QUEENMAKER

by apocalyvse

Summary:

To JYPE, the solution is simple; take the sole trainee that will not debut with your brand new girl group, and use her to replace the missing vocalist in your male group that insisted on starting as nine.

Unfortunately, to the fans and the members themselves, it isn't that simple.

Chapter 1: Prologue

         

 

Chapter 2: chapter 1

“Tell me the news,” Minseo says before you’re even all the way through the door, hauling you over to the couch pushed against the back wall of the room.

Hayoon’s head turns, seated on the other end watching the final four members of their group clean choreography. You don’t know her very well compared to Minseo and a couple of the others; she’s only been a trainee at JYP for a matter of months, and you’d started working as a group just ten or twelve weeks ago.

Minseo though, you’ve known for years, ever since she entered the company with no dance skills to speak of but the full voice of an angel. Minseo, you’d been excited beyond belief to debut with. Minseo, you’d been friends with through the worst and the best years here, until they had pulled you apart with no warning.

“This is a lot of manic energy when I could be about to tell you that my contract is terminated,” you say, to hide the way your teeth rattle against each other, your heart pounding in your chest. Your nerves are run ragged from the hours spent in that room, executives staring you down - and even now, Hayoon stares from the corner, however unobtrusively.

Minseo bites back a ruder comment, a hand slapping your knee. “That’s not the face you’d be wearing if they ended your contract,” she tells you confidently. Probably correctly, too.

You can’t stop the small smile that tugs at your lips, the rise of emotion down in your chest that squeezes at your lungs. “See?” Minseo cries, pointing at you. “They didn’t fire you. They made you an offer.”

Slowly, you nod. “They made me an offer,” you admit - and for a minute, all the apprehension that has been building in your chest relieves. You’re going to debut, one way or another. You’re going to live out the dream you’ve all been chasing for so long now; you’re just going to do it-

“Solo debut?” Minseo guesses, and your smile tightens, struggling to slide right off your face. 

“Group debut,” you correct her; and then, because there’s no better way to tell her, blurt out, “They offered me a contract within an established group. To replace a missing member.”

Minseo stares at you, her fingers stiff where they cling to the seat cushion you sit upon. “Which group?” she questions - skipping over, for now, how unusual the circumstances are, the hundred other questions there are to ask about how and why and what the hell are you talking about.

You take a breath, because it’s only going to get weirder. “Stray Kids?” you say tentatively, as if she might not know the name - but of course she does. Everyone here knows of them, if not knowing them personally.

“That’s a male group,” Hayoon says from the corner, because Minseo is too busy stuttering her way through several questions to voice any single one clearly. 

“JYP are interested in making them a co-ed group, if I’m interested in taking the contract,” you reply, near-verbatim from the meeting you’ve just sat through, and twist in your seat to look at her. You don’t know her very well, but you’ve always liked her - calm under pressure, logical and shrewd in her judgment, yet still able to have fun outside of practice. 

“In what world are you not taking the contract?” asks Minseo, who has never once let an opportunity slip through her cut-throat little fingers.

“In this world, maybe,” Hayoon shoots back without hesitation, “where she’d be the only girl in a group that’s not only all male but also two years her senior.”

You don’t know how Hayoon managed to sum it all up in one sentence, but she’s right; the hesitation that builds up in your chest, the welling fear that you’re going to end up somewhere worse than an empty dorm room, your friends debuting without you. It’s because of the untenable position the executives have offered you - to join a group of seniors, to always be an other within their unit…

“What happens if you don’t take the contract?” Minseo asks.

“I get dropped from the company,” you answer, and then shrug. You think it comes off as very nonchalant, despite the pit in your stomach. “I’ll be too old for the next planned group, and they aren’t willing to offer me a solo contract.”

“But they can offer a random contract in a male group?” Minseo presses.

Hayoon is pensive, her brow creased in thought. “Co-ed groups are insanely popular right now,” she says, “but adding a girl to an existing boy group is…weird.”

“It’s creating publicity for the group and the company,” you recite, the words still fresh in your mind from another woman’s mouth. “They want to do something new and exciting. Something people might talk about.”

“Everything always comes down to money or clout,” Hayoon sighs.

“I think you should do it,” Minseo puts in, leaning back into the sofa. “What else are you going to do, just quit? You’ve been here like six years for nothing then.”

“Four,” you correct her, though six isn’t wrong; the first two years had just been spent in another company, slowly realizing that they had no intention of debuting you. “And I can try another company still. I’m twenty-two and I look like, eighteen, I’m not dead.”

“Another company is risky though,” Hayoon points out. “You’re trusted and respected in JYP - if I were them, that’s why I’d have offered you the contract, not because of talent or anything. Another company isn’t going to care at all if you get a chance to debut, even if you audition perfectly and never make a mistake.”

“How are you so wise, unnie?” Minseo asks teasingly, and a smile curves the other girl’s lips.

“I’ve been around the block a few times,” she responds. “Got friends in high places, giving me advice. How do you think I got here?”

You feel slightly uncomfortable at that; the insinuation she’s making. The thought creeps into your head that she stole your spot, but you chase it away just as quickly as it comes - your spot is empty now, not filled by someone else. Your fight is with whatever face of management looked at a photo of you and decided to rip it up, not the girls down here, and there is no point losing friends and allies over it anyway. It’s already done. Midnight isn’t the path you will be allowed to take.

You turn to look at Hayoon, somewhat surprised at what else she is saying. “You think I should do it too?” you question.

Hayoon is slow to answer, thinking it through one last time. “It’s a shit choice,” she says, the language slipping from her tongue in a carefully constructed way that says she doesn’t care who hears it. “You either become a scapegoat for whatever happens with Stray Kids, or you throw yourself to the wolves of the industry. Solo debut would be much kinder.”

“But if you stay,” Minseo tacks onto the end, “we get to hang out every day still.”

“If you stay,” Hayoon interrupts, “you debut in a company you trust and a group known for doing their own thing and protecting each other. If you’re going to be added to any group, they’re definitely one of the better options.”

“Their leader was in the meeting,” you say suddenly, your eyes turning to the polished wood of the floor. “He didn’t seem very happy about the idea.”

“Bang Chan sunbaenim?” Minseo says. “He’s really nice though.”

“How would you know that?” Hayoon asks. 

Minseo throws a hand up, defensive. “I just see him around, I don’t know. Everyone knows Stray Kids are nice guys.”

“Nice or not, he was pretty vocal about not wanting a new member in his group,” you sigh. 

Hayoon falls silent, apparently without a rebuttal to this statement. “He’ll just have to get over it then,” Minseo says, elbowing you gently. “What’s he going to do, ice you out? He could lose his whole group doing that.”

“You’re very rude,” Hayoon says, leaning forward to look at Minseo. “I don’t know what the best decision is. Stay or go, it’s a risk either way. You don’t know what kind of group you’ll end up in with another company either.”

“And they want an answer by tomorrow,” you add dejectedly.

Minseo pats your arm, Hayoon a quiet, grounding weight on the other side. “You’ll make the right choice,” she says. “You’re way smarter than me, and way better at singing - if I’m going to be mega-famous, you’re going to be there quicker.”

Despite yourself, a small smile quirks in the corner of your mouth. “But not better at dancing?”

Minseo laughs, open-mouthed and mocking. “No way,” she replies. “You’ll never be better at dancing than me. Nice try.”

 

 

Chapter 3

 

---

 

The first thing you hear when you walk in the room is yelling.

You first hear it from down the hall, really, though you don’t really realise that it’s coming from this room until you reach the door, and you don’t appreciate the full volume of the voices until you knock and the door opens, letting the sound escape containment into the hallway. You don’t have time to react either - because the face that opens the door for you is strikingly familiar, in the way that faces you see often in photos and on billboards are.

“Y/N?” he asks, pulling the door wider so that you can come in.

“Felix sunbaenim,” you reply and bow, though it feels…awkward under the circumstances. You suppose you’ll get used to it, now that this is your life. “It’s nice to meet you.”

He looks uncomfortable too, for a moment, before it is smoothed over with a graceful smile. “You better come in,” he says, making room in the doorway for you to step through.

The room that greets you is achingly familiar - a dance studio, like any other in the building, though this one feels a little more personal that the faceless classrooms on the trainee floors. Boys are scattered across the space, practising on the far side of the room, counting out time to themselves, or sitting quietly on their phones. 

Changbin and Hyunjin are the source of the noise; sat together in one corner, but they aren’t what draws your eye - no, you look right past them to the lanky figure with his back turned to you, hunched over the laptop that he’s connected to the sound system. You’ve already met Stray Kids’ leader, in a way - he’d been there for that long meeting three days ago that had decided your fate, though there hadn’t been an opportunity to exchange words then. There hadn’t been many words to exchange by the end of the meeting either, not when he’d spent the first hour making it very clear that this was not his idea, nor did he think it was a good one.

You’re trying not to be hurt by it. You don’t think he really realised that you were in the room until the conversation shifted directly to you, and it wasn’t really about you anyway. This is an insular, self-made group, and he didn’t like JYP meddling with their affairs when they didn’t have to, that was understandable. 

It still makes you nervous to walk into this room and pretend to be one of them, though. There’s no pretending that he wants you here, and both of you know that.

“Sorry that I’m late,” you say to Felix, tearing your eyes away from the others before one of them can turn around and notice you.

“You’re early, actually,” he replies, closing the door behind you.

“Am I?” you question. “You guys are already practising.” Your head tips towards the two on the far side of the room - Lee Know and I.N. You kind of wish you didn’t know their names. It would be easier to fight off the feeling of intimidation then.

“They’ve been here for an hour already,” Felix says, waving a hand in the air. “Come and sit down while Chan-hyung fixes the music.”

Wordlessly, you follow him to the long couch that lines the wall, the same sort of place you’d sat with Minseo in Midnight’s studio when she told you that you should do this. The louder boys are both sat here too - somehow, you end up right next to them, Felix slumping down on your other side. There’s no avoiding how their eyes turn to you now, or the way their smiles dim as they do, their fun interrupted.

“Is this our new maknae?” Hyunjin asks without preamble, leaning forward to see Felix around you.

Felix frowns in confusion. “Isn’t she older than us?” he questions. 

None of the three know the answer, silence reigning until Hyunjin’s eyes turn to you. “What year?” he asks.

“‘98,” you answer, and he blinks.

Between you, the sound that erupts from Changbin’s mouth is almost loud enough to burst your eardrums. “Maknae-noona,” he says, with a grin that gives away just how funny he thinks it is. Felix cracks a laugh, unable to help himself - Hyunjin just looks perplexed, caught up on some implication that you’ve missed.

“How old are you?” you ask the three of them.

“'99 and 2000,” Felix supplies. “Only Chan-hyung is older than you.”

“Lee Know is the same age,” Hyunjin supplies. Felix shrugs like it doesn’t matter, leaning back in his seat.

“This is Changbin and Hyunjin,” he says just to you, ignoring the other two the way that you would ignore a pair of hecklers on the sidelines. “Do you know everyone’s names?”

“I think so,” you say, looking around the room - for each one of the boys you see, a name comes to mind that you’re reasonably confident is correct.

“I can introduce you to everyone if you want,” Felix offers freely.

“No, that’s okay,” you say, because you think about meeting all eight of them at once and your stomach kind of drops. “I’ll meet everyone as I go…if that’s okay.” Not that you weren’t already nervous walking in, but having to face them all one after another…

“It’s a lot of people, huh,” Felix says, as if he’s reading your mind. You nod, grateful for the understanding.

“Not as many as a trainee class, at least,” Hyunjin points out. It’s hard to tell if he’s trying to be supportive or just letting his thoughts flow straight to his mouth, but at least he’s not being mean. You’ll take not mean.

“If it’s easier to meet everyone now-” you start to say, backtracking as fast as your heart starts to pound. Great start - a whole five minutes, and you’ve already come off as rude.

“Don’t worry about it,” Changbin answers you before you can finish, waving away any doubts. “This is weird for us as well.”

“Do you have an accent?” Hyunjin cuts in when you don’t immediately answer, leaning around Changbin.

“Oh.” Unbidden, your eyes cut to Felix. “Yeah. I’m from Australia.”

Felix’s face lights up. “Hey!” he says, switching easily to English. “Nice!" 

Hyunjin grins, his hands clapping together. "Aussie-racha,” he says, pleased with himself.

“She’s vocalracha too,” Changbin adds. “Everyone has three now.”

“Racha?” you question.

“That’s what we call our units,” Felix explains. “Vocal, dance, rap. And now we have three Aussies as well.”

Overhead, music blares from the speakers followed by a cry of success from Chan. “He fixed it,” Changbin says, pretending to be dejected even as he springs to his feet, stretching his arms like he’s ready to dance.

“And broke my ears,” Hyunjin grumbles, following along. Felix stands too, and you follow him to your feet - just in time to catch Chan’s eye as he turns away from the computer.

“Y/N,” he says. “You made it here okay?”

His voice is warm but his eyes are guarded; wary, of what you might say or do. “Yes, sunbaenim,” you answer, bowing just in time that it is still polite.

“Oh, don’t worry about honourifics,” he says quickly, almost before the words are out of your mouth. “Has anyone sent you anything on what we’re doing today? Or…the comeback? Anything?”

Wordlessly, your head shakes. His brow furrows.

“I’ve run over some of your choreography and songs, since-” The meeting, but you’re hesitant to bring that up. No need to remind him that he doesn’t want you here, even though so far he’s been…nicer than you expected. “-well, two days ago.”

“Yeah, the timing is…” a hand reaches up to rub at the back of his neck, “…not great. We’re doing choreography for the comeback shows today so we’ll run you through that and think about formation changes, and tonight I’ll send you all the tracks for the new album and the old ones you’ll have to learn? There won’t be parts for you yet in any of the newer stuff, but I’ll figure that out by next week, and then we’ll figure out when we’re recording and all of that.”

“That sounds good,” you reply, blowing out a nervous breath as your heart stutters in your chest. It sounds like a lot, actually, but you can’t just back down in the face of hard work, no matter how high it piles up or how quickly it reaches those heights. The time for that was three days ago, when you decided to do this.

(The time for that was six years ago, when you decided to leave everything you knew and everyone you loved, but if you think that far back now, the amount of potential wasted time and the blank future ahead is paralysing.)

“I’ll look after her for today,” Felix offers, a hand patting Chan’s shoulder. “I’ve got most of the song down anyway.”

“Thanks,” Chan says, and then turns as someone calls him across the room, pulling him away as quickly as he’d come.

“Come on,” Felix says, gesturing for you to follow him.

 

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

 

By sheer coincidence, or maybe just rampant bad luck, you do see I.N on the way to your second dance practise of the day, lurking around by the vocal rooms at the same time as you finish a lesson.

You almost walk away, truth be told, when his back remains turned to you, busy talking to someone you don't recognise. You've barely met, apart from scattered exchanges of words (which is still more than you've exchanged with Han, who only ever seems focused on the dance or on doing something silly in another corner of the room), and it seems...awkward, to go over and grab him and not let go, as Lee Know had so eloquently put it. Rude, too, when he is still a sunbaenim, in public and in the group that you're now a part of, two years your senior even though he is younger-

It's a weird situation to be in. That reality hadn't left your mind since Taerin had pointed it out on the day you'd first received the offer; and it's only the safety of that knowledge bolstered by the...unease of turning up to dance practise and admitting that you saw him and didn't bring him that propels you down the hall, trying to catch his attention without interrupting his conversation. 

He glances over the moment that you pass by his peripheral vision, pausing midsentence to give you a small wave in greeting and then resuming what he was saying, half-turned as if you are part of the conversation. You hang back anyway, trying not to listen in as he finishes up and his friend departs, leaving you alone in the hallway.

"What's up?" he asks when the other boy is out of earshot.

A sheepish smile sets itself upon your face. "This might sound weird, but I was instructed to...drag you to dance practise, basically."

He stares at you for a second, uncomprehending, and then blanches, pulling several faces in a row. "I nearly forgot about that," he says, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, and then frowns. "Wait, is that what Lee Know hyung said?"

"Basically," you answer, and pull out your phone to show him. One eyebrow raises, a look of disdain crossing his face even as he struggles not to laugh.

"He makes it sound like I'm always late or something," he complains as you start down the hall together, shifting his bag on his shoulder for better comfort. "For the record, I've never been late."

Unbidden, a smile plays on your lips. "Never?" you dare to ask, testing the waters just a bit. 

You're pleased when he cracks a smile and a breathy laugh, unable to hide it under a straight face. "Maybe sometimes. Not as much as he wants you to think, though."

You're inclined to believe I.N, despite not knowing much of either side. While you've missed some of the boys in the first week of practise, never ending up close to each other by pure circumstance, you've spent the great majority of that time trying to follow along with Lee Know as he picks at details and mistakes and runs choreography back past the other boys - and toys with them as he pleases, straightfaced enough to make anything that comes out of his mouth sound believeable. 

And anything could come out of his mouth, any bald-faced lie he feels like telling in the moment. In practise times, he is a serious and trustworthy teacher, but as soon as the music turns off, anyone is fair game and any topic that will cause havoc amongst the people gathered in the room is preferable.

It's kind of funny, when you're standing nearby and innocently listening in. You have a feeling it's funny when it happens to you as well, but his particular kind of wit hasn't turned towards you yet. 

Lee Know is already waiting when you make it to the dance room, the music playing while he lazily marks choreography to the mirror. God's Menu, the track that's beginning to play in your dreams and your nightmares, when you find the time to have them. The bane of your existance, almost, except that the tune is horrifically catchy and the choreo is starting to make its way into your bones and at that point, it is hard to resent any of the track. 

He turns as you enter, watching the door swing open in the reflection of the mirror, and then strides across the room to pause the music. "You brought him," he says to you, pleased, as Jeongin trails in behind you, closing the door with the bump of his shoulder.

"Hyung," he says before you can say anything. "Why am I being escorted to practice now?"

"No reason," Lee Know replies, deadpan; but there's an impish look in his eyes that says otherwise, the ghost of the smile that he's hiding curving in the lines of his face. You have a feeling you've both just been the butt of some joke he's only told himself, especially when the look that Jeongin gives you behind his back is long-suffering. Perhaps you hadn't been so right about him not toying with you yet.

Dance practise runs smoothly, as it always does, although there is far less goofing around at the beginning than there is when all eight boys are here together. This is a sombre duo, you notice; Minho is sharp-eyed and precise in what he wants, but gentle in his teaching - I.N is studious in response, trying to press every little detail into his limbs in the short time given. 

You are serious about practise too, determined to get it right and trying to emulate the attitude that I.N puts forward as best you can, but...it is hard. Not the choreography so much, although it isn't easy, but the detail, the finer points that they have spent years honing while you were still scrapping for survival in the trainee rooms. They work with a practised ease, falling into a rhythm that molds to the other members that they've beaten into their bodies in the two long years they've danced with each other, but your body won't follow along so easily no matter how hard you try - always a little stiff, or a fraction slow, or too reserved when the rest are opening up. Always sticking out like a sore thumb, no matter the placement or the move.

Dancing was already a sticking point for you, an achilles heel you've worked and worked and worked to overcome, but this is...this is another thing. It's daunting, to come into this room every day and play yourself back on a video and notice the fractions of a second that pass by, the way everyone else moves around each other and you stand like a rock in the centre of their ocean, unable to follow an underwater current you weren't even made to feel.

"Bigger movements," Minho says as Chan's voice plays over the speakers, the nod of his head marking the choreography as he turns his back to the mirror and watches intently. Your kick is good, sky-high and bursting with energy, but the movement after it is quick, and then the throw-

"Bigger," Minho says again, arms reaching and pulling in example even as the music moves on. "Keep going."

You pick it back up at the prechorus, stretching for that extra movement he wants to see, trying to embed the feeling of it right down into your bones. It's hard, and it's tiring - your mind slips to something else, or your breath hitches funny in your throat, and your body wants to slip back into its old way of dancing, rather than stretching to its limits. You've always found details hard, to spot and to correct, your confidence in your own judgement lacking; unlike singing, where you were sure you knew what you were capable of and when you strayed from your goals.

The music ends with a final bow to the mirror, your mouth open and your chest heaving, the dance burning like liquid fire in your veins. You have to remind yourself to hold the pose and hide the weakness of your limbs for several seconds, a small moment you hadn't really thought to practise in the past - your eyes stray to Jeongin, taking up the spot just in front and to your right, waiting for him to break first before you relax too, shaking out your arms.

"It was good," Minho says, his voice lifting upwards in what you think is a hopeful tone. "Better than the other day."

"Still not good enough though," you reply, though you store the compliment away in the corner of your mind, pleased that he isn't saying you haven't learnt anything. Debut or not, you've always taken pride in being an excellent student, and you need that one thing to hold on to right now, when everything else is so up in the air.

"Not yet," Minho agrees readily, leaning back against the counter at the back of the room. His eyes meet yours in the mirror, the expression unreadable. "Not that it's an easy dance. Keep working on the details, and it will keep getting better."

You feel like there's an or else attached to that sentence that he isn't saying, a black cloud that hangs over you as his voice peters out and his gaze watches you thoughtfully, though what he's searching for, you don't know. All you can do is nod in response and push down the cold fear, letting his eyes drop away as he turns to say something to Jeongin that sounds much more positive than your review.

"Can we run through Top today too?" Jeongin questions when he is done, one sleeve wiping the sweat from his brow. "We're going back to that this week, aren't we?"

"Yeah," Minho confirms. "One week before we go."

"Top?" you question with a frown; the name sounds familiar, maybe from the extensive list of tracks sitting in a folder on your phone waiting to be listened to, but you can't summon any memory of the track itself off the top of your head. 

"Our Japan promotion next week," Jeongin says. "You haven't heard it yet?"

"I think I have it somewhere, but I've been focusing on the album," you reply. "You're going to Japan next week?"

"You don't have the new schedule?" Minho questions.

"No?" you reply tentatively. "Not one with Japan on it, anyway. The only thing on my schedule is dance and vocal. No one's told me anything else." Not even Chan, though he'd been...busier this week. More distant, only around for group practise and then gone again. You've seen most of the boys around by themselves, practising one thing or another, but not Chan, who seems quite happy to leave you with Minho and focus on whatever duties he had that were drawing him away. Not that you could blame him, when you were just an additional problem thrown on him right before a comeback. If you were him, you'd probably find someone else to deal with it too.

Jeongin reaches out, patting you on the shoulder sympathetically. "No one tells me anything either," he says, so serious that somehow, he circles right back around to funny. It surprises you, so much that a smile cracks across your face unbidden; which in turn makes him laugh, a short breath that swallows itself back down before it can become a proper giggle.

Minho is immune to the humor, arms crossed over his chest. He looks like he has something to say, his brow furrowed in a particular way, but all he says is, "Lets do Top," and turns to the computer again, scrolling through the tracklist. 

Jeongin turns towards the mirror, flashing you a smile as he picks a spot on the floor to begin. You shuffle out of the way before the music starts, dropping onto the couch in time with the first note and reaching for water. Minho wanders across the room in no real hurry, watching Jeongin pick up the first beats of the choreography on his own, the spaces where the other members are supposed to be around him gaping wide.

"Are you at the front for the chorus?" Minho asks over the sound of Hyunjin's voice playing through the speakers, Jeongin joining him at the side of the room as the verse plays out. 

"Yes," Jeongin replies.

"Oh, I.N-ah!" Minho crows, and then picks up the dance as Hyunjin's part ends and Seungmin begins, his voice clear and crisp as the beat behind it drops out. "Main dancer I.N-ah!"

Laughing, Jeongin follows, joining in time with the music. You watch, mesmerised as they work their way through the chorus and then back into another verse; this is obviously choreography made for a whole group, not to be done on its own, but even with the obvious gaps in the timing, it looks...cool. Fun, you're surprised to think, even though the fast, sharp movements never seem to stop and I.N obviously tires the longer it goes on, his action softening and his body starting to forget the movement that comes next, limbs hesitating a fraction too long. 

Minho oscillates between dancing and watching, eagle-eyes following every small shift in the other boy's body from start to finish. It's impressive, how much he can see at once, how there are so many timings missing with the other members and yet he knows where and when everything is supposed to hit, his brow furrowing or his head cocking to the side when something isn't quite right.

"You know what to work on for that," he says when the music ends, shrugging when Jeongin's eyes find him in the mirror. You move for him, leaning over to the computer to pause the music before the next song can start playing. 

"Everything?" Jeongin guesses wryly, pushing his hair back out of his eyes. 

"We haven't done it for a while," Minho says. "Wait until we all do it. You're going to be the only one in time."

"Because I'm at the front," Jeongin says, but he manages to smile anyway, turning away from the mirror in search of his water bottle. 

Minho is unsympathetic, following him across the room. "Well if we put you at the back, how will anyone see how cute you are?"

Jeongin twists sharply. "That's true," he says, masking the laugh that threatens to spread across his face. "You're smart, hyung."

"I know," Minho replies, and then he turns away, picking up his jacket. "Are you going home now?"

"No, I have a lesson."

"I.N-ah, are you practising everything today?" Minho's voice rises with each word, the grin on his face growing wider and wider. You lean back against the counter as you watch, amused at the way they bounce off each other as Minho pokes at his ribs and I.N laughs, skittering away out of reach. "You're so cool. You're going to be a rockstar."

"Get out of here," Jeongin says, shoving him away. 

Minho laughs, stepping towards the door, and then turning to you. "You were good today," he says; his voice light, but not uncaring. "You're going to sing next time."

"Thankyou," you say, your head dropping, unable to accept the compliment face-to-face. Someone outside catches Minho's attention in the next moment, drawing him towards the door. 

"Hey," Jeongin says before you can follow, drawing up beside you. "Give me your number, and I'll tell you when I'm in here practising."

You blink at him, your hand automatically reaching for your phone before stalling again. So far, only Minho has asked for your number, to organise times for these practises. "Are you sure?" you question. "You don't have to do that."

I.N nods, his phone already in his hand. "As your sunbae, I have to make sure Minho's teaching doesn't kill you," he says, a smile tucking itself away behind his cheek as he pretends to be completely serious. "As my elder, you should be here to make sure he doesn't kill me."

You're the first to laugh again, the sound bursting out of you unbidden at the face he makes, the specific way he intones each word. He looks pleased at your reaction, a smile lighting up his face. "Deal," you say, and you pull out your phone, tapping his number into a new contact.

 

Chapter 6

 

---

 

Even as you knock on the door to the studio, you're nervous.

Maybe you shouldn't be; it's been nearly a month exactly now, and you're fairly sure at this point that none of the boys hate you, though calling some of them friends has been easier said than done. Maybe that's why you're nervous in the first place, because it's been so long and you're still unsure where you stand within the group, especially with the one you're supposed to meet now...

It's not your fault. Well, maybe it is a little bit - you're aware that you're struggling to relax in their company, the way you had with the girls in Midnight or other trainees. But your schedules are so different too, you only see the others in practise, or in passing in the halls. Some days you practise on your own, while they are off on one schedule or another, living the life of idols that have built up their name, other days only half of them are there. Sometimes there is no dance practise scheduled at all, their own individual lessons or other commitments taking precedence.

It won't be like this forever, you just keep telling yourself. Three weeks more, and then you debut with the rest of them, and you're part of the group for real. Three weeks of hard work, and then, maybe, it gets easier.

Maybe. You've thought that before, only for an opportunity to slip away through your fingers. You wouldn't be surprised if it happened again.

The door opens - Chan, leaning over from his chair to tug on the door handle before he returns to his desk. "Come in," he says warmly, an arm gesturing you towards the couch behind him. It's already occupied by Changbin, who makes you smile when he gives you a hello and a wave. "Sit with me," he says, in Korean and then again in broken English, patting the cushions. "I'll be quiet, I promise."

You're reminded suddenly of how loud he can be, during practises or even when everyone is just sitting around, but you hesitate to mention it, sitting quietly beside him instead. "You can tell him to leave if you want," Chan adds, his back turning to his laptop. "He's not actually here for anything important."

"I'm here for emotional support," Changbin claims, only he puts on such a voice as he says it that it makes both of you laugh. "It's an important job."

"Okay, well." Chan's hands spread, like he doesn't have any say in the situation. "If you don't need support, you can tell him to leave."

"He can stay," you answer readily, and you don't really doubt your answer at all. Out of all the members, Changbin has been one of the friendliest; he'd been so warm and accepting on your first day, and gone out of his way in days since to talk to you or pull you into a joke when you were on the outskirts watching. Even if he was only doing it because you looked pathetically out of place among them, you appreciated it. 

"Cool," Chan says, and then he shifts in his chair like he's uncomfortable, his eyes straying towards his laptop momentarily. "So. I wanted to talk to you about the comeback."

"I figured as much," you reply, aware that your hands are fidgeting nervously in your lap.

Chan's mouth opens, like he's going to say something, and then he hesitates, glancing away again. Apprehension rises in your throat, bitter like the taste of bad coffee as you swallow it back down again. It's one thing if you're nervous - but if he is unsure about what he's about to say too, then it could be-

"I've thought about it, and I've decided that you're not going to debut with us on this album."

Bad.

Your heart stops and then starts again, your chest tightening around your lungs even though you've heard this story before. It shouldn't even surprise you by now, the let-down; thinking you might have now, finally, done the work and reaped the reward, and yet every time you seem to let the hope creep into your chest just so that you can crumble twice as hard. You hadn't even realised you'd become this married to the idea of joining Stray Kids in the last three weeks, and yet the idea of getting dropped again hurts like a pain in your chest.

This was your last chance. No one else will debut you. The world isn't that kind of kind.

"Okay," you say, through a jaw that feels like it won't move enough to form the words. "It's - I understand. I'm sorry that I couldn't do it."

"Hang on," Chan says, a hand hovering between you like he's ready to catch you if you turn to leave. "Just hear me out - it's not that you're not good enough, okay? I just think it will help you if we wait a little bit longer, and the company were happy to agree."

"You've worked hard," Changbin says beside you, his face earnest. "No one thinks you can't do it."

"No," Chan agrees. "I'm just looking at the timeline, and the schedule they've drawn up for you, and I think you'd do much better if we push debut back to our next comeback in September."

September. Three more months away, rather than three weeks; three more months to push through, nose to the grindstone, that deadline looming over your head. Three more months in which someone might realise they've made a grave mistake and pull you right back out again, when you'd been so close to that finish line. Three more months feeling like an imposter in these boys' lives, waiting for life to even out into some kind of normal.

"Is that okay?" Chan asks, and you bite down the spiral of thoughts that pulls your mind down towards a big, black hole and nod, trying to pretend that it's nothing. The frown on his face doesn't look convinced, nor does the sheet of paper that he reaches behind him to fetch, shoving it into your hands.

"I want you to understand," he says as you look down at the paper, forcing your fingers to only hold it gently before you can rip it. A schedule, the next three weeks of your life laid out in a neat little chart that is detailed down to the minute and overflowing with things to do. "This is the choice they've given us; either we push you through this schedule and extra dance practise and debut in three weeks, or we wait sixteen weeks, and you do all of these things with the rest of us in a reasonable timeframe. I've been looking at it all week, and...I think it's too much. Waiting gives us a song prepared for nine members, takes the pressure off of the managers, gives you time to get to know everyone..."

You're forced to swallow the lump in your throat as you read the schedule and realise that Chan is right; the next week is full of photoshoots and content creation, with no room left for the dance practise you know you need to keep up with. It's rushed, and it's daunting, and at first look you're not really sure at all how you would handle everything. It's the life you've been training for for years now, and yet so many of the things on this list you feel like you haven't trained for at all.

"You're right," you admit, around a tongue that sits too heavy in your mouth. "I don't know why they thought this would work in the first place, when I'm so-"

"Someone high up had a great idea, and wanted it seen through as fast as possible," Chan says before you can finish. "Stray Kids haven't had a really...successful year. Maybe they were thinking of dropping us unless something changed, maybe they just really liked you. They've already agreed to push your debut back to September anyway, so it's not something we need to worry about now."

"As long as they still think it's a good idea in September," you say, and you manage to keep your tone light even though it doesn't sound much like a joke to you at all.

Changbin is the one to speak up, his hand slapping the arm of the couch. "They can't mess with us like that," he declares in the kind of voice that says he has complete confidence in what he says. "You want to be in Stray Kids, you're in Stray Kids, and you're not leaving."

"Exactly," Chan says warmly, and you manage to muster up a smile even though that tension still squeezes tight in your chest at the thought of another three months of limbo, not knowing if you'll stay or if you'll go. "Now," he says, turning back to his laptop, "I have better news; I've got a part for you in God's Menu that I want to hear, and I can play the next title track for you..."

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

 

Chapter 9

The seat you've picked for their second practice runthrough is one of the best in the house, you think quietly as the music kicks in. 

The one that you'd picked for the first practice was middling, upon review, too far back to really appreciate every silly antic on stage, and the seat you'll be hiding in on the night of the show won't be anything as special as front row, but this one...this one is good. Front and centre, no one in the seats in front of you and not so close that you have to crick your neck to look up at Changbin waving to you as he wanders along the edge of the stage - but still close enough to spot that smile and the amusement that glimmers in his eyes as he passes. 

It's nice to see the show from a place like this just once, even if the choreography isn't all out and the boys wander about rather than playing up the energy for the crowd, when there will be so much time for that tomorrow. It's even better to observe how they work in an environment you've never experienced despite so many years as a trainee.

Not that you will experience any of this yet, not really. You're not sure if the way your gut clenches is out of disappointment or relief. You've waited to headline a concert like this your entire life, but to have to start your career here, instead of something smaller like the TV stages...

The start of God's Menu blares through the small arena, every beat a gut-punch with the volume of the speakers. Your feet move with the music, dragging you up out of your seat and into the clear space of the aisle nearby. For once, the choreography feels easy; whether it is because Lee Know isn't watching your back like a hawk, or because you stop for a moment whenever you run out of room, or because the way Chan points at you and smiles makes your heart rise in your chest...

Easy plays next, subtler in sound and much sharper in movement, each move sliding seamlessly from smooth to snapping and back again. You don't dance that one half as well, you're sure - just keeping up isn't good enough, when they are so perfectly in sync, so absolutely sure of themselves after just a week of practising.

You sit down again after that one, face flushed and chest rising and falling rapidly. At least you've gotten in some practice for today.

They go for a full three hours, just like they will tomorrow. Just like it's another day for them, like it hasn't taken weeks of planning and choreography and a whole team of people to put together - and for them, you suppose, it hasn't. It's been kind of scary, actually, how easy it's been for them to come into practice and pick up choreography for one song or another, clean and go. It's taken you so long just to prepare one and a half songs; even as a trainee, you couldn't imagine being that confident after just one day.

The practice ends with an imaginary fanfare, the boys cheering themselves on through microphones before scattering to all  corners of the stage so that the band can adjust what they want to. You wander up to the stage in no real hurry, just as you had at the end of the session yesterday, hoisting yourself up onto its eddge between two lights and climbing to your feet, turning to look out at the empty auditorium.

You'd never admit it, but the sight takes your breath away. The stretch of the seats, climbing up the walls into the shadows, the shine of the lights in your eyes - and this is only a small venue. Dones and arenas stretch even further into the distance, the sea of lights infinite - if you couldn't even stand on this stage and imagine it full-

"No audience members on stage, please," Minho says behind you, wandering his way across the stage with Han trailing in his wake. "Where's security?"

He's so straightfaced that for a moment, even though you know he's joking, you wonder if he's being serious. In the next moment, Han cracks a laugh, his elbow catching MInho in his side. "What?" he says like he can't believe what he's hearing.

"What?" Minho replies, his lips curving into a smile.

"Don't be mean," Han whines, though the effect is lost in the laugh that bubbles from his mouth. It's the most relaxed you've seen him since your first week, when Felix had leaned over and said he's just shy.

"Don't worry," you say kindly, trying your best to tread carefully in this new terrain. "He does this to me all the time now."

"Ah, you know how it is then," Han sighs in agreement.

"Do you like the stage?" Minho asks, if only to draw the conversation away from his bad habits.

You nod, your eyes turning outwards again. "It's big," you comment, scanning row upon row of empty seats, all the way to the back wall. "I've never actually been on a stage in a venue like this."

Minho looks out too, eyes searching the place while he thinks of something clever to say. "It's okay," he says lightly after a moment, the tone of his voice clearly giving away that he is playing with you. "It's not that big."

"Okay, sure," you snort, and then you catch the funny, surprised look Han gives you and remember that you're still a junior here. You've begun to forget, with some of them, that they are afforded due respect as seniors, the chasm between you starting to feel smaller...but not Han, yet. Not Seungmin, or Hyunjin, or sometimes even Chan, despite how friendly he tries to be.

"Wait until award season," Minho says, patting you on the shoulder. "If we perform at those shows..."

A shiver runs down your spine at the thought of it - packed arenas, audiences of other idols, international broadcasts with all kinds of eyes on them. And you weren't even playing this stage-

Sixteen weeks. And another sixteen to award season, the year over in the blink of an eye. You know by now how quickly time could disappear if you weren't careful, how six months could whittle to three and then none in the blink of an eye.

"Don't scare her, Lee Know," Chan says, pausing on his way past. A mic dangles from his hand too, flipping back and forth idly in a way that catches your eye simply for how close it seems to come each time to being dropped.

"Why would I do that?" Minho replies innocently, stepping casually out of their leader's reach. Clever, really, when he shifts just a moment before Chan can throw an arm around his shoulders to match the silly grin that's dawning on his face. "I just spent all of this time making her dance."

"Because you would," Chan says, in a voice that gets more indulgent with every syllable. "Evil rabbit."

Minho makes a noise of disgust and shuffles away two steps, nose scrunched in distaste. Across the stage, the band picks up the thread of Slump, somewhere in the verse. The lyrics spring to mind several bars later, your mind automatically catching up to them.

"Everyone's gonna be watching," Han sings casually, mic dangling by his side and his head swivelling to track the movement of the others across the stage. "I gotta show them all of me." His voice is lovely, steady and clear as a bell even at the end of their runthrough. Without a mic, he is still loud enough to be heard across the room; from several feet away, Felix lets out a loud whoop, hand up in the air as he laughs at himself.

Minho picks up where Han leaves off, pulling a face as he reaches up into the higher range of his voice once more to catch the notes. Han joins him for the final line in lieu of I.N, lost somewhere across the stage, threading in a higher harmony as the drum kicks up towards the chorus.

"Now I'm walking on my way," you sing under your breath as their voices both rise, not wanting to disturb their fun but unable to resist the rise of the music when you know the melody and you love the song. Han doesn't hear you, his back turned to look at something Felix is doing over in the corner; neither does Minho, wandering restless circles in orbit around your group as he sings. That's okay though. You didn't really want to be heard anyway, not when you aren't-

Something hard taps you on the shoulder. 

You turn, looking down; a microphone awaits, held out expectantly for you to take. Chan looks at you expectantly, the offer never wavering even though it takes you several seconds of indecision to decide what it is you're going to do about it. He waves it at you again when you don't move, insistent.

Slowly, you take it from his hand, and watch the smile that lights up across his face.

"I'm afraid I'm gonna be left stranded by myself." The sound of your voice reverberating in the rafters, filling every corner of the room, sends a shiver down your spine, a shock of lightning that winds itself into the notes that you sing, electrifying the air. To your left, Han stops singing, turning around to watch you; from the far end of the stage, Hyunjin looks up too, sharp eyes landing on you. You turn away before fear can falter in your voice, looking out to the empty crowd instead, the wide space that waits for an audience to fill it.

Imagining them there, singing along as your voice rises above them, is giddying; but why wouldn't it be, when this has been the dream all along? And now it is so close, right here within your reach and in front of your eyes, and if it runs away from you once more-

The song ends, one final note from the very back of the stage ringing out. Your voice dies in your throat, the microphone falling away - for a moment, you wish that they would start up again so that you could have four lines more, or eight, or a whole song. You could live in this feeling forever, standing here on this stage, right up until the hour of the show when people would start to fill those seats and you would have to hide away again.

In the next moment, you become distinctly aware of all the eyes that are trained on your back, and you remember that this is not where you belong.

You turn sharply on your heel to face Chan, your heart in your throat. "Thankyou," you say, in a voice that is a little too stiff to be usual, and hold out the mic for him to take.

"Hey, no worries," he replies in English as he takes it, the warm metal slipping from your grip. "Sounds good, by the way. I like your voice."

"Oh." The compliment catches you off-guard, your fingers curling around themselves in the absence of the mic. "Thanks. I've been working on the songs."

"Have you ever sung on a big stage like this?" he asks.

You shake your head, your heart jumping again at the thought of it - blinding lights and screaming crowds and the music down in your bones. "I did a survival show before I came to JYP," you say, "but the stages there were only a hundred or so people, not...thousands."

Chan's face changes, from that usual, polite warmness he puts on to a confusion that tugs at his brow. "I didn't know you were on a show," he says, in a voice that says he is dying to ask more questions.

"It wasn't very popular," you offer freely, something between a smile and a grimace turning the corners of your mouth. "It was so much work, and then they dropped two of us in the predebut stage, and disbanded six months later. I shouldn't have ever done it."

"And then JYP dropped you from Midnight as well," he adds, and then blanches at the grimace that comes across your face, rocking back on his heels. "Sorry. I didn't mean that in a bad way."

"I don't think there's any good way to say it, is there?" you reply, trying to wipe that expression off your face and slow the jump of your heart in your chest. Tension tightens in the air like a wire, expanding to fill the whole stage before it snaps. "Six years in training, three debuts lined up, and-" You stop as short as Chan did before you finish that sentence, looking at your feet to avoid looking at him. "I'm trying really hard this time, I promise. Not that I didn't try the last two times, it just didn't-"

"Hey," he says, cutting through the babble that your sentence has descended into. "I know what you mean; I was here for seven years before Stray Kids, so...I know where you're at. And you can tell me whatever you want, yeah? I'm not that scary. Ask any of them."

You lift your eyes, following the line of his finger to the seven boys he is pointing to at the back of the stage. The sharp eye of Lee Know catches yours from within the crowd, eyebrow raising as if to ask what you need; you glance away as if you hadn't noticed, eyes sliding across to the empty side of the stage. 

What are you supposed to say? I don't know if we can talk casually without it being rude, or you hold my entire life in your hands and I don't know what to do about that? If I relax before debut I'll get dropped, or I think I'm cursed? None of those things seem right to say, and when you look at him out of the corner of your eye, trying to pretend like you aren't looking at all, you realise that you're still not sure you trust him, even though it's been over a month and he's given no indication that he wants you gone bad enough to undermine you.

But he never wanted you here in the first place.

"I'm not scared of you," you say, and force yourself to look him in the eye. Your mouth is set in a grim line, your jaw clenched; you know immediately by the way the corners of his eyes crinkle that he can see through the lie, but he doesn't say anything. "I'm just really focused on making it to debut. I want to be one of you, not just...the trainee on the side."

He reaches out, hesitant as his hand lands on your shoulder. Giving you time to move away, you realise, but you don't. It's grounding, in a way, even if the proximity of him and the stretch of the stadium out around you makes you want to curl up and hide away. "You already are one of us," he insists.

But when you look into his eyes, you can tell that he doesn't really believe it - and you know that he can see that you don't really believe it either.

Chapter 10

 

---

 

At some point in the last two months, you'd become more used to the presence of eight boys than you'd realised.

The thought only makes the quiet air of the studio all the more oppressive as you sit on the floor, legs stretched out before you as you wait for the livestream to load. You'd spent plenty of time in here alone since joining their group, but not as much as you have in the past week, with the boys gone from the moment they woke up to the late hours of the night on schedules and promotions. It was strange to be here for twelve hours or more and not hear a single voice coming through the door, to wander up to the cafeteria for lunch and not see them, or Minseo, or even the other trainees you'd worked with for so many years, your personal rhythms no longer lining up with the regimen of classes and mealtimes and monthly evaluations, which you know are drawing close without even having to check.

Even your home is lonely, the empty rooms echoing with no voice to respond to you. You haven't had your own room since you left Australia all of six years ago. You've never had your own apartment. You're not sure you know what to do with it anymore.

The livestream erupts in a burst of noise and colourful pixels, clarifying slowly into a picture of a stage. You've missed most of the opening performances, not watching the time as you practised. You've seen them all three times this week already; you'll probably see them all again next week as well. And if you said that watching the rookie groups in the earlier stages of the show didn't make you a little bit jealous, you'd be lying, especially this of all weeks.

(If you said that watching the boys perform God's Menu didn't make you a little bit jealous, you'd be lying too, but you won't allow that thought to cross your mind.)

As if summoned by the thought of them, they flash up on the screen, one at a time, and then as a group as the stage begins; senior idols, playing top billing on a weekly show watched by millions, a position you have no business being in. And yet here you are, sitting in their studio and watching their shows and thinking that it should have been you and you've been cheated again.

A shiver that has nothing to do with the music or the sweat that clings to your skin runs down your spine. Were you just being conceited about this whole debut thing; signing this contract to join a senior group, watching other debut groups like you had the right to be out there with them, occupying this private dance studio as if it is your own space, as if you'd earned the right fair and square to leave the darker, shared spaces of the fourth floor rooms, where all the other trainees ground away at their skills with only hope in their future. 

Weren't three missed debuts just three signs that you'd ignored that maybe this wasn't the life promised to you?

Your phone vibrates, a text notification from Minseo covering Felix's face. Your thumb hovers over it, the desire to ask where she is and what she's doing tugging at your breastbone. You let it slide away though; she's been at different schedules all day too, if she is even home yet, and night is drawing on quickly. You're exhausted anyway; you'd probably fall asleep in the first five minutes of a movie, or even midway through a bowl of icecream.

You need to keep practising anyway. That was the key to this debut you'd stolen off of fate; every minute of every day spent in this studio, until you made it or they dropped you. You already know how it feels to look back and see an hour or a day that could have been spent getting better, and you'd hated it; this time, even if you never debuted, no one would say that you didn't try. No one would call you lazy.

(But the wrong look was what they had said, not lazy. Just not pretty enough, just the wrong face in the wrong lineup in front of the wrong man. It was one thing to fail out of merit; it was another to fail because of the way you were born.)

 

---

 

Chapter 11

 

---

 

The studio is silent when you enter, the door clicking softly shut behind you. Neither of its occupants stir, even though Chan had just called out for you to come in when you'd knocked; he's staring at his computer screen now, fingers hovering over a keyboard as he listens. Han is on the other side of the room, fast asleep on the sofa with him mouth hanging half-open. 

A coffee cup sits in the ground next to him and his phone dangles from relaxed fingers, dangerously close to falling. You lean over and grab it just as it starts to slide from his grasp; Han doesn't stir, not even when your shadow falls over his face. You catch a glimpse of his phone screen before your thumb locks it, long lines of lyrics set out in a basic notes app, the top bar lined with notifications; you put it down hurriedly on the armrest of the sofa, not wanting to pry.

When you look up, Chan is watching you, an unreadable expression on his face.

"Hi," you say, turning your back on Han. Your hands are awkward after touching his phone - you fold them in front of you, one hand twisting at the fingers of the other.

"Hi," he replies softly, and smiles - something that's meant to be encouraging, you think, but this is so far out of your normal routine that you don't think there's anything that would let you just relax, rather than standing here awkwardly in the middle of the room with nothing else around to draw his attention.

"There's another chair over there," he says, pointing to the corner behind you. "Come and listen to this."

A clear goal. An easy one to achieve too - the breath rushes from your chest as you drag the chair over to his desk, some of the tension in your limbs draining out with it. You sigh again as you sit down, this time as your tired body presses back into the seat and finally finds relief - you've been engrossed in practise all day, sliding right past lunch and nearly dinner too, barely stopping for a break. Not that you'd meant to, you knew better than that, but when you'd felt like you were actually getting somewhere-

"You look tired," Chan comments as he hands you a set of headphones, one hand idly untangling the wire as it stretches out to you. His voice is decidedly neutral, his tongue lazy as it lets the English syllables slide past one by one. He talks to you in English almost all the time recently, you've noticed; ever since the album released, or maybe a little before. Not that you mind. English is...comfortable, in a way that Korean sometimes isn't. It's always been easier for you to be Australian.

"Practise was good today, though," you reply. "I feel like I might actually be able to dance in the group without sticking out now."

"You've been doing that for a while," Chan says, bemused. "Lee Know didn't have anything to say at all the other day."

You can't help the derisive snort that escapes your mouth, swallowing the acerbic laugh that tries to follow it before you can make even more of a fool of yourself. It's so rude; maybe you are tired. You certainly aren't as careful as you usually are, even though you know that can preclude trouble. "I don't think he's being as hard now that I'm not debuting in two weeks," you blurt out, and then drop your eyes down to the headphones in your hands. 

"That doesn't mean he's lying," Chan insists. His hand pats your knee - just a brush of his fingers, there and there and gone again. "You don't really need all this practise anymore, you know."

A shrug works its way up to your shoulders, though it feels more like a defensive hunch than anything else. "I'd rather practise than waste my time sitting around," you answer, and at least the words are strong, even if your body is not. "Especially when there's still a chance I could end up sitting around in Australia by the end of the year."

Something flashes across Chan's face, twisting at the edges of his mouth for just a moment before disappearing - disappointment, or frustration? It twists at your gut twice as hard, whatever it is, upsetting the delicate balance you'd found for just a moment while sitting here. "Do you want to listen to this song?" he asks, changing the subject before you can say anything to defend yourself. "We recorded it roughly, but I need a real version of it, and I think you'll like it..."

His voice trails off as he turns to the computer, pulling up whatever he's been working on. You take that as a sign to pull the headphones over your ears, offsetting one side slightly so that you can still hear him. Music fills your ears - a slow, roundabout beat and a heavy bass, overstrung by lyrics about bravery and fear and the darkness of being alone. Beautiful, in a way you're not sure how to express, and artistic, winding its way into your chest where you won't easily forget it.

You really like this song, so much that you're almost afraid to admit it; because if you did, you'd have to admit too, how its spiralling beat brushes against that dark spiral of anxiety that always lives in your chest, and the cold memories that the words stir up-

"I like that," is all you say when the music ends, one final downbeat cutting through the instruments abruptly.

"Really?" Chan asks, like it's unexpected, or unbelieveable.

"Of course," you insist, headphones sliding down around your neck. "You really want me to sing that?"

"Well, if you're going to spend all of your time working anyway, you might as well do some of our work for us," he says, the tone of his voice and the way his head tilts to point at Han's sleeping form informing you that he is joking. "Listen to it a couple more times, I'll see if Han has the lyrics written down on his phone, and then we'll try it."

 

---

 

Chapter 12

 

---

 

The door is already open when you arrive, inviting you inside. Like someone had known exactly when you'd gotten in the elevator, or sensed the moment you stepped foot in their hallway. Or this was just how they lived, the door open to invite each other in and out, though that didn't seem likely. You shut it behind you when you enter anyway, the creak and slam of the heavy door loud enough to alert the occupants of the apartment to your presence.

The sound of Changbin shouting over someone follows, drowning out the noise of the door. Everything is normal, then. 

The short hall by the front door is empty except for a pile of scattered shoes - you add yours to the line as you pass through, glimpsing a group of the boys sitting on a couch at the other end. It feels weird to stand there and see them at the other end, the way they've been for years before you came; your empty hands feel awkward, and your feet are too soft against their floorboards, and the closer you get, the more rowdy they become, their eyes so fixed to some game they're playing on the TV that they don't even notice you slipping into the room. You pause for a moment, listening to them howl as their game characters slip off the screen, and then continue on your way to the kitchen, your fingers twisting together restlessly before you.

Chan and Minho are there, sequestered away from the chaos erupting in the other room while they move between the benchtop and the stove, avoiding each other in a way that seems practised. The air is filled with the smell of food cooking, the steam rising from the bubbling pot on the stove warming the air in the small kitchen. Chan turns as he sees you out of the corner of his eye, smiles, and then points back towards the other boys.

"Out," he says, in a voice that brooks no argument; and you'd almost think that you'd broken some rule, except for the grin that eats at his face, amused at himself without even trying.

You stop in the doorway, hovering between the two groups. "I was just going to see if you needed any help," you say.

"Nope," he answers. "You're not allowed in here. Go and sit down."

You pull a face, one that must be funny if Minho glances away, a smile struggling to break through the blank face he's trying to pull. "I already physically kicked Felix out of here," Chan adds, a wooden spoon brandished in the air in warning. "I'll do it to you too."

Your hands come up, your feet backing out of the doorway, and yet, you can't help but laugh. You're feeling...relaxed, here, in a way you haven't since leaving Midnight those two months ago. Maybe it's because you'd spent those months grinding away at what seemed like an insurmountable hill of work, maybe because in the last week, the days that had passed since you'd walked home with Han and Chan, things had suddenly become easier within this group. The reason doesn't matter, you suppose, only that you know now that he's joking, and that it's something you can laugh at. That he's included you in the same joke he's used on Felix.

"Hey, hey, hey," a voice says behind you. "Watch where you're going. You have enough trouble walking forwards."

You turn on your heel, already rolling your eyes at the shit-eating grin on Seungmin's face. Funny, how easy it  to fall into cameraderie with him once you've broken the ice between you; only a day ago, it'd still felt like you weren't much more than acquaintances, until you'd made the decision to fall over on the way to their shared vocal lesson, the only thing Seungmin had ever reached out to offer to you.

Well, made the decision is a stretch. Falling over is too. You'd only stumbled over the sidewalk, and you certainly hadn't planned to make a fool of yourself. Maybe the story that Seungmin was selling was so convincing it was starting to affect your memory. He wasn't mean about it at least, for all that he was known to pretend to be mean when the opportunity arose; if anything, the last few hours of him spreading increasingly wild tales and the others relaying them back to you had been fun. Something different than the usual grind of your days, a joke that might stick around longer than the few minutes in which it's being laughed at.

In this moment, you stand up a little bit straighter and hope that your cheeks don't turn red. "I'm great at walking," you posture, and then struggle not to laugh at how preposturous you sound, your lips fighting against you as they curve into a smile. Something to work on, maybe, if you wanted to compete with his and Minho's deadpan humour. 

"Except for the part where you hit the concrete," Seungmin says, unaffected by the way your eyes crease and your mouth splits in two. "Then you're really bad at walking."

"I tripped," you insist, and you move forward as if to slide past him to get to the couch that the others sit on. He falls in beside you without hesitation rather than letting you pass by, a ghost at your side. "I wasn't even close to falling."

"Everyone says that you fell though," Seungmin insists. "You think everyone would lie?"

"I think you would lie when you told everyone else the story."

Grinning, Seungmin strides out in front of you, leading the way around the couch so that he can stand right in front of the TV. "Move up," he tells Felix, who sits at the end of the couch, neck craned to watch the game the others are playing around Seungmin. 

His eyes slide from Seungmin to you, trying your best to stay out of the way despite having been dragged into mischief. "Y/N," he says, shifting over and patting the seat next to him. "You wanna sit here?"

A smile spreads out across your face. "I do," you reply, and slide past Seungmin to fit yourself in the small space he manages to make beside him. "Thanks."

"You said you would save my seat," Seungmin says, pointing a finger at Felix, who waves him out of the way. He sits on the arm of the chair instead, balancing precariously as he pulls out his phone.

"They kicked you out of the kitchen as well?" Felix asks sympathetically, one eye on the TV and the other on you.

You nod. "I was just going to see if they needed help."

"Yeah," Felix sighs. "I'm not even bad at cooking."

"I'm banned from the knives," Seungmin puts in without looking up.

You glance at him, staring intently at his phone. "Why isn't that surprising?" you question.

"Because he's Seungmin," Felix puts in. "Same way I know he's lying about seeing you fall over."

Seungmin sighs. "I didn't fall," you say, before he can decide which lie to seed this time. "I tripped. I didn't fall."

"It's no fun if none of you believe me," Seungmin grouses.

The game on the TV finishes with a fanfare that fills the whole room, drowned out only by the racous cries of cheating from the boys playing it. The sound makes you wince, leaning away from them; Felix's hands come up to cover his ears, his cry for help also disappearing under the noise they make. You wouldn't be surprised if the neighbours were doing the same thing, or marching towards their door with pitchforks in hand. How do they even have neighbours, when they're capable of noise like that?

"They're going to get complaints again," Seungmin says, like he'd been reading your mind. 

"Hey, hey! Hey!" a voice calls over the noise, and you turn in unison to see Chan's head poking out of the door, the wooden spoon waving in his hand once again. "No yelling!"

"I'd say he looks like he's our dad, but he just kind of looks unhinged," Felix comments, only his eyes and the blonde hair that tufts up on top of his head peeking up over the back of the couch. The rest of him has slid down out of Chan's sight, like if he hides, he won't get caught up in whatever trouble the others are causing.

"He looks like my grandfather," Seungmin adds as the older boy disappears, making no effort to hide at all. "He was crazy too."

Felix grins, wild and wolfish. "He just keeps getting older."

"It's so sad he's going to die so soon," Seungmin agrees.

The noise dies down, the game switched back to a more neutral home screen as boys wander off this way and that. Felix shifts over, enough that you can give Seungmin a space on the couch - you think, for a moment, about making him go around to the other side, but Changbin is still sitting there, looking peacefully unbothered by whatever chaos Seungmin is surely capable of unleashing and it's much easier to just shift over and let him slump down in the corner than to set him off. It disturbs Changbin anyway, somehow; as Seungmin sits down, he sits up straight, leaning around Felix to look at you.

"Hey, Y/N," he says, drawing your attention over to him. "Where were you this morning? I didn't see you in the practise rooms."

"She left the room?" Felix questions, turning to stare at you like such a thing is unheard of.

"I was there for three hours," Changbin confirms, "and I didn't see her at all."

"I was tired," you say, trying to ignore the feeling of your cheeks turning red, "so I slept in. And I left the room twice today, actually. I went to a vocal lesson with him."

Seungmin nods as your thumb jabs towards him. "She won't be dancing tomorrow either. She fell over on the concrete."

You don't even think twice about reaching over to push him off the couch. It catches him so off-guard that he actually does fall, sliding right onto the carpet and staring up at you in disbelief. The other boys howl with laughter, loud enough that you glance back at the kitchen door to check if Chan is coming back.

"I'm glad you took the morning off," Felix says warmly, ignoring whatever Seungmin mutters under his breath as he drags himself up off the floor. "We've all been worried about you."

"So I've been told," you say. "I promise, I know what I'm doing."

"I trust you," Felix says, and there's a glint in his eye that says he's telling the truth. It warms you to your core, just as sitting here surrounded by these boys does, and the sound of Minho's voice calling for Seungmin from the kitchen. It's nice, to come into the middle of their group away from the stage or the dance floor and feel like you're just in the midst of friends, somewhere where you belong. It's nice to see how they live. You hadn't let yourself see this before, too tied down to practise and the dream they've achieved that you're still chasing.

"Seungmin-ah! Come and help!" Minho calls again, and then he can be seen at the door, waiting with an unnerving kind of patience. You're not sure if the smile on his face is supposed to be encouraging or threatening, and you don't really want to find out; mostly, you're just kind of glad that he's not calling for you.

Seungmin isn't bothered by it, dragging himself off the couch with a sigh that reverberates through the room. "Coming, old man," he calls across the room, and ignores the double take that Felix does beside you, his eyes growing wide. 

"Ai-e," Changbin says, the sound whistling through his teeth. "Is he crazy?"

"You want to go in the oven?" Minho questions as Seungmin crosses the room.

"You'd have to get me in it first," Seungmin says, and then yelps as Minho's arm wraps around his neck, dragging him into the kitchen in a headlock. 

"He's going to die," Felix says gleefully. 

"Winning the bet was not worth it," you agree, your eyes still on the empty doorway to the kitchen. No one emerges except Chan, holding a pot of whatever they've cooked for dinner and looking disturbingly peaceful despite the chaos he has just left behind.

 

---

 

Chapter 13

 

Chapter 14

The way that Chan slumps straight down onto your sofa suggests that it has either been a long day or he is expecting a long night ahead. You're almost too scared to ask which is true; not that there's a way for you to wheedle out of blame for either being difficult. It's all related to you joining the group, and whatever was going on with your schedule.

In the end, Chan doesn't give you a chance to ask, his eyes roving around the apartment. "Your dorm is nice," he comments, in the sort of voice that would insinuate his isn't nice if you hadn't already seen it.

You glance around too, at the white walls and years-old pieces of furniture that clutter the space. They've all seen many singers come and go before you, and then were never built for that kind of handing down - but they're robust, if not entirely pretty. Dependable as a place to keep a home. "It's alright," you say, sinking into the seat beside him. "It's small. There's no way all eight of you would fit."

"It's loud enough in our dorm," Chan agrees, cutting a grin. "You should have seen when there was nine of us living on top of each other in one dorm."

Nine of us. Not you, of course, but the long-gone boy you were supposed to replace. You're not sure how the echo of the words over inside your head makes you feel. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you're distinctly aware that you've never heard him say that before (not even since you joined; always, it was the eight of them and one of you).

"Nightmareish," you say dryly, but the response is lacklustre, the joke weak and watery. Chan's smile fades. 

"I guess I should stop stalling," he says, mistaking your tone for a different kind of distraction. 

For two weeks, a heavy, curling tension has been holding itself steady in your gut; at the reminder of it now, it clenches its fist tight, your ribcage retracting and your breath shallow. You're going to debut, Minseo had said, and you'd thought it and thought it and thought it; but surely, it was unbelievable-

"I want you to perform at K-Con," Chan says, before the thought can finish flashing through your mind, and you freeze. "Not the whole concert, just God's Menu, or whatever you're confident in. Anything you want."

"Isn't K-Con in three weeks?" you question, and try to ignore the pounding of your heart in your chest. "You want me to debut in three weeks?"

A light dances in his eyes, that funny, coy smile he wears when he wants to mess with someone playing on his lips. "Technically, it doesn't count as a debut until the album comes out."

You’re seized by the sudden urge to push him off the couch - not that your hands move. You're still stuck in place, fingers twisted together in your lap; and even if you weren't, it's one thing to make playful threats in a text under his encouragement. It's another to enact them in real life, when he wants to sit across from you and offer you all of your dreams-

"Why?" you blurt out, and then realise belatedly that that might be just as rude as the actions you were trying to avoid. 

Not that he cares, that smile slowly fading into something that isn't anger or humour. Even if you'd asked in Korean, you're pretty sure he wouldn't have minded. He was always telling you there was no hierarchy within this group, no reason to treat him with any respect.

"Because I want to," he insists. "The company agreed that you're ready - and you are ready. You've worked really hard."

You can't stop staring at him; that smile that's plastered across his face, the order of the words that come out of his mouth. You can't put your finger on why it gives you a bad feeling, and yet...something is off. You're sure of it. There's something he's not saying.

But what would he be keeping from you? Your mind wanders back through the things you know about him, the conversation you've had. Is this about the agreement you made, that you would stop working so hard once debut came? But he had just offered you a loophole out of that...and you've never known him to be that kind of sly anyway. Unless you don't know him as well as you think you do - which you suppose would be disappointing but not unexpected-

"What's wrong?" he asks, that pleased smile slipping from his face, and you can see it there under the crack; the secret, and the worry that holds itself stiff in his shoulders as he wonders if you've figured it out.

You have to take a deep breath first, and then another. The air won't quite reach the bottom of your lungs.

"It just doesn't make sense," you say, as kindly as you can. Your fingers twist at each other, tight enough to hurt.

"Doesn't it?" Chan asks. "You're ready for this, I promise."

"No," you say, certainty growing with every moment. "There's something you're not telling me."

Chan looks desperate. "There's nothing else to it."

He's a bad liar. You shake your head. "I'm just going to worry about it if you don't tell me."

"It's not something you should worry about," he insists. "I've got it under control."

"But there is something."

"No."

"You just admitted there's something."

He stops, thinking back through what he's said. Blanches. "Chan," you say, leaning forward, your elbows braced on your knees. You're surprised by the surprise on his face at the way you say his name - strong and unquestioning, free of honourifics and any kind of doubt. "Don't keep secrets from me. Please."

It's the weak little please at the end that makes him waver, the cracks of your resolve on the second syllable as the doubt over how far you can reasonably push him sinks its teeth in. He's still not angry though; if anything, he's scared, apprehension holding his tongue and reeling him, straight-backed, into the couch.

"It's better if you don't know," he says like he's delivering an apology. "I don't keep secrets. I just don't tell you things that are only going to hurt you. It's the same for all the boys - I don't see a reason in upsetting any of you when I've already resolved it."

You digest this slowly, your frustration melting word by word. "You're a really good leader," are the first words that blurt out of your mouth, a compliment that has him shaking his head and avoiding your gaze before the words are even out of your mouth. "And I appreciate it. Really."

There's a pause where you swallow the words that were about to come out of your mouth, too afraid to voice criticism, to risk the tenuous position you've built for yourself here.

"But?" Chan prompts as soon as the silence gets too loud.

Breathe.

"But," you say, intentionally slowing yourself down to one word at a time, "I've been around long enough to know when something's up, and I've looked after myself long enough to be able to handle it. If it's about debut and my career, I want to know what it is. Hurtful or not."

Chan's mouth twists unhappily. "I understand," he answers - and though he looks unhappy, you don't disbelieve him. "But also, you're not alone anymore. You're one of my people now, and it's my job to look after my people."

"I know that." Your hands are trembling, you realise suddenly, your head buzzing from the thrum of your heart beating in your ears. "And I know you like taking care of people and making sure the others never have to worry and all of that, but...that doesn't work for me. If I think something happened and I don't know what it is, I'm only going to sit here and think about it."

Inexplicably, a small smile twists at Chan's mouth, his eyes softening. "That's not going to help any more than me telling you is," he says lightly.

"Yeah," you sigh, leaning back. "I know." 

For a moment, silence falls, the tension in the air unwinding itself into something a little more comfortable as you work your way through all the things you think you should say. Chan waits patiently; understanding, maybe, that you need a moment to think, that what you're trying to say might not come out the right way the first time you say it. That would be nice. It already feels like you're risking everything to have this conversation.

"Don't baby me," you say eventually, and then cringe at how blunt the statement sounds coming out of your mouth. "I'm old enough, I can handle whatever it is. I've taken care of myself all this time."

"You're not alone anymore though," Chan repeats, stronger this time. 

"I still want to know what's happening though," you insist. "Where I stand with you, or the company, or - whatever it is. Even in a group, it's my career. I deserve to know."

"Okay," Chan says, and then again, "Okay." He stops for a moment, eyeing you appraisingly, and then says, "It's important to me that you listen to what I'm saying though. You're not alone anymore. We're a family, and we work so well because we're all committed to each other. If you want to be a part of this, you have to be as well. Do you understand?"

Your chin dips towards your chest - first in a nod, and then to stare at your hands rather than the unyielding intensity of his gaze, waiting for your answer. Waiting to see if he should be worried about you and whatever commitment he's made to you without you knowing. "I'm trying," you say, and you try your best to colour your voice in that raw honesty that burns at your chest. "I really am - I just don't want to pretend to be one of you if you're not all ready to accept me. I don't want to just come in and say I'm part of Stray Kids, I'm the same as the rest of you who have been here from the start-"

"You are one of us," he says over the top of you, cutting you off short. "We've all accepted you. If you want, in the morning, we can go and ask every single member and they'll tell you the same thing, but I need...I need you to let go of that. Forget Midnight and all the other groups that you nearly joined and being by yourself, and be part of Stray Kids. That's the person I want to show to Stay next month. That's the person I need in this group."

You swallow hard, blinking back tears. It feels big, this moment - bigger than the climax of any reality show, or the flight and fall of your time in Midnight, or the countless monthly evaluations that have passed you by in your time here. Bigger than auditions and leaving your home behind, the hardest moment you'd once thought you'd live through, when you were younger and less wary of the world. And for it to be Chan that sits there and asks this of you, his heart on his sleeve and his nature so honest and well intentioned, so hard to let down-

"I can do that," you say, around a tongue that feels thicker and heavier than it was before, a mouth stuffed full of cotton. You look up, meeting his eyes, and you're surprised to find a smile there, slowly lifting his face and crinkling at the corners of his eyes. Pleased. Relieved.

"Okay," he says, a breath blowing out with the word. "Good. Because I really want to keep you."

"Good," you echo. "Because I really want to stay."

He laughs; a small, soft thing that unwinds the tension in your chest. You pull in another breath, push back the tears again; preparing for what you need to say next. 

"I meant what I said earlier though," you add, your shoulders squaring and your jaw clenched tight. "This is important to you, and it's important to me that I know exactly what's going on."

You hate watching that smile struggle and fade again, gone as quickly as you had earned it. "You're not going to like it," he warns, but he doesn't try to fend you off again.

"That's okay," you sigh. "Nothing unusual."

His mouth twists against words that he decides not to say. "The company offered last week to let us continue as eight members," he admits, one of his hands reaching up to pick mindlessly at the pillow of your couch. "They were pretty insistent about it, actually. I told them we wanted to be nine."

Your gaze turns sharp, your head swivelling to stare at him. "Why?" you ask, your voice gasping - because you can't fathom, after the back-and-forth of the last three months and the drama of delaying your debut when they'd been so hell-bent on revealing you in time for the last album, why they would turn around and try to take you out just as quickly.

"Because God's Menu did so well." Chan shrugs. "We weren't doing very well as a group before that; the last two albums were rough, and losing a member...I guess they thought without him we weren't ever going to be able to do as well as we did at debut, and then we went and proved to them that we are profitable as eight members. And they thought they could just use you as a backup plan."

"And you-"

"I told them they already spent the last three months fucking around to make us a nine member group, so we're going ahead as nine." You're surprised at the way his voice turns sharp, the hardening of his eyes and the dig of his fingers into the cushion. "They asked me if you were ready to debut, and I told them you could debut at our next concert if they wanted - which I probably shouldn't have said, because they decided that was a great idea, but-"

It's him that's rambling now, you that cuts across him with a, "Chan." He stops short, looking up at you with eyes that remind you of how you'd felt just moments ago - unsure, wary of how you're going to react. Sure that you're going to be angry for some reason, even though what he's done is...

"Thank you," you say, your voice dropping away to almost nothing - tears well in the corners of your eyes, unbidden, dripping down your cheeks even though your throat aches with the effort of trying to swallow them back down. "No one's ever done anything like that for me before."

"Hey, don't cry," he says, alarmed. His weight shifts across the couch, his arms reaching out -  before you can wave him away, they envelop you in a hug, pulling you into his chest. It's been a long time since you hugged anyone; you're surprised at just how much you didn't know that you missed this kind of comfort, the tightening of someone else's arms around you and the warmth of another body close. 

"You better get used to it," he says over the tuck of your head into his shoulder, your tears drying on his hoodie. "You're stuck with me now."

"You didn't even ask me first," you say, and listen to the way he laughs. "I'm going to do a good job at K-Con. I promise."

"We'll talk about it tomorrow," he says, before you can continue on. "We're going to have to plan how to show those idiots that they were wrong."

"It's my special talent," you joke weakly. "They haven't got rid of me yet."

You can hear the satisfied smile on his face, the amused huff of breath that ghosts over the top of your head. "And they never will," he says, and it sounds like a promise. A prophecy.

 

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

 

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

 

At 6:05 on the dot, there's a knock on your door.

He must have been up all night waiting for your text, you think as you answer it, the way that he'd made it down the stairs within five minutes of your alarm going off. You're still in your pyjamas, a hoodie thrown over the top when you'd dragged yourself out of bed to combat the early-morning cold of your apartment. 

The boys waiting outside your door are dressed similarly, at least, padding around in clothes they've chosen at random from a laundry hamper somewhere and shoes that they kick off as soon as they pass through your doorway. You're not surprised to see Chan, hair sticking up at every end like he's gotten straight out of bed for this and not bothered to even try to stick it back down again, but you are surprised to see Changbin. You don't think you've ever seen or heard a peep from Changbin at this time of the morning.

"Good morning," Chan says as you close the door, lingering within arm's reach as Changbin wanders his way further into your apartment like he's looking for something.

"Good morning," you echo, your attention divided between the two of them. "What are you doing here?"

"Well," Chan hedges, hesitating like he's not decided yet what he's going to say next. "Changbin is here to steal your cereal."

"Hyunjin ate all of mine," Changbin says, his feet carrying him one step closer to the kitchen in question.

You wave him towards it, despite warnings you've been given against ever giving him free reign over your pantry. "There's eggs in the fridge too if you want them," you offer, and your heart lifts at the way his face lights up. It's funny how such a little thing could cause such simple joy.

"Gamsamnida, noona," he says, and disappears into your kitchen. 

Chan steps into your line of vision.

"What are you doing here?" you ask when he doesn't immediately say anything, though the pit in your stomach and the sleepless night unravelling behind you say that you already know the answer.

He draws in a breath and holds it, anticipation paling his face just enough for you to notice. "I'm being honest," he says, his eyes flicking up to the kitchen door. Changbin doesn't appear - he's busy making a lot of noise with your pans in there, the slam of a cupboard door a little too obvious to be anything but deliberate. "I promised I'd be honest with you, so...I'm here."

"About the things they're saying online, or what's going to happen next?" you question; and you don't miss the way that his face falls, his brow tightening imperceptibly.

"You've seen it," he sighs, as if he'd been hoping for something different.

A grim smile twists itself around your mouth. "It's trending," you point out. "It's kind of hard to miss."

"True." He looks away, eyes casting behind him to where Changbin is being deliberately noisy in the kitchen as he hunts through your cabinets for something. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" you question. "You didn't do anything."

"They're my fans," he says and then blinks, correcting himself. "Our fans - if something I've done makes them think-"

You've seen the messages he's talking about, the back-and-forth between fans debating whether this was his idea or something that had been forced upon him by the company. Always Chan - Chan's group, Chan's members, Chan's decision. If the trending tags were anything to be believed, the general consensus was that the Chan they knew and loved would never do this to them, nor would he endorse it. It was obvious that you had forced your way into the group, and at first opportunity he would drop you right back out again; if only they screamed loudly enough in opposition, JYP would give him that choice quicker.

You didn't find that daunting at all. There wasn't a black pit opening inside your gut every time you thought about it, the urge to get back to the practice rooms and gruelling hours of work scratching at your skin. 

"You're acting like you told them to do this," you tell him wryly, and the corner of his mouth quirks upwards. Nearly a smile, despite how sardonic it feels. 

"I definitely did not," he answers, a hand pressed to his chest in honesty. "I meant what I said the other day. You're one of my people now."

Inexplicably, warmth blooms in your chest around the icy cold that has had a stranglehold around your stomach since you'd first seen...well, everything that's happening. The reminder of the conversation you'd had before all of this began is timely - it was easy to forget sometimes, around the screaming of a thousand voices that it couldn't be true, that he had chosen you, in a backwards way. That all of this was only happening now because he'd fought with the company for you. Because he'd won the fight, a feat you've never seen accomplished before, in a long career of letdowns.

Your teeth grit together at the thought of those voices online, hiding behind screens as if they know anything about what’s happened in the last three months or even the past six years. You had forgotten for a while last night, all the things that Chan had said; you’d felt like throwing something across the room, God’s Menu playing over and over through a tinny speaker until your body moved without thinking. You’ve contained most of that rage since, under the assurance that none of them know what they’re talking about, and truly, you don’t think that you’ll really care at all as the days wear on; but still-

"Someone should have told them that," you say without thinking, and then watch as Chan's brow furrows. "Sorry. I didn't mean you. It's not your fault."

"Someone will," he replies. "Once I've been to this meeting with management. Which I am probably going to be late for."

His phone appears in his hand, the screen lighting up to show him the time. "If you have to go-" you begin to say, already moving out of the way of the door.

"He's eating breakfast first," Changbin says from the kitchen door before Chan can argue with you himself. 

"Am I?" Chan asks; but his voice is mild and his feet are already turning towards Changbin, all the fight draining from his body before he has even begun.

"You think I'm going to eat all of the eggs myself?" Changbin fires right back. "I'm not a pig."

"But I thought you were a pig, Changbin," Chan says and watches in amusement as the sound of Changbin shouting indignantly fills the air of your apartment.

 

---

 

 

Chapter 19

 

The airport is a crush of bodies and phones and flashing cameras, staring you down as you follow Seungmin's back through the glass doors and try not to stutter under the weight of so many eyes on you at once.

It happens fast and yet also so very, very slow, every second dripping past so discernibly that you swear you can feel time moving around you. Every breath hitches in your lungs as you walk, every blink of your eyes blinded by the halogen lights overhead or the lense of another camera, searching for the face a manager has tried to hide for you under cap and hood and mask. The clothing is hot and stifling, the collar of your shirt suffocating where it is tucked into the black hoodie, the ends of your hair scratching at the back of your neck, but you're too scared to pull it down or to even look up, your eyes fixed on Seungmin's heels and the tails of the loose shirt he's pulled on just for this walk through the line of fire.

You'd looked for Chan when you'd gotten out of the car, gravitating naturally towards the leader (the one that had defended you online, the one that could look you in the eyes and tell you the truth and went out of his way to prove it the moment he had an opportunity), but he'd fallen back and you'd been steered towards the centre of the group, sticking to Seungmin's side instead. Seungmin was dependable too, like Changbin; unafraid of the crowds that pushed and pulled at each other and tried to lean in close as security shove their way through, and fiercely loyal when the situation called for it.

Seungmin doesn't look back though. He doesn't have time, when the hands to either side are reaching for him just as much as they do to shove you, when hired bodies keep nearly separating you as they move in circles around you, carrying out their job. You're not sure how you could feel so small and alone in such a large crowd of people, seen by so many eyes, but for a moment you do, and then-

An arm lands across the back of your neck, a hand resting casually over your shoulder, pulling you into someone's side. Felix, recogniseable by the soft blue jumper he's wearing and the blonde hair that pokes out from underneath his beanie. You have a feeling he's not supposed to do it, from the wicked gleam in his eye when he glances at you and the way that he marches onward, feet placed deliberately beside yours as if to challenge anyone to tear him away, but you can't find it in yourself to make an excuse and pull back, to walk on your own two feet. 

You were scared, after all; you are scared, even with the reassurance of the weight of his arm around your shoulders and the angle of his body blocking some of the cameras that angle and click and glare at you like if they stare hard enough, you might freely divulge your secrets. You've never seen a crowd like this before, so close and so...mob-like, uncontrolled and ready to roll over each other if it means getting their two seconds of fame, their photo that's unlike any other.

"I get scared too sometimes," Felix says, close enough to your ear that you can hear him over the mayhem. "Just keep walking. The faster we get there, the quicker it'll be over."

"Thanks, Felix," you say in return, but you don't think he can hear you over the crowd. 

 

Chapter 20

 

You're choosing to ignore the noise that you know clouds the air online as you file into the underside of the stage on the tail of the boys, early enough in the morning that they are still yawning and blinking bleary eyes open, coffee clutched in their hands.

Stay offline, they'll all tell you, and make sure you sleep too, but you're no good at either; sleep is hard to find in the face of what hovers over you in three days time, and it's almost worse to not know what's going on where you can't see it than to keep a finger pressed very casually to the pulse. Just to know what they think. Just to know what to expect when you inevitably come face-to-face with them.

Not that you'll see them too closely. Four songs on one day, that's all you were here for. No fan meetings, no signings. Not that you had a problem with that, when those four songs alone came with a mountain of nerves to climb and conquer and sure, you'd been taught how to feign confidence until your voice didn't waver and your feet kept dancing, but that stage...

You come out onto it from underneath, following eight sets of feet up a narrow set of hidden stairs, and stare upwards at the seats that line the hall. It's lucky you're at the end of the line, your feet rooted to the ground on the final step by the sudden, unnerving terror of being faced with that ring of empty space; the stage that stretches out before you seems so small compared to the towering walls of the hall, so far into the ground when you look up at the final row of seats and see them hovering far above you as if to look down from the heavens.

Chan glances back from the middle of the pack as they spread out across the stage, checking that everyone is present, and beckons for you to join them, the smile on his face a message you can't decipher. Maybe he takes pleasure in seeing you speechless, or maybe he's just excited to share this with you - or relieved that you finally made it here after he staked everything on believing it would happen. Even with his invitation, you still can't find it in yourself to move though; not until a manager's gentle hand pushes you up that final step and onto the stage, the surface thumping quietly under the fall of your feet.

There are so many things you don't know, wandering across those boards while the others spread from corner to corner, jumping around or stretching or arranging bottles of water at its edge. They look so comfortable here, following a routine their bodies intrinsically understand, while you are...lost, your hands wringing nervously as you gravitate towards Chan in the centre of the stage.

He's still smiling though, his hand reaching out to stop yours from pulling themselves apart. "Still okay?" he asks, repeating the first question he'd put to you upon seeing the looming height of the convention centre this morning. 

"Mmm," you reply with a mouth that has forgotten how to shape words. "Not really."

"Do you want to go back downstairs for a moment?"

You focus on him instead of the seats for a moment, the warm feeling of his hand where it brushes your arm, the slow fade of his smile into something more focused on the problem, and how he can fix it. "No," you say, before he can get any further ahead of himself than he already has, and force a breath down into your lungs. "I'll get used to it. I just need something to do."

"We'll warm up in a minute," he assures you, and twists to look at the four boys that are gathering on the edge of the stage behind him, squawking at something they've seen down below. "Unless Han falls off the stage. Then I might just give up and go home."

Your eyes stray over his shoulder to the boys teetering on the edge of the platform, the toes of their shoes hanging over a fall that is far from fatal but still not ideal. As if he'd heard your conversation, Han crouches in the centre of them all, wobbling back and forth - it's the hand that Changbin wraps around his arm at the last minute that saves him, tugging him back on his heels just before he can tip too far forward to save himself. 

"Are you going to stop them?" you ask Chan, and very deliberately put your hands in the pocket of your hoodie as if you are completely relaxed, willing him not to turn around. 

"I'm trying really hard not to look, actually," he answers, and then he turns thoughtful. "Maybe I should make it your job to try and stop them, if you need something to do."

"I don't think I have that kind of authority here," you say, huffing a laugh. "You've killed any respect they had for their elders."

"I know. Lee Know is working on it," Chan sighs, rubbing at the back of his neck.

"He has no respect either."

Chan's eyes flick to you, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth; and he doesn't count the joke out loud, but you know that in his head he is adding it to his tally. You're not sure how he remembers what number he is up to, or why he even bothers when you throw them out so sporadically, numerous one day when you're feeling bold and then nothing on other days when the urge to cower at the sight of the group chat or all of them loudly laughing together is too strong. And recently you've started to throw them out in person too, rather than just in the safety of your messages with him. 

Maybe he just makes the numbers up as he goes along. You haven't been keeping track of the total he says each time any more than you suspect he counts the jokes. 

"I'm glad this is an English concert, actually," he says suddenly, snapping your attention back to the present moment.

You frown in confusion. "What?" you ask, wondering if you'd spaced out for a moment and missed something he'd said.

"I was just thinking," he answers. "I'm glad we'll be speaking English this week."

You still don't follow. "Why?"

"Because if we're speaking English, you'll talk to me like this on stage."

You can only stare at him for a moment. Processing what he'd said, and the way he'd said it; genuine, with that smile still hiding in the corner of his mouth. "I don't know if I'll be able to say anything on stage," you say when the words have sunk in, scrambling for a response. "I'm going to be busy trying not to mess it up."

"Oh, come on," he scoffs. "You don't need to do that. Nothing is going to go wrong."

Somehow, his brazen confidence eases some of the tension in your chest. Maybe because he plays at being so entirely convinced that it's kind of funny; maybe because he'd already thrown you off beat a moment before and you're still reeling. "You cannot tell me that you believe that," you say; a joke, but a weak one, testing the waters rather than diving right in with any of the other responses that spring to mind.

"I am a hundred percent sure everything will go perfectly," he throws back without hesitation.

"Are you?" you tease, egged on by the grin that bites at his face. "I feel like you've basically cursed us now that you've said that."

His smile very deliberately falters, his mouth flattening into a put-upon line. "Go and warm up," he sighs dramatically, waving a hand. "No more talking about curses. Go on."

Your own smile doesn't budge as you turn away, sticking to your face until you gather with the others in the centre of the stage, stretching and loosening stiff and cold muscles, a warning to your body that it is nearly time to dance. It goes by in a flash with the distraction of Changbin's loud voice in the background and the complaints of the younger boys around him every time he yells, the laughter that the group shares. Chan was right, too; the distraction is just what you need, the laughter easing the anxiety that squeezes at your chest so that by the time you sort yourselves into the opening formation of God's Menu, you can almost imagine that it's just another day in the practice rooms at home.

"Ready?" Changbin asks as he rounds out the back of the formation, a hand held out flat between you.

You slap it with your own, loud enough that the sound echoes across the stage and he rescinds, shaking his palm out like it stings. "Ready," you confirm, adding strength to your voice so that he will believe you, and then you turn you backs on each other, crouching down back-to-back.

You spare Hyunjin a small smile, now in front of you where he crouches as well, and then drop your head as the music starts, counting the beats to the moment where you will jump to your feet.

It comes quick, barely four bars past the moment that that loud, discordant beat kicks in; quick enough that every time, it feels like it takes your breath away as Hyunjin turns to the side and you rise to your feet, only a moment before Felix and I.N shift outward too and reveal you to the empty crowd. It occurs to you again, in the fleeting of moments that passes between beats, just how terrifying that could be on the day that it matters - how it could be so easy to freeze in the spotlight and forget what you're supposed to do and where to go after-

"Ne sonnim!" you shout to an invisible audience, your throat remembering by itself the power that Changbin has beaten into you in the days since you'd taken the part and your hand rising into the air. Someone whoops into the microphone as you take your swift step to the left, out of Changbin's way - you almost laugh, but your concentration turns too quickly to the choreography and your place in the crowd, careful to stay out of Chan's way as he moves forward and you move back.

It gets easier from there, until the second verse comes around - hide at the back and keep up with the rest, part of a unit rather than leading the way into the light. Your parts follow on naturally, short and sharp movements paired with similar vocals in the verse, and then the relatively easy task of standing still and filling your chest with your voice while they continue the dance around you in the pre-chorus. 

And then, the bow at the end, the struggle not to stop and gasp for a breath of air in the five seconds of silence that follow.

Hyunjin is the first to fall on the third runthrough, sitting with a dramatic flourish and signalling the start of a break for everyone. Minho rolls a bottle of water across the stage to him, and then holds one out to you - you take it gratefully, your throat already dry just after one song. Nerves, you think as you sate your thirst and then pass the bottle off to I.N. 

"Happy?" you ask Hyunjin, still on the floor close enough to your feet that you're mindful of not stepping on him as you shuffle around, keeping your feet moving. 

He groans, his head rolling backwards to look at the ceiling. "We still have to run through Hellevator," he says, which is not an answer to the question, but not a complaint either. No news is good news, you assume, and nudge his bottle back towards him again as it wanders away down an imagined slant in the stage surface. 

"You have a whole day off tomorrow," I.N points out.

"No I don't," Hyunjin replies, unscrewing the cap of his water bottle. "I have schedules to go to."

"So do I," Seungmin puts in from behind you, a shadow at your back as he circles around to join the group.

"No, you don't," I.N says, his eyes tracking him as he walks. "The only thing we're doing is going out for lunch."

He flips the empty bottle in his hand up and down idly between two fingers as he speaks, his attention elsewhere. You can see the glint of playfulness in Seungmin's eyes as they mull over what he's said, and then look down, tracking the movement of the bottle - you don't see his hand before he whacks it out of I.N's hand and watches it bounce away down the stage, laughing at the look of disgust on the younger boy's face.

"Do you want to come out for lunch tomorrow, noona?" Seungmin asks while I.N is distracted by the bottle.

"I want to come out for lunch," Hyunjin says from the floor, carefully placing his own water out of Seungmin's reach.

"You're not invited," Seungmin throws back before he can be convinced. "Unless you're paying."

Hyunjin screws up his nose and turns away, climbing to his feet instead of answering. Minho calls your names from the other side of the stage only a moment later, the backing track of the new song they'd added just for you queuing and then stuttering to a stop over the sound system. "I'll come out for lunch," you answer Seungmin as you walk, I.N falling into your shadows. You specifically don't say anything about paying.

"Good," Seungmin says, "because we're making a vocalracha vlog."

If he notices the way your stomach drops at the mention of the vlog, he doesn't say anything, and you don't either - stupid, really, to feel nervous about the prospect of a camera pointed at you when you've spent all these years chasing that exact dream. Not to mention the amount of cameras that have caught you in their vision in the past - from instructors, and evaluations, and TV networks, and online content.

But to do it with them, for their fans who, so far as you've read, don't seem very interested in seeing you with them...the thought kind of turns your stomach upside down. Makes the sweat running down the back of your neck turn ice cold all of a sudden, your skin shivering at its sudden touch. 

"What are you worrying about?" I.N asks you suddenly, appearing at your shoulder.

"What?" Seungmin says on your other side.

Before you can answer, I.N cranes his neck to see the other boy and says, "She's worrying about something again. Look at her face."

"What?" you echo, and if your face wasn't screwed up in consternation before, it is now. "My face isn't doing anything. How would you know? You were behind me the whole time."

"You can pull expressions with the back of your head?" Seungmin asks. "That's weird. You're weird."

You arrive in the circle of the rest of the group like that, I.N looking at Seungmin like he has something equally witty that he wants to say. Chan leans behind Seungmin with a funny twist to his mouth that says from one look, he knows exactly what you're going through, and wordlessly offers you a microphone. You pull down your headset as you take it and tune out whatever Seungmin says next, calling up the lyrics to the next song as the music starts. 

You note, as you sing the first line, that the tension in your chest has eased away as quickly as it had tightened. You have a feeling that was I.N's perogative the entire time. Either way, you're grateful. 

 

—

 

"Annyeong," Seungmin says to the camera that sits heavy in his hand, hoisted up to keep its lense from catching the sun as you walk down the street. "This is our vocalracha exclusive outing. No one else is allowed."

"Stay is allowed," I.N says beside him, poking his head into frame just to give Seungmin a look that the camera will catch, and they start off on an argument that plays out so naturally you can almost forget that the camera is there at all.

Except that you can't, because every time you stare into the face of it from where you're hiding on one side, your stomach drops and your limbs stiffen like they don't know what to do with themselves, anticipating the moment that it turns onto you.

Not that you haven't seen a camera before, or even had to produce this kind of content. The survival show you'd once done had loved this type of content just as much as any other, and there was always someone recording something in practice rooms, whether it ended up online or not...but this felt different somehow. More revealing, or more public, maybe, because of the audience that would surely be waiting to watch it. Because of the way that audience felt about you, lain out so clearly in a hundred comment sections online for you to see.

"You know who is invited," Seungmin says, cutting over whatever I.N has just told him with little regard for the other boy's opinions. "Our noona is here to buy us lunch."

You blink, and the eye of that camera turns to look at you in the moment that you aren't paying attention, cornering you within its gaze. Ignore it, you tell yourself firmly around the lump that begins to form in your throat, and turn your head to look at Seungmin instead, trying to remind yourself of the conversation topic. "Is that the only reason you invited me?" you ask, and resist the urge to wince when it comes out flatter rather than playful, the joke choking on itself before it can even reach your tongue.

Seungmin doesn't miss a beat, his lips pursed like he's thinking about it. "Youngest always pays," he says. 

Behind him, you can see I.N's gaze turn sharp, already preparing to be the next one under fire. "I'm older than you," you point out mildly, not wanting to swing the conversation one particular direction or another.

"Grandma always pays," he fires back.

"You can't just change the rules to whatever you like," I.N says.

"Says who?"

"Everyone," you tell him.

"Do you even know where you're going?" I.N asks.

Seungmin scoffs. "No. That wasn't my job."

"Why are you leading then?"

"I'm following Stay." 

Their attention snaps so naturally back to the camera that it feels like whiplash, like you're lagging one step behind and you can't quite catch up. You tail off again as Seungmin starts explaining your day and what you're doing after this to an invisible audience, sliding back out of view and into your comfort zone to the side of the camera, forcing a breath right down into the bottom of your lungs. 

You're going to have to get used to this, and the idea that everyone is going to see everything you do. It's silly to try to dance around it when there is no way out, but still, you let yourself slip away when you can no longer muster the strength to hold yourself within view of that camera, promising that another day you will try harder. Another day, it will come easier, and you will stand there and chatter on to that lense without thinking twice, just like the boys do.

Today isn't that day though. Neither will tomorrow be, and the day after-

The day after, you are on stage, for all the world to scrutinise in full view rather than in a box on a computer screen.

 

---

 

 

"You can go out when you're ready," the stylist tells you with a final adjustment of the hem of your shirt, gently tugging the creases into just the right position. "Have a good dress rehearsal. Let me know if there's anything we can fix."

She moves out of the way of the mirror so that you can see the entire piece. It's a simple concept, really, dark and grungy to fit the group's ongoing concept and yet pulled off in pieces of soft cotton and the glimmering gold of the plain rings on your fingers. You could almost imagine yourself sitting at home doing nothing, except for the makeup that sharpens the lines of your face and deepens its shadows, the embellishments that dangle from the loose cargo pants that cover your legs and the way that the hoodie's sleeves billow artfully at your sides. A safe outfit for a first performance, except for the strip of skin that shows at your midriff whenever you move, the shirt's hem cut at just the right length to expose it.

There'd been a lot of back-and-forth over outfits in the past few weeks. You'd only been privy to the part of it where they'd asked how much are you comfortable with and you'd answered I don't mind what I wear, and then the fittings afterwards in which there was a new outfit every time, but you knew there'd been...discussions. Arguments. Mistakes, nearly, and since then it seemed like the entire group's styling had been toned down to accomodate the lack of agreement over yours, which was-

Music starts playing upstairs somewhere, blaring from the speakers and then cutting off again. "Thankyou," you say to the stylist, who is already busy with something else, and cut across the room to where the boys are gathering around a manager who is handing out equipment. 

"Ah, noona!" Changbin says as you approach, his voice deliberately pushed high and light to match the broad smile that crosses his face. "I haven't introduced our noona yet!" A camera follows him, latching onto you before you have time to duck away - you swallow the nerves that suddenly pile onto your chest and focus on the smile you're giving Changbin in greeting and the table behind him that you're trying to reach. 

"Hello Stay," you say to no one, waving at the camera for the two seconds you're comfortable enough to look at it. You busy yourself with the search for your equipment on the table as an excuse to turn away and collect yourself, preparing for the onslaught of questions that you know Changbin has been told to ask.

"That's right, Stay," he says to the camera in your peripheral vision, filling the empty space that would otherwise be left. "Just for you, we brought our new member to LA to show you just how cool she is. Right, Y/N?"

There, over in the corner. "Yes," you say over your shoulder and then grab the bundle of cords and monitors, careful not to tangle anything. "I've come after a long time to join everyone here."

"You hear that, Stay? We trained her for a long time just for you."

The way that Changbin fills the air all on his own is like a weight lifted off your chest, giving you a chance to breathe while he natters on about the schedule and how he expects the performance to go and whatever else happens to come to his mind. Hyunjin's arrival provides further relief; you busy yourself with the equipment in your hands while you hang in the background of their show, appropriately on camera and yet out of the way of the spotlight while you pretend to be too busy to talk.

The in-ears pack unravels itself in your hands, a long string of cord and a monitor that nearly slips from your hand as you separate it, conveniently providing a real distraction rather than the one you were pretending to focus on. You clip it at your hip before it can hit the floor, your other hand reaching up to feed the cord down your back.

"Ah, wait, wait, wait," a voice says behind you as you try to tug the cord down through your shirt, and then warm fingers brush the back of your neck, brushing your hair away from a knot you hadn't realised had formed at your collar. Your head turns so that you can see Chan out of the corner of your eye, picking at the cord until it falls freely down your spine. You catch the other end of it with your hand, turning to face him as you plug it into the monitor.

"I don't know how I did that," you admit with half a smile, quiet enough that the camera behind you won't pick it up. 

"Five minutes in and you're breaking things already," he returns, his fingers gently shifting a lock of hair out of the way of the cord. It slips from his fingers as you turn to face him, adjusting the way that the earpieces fall over your shoulders and dangle around your neck.

"I like the outfit they gave you," he says as you take in what they've dressed him in - artfully designed cargo pants, just like yours, and a sleeveless shirt that's half-tucked at the waist, detailed in silver. "The SKZ style suits you."

"You think so?" you ask, looking down at yourself again. Too self conscious, you know, but you're mindful of what it might look like from the outside, what the fans might think of you when the boys move aside and they see you for the first time on that stage- "It's not too..."

"No, it's perfect," Chan insists. "You look good."

You struggle to keep your face from turning red as you say, "Thanks." By the way his lips pinch together, trying to swallow a smile, you're pretty sure you fail.

"Are you going up now?" he asks, a hand pointing to the stairs that lead to the stage.

"In a minute," you answer. "I just need-" You spy the object you're looking for as you speak; your headset, neatly wrapped on the other side of the table. It only takes a moment to unwind, looping it over your head and reaching back to feed the cord through again.

"Have you tried using a microphone?" Chan asks, circling around you again to free the cord from your collar before you can displace everything. 

"I thought it would be better if my hands were free," you answer. "Maybe next time I will."

"Use whatever you want," he says, watching as you hook up the headset and shuffle its components into a space where they are comfortable. 

When you're done, he offers you a hand, his body twisted towards the stairs. "Ready?" he asks.

You glance behind you before you take the hand that's offered, looking for Changbin's camera. You find it in the corner of your eye, pointed safely at Felix as he endeavours to take uninterrupted selfies up against the back wall. When you turn back, Chan is still waiting, his hand steady and his patience unending, as if he'd stand there an eon if it meant you would walk up those stairs with him.

"Ready," you say, the word dragging all your breath out with it, and you take his hand, the warmth of his palm sinking into your cold fingers and the strength of his grip dragging you up into the world above.

 

--

 

 

A squeal of delight that echoes in the large, empty space is all the warning you get before a body barrels into you, uncaring of the phone held in your hands or even if you're looking up when she meets you.

Minseo, her hands cold and her body familiar as she hugs you tight enough to squeeze all the breath out of your lungs and then pulls away to look at your face with a smile that you feel like you haven't seen in decades. Her cheeks are pink from the cold air outside, her gaze alight as a giggle rises to the surface of her breath at the luck or the absurdity of you meeting in this place, at this time, after so long apart. 

"I can't believe you're here," she says, as if you haven't known for weeks that you would be in the same hotel at the same time, scheduled to perform the same day. "I can't believe I'm here. God, we have so much to catch up on."

"I can't believe I'm here either," you answer. "After everything that's happened this year-"

"Don't you dare tell me you might not have been here," Minseo threatens, one finger prodding at the air between you. 

"Maybe I was going to say we might not have been here," you lie.

She sees through you immediately, arms crossing over her chest. "No, you weren't."

No, I wasn't. "Are we hanging out in your room or mine?" you ask instead to distract her.

Her eyes stray to the desk behind her, where her managers and the rest of her group wait patiently. "Well I don't even have my room yet, so..." her voice trails off suggestively, her back turning on her team with the conviction that tells you she would abandon them here without a second thought if you let her.

"Get your key first," you say, reaching out and pushing her back towards the desk. "I'll come up with you."

"But I can't wait that long to hear what you've been doing here for three days," she whines.

"Nothing special," you insist.

Chapter 21

You're sitting in a small, empty waiting room, away from the hustle and noise of the main room, when I.N flies through the open doorway and straight across the room, his feet moving so fast that you swear he almost crashes into the wall on the other side.

"Hide me," he says, sliding onto the floor on the far side of your seat.

You blink in confusion, frowning as you look down at him. "What?" 

"From Changbin," he says, his breath hitching in his throat like he's been running for miles, and aggressively waves a hand towards the door. "Don't look down here. Hide me."

"I.N-AH!" Changbin's voice cries in the hallway as if summoned by the very mention of his name, the final syllable drawn out long and loud. The sound, and the grimace that covers I.N's face in response as he sits there curled against the wall makes you crack a smile, your eyes tearing away from him and back to your phone screen just in time to feign innocence as Changbin appears in the open doorway, a wide grin on his face as his eyes search the visible parts of the room.

"I.N-ah~," he calls, cajolingly now, and leans through the door as if that will be enough to entice the younger boy out, to make him forget about the deranged yelling that had followed him down the hallway just a moment before. "Come on, I.N-ah. I just want to give you my love."

From behind him, you spy Hyunjin with a camera in one hand, hovering over Changbin's shoulder as he hesitates to come into the room. His other hand is covering his mouth, trying to stifle a laugh. "He's not in here," you tell them, resisting every urge to look down at the boy hiding behind your chair - or to break, a laugh trying its hardest to bubble up to the surface of your lips no matter how hard you shove it down. "He ran past going that way." You point out to the hall again, in the direction Changbin had been heading.

Changbin stares at you for a moment, eyes narrowed like he's trying to figure out if you're lying or not. "I saw him come in here," he says, but only like he's testing the waters - not like he's sure of the fact, or willing to defend it with his life.

A smile creeps across your face. "You're seeing things again," you say, and watch him scoff and bluster, withdrawing from the doorway. 

"Our noona is lying to me," he says to the camera, and then giggles when he looks back to see the look on your face before he leaves, saying something to Hyunjin that you can't quite hear when their voices fade down the hallway, following their footsteps.

Several seconds later, I.N climbs out of hiding, circling around you to slump onto the other end of the couch in a sigh of relief. "I knew I could trust you," he says, a hand tossing his hair away from his forehead and then reaching to drag his own phone out of his pocket.

"Is this what you usually do for your vlogs?" you ask in return, your phone sinking into your lap. "A lot of screaming and running around?"

A wry smile crosses I.N's face. "Changbin does that anyway. Hyunjin just happened to be holding the camera when he grabbed me." He pauses, and then adds, "Isn't this how every practice goes too?"

You shrug. "There's usually less chasing. Maybe it's just because the practice rooms are smaller."

"And they can lock the zoo animals in with us." You snort a laugh and lift your phone again, your restless scroll continuing. Several seconds of silence stretch between you before I.N comes up with another question. "What are you doing in here alone?"

"Nothing," you sigh, and the phone drops away from your field of vision again, replaced with the sight of the other side of the room. White walls, folding tables covered in mess, abandoned chairs. Boring. Thoughtless. "Trying to find something to do that isn't thinking about tomorrow. I don't know, nothing important."

"You could always poke Changbin into tackling you," I.N suggests lightly. "Usually when that happens to me, I can't even remember what I was doing before."

You wince at the thought of it; so far, you've stayed away from the roughhousing that occasionally breaks out and you'd not intended to get involved in the future. Not as a victim, anyway. "I'm good, thanks," you reply wryly, making light of the curl of anxiety that rattles at your ribcage for no particular reason. "It was really loud up there earlier, so I came down here."

"I should have come with you," he sighs. "I didn't know we were being nervous in peace down here."

The way you look at him, head turning sharply and eyes narrowing as your thoughts race to catch up, makes him do a double take, confusion clouding his eyes. "You're nervous?" you ask; and sure, it's not so strange when you think about it and remember the jitter of nerves that crawls up and down your spine every time you go near that stage, but for him to feel like that too, a whole day before you go out there and do the job you came here to do? Surely, after three years, it got easier than that. Surely he couldn't be that nervous.

"Probably not as much as you are," he tells you, "but yeah. It's a big stage, and there's a new song-"

He stops like he is going to say more and then drops it, the end of his sentence hanging unfinished in the air. "I thought you'd be more...used to it, by now," you say, a hand waving in the air vaguely like that will help to explain your case. "Not that you wouldn't be nervous at all, but..."

"I think the others are," I.N says, leaning back into the cushions of the couch with a shrug that slumps his shoulders downward. His hands fiddle idly with his phone in his lap, snapping the case on and off as he thinks. "I feel like I'm still learning though, like you. That's why Lee Know teaches me a lot."

You're aware that you're staring at him like he's crazy, but he takes it in stride, not even flinching under your scrutiny. "If you're this good and still learning, I've got no hope," you tell him, and then you slump back too, one leg sliding up under you so that you can lean on your shoulder.

He openly scoffs at you. "You're just as good as me. And you came in here and just started...fitting in and working."

"That's a lie," you insist, but the absurdity of it all makes a breathy laugh bubble up from inside your chest, easing the tension that keeps building there. "I don't think I fitted in at all when I started. Sometimes I still can't believe that I'm actually going to make it to debut; or that I even belong here."

I.N's lips twist, his eyes softening. "Sometimes I don't either," he admits.

You laugh again, this noise far more undignified than the last one. "Wild thing to say when you've been in a successful group for three years."

The look he gives you is cutting, his eyebrows raised high. "Yeah?" he questions. "And you saying you're not going to debut is any different?"

"I haven't debuted yet, global idol," you point out. 

"Because tomorrow is so far away," he says with a roll of his eyes.

"Technically, I don't debut until an official comeback," you argue.

"You think you're just going to leave after performing with us tomorrow?" he scoffs. "Be more serious. It's embarrassing for you."

"I am being serious!"

"You're being ridiculous."

"I'm calling Changbin to come and get you."

"Not if I leave first."

You stare at each other for several seconds, your phone raised in the air between you like a threat. I.N is the first to break, lips pinching together tight in an effort to swallow the smile that eventually breaks them, the giggle that bubbles up at how stupid an argument this is. "Don't call Changbin," he says, breaking about as fast as you'd expected him to. "I'll break your phone."

"Who are you, Seungmin?" you question; your phone moves out of his reach anyway, just in case. "You spend too much time together."

"Only since you came," I.N throws out carelessly. "He won't leave me alone." The way he says it is innocuous, like he truly doesn't mean anything by the words, and you believe it; but still, it sticks in your mind.

"No one leaves you alone," you point out, carefully stepping around the implication that Seungmin likes hanging out with you. Or taking care of you. Or something. "You're too cute to ignore."

The face I.N pulls is disgusted, the mirror image of the expression he gives the other boys when they start paying him too much attention. "Maybe you spend too much time with Changbin," he suggests.

The dryness of his tone is funny enough to make you laugh, the noise bursting unbidden from your mouth. "I'm just stating a fact," you assure him. "You're cursed with that face. There's nothing you can do about it now."

 

 

"Have you ever toured in Australia?" you ask some time after Chan has taken over the laptop again, your career as Stray Kids' producer as short lived as it was spontaneous. You're sitting now in one of the armchairs from across the room, dragged over next to the table in the pretense of having any kind of input in whatever he is doing as he fiddles endlessly with the details of Han's song.

"We went last year," Chan says, glancing up at you. "Why?"

You shrug carelessly, leaning back in your chair. "Just wondering. I haven't been back in a while. It'd be nice to go one day."

He pauses a moment longer, his hands on the keyboard. "How long is 'a while'?"

You realise you might have made a mistake when your lips press together around the answer, reluctant to give it. "Since I came to Korea?" you spit out eventually, when the tension in the air reaches the breaking point between too late to answer and not saying anything at all. 

The look he gives you says everything he needs to, though his mouth opens to back it up anyway. "You haven't been home in - six years?"

"Sixish," you confirm. "Something like that."

"Why?" he presses. "You've never had a holiday?"

"I've never had time," you say defensively. "Every time my holidays came up, I was working on evaluations or something, so I just never got there."

He shakes his head, returning to his work. "We'll tour in Australia," he says, like it's a promise that is his to keep, not some employee of the company whose name you don't know. "And you'll get a holiday before that."

"Why do I feel like you're going to force me to take a holiday?" you ask, drawing your legs up underneath you.

The look that he shoots at you between edits on his computer screen is withering enough to belong on Minho's face - and without words attached, his gaze saying what it wants all by itself. "Did you take every holiday you had as a trainee?" you ask. 

"Most of them," he answers primly. "And I went home a couple of times too. Like a normal trainee."

"Don't call me weird," you say, but there's no heat behind your voice - only the weakness, maybe, when the realisation of how much time and distance has stretched between you and a place you keep calling home, brushes up against your mind. You hold it at arm's length rather than embracing it, unwilling to sit here and cry about it on a night like this. 

"You're not weird," he answers. "Just unsocialised."

"Unsocialised?"

The incredulous look you give him is met with a laugh, the sound of it high and infectious as it invades the room. "No one ever taught you how to do anything except work," he explains. 

"Hey," you say, as if you're offended. "I'm fun. I know how to have fun."

"How to have fun at work," he insists. 

"Are we not having fun right now?" you question.

"And what are we doing right now?" he fires back, pointing at his laptop.

It takes you several seconds to realise the corner he's backed you into, your eyes tracking from the laptop to him several times. "Working," you sigh in defeat and wrap your arms around your knee, drawing it up towards your chest like a shield as you sag into the back of your seat.

"It's okay," Chan says smugly. "At least you are fun to hang out with. Some people don't even have that going for them."

"I'm so fun," you insist, knowingly doubling down to avoid having to accept the compliment. "Companies can't resist me. Teachers never want me to debut and leave their classes. I'm the most fun person in the world."

"Everything you just said was about work," he points out with a wolfish grin.

You sigh again, loud enough that he can't miss it. "Maybe it's all I think about," you allow. "Maybe after this and comeback, I could make time for something else."

"After comeback?" he echoes. "That's another month away."

"And yet, it haunts me."

A smile pulls at his lips, but he doesn't reply, distracted by whatever he's fixing on his laptop. You wait as he listens to the song, running one part over and over again and fiddling with a fine detail you can't see or hear, even if you were the one looking at it. 

His voice catches you by surprise when he speaks a minute or so later, your ears just grown used to the comfortable silence that had fallen over the room. "I never asked why they took you out of Midnight."

"Oh." You sit back, rubbing at your tired eyes. "I didn't 'fit the image they had for the group'. Not pretty enough."

"I'm sure that wasn't exactly what they meant," Chan says slowly.

An acerbic smile twists at your mouth. "Maybe," you allow. "I don't know. It's the obvious answer - have you seen Midnight? They're all insanely beautiful, and I'm just - okay, I guess."

You have a feeling, as you watch Chan's brow furrow and his eyes narrow in thought, that you might have revealed your thoughts to the wrong boy first. Maybe you should have told Minho instead, or Seungmin or Jeongin, friends that would tell you you're wrong at an arm's length. Chan is a fixer, on top of everything else that he does, and that look in his eyes is only an indication that he's finally narrowed in on his next project.

"Well, you're a better visual than all of us in SKZ," he says, the firm tone of his voice only confirming your suspicions. "And I don't mind if we never look as good as Midnight."

"Lying is such a bad habit, Bang Chan," you say lightly, trying to lift the suffocating, sombre blanket of air that has fallen over the room. "I look at you guys every day. I know how pretty you are."

"You lied first," he scoffs. "Saying you're ugly. You can't just go around spreading rumours like that."

"I didn't say ugly," you argue. "I just said I don't stand a chance next to those other girls."

"Liar," he insists, and struggles to swallow a grin.

"I'm not!" You sit up straight in your chair, the energy that suddenly rushes to your voice unexpected. You realise only a moment later that you've spoken too loud for a hotel room in the middle of the night and swallow down the way that your heart picks up pace and a smile fights for control of your face, lowering your volume before you continue. "I'm telling you, the bar is so high. I waited four years for that debut, and some of those girls just walked in and got a place. Not that they didn't deserve it, but like..."

"Lee Know did that," Chan points out. "Debuted in six months."

"Do you know Ellie?" you ask; and to your surprise, he nods. "I think she was here for weeks before they added her to the predebut lineup. I feel like I don't even really know her, she's been here for so short a time. And she knows idols from all kinds of groups already - the more I think about it, the more I'm like...how did I even think I had a chance? Maybe I should have just known I wouldn't debut."

"Maybe you were just always meant to be here with us," Chan offers before you can spiral any further down that particular rabbit hole - pulling you out into the light, shovel and all, like it is nothing to him. "Lee Know nearly got taken out of the group too, you know. Maybe the people making these decisions just don't know what they're doing."

Your eyebrows raise in surprise. "Really?" you ask, distracted by this new piece of information. "I need to watch your survival show. I've missed so many key points."

"No," he groans again, burying his head in his hands. "We're not watching that. Forget anyone ever mentioned it."

"All of you need to get your story straight," you tell him. "Seungmin says I need to watch every piece of content ever filmed, you tell me not to watch any of it; how am I supposed to know what to do?"

"You should know not to listen to Seungmin by now," Chan says. 

"I think we should watch it," you counter just as quickly. "I think it's a great idea."

"No," he insists. "It's four AM. Go to bed. Don't watch bad TV shows."

"You just told me I need a new hobby."

"Get a normal hobby."

"Watching reality TV is a normal hobby."

"Don't watch the show."

You swallow a smile, struggling to keep a straight face as you stand and stretch, your feet wandering one step at a time towards the door. "I'm going to watch the show," you tell him, deadpan. "I'll tell you all about it in the morning."

"No," he complains again, like if he says it enough he'll be able to stop you. He makes no effort to do anything else though; just sits there and looks pathetic, weighing up whether whining is worth it or not. "Go to sleep."

"Are you going to sleep?" you ask pointedly, taking in the sight of him sitting there at the table, his work still open on his laptop.

The moment that he notices, he closes the laptop, dragging himself out of his own chair. "Yes," he claims, too bold for someone who is always up at this hour. "You know what I'm not doing?"

"What?"

"Watching that show in the middle of the night."

The way he says it makes you crack, a laugh huffing from your throat just before you choke on it and the effort of holding it down. It makes him laugh too, the sound escaping all too easily from his mouth. "Goodnight," you say before he can celebrate his victory, backing towards the door. 

"Goodnight," he echoes, his smile softening his voice and lighting up his face in a familiar, joyous way. Your feet don't hesitate at the sound of it, but your heart does, your chest aching for something you don't think you've ever had, but maybe you have found - your spine crawling at the thought of it being over, even though you will wake up in the morning and he will still be here, and all the others will be around you too, and-

And you will debut, on that stage, in front of the thousands of people that love them even more than you do.

You try to leave the thought behind you as you close the door, back there with Chan, who will have the sense to throw it in the trash where it belongs, but it sticks to you, echoing in the hallway as you take the short walk back to your own quiet room, slinking around incessantly in the shadows when you turn off the lights and slide underneath the covers of your bed, resolving to at least lie here until the alarm goes off in the morning.

Tomorrow, you will debut.

Tomorrow, you will debut.

Chapter 22

Here's what happens:

You throw a bottle of water at Minho's head.

Minho catches it midair, and laughs at the look on your face. For a moment, the tight coil of fear that's constricting your chest eases.

And then, they leave.

Maybe you're skipping a few steps, like how they all laugh, and Seungmin gleefully shares his condolences, and you walk towards the underside of the stage in the middle of the group. Or how Felix squeezes your arm on the way past and Chan offers a smile in the middle of being ushered to his place. It's all short lived though - the camaraderie, the burst of hustle and bustle and distraction that Minho creates - and when it is gone, it all blends together into some half-forgotten memory of colour and light, the only thing that is real the small space you're left standing in and the blast of music above you, the roar of many voices that reminds you of the crowd waiting just past that stage.

Your insides turn sour as you stand there, your mouth too dry to sing through and your limbs too numb to remember the choreography. You press through warmups again under your breath and set your eyes on the downturned face of the assistant who comes to poke at your outfit one last time. She barely seems to do anything, picking at the clothing here and there, adjusting your hair and the cuff of your sleeve. Her slender fingers slide two rings onto your left hand, her mouth saying something about final touches. It doesn't make you feel any better to have them there; it only gives your fingers something to do once she is gone, twisting the metal around and around restlessly.

One song. Two.

You have to go up there now. Dance and sing and live out the dream that you've hounded the shadow of for your entire life. Enjoy it, you tell yourself firmly, but the fear that runs down your spine is ice-cold and the string it winds through your ribcage only tightens with every beat that passes by, the music dragging you closer to debut. It feels wrong somehow, like you are an imposter in your own life, like you've beaten someone else down and taken their place. Like you don't deserve to be here.

Enjoy it, but it is impossible to enjoy something that you dread, that brings so much fear that you can hardly breathe even as you step into an elevator and look up at a far-away ceiling, waiting to rise. 

Chapter 23

 

The moment you step off the stage, your breath still lost from the energy and flying notes of Hellevator, you are surrounded by bodies, squeezing you even tighter than the fear that you'd held in your chest when you'd first stepped up into the flashing lights.

They accost you right there in the dark underside of the stage, steps away from the eyes of the crowd that had only moments ago born down upon you. You feel lightheaded under their grasp, your knees buckling underneath you as the rush of the stage catches up to you; the struggle of your lungs to draw breath, the relief of having made it to the end, the feeling of having done it, stood there and looked at that crowd and realised the dream that had clutched at you since you were far younger and more naive. 

It bubbles up from inside you - first, a gasp of breath, searching for air in the suffocation of eight boys howling around you, and then, inexplicably, a laugh, light and hoarse and rasping at your throat as it struggles to the surface. "Okay, okay, wait," Chan says somewhere to your right, pushing Changbin away before he really can squeeze the life out of you and then the others, one by one. "She can't breathe. Let her - breathe-"

Slowly, the group breaks apart, filtering down the hall and back towards the waiting room. Felix is the one that drags you along first, an arm thrown around your neck before anyone else can and a giddy smile plastered across his face. You feel like you should be wearing one too, with the way your head spins and your chest aches with an emotion you can't quite describe, but you find yourself echoing the softer smile that Chan offers as he falls in step behind you, something unspeakable echoing in his eyes.

You can't make out a single word any of them say as you come into the room, standing there bereft in the centre of the whirlwind as they move around you, splaying out across the couches in the corner or removing a part of their outfit that is too uncomfortable to keep wearing. You're not sure what you want to do; the room buzzes with activity, not only from the members, but the staff as well, shifting back and forth as they push chairs together and set up a camera for the livestream that is to follow. The rings on your fingers twist endlessly as you consider your options, turning around and around with the memories of that stage and those songs, these boys in sync around you-

Your eyes fall on I.N, sitting dejectedly on one of the sofas arranged for the livestream with a look on his face that says he is very much not ready for the camera to be turned on at all. You know why without having to go over and ask. You'd seen it out of the corner of your eye during God's Menu, on your way to the front of the formation; his foot slipping out from underneath him as he crouched and the ungraceful sprawl that had followed. You hadn't had time to see what had happened next, if he'd been late standing back up or if he'd kicked anyone else on the way down, but whatever it was had clearly upset him, if he is hiding in a corner now.

He's not alone, at least; Chan is slumped next to him, one hand patting his knee absent-mindedly. The slaps become harder as you approach, trying to goad the younger boy into moving. You suppose it has the desired effect when his hand reaches out to slap Chan's away, his leg never moving.

"Y/N," Chan says as you approach, relief clear in his voice. "Come here. Tell him he hasn't ruined your whole career."

"Why would he have ruined my career?" you ask, sitting tentatively at the edge of the couch. 

"It was so obvious that I fell over," I.N answers dejectedly, his eyes fixed on the floor. "It was your first part in your first stage, and everyone would have just seen me messing it up."

A smile curves at your lips despite yourself, your hands itching to reach out and shake this nonsense from him. "I don't care if anyone was looking at me," you tell him. "Maybe you helped me out. And the other three songs were fine, weren't they?"

"Exactly," Chan agrees. "No one got hurt and everyone enjoyed the stage, that's all that matters."

"I just hate that I messed it up," I.N says, and his eyes turn to you. "You were so nervous, and we wanted it to be perfect, and-"

"Hey, I didn't see a thing." Your hands come up as if confessing, your head shaking. "As far as I knew, everything was perfect."

It's a small lie, omitting what you had clearly seen from the corner of your eye, but he doesn't need to know that, not when he looks at you with such lamb-soft eyes and asks, "Really?" and you are able to nod and pat him on the shoulder and then reach out and envelop him in a hug, the way you imagine you would for any little brother you might have been lucky enough to be blessed with (but these little brothers, you think, might just be the biggest blessing there is to gain, so much so that even now you don't feel worthy of it).

Above his head, your eyes lock with Chan's, sharing a look; there is gratitude in his eyes, and that open warmth that he extends to everyone he meets, and something else that you can't quite pinpoint, an unreadable emotion that flickers across his face and twists in the corner of his mouth, swallowed down before it can give itself a voice.

 

 

"What are you looking at?" Chan asks as the clock ticks past midnight, leaning back in his chair to try to peek at your phone screen.

You blink at him in surprise, unprepared for the sudden departure from the conversation you'd been having about whatever happened to come to mind. You'd thought neither of you were really paying attention to the words that were passing between you since Changbin had left the room several minutes ago; Chan's eyes were glued to his laptop and yours to your phone, casually scrolling as you waited for your mind to wind down enough to sleep.

You're reticent to show him what you're scrolling through though, because you know what he'll think, how he'll worry about it. They all do, on the odd occasion they catch you, and maybe they have a point - when you sit here and acknowledge the dissatisfaction that is slowly putting down roots in your chest now that the performance is over and done and you've had time to read what they think and compare it to your memory. You'd been happy with your efforts earlier in the day, but at this hour now, watching it back and seeing the cracks-

"Is that twitter?" he asks, and if he leans even further to be able to see, you don't call him out on it, just sigh and turn your phone so that he can see, accepting your fate. It's too late in the night for lying, and you probably need to hear something nice about yourself just once in this hour, if you're being truthful. 

His face furrows as he reads what's on your screen, his hands reaching out to take the phone from your hands. His frown only gets deeper the further he scrolls; it's a darker expression than you'd thought, something closer to fury than you'd thought he was capable of.

 

 

"I just wanted to see what they thought of the performance," you say, as if that's any excuse when you'd already had a feeling about what you'd find. 

"You could have just asked me if it was good," Chan replies. "Or Lee Know. We're not going to lie to you." You can still see that anger in his face when he looks up, but it isn't directed at you - instead, it softens when your eyes meet, replaced by the concern you knew was coming instead.

You shrug. "I wanted a wide range of opinions," you say, as if that makes the vitriol you've handed him any better.

"This isn't a wide range of opinions," he says. "This is-"

 

 

 

"What is it?" you ask when he pauses mid sentence, craning your neck to see what he's seeing. 

He clicks out of it before you can read anything, navigating smoothly back to the endless stream of tweets you'd been looking at before. "Nothing," he claims, and affixes a brightness to his face that tries its best to mask the disgust that struggles to surface. "I can't believe you don't trust us. What are we even here for?"

"I trust you," you say. "I just wanted to see what everyone else said."

"No you don't," he insists, his voice lifting higher and higher as if he's going to laugh. "You didn't even back me up when I told you Changbin's lyrics needed work."

You know the humour is only surface-deep when his eyes flick back to the phone screen, but it gets to you anyway, lifting at the corners of your mouth and easing the weight in your chest. He's hard to resist like that sometimes, even when you know exactly what he is doing and why he is doing it. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"You didn't think I was telling the truth then," he claims, "and you won't think I'm telling the truth now if I tell you the performance was amazing."

 

 

"You haven't even tried," you poke back, crossing your arms indignantly. "You just made up all these lies about me for yourself and said nothing."

"Oh, you want my compliments now?"

"No, I'm not that desperate."

"Lying again, it's such a bad look."

 

 

 

"What was that?" you ask as your phone beeps in his hand, a message popping up in the notification bar. Chan clicks it for you dutifully, pulling up your private thread with Changbin - a moment passes while you read, and then you cough out a laugh.

"Wasn't he going to sleep?" you ask, shaking your head at the message. 

"It has been a whole three hours since he last ate," Chan answers, and then pauses as he looks at the screen again, his eyes narrowing. "Why are all your contacts blank?"

"What?" you say, and then you see that he has bumped back to your message list; a long line of grey bubbles, broken up only by the colourful pictures that they have set for each other in the group chats. "I don't know."

"I wasn't reading your messages," he adds before you can answer, handing the phone back to you. "I just noticed you had nothing set for Changbin. He's like, the easiest one to get a photo of."

"I don't have any photos of any of you," you point out. "What am I supposed to do, google for photos of you?"

"Just take photos of us?" Chan suggests in answer, and then he sees what your fingers are already up to on your phone screen. "Hey, no, hold on - hey, don't do that-"

 

 

"One of these?" you ask and hold the phone up so that he can see, an impish smile on your face.

"No, no, no, no, no," he replies, his ears turning red. "No, put that away. Oh my god."

"What about this?"

 

 

"Give me that," he says, snatching at your phone. It takes him three tries to get it - you screech as he leans forward, trapping you between your chair and the table as he grabs at your wrist and then your fingers, the offending photo sliding away on the screen. His breath is hot on your neck when he laughs, his nails gentle where they bite into the skin of your thumb, prying the phone from your grip. 

You give it up without fighting; your fun has been had, after all, and his face is flushed red, the laugh that bubbles up from his chest more genuine than the light fun he had been poking earlier. You've even nearly forgotten about the tweets you'd been reading, the black mark they've left inside your chest covered up by your shirt and the silly giggle that spills out of your mouth, unable to be swallowed.

"Here," he says and lifts your phone, posing so subtly for the camera that you're not even sure he knows he's doing it. "Now you have one out of eight." It only takes him a few taps to set the photo, as if it really was as easy as ten seconds of work that you'd been neglecting, and then turns the phone to show you.

 

 

"Do you want me to send you photos of the others, or are you going to do it yourself?" he asks.

"No, I'm going to ask Minho for all of his weird photos," you answer. 

He laughs despite himself, the giggle high and breathy. "The ones in the group chat aren't enough for you?"

"No," you say. "No, I'm starting to think I need blackmail material."

Chan lets his face fall in slow motion, from humour to despair. "I used to think you were on my side," he laments to the room at large, as dramatic as any actor you've seen, "but you have the worst friends."

"That you introduced me to."

The grin that spreads slowly across his face and the wicked glint that flashes in his eye send apprehension shivering down your spine. "Actually," he says, "Felix introduced you. And you called him sunbaenim."

You freeze, deer in the headlights as your cheeks turn red, and he bursts out laughing, unable to help himself anymore. "Okay," you say, defeated, and sink back into your chair as if it might swallow you, pointing at his computer. "Please go back to your music stuff before I leave."

"Okay then," he says, leaning forward, and then looks at you again. "Hubaenim."

You bury your head in your hands and groan.

 

 

Chapter 24

 

"I love when you do that," Hyunjin sighs to his phone screen, sitting down in the chair next to you.

"Hm?" you ask, looking up from your own phone. It's hard to see his face in the grey light of your hiding place, away from the stage lights and flashing cameras of the set across the room. "Do what?"

"Put him in his place," Hyunjin says. "We needed someone older than him on our side."

You huff a laugh, watching I.N climb up amongst the set pieces. "Chan's older than him."

"Chan just flirts until he's grossed out." Hyunjin pulls a face that makes you laugh again, leaning back in his chair. "I like your way better. It's much funnier."

"I might have made an enemy though," you say wryly. "Seungmin's side is not always the correct side."

"I wouldn't take any side if I was you," he replies. "If I were you for one day..." His hand covers his mouth, eyes screwing up as if it's a dream that is so delightful it is hard to imagine and unbearable to let go.

"You want to?" you ask. "You can be me for the whole music video shoot. You can teach my arms how to dance."

He shoots you a look, turning back to disgust again. "I don't want to work," he says. "I just want to speak casually to Minho-hyung for five minutes."

"You can't be me then," you say, turning back to the shoot happening across the floor. "No lazy dongsaengs. I already chased Felix out of here."

The look Hyunjin gives you is judgemental, mouth twisted as if he has something he's not saying. "Maybe someone should be you for a day so that you take one off."

You look at him out of the corner of your eye, trying to stifle the laugh that bubbles in your throat. "I don't want a day off," you tell him, before he can get any ideas. "I'm very happy the way I am."

"Well, as long as you're happy," Hyunjin sighs and pulls out his phone to check Seungmin's next message.

 

 

Notes:

to find more or read queenmaker in its true form, visit me on tumblr @kangaracha :)

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