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Sometimes to be seen is the same thing as being saved.
— Mary Rakow
Minho steps back and tries to think over the sound of his heavy breathing. He runs through the choreography in his head while trying to suppress the urge to push his sweaty hair back.
He inhales deeply. Watches as the dance instructor makes three other trainees dance through the part that doesn’t look quite right yet. Knows exactly what it is they’re lacking and how to fix it.
He exhales through his mouth. What he doesn’t know is how to tell them , how to walk up to them confident in the answers he has. He doesn’t know how to step forward from the back of the room and be seen—at least not when he’s not dancing.
Which is why his whole being craves to move, to take one step forward and dance like everyone was watching. To make everyone watch.
There’s something different about the way Jisung looks at him, as opposed to how everyone else has looked at him before. It’s like, without even intending to, Jisung knows the shortcut to the part in Minho where everything lies genuine and bare.
There’s being looked at and picked apart, and then there’s Jisung knowing what Minho means before he even gets the chance to properly curl his lips around the words. Because Jisung isn’t just taking him in, he’s seeing him.
It’s like the first time they talked, when Jisung told him he could drop formalities with him and Minho was left to wonder if Jisung knew just how much Minho had wanted to figure out the look in his eyes as soon as he’d seen it.
But then Jisung had looked dazed a couple of days after, when Minho had called to him casually, as if wondering where Minho had found the courage to listen to what he’d said. And Minho understood Jisung wasn’t trying to understand him, he just unintentionally did.
Because somehow Jisung had figured out something major about Minho before he even walked into that practice room the first time. Jisung had barely floundered to his feet, blinked those round eyes of his at Minho twice and decided he had everything to gain from never looking away from him again.
Minho wanted to know what it was. What Jisung knew of him that even Minho himself was completely ignorant to. What stood somewhere in Jisung’s stare that made Minho feel like he couldn’t get away with nonchalance.
“I think you’re the piece we’re missing,” Chan said, and Minho wondered if the other knew what those words would do to him, what the idea of being needed would turn him into.
Because if somehow all those other hopeful trainees were a puzzle with a gaping hole, Minho would bend at every edge to fit right into the open space and still fall to his knees with gratitude. Just to be needed more than he could ever be wanted.
“I really think we can make this work,” Chan later said to the handful of boys sitting restless on the floor of a practice room, to the handful of boys who were looking right at him as if he had all the answers.
In the stuffy air of the room Minho could feel hope. Hope that rested its weight against Minho’s side, hope in a heart-shaped smile and Jisung’s almost breathless you’re here too. Hope in the corner piece of the puzzle named Jisung, the one beside the empty space left open for Minho.
There’s a beat of silence before everyone in the practice room exchanges looks, a pause before everyone decides what to do. Some of them stay rooted in place, contemplating whether to keep practising or not. The others set out to look for Hyunjin and Jisung.
Minho doesn’t have to look at anyone to decide what he wants to do or know where to go.
His feet take him to the bathroom of the third floor with the crooked out of order sign on the door. “Jisung,” he calls out upon entering, more to make his presence known than to inquire about the other. The thought of Jisung not being exactly where Minho went to look for him doesn’t even cross his mind.
“Hyung.” Jisung’s voice comes out of one of the stalls like a warning, as if Jisung thought he was a bomb waiting to explode if anyone came too close. But Minho wasn’t afraid of him—he was never bracing himself for the impact of harsh words or sudden outbursts as others seemed to sometimes be around Jisung.
A second passes, then two. Jisung seems to sense somewhere in the air between them that it’s safe to come out so he opens the door. “Hyung,” he says again, this time more watery and with his scared eyes full of confused rage looking right at him.
Minho has never been good at comforting others but lately he finds himself wishing he were. Not only for Jisung but for every person in their little group of people chasing after their dreams.
He steps forward and gently brings Jisung closer to him by the shoulders. It’s a strange and pleasant sensation, the way Jisung all but melts against him everytime Minho touches him. It makes Minho feel like there’ll always be somewhere he’s welcome, somewhere his purpose is to just be.
“I’m sorry,” Jisung whispers, face pressed against Minho’s shoulder. Suddenly Minho wants to laugh or scream, he’s not sure. There’s something very pressing and complicated about not yet knowing how to feel objectively about a person, not knowing how to put his Jisung feelings away for one conversation.
“I don’t think I’m the one you should be apologising to,” Minho says, trying to think only about what he knows he has to be saying, addressing Jisung’s fight with Hyunjin so that everyone can move on as a group.
A groan of protest comes from Jisung and rumbles against the fabric of Minho’s shirt. “I can’t. I don’t want them all to hate me but I can’t.” Minho’s not surprised about everything he manages to understand in that sentence or how much of Jisung he’s able to see without actively trying.
“I’ll be right there with you,” Minho says, hoping—no, knowing —that his presence will be a good enough compromise for Jisung.
They stay in silence for a while. Minho recognises the defeated slump of Jisung’s weight against his, the anxious grasping of Jisung’s fingers on his shirt, and the shallow breathing of coming down from a high. He feels the many times Jisung opens his mouth to say something just to end up saying nothing at all.
“What’s on your mind?” Minho asks because sometimes that’s easier than asking someone to put into words how they feel.
“I think,” Jisung begins, moving himself to adjust their posture into more of a casual embrace, “that I’d feel much more lost if you weren’t here with me.”
The sincerity of the words sends a pleasant shiver down Minho’s spine. There’s a strange sort of pride in his chest at the knowledge that Jisung feels that way too, sort of grounded by him, like when Jisung had held his hand before Minho had been made to rap or how he’d felt after when the younger boy had told him he’d done great.
He doesn’t say that’s how he feels too but it’s sort of implied in the way his grip around Jisung tightens for a quick moment. It’s sort of implied and Jisung knows exactly where to look to know.
It’s raining the day they tell Minho he’s not going to make the cut, because of course it is. There’s something very dramatic in getting the chance of debuting along with people he’d started to grow very fond of ripped out of his hands; the least the weather could do was get on with the program.
It’s raining, and he’s dragging his feet. If this were a movie Jisung would come running to him, drenched and with that same look of sadness Minho had last seen him wearing. He’d have to say something grand—Minho wasn’t exactly sure of what yet.
But if this were a movie Minho wouldn’t have screwed things up, he’d get to have his dreams and Jisung together wrapped with a bow. He probably wouldn’t be here, standing under the rain.
He probably wouldn’t just take a shower and be done with it. There would be something , something different from Minho sitting on the bottom bunk bed of an empty room wondering if this meant Jisung would stop looking at him.
There was the familiar desire to be seen when he performed, to be stared at with awe and for a moment feel untouchable. And then there was the need to be seen like only Jisung saw him—to see Jisung the way Jisung saw him, to see Jisung with an intensity that made him want to stay.
There was Minho who spent his days rehearsing the same choreography as Jisung and sang the same songs, Minho who could reach out for this feeling of being needed and wanted. And then Minho who had failed to keep up, who couldn’t—no matter how much he wanted to—take a step forward and stand by Jisung’s side.
If this were a movie he wouldn’t have to wonder how his life would suddenly look without Jisung. If this were sort of a movie it would perhaps go like:
Minho doesn’t know whether he’s imagining the Jisung that carefully opens the door, the one with the red eyes and defeated look. He only knows he’s not when this Jisung kneels in front of him and buries his face in his lap, because his mind isn’t vile enough to break his heart with such an image.
Jisung’s shoulders start to tremble with the force of his sobs. Minho runs his fingers through Jisung’s hair for the first time ever. “What’s wrong?” he asks, as if he didn’t know, as if these tears weren’t a sign that Jisung was as distraught about this as Minho.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Jisung laments. And Minho knows, he had seen it in Changbin’s shock, Felix’s inability to look at him, and Seungmin’s sobs. None of them had planned for this.
“I don’t want it like this,” Jisung adds. “I don’t want to do it if it’s not all of us together.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Jisungie.” This can’t be a movie because Minho has nothing else to say, nothing apart from pointing out how ridiculous it is that Jisung can even entertain the idea that his dreams don’t look as appealing if Minho isn’t part of them.
It isn’t a movie and tomorrow when it stops raining they’ll have to move on and keep going.
Minho stares at Felix from across the room and wonders where they are in the great scheme of things. Will they be defined by this one shortcoming? Will they go down in history as the almost something , the forever not quite ?
More than anything Minho keeps thinking about whether they’ll ever be able to stop thinking about what almost was, whether he actually wants to stop thinking about it or not.
He knows this isn’t the end, there’s still plenty of opportunities left, a handful of chances to debut, perform, be seen. But this had been the one opportunity where it had almost felt like the stars had aligned in their favour to give way to something more than great. And it was gone.
It was hard to miss, especially on the early mornings where the rest of the boys would run off somewhere together and they would be left behind. It was hard not to think about a future where it would always be like that; the others would be stars in the sky, busy with their own shine, and they would be left to look up at the night sky just to be able to catch a glimpse.
Minho would have to settle with looking at Jisung from afar after having been able to see so much of what Jisung refused to show anyone else. He would end up becoming another one of the thousands that’ll look up at Jisung with awe, adore him and never have him.
He’d become a real hyung for the very first time when six pairs of eyes had looked up at him and asked for help with one of the choreographies. Back then the title had stopped being a formality and turned into a defining word, a responsibility Minho never knew he’d wanted until then.
“Hyung.” The voice that called for him was soft and gentle, carefully coaxing Minho out of his own head. Minho unconsciously catalogues it on the long list of the many ways Jisung calls for him.
Minho blinks rapidly a couple of times, trying to come back from wherever his mind had been. In front of him there’s the full length mirror that shows his puzzled expression back to him; in the corner of the reflection Jisung’s eyes stare at him.
Jisung shone when he was up on stage performing in a way that made people unable to look away; right now Minho doesn’t look away simply because he doesn’t want to.
“Hyung, have you had dinner yet?” There they were again, that word and Jisung. Two things that would haunt and chase after him even in the impossible distant future in which he could dare not to want them anymore. The person he’d become and the one he’d become it for.
Minho shakes his head, he’d probably danced all through normal dinner hours. In response, Jisung says, “Come eat with me.” He’s not asking Minho to go with him, he’s demanding him to. Minho doesn’t know how he ever entertained the idea of Jisung simply looking away from him.
When Felix and Minho are given a second chance—a chance to make things right, he calls it in his head—Minho promises himself not to get his hopes too high. When he tells his mother about it over the phone he doesn’t forget to add a but we might not debut at the end.
It’s his coping mechanism; he’s always been good at building walls around every part of him that feels too fragile to leave out in the open. So every time the other members start talking about a hopeful future where they all make it Minho opts to exit the room or tune them out.
He limits himself to practise instead of spending time with the rest. Because if he manages to get his rap to sound flawless then he’ll have years to spend with them, and if he fails he’ll have fewer memories to pluck out from his heart as if they were crystal shards.
But then Jisung walks towards him in the five minute break they take in between dance practice just to hold his hand or make a dumb face, and Minho’s walls start to crumble slowly. Jeongin laughs behind them, Hyunjin rolls his eyes, and Minho lets himself admit for a second how much he wants this.
They all manage to dance through the entire song without mistakes three times in a row, and Minho thinks about stopping for the day. Jisung sneaks inside his room in the middle of the night, careful not to wake Chan up and doesn’t even have to ask before Minho moves to make space for him. And Minho finds out he never stood a chance.
He lets himself be roped into the conversation, agrees to have dinner after practice and hugs Jisung from behind.
A couple of weeks go by but the excitement doesn’t seem close to wearing off. Minho can be simply unpacking in the new dorm and still feel his heart racing like the news that they’d be debuting together had just been announced. He could be trying to fall asleep and still feel Jisung’s lips pressed against his temple.
Minho no longer feels capable of feeling anything besides content. Even the long practice hours that get more demanding in order to polish every and any remaining detail don’t stand a chance.
Because now he has the future waiting for him, a future where he’s gained the chance to be seen while doing the thing he loves. He has a future in which, at any given moment, he can look up and catch Jisung looking at him from across the room.
In one hand he has his dreams cradled against his chest and in the other rests one of Jisung’s hands, right beside the feeling of a quick peck pressed against his sweaty hair and the most dazzling pair of eyes Minho’s ever seen.
There are years full of opportunities ahead in which Minho can be and do anything. A star, a singer, a hyung, the one being seen, the person that discovers everything hiding behind Jisung’s knowing eyes.