Sort of,” Chungwoo said. “We need to talk.”
Without Moondae, though? Important talks never happened without Moondae. They sure as heck could happen without Raebin, but Raebin couldn’t remember being on the inside of an important talk that didn’t include Moondae. He felt a little thrilled and a little guilty. He was about to speak up and say that maybe Moondae should be included even if he wasn’t feeling well, when he noticed the atmosphere in the room.
Chungwoo’s arms were folded. He was normally so careful not to come off too strict when he confronted them in the position of leader. Raebin was so used to a Ryu Chungwoo with carefully sanded edges that his unvarnished, unsmiling face over crossed arms was almost shocking. “Lee Sejin, Bae Sejin, explain.”
“Woah,” Eugene muttered. Raebin agreed silently. The Sejins weren’t usually partners in crime. “Is this… a dating scandal?”
Lee Sejin groaned. “No, don’t get weird ideas. It’s about Moondae and Cheongryeo.”
“Are you sure it’s not a dating scandal?”
“Moondae would never be close with that criminal,” Bae Sejin said, fists clenched.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Chungwoo said. “I’ve gotten the gist of it, but it’s time for one of you to say it.”
The Sejins looked at each other reluctantly. Neither of them wanted to say whatever it was Chungwoo demanded.
With an exasperated sigh, Chungwoo said, “It was Cheongryeo who kidnapped Moondae, wasn’t it?”
“What?”
“The stalker?”
“The stalker who beat up Moondae over that break–”
“The stalker Moondae beat up–”
“No, seriously, what?”
There was a lot of yelling. It was a long time before Raebin learned what had happened earlier that day.
Moondae and Cheongryeo encountered each other in the building of the broadcast station. The other members there didn’t hear much of their conversation, just the tail end of it – a joke from Cheongryeo that seemed perfectly lighthearted and friendly, but which Bae Sejin maintained must have meant something a lot worse between the two of them. Because Moondae’s response had been a vicious “If you ever touch any of them, I’ll kill you.”
And then he clutched his throat and nearly collapsed, and Lee Sejin had seen that the air between the two men was wavering as if on a boiling hot day.
As someone ran for a first aid kit and a doctor, Bae Sejin had nearly launched himself at Cheongryeo. Whatever he’d yelled at the time had made Chungwoo realize this wasn’t the first incident.
And wasn’t that incredible, that Chungwoo had been left out of such a big secret? So it wasn’t always Raebin, after all.
“But is Moondae hyung okay? What did Cheongryeo do to him?”
“Well… Cheongryeo didn’t do anything to him this time,” Lee Sejin admitted. “It’s more what Moondae did to himself.”
“He tried to breathe fire and it didn’t go well.”
“What?” Eugene yelled, popping out of his seat. Raebin thought he was concerned. That was incorrect. “That’s sick! Why wasn’t I there?”
Raebin bonked his head to make him sit back down.
“The fire didn’t make it out,” Chungwoo explained. “He just made a lot of heat. The doctor said his throat is damaged and needs time to recover, so he’s on hiatus for at least a few weeks.”
“Aw, man. He should singe that guy’s face off next time.”
“That was the first and last time Park Moondae will ever breathe fire,” Chungwoo said firmly.
“I can’t believe Moondae didn’t tell us.” Ahyeon turned big, accusing eyes on Lee Sejin, all the more accusing for looking so wounded. “You’ve known Cheongryeo was the stalker this whole time?”
Sejin coughed. He also surreptitiously glanced at Bae Sejin for help, and received none. Finally, he admitted, “Yeah, but Moondae didn’t want any more people to know. He only told us two at the time because we were there–” He seemed to remember that Chungwoo had also been there. “And, uh… well, it was Park Moondae’s reasons, so why are we the ones answering for him?”
“Because you aided and abetted in keeping secrets.”
Lee Sejin swore quietly.
“Well, I have nothing else to say to you two today.” Chungwoo stood up. “We’ll discuss this more when Moondae can speak for himself.”
Several weeks later, Moondae wasn’t cleared to sing full time yet, but he could finally talk however much he wanted. Only a scratchiness in his voice remained of the incident. That, and Chungwoo’s frostiness, which had yet to melt even after Moondae admitted to hiding the truth of the kidnapping.
It was funny how the whole ordeal wiped Raebin’s previous worries from his mind. He hadn’t thought about the conversation he overheard in weeks. And then suddenly, as he sat working on a song and keeping Moondae company in his room, something clicked into place.
He blurted it without thinking. “Moondae hyung, are you hoarding us?”
Moondae froze. He looked just like a fox with one foot in a trap, unable to move without springing it.
He was. Moondae was hoarding the members. Testar was his hoard.
Raebin remembered Chungwoo joking that Moondae was going to kick him out, and Moondae responding that if such a thing was possible he would have already kicked Lee Sejin. At the time, Raebin had thought it was the team they were joking about. It wasn’t.
The joke was, if I annoy you too much, will you throw me out of your hoard?
The joke was, no, I can’t give any of you up.
Actually, looking back, Raebin wasn’t sure that they had been joking after all. Chungwoo may have really been curious if a member of the hoard could be removed. And Moondae had really admitted that it wasn’t up to him.
It wasn’t the fan gifts lining his shelf that were special to Moondae. He probably liked them, but he wouldn’t have burned his own throat trying to defend them.
“Is that bad?” Raebin asked. “Do you not like it?” Maybe – maybe Moondae didn’t like being stuck with them. Maybe it hadn’t been his choice to hoard them. Maybe he would rather just not.
Moondae said immediately, “No.” Instinctive, in the same way fire must have burned up his throat at Cheongryeo. “Of course I…”
Raebin waited.
“I can’t not…”
Raebin waited some more.
“You’re my hoard. You’re mine.” He made a sharp gesture, like he could sweep away the question and incomplete answers. “You can’t ask if someone likes that they love something. It’s too hard to have feelings about feelings.”
Raebin didn’t agree with that. He had feelings about his feelings all the time. Right now he felt that it was a strange feeling, finding out you belonged to someone. Someone found you precious and kept you in their heart. Under Moondae’s protection, Raebin realized, was a warm place to be. If he liked being loved, wasn’t it also possible to like loving?
“I heard Chungwoo say something to you a while ago. I don’t exactly remember, but… is he worried about your hoard?”
“Oh, sure.” Moondae shrugged, much softer than before. “He worries because it’s hard on me when you all leave the dorm over breaks, and it’ll be even harder if the whole group splits up when our contract ends. That worries me too. But Chungwoo worries about it too much, even though he says it’s the other way around. But… when did you hear that?” He flicked Raebin’s forehead, too light to even sting. “Don’t just listen to things and get worked up over nothing. Just ask what we’re talking about.”
“If we belong to Moondae, that also means he belongs to us.”
Rather than appreciating this important thought, Eugene said, “I don’t know why you’re always just saying obvious things.”
“Ugh!” Raebin threw his controller at him, which was unsatisfying, because it just bounced off his shoulder and Raebin had to pick it up, and now he was in nearly last place. Just for that, Raebin decided not to tell him the thing he was building up to, about how the belonging wasn’t just about Moondae, but also about them, because they belonged to each other, Kim Raebin and Cha Eugene.
“Well? What is it?”
“What’s what?” Raebin asked, mutinous.
“I thought maybe you also had something not-obvious to say.”
“I do, but I’m not gonna tell you.”
“Kim Raebin!”
As Eugene’s controller bounced off Raebin’s arm, Bae Sejin, who Raebin had forgotten was silently reading on the couch behind them, got up and left the room. Raebin heard him say down the hallway, “They’re fighting again, or something.”
“About the game?” Ahyeon fretted.
“It’s never about the game,” Bae Sejin told him patiently. “They just play Mario Kart when they want to talk about what’s on their minds without having to look at each other.”
It was a little embarrassing to be so known. But he supposed that was just what happened, when a whole bunch of people belonged to each other.