Chapter Text
Storms kept some people inside, but not Han Jisung. Gray, overcast skies and a steady drizzle were practically his theme song, heralding his reentry into a world that the day before had been too overwhelming for him with its bright presumption. Dark clouds were his shield, pouring rain his valiant steed, and the lack of crowds at the local café he'd chosen exactly the sort of exposure therapy the doctor recommended, literally and figuratively.
He pulled at the strings of his hood, more a nervous gesture than any real need to block the wind, squinting to make sure he'd found the right place. Little Pause Café, the window proclaimed in script that was loopy but still readable. Someone had mentioned it on a recent livestream, and the name had stuck in his head for how perfect it sounded. How often had he needed exactly that: a short escape from his life with a boost of caffeine?
More often than he wanted to admit, these last few months.
The interior was warm, with cozy lighting that matched the pitch of the outdoor lighting, if not the timbre. He did his best to shake off his boots in the entryway, but the inevitable track of wet footprints marked his path to the counter where he joined the short line.
He'd caught the place at just the right time, distinctly mid-morning so that the morning salary crowd had long since headed to work with their lattes and the casual lunch crowd hadn't yet ventured out after yoga class. If anyone asked, he'd say he'd timed it on purpose, but really it just happened to be when he rolled out of bed.
He was supposed to be writing today. He had deadlines. But he needed the headspace, needed the distraction to loosen up his brain so that he could separate the lyrics from the parts of himself that he couldn't share, either because they were too morose or too private. He wasn't sure which tendency was winning today. All he knew was that his manager was puffing him up with stories of how much traction his latest song had gotten on social media, and if he refreshed the post one more time just to watch the view count go up by three, he was going to explode.
"You look like shit."
Jisung looked up, startled at the comment only to realize it hadn't been directed at him, but at the man in front of him. He was a bit taller, wearing black pants and an orange shirt—a uniform of some kind that Jisung's overworked brain couldn't quite piece together. He was fit, far broader in the shoulder than anyone who stayed out of gyms ever managed. He laughed and ran a hand through his hair, which was just long enough to brush the middle of his ear.
"That's what happens when you work a twenty-four-hour shift, hyung." His voice was softer than Jisung had expected. Not that he had more than ten seconds of expectation to speak of.
"You're not skipping out tonight," the barista continued, turning to start making a drink without taking an order from the guy. He turned to speak over his shoulder. "If you leave me alone with Wooyoung, I'm rioting."
"Never," said his friend. "I've got time to sleep. Besides, you owe me a duet."
Before either man could get out another word, the espresso machine's steam wand let out its tell-tale shriek of heating milk, more shrill than any bad note Jisung had ever sung. He felt it behind his eyes.
Then the man in orange folded himself over the counter.
Not leaned, but specifically folded, chest flat to the surface, one arm buried to the elbow somewhere behind the counter next to the cash register. For a lurching second Jisung's brain served up the worst case: the guy was robbing the place. He'd walked straight into a robbery, and he was going to end up begging for his life at knifepoint and later endlessly recounting it to his shrink.
Then it served up a better one: whatever job kept the man on shift for twenty-four hours, it had to be the sort that kept him in good shape, because even regular gym time didn't easily gift a person an ass like that.
Jisung looked at the menu board. Very hard. He pulled the strings of his hood until the fabric cinched close around his face, which did nothing for the heat climbing his neck but everything to hide it. He hadn't come here to ogle strangers. Though, was it really his fault if they arranged themselves at eye level and insisted on staying there?
The man rocked back onto his feet with something small fisted in one hand, triumphant. The barista cut the steam wand, and into the sudden quiet, not bothering to turn around, said, "Lose that and I'm deleting every playlist you've ever made."
The man let out a wounded gasp. "Easy, Minnie. No need to choose violence. I'll be at my table."
He spun on his heel and directly into Jisung's face.
Jisung very quickly noticed three things: the phone charger in the man's hand, the black name patch stitched to the bright orange shirt—Yang Jeongin—and, a sixteenth-beat behind the other two, the fact that this was very possibly the most attractive person he had ever seen in his life.
Jeongin looked as off balance as Jisung felt. "Sorry, uh, I didn't realize there was a line."
He didn't move immediately, only stared back like Jisung was a song he recognized but couldn't name. It went on a half-second past comfortable—more uncomfortable, anyway, than Jisung's baseline when being looked at by anyone, ever—before Jeongin cleared his throat, said "Sorry" again, and stepped around him.
Jisung turned to watch him go.
There really was a line, more than just him. It had grown while he wasn't paying attention. Or, well, while he was paying attention to the hot stranger, he supposed. Just behind him was a girl who couldn't have been more than sixteen, beaming at him like he was the hot stranger.
Her mouth opened like she was going to say something, and Jisung about-faced toward the counter.
A second barista had appeared, tugging an apron over her head and taking the espresso machine off the first one's hands. Jisung ordered a coffee and, because his relationship with lunch was theoretical at the best of times, a slice of cheesecake, and then found a table to wait.
He did not pick the table with a clear line to the corner where Jeongin had tucked himself into a chair. He absolutely did not.
He sat there stealing looks, thumbs flying across his notes app in the gaps between. It quickly began to fill with the kind of pining, lovesick garbage his manager would take one look at and sigh over. Another loser love song. But inspiration was inspiration, and Jisung had long since learned not to argue with it on the days it bothered to show up.
*
Jisung backspaced yet another line with an agitated tap-tap-tap of his finger, then quickly replaced it with a better one, one that this time really expressed what it meant to long for someone, to have them exist just out of your reach. He looked up, pleased with himself and with no one to see it, and had to blink to make sure his eyes were working.
Wow, had he really been sitting for that long?
The plate where his cheesecake had once been held only crumbs, and his coffee cup was empty enough that only a dribble came out of the lid when he knocked it over in his surprise.
There were a lot of people in the café.
He'd been heads-down over his phone, working diligently on his song and not diligently not checking the post. He was proud of that last one. He'd only looked three times, which by his standards was basically the same thing. In the time since he'd sat down, it had gained a hundred more views. A hundred. He told himself that was exciting, because his manager kept telling him it was exciting. He was a little excited.
The line at the counter was long enough now that Jisung wondered where they would all sit. The empty chair across from him at his little two-seater table was one of the few still free, and he was tempted to throw his bag into it and pretend his friend was in the toilet so that no one would try to sit with him. There were so many people that they were blocking his view of Yang Jeongin over in his corner, if the man hadn't already escaped back into the dreary afternoon for his pre-karaoke nap.
He wondered if a school had let out nearby, because most of the room was young women. Teenagers, a lot of them, and some older faces mixed in, still very overwhelmingly feminine. He checked the clock on his phone and found it was hours too early for that. Weird. Was school even in today? What was today? Tuesday? Saturday?
The door opened as if on cue. Three girls came in with their arms linked, heads tipped together, giggling together in the way that only teenagers could. They glanced up and saw him, and he watched their faces change into something beyond mere amusement: delight.
That's when the thought hit him, the one that had never until that exact second occurred to him as a possibility.
They knew who he was.
"Hi!"
The voice came so sudden and close that Jisung might have fallen out of his chair if he hadn't been clenching his hands around the edge of the table. The girl who'd been standing in line behind him before was standing next to him, closer than he liked, but probably what was necessary in the cramped space. Her hands were clasped around something and she lifted it in his direction.
"Would you mind? I really loved Alien. It's my favorite song ever."
She was holding a scrap of paper that had been ripped from a wirebound notebook and a purple pen with teeth marks on the end.
Oh. Oh. She wanted an autograph.
From him.
"Thanks," Jisung said, and took the pen before his brain could tell him this was a weird thing to be doing.
He'd practiced his signature about a million times, because what wannabe music star hadn't? It came out fine. Good, even. Though it could use a better flourish, something to make it stand out. He handed it back.
It was a lot, honestly. Part of him wanted to sink through the floor, because he'd been caught on a random day at a random coffee shop. But the other part of him was going, holy shit, holy shit, somebody wants my autograph, me. Both parts were about equally loud. He didn't have time to sort them out.
The three girls from the door made a beeline for his table. They didn't really ask if they could join him—they just sort of arrived, all around him, talking over each other the way friends did when they'd known each other forever. They followed him on Instagram. He was so funny on his lives—so funny—and was he going to do another show sometime, and also where did he get the necklace, the one he always wore, because they'd been looking for one like it for ages.
He was answering, or trying to, always a question behind, when he noticed other eyes on him. Not just the girls now. A couple over there. Somebody's phone. And then it was like the whole room had been talking behind his back, waiting for the right moment, and there were people starting to gather around his little two-person table.
That was around when the holy-shit part packed up and left and the sink-through-the-floor part took over the entire building. Because, okay. He was a guy. In a coffee shop. He'd come to be a normal person having a normal coffee. An at least mostly normal person. And now he was a thing that was happening, and he had no idea how to go hey, you're all so nice, could everyone maybe take one step back without it turning, by tonight, into some clip captioned Celebrity Thinks He's Too Good For His Fans.
Except. Celebrity? Was he even that? Indie nobody was more like it. He had fans, obviously. They were right here, and one of them was holding his signature, and another was saying words that he was barely hearing and touching his arm when he really wanted her to stop—but he wasn't famous famous. Was he?
The door opened and somebody by it just about screamed it: "Oh my god, he's actually here!"
Whatever was left of the line lurched. Not toward the counter, exactly—more like everyone had gotten too close to stay upright on their own, so they leaned and shuffled as one clump, still pretending to be a line. The shop wasn't full. It was just that all of it was happening around Jisung's table.
The noise climbed. He couldn't pick words out of most of it, just the rising hum of a lot of people being excited in one small room, and under it the sound of phones going up, one after another. Someone was recording. Several someones.
"Can I get a picture? Just one?"
"Oppa, over here—"
He was saying yes. He was pretty sure he was saying yes to all of it, smiling the smile, because no wasn't a thing he knew how to do, and some people were nice and let others take their place at the front. Paper and pens kept appearing out of nowhere.
Somewhere past all of it, sounding weirdly far off for a room this size, the barista was going, "Okay, folks, if everyone could step back and make a nice line, we'll get you all sorted, promise." It was calm, but stern, and he clearly had no idea what was actually happening.
Jisung wasn't claustrophobic. He got it now, though, how a person could be, because the air had gone dense, too many people breathing in too small a space.
None of this was real. Right? Maybe he was still in bed and this was just the kind of dream you got from falling asleep to your own view count. Honestly he should've stayed there. His therapist was going to get an earful about this whole exposure therapy thing.
The door opened again. The whole mass of people did the wave thing one more time, that helpless lean, and somewhere in the middle of it someone cried out—hurt, not excited.
That got Jisung on his feet. Not a decision, just up, craning to see over shoulders and phones, because someone was hurt and it was because of him and that was—no.
"Is—hey, is everyone okay? Can people just—" His voice went nowhere. "There's no rush, nobody has to—could everyone maybe—"
Nothing. He was a guy waving his arms at a tide.
Then a voice came from somewhere off to his left, loud and certain that he'd be heard. "Step back. Make a path. Now."
It took a second of the crowd shuffling and resettling before Jisung could find the source, and when he did, it was Yang Jeongin, shouldering through a gaggle of teenage girls like it was nothing, like the whole mob was a bead curtain he was walking through.
He should be on a horse, Jisung thought, a little hysterically. Some big white one. All he was missing was the horse and a sword and maybe a cape, and Jisung would be the swooning idiot in the tower waving a handkerchief. He didn't have a handkerchief. He had a knocked-over coffee and a signature he was starting to regret.
Jeongin reached him, planted himself an arm's length away, stance wide and shoulders squared. He leaned in just enough to ask, in a quieter tone, "Will you come with me?"
Jisung nodded before the question was all the way out.
An arm settled across his shoulders, firm, and Jeongin did the voice again—"Coming through, make room, thanks"—and just moved, steady and immovable at once, the crowd folding out of his way like it hadn't occurred to him it might not. Jisung went where he was steered.
They weren't going toward the front. He opened his mouth to mention it, some dumb instinct that the exit was the other way, but he was so far past the edge of anything he knew how to handle that he shut it again and let himself be guided.
The crowd trailed after them, loose and curious, all the way to the back wall. A door stood open, Jeongin's barista friend holding it. Jisung stepped inside before he could wonder if he was supposed to. There was a little table and chairs in the center of the room, a microwave on a stand against one wall, and an older model TV hanging on the other. Employee breakroom, then.
"Close it and wait," Jeongin said, already turning back. "I've gotta make sure nobody's hurt."
"Police are on their way," the barista said, and closed the door. "You okay?"
Jisung nodded. Nodding was about the limit of what he could do.
The barista pointed at the little table. "Sit if you want. I gotta get back out there, help Dahye hold the line." He tried the door handle, made sure it was locked, then ducked out through a curtain in the far wall that Jisung guessed led back toward the front.
Jisung really hoped nobody out there noticed that curtain.
He pictured Jeongin planted in front of it like a bouncer, arms crossed, turning teenagers away with a look, and the image startled a laugh out of him. Not a good laugh. Just a sound his body needed to make, somewhere between a hiccup and a sob, so he let it. Alone. In the breakroom of a random café. Well no, not random. Therapist recommendations aside, he'd really been looking forward to coming, because of the fan who'd recommended it.
God, he really hoped babybread01 hadn't been part of that mob out there. Then he really would cry.
He pulled out a chair and sat perched on the edge like he might have to bolt. He didn't know what to do with his hands, or his face, or the fact that any of this had happened at all.
There were sirens somewhere far off. Getting closer, he hoped.
He dug his phone out. He could have kissed the screen just to celebrate that he hadn't lost it in the commotion. He swiped the screen, and only then did he notice his hands were shaking. The screen was still open to his song, because okay, fine, he'd checked it more than three times, sue him. There were a couple hundred more views since he'd sat down at that table a lifetime ago and a wall of new follow notifications.
Tucked in among them was a text from his manager: the song's blowing up!! keep doing exactly what you're doing 🔥
It almost got a smile out of him. People liked his music. That was the whole dream, right there in a push notification. It would've felt incredible if a good handful of those people weren't currently on the other side of that locked door, and if he couldn't still hear, fainter now, Jeongin's voice out on the floor, telling the dream to please form an orderly line.
He sent back a single thanks and nothing else. He didn't have it in him to talk about what had happened right now. He put the phone away.
Waiting, it turned out, was its own special kind of torture. It took about ninety seconds for the boredom to set in on top of everything else, which was frankly insane. He was bored in the middle of what might've been the biggest morning of his life. But there it was.
He did not look at his listen count. He wanted to. He always wanted to. But checking it right now, after all that, felt a little ghoulish, so he sat on his hands and stared at the wall instead.
When the wall got old he started counting the roses printed on the curtain, the one that hung between him and the staff out front. He got to thirty-one before he lost his place and had to start over.
The café went quiet by degrees. It had probably only been ten or fifteen minutes, but time had gone strange and elastic, and it felt like he'd been in that little room for a season.
Then the curtain swept aside and Jeongin came back through.
The first thing he did was cross to the door and unlock it. Only then did he turn around. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Yes. Totally, I'm good, no worries." The words tumbled out too fast to be convincing. Jisung made himself slow down and ask the thing he actually cared about. "Did, um. Did anyone get hurt?"
Because if someone had, he was going to carry it around forever. He knew that about himself already. It wouldn't matter that he hadn't asked for any of it.
"No. We got it broken up before it turned into anything." Jeongin leaned against the table like his legs had earned the rest. "Couple of bruises, somebody's scraped elbow. Nothing that won't be forgotten by dinner."
The relief that went through Jisung was almost embarrassing. "Okay. Good. Thank you. For getting me out of there, I mean. I honestly don't know what I would've done."
"You'd have been fine. But you're welcome."
Manners caught up with Jisung a quarter-beat late. He shot to his feet and stuck out a hand, because that felt like the thing you did, even if he had no idea whether this guy was older than him and owed a little more deference. Right now the gratitude outweighed the etiquette. "I'm Han Jisung."
"I know." Jeongin shook his hand.
Jisung blinked, and filed the little jolt of that away to panic about later. Before he could get to it, Jeongin added, "I'm Yang Jeongin."
"I know."
Jisung appreciated that he wasn't the only one a little off kilter in the interaction. Jeongin's face scrunched up, and it was only when Jisung pointed at the man's chest that his expression cleared once again.
Jeongin looked down at the name patch stitched over his heart, dragged a hand down his face, and laughed. "Right. God. Sorry. Twenty-four-hour shift, my brain's soup." He let the hand fall. "I'm a paramedic. In case the shirt didn't give it away."
And oh. That was why he'd cut through the crowd like he did it every day, why the authority in his voice had sounded as much like practice as bravery. Because he did do it every day. It clicked into place so cleanly that Jisung almost laughed.
"Sorry for keeping you from your bed," Jisung said. "Or, not sorry. I'm really glad you were here, actually. But sorry in a general sense."
He got a small laugh out at that, and it was a mistake. The laugh knocked loose everything he'd been holding down: the crush of bodies, the wall of phones, the unwanted touching, the fear of someone being hurt, the fear of him being hurt. Now that he was safe, his throat had started to close and his eyes to sting. He drew a shuddering breath, trying to clamp down on the emotions. He didn't want to cry in front of his savior.
Jeongin caught it instantly. His hands came up and hovered, ready to steady him without actually touching him. "Hey. Maybe sit back down. You might need another minute."
"If I have to count one more rose, I'm going to lose my mind."
Jeongin's eyebrows drew together, but he let it go, and Jisung wasn't about to explain that he'd already memorized the left third of the curtain. He sat.
Jeongin dropped into a squat beside the chair. "Can I check you over? Nothing invasive. I just want to make sure you're not about to fall over."
Jisung didn't think any of that was necessary. He said yes anyway, because why stop now?
Two fingers settled at the inside of his wrist, his other hand warm where it braced Jisung's forearm. Jeongin's eyes lost focus while he counted and Jisung, who couldn't sit in silence to save his life, started talking.
"I should've taken the weather bad omen for what it was. The universe was probably trying to tell me to stay in bed, and I didn't listen. But I love it when it's like that. The rain, the hoodie, the gray-sky thing. It's the best." Jeongin's fingers moved to the side of his throat, and still Jisung's mouth kept going. "And I don't even like new places, mostly. They make me weird. But I really wanted to come to this one. Somebody special recommended it. Somebody whose taste I trust, so I figured it was worth the anxiety."
The fingers paused.
"Yeah," Jeongin said. When Jisung glanced over, his cheeks had gone pink, and he wasn't looking up from his own hand. "That was me. Last week, on your stream."
Jisung gaped at him. "Wait. You're—"
"babybread01," Jeongin said. "Yeah."
The stupid part was that, somewhere under the shock, Jisung felt the exact sort of thrill he'd get meeting somebody he was a fan of, which made no sense, because he was the one with the social media following. But babybread01 had been around longer than most of Jisung's actual career. In Jisung's own small and specific corner of the universe, babybread01 was the famous one.
"You've been in my comments forever," Jisung said. "Like, from the very start. Back when I had one song and a laptop mic that sounded like I'd recorded it inside a shoe, and a guitar that would not stay in tune to save my life."
Jeongin ducked his head, cheeks still pink. "I was your hundredth subscriber on YouTube."
He didn't stop the exam to say it. The backs of his fingers came up to Jisung's cheek, cool and light, then his forehead, then the side of his neck with the offhand focus of a man who did this to strangers all day. It was entirely professional, but Jisung found himself flustered anyway. He couldn't stop thinking about the last two years, back to every night he'd been depressed and lonely, when he'd spent hours scrolling his own comments for proof that somebody out there was actually listening.
"You commented on everything," Jisung said. "Every single video, all the way down, always asking when the next one was coming." He swallowed. "Sometimes, when I've got it into my head that none of this is ever going to work out, I go back and read the old ones. Yours especially."
Jeongin stopped at his jaw. "Wait, really?" He laughed, disbelieving. "We talk on your lives all the time. I'm in your Instagram comments basically every day."
"Yeah, but." Jisung hummed, unsure if he could explain it. "Sometimes I just need to remember it when nobody's looking."
Jeongin's forehead creased. "I don't think I follow."
Jisung shrugged. It felt too big to say looking right at him, so he said it to the middle of the room instead. "I guess I just mean you've been saving me for a long time, without even knowing it."
*
Unknown Number
hey. it's Jeongin, from yesterday
Me
JEONGIN
hi!!!
yeah you got the right number
Me
ok saving you now
what do you want to be
Unknown Number
what do I want to be
Me
in my phone. contact name
you can't just be Yang Jeongin that's a waste of a perfectly good rescue
Unknown Number
that is my actual name
Me
too late, i'm putting you in as Paramedic Prince Charming
Paramedic Prince Charming
absolutely not
Me
sorry, can't hear you over how heroic you are
Paramedic Prince Charming
I literally did nothing
speaking of, though. I'll save you as something that isn't your name
Me
?? i don't care if you use my name
Paramedic Prince Charming
It seems safer for you if I don't have "Han Jisung" sitting in my contacts
if someone ever saw it
Me
oh
i'm really not......that
Paramedic Prince Charming
Famous?
Me
yeah
Paramedic Prince Charming
yesterday disagrees
too soon?
Me
too soon
Paramedic Prince Charming
I'll do something something boring. Coffee Guy, maybe
Me
you're Paramedic Prince Charming and i get demoted to Coffee Guy
Paramedic Prince Charming
you gave me the crown yourself
also, unrelated
you're at 94k monthly listeners as of this morning. up almost 30k from last week
Me
how do you even know that
Paramedic Prince Charming
been paying attention for two years, remember
Alien basically doubled its streams overnight after yesterday. picked you up around 8k new followers too
Me
i haven't looked
it makes me anxious, honestly
Paramedic Prince Charming
then don't. I'll keep track of the scary numbers, you just make the music
Me
...deal
wait. did you actually sleep? you were on a 24-hour shift and THEN dealt with all of that
and you and the actual coffee guy were talking about duets
Paramedic Prince Charming
what?
oh, you mean Seungmin
Yeah, we had monthly karaoke
then I slept twelve hours. woke up maybe an hour ago
Me
ok. good
wait if i'm coffee guy then what is he?
Paramedic Prince Charming
I have no idea what you're talking about
Me
in your phone
the guy
Seungmin
Paramedic Prince Charming
All Bark No Bite
*
Titling his next song "Paramedic Prince Charming" seemed a little on the nose, so Jisung had gone with "Tall Dark and Rescued Me" instead.
It was still a work in progress.
And anyway, the song wasn't actually about Jeongin. He hadn't even known Jeongin then, or known that the hot guy in line in front of him was Jeongin, or known that Jeongin was babybread01, so it barely counted. He could write a love song about looking for what you were missing in a stranger. He was great at writing raw longing. His fans always said so.
Ugh, fans.
No, that was unfair. Just because the incident at the coffee shop had put a bad taste in his mouth didn't mean he didn't want fans. He loved his fans. He was still shocked and awed that he even had fans.
One Manager to Rule Them All
Be sure to upload today!
Want to keep that momentum going!
"Why are you looking at your phone like it's done crime?"
Jisung startled at the question, then felt stupid for being so hyperfocused that he'd been ignoring his friend who was literally letting him use the coolest equipment he'd ever used. "Sorry," he said, shoving his phone back into his pocket where it would stay. "Just my manager."
Changbin gave him a long look, then let it drop, which was more mercy than Jisung was used to. His mom would have kept digging, and so would his therapist, and so would every boyfriend he'd ever had, so, fine, maybe he had a few unresolved things there. He wasn't in the mood for the administrative half of his life anyway, the uploads and the momentum and the manager still buzzing in his pocket. He wanted the other half. The music.
"Come here," Changbin said. "If you're going to live in here for two weeks, I'm not leaving you to guess."
The studio was small and dimly lit and unmistakably Changbin's. The acoustic foam clashed on purpose, burnt orange against purple, half of it buried under stickers and old show flyers. There was a couch under a throw blanket in about six colors, and a shelf of little awards Changbin never brought up. It smelled like coffee and instant ramen. Changbin walked him through the board, which long fader was the master, which knobs were gain and already dialed in, and the one rule that actually mattered, monitors on last and off first. "Interface, computer, then the speakers. Reverse it to shut down, or you'll get a pop the whole building hears." He covered the rest fast, the patchbay and the temperamental door and the space heater that had to go off every time, because the wiring in here was older than both of them.
Jisung paid closer attention than he'd paid to anything in months, other than lyrics and that anime he'd binged three times already. Half of it went right back out the other ear, the patchbay especially, and he'd probably be texting Changbin something humiliating like which knob puts the sound in the speakers by tomorrow. But it didn't make his chest seize up in imagined fight or flight. He wanted to learn this. He'd practice until his hands knew how to work the knobs, with or without his brain helping.
"Seriously, thank you. For all of it. Genuinely the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me." Which came out more honest than he'd planned.
Changbin waved it off. "It's fine, I won't even be in the country. Why let it sit empty when you'll actually use it? If you don't text me at least six times a day with random lyrics and song snippets with uncomfortably high bass, I'll know you've been kidnapped."
Jisung laughed, feeling more at ease than he had in a long time. "No chance of that, hyung. I'd sing something off key for ten hours straight and they'd let me go. Works every time."
*
Tall Dark and Rescued Me
okay, numbers
as of this morning you're at 148k monthly listeners. the spike right after we met has settled. you're still climbing, but it's a steady few thousand a day now instead of that vertical jump
Save rate on the last single's around 34%, which is high, and it got picked up by two algorithmic playlists and one editorial, so your passive-to-active ratio is finally tilting the right way
also the clip you posted Thursday, thirty seconds of you working out that guitar line with no words yet, is your best performing post in months. share rate is way above your follower-conversion baseline, it's beating stuff with ten times the production
Me
ok i understood maybe 10% of that
Tall Dark and Rescued Me
more listeners good
Me
thank you
that's more my level
Tall Dark and Rescued Me
How's the recording going?
Me
SO fun
i've been in changbin's studio pressing every button at least once, possibly twice
genuinely having the time of my life
.......i just haven't made anything good yet
like nothing i'd let a live human hear
Tall Dark and Rescued Me
you will. I love knowing how much heart and work goes into your song
it's the part people actually feel
Me
ANYWAY
are you coming to the show tomorrow??
Tall Dark and Rescued Me
I can't, unfortunately, I'm on shift
Me
:((
you work too hard
you deserve a holiday honestly
Tall Dark and Rescued Me
Pot. Kettle. Black.
besides, I'm saving up for a new couch so the overtime's good
Me
that sounds horribly grown up
what does it say about me that my couch came from a charity shop
Tall Dark and Rescued Me
mine has red wine stains from the Birthday Incident of '25 and looks like part of a crime scene. Why do you think I need a new one?
Me
ok but red wine doesn't make you sound like LESS of a grandpa
Tall Dark and Rescued Me
shut up and go write something sappy
Me
your silver hair glows in the early-bird-special light
i'd cross the whole pharmacy line just to hold your hand
slow-dance me past the blood pressure aisle
be my valentine, you beautiful antique
Tall Dark and Rescued Me
BLOCKED
Me
worth it
*
Jisung let himself in, locked the door, and dropped his keys in the bowl on the second try. He toed off his shoes without untying them.
The place was dark except for the lamp he never turned off, because a black room felt worse than the electric bill. Same tired yellow over all of it: the sagging charity-shop couch, the futon he hadn't folded away in a week, and the counter where, yeah, he'd left food out. He could smell it from the door, the fried rice from lunch, and the egg he'd scrambled in it didn't appreciate him bolting for soundcheck mid-eating.
The show had been fine.
More than fine, technically. There'd been more people than he'd expected, enough they'd turned some away at the door. A year ago, playing half-empty rooms, he'd have called it the best night of his life. He kept waiting to feel that again, but he mostly felt the monitor that had died in the second song, leaving him half-deaf to his own vocals for most of the set, and the two guys near the front who were louder drunk than he was amplified. He'd smiled through it, played the encore, and thanked everyone like he meant it. Which he did, mostly. He always finished fine.
It just hadn't matched the expectations he'd built up back when all of this had been a mere dream.
He needed a shower. He could feel the stage-sweat gone cold on his neck, and a responsible adult would go deal with it. He dropped onto his back on the futon instead.
His phone dug into his hip. He worked it free and tossed it into the dark by the couch without bothering to look at it. He already knew what he'd find. His manager would want the attendance count and a photo for the story. His mom would ask how it went with too many question marks and remind him to eat something that didn't come from a convenience store. He'd have some new followers, maybe lost some if the drunks had been more entertaining than he had.
That could belong to tomorrow's Jisung. Tonight's was going to lie on the floor in his stage clothes and smell his own eggs and regret. It was a flawless plan.
Except he'd never turned the notification vibration off, so the phone just kept buzzing against the hard floor, over and over.
He tried to ignore it. He lasted maybe three minutes before he groaned and rolled over, fumbling around in the dark until he found it.
There were so many notifications that he swiped twice and still couldn't see them all. It made him want to scream, or vomit, or curl up in the dark corner next to his scruffy couch where no one would find him. He couldn't deal with any of it tonight. He cleared them all and was about to toss it somewhere near the charging cable when he paused.
He didn't open any of the things that wanted his attention. Instead, he went to his YouTube channel, opened the videos tab, and scrolled all the way down to a cover he'd posted back when being a professional musician was still just a dream. It was rough—thin, a little pitchy, recorded on some ancient phone—but he'd been so proud of it at the time, making his mom promise to watch it at least ten times to get his view count up. She'd probably called his grandma, too.
Jisung read the comments as he scrolled down, not really intending to read them but catching a few anyway. Some were mean, complaining about the sound quality and the stupid way he used to wear his hair. Some were nice in that fluffy, "great job" sort of way that felt good at the time but didn't really say anything.
And then, near the bottom, was a comment that had gotten only two likes, one of them from Jisung. He'd seen the name a hundred times and it still made him laugh, but this time it was out of pure fondness.
Call Me Baby Bread just found your channel tonight and I'm going back to watch from the very beginning. this is so raw and so real, you can tell you're making the thing you love. and your voice?? genuinely incredible. I can't wait until you sing something that really pushes you, something with real range. I bet your upper register is INSANE.
He locked the phone and pressed it to his chest, laying back down and staring up at the ceiling.
The cloud of the mediocre-to-depressing evening didn't dissipate. It just wasn't quite so thick.
He could do this for the love of it, because it was the thing that made him feel alive. And if the rest sucked sometimes, that was okay, because he would always have that love.
He just needed a reminder every once in a while.
*
Emotional Support Bread
someone posted a fancam of you from your show last week set to one of your own songs and it already has more views than the actual upload
numbers, by the way, since I know you won't look
you're at 198k monthly listeners. the day-to-day climb's basically leveled off, which is good?? after the last few weeks that's honestly a relief. the vertical stuff was never going to hold, this is the kind that sticks
oh, a girl commented that she played your song at her grandmother's birthday and the whole family cried. good crying, she made sure to specify
there's a thread arguing about whether the bridge in the new one is in 7/8. it isn't. they're extremely passionate about it though
someone drew you as a small frog. no idea why. it's very cute, I saved it
your save rate's holding and your thirty-day retention is
Emotional Support Bread
oh my god. I fell asleep mid-sentence
You're either asleep too or at the studio. maybe both
I wasn't even trying to sleep, I just wanted to zone out until my brain shut up, and I guess it worked
it was a rough one. I should take the win
goodnight
Me
NO
no no no no
i'm so sorry
yes i was at the studio and i lost ALL track of time, i didn't even feel my phone go off
i just saw all of this
i'm so so sorry i left you talking to yourself until you passed out
also please tell me the shift was just bad traffic or a transfer that ran long
and not the kind of rough i'm scared "rough" means when a paramedic is the one saying it
:(((((
;______;
is there anything i can do?? can i send you food, can i write you a dumb song, ANYTHING
...you're definitely still asleep though
it's 4am and normal people are unconscious
which is where i should be, honestly, not writing lyrics on changbin's couch at stupid o'clock
but in my defense, this couch is really comfortable
Emotional Support Bread
good morning
though I'm hoping you're actually asleep and won't see this for hours
and no, it wasn't traffic. better if we don't get into it
Me
HI
hello!!
good morning!!!
no i'm not asleep
though i think i dozed off somewhere between the bridge and the final chorus, which is basically sleeping??
Emotional Support Bread
That is not sleeping
you need to actually rest
Me
i'm FINE
there's this incredible invention called caffeine and i've had a concerning amount of it
Emotional Support Bread
you're going to crash so hard later\
Me
you and my manager are in agreement
Emotional Support Bread
please be near something soft when it happens, not the edge of a mixing desk, so I don't have to sit here worrying about you
Me
i promise
eventually
also unrelated but i'm STARVING, i haven't eaten since yesterday
Emotional Support Bread
dinner?
Me
....it might have been lunch
Emotional Support Bread
Jisung!!
Me
ok NEW PLAN
we should go get breakfast
i'll tell you everything about the song i recorded, i've been losing my whole mind over it
maybe even a sneak peek if you're nice to me
i'd say come to the studio but i haven't changed clothes in like 36 hours and i feel genuinely disgusting
Emotional Support Bread
and going out in public in that state is somehow the better option?
Me
....good point
ok just come here
Emotional Support Bread
Address?
Me
Han Jisung has shared his location with Emotional Support Bread
Emotional Support Bread
really.
Me
what????
Emotional Support Bread
Emotional support bread?
Me
thanks for outing me, Samsung :P