Archive of Our Own

1. Be born surrounded by black storage containers and drink hot milk with paper straws. The mould grows above you, and insects will crawl along the base of your cot, but you’re safe and that’s made sure. Burn your tongue on hot milk and feel the sting of plastic on your back when you cry. You can scream, but there will always be someone screaming louder.

Is it karma? Is it retribution? Does the world simply have it out for Lee Minho, or is he here just to balance the scales? He stares at the blurry arms in front of him, and he cries at the distant ringing in his ears. The lights warp and streak and melt down the sides of his face. He can feel its warmth, and its burning touch. The moon hangs itself above him. The stars tumble down above him.

This is how he dies.

It was going to happen eventually. Minho could run and run but soon he’d trip. He’ll skid across the pavement, skin ripping into the grooves of the concrete, and he’ll leave a red trail of his blood along the street until he slams face-first into the Universe’s ultimate, unavoidable and inescapable divine justice. He will stare up at God and He will ask Minho, What have you done with your life? Minho will stare down at his naked body, and then at the metal and wood and flesh of everything he’s ever owned, and he will have no choice but to say nothing. Minho has done nothing. Minho has nothing.

Oh, there’s his favourite cookbook, there’s his car, his cats, his shoes and that pitiful dog he fed seven years ago with the scraps of his tongue. There’s the city he enslaved himself to, the bed he slept on, the mug he drank from, his hoard and his mother. There’s every proof that he ever lived. There's the damning evidence of his existence.

I’m proof, hyung, Hyunjin would say, if he were here. He would hold Minho’s hands in his own, and trace his thumb over the lines in his palm. He would take white paint and rub it over the torn flesh on Minho’s arms. He would say something artsy and romantic, like, I am proof of your existence, and Minho would not understand. He had never understood the way Hyunjin approached life with his entire heart, not on his sleeve, but in his chest, exactly where it was supposed to be.

You can find proof for this and that and if it fits you then it’s correct, but Minho can’t feel his legs or his arms or even the light on his cheeks anymore. If he could find anything correct and anything right to fit him, it would be the hope that he really is worthwhile. And he wishes in some distant, correct universe, that this proof is true.

That’s it, he supposes. That’s all he has, and even with all the wood and metal in the world, he has nothing.

His feet pad wearily on the sodden sheets of his bed. It’s time to lie in it.

A DOGMATIC FACT.

You’re never the only one. Even if you are.

Minho watches with thinly-disguised pleasure as Jeongin trips over nothing and slams straight into Seungmin, who was precariously balancing three boxes in his, frankly, shaking arms.

Objects are sent flying, and he hides his grin behind the stacks of boxes he’s carrying with much more ease.

Minho, boxes, an unintentional Jeongin - 1

Kim Seungmin - 0

“Innie!” Seungmin shrieks at the same time Jeongin screams, “Hyung!” while Felix yells, “Oh my fucking God!” and Minho, for the sake of comedic effect and only that, shouts in a much louder and more dominant voice: “Are you idiots?!” And it is at this point that both Seungmin and Jeongin are on the floor, items are rolling aimlessly about, Felix is buzzing over them frantically, and Minho has not found a better reaction than to obnoxiously cackle as one ought to when they are the Adult™ in this situation.

“Hyung,” Kim Seungmin hisses, rubbing his back from where he is being pinned by a particularly stubborn box, “Help me.”

Minho, not one to ever make life easy for Kim Seungmin, helps Jeongin up instead. It is the unfortunate way of life, Seungminnie. And he can’t constantly coddle his dog, or the dog will get complacent. He’s thinking bigger here. Seungmin obviously wouldn’t be able to comprehend.

“Right,” Felix sighs as he lets Seungmin use his arm to pull himself up, “That’s about the kind of entrance I would expect from us.”

“It was an accident,” Jeongin whines. Minho thinks it’s very cute, how red he is steadily becoming. “I’m sorry, hyung.”

Seungmin shrugs and lasts about two seconds (a valiant effort) before he succumbs to their cute maknae and smiles. “It’s okay. At least no one’s hurt and nothing’s broken. I think.”

“If Innie somehow managed to break mattress toppers and bedsheets, I’ll be more impressed than mad.” Minho shimmies past the bumbling three so he can finally place his boxes down. If he looks at their collective adorable innocence any longer, he thinks he might throw up all over their new linoleum floor.

“Innie could break mattress toppers,” Felix says very seriously. Minho can sense Jeongin practically burning up in embarrassment. “I believe it! His muscles have increased tenfold in the past ten months!”

“Yang Jeongin, Yang Jeongin’s clumsiness, and Yang Jeongin’s growing strength,” Seungmin drawls, no longer paying attention to the unfolding sheets on the floor. “Seems like the perfect recipe for disaster.”

Jeongin makes the strangest noise with his throat that Minho’s ever heard (and Minho’s done strange things). Emphatically, “If you guys keep teasing me like this, I might just move in with the others! They’d accept me, my clumsiness and my ever-growing muscles.”

Witness how this foolish dongsaeng says foolish things.

“As if they wouldn’t be overwhelmingly worse with the teasing,” Minho counters. Jeongin deflates—an immediate relent.

“You’re right,” he sighs. Hah. When is Minho not!

“You’re stuck with us, Yang Jeongin,” he croons, “Stuck with us. For-ev-er—” And in solidarity, Seungmin and Felix begin puckering their lips at him.

Jeongin, in a brave and stupid surge of confidence, throws a pillow in his direction. This obviously causes Minho to swing the pillow back, and pretend it was an unfortunate accident that it hit Seungmin instead. This causes Seungmin to glare dangerously at him and haul a whole duvet off the floor…

And it begins as such, in Seoul, South Korea.

“Woah, hyung,” Jeongin’s voice wafts closer as Minho hears him come up beside him. “This book is—massive!” And then he heaves the giant thing on the shiny countertop marble. Minho would ask him to be more careful with it, but he knows very well that this thing is as durable as anything he’s got. He then wonders why Innie had the book in the first place, but he was probably just being a good dongsaeng and helping him unpack. See, Minho, not everything you do and not everyone who follows will end up so terrible.

“Yeah.” Minho grins wide, and despite himself, adds, “It’s my cookbook. Has all my recipes in it.”

“Your own!” Jeongin gasps. Minho is fascinated by Jeongin's fascination. Is this really something to gasp over? It’s a large book, but quite simple in principle. Much like everything else.

“Not just my own,” he clarifies. God, no, he could never have this many recipes down at his young age. Even if the prospect of it excites him. “My mother’s as well as my grandmother’s.”

Felix waltzes up to the counter with Seungmin in tow. Minho feels his cheeks warm because this really shouldn’t garner the attention of all of them. He thinks he’d shrivel into the tiling grout if they decided to open the book and read. How embarrassing.

Nobody opens it up. Maybe they’re being respectful about it, in which Minho will be grateful. Jeongin runs his fingers over the grooves of the front cover while Seungmin flicks absentmindedly at one of the fluorescent sticky notes that is poking out of the pages. Felix is staring at him, though. Minho’s not sure why, and will not find out in this current moment.

“Will you cook for us?” Felix’s blank face turns bright again, maybe even teasing, and Minho cannot stop the rush of fondness that rises up his throat. He wonders, briefly, how someone like Felix was even able to worm his way into Minho’s chest. “Family recipes are always good!” Then again, it’s Felix. Everyone succumbs to his social dominance one way or another.

He should play along, then.

“Well, no one will go hungry in this house as long as I live!” He declares dramatically and feels another rush of warmth at just doing that. Jeongin cheers and laughs. Minho misses the strange flash in Felix’s face.

He’ll be missing a lot of things. As is the life of Lee Minho, centre of the universe.

“Mmm…” Seungmin pretends to swoon—or maybe he really does, “Hyung’s kimchi-jjigae…” His eyes are closed and lips upturned—Minho looks away.

He blindly flicks at the other’s forehead and words rush up and over involuntarily. “It is bold of Kim Seungmin to assume hyung will be cooking for him.” He wants to kick himself for it, and Seungmin for looking so sulky about it too. (Well, he isn't looking at him. But he can feel it. The pathetic dog aura.)

“But I suppose the puppy can have our scraps.”

He is not sure what sort of reparation that was. Seungmin seems content with it, though. Maybe he’s just expecting it at this point. Minho bites down hard on his tongue so he won’t say anything else. Did he push too far this time as well? He thinks, Seungmin should surely know Minho only does it because he seems okay with a jab here and there. That, and it’s how they’ve always been.

He’s so far in his head he doesn’t notice that Jeongin has left to unpack his own things, and Felix has begun styling their living room, and Seungmin is still staring owlishly at him—why do they keep looking at him so much?

“What, brat?” Minho asks for lack of better words, and because Seungmin is feeling particularly bratty. Not because he is Seungmin, but simply because he can sense the bratty aura.

“It’s a nice cookbook, Hyung," Seungmin says, ominously. Minho immediately has his hands on the sides of what is his and drags it up the counter until the base of it is kissing his stomach. What is he playing at? Why must Seungmin say things with such intention?

Is this an offering, a threat, a push, a pull? It could be all but not a harmless statement. Seungmin never makes those.

Minho holds the book to his chest—a precautionary, or something subconscious, he’s not sure—and watches Seungmin’s eyes follow it. “Yes, my cookbook is an art piece and easily the most luxurious thing in this apartment.” It is mine, Minho doesn’t say, nor does he know why he is getting possessive only now. Seungmin always manages to bring the worst out of him. “Now don’t go rifling through it as you want, okay?”

He’s being hostile. Why? He thinks, maybe he wasn’t ready to move. The eight of them had been doing fine even if they were a little cramped. He had been doing fine with Seungmin just last week when they’d washed vegetables together in that tiny kitchen. He’d been doing fine sharing a room with three others, then two, and now one. Minho was fine and now he’s suddenly not? Shouldn’t a man with freedom feel free?

Minho glances up at Seungmin’s face and tries to say something to the eyes boring into him. He opens his mouth and nothing sounds.

Seungmin, to his credit, smiles easily. “What, don’t want me getting my grubby paws on the pages?” It is an olive branch that is given before Minho even knew he needed it. He latches on with both hands.

“Something like that.” He relaxes.

Seungmin is good at that. Pushing a crevice open for Minho to crawl through, and pulling him out when it begins to close. Minho fiddles with the lines of tabs poking out of the book and wonders incredulously, how much patience the human body can hold. He wonders how much Seungmin cares, if he even cares at all.

Minho’s a coward, but he isn’t stupid. He’s spent seven years ignoring Seungmin and it’s going to come back biting him eventually. All that’s left is to sit down and wait.

A Slice of Cake.

1. Gather your ingredients. Flour, eggs, milk and sugar. Salt, vanilla, butter and baking powder. It’s okay if things are uneven. Some things will be uneven.
2. Beat your ingredients smooth.
3. Pour the batter into a pan. Notice the light yellow colour and the lumpy texture. The batter is never going to be perfect but it will at least look pretty.
4. Bake your batter hard.
5. Remove cake from the oven with your fingers. Take a slice and throw the rest away. Bite hard and gag at the rancid taste. Swallow and rinse down with a glass of milk.
6. Start again until the taste is common.

 

“Seungminnie, Minho-hyung!” Jeongin calls from the living room. “Do you want to play Mario Kart? Yongbok set up the Wii!”

Seungmin, the fiend he is, immediately launches off the counter and towards the couches.

“Yah!” Minho, much more refined and dignified, yells, “Is that really the first thing you unpack?!” He supposes he shouldn’t expect anything less from these self-proclaimed game masters. Though, he could absolutely decimate them with his superior aura alone.

Minho shakes his head incredulously, because he is sure that stupidity has been rubbed off on him and he is now thinking laughably stupid thoughts. He wonders how he managed to room with these three in the first place. He wonders, as if he didn’t consciously and consensually agree to it.

“We’re rooming together, right?” Minho had asked assumingly, with near certainty. Jisung had looked at him with shy eyes—almost sheepish. An unfairly heavy amount of disappointment washed over him.

“I would, but I’ve gotta be with Chan-hyung and Bin, remember?” Jisung scratches the side of his neck like this is supposed to be a problem, but Minho does not see it. “And…our lifestyles really won’t work out…”

“I’d make it work,” he had answered honestly. And he would. He would’ve, for Jisung, but Jisung hadn’t seemed to agree. Minho had watched the other tilt his head to the side and suck his cheek. It stung, a bit. And if Jisung were anyone other than himself, Minho would get upset.

Maybe he should’ve gotten upset.

Minho watches Seungmin, Jeongin and Felix bundle up with controllers in their hands, faces locked onto the newly set-up television with hunger and wrath in their eyes.

Jisung had eventually shrugged, which would seem uncommitted to the average person, but Minho was not the average person. He had noticed the faint flush on Jisung’s face. He had noticed his trembling hands and avoidant gaze. Minho knew Jisung. That is why he could never be upset. “Hyunjin wants to room with us. He’s already talked to Chan and everything.”

Bested by the best. Minho had supposed it made sense that Hyunjin would one-up him in this, too. “Hyung?” Jisung had glanced at him nervously, as if he had anything to be nervous about. “That’s fine…right?” And where Minho would respond, Jisung kept speaking. “I mean, Hyunjin’s basically takin’ the fall for you. I would never want to let my dear hyung be woken up at three in the morning because one of us was craving deep-fried fish-flavoured ice cream. That is the sort of thing we’d get up to.” His face turned contemplative. “You know this.”

Minho does know this.

Minho also knows of Jisung’s three A.M. crises, pacings and panics. Chan’s spontaneous and uncontrollable bursts of motivation, Changbin’s similarly spontaneous urges to get outside and just run. Yes, surely the three of them only managed this far by being so similar. They could be nocturnal if the social laws of society did not insist otherwise.

He lets his gaze linger a little longer on the three before turning back towards the counter. Towards his family cookbook.

Bitterly, he had wondered if Hyunjin would be able to handle it all. It’s a stupid thought to have. Realistically, he knew, and knows, Hyunjin would do a better job than he ever could. Hyunjin’s love runs fluid—without shifts and ever constant. Minho is…not the same. He wouldn’t say so. He doesn’t think anyone would.

It irks him, sometimes, how easy Hyunjin is.

Minho hears Jeongin let out an indignant squawk while Felix roars a battle cry worthy of being in the game itself. He thinks, he would be much louder if he were on that couch, too. The thought passes quickly.

“Hyung?” Jisung’s eyes are the size of dinner plates—so, the usual. “It’s okay, right, hyung? I mean, Chan-hyung approved because then the dorm arrangements would make more sense. Y’know, I don’t think it’d end well if Hyunjin was with your three.”

What? His three?

“Wow, you’re terrible,” he hears Seungmin bark out a laugh and assumes the following yelp is because Jeongin hits him, or pinches him, or does something along those lines that is annoying and mildly painful but otherwise harmless, and Kim Seungmin is notoriously dramatic. “Okay, I’m sorry! I’m sorr—I said sorry! You’re not as bad as Lix, okay? How about that?”

“What?!”

His three. “So—So it gives Chan-hyung some peace of mind, yeah? Like…well, you know how the rest of us get compared to you two.” His three. His three.

“You’re right, Jisungie.” His three. “And Chan-hyung is right, too.” Minho smiles easily, so Jisung does as well. “It’s a shame we can’t be together, but hyung does have to take care of the maknaes, unless we want them blowing up the apartment.” He thinks, ironically, Jisung would be more likely to do that than the (his) three. He isn’t going to bring that up, though.

“Right!” Jisung grins—his teeth shine, “Right. That’s exactly right.”

“I am always right,” Minho says, because that is something he would say. He shoves all other viscous emotions down again and clicks his tongue. “You just happen to say the same things as me.”

Jisung is all whiny, and it is cute, and Minho is grateful for someone who understands him. “What—hey, hyung! I said it first!”

Looking back on it, Minho had been playing with fire. Looking back on it, there was nothing he could do. He nods to himself, because the reasoning is sound. There was nothing he could do, so Minho did nothing.

“One more. Just one more match.”

“I am finna cook your ass, fam.”

“What?”

Minho pulls open one of the kitchen drawers and slides his cookbook in. He likes how it fills its space from the bottom of the drawer until the top of it. He likes that it belongs here. He likes that, all things considered, this kitchen is his and his things are in it.

He runs his fingers along the smooth marble countertop—his, as well. This is also his. This is where he will chop meat and vegetables and knead dough and blend fruits. This is his space and he is glad for it. The other three (his three) seldom cook. Jeongin will happily eat whatever Minho makes and Seungmin, the peculiar oddity that he is, will solely use his precious, unnecessarily expensive coffee machine. Yongbok is really the only one who will potentially use this space to bake, and if Minho thinks about it, he rarely sees the younger one in the kitchen anymore.

“Agh.”

“I cooked your ass, Yongbok. L. It is giving L. L Bozo. No cap.”

“Hyung. Stop.”

“God, Seungmin. Have you been studying these?”

Minho thinks, he needs to fill these drawers up. He needs this space to be used, and to be used by the things he owns. With spoons and napkins and large ceramic bowls. The fridge as well, should be properly stocked because there are four of them and Minho will truly be damned if anyone goes starving in his presence, because Chan entrusted his three with him and he will not put that trust to waste, because he likes cooking and his three-generation cookbook is not about to collect dust in his drawer. Because there are many reasons that are all logical, and Minho feels good. This is a good plan, a good idea. It is good.

Minho’s good. He’s a good cook, a good member, a good hyung. He glances at his phone that tells him it is almost noon, and Minho strides over to where his three are engaging in digital mortal combat. Because it seems like Seungmin is winning and Minho’s main purpose is to never let Kim Seungmin win, he steps in front of the TV with a broad stance. As expected, they groan and wail petulantly like the small, sniveling dongsaengs they are. Minho smiles despite himself.

“Hyung,” Jeongin whines. Seungmin and Felix simply stare up at him owlishly, but Minho will not be susceptible to their whims today. It brings him a shrill sort of satisfaction when they obediently set their remotes down and pout at him.

“Get up,” he orders, laughing a bit when they continue to stare bug-eyed at him. “We’re going grocery shopping. Unless…you don’t want to eat hyung’s homemade lunch?”

That gets them up and moving. Jeongin, in true Jeongin-fashion, nearly takes the couch and the other two with him. Minho can only grin evilly as he watches the younger drag a disgruntled Felix to the front door, while calling behind him, Hyung, can we have your Beef Wellington? Please, hyung? Please? He always knew Jeongin was his favourite.

Kim Seungmin is frowning at him. He really does look like a pathetic dog.

“You did that on purpose,” Seungmin whines, “I was going to win and you stepped in front of the TV.”

“I did no such thing,” Minho denies, letting the extra rush of fondness gather in his chest. He will allow it this time, because he is in a good mood.

“You did! You meanie hyung.”

“I am no such thing,” Minho repeats, trying and failing to stifle his laugh. Poor, poor Seungmin. The other grumbles behind him but follows anyway, and the shrill feeling from before returns. “Now be quick, before Innie-ah drives to the store without us.”

interlude.

feat.

lee minho — the dog — the open-hearted, kindmind, respectable hwang hyunjin — a second-hand nightstand.

“Are you going out, hyung?” Hyunjin calls from where he’s slumped over the cuties’ couch. It’s warm and blankets are waterfalling off the sides. It’s been lived on. Hyunjin wistfully wishes his dorm had such a piece of art.

“Yep,” Minho strains back from where he’s bent over, tying his shoelaces. “I saw a nightstand on the side of the road yesterday—totally clean and scratchless. The homeowners must be stupid to throw away something perfectly usable.” He pauses, then adds, “And nice-looking.”

Hyunjin squints at him. He has no idea what half of that sentence means, but it seems like hyung is having fun, so Hyunjin is happy, too.

“He’s been getting things off the street that other houses have been throwing out,” Seungmin explains patiently. Hyunjin’s heart seems to pulse louder, even. He wants to sigh. It’s been years since they’ve met and Hyunjin still can’t act normal around Kim Seungmin. This is clearly Seungmin’s fault. He must be some sort of extraterrestrial creature sent from the alien gods to woo humans like Hyunjin and abduct him to Mars. Or Jupiter. Or whatever. Okay, Hyunjin, pay attention. The huzz is speaking. (He thinks that’s what that means. Felix and Jisung can be outrageously slangy sometimes.)

Seungmin gestures to a nearby shelf with his thumb. It’s clean and simple, probably from IKEA if Hyunjin had to guess. “Hyung got that off the street, too. I keep telling him we can just buy the damn things if he wants them but—”

“Kim Seungmin simply does not understand the superior method of utilising the resources available to you.” Minho interrupts. Hyunjin, of course, must laugh, because his hyung is funny and says funny things (and, anything at the expense of Seungmin is going to make him cackle like a hyena. Hence, Minho is often making Hyunjin’s side hurt from laughing too hard).

Seungmin rolls his eyes and sinks deeper into the couch with a sigh. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Well, I’ll be heading off, then.” Minho fiddles with his keys. “I hope the dog doesn’t give you too much trouble, Hyunjinnie.”

Seungmin silently mocks him as he leaves, and Hyunjin can only laugh harder. He loves them. He wouldn’t trade them for anything. He wonders how such people can even exist. How does someone grow up to become like Kim Seungmin? How does someone live in such a way to become like Lee Minho? It’s a mystery! Hyunjin hit gold with his members (or, was it Chan? Is Hyunjin the gold? Well, that can’t be right). They are truly the most unique and unrivaled humans to ever exist.

“He’s mean to me, Hyune,” Seungmin whines, and rolls down on the couch until his face is buried in one of the ten pillows surrounding him. “So mean.”

Hyunjin is so endeared, and he shows it by poking Seungmin’s left buttcheek. “He loves you.”

“Noo…” Seungmin’s socked foot comes around to kick weakly at his chest, which shakes again with laughter, “The other day…” His voice is muffled and sounds comically pouty, “The other day, the powerboard in my room stopped working—very tragic, I know. And then…I was complaining to Innie, right?” He accentuates his distress with a heavy sigh. Hyunjin begins to giggle again. “I swear, Minho-hyung strides out of the bathroom—bathrobe and face mask and everything—and, Hyunjin, he pulls a brand new powerboard out of his ass! Stop laughing, I’m being serious!” Seungmin’s feet start swim-kicking in Hyunjin’s lap—oh, this is horrible. Hyunjin, stop laughing. This is horrible.

“What point are you trying to make?” Hyunjin tries to sound serious. He can sound serious for two seconds. Do not laugh at Kim Seungmin’s small misfortunes that don’t sound like small misfortunes. “It just looks like hyung is looking out for you.”

“No, he clearly broke my original powerboard to toy with me!” Seungmin cries, and, of course he would come to this conclusion. Hold it in, Hyunjin. You cannot laugh yet. “He definitely crept all the way to my side of the room with his hyper-realistic cat dexterity. I bet he was laughing while he was doing it, too. Ha ha, Minho-hyung says, as he pours water on my poor, defenceless, powerboard. Ha ha. Kim Seungmin will never see this coming.”

“Stop it!” Despite his best efforts, Hyunjin bursts into laughter. Sue him, Seungmin is hilarious. He’s the funniest guy ever. Surely he must know how silly he sounds sometimes.

“Why are you still laughing?!” Seungmin mopes, but even his shoulders and voice are beginning to tremble. “Agh, you guys are so mean to me. Innie was laughing, too.” He seems to try and hit Hyunjin by straining his arm back but just ends up patting a pillow instead. “You guys are the ones fueling Minho-hyung, you know! He sees you all tittering and chortling over my suffering and that’s why he keeps doing things like this!”

“It doesn’t—Hah! It doesn't gravely wound you, does it?”

“See!” Seungmin is practically wailing at this point, like a dog locked out in the backyard. “You didn’t even deny it!”

Hyunjin cannot help the genuine cackle that rips out of his throat, or the rush of warmth in his chest. “I would be a liar!”

This is not the answer Seungmin supposedly wants, because he groans in agony, rolls all the way to the floor with a thud and stares up at Hyunjin with wounded, pitiful eyes. They call him the dramatic one when this guy is right here. Hello? Stereotypical-media-chan? Kim Seungmin is not as nonchalant as he seems. Chan’s ass is more aloof than Seungmin is when Minho’s involved.

“Oh…” Hyunjin sighs once his laughter calms down, “You’re funny, Min. You’re really funny. Hyung only teases you so much because he likes you, y’know? And besides, even if he did break your powerboard, he gave you a new one, didn’t he?”

Seungmin also does not seem to like this answer, because he rolls his face once again into the ground and a series of incoherent, strange noises erupt from the back of his throat. Hyunjin is too tired from laughing so hard to laugh again, but he would absolutely if he had the energy. He pokes Seungmin’s ass with his foot instead. “Lighten up. For the sake of the team and Minho-hyung’s joy, you should take it in stride. Think of the bigger picture, Min. What if hyung stops making us beef wellington because Kim Seungmin winges too much and is grateful too little!?” It's an honest, realistic thought. Hyunjin near shudders at it.

“One day, I will snap, and the world will split in half,” Seungmin warns ominously, the effect being ruined by his smushed face. Hyunjin rolls his eyes.

“Sure, Kim Seungmin. Sure.”

2. Listen to your friends at school complain about their cruel siblings and their overbearing parents. Wish you had the room they have to share, the couches they curl up on and the family dinners they’re forced to go to. Wish you could be grounded, wish you could find the clothes you wore last week, wish you weren’t afraid to shower because that spider in the vent still hadn’t gone away. At least the food is good, and you eat well. Even if you’re slowly building up debt for it.

Minho cannot remember when he began to resent his mother. His father, too, he supposes, but father was never there long enough for Minho to have any pulsing feeling of him. At most, he pitied the old man. He pitied him and found him disgusting, actually. Father was too passive, he was too lenient and he used to simply lie down and take whatever mother threw at him. A plate, a flower pot, her fist.

He was everything Minho was expected to be. He is everything Minho detests to become. There is the obvious aversion to becoming anything like his mother, but Minho’s not stupid. He knows there’s a chance he’ll be like her—or already is like her—eventually. That, he will have to accept.

As long as he can do anything about it, though, Minho will never be anything like that coward of his father. He would rather eat roaches and lick dogshit off of the tile than succumb to that low level of docility. Father, stop hiding in the bathroom and block the tin can being hurled at me. Father, stop looking down at your food and defend me when mother calls me useless. Father, wake up and tell mother to see a therapist. Father, my arm is bruised. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. Why won’t you do anything?

“Go away,” Minho wails, curling in on himself on the chair too big for him because there is nowhere to run. No place to hide under even with his small size. “Go away!”

A piece of a vase hurtles at his head, clanging on the plastic bin he presses his back to. It startles Minho, and with awful clarity he can taste the snot on his lips and feel the intense pressure in his nose and head. His tears drip and soak the sleeves he desperately wipes his cheeks with. He breathes harshly through his mouth. This is disgusting.

This is humiliating. This is weakness.

“Brat.” Mother utters coldly. He doesn't dare look at her face, and against everything in him, Minho sobs harder. “You stupid, useless child—”

“Stop—”

She throws another shard and Minho flinches—he yells as it just barely misses his shoulder. Immediately, his body screams for him to run, but he does not—cannot—move. Minho has always been more scared of Mother than the things she has thrown at him.

“I sacrifice everything for you, and you pay me back with this?!” Her voice is shrill and shrieking—it rings sharp in his head and squeezes the insides of his face. He wants to say something, anything that will get her to understand. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. If you’d just told me to do something, I’d do it. I can’t read your mind. I can’t read your mind. I can’t read your mind—If you wanted a slave then why did you get a child instead?!’

The words are lodged in his throat.

“You never clean up—” But Mother throws a fit when he puts things in the wrong places. “Look around you! Look at all this mess!” Mother put the mess there. “And all I have are these two hands to do everything because I have two useless children—” Father is not a child. Minho is. “—who laze about all day doing nothing!” Say something, Minho. Tell her she did this to herself. Tell her it’s her own fault there are too many things and nowhere to put it all. Tell her the boxes of expired food in the kitchen and the wardrobes with termites need to be thrown away, but Minho can’t because he’s just a kid. And Dad can’t because Mother refuses to throw anything out. How can you tell us to clean when you think nothing is dirty? Say it, Minho. Say. It.

His chest pounds. And his head, and his hands. He breathes as silently as he can through his mouth, curling his fists in his lap until his fingernails break the skin beneath them.

“Nothing to say, huh?” Mother stares down at him. His insides feel as though they are boiling and vibrating—an angry pot on the stove. He wants to grab the shard off of the floor and slit her mouth. Maybe her throat. He can’t go to prison at this age. Maybe if he just— “All you can do is look at me with that ugly face.” He wonders if he should go for her eyes. “All you do is sit there, useless—” He is not. “—and ugly.” He is not. She turns to walk away. Minho thinks, rebelliously, fuck yeah. Go the fuck away. “You are an idiot. I have an idiot child.” Maybe she does. Maybe Minho’s a fucking idiot.

He sits there after she leaves and the silence feels like ice on a burn. He spends minutes hugging his knees and rubbing at the goosebumps that line his arms. He blinks his tears away and tries to calm his squeezing chest to no avail. Then, like every other time, he regrets not saying anything. Like a constant sporting match, maybe if he’d just done something different to turn the tide. Maybe if he’d just screamed at her back. Maybe if he was the one screaming for once.

Minho just hopes he’ll become numb after a while. That’s how Dad became Dad, right? The constant yelling and lecturing and the ‘I expect you to reply with what I want, but you are also not allowed to talk back’. He wants to become a brick wall. Father never says anything, but Minho can see it. Whenever Mother’s yelling at him and his old man is there, in his eyes there is the look that says ‘just take it’. Just take it, Minho. Just take it.

One day, he will. He’ll get used to it one day.

His heart wants otherwise. It’s not fair. He’s a kid! He’s her child. He’s his son. It’s not fair. Why him? Why does he have to be the ball mother squeezes. It’s not fair. Sometimes, he fantasises pouring cleaner agent in Mother’s coffee in the morning before he’s off to school, and when he gets home she’ll be gone. Sometimes, he fantasises receiving officers at his door to tell him there’s been an incident. Sometimes, he fantasises going to someone for help. Sometimes, he fantasises Mother in jail.

Sometimes, he fantasises being beaten to the ground. Mother looming over her with an intense gaze, a kitchen knife in her hand. He’ll die, and she’ll be locked away forever. He’ll die, and maybe, perhaps, if Minho is feeling delusional enough, she’ll cry about it. And the thought feels good, but it feels far. It feels good, and that good feeling is horrible.

He’s too young to be anything but useless, and he’s too old to have these fantasies without the shameful moral sense coming with it. The most frequent fantasy he fantasises is considerably more tame, he’d suppose. Minho will scream and yell every little and big thing he’s ever-never said to Mother, and she’ll stand there and take it. He just screams, and screams, just like her, and it is never-ending, just like her.

It’s okay, Minho tells himself, Everyone goes through this. It’s okay.

The radio plays some catchy country song as he drives down the road. Minho can practically feel the presence of the nightstand behind him, taking up the backseats. It’s wooden and stained with some sort of varnish that sticks with tack. It’s cute, he thinks. A little antique and fancy, and the previous owners truly were idiots. He could sand the stain off, paint if white and make it shiny. He could put it under the bathroom counter, or use it as extra counter space for the kitchen. There is an intended use and then there is an unconventional use for everything, but they are uses all the same and Minho was taught to use everything available to him. So he will.

Minho blinks down at the road in front of him. He chews his lip at the familiar voice in his head. It sounds like Father—what he remembers of Father, and Father tells him he is ‘just like her’. “You have her eyes and her hair colour, but my nose and my lips. You are our child.”

3. Be humiliated by your messy hair and second-hand uniform, four sizes too big. Do humiliating things—hit your friends when they embarrass you, and walk in shame to your seat as everybody stares holes into you because you are late. Go through the humiliating process of learning what is socially acceptable and what is not. Be a humiliating student and child, and look back on it to tell yourself that it was all for the growth of your character.

Minho decides that rooming with Seungmin is not the worst thing that could ever happen to him. He’s done it once, he can do it again. As much as he hates to admit it, they are pretty similar. They both opted for bunk beds so they could fit their own desks underneath, and have a bigger wardrobe. He should joke about it.

“So the dog does know how to maximise space,” Minho singsongs and laughs when the dog in question glares at him. Minho sets down one of his boxes with a heaved sigh. He has no idea what’s in this thing.

Seungmin has somehow already unpacked everything that is his and is reclined on his desk chair, phone in hand and feet up on the table because he is uncouth. “Well,” Minho watches the other tilt his head back to get a better look at him, “I’m sure hyung needs the space more than I do. I’m being considerate, you know.”

“No, I’m Lee Know,” Minho huffs back, “And these are all the essential items that we will absolutely need because my little dongsaengs simply do not know enough about the world to come prepared for it.”

“You’re packing for wartime.” Seungmin says, which Minho can’t help but roll his eyes at. Seungmin has to be the most dramatic person on the planet. This is not an incredible amount of things. He’s seen what an incredible amount of things looks like. See, Seungmin just doesn’t know enough.

Minho’s knees crack as he drops the last box under the ladder of his bed and glares at Seungmin before he can even form the thought of teasing. The dog practically deflates under his gaze.

“I cannot believe I agreed to room with you,” Seungmin moans, again, dramatically. “This is going to be hell! I’m going to be tormented and tortured even in my sleep!” Minho throws a small pillow at him. “Agh! See, it’s already starting. I’m already being attacked—”

“Be quiet, Kim Seungmin, you dramatic baby.”

“I am not a baby—”

“Then stop acting like one.”

Seungmin’s face contorts petulantly at that. Minho grins. Victory is his, this time. (All of the time, actually, because he is superior.)

“Why do you even have so many boxes?” Seungmin asks. He’s so embarrassed that he needs to change the subject! This is hilarious. Minho schools his face neutral. He must hold onto the last shred of indifference he has left.

“I just told you, stupid.” Minho rolls his eyes. He bends down to pick another up, and he thinks his voice strains as he does so. “They’re all items I, as hyung, must burden myself with—”

“Oh come on, hyung,” Seungmin has swiveled on his chair, hugging the backrest and swinging his feet to get closer. He looks very akin to a toddler now. “They can’t all be for us.” He waves his arm around with no direction. Minho has no idea what he’s trying to say. “Are you actually packing for war? You can be honest with me, hyung. I won’t tell anyone of your paranoia, or secrets, or obnoxious amounts of boxes. It’s okay, you can be weird with me, hyung.”

“What are you even talking about?” Minho shakes his head. Seungmin says and is complete nonsense sometimes. This is not that many boxes—didn’t they just talk about this?! His eye twitches. “You are very dramatic today. If my unpacking bothers His Highness so much, there is an empty living room just down the hall.”

Seungmin huffs, petulant again, but doesn’t say anything which means Minho must’ve gotten it spot on. See, he knows his members well.

The dog rises from his unconventional sitting position and stretches with a loud groan. “Fine, fine, hyung. You don’t have to tell me. I’m gonna go bother Lix and Innie, then. Are you making lunch?”

“Leave me to my peace, Kim Seungmin,” Minho laughs,” And maybe I will.” He thinks Seungmin smiles as he leaves.

Minho steps into Seungmin’s side of the room to look at his. The box he holds in his arms weighs heavy, and it seems this jigsaw puzzle has an extra piece. No matter. He will shove it in the gap under his ladder and come back to it when he can.

He should get more storage. There’s space on the walls for a shelf or two. Even under his bed, he could install a cabinet. Yeah, yeah, okay. In his head, Minho makes a reminder for himself: find storage. It shouldn’t be that hard to find something on sale in all those furniture stores. He’s not really sure how it happened last time, because he let the other three choose all the furniture as he looked over their shoulder and pointed at whatever he thought looked good, but it seemed simple enough. He’ll be fine.

The only, and arguably big difference, is that he cannot use the company’s money for non-essentials. If he wants extra storage, he’ll have to buy it himself.

Something in him itches. He steps back and stares at his space again. His space. His space. It looks good, and Minho likes it. He likes the pretty, empty desk. He likes the office chair he picked out. He likes the metal bedframe and the handle-less closet with a mirror door. He likes the plastic storage containers in said closet, out of said closet, stacked neatly in the spaces that allow it. He even likes the unpacked boxes that are too, stacked neatly on top of each other. Even if they look conventionally ugly, all Minho sees is how he has maximised the space given to him. It sends a hot, electrifying feeling from his stomach to his chest.

He pictures a shelf nailed to the wall, a bookcase next to his desk, a bigger desk, more pillows, more containers. More things that are his, all his. Just his. The space looks good now, and it will look better with more of his things in it.

Minho’s fingers buzz, and itch. He rubs at his cheeks and feels the warmth spreading under them. This is good. This is what he had been fighting for. This is why he never looked back.

(“Wait here, Min,” Mother tells him, and then she’s out of the car. Minho has to turn his body around to watch as she heaves up what seems to be a large cabinet that just barely fits in the back of their van.

“The neighbours threw it out,” She says, when she feels his curious eyes on her. “It’s in perfect condition, and can be used in our home for more storage. I could sand it, or paint it. Brand new, don’t you think?”

“They were pretty stupid.”)

“Yah, it was far but it was so worth it, don’t you think, hyung?” Changbin sighs so happily, Minho wants to laugh, and then he does, when the other winks in a vague direction not pointed at Minho at all. “Thanks for treating me. The next one is on my card.”

“No need, Seo Changbin,” Minho waves the air. It’s been roughly five months since Minho woke up in the same house as Changbin. He has to admit, only to himself, that he had missed going out for breakfast when the other had felt the early and incessant need to go outside. Of course, Minho’s nothing but a man of compromise. He is not going out for a run at seven in the morning after a six hour practice the night before—that ended with all of them sleeping on the floor of Chan’s bedroom because nobody could be fucked to get into their own beds—when there is a perfectly good company car available to him. “You’ll repay me one day, somehow, when I most need it.”

“That is so ominous. You are so ominous.” Changbin takes his hand off the wheel to bat blindly at Minho. He fails to land a hit, as expected. “Why are you so ominous, hyung?” And now he’s just saying the word for the sake of it. “Ominous. Ominous, ominous, ominous. Ominous Lee Know-hyung ominously ominums ominous ominouses.” What the fuck is this guy saying. Minho loves him. Unfortunately.

“Turn that into a lyric, won’t you,” Minho huffs.

“I might!” He might.

They pass a house that looks way too grand for the street they are in. Changbin gapes at it and nearly swerves into a garbage bin trying to get Minho to look at it. “Hyung, do you see that? Three stories and a pond in the front yard—wow. Look, hyung. Look—”

“I’m looking,” Minho says, not looking at all.

And then Changbin adds, “They must be rich. Look at those nice chairs they’ve put on the curb.”

Minho swivels in his seat. “What? Pull over.” Changbin’s head snaps to him with confusion painted on his face, but he obeys. See, this is why Minho likes Changbin. He does, and asks later.

The car stops right in front of the curb. Minho can see the furniture closer up and his eyes shine at the quality. A good find. A very good find.

The chairs are actually metal barstools with red fabric cushions and farmhouse-styled backrests. They are cute. They will look perfect in his kitchen. He can already imagine having his three sit on them while he makes them breakfast, eagerly pointing at his ingredients and trying to sneak ‘taste tests’ behind his back.

“We are taking them,” Minho declares. His heart surges when Changbin just shrugs and nods in response, already getting himself out of the car to help carry them into the back. Minho thinks, he feels validated and he is right to feel so. Changbin is the sort of person he would want validation from. Someone so carefree and confident—yes, he would like the feeling of Changbin telling him that he’s done well.

“They’re nice chairs, hyung.” Changbin nods at him, once they’ve finished loading the back. “And they’re all yours, now!”

Changbin always knows what to say, doesn’t he? Minho admires him for that—admires him for everything else, too.

“It is mine.” Minho nods back, and the drive home is good.

He forgets that the space where the stools were supposed to go, are occupied by boxes of food because Minho had gone shopping the day earlier. He has to squeeze them to one side of the counter, and it looks a little awkward but they will have to make do for now.

Seungmin scrunches his face when he sees how cramped the walkway has become, but Felix and Jeongin immediately rip open a box and start chugging whatever juice was in it. The boxes will run out, eventually. Minho just tells himself he shouldn't shop for a while until then.

He forgets, when he sees a bakery having an end-of-day-sale. He buys a dozen pastries for his three, and lets Jisung have one after he whines for an hour. The boxes stay collecting dust and eating their kitchen space. Minho is not too oblivious. He does notice Seungmin’s uncomfortable glances, he just doesn't think they're worth much. It is Minho’s things, and Minho’s kitchen, after all. It's not like Seungmin is in there for anything other than making coffee.

Minho can do what he wants. He’s earned it.

X. “I mean, I just do it because it feels good, I think? I like the wind in my face, I like the burn in my lungs, I like the sweat that sticks my pants to my thighs. It just works for me. The others have their ways to let steam off. Jeongin has his prayers, Jisung has his video games, ████ has…well, he’s really put together. I don’t think anything could knock him down. I think we all try to be a bit like him, actually. I mean, that’s why I’m doing this.”

“Minho-hyung!” Junyoung comes up and bumps his shoulder—does this guy know the concept of personal space? “I heard you’ve caught the eye of Bang Chan! The Bang Chan!” The??

Minho rolls his eyes and attempts to shake the other off. This guy believes anything. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“No, I’ve heard it too!” Gyehoon nods, laughing a little. What. “You’re a beast, hyung! And you’ve only been here for a week!”

Minho just sighs and lets them drag him to the cafeteria. They’re on about nonsense, probably. Minho’s heard of ‘The’ Bang Chan, the ever elusive, executive-adjacent, mysterious and—whatever else the other trainees call him, like he is some ancient, well-feared and never defeated final boss. Considering he is allegedly in charge of the upcoming boy group that’s set to debut next year, Minho supposes such titles are not completely held in fantasy.

(“I mean, I didn’t mind it too much,” Chan will say, many years later. “I sounded like a really cool Genshin boss, right?”

“Hyung, for the last time, you cannot cosplay that Wri-oh-thess-lay character from Genshin Impact for your birthday livestream. Think about the copyrights, or whatever the higher-ups said.”

“We also really don’t need to push the alpha wolf agenda even more, I think.”

“Hey! I wasn’t going to suggest it….”)

He’s never met the guy, nor seen him in person. Probably because a week-old trainee and a seven-year trainee would never be put in the same training program, professional dancer or not.

The recruiter’s words still ring fresh in his head. It was an ultimatum, though she hadn’t said that. Learn all forty basic dances by the next evaluation, or lose your chance to debut. This was his only chance. None of the other companies wanted him, and by the time another group would be ready to debut in JYPE, he’d be over twenty.

He supposes he’s not the only one. There are at least fifteen other trainees his age, in this building, that he knows of. He’s competing against people who have trained far longer to debut. He’s in JYPE for crying out loud—he’s in that one percent who make it into training. And if he is accepted into the lineup of the upcoming group, he’ll be a part of the one percent of the one percent that are gunning for the top. The thought almost makes him laugh. Where he is right now, it sounds like a pipe dream. All of it does.

The next evaluation is in a week. The odds are not in his favour.

“Junyoung-ah and I are gonna sit with our friends, so we’re leaving you here,” Gyehoon declares. Minho wants to pinch his cheeks. “Maybe the next time we see you, you’ll be conversing with ‘The’ Chan-hyung!”

“Hey,” Junyoung suddenly asks, “Do you think we’ll be able to converse with Chan-ssi?”

“No, Jun, we’re too young for that. Minho-hyung is much older! Too old to be talking with us! He should be talking with Chan-hyung instead!”

“Yah, respect your elders, brats!” Minho calls after them and sighs as their laughter fades down the halls. Young children can be so tiring sometimes. He wonders what they’re even doing here, training for idol life, instead of…children things, but he supposes he’s not one to judge.

“Minho-hyung?” Minho swivels around. It’s Seungmin. “Oh, there you are. C’mon, let’s eat!” The other grabs his arm and drags him—why is he being pulled everywhere?—to a nearby table with a bunch of random trainees already sitting. When did Kim Seungmin get so many friends? Minho assumes they’re his friends. Seungmin does not seem like the type to sit down with unknown strangers.

“I got you a tray already.” Seungmin pulls him down on the single empty chair, and Minho thinks the movement makes his chest ache. “I didn’t know whether you’d prefer the lettuce or spinach but I got you the spinach. You seem like a spinach guy.”

“What does that even—whatever, I’m taking that as a compliment.” Minho hopes on the life of the CEO himself that his ears aren’t turning red as Seungmin laughs at him. He shoves a piece of spinach in his mouth to act busy. It is pretty good. Minho could probably do better, though.

“Oh, Minho-hyung!” One of the trainees gasps, and Minho looks up at him. He thinks he hums in recognition. It’s Jisung, someone Minho met on his third day in the building. He had looked pretty awkward back then, and so had Minho. In his head, Jisung is an ally simply because of this.

(“Oh.” Minho says. He really thought this bathroom would be empty so he could burst into tears, throw a pity party, question why he even came here, and probably kick a wall to feel better about himself. It looks like he wasn’t the only one with the idea.

“Oh.” The other trainee(?) says back. He looks young, from the very small glimpse of his face that Minho can see—most of it is hidden behind a beanie, a hood, and eye-covering hair. The hair in question and the surrounding fabrics seem wet from the presumed water splashed on it. “Hello.”

“Hello,” Minho replies. He hopes the other will finish quickly and leave. Should he turn around? He should turn around. He is probably making this situation ten times more uncomfortable just facing in this stranger’s direction. Maybe he should leave? That would probably be rude, though, considering he was the one who walked in—

“Are you new here?” The boy suddenly asks before Minho can decide the next appropriate course of action. He seems to flounder a little, pulling at his sleeves before adding, “I’ve just, uh, never seen you before.”

Minho decides he likes this guy. He’s funny, and gets straight to the point, and also seems too worried about his own awkwardness to care about Minho’s.

“Yes. I’m new. Call me Minho.”

“...Hi, Minho-ssi. I’m Jisung.”)

“Han Jisung-ssi,” Minho decides to say, smirking when the other gapes at him, eyes comically wide. Shit, this guy is really funny.

“How did you find my full name!?”

“The same way you figured out I am your hyung.” The roster sheets, because they’re in the same dance class. Though before yesterday, Minho hadn’t exactly been observant enough to realise this.

Jisung makes an O shape with his mouth and Seungmin leans forward, eyes sparkling with intrigue. Minho doesn’t know if it’s just these two or if everyone in JYPE can get their eyes shining like a damn star. A rite of passage, maybe? “You know each other?”

“We met in one of the bathrooms,” Minho shrugs, at the same time Jisung nervously laughs, “Hyung had honestly caught me at a bad time.”

“What,” One of the trainees speaks up and holy shit, his face must’ve been kissed by God Himself, “Were you constipated, or something?”

“Hwang Hyunjin, I will shove you down the toilet.”

“Oh, so you can shove me down but not—”

“Shut up!”

“Hwang Hyunjin,” Minho sounds the syllables out, while laughter surrounds him. It’s a pretty name. Very…celebrity-esque.

“Oh!” Hwang Hyunjin, “You don’t know me—you don’t know many of us.” He bows slightly at the table, “I’m sorry. Guys, let’s introduce ourselves.”

Minho is not going to say that he really hadn’t registered the presence of everyone else because he really hadn’t wanted them to register his, and instead nods in silence. One of them, skinny with a sharp chin and a cap sliding off his hair, waves and grins a white smile. Minho thinks his happiness does not match the dark circles under his eyes. “Hey, I’m Changbin.”

“Minho.” Minho decides he is cute, maybe one of the more friendly ones on the table considering everyone else’s solemn and/or miserable faces. He wonders if he also looks like he’s about to cry, and tries to fix this with a sudden smile. Seungmin looks at him strangely.

“I’m Jeongin,” another voice chimes in. Minho’s eyes snap to him and nearly fall out. He’s not sure why he’s so shocked, because he’s met nine-year-olds in this building, but the boy he is staring at is just so…young. With braces and squishy cheeks. Minho feels his fingers buzz at the minimal food on his plate. “It’s nice to meet you Minho-ssi.” His smile is so bright. Minho is really beginning to believe the trainees here have to have some sort of captivating aura in order to join. That, or Seungmin only picks friends who are just as strange as him.

“Call me hyung,” Minho finds himself saying. He is not sure what about Jeongin makes him feel so…maternal, but the feeling is there. Jeongin smiles again, a little wider this time, if that was even possible. He is very cute.

Wait, focus. Minho, you are in a very open area and actively engaging in social interaction. This is not the time to daydream. He glances around the table. There are three of them left that he has not yet been introduced to. One guy in particular looks very broody, he’s taking his time with his meal and doesn’t look curious about Minho at all.

Jisung, who is sitting next to Mysterious Brooding Man, catches Minho’s eye and seems to almost sling an arm around said man before deciding against it. “This is Chan-hyung,” he says instead, casually, “And over there is Felix-ssi and—”

Minho fails at concentrating after that. Chan. Bang Chan? No, that can’t be right. He blinks rapidly. No, the guy is still there. The supposed Bang Chan looks quite similar to how all the trainees (who’ve seen him) describe him. Handsome, with messy, curly hair and a big nose and lips. Minho blinks again. He has the exact foreboding aura that the rumours whisper about.

What exactly is the Bang Chan doing at this table? (If Minho thought for two seconds, he’d see that the guy was just having lunch like literally everybody else) Why does Jisung know him? Why does Seungmin know him? Minho wonders if he has landed himself in the right place at the right time, or if he's about to ruin his chances forever.

(“That was a very vulnerable moment for me, hyung. You can't laugh,” Minho says, as Chan laughs.

“It sounds like those highschool romance comics Jisung reads,” Changbin ponders, in which Minho throws a box of tissues at him. “Ow. See, hyung? You've got that ‘tsun-de-re meets popular guy’ trope all figured out.”

“Be careful with your dinner tonight.”)

“It’s nice to meet you,” The Bang Chan says, without looking at him, “Lee Minho-ssi.”

Holy shit, this guy might actually rip Minho’s ominous reputation right off him. Jisung’s eye shines brighter, so maybe it’s a good thing that Bang Chan knows his full government name for some reason (he knows the reason. It’s the exact same reason he gave to Jisung five minutes ago).

He feels only slightly bad that he zoned out of the other two trainees’ introductions. There’s no time to ask again, though, because half of them are standing up to leave. He waves politely and tries not to let it show that he still does not know one of their names. The table empties, Seungmin shoots him a goodbye smile. It is him, Hyunjin, Jisung and the trainee whom he thinks, if he reaches back into his mind, is called…

No. He can’t remember. He shovels more food in his mouth and hopes either Hyunjin or Jisung will say their name before he is forced to expose his very embarrassing impoliteness. Minho is sorry, trainee-whose-name-he-cannot-remember; Bang Chan was too captivating.

“So, hyung,” Hyunjin says, and Minho wants to fight against the use of such a friendly honorific but decides he won’t win against such a charming face, “When did you join the company? Can’t have been long, I think I would’ve recognised you.”

Minho looks down at his corn. “Roughly a week.” The dramatic gasp that follows this, sort of makes him want to laugh.

“He’s been here…one week,” Jisung says in English, to the unnamed trainee. Minho tilts his head. Is he a foreigner? Is Jisung flaunting his English-speaking skills? Minho can interpret the words well enough with his very minimal high-school language knowledge, so it’s not so bad.

“That’s cool,” the trainee replies. Then, in hesitant Korean, “Like it here?”

“Yes,” Minho nods. He thinks he feels endeared.

Later, he’ll finally find out that the guy’s name is Felix. It takes a while for the syllables to get comfortable on Minho’s tongue, but it’s not unwelcome.

He figures everything else out in the shower that night. Bang Chan has his eye on these seven individuals, Minho was just lucky enough that Seungmin dragged him over. He lets the bucket under him fill up and spill water on the tile.

He will have to work hard to make it in.

5. Beg for a doctor.

“Thanks, Innie.” Minho puffs out a breath when they finally lower the table to the floor. “Hey, your muscles have become firmer!” His dongsaeng is too strong, nowadays. Minho must feed him more meat to match his muscle.

“Hyung,” Jeongin whines, failing to lean away from Minho’s squeezes. “Anyway, it’s no problem. Where did you even get this from?” He runs his hand over the top. “It’s so smooth. So white and modern.”

Minho tries not to let the compliments get to him. “There was a sale at IKEA. It’s nice, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Jeongin laughs. “It’s like…an entry table? When we come home, we can put our things on it.”

“That’s right, Yennie-ah,” Minho coos. He moves his fingers from Jeongin’s arms to his cheeks. “So smart.” Jeongin yelps and makes a great escape to his room. Minho lets him go. His attention falls back on the boxes of items that he bought and figures he should probably put them away. Unless he wants to stress Seungmin out with an even bigger pile of boxes by their door (Yang Jeongin’s shoes and Lee Felix’s coconut milk cans are enough packages for a lifetime).

An industrial-styled lamp (it was on sale), six-pack root beer (it was also on sale), ten rolls of garbage bags (you’re not going to believe this), and three bottles of Shower Power Hair Shampoo + Vitamin C, 10x More Hydration because the store had a buy-one-get-two-free deal and Minho will be damned if he lets someone buy one 200mL bottle for thirty-thousand won when this exists. He’s thrifty, he will be proud of it.

There are also a couple books he bought from their local library’s book sale (five-hundred won each!). He isn’t sure who’s going to read them, but they will be read.

Minho hums a random tune as he slots the items in. Lamp on the desk, beer in the fridge, garbage bags in the drawer, so on and so forth. He decides to set the shampoo bottles down on their coffee table so the others can grab them as they please when they get home (or when Jeongin inevitably floats out of his room on the smell of the dinner Minho’s going to cook up). There is extra space on the shelf above their couch, so Minho expertly balances on the cushioning with his superior core strength and aligns the books upright.

They’re a little crimpy and discoloured from use, but Minho likes it. He steps back and sees the kitchen, and the living room. He likes it. He likes it. He likes his light on the desk he brought, the stools near the countertop that he found, the knowledge that his things are in those kitchen cabinets and drawers, and fridge. It feels good to be surrounded by things that are his. It feels good to have things.

Seungmin’s Daengmo stares at him, from where it is perched up on one of their cabinets. It’s one of the only personal items Seungmin owns and the plush is just as shabby as the books Minho had brought home.

It is menacing.

“Hush, you,” Minho whispers. A little crazed and feeling a little mad, because it is an inanimate object.

Daengmo only stares back, threateningly. Minho feels his back itch. Don’t be threatened by a dog. A fake one, at that. A dog. A dog with Seungmin’s aura all over it.

That’s all it is. “You’re just a dog.” That’s all it ever will be, and Minho has no business guarding himself or his things from it. He’s just not a dog person. He’s just not a Kim Seungmin person. That’s what it is.

Yet, his body itches with emotions he can't place. Minho tries to shake off the feeling, because it feels weird and it feels bad, and Minho was just feeling good about his space and his things in said space. He should continue to feel good, whether Seungmin's dog is present or not. Minho stalks over to the fridge and pulls the door open to his impressive supply of meat, vegetables, poultry and dairy and everything else. He spots the tub of Greek yoghurt he had bought four days ago and decides he will make curry.

The next weekend, Minho comes home with a grey tabby cat-plush from IKEA, and squeezes it right next to Daengmo on the shelf. Seungmin sees it and smiles at him. “Was it on sale?”

“No.” The admittance feels sour on his tongue, but Seungmin seems to smile a little wider, so maybe it’s not so bad.

“Daengmo and Nyangno,” Seungmin grins—Minho thinks this is the happiest he’s seen the other in the past month. His chest begins to ache, so he turns away to make ginger tea.

6. Fail.

“Minho-ah,” Mother grins at him, holding a suspiciously large crate. “Happy birthday!”

Minho runs up to her, blinking wide. He’s too short to reach the crate but Mother sets it down and he peers in.

A cat.

“A cat!” Minho cries, fumbling with the latch, “Mama, you got a cat!”

“Yes, Min-ah,” Mother bends down to help him, “You’re a big boy now, and I know you’ve always wanted a cat. See—I know these things. I remember.”

“Thank you.” Minho smiles. It’s adorable. Small and bean-shaped and wiggles around in his palm. It’s orange and Minho wants to put it in his mouth—but he is a big boy and knows he shouldn’t.

Minho names the kitten ‘Soonie’, because it’s a cute name for a cute animal. He forgets about the screaming matches in the kitchen and instead holds Soonie to his stomach and feeds him milk from a baby bottle. He doesn’t mind coming home as much as he used to because Soonie will always be there, on his bed or in his crate, meowing and wobbling up to Minho’s hands when he approaches.

He hides Soonie in his wardrobe drawer when Mother barges in to yell, in turn Soonie licks at his cheeks after Mother throws a plate at him and leaves him crying on his bedroom floor. The feelings are good. Even when they’re not, Minho feels like he can be happy forever so long as he has Soonie. Even when he trips on a pile of roller blinds and bruises his shoulder, and even when there is no room to put his plate on the dinner table so he has to eat sitting on a box of CDs.

Maybe it’s not okay that this house isn’t built for Soonie—has no room for him in it. But it doesn’t have any room for Minho, either. So at least they’re in this together.

Two years later, mother brings home Doongie and Soonie gets a friend. Minho knows they don’t have much space but the cats are growing, so he makes a makeshift pen in an empty storage container and hopes Mother will let them keep it. He dreams of being an idol—being more than what he is now—and having his own spot on the floor to sit. He graduates and then practices dance because by the grace of everything above, Mother thinks the exercise will be good for him. He’s allowed to dance with the world’s biggest K-pop group and the urge to audition grows stronger but nobody calls back.

He thinks, at least he has Mother’s support. At least Mother is confident in him enough to let him try. At least, despite everything, he has his cats and he can dance. It’s okay if he cries because Soonie and Doongie will be right there yowling at him for food.

And then JYP Entertainment calls him back. They let him go, and then they call him back again and Minho really wishes people just told him what they wanted instead of pulling him upwards and sideways to get their point across.

Minho’s only regret when moving into the dorms was that he had to leave Soonie and Doongie behind. And anxiety curdles in his stomach for his cats but he doesn’t think Mother would be harsh with them. She never did anything to them through the years—actually, she treated them well and let them sleep in her bed, so maybe it’ll be okay. Minho thinks he's glad Mother has something she loves. Cats are very loveable.

(How are the dorms? Father texts him, one night.

They’re good, Minho replies, Clean, even though I have to share with three others.

Are you happy?

Yeah.

Father never texts him again, after that. Mother yells over the phone for hours, saying he’s left her—gone and fucked all and disappeared. Minho doesn’t know what to feel. For a long while, he thinks he should be happy.)

A few months pass. A comeback comes and goes, and then another. A year goes by of Minho cooking elaborate, filling meals for his three, bringing home things that are his and being happy at the space he has created for himself. It’s become cozier. Minho thinks he may be able to live like this forever, even though he has to stare at Kim Seungmin smothering himself into his pillow before bed every night, and even when Jeongin eats five whole packs of Swedish candies and it makes him projectile vomit twice—once a direct hit into the toilet and the second into Seo Changbin’s face when the poor guy was trying to lead Innie to a trashcan.

Minho continues his leisurely routine of finding furniture on curbs and snagging sales at the mall when he can. He enjoys the small and big trinkets he finds, and the spaces he gets to put them in before anyone else. Seungmin now has two coffee machines thanks to Minho. Jeongin has a whole shoe rack and Yongbok has at least five different storage boxes for all his gaming equipment.

Of course, Minho probably should have considered that their apartment square meter size is not infinite and this space was going to run out eventually.

Like right now.

“Wow,” Yongbok gasps. Minho finds it cute that he even shifts his slouched couch-comfort position, “That container is filled! Where are you going to put it, hyung?”

“Nice, right?” Minho says instead, because he hasn’t exactly figured that out yet, “They were discontinuing an outrageous amount of beddings and comforters—” Pillows, blankets and sheets as well, “Perfect for Winter.” IKEA and their mass production. At least Minho can benefit from it—leave everything ‘out of season’ to him, no problem.

He glances around and warmth fills him at the sight of all his things—on the shelves and by the counter and on the counter and by the door—it’s overwhelming to remember how barren the place was just over a year ago, but it’s a good feeling, Minho thinks. This place has really become his. He wonders if he has finally achieved his dream, but feels the weight of the box in his hands and thinks, no, there is always room for improvement.

Maybe if he put the box on the kitchen countertop, there’d be space (he’d just have to find a place for all the things already on it), but that sounds like a fire hazard. He goes to stack the box on another pile of boxes but finds that the tower is already becoming too tall, and Minho has limits—he will not let an unsuspecting, oblivious dongsaeng be crushed by the items meant to sustain them. It would be a very ironic and sad way to go and Minho would surely be haunted for it.

He thinks, if they got rid of the couch, there’d be room for more things. He shakes that thought away, because he would definitely be met with objections, and the couch is well loved. Minho must work around the needs of his whiny three, but it’s okay because they are cute.

He then begins to haul the box to his and Seungmin’s room. Felix calls after him, saying they will watch a horror movie for the night and Minho does not care about that—whatever makes Yongbok happy, as always—but he does care about the other two non-Yongboks who will be clinging to his arms and ruining his blood circulation while it happens. Whatever, that is future-Minho’s problem to solve.

He already knew his side of the room would be filled. It is, with boxes and clothes alike. He is not sure where he’d put this aside from his bed, but he cannot really obstruct his place of sleeping.

He hopes Seungmin won’t mind. Minho makes sure to keep it out of his walking area, so really, he doesn’t have much to argue about.

“Don’t fret, Kim Seungmin,” Minho says when Seungmin frowns at the invasion in his space, “When Winter rolls around, this box will be empty and your beds will be warm. It’s temporary. Hyung promises.” Seungmin smiles thinly at that and just nods, and Minho will take Seungmin's distaste if it means he will be warm through Winter.

Minho forgets, when IKEA launches another end-of-season sale with beddings and comforters and pillows, sheets, blankets—he forgets. He forgets, but Seungmin says nothing, and nothing is done. Minho puts the new box on top of the old box and tells himself he’ll remember next time.

It’s future-Minho’s problem to solve. Future-Seungmin’s, and Jeongin’s and Felix’s too, maybe.

7. Replace the paws clawing at your pant leg for a bigger one, with shiny eyes and crooked teeth. It’ll bark nonsense that will ring in your ears and find its way to your lips. You hum the melody of the dog on the side of the road, you give it your tongue and do not ask for it back. The good thing about this dog is that you can spit at it and it will not answer. It’ll roll over and split its skin on the grooves of the concrete, but you have no paint to rub over its wounds, so you give it your teeth next. And then your lips and your jaw, in hopes that it will eat and be healed.

All significant things happen in this damn cafeteria. Kim Seungmin makes himself at home in front of Minho, with his green cabbage and steamed rice. He stretches his hand out like they’re at a business conference and Minho takes it because he thinks this boy with dog eyes and dog hair and a dog smile is ballsy to sit down with him and it wouldn’t hurt to make one friend in this place.

Seungmin follows him to his dance classes and laughs when Minho loses his mind over his two left feet, laughs more when Minho loses more mind over his own tone-deaf voice. He’s exaggerating, more so about Seungmin than himself, but exaggerating nonetheless. Seungmin sings well, dances well, too. Minho dances greatly and can sing, a little bit. They laugh at their stupid mistakes and intelligent accuracy. They laugh at their pipe dreams and hook pinky fingers in hopes that somehow, they debut together, so Minho can continue twisting Seungmin’s limbs in order and Seungmin can gaslight Minho into doing humiliating vocal warmups in the change rooms.

Minho accomplishes more in the first two weeks at JYPE than he ever has in his entire life. The ever elusive Bang Chan acknowledges his efforts and he’s sent into even more rigorous training but this time there are no private crying sessions in bathrooms, and no sneaking out of dance practice to sing instead. He’s got a flash in his face during the day and has to say goodnight into a microphone before heading home.

Mother fluctuates between two extremes: vehement disgusted horror at Minho's career choices and ill-founded pride at her ‘rising star’. Father continues to be a hermit, even when Mother's yelling and throwing sessions become harsher and more frequent, like she knows she doesn't have much time left.

Minho takes care of Soonie and Doongie and tries to ignore that he will have to choose between them and being an idol, and that he already has his answer. He works his jobs to pay off his trainee debt but ends up spending his savings on cat treats.

Whatever it takes to debut, he supposes.

He’s happy though, he thinks. He teaches Felix Korean and Felix teaches Minho English. He breaks Jisung and Hyunjin apart when they look like they’re about to start brawling in the middle of practice, and force-feeds Changbin as much meat and rice as he can before staff catch them. He learns that Chan is not final-boss-number-one but just extremely sleep-deprived and could probably make good use out of a smash room. He stops Jeongin from eating hard candy with his braces like an idiot and lets Seungmin steal his shampoo from the communal shower.

It feels good. Though the others tease him for his ability to make gourmet meals out of cafeteria food, he feels as though there is a space for him to belong. There is room for him and he likes the feeling.

The night he is eliminated, Minho leaves Seungmin crying in the rain while Jisung burns bullet holes into his backside.

“Hyung, c'mon,” Seungmin begs, and he tugs at Minho's sleeve. And he tugs at Minho's chest. “It's raining. Come on. Let's go back inside.”

Minho says nothing. He walks, and it is easy because the pavement slides him forward and Seungmin's grip isn’t really all that tight. It's like a sign, subtle and trying not to hurt Minho's feelings. He really does not belong.

Minho runs away.

Seungmin’s screams chase after him. The others, the company's, his Mother and Father's shadows, are in every corner he turns. In the pipes and in the grooves of the concrete. In the lamp lights and the rain, they tell him he does not belong.

“Useless.” He gets a hanger to the shoulder when he comes home. “Useless child. The younger ones can stay but you cannot?” He curls up with Soonie and Doongie and cries until there is a large sodden patch on his sheet.“Is this what you did? Spent all your time crying instead of training?!”

It feels cruel and crumbly when he gets the call back. It feels cheap and sour in his mouth. It feels mocking. Minho almost doesn't want it but he wants what he shouldn’t have even more.

It’s okay, though, because Minho comes back. It’s okay that things had to start over. It’s okay that whatever happened before debut, didn’t really happen. It’s okay. His things are still here even if they’re not his anymore.

He continues on, with things that are not his, in a place with no space for him. He coaxes Felix to eat and reads Jeongin a verse after he collapses from appendicitis. He presses down on Jisung’s bleeding leg and lets Changbin cry into his shoulder. He pretends Seungmin enjoys his presence and he pretends Chan isn’t watching him carefully.

“Hyung,” Hyunjin warbles over the phone, “He—I don’t know what happened, how he got like this or how we didn’t—”

“Breathe, Jin,” Minho says on autopilot. His first thought is, these things have to stop happening to us. The second thought is, Who is it now. “What happened? Is someone hurt? Are you hurt?

“Seungmin,” Hyunjin whispers. Hyunjin, with his white paint and paint-stained fingers. “Please come, hyung. They’re taking him to the hospital.” Hyunjin, with a pretty artist brush, whose feet touch the ocean floor and whose heart beats red in his chest. “I don’t know what to do.”

Minho feels his gut twist. He spends five minutes blindly, stupidly filling a container of fried eggs and rushing over to the hospital because he has no paint but he has this, and he hopes Seungmin will eat it and be healed.

The next week, Jeongin is in Minho’s room. His books are on Seungmin’s desk, his bag and his pile of clothes, his makeup and gaming equipment. His laptop with a bright green wallpaper, and his cologne, all where Seungmin’s things used to be. Minho stares, and is not sure how to stop.

“It was my idea, hyungie.” Jeongin shrugs. Minho doesn’t know how but he knows Jeongin’s lying. “I thought Seungmin-hyung could benefit from having Yongbok-hyung’s radiant aura surrounding him as he recovers from…being a stupid idiot.” He nods to himself, and then jolts. “Not saying you don’t have a radiant aura, hyung. It’s just that it’s Felix, and Felix has The radiant aura. Y’know?”

“I do know,” Minho agrees, even though his mouth feels sour. Wouldn’t Seungmin benefit more from his radiant (harsh, threatening) aura if he is aiming to recover? He blinks and lets his mouth stretch upwards, “Then I guess Jeonginnie will be the one graced with my radiant aura, hm?”

Jeongin laughs, and then screams, when Minho lunges to tickle his armpits. It’s okay.

(When will you come over to visit? Mother texts him, one night.

Sorry, Minho replies, We haven't been given any information. Still got hectic schedules. I don’t know when we’ll be let on a break.

Well, that’s the risk of being an idol.

I know.

Mother stops asking him after Minho keeps sending her the same response, again and again. She probably thinks he’s left her—gone and fucked all and disappeared. Minho doesn’t know what to feel. For a long while, he thinks he should be guilty.)

“Come here, Minho-ah,” Mother calls, “Have you finished the carrots?”

“Yes, mama.” Minho haphazardly gathers the circled carrots in his hands. They feel slimy, but maybe that’s from the onion residue. Mother takes the container once it is full and leads him over to the counter. Minho has to stand on the tips of his toes to really see what’s happening, but he doesn’t mind. The kitchen smells good—mother must be in a good mood today if she’s adding sweet sauce to the chicken.

Mother asks, “See the rice cooker?” Minho nods. It’s already filled with washed rice and what he thinks is chicken juice. There’s another word for that in which he has forgotten but he figures he’ll catch on one day. “Rice is not the only thing you can cook in this.” She then takes the carrots and gracefully slides them over the rice.

Minho is astonished. “The carrots will cook with the rice?”

“Yes.” Mother nods. She fills the cooker until it is slightly over-flowing, and then seals the lid. “There are many things you don’t know yet, Minho-ah. That’s why I will teach you.”

“Yes, mama,” Minho nods. He wonders what else he can cook in a rice cooker. Vegetables, sure. Fruit? Cheese? Could he make cheese rice? Meat? Maybe meat is too confident. Mother will surely answer him if he asks, but maybe the questions are stupid. It’s okay, he will just experiment himself when he is older.

Minho watches as Mother cuts celery on her hand and wonders if he’d be able to do that one day, or if he’d accidentally chop all his fingers off. “Look, Minho.” Mother lets the celery pieces drop into the pan with a sharp sizzle. “Cook the celery before the onions and broccoli, okay?”

“Why, mama?”

She sighs, “Because celery is a harder vegetable, so it takes a longer time to cook.” Minho nods. It makes sense. “Then, the broccoli and onion.”

“There are a lot of flies in here, ma,” Minho says absent-mindedly, because there are. He supposes it’s probably because of the water in the sink, and the boxes of expired food everywhere, and the wet floor of unknown liquids, and the dampness of the enclosed space. He guesses the flies are hungry and there is food here. It usually stinks of detergent and mouldy fruit, but the aroma of the pan is so strong Minho can’t smell it at all.

Mother laughs, high and jeering, “What, are you posh now, Minho-ah?” He thinks he isn’t, so he says nothing after that.

Chicken Rice.

1. Prepare your chicken. Remove as much fat as possible and cut into small pieces.
2. Coat pan in oil and sauce. Fat may optionally be rendered.
3. Add your chicken.
4. Carrots or celery can be cooked in the rice cooker. Whichever is not must be placed first into the pan.
5. Onions and broccoli should be added. Optionally, egg.
6. Cook until the onion is translucent.

Notes:

There is not much to say about this dish. I would not typically use the sauce as it contains high amounts of sodium, but my son enjoys it and always finishes the plate when I give it to him for dinner. My husband, as well, enjoys this dish. I’m not sure why, but he is a strange man. I believe Minho likes the carrots and celery mushy and soft. This requires more water content in the rice cooker which may result in hard rice, however my son also likes this texture.

Now that Minho is older, I use less water in the rice cooker. This works out, as he seems to prefer usual rice over what he used to have. I am hoping that when he grows older, he will understand the dangers of sweet sauce and I will be able to use less in this dish. Nevertheless, my son is happy with this dish, so I am as well.

Also, this dish is not cat-friendly. Cats are not allowed to eat this. Do not feed to cats.

(He mourns Dori. Mother sends a picture of him one night, in an attempt to get Minho to visit. Minho is not sure they will ever meet. He hopes, in some distant and correct universe, they do.)

Tonight, the eight of them will have dinner together.

“I dibs the seat next to Hyunjinnie and Innie!” Changbin screams, launching over the couch (and subsequently Seungmin and Felix) to get to his spot. Minho rolls his eyes. He knew this was going to be absolute chaos and he is honestly not sure why he agreed.

“Wow, hyung!” Jisung gasps, eyes as wide as they usually are, “You should do that for the award show!” He loves his members. Unfortunately.

Minho shakes his head and sighs. With his pot of vegetables in hand, he turns towards the stove and comes face first with Chan’s—“Why are you shirtless?” Actually, dumb question. Forget Minho even fucking asked. Holy shit, they’ve been in this room as eight for only twenty minutes and Minho’s already getting a headache.

His dumb, stupid, idiot hyung just shrugs like a dumb, stupid idiot. “It’s hot.” The air conditioner is on. “D’you need help?” Minho wonders what Chan expected from him, when he ambushed Minho by putting his arms on the countertop and leaning as far up and as far forward as he possibly could just so Minho could walk face-first into his chest. His bare chest.

“Put a shirt on first,” Minho feels his eye twitch and a strand of hair turn grey, “And then you can help me.” Chan pouts, but he releases Minho and goes to steal a shirt from, most probably, Minho’s closet. He can only hope the other doesn’t knock anything over. How he made it to their apartment without getting pulled over by an officer on patrol is a miracle.

And it’s also not Minho’s problem! For now. At least. He sets the pot down and goes to fill another. The sound of rushing water fills the space, and Minho bites back a smile when he hears Seungmin launch out of his seat with a disgraceful squawk.

“Kimchi jjigae, hyung? Hyung,” Minho only needs to blink for Seungmin to be teetering dangerously over the counter, meager centimeters from his face. He doesn’t look up, he can already sense the bulbous and shiny eyes peering down at his hands that skin the garlic, “Are you making kimchi jjigae? You’re making kimchi jjigae, aren’t you? Hyung? Hyung? Hyung?”

Ignoring Jisung’s ‘Just kiss already!’ and the cackling in the distant background, Minho slowly pushes Seungmin back down to a socially acceptable level (and also so he doesn’t accidentally trip and fall neck-first into Minho’s knife, but Minho would never admit to consciously helping Kim Seungmin) and squishes the other’s cheeks between his garlic-stained fingers until Seungmin’s face is scrunching up from the smell. He offhandedly thinks, Seungmin’s face has gotten a lot sharper than the last time Minho had held it. Then, “Yes, you silly dog. Hyung is generously making your favourite dish in the entire world. Now, go sit down before I change my mind.”

Seungmin scrambles back to his seat, practically glowing and vibrating in place. Minho thinks, he must be allergic to Happy Seungmin, with how his chest always seems to want to explode at the sight of it. For the past couple weeks, all he’s been doing is frown and sulk. Minho’s not sure why, but Seungmin never comes to him, so he figures it’s nothing serious. (Minho fights the urge to ask Seungmin if something’s bothering him. He knows Seungmin will not answer.)

He turns away quickly, before he breaks out into hives or has a heart attack on the spot.

“I am decent.” Chan appears behind him, a-fucking-gain. “I also tripped on one of the boxes in the corridor, but nothing’s broken! What can I do to help my beautiful, sexy, smart, amazing—”

Minho wipes his fingers on Chan’s (his) shirt. “The knives are in the top drawer. You can cut the meat if you’d like. Or the rest of the veg. Your choice.” Chan grins happily. Minho knows Chan gets ridiculously excited when presented with any and every opportunity to help someone; he can’t help but laugh anyway.

He likes to think that he’s a pretty good multitasker (something that cannot be said for one Seo Changbin), so he is easily able to understand that everyone, minus himself and Chan, have gathered around the dining table and are playing with a 1v1 minigame app. Altogether. All six of them are playing a two-person game on a tiny phone on Minho’s dining table. The TV and consoles are right there. He locks eyes with Chan momentarily, and shakes his head in disappointment.

Minho is not going to try and stop them, though. He knows it’d be impossible, with how immersed they are. Once his members get into something, it is very hard to get them to stop. He continues stirring the pot and half-listens to the incoherent and way-too-dramatic screaming behind him.

At some point, everyone is fighting a sole Kim Seungmin (regrettably, a formidable foe)—fingers frantically tapping the six-inch screen (whose phone even is that?) and yelling hysterics while the dog calmly stacks up points because his screen is not being bombarded by four other people (Minho is not sure why they even try).

They’re so immersed in their endearingly stupid game, they don’t realise the table is not meant to support five people on one side and only one person on the other.

It flips over.

Of course it does.

Like a flock of chickens screeching in unison, Minho’s ears ring at the synchronised yells that rip out of his members’ as they go down. The phone goes flying—somehow Jisung does, too—and everyone else ends up on the floor, half or completely buried by Minho’s poor, overworked and abused dining table. Oh, and there is Kim Seungmin, still upright in his chair and staring wide-eyed at the five idiots sprawled before him. As one does in this situation.

“Yah!” Chan screams and laughs at the same time, “Guys!”

Another couple seconds pass of multiple groans, whines and fake, dramatised crying. Minho stares unblinkingly and tries to figure out whether he’s supposed to yell at them or help someone who might be mildly injured. With the way their luck has been, someone is probably mildly injured. Actually, that is incorrect. With their luck, someone has a concussion and/or needs stitches, but he’s hoping that will not happen today.

“Jeonginnie!” Hyunjin wails, confirming Minho’s ultra-superior-always-correct predictions, “Jeonginnie! Our poor, little, cutesy maknae-yah is…” A couple grandiose sobs for emotional effect, “Hurt!” Minho sighs and walks forward, kneeling beside a fallen Jeongin who looks more damaged at Hyunjin’s loud cry than whatever wound he has been afflicted with.

“I’m fine,” Jeongin huffs, but lets Minho haul him away from the dining table, “Just a scrape.” It is indeed, just a scape. He had probably scratched his arm on an area of the table where the wood was chipping. Second-hand tables can do that—the one he had found was far bigger than the one they had bought—and the law of Yang Jeongin’s comically fragile body is more than capable of utilising it.

He lets the others collect themselves (and get the table upright) before saying, “Jeonginnie is not mortally wounded.” For them, they do in fact need this concrete reassurance. “Only bleeding a little—the very base layer of skin, I think.”

“Do you guys have a first-aid kit?” Chan asks, once he stops laughing and his dimples are stuck on his cheeks. Minho nods, because they should and because they do. He is confident they have at least two because he is not one if not prepared.

“Oh,” Yongbok hums, “I think we do. It’s probably in one of the bathrooms.”

Chan leaves for it, dragging Changbin along with him for no apparent reason other than their alleged separation anxiety. They come back three minutes later looking befuddled.

“Dudes,” Changbin nervously laughs, “I have never seen a more packed bathroom than that. Between Chan-hyung and I, we’d definitely knock something over.” Chan mopes but says nothing to refute it. Minho supposes it’s true. They’re too beefy to navigate his and Jeongin’s bathroom without breaking something.

Out of the corner of Minho’s eyes, he thinks Jisung frowns. And he is not sure how to place the feeling it elicits in his chest.

“That’s fine.” Seungmin waves his hand. “I remember where hyung put one of them.” Again, another feeling he cannot place at the tone in the dog’s voice. Minho must be getting really hungry.

Seungmin rummages through one of the closets near the entryway, and it is in no long amount of time before there is a bag in his hand. They cheer.

“You’re so smart, Minnie,” Yongbok giggles, maybe swoons a little. Minho feels his face scrunch at that, because he was certainly the one to buy it, but he says nothing. The dog can have his credit where credit is due. He stands and lets the others fuss over their maknae so he can get back to work on feeding them.

“Thank you, hyung!” They scream in unison and Minho only has to blink at Jeongin touching the spoon to his lips before everyone is guzzling the broth and meat down. It might just be the steam, but Minho thinks he sees Seungmin’s eyes water. Oh, Seungmin.

He is glad that, at the very least, his cooking is worth it. At least he contributes somewhat to their overall survival.

“Yah.” He ignores the dog’s tears for now, maybe he’ll tease him later. Minho turns to Yongbok and offers his own bite, because the blonde’s plate is still significantly full (compared to everyone else, at least, but that is not really a fair comparison when Chan and Changbin exist). “Lix, let’s eat well and live well.”

Kimchi Jjigae

1. Cut your kimchi, pork and tofu into reasonable portions.
2. Cook your kimchi and pork through; optional flavours are chili flakes or garlic.
3. Add kimchi juice and broth along with any additives.
4. Add bok choy, mushrooms and/or onions.
5. Add noodles of choice. Press until submerged in stew.
6. Cook with lid on pot until boiling.

Notes:

Everything added is technically optional but this is also my recipe, so if you are leaving things out then why are you looking through it in the first place? Exactly. Go find an inferior recipe on the internet and do not come back crying.

Bok choy soaks up the broth a good amount, even if it gets soggy it will still at least taste like the stew. It is my go-to vegetable, simply because it is versatile and the stem tastes good. Furthermore, I will need all the bone support possible if I do not want osteoporosis by thirty. (Also, Jisung goes crazy for it.) Garlic is another essential for both the stew and the stew-eater. I have reason to believe Changbin is scared of the potential vampires lurking in our area and that’s why he eats so much of it. I am not going to stop him.

One thing I am going to stop is the excessive use of additives. Jeonginnie whines at me for it, and usually I’d give him anything he asks for, but stock, MSG, fish oil and also sugar are more than enough for one singular stew. I tend to opt out of MSG. There is already enough flavouring (and salt) from everything else. Unless you are as sodium-driven as Yang Jeongin, the flavour will have very little difference. Even then, he usually doesn’t notice as long as I put a cosmetic bag on the counter (for his peace of mind, of course. Never to con him). The things I do for my growing dongsaeng. If only he knew.

Spice is inevitable with this dish but I try to cut back on it for the sake of my Australians. Actually, I do believe Chan-hyung likes the burn, but his body does not. For Yongbok’s sake, then.

Controversially, I will add noodles to the stew. The artistic innovator, Hwang Hyunjin, was the one to request such tradition-deviation and I am not one to disappoint. So far, our favourites have been udon noodles and the tried and trusted instant ramen. Nobody ever complains about it. Either, it’s not a bad ingredient and/or I simply am the best chef in South Korea.

My dog will eat practically everything that is mine (one of his only redeemable traits), but he will do complex tricks and cutely beg for this dish in particular. It is certainly amusing to watch him hover jitteringly as I cook. If it is just the two of us eating, I will add a significantly greater amount of spice to see if he will still eat it. He does. He is red-faced and snotty by the end, but he will still proudly show me his empty bowl and then tease me for my own, substantially less snotty and red face. (Okay, I will be a bit snotty, but as long as Kim Seungmin is snottier, I don’t care.)

8. You find that after losing your tongue, and your teeth and lips and jaw, the rest of your face rests perfectly on the curve of its back.

Minho wants to become an idol so he can finally get out of this stupid house.

He is sure it is the dumbest and regrettably, most childish reason in existence, but it is such a perfect fantasy that he cannot help but dream about it. The tail that wags the dog, he supposes. He knows he wouldn’t move into any trainee dorms simply because money is tight and mother is fiercer, but the simple potential scenario where he moves out before twenty and never has to shower over a bucket, and never has to eat with his plate in his lap, and never has to share a room with his abuser is…a faraway delusion, probably. But Minho can dream. He can.

“You stupid, stupid child!” Mother screams, again. Minho thinks he’s getting used to it now. He’s honestly a little relieved at the outburst he’d been anticipating all week. Mother is never calm for an entire week. He’s pretty sure, even if time blurs together, this is a constant he is sure is correct.

He isn’t ignorant, or naive or even the type to think, ‘Do I actually deserve this?’ He knows he doesn’t. He knows because he’s spent nights scrolling through websites on family neglect and guides on how to live with a hoarder. He’s read the articles on types of abuse and has tried to match himself to their outlines. Anything to validate himself. None of them give anything of real use but Minho thinks he can adapt—he’ll find his own guide to live by. He thinks, distantly, that this is pretty pathetic, but he’s not going to stop. The proof is vindicating. All that is left is for someone to look at him and say, you have been through a lot. He wants it. Maybe more than for someone to say, I understand how you feel.

“Yah.” Mother snaps at him. “Are you listening to me?” Minho stares at her and tries to swallow down the pressure in his throat. There, again, is the urge to say something. Tell her the room is too small for the two of them. Tell her that you’re planning on moving out. Tell her that she is the reason life is so fucking hard. The sole reason. The reason for all his problems. Minho, will you ever say something?

Nothing is said.

Minho breathes harshly through his nose and hugs his knees, rubbing at the goosebumps that line them. He tries to forget that this is Mother’s room, too, and that she has every right to come in and out as she pleases. He tries to forget the three other rooms in the house that would be vacant if they were not filled to the absolute brim with furniture and fake plants and crumbling shoes and too many rugs and too many mirrors and too many light fixtures—

It’s unfair, it’s unfair, it’s not fair. How many people have to go through this? Minho’s friends sure don’t. They have no issue inviting him over to their houses. No issue showing Minho their own rooms and own spot on the table, their clean bathrooms and cleaner backyard. Minho can’t even tell them he has cats because they’ll want pictures and Minho has no picture where Soonie or Doongie aren’t surrounded by piles of junk. That, and it’d be even stranger to not have any pictures at all.

For a moment, he thinks it was pretty shitty of Father to leave him here. The thought passes quickly, Minho blows it away. Father deserves time away from Mother, even if Minho does too.

He mourns this desk that he shares with Mother. He mourns the containers of clothes under his bunk bed that he cannot access. He wants a floor. He wants a clean shower. He wants slippers that will stop being stolen. He wants his own closet. He wants to have things that are not his. He wants things.

At least, he has good meals. At least, he has his own bed. The only thing that is only his, he supposes. It feels shitty. It feels shitty that they have all these things and all this space and it’s all…Mother’s. Minho fantasises his parents passing away, the entire house being left to him. The entire house and the things in it, all Minho’s. He can already imagine hiring a dumpster to throw everything rotten in. He’d keep all that is valuable, maybe sell some things. He’d have ten closets and ten beds and Soonie and Doongie could finally have their own room. Maybe he’d get a dog, too.

The door bangs open again, after Minho had tentatively pushed it closed for some illusion of privacy. He stifles his flinch and feels like kicking himself at the sting of hurt that rises when Mother refuses to look at him. He wants her to die already, so he’ll never have to feel like this again.

It’s not going to happen. Either Minho is going to die, or Mother will live forever.

“Why are you crying.” Mother spits, after staring at him for a full minute (two extremes then, she either cannot look at him at all or he must be the center of her vision). Maybe she was expecting an apology, maybe she had wanted him to drop to his knees on the clothes on the floor and beg for her forgiveness. Even his tears cannot be his.

He tastes the salt on his tongue and looks down at his feet. Soonie mewls at him, sadly. Minho knows what he’s saying. Do something. If you can’t speak, then at least do something. Do something before you die.

When he gets confirmation for the dorm he’ll be staying in, there is relief—and there is sadness.

“Goodbye, kitties,” Minho whispers, blinking back tears. He’s cried en-fucking-nough. “I’ll miss you.” They paw at his pant legs and lick his cheeks when they spill over despite his best efforts. This is the only thing Minho will regret. He will regret leaving them behind, forever. “I love you.”

He takes one picture of them. There’s a pile of second-hand clothes in the corner and a box of antique jewellery pouring all over the floor, but Soonie and Doongie are there. And they are cute, as they always are.

“Be good, okay, Minho-ah?” Mother pulls him closer and hugs him. He can smell the detergent on her clothes and the onion aroma sticking to her hair. She kisses him softly on the forehead, and it is cruel. “Be good. Smile, and be kind.”

“Hyung, what are you doing?”

“Checking the trash, because my silly dongsaengs throw away things that are still perfectly fine to use. Look, this milk carton can be used to store water, so we can water the plants on the balcony. Ah, you people are so silly.”

“I see.”

Here comes the Universe’s ultimate, unavoidable and inescapable divine justice.

“Where’re we going, hyung?” Seungmin asks. Minho can hear the sound of his shoes tapping on the car floor in rhythm with the radio. “Are we going on a date? Are you taking me out? Dinner? Lotteria? Ooh…a fancy place?” A gasp, “A buffet—”

Minho glances sideward, catching the other’s impish grin. “The dumpster behind our apartment,” he snorts wryly, “If you don’t stop saying nonsense.”

“I knew you’d murder me one day…”

He does not have to look again to sense Seungmin’s big, petulant pout. He says nothing and lets a blanket of comfortable silence fall. Minho supposes Seungmin is not too far off, because he is planning on taking the dog to see the new dog movie (wow!) at the mall. It still sounds funny in his head. It is funny. Minho’s the funniest guy ever.

God, he gets in such a weird mood whenever he’s alone with Seungmin. It’s like their primal cat and dog energy is in a subtle battle for dominance. Minho’s will win eventually, obviously. This little, naive puppy is no match for him.

It’s been a while since he and Seungmin had gone out one-on-one. Usually, they’re with the other members or with a manager. Minho wants to say he’s nervous just because of this, but he knows that’s not true. Seungmin is…special to him. They’ve spent quite a while pretending he isn’t.

Minho would like to say he’s mostly amended things—that he’s slowly gained back Seungmin’s trust and love. But there’s always that itching feeling in his stomach, that things are eventually going to catch up to him and Minho’s perfect art of avoidance will come face-first with Seungmin’s perfect art of confrontation. Not that Minho’s art isn’t more perfect, but he’s just saying that to say that. It doesn’t mean anything when Seungmin is just waiting for the right moment to knock Minho right off his feet. The thing with people pulling Minho upwards and sideways to get their point across, and all.

He tries stealing another glance at the other. Seungmin’s just staring ahead, and he seems happy. Minho thinks he should feel proud that he’s happy, but instead his stomach shrivels tightly in anxiety that shoots down to the bottom of his feet. He doesn’t understand why. The movie will probably make him feel better. Maybe he hates dogs more than he thought.

The road feels blurry and sharp at the same time. It’s night, it must be cold out and that must be why Seungmin had cranked the heater up so high. He’s always running cold. Minho itches to do something about the pit in his chest. He spots an abandoned wardrobe by the side of the road—what he thinks is one anyway, he’s good at spotting—a humble, dark shape on the grass. Minho’s breath hitches.

It’s big, and intact, and pretty and it must be sturdy. It must be strong. It must be good and it must be useful. They could use something useful. Especially something so expensive, for free.

“Hyung,” Seungmin breaks him out of his stupor, “Hyung, come on, I thought you were taking me somewhere? I really needa pee, so if you could step on the brakes a bit…”

Minho huffs and straightens the car—he hadn’t even realised he was veering dangerously to the side. “Seungminnie, look at that nice closet.” He should take it now. Before someone else does. He bets if they come back the same way after the movie, it’ll already be gone. He knows it. “Don’t you think—”

“No, hyung,” Seungmin huffs, shifting in his seat. “I don’t think. I need to piss. Let’s go.”

Minho frowns. “Don’t order me, Kim Seungmin. And don’t cut me off, either. Ah, where are your manners?” The closer they get, the more certain Minho is that this wardrobe is worth it. “Come on, help Hyung carry it in.” He can picture it already. And it’ll look pretty, and be pretty, and be his—

“No, hyung.” Seungmin is glaring at him with wide-eyes, and it startles Minho. Is the dog being aggressive? Minho knows he doesn’t actually have to pee—he would’ve been much whinier otherwise.

“What’s gotten into you?” Minho huffs. Can’t Seungmin see this perfectly good opportunity in front of them? It’ll be something they’d found together. It’ll be theirs. Minho’s willing for it to be theirs. What a high compliment, except Minho is willing to share many things with his members.

“You don’t need it, do you?” The dog’s face contorts in what Minho thinks is aggravation. Minho frowns. “We already have closets. Too many.” Too many?

“There is no such thing as ‘too many’.” Minho had thought Seungmin would understand. They’re similar, after all. He hates to admit it, but they’re too alike. It’s how they attached to each other in the first place—in the beginning. Seungmin doesn’t say anything in response, only stares at him, stone-faced. He sort of looks like Mother.

Minho shakes his head roughly and sighs. The ball of distasteful feelings still sits heavily in him, and he would like to get rid of it as soon as possible. “Ah, that’s fine. You’ll understand eventually. I’ll carry it mysel—”

“Stop it—stop the car.” Seungmin suddenly says, face blank.

Minho frowns, the molten hot feelings pausing just under his throat. “What?”

“Pull over,” Seungmin hisses. More forcefully, this time, and he practically tugs his seatbelt loose. Minho can only swallow thickly and veer to the side. “Fuck. Fuck.” Then, with a frantic shout and bristle that makes his seat shake, “I can't be here right now!”

“What?” What is happening? Seungmin is flushed red, his nails scratching grooves into the carseat. Minho can’t take his eyes off of him, and he feels the ugly feelings rise up his lungs, an abrupt ringing in his ears that nearly makes him crash into a street pole.

The car stops harshly on the side of the road. Minho only faintly registers Seungmin frantically scrambling out of the car, high and rough snarls erupting from his throat like he is trying his best to scream quietly. Minho watches dumbly as he pulls out his phone and starts to walk away.

“Seungmin?” Minho clambers to catch up, ignoring the cold wind that bites at his arms, “Seungmin!” He grabs the other’s hand and swallows down a rush of—something, when Seungmin rips it away. “I’m—I’m sorry, Minnie-ah.” Seungmin keeps walking and Minho tries to match his pace but air refuses to come to him. “I’m sorry. Let’s—Let’s go back to the car, okay? Let’s just—”

“Will you leave the wardrobe?” Seungmin doesn’t stop walking. Minho cannot even answer. He doesn’t know. How can Seungmin ask him that? Everything Minho has collected and bought has been for him, has been for Innie and Yongbok, too. How can Seungmin ask him to leave it? What will happen if they need it in the future, and there isn’t something so blatantly free right in front of them? Will they have to spend money? When they can have it now? Why does he even care so much—

“Can you, hyung?” Seungmin whips around when Minho takes too long to answer. He stills at the sight of Seungmin’s livid expression. “Can you?!”

Minho wants to say, Maybe. Maybe—But what if we need them? At least tell me why I need to leave it—I don’t know—Nothing is said.

“How many more useless items are you going to bring home?” Seungmin spits. It stings. They’re not useless. “All your shopping sprees and your bags that fill up the entryway—fuck, I could handle that, at first. Lix and Innie are the same, anyway. I could let it slide but fuck, hyung. The clothes, the tables and chairs and multiples of the same things and the plastic containers—do you think our home is a fucking warehouse?! Are you going to enclose us with all of this junk until we suffocate?!”

No, no, that’s not it. I just want us to be prepared. I just want you to have things. I just want to have things. It makes me happy—

“I have to scrape the back of my hand on a chipped medicine case everytime I need to use the bathroom, because it covers the fucking light switch!” But all your medicine is in that cabinet— “Lix doesn’t say shit because he’s a pushover, but hyung, he hasn’t worn his favourite hoodie in weeks because he can’t fucking find it.” It’s in one of the clean bags— “Jeonginnie acts like he doesn’t care but he does, hyung. We care. Why don’t you care.” I do, I do—

Seungmin tugs his sleeve up and Minho gapes at the purple bruise on his arm—it covers basically the entire— “I tripped over the bags left in the hallway and got this. Your bags full of junk.”

Minho stares. He can’t say anything. He stares at Seungmin’s purple arm and then his red, angry face. He cannot say anything. Why didn’t Seungmin say anything? Why didn’t Minho notice? This cannot be right. Minho takes care of the three. He does. Say something, Minho. Say anything.

Seungmin’s red, angry face falls flat as the silence goes on. Seungmin turns around again and Minho has none of the energy or right to try and look at him. I’m sorry, he tries to say, Please let me take care of you. I’m sorry.

“I’ll take a taxi home,” Seungmin mutters, “I need to cool off.”

“Okay,” Minho whispers, after a few seconds pass and Seungmin graciously stays to wait for a response. Minho doesn’t deserve him. He doesn’t deserve any of them.

Seungmin walks away.

Minho isn’t sure how long he stands there in the cold, and then for longer when it begins to rain. He can’t remember what Seungmin was wearing, but he can only hope he had a hood. Maybe he’s already home because Minho’s been standing out here like an idiot for God knows how long.

Home, where bags and tables and containers will greet Seungmin. Home, with lost clothing and expired food and a dirty bathroom, a dirty bed, a container full of cats—

Minho shivers. He walks back to the car and tries not to think about it—about anything. The wardrobe on the curb gets clearer as he gets closer—he tries to look away. He tries to drive off and forget about the stupid piece of wood and his stupid fucking decisions and his stupid fucking mother—

“Just go home already,” Minho whispers to himself, forehead pressed to the steering wheel. The wardrobe lies meters away from him, presence big and looming and mocking. He needs it. He needs to bring it home. It’ll be worth it. It’ll be valuable. They’ll buy things that will need a place to stay. Seungmin was angry but he just didn’t understand. He’s just too overwhelmed with the messy space back home. Minho can clean it up. He can even move some of the tables and bags and containers to his own room. He can even push the wardrobe right next to his desk—he doesn’t need it that much, anyway. As long as he has things, it’s fine.

He can even put things on his bed, and he’ll just sleep on the couch. The wardrobe is valuable. Minho just needs it—he and Seungmin found it together. That has to mean something. There are stacks of items at home without a place for them to stay. Minho can bring the wardrobe in and give them places. The place’ll be cleaner. He just needs it. Before it’s too late.

And maybe if they—if Seungmin needs it later, Minho will have it. And Seungmin will be happy.

A car’s horn blares.

Yeah, Minho tells himself, the wardrobe in the back shifts against the walls of the car. He swallows down the bile in his throat. He tells himself he’ll feel better once the place is cleaner. Once he has his wardrobe inside and everything packed away. The ringing in his ears returns. Seungmin will thank me later. Jeonginnie and Lix will thank me later. I will thank me—

Minho doesn’t see the second vehicle beside him until it’s smashing against the side of his car. Until it’s sending his car sliding across the road and into a nearby tree and Minho’s first thoughts are—fuck, his wardrobe. Fuck, Seungmin’s wardrobe. The ringing in his ears burns sharper, the car horns blare brighter. Minho jolts in his seat and smacks his face on the side of his door.

Here it is, divine justice. With the sound of rain hitting the metal hood of his car, Minho blacks out.

Dad, I’m really happy.

He’s probably going to die like this.

Minho blinks blearily at what he thinks is a tree trunk. Where his windshield is supposed to be. He tries to touch it, a little deliriously, and his arms barely obey him. Whatever. The horns that blare in the distance sound suspiciously akin to God’s Menu. Minho is so Du Du Du Dead. Hah, call him a lyrical genius.

He laughs at that, or tries to, because he’s fuckin’ hilarious. His chest pulls and stings with the movement. Minho thinks he’s no stranger to bodily pain—this is only slightly more intense than that. He tries to say something, probably scream or cry or sing. The salt that touches his lips tastes good.

It feels strange, because he is warm when it is certainly raining outside, so he should be cold? His stomach feels fuzzy and comfortable. Minho thinks he should get into car crashes more often if this is what he’s going to get.

He closes his eyes, thinking, poor closet.

That’s good, Minho.

The hospital ceiling greets him. Minho should be used to seeing it, with how hospital-prone they are, but he’s never seen it so…flat, before. It makes him giggle, and then humbly school his face because his chest begins to hurt (he should get that checked out). Why is the ceiling flat. Wait, ceilings are flat, aren’t they.

“Good fucking grief, hyung,” Changbin appears out of nowhere, and sinks into the seat beside the bed with a heavy sigh. Minho blinks at him, thinking he should probably be offended, if he could think at all. Wow, Bin looks really fucking weird when he’s tall. Minho, there are a lot more relevant topics at hand.

Who’s even hurt this time, Minho doesn’t have a clue. Who is the poor, injured fuck who has landed themselves in hospital with seven worried members hovering over them? That is what has happened all the past other times, anyway. Someone keels over and they rush them to a hospital—these hospital staff must have a shit-ton of gossip on them. Stray Kids! Mentally and physically misfortunate! Doctors hate them!

“I mean, a car crash,” Changbin continues, waving his arm vaguely in the air. Minho had forgotten he was speaking. “Nothin’ beats Jisung’s fiasco—I still don’t believe it happened, sometimes—but this has gotta come close. What is with you two and always matching each other’s energy? You’re taking it too far, y’know.”

Holy shit. “Bin.” He’s the poor, injured fuck. “I’m the poor, injured fuck.”

Changbin stares at him. He looks like he is deciding whether to laugh or burst into tears. “Yes, Minho-hyung. You are the poor, injured fuck.”

This is devastating. This is embarrassing. Minho tries to recall what happened, but the memories are all smudged and brown in his mind. He remembers Seungmin, and the wardrobe, and lots of high-pitched ringing, and Seungmin again, and maybe an angel that looked dubiously like Yongbok, descending from the sky with wings the size of a two-story building. That one probably didn’t happen.

He gently brings his hand—the one he can move—to his temple and feels around. He thinks there’s a bandage around his head. He wonders if he looks like those really beat up characters in anime after defeating a supervillain. Except Minho defeated no supervillains and ate a tree instead.

“Thankfully, you weren’t…seriously injured.” Changbin grimaces. “Well, still more injured than anyone would prefer, but…we had faith in you and your very strong will to not-die. Most of us.”

Minho nods. He’s glad about that, at least. His members know him well—he wouldn’t die to a tree. Hah. Ha, ha. Minho decides he is probably still a little high off of whatever the hospital staff gave him.

Changbin reaches over to poke at Minho’s forehead, very disrespectfully. “You have a mild concussion, is what they said. But a concussion is a concussion—you will be coddled.” This sounds like a threat. Seo Changbin cannot be threatening him right now. “Also a couple broken bones and some gashes and bruises. Could’ve been a lot worse, though. See, I knew you’d manage to prevail, hyung. I had absolute confidence in your strong and sturdy constitution.” Judging by his red-rimmed eyes and wavering hands, he had not. Minho is not going to call him out on it, though, when he has observed this many times before. He has been a victim of this, before.

“Thanks, Binnie-ah.” Minho blinks again. He thinks his head feels clearer. Leave it to Seo Changbin to run over the dizziness for him. Even though pain starts to seep through, Minho thinks this is a good thing.

“We were all in here at first, actually. But you were kinda out of it. Do you remember?” Minho shakes his head. “Yeah I thought so. Anyway, we thought it’d be best not to overwhelm you.” Changbin then stands from his chair—holy shit this height difference is disconcerting. “So they just sent me in to hang out until you woke up. The others will come in later, okay? You should get some rest first.”

And the lights smear down above you, kissing your hair and your cheeks. The pavement is strangely smooth beneath your body, and shiny white butterflies circle you. They sing high and pretty, and their touch is soft. A skeletal, happy dog licks at the lights that drip into puddles on the concrete and smiles when you give it your hand.

“Hey, hyung,” Yongbok enters quietly, as if Minho might still be asleep. It is late into the afternoon.

“Yongbokie,” Minho grins—tries to, though his face feels stiff and chalky. He fiddles with the bandage on his arm and tries not to look at the container Felix has brought.

He feels his bed begin to rise him into a sitting position, which, much better, I am finally of a better height to my members. The extent of his injuries really do not seem too bad. It seems more like the heavens were trying to destroy his car. And his wardrobe. Haha.

“Come on, hyung,” Felix sits down in the same chair Changbin did and opens the container. It looks like soup. Wow, Minho, what fucking else would liquid in a food container be. “The doctors didn’t give us any strict restriction except that your concussion might make you throw up. So we prepared soup! Well, Chan-hyung, Hyunjin, Yen and I did. I know you guys shit on Seungmin and I for being disasters in the kitchen, but Changbin-hyung and Jisung aren’t exactly the pinnacle of teamwork, either.”

Minho snorts. “Four of you prepared soup?”

“Hyung,” Felix whines, “Not all of us are kitchen master-chefs, you know.” He’s so cute. Minho wants to bite him.

“I know, Lixie. I know.”

Minho thinks he should probably be unsettled by how desensitised they are to being literally hospitalised, but what the fuck. Same. It’s not that he truly expected to land in hospital, but with the rest of them falling down like dominoes, he kind of fucking expected to land in hospital. Changbin was right, though. A car crash is a bit dramatic.

He wishes he could’ve been there to see Yongbok working away in the kitchen. He thinks back to their apartment, with too many jars and aprons tying the oven shut—he feels sick. Seungmin was right, too.

“We made it with love, hyungie,” Felix smiles at him, “So…eat well and live well.”

Minho feels his eyes watering, which is very inconvenient if he wants to taste this soup and not his tears. He had hopes Yongbok wouldn’t see, but considering their position and life’s extreme tendency to fuck Minho over, Yongbok sees.

“Hyung,” the other sets the soup down and pulls his sleeve up to his fingers so he can brush the fabric under his eyes. “Don’t cry, hyung.”

“‘M not crying,” Minho cries. This feels wrong. Everything since he has woken up feels wrong. Everything since Seungmin had screamed at him, feels wrong. When did he become like this?

Yongbok pats his cheeks and brings the spoon to his lips. Minho eats it, and hopes he will be healed.

“Minho-ah,” Chan traces Minho’s palm lines with his finger. “Minho-ah, come on. Talk to Hyung.”

Minho stares owlishly at him. “What do you think, hyung? You made the wrong decision, picking me. I’m not fit for any of this—”

“Don’t speak for me,” Chan says, and it shuts Minho up. His gaze just makes Minho want to hide. It is heavy and tired. Minho did that. “You aren’t unfixable—hardly broken, actually.” Minho glares at him. “You don’t believe me. That’s fine. You’ll understand, one day.”

Minho tries, in great efforts, to calm his very persistent nausea as he stares with horror at Seungmin’s kneeling form.

“What the fuck—get off the floor, Kim Seungmin!” He thinks he shrieks, a little hysterical, and a little too loudly, because Jeongin bursts through the door in an instant.

“Oh my God, hyung,” Jeongin barks an incredulous laugh, “This is not what I meant!”

“Seungmin, stand up right now, or I swear I will throw up all my lunch on you.” It is a completely full promise. Minho knows that if he has to look at Kim Seungmin kneeling before his feet for a second longer, he will really be sick.

The idiot stands up, tearfully and quite reluctantly, and Minho wants to smack him. Seungmin decidedly won’t look into Minho’s eyes, and it hurts worse than the kneeling. Minho takes a deep breath and tries to collect his thoughts. Leave it to the dog to shock them out of abject misery by being really fucking stupid.

“Seungminnie,” he says, much more softly, after the heat fades away. “I’m sorry—”

“No!” Seungmin cuts. Minho freezes. “I should be sorry—fuck, hyung. I’m so selfish. I wasn’t thinking about you at all and—and all I was thinking was how unfair everything felt to me but—what about you? How could I yell at you like that? And then you nearly died—” Holy shit, the dog is crying. Minho is the universe’s biggest fucking fuck-up.

“I’m fine,” he tries, a little desperately—please don’t cry, “And you’re right, Minnie-ah. Hyung’s been completely disregarding you and Innie and Yongbok—I was treating our home like a warehouse. I would scream, too.” He pushes down the twisting feeling in his stomach, the wardrobe in the back of his wrecked car.

Seungmin looks constipated. Minho probably does as well. “But—”

“O–kay,” Jeongin interrupts. Minho had embarrassingly forgotten he was still here. “I know you want to place the blame somewhere, but reality is that you’ve both fucked up and you’ve both been fucked over. How about you…share the blame. I guess.”

Minho nibbles at the flaky skin of his lips. He wants to say this entire thing is his fault, and it will continue to be his fault until he gets his shit together, but he says nothing.

“When did Jeonginnie get so wise?” Seungmin sniffles, and then bursts into tears. He starts wailing bad.

“Seungmin—” Minho yelps, “Oh, come here.” At the same time, Jeongin groans, “Hyung.” He holds Seungmin as best he can in the awkward confinements of his hospital bed, and rubs his back. Minho has hurt him so much.

“You can’t—do that again, hyung,” Seungmin, snotty and red-faced, warbles into his hospital gown. Oh, Minho’s chest hurts badly. He needs to make it up to them, somehow. He just doesn’t…know. Hasn’t he done too much? “I was so scared, I thought you were going to die—Hyung, promise me you won’t do that again.”

“What, crash my car and land in hospital?” Minho snorts, “I assure you, Minnie-ah, I don’t exactly plan on it.”

“Promise me,” Seungmin cries, and he sounds so miserable and close to bawling again that Minho just sighs and nods.

“I promise.”

Nothing is really fixed. Jeongin’s face tells him such, as he guides Seungmin’s snivelling form out the door.

“Hyung,” Hyunjin enters with his white clothes and shiny eyes. He sits in the chair everyone else sat on and cradles Minho’s bandaged hand in his. Minho says nothing—he doesn’t want to. Hyunjin sits with him anyway and rubs his nails with his fingers. “It’s okay, hyung.”

After a while, he whispers, “I’m jealous of you, you know.” Because if he’s fucked everything over he may as well fuck this too.

Hyunjin looks at him and blinks. He looks down at their intertwined hands, and then back at Minho. ‘This is it,’ Minho thinks, ‘Hyunjin’s going to stare at him with disgust or contempt or—’

“Hey, hyung,” Hyunjin says, “Did you know that we’ll be moving out of our apartments?”

“We’re rooming together, aren’t we?” is the first thing Minho says when Jisung enters the room. The other’s eyes widen. Maybe he wasn’t expecting Minho to know. “Are we?”

“Yep,” Jisung relents, “I really thought they’d give you more time to recover before hitting you in the face with that. Are you fine, by the way?” Minho nods. “That’s good, hyung. Who?”

“Hyunjinnie.”

“Figures.”

“Why?” Minho has a feeling he knows why, but he’d like to hear it said to him. “Why are we all moving out?” He thinks, ruefully, that it is unfair of him to ask Jisung when Hyunjin was the one to tell him, but Minho’s always been an unfair person.

Jisung eyes him. On a normal day, Minho would feel good about it, because Jisung sees him and he sees Jisung—the moon revolves around the earth, grass is green and good for you. Today, he simply feels wrong. He supposes he’s been feeling wrong this entire time. He thinks Jisung is trying to say, You know why. Minho thinks, he knows why.

“We just thought it’d be good for us.” Jisung shrugs. Minho thinks about it. He probably won’t have to share a room with Jisung, if it’s just the two of them like Hyunjin had said it’d be. He would be able to move so much more stuff into the space, and Jisung probably wouldn’t care as long as nothing entered his room.

Minho thinks it’s hilarious, actually. They’re giving him more space instead of restricting it. He wants to say something about that but voicing it aloud makes it sound real, so he doesn’t.

“Hyung,” Jisung sighs. Again, the ugly twist in his stomach festers. “You need therapy.”

“No.” Minho replies.

“No? It’ll be good for you. Nevermind whatever you’ve got going on with the apartment, you just had a traumatic experience.”

“I’m fine.” It’s his turn to shrug. “I don’t need it.”

Are you, now. Jisung stares at him. Minho shrugs again. He doesn’t need therapy. He doesn’t need to talk to someone. He doesn’t need someone spinning his words and actions into an arm band so he can wave it around and go: Look! I have this! I’m ill! Shame on me! For a moment, he thinks the pity would be nice. It would feel good for someone to listen to him and at the end of it, say, I’m sorry that happened to you.

He can’t, though. He can’t go! He can’t be labelled whatever the fuck he is, when his mother is still out there, with her three cats and her piles of clothes and her ten beds, ten freezers, closets and curtains and shampoo bottles and expired food— He cannot. How is that fair?

“Okay,” Jisung says, quietly. Minho just barely remembers that the other goes to therapy every fortnight. “That’s fine. We’ll work on it.”

“I’m sorry,” Minho feels the need to apologise.

“It’s fine, hyung.” Jisung waves his hand. “At the very least, we can tackle your…furniture problem…together. I’ll help you. Does that sound alright?

Minho feels sick at the thought of it. “Okay, Jisungie. I’ll do it with you.”

the center of the universe.

9. You are a burning ball of suffering, those around you are all consequences of your basic hostility.

 

Chan and Seungmin join them at first, to help with the sheer amount of things there are. After the fifth time Chan accidentally throws something away without asking and Minho snaps at him for it, and the third time Minho and Seungmin get into an argument about what is useful and what isn’t, they decide it’s probably for the best that only Jisung handles the packing with him.

“Sorry for the added stress,” Seungmin mumbles. Minho feels terrible. He knows they’re just trying to help but all it’s doing is getting his stomach twisted up with emotions he cannot place.

Jisung pats their bums for him, “It’s fine, don’t worry about it. Seungminnie, the Switch is in mine and Bin’s room and Channie-hyung, please get some sleep. Good God, you look like you’re about to pass out.”

Poor Chan genuinely does look like he’s aged twenty years in the past two hours, cheeks sagging and eyes downcast. Minho tells himself he will make Hyung’s favourite dish later.

“I’ll make sure he goes to bed,” Seungmin promises, and ushers Chan out the door. He smiles at Jisung and gives Minho one more, reassuring glance. Minho really does not deserve the amount of second chances Seungmin has given him.

He’ll be better. He must get better.

“I’m sorry,” Minho heaves a sigh, after the two leave. Apologising makes his tongue go sour, but he knows he’s in the wrong. “They’d never…tried throwing anything out or stopping me when I went through our bin. I took advantage of them.”

“You can’t change what happened back then,” Jisung tells him, as they sit cross-legged on the floor. “But we can work on it, hyung. And they still love you.” They do still love him. This is unfortunate for their own sakes, but Minho’s always been greedy and he is going to take that grace with both hands.

Jisung holds up a box Minho can’t remember buying. “Keep?”

Minho blinks at it. It’s just an unmarked cardboard box. “What’s inside?” Jisung rips the tape off and dramatically holds the inside out to him like it’s an award. Minho kicks him.

They’re just Christmas ornaments. Sparkly red and gold bulbs and a couple ropes of tinsel. He’d probably bought them at Artbox during a sale. They’ll definitely use it over the holidays—he thinks his and Jisung’s living room would look pretty with it. He’s about to tell the other to put it in the Keep pile when Jisung nudges his head towards it.

A near-identical box of tinsel and bulbs already sits in it. Minho chews his lip, swapping his gaze from the old box to the new box to Jisung’s calm face. The old box is full of white and blue ornaments—he likes it better.

“Throw,” Minho mutters, after a few moments.

“We don’t have to,” Jisung smiles, “Maybe the others will want a box of ornaments for their Christmas tree. I doubt any of them, except maybe Hyune, would have this lying around.”

Minho blinks. That does sound good, so he nods. Jisung seems to make an entirely separate pile for the other members. That’s good. At least the things he’s bought won’t go to waste.

“Hyung,” Jisung laughs, a little incredulously. He’s holding another box and Minho has to scoot around so he can see it. “What—Ha! Why do you need this?! Where did you even find this!?”

Minho blinks. The box, at least, is decorated and distinguishable from all the other cardboard boxes. It reads, M16 FUEL 22. G.A 20 VOLT CORDLESS NAILER. With big, red, printed words and an image of the thing taking up half the face of the box.

He has no idea what it is.

Jisung is still laughing, though trying to stifle it. “God, is this a nail gun?” He glances back at the image plastered on the box. “It looks like a nail gun. Hyung, why the fuck do you have a nail gun. Do you even know how to use this?”

Minho huffs, face feeling flushed, “Yes, I do.” No, he doesn’t. “It was definitely on sale. I wouldn’t have bought it otherwise.”

Jisung sobers up significantly at that, it’s a little amusing to watch. “Right. Well, hyung, I’m sure you’ve heard this quite a lot, but just because it is on sale, does not mean you have to buy it.”

Minho has heard that quite a lot. From Jeongin, from the websites he’s read, from Seungmin thirty minutes ago. He used to say it to Mother, quietly, without her really hearing him. He wonders why he doesn’t feel as bad about hearing it from Jisung than he does from everyone else. Jisung just gets him, that’s all.

“We don’t have to throw this,” Jisung says, much to Minho’s relief, “Especially with how expensive it probably was. We can either give it to someone who knows how to use it, or resell it. Does that sound good?”

Minho decides to nod, because it does. He supposes he would find no use for it, even though he would’ve bought it for a reason, he can’t find himself saying no to Jisung’s earnest face.

He thinks, is this all it had to take? He figures, no, it wasn’t. The ‘Keep’ pile is still much larger than the other two piles combined, and he had spent the previous two hours yelling at people who were just trying to hurry things along—because he’s slow. He can’t decide what to keep or throw because he wants to keep all of it. He stares at the three closet in front of him and his skin itches because he doesn’t want to have to choose. He doesn’t want to throw two away and end up having to buy identical versions a couple years later.

He stares down at his feet. He wonders what would’ve happened if Mother had said no to Minho practicing dance. Would he be twenty-something, living with his cats in their container, spending half his day lying in bed because that would be the only thing that’d be his? Would he have suffocated under Mother’s junk?

“We’ll work on it, hyung.” Jisung says, from behind him, probably watching Minho stare at the closets with doom. “Let’s work on it.”

Alright. He supposes they will.

Their first night in the apartment, Minho does indeed make the Beef Wellington Jeongin had so desperately been begging for.

They sit around their dining table, making minimal eye contact but sharing some weird sense of giddiness. Minho feels fond, as he watches them eat (more so, stuff their faces). He hopes to feed them well and he hopes they don’t cause too much trouble for him. Though, that is wishful thinking.

“It’s good, hyung,” Yongbok groans into the meat, face stained with juices. In his defense, he’s eating much more delicately than Seungmin and Jeongin.

“Yah,” Minho has to stop himself from cackling, “What are you doing? Eat properly unless you want to throw up and choke.”

“B’uh ish s’goog,” Jeongin very grossly says with food flying out of his mouth, “I’luv hyung’s cookin.” Minho rolls his eyes but laughs again.

“I think we’ll live good, together,” Seungmin smiles. Minho smiles, too. He’ll make it good, for the four of them. He plans on making it good.