Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The music still rang in his ears even as the door shut behind him. It pumped so loud from the speakers that he could still hear it bouncing down the hallway, though the stage was long behind them and their dressing room was supposed to be soundproof. It was quiet for a moment—as quiet as it could be, with their breath heaving from exertion and excitement and pride—before the room once more exploded into applause. Their staff cheered them on a magnificent encore stage and promised to display their trophy high in the agency.

High on the moment, he couldn’t stop himself from running forward and leaping onto his hyung’s back, laughing as it sent them both tumbling to the ground. It didn’t take long for the others to pile on top of the two, and he let out grunts and whined about the extra weight, but in reality he couldn’t care less. Never would he have imagined he would end up here, successful and happy and surrounded by the people he trusted the most.

How did he end up here?

“Yah, Choi Jongho!” 

Jongho flinched. Suddenly the joyful memory was gone, replaced by the reality surrounding him.

Jaejoon stared at him, eyes hard. It was hard to recognize that the person standing in front of him right now, with dark purple hair and an eyebrow slit and a mouth that seemed to be permanently curved downward, was the same one that he had leapt onto so readily just a few years ago. That had been their first win, and while it wasn’t their last, things hadn’t been the same.

“Yes, hyung?” Jongho asked finally, tilting his head down. He hadn’t been expecting the interruption; it was the first time someone had spoken in what felt like hours of them all sitting in silence in their practice room.

“We’re going back to the dorm, so get your stuff,” Jaejoon said, voice tinged with impatience, and Jongho looked around and realized that the rest of them had already left. He couldn’t find it in himself to be upset that no one else had tried to let him know. “You’re lucky we didn’t leave you here.”

Jongho pursed his lips and pushed himself off the floor, accidentally catching a glimpse of himself in the mirrors that line the walls. It came as no surprise to him how deep and dark his eye bags were, not since this morning when he had tried to wipe them off, thinking he had simply forgotten to remove his makeup last night. Benches lined the back wall, everyone’s bags missing except his. The harsh overhead lights blared into his eyes and created dark spots that bounced around. He took a moment to steady himself before grabbing his bags, and together he and Jaejoon began walking out to the van.

Jaejoon didn’t even glance at him, but that was to be expected. All of them were on short fuses tonight—though tonight seemed to happen a lot lately. That was how they got in this situation in the first place. They were practicing the choreography for one of their songs, with Hojin instructing them as usual, when Kyungmin kept messing up this one particular step. Jongho could tell when Hojin was getting more and more frustrated and mentally braced himself for the blow-up that was surely coming. Sure enough, Hojin made one too many snappy comments for Kyungmin to handle, and then Youngsik came to Kyungmin’s defense, and Hojin yelled at them for ganging up on him, and then they all stormed off to their own corners of the practice room. Jongho had watched with tired eyes as Kyungmin and Youngsik whispered together way too loudly to be accidental. That was the thing about them: once they got going, no one could let anyone else get the last word in. He had leaned his head back against the mirror, the cold glass providing an amazing sense of relief to his sweat-damp hair, and inadvertently began drifting off into his daydreams of a different time.

Jongho fiddled with his hands, swept his fingers through his hair more times than he could count, while on the way out. He just knew that the environment wasn’t going to get any better once they returned to the dorm. Best case scenario was that everyone would ignore each other for the rest of the night and cool down enough to pretend it never happened in the morning. Jongho had gotten pretty good at keeping out of the crossfire, so as long as he kept his head down, he wouldn’t end up on the other end of a loud scolding. As much as he wanted to scream at them until he was red in the face during times like this, yell until his throat was hoarse about how they were his hyungs, so why was he the one holding them together, he always held back. It wouldn’t do any good in the long run. Plus, he reminded himself, they didn’t mean anything they said or did when it was like this. They had good times, too, so it wasn’t like they were constantly at war. He couldn’t fault them for what they did at their lowest, or maybe he couldn’t bring himself to admit finally that they weren’t the same people he debuted with. They were no longer the ones who would let him beat up on them like a good maknae and still smile adoringly.

(The resentment inside him grew and festered like infection on a wild animal still crawling along and trying to save itself, but the hope that they would somehow repair themselves was the one thing keeping him from collapsing on shaky legs and surrendering to the disease).

The van door was locked when they arrived. Only after Jaejoon had knocked incessantly against the window did it slide open. Youngsik met them with a falsely innocent expression. “Sorry, guys, none of us heard you.”

Jaejoon rolled his eyes and gestured for Jongho to climb in first. Jongho managed to wrangle himself over Youngsik’s legs enough to slide into the backseat, in between Hojin and Byungho, who were staring resolutely at their empty phone screens. Jaejoon got in after him, sitting next to Youngsik. Kyungmin sat in the passenger seat and refused to make a noise. The driver just shook his head and started on his way back to the dorms.

As a trainee, Jongho had inevitably heard horror stories of groups that dropped the act of closeness as soon as the cameras were shut off. But after he met all of the members, he thought for sure that they would never end up like that.

He wasn’t prepared to be wrong. He wasn’t prepared to go to practice and wonder when, not if, there would be a new feud that day. He wasn’t prepared to watch his hyungs turn into people he barely knew at all.

How did he end up here?

There was nothing that got to Jongho quite like singing. 

When he was younger, he had thought that he was simply destined to follow in his family’s footsteps and be an athlete. Maybe he would play basketball like his mother, or maybe he would join his younger brother, who was already on the school’s archery team. He figured that he was good enough at soccer to try out for some professional leagues once he graduated.

Really, his decision to enter the school’s talent show was more impulsive than anything else. All of his friends were doing it for something or other, and he couldn’t just let himself be the odd one out. Only after he put his name down did it occur to him that he had nothing to actually do. It wasn’t like he could very well get a line of people to arm wrestle—he may have been going to the gym after school more often, but he still wasn’t where he wanted to be yet.

As a last resort, he put down singing, resolved that he would practice in the coming weeks, and promptly forgot all about it. He couldn’t be blamed for that, really, because what kind of talent show didn’t have auditions or something where they checked to make sure you could actually do the task you said you could? But the night of the show came, and he walked out on stage, bracing for the impending humiliation and already planning how he would ever live this down, and sang a song that he had randomized off his Spotify playlist an hour before. And he did good.

He didn’t get first—no, that spot went to a pair of twins who performed a choreographed hula-hoop show—or second, but he did get third, and that was way better than he was expecting at all. So he entered a different competition, and another, and then another, and when he kept doing well, he figured that he must have a bit of a knack for it.

Finally, for once in his life, he had something that was entirely his. He could sing, and with the lessons that his family signed him up for, he would only continue to blossom. It was only a matter of time before someone encouraged him to audition for an entertainment company. And at that point, he felt on top of the world. If he made it in, he did, and if he didn’t, then there were other paths for him to follow. 

Nothing could compare to the feeling he got when he was on stage. 

It was a culmination of the talent he had stumbled upon by accident and all of the work he had put in to get him the rest of the way. He wasn’t a perfect singer back then, and he still wasn’t now, and he would be the first to admit that he wanted to work on his dancing. But he was here, with his members who he still loved despite it all, and they had millions of adoring fans who would scream at the sight of them. On stage, he was confronted with the full force of that adoration. No matter how many times he did it, he still marveled at the fact that he could be celebrated simply for doing what he loved.

Today was no different. 

A successful comeback show put all of them on cloud nine. No one was at each other’s necks today; Jaejoon and Hojin were too busy laughing backstage at Youngsik and Kyungmin’s antics (those two, both ‘99-liners, were always two sides of the same coin, always bouncing off of each other like rubber balls on the wall), and Jongho had just shoved a giggling Byungho off of where the older was clinging to him. Byungho didn’t seem to mind, just threw his arm around Youngsik’s shoulder and joined in on the fun. It wasn’t that Jongho didn’t want the attention—well, okay, maybe he didn’t usually, but when everyone was happy with each other, he couldn’t help but want to feed on that—but having someone all up on him like that increased the odds of them pressing onto where he didn’t want them to.

His ankle had been hurting ever since he had landed on it wrong while they were performing half an hour ago, what started as a dull, pounding ache soon morphing into a sharp, stinging shock sent up his leg with every miniscule movement. He had been careful not to let it show on his face when it happened, not wanting to ruin the take, but apparently that translated too well into off-camera, so no one noticed how he could barely walk without his legs collapsing in on him.

Jongho knew that he should probably let someone know so that he could at least get an ice pack, but he was still holding out hope that it wasn’t too serious. Everyone was in such a good mood; he didn’t want to ruin all of that by complaining about an injury that he could have just as easily dealt with by himself. Besides, he was sure that they had passed a main office of some sort somewhere in the endless white halls that led them to their waiting room. Maybe they had a nurse’s office in there, too, like his school had, or at the very least could point him to where he could find some ibuprofen or something to get rid of the incessant pain.

Excusing himself from the celebration (not that he thought they took notice, too busy trying to throw confetti and smear frosting on each other’s faces, and if they did, they didn’t think much of it), he hobbled out of the room and into the hallway. He looked left and right. He had no idea how to escape from the sector with all of the waiting rooms for different groups, let alone how to then find his way to the main office that definitely, 100% did exist (right? He swore that they had passed one somewhere). 

To the left, the hallway stretched as far as the eye could see. Staff stood outside some of the rooms, rifling through clothing and tapping away on tablets. He couldn’t tell if anyone was filming, but if he ended up in the background of some other group’s behind-the-scenes clip, he was probably too far in the back to be paid much attention. If an eagle-eyed fan (of which he knew there were a lot) happened to identify his stage outfit, then they still wouldn’t be able to tell he was injured. As long as he didn’t limp too dramatically, he was in the clear.

To the right, the hallway continued for a couple meters before turning a corner; Arrowheart were in the last room on this end. Either way, he figured, it would probably wrap around somewhere. It didn’t really matter which way he went, and it wasn’t like he could remember which direction was the shorter path. He had a fifty-fifty shot, and right seemed like as good a choice as any.

Unfortunately, once he rounded the corner, he was just met with more doors. This hallway looked like it went on forever, too, and all Jongho could do was continue on, hoping to eventually find his way out of this maze. No one would care how long he was gone as long as he got back before they had to leave, which gave him an hour to find an office and then retrace his steps back to Arrowheart’s waiting room.

No matter how many turns he took, he couldn’t manage to get out to any new areas. He felt like he was starting to get turned around, even though it was a normal building that normal people were supposed to be able to navigate but for some reason he just couldn’t. With each moment that passed with no treatment, nothing to dull or distract, the pain emanating upwards only got worse; he liked to consider himself a pretty tough person, but by now, even he could feel the tears starting to prick behind his eyes. He reached up to rub at his eyes with his fist, not caring about smudging the makeup now that the stage was done, and was left blinking away the dizziness that resulted. The ground spun in front of him, and the walls got fuzzier each time he stepped down on the injured ankle.

Eventually, when he got around one last corner just to realize that he had been walking in a circle for the last ten minutes, he finally ducked into a bathroom just so he could gather his bearings and hopefully not lose his mind.

He splashed his face with water from the sink and then leaned his hands on either side of the pedestal, scanning himself in the mirror. His makeup was, predictably, a mess, smudged and running down his cheeks. He roughly wiped at the trails with his sleeve. Leaning his head down and closing his eyes, he took a deep inhale. This was exactly what he needed: a breather, a chance to reevaluate. On one hand, by this point, it wouldn’t take much longer to just return to their waiting room, sit it out, and just get some medicine once they returned to the dorm. On the other hand, after he already put this much effort in, it felt like it would be a waste to just give up now.

“They really need to put up a map in this place,” he muttered to himself.

“No kidding,” a voice agreed from behind him.

Jongho’s head snapped up. A man stared back at him in the mirror, eyes wide. He whipped around, frantically tilting in a low bow.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize you were there,” he stuttered.

The other man held his hands up. “No, I'm sorry for sneaking up on you.” Then he bowed his head. “I’m Kang Yeosang, from Ateez.”

“Choi Jongho, Arrowheart. It’s nice to meet you, Yeosang-sunbaenim.” He bowed once again in return, but when he came back up, his head spun with the movement. He staggered back, leaning onto the cold tile wall.

Yeosang peered at him. “Woah, are you okay? You look sick.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Jongho waved him off. He pushed off and took a step. Landing on the injured ankle sent a jolt up his leg, ending in his brain like a lightning rod in a storm. He stumbled forward and put his arms out to catch himself, bracing for yet another injury, but—

Yeosang jumped forward and caught him, winding an arm around his waist while also lifting one of Jongho’s arms to wrap around his shoulders.

“Yeah, no, you’re very clearly not okay,” Yeosang said, giving him a moment to steady himself before beginning to lead him out of the bathroom. “Which way is your group’s waiting room?”

A flood of panic rushed through him. No matter how happy they were now, his hyungs would never let him get away with not only wandering off, but wandering off and getting lost to the point that someone from another group—one of their sunbaes, no less—had to help him get back. The scolding he would get would be enormous, likely the worst one yet. And then, as if being yelled at for hours wasn’t enough, the subsequent silent treatment could last for several more hours, maybe even days. That was the worst part for him—being ignored by his members, feeling like a ghost in his own home. He knew how this would go because it was what happened every time he messed up this badly. And this—this was bad. They would tell him he humiliated them by needing help from one of their seniors, and he agreed with them.

“No!” he shouted, face burning at Yeosang’s confused look. “No, we can’t go back there because I—I don’t remember how to get back.”

“Ah,” Yeosang nodded. “That is a problem.”

“I understand that you probably have to get back to your own group, so it’s really no problem if you just leave me—”

“I’ll take you back to my waiting room instead,” Yeosang said. He continued leading them along, ignoring Jongho’s protests.

“No, really, it’s okay—I’m sure you’re busy, and I don’t want to disturb the rest of your members.”

Yeosang scoffed. “Oh, please, you won’t be disturbing anyone. Those idiots could use a distraction—for some reason they’re especially bored today, so an extra person to try to entertain will be good for them.”

At the assured tone in Yeosang’s voice, Jongho’s resolve crumbled. Hopefully, once he got to the Ateez waiting room, they would have some pills or an ice pack he could borrow, and he could be in and out before he embarrassed himself too much more than he already did. God, he couldn’t believe this was where he was in life: being so stupid that he had to use one of his sunbaes as a crutch while being transported to said sunbae’s waiting room—where the rest of his members awaited.

Soon enough, or maybe too soon, they arrived, and Yeosang let him use the wall for support as he pushed the door open. The sight that greeted Jongho was worrying, to say the least. No one talked to each other. Some scrolled on their phones, one was reading a book, and one was leaning his head back with his earbuds in, tapping his foot to the beat of the music. But no one talked. In Arrowheart, when they weren’t talking, it almost always meant they were upset with each other. It seemed that they swapped between two extremes: overjoyed and clinging on to each other or upset and resolutely ignoring the others’ existences. Did Yeosang purposefully bring him back to a feuding group? Or did something happen in the time that Yeosang had gone to the bathroom?

One of them—Jongho recognized him as Hongjoong—stood up as soon as he spotted the two of them, an instant smile appearing on his face.

“Hi! We weren’t… expecting guests.” He turned to Yeosang with a questioning look. At that, the rest of them seemed to notice them and also stood, each bowing their head in quick greeting before watching curiously.

“Yes, hyung, I know, but Jongho-ssi here is sick and he doesn’t remember where his own waiting room is so I brought him here.” Yeosang gained a sudden determination. “I know that our call time is soon, but we’re all ready already, and I couldn’t leave him.”

Seonghwa walked over and placed a hand on Yeosang’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Yeosang-ah, we understand. It’s good that you didn’t leave him on his own.” Then he turned to speak to Jongho, looking him up and down assessingly. “Are you hurt? What’s the matter?”

Thrown back into the center of attention, Jongho felt himself begin to fumble his words. “Ah, sunbaenim, it’s just my ankle, I landed wrong while on stage and—”

“What are you still doing on your feet then?” Seonghwa interrupted. He ushered Jongho over to their couch. The ones sitting there had already stood, clearing space without question, without protest. Jongho tried not to let his confusion show on his face at that.

“Really,” Jongho tried to say, “I don’t want to take your guys’ seats.” He looked to San and Mingi, the ones who had been sitting where he was now. “I’m sorry—”

“Don’t apologize,” San said, shaking his head. “You need to sit more than we do.” At his side, Mingi nodded.

Meanwhile, Yunho came up and kneeled near Jongho’s feet next to Seonghwa. He looked up at Jongho. “Can I look at your ankle? Which one is it?”

“He’s our injury guy,” Seonghwa added. “He gets plenty of them on his own while dancing.”

“He has gotten better over the years,” Yeosang said, “but he still doesn’t know when to quit.”

Yunho barely spared them a glance, instead flashing Jongho a smile. “They say that, but then they’re the ones who always look for me when they get a bruise. Ankle?”

Jongho snapped out of his daze at the easy way they interacted. “Oh, yeah. It’s this one.” He shook the leg and flinched at the shock immediately sent up it.

“Try not to move too much,” Yunho said, reaching to pull up Jongho’s pant leg until his ankle was visible. He carefully prodded at it with a couple fingers and let out a hiss. “This is really swollen, but it looks like it’s just a sprain.” Then he turned around and, like he hadn’t just rocked Jongho’s world, asked, “Can someone get an ice pack out of the mini fridge? And maybe some ibuprofen, while you’re at it?”

Just a sprain? Just a sprain? 

While it was certainly better than dislocating it entirely, a sprain still took time to heal. It still meant that he would be spending the next couple weeks sitting down at practice rather than dancing, all the while trying to pretend that the bitter glares he received weren’t killing him inside. Even worse, it meant that he couldn’t perform on stage with them for the rest of their promotions, of which they weren’t even halfway done with yet. That would be the most unbearable part; he was used to his members’ moods, and he could deal with that, but just the thought of disappointing the fans was already crushing.

A sudden coldness pressed down on his ankle, startling him out of his spiral. Mingi held an ice pack down until Jongho remembered that he was the guest here, and the least he could do to repay them for their generosity was ease the burden, even in such a small way. He smiled gratefully when he took the ice pack into his own hand, and then repeated his gratitude out loud when Mingi then handed him some pills and a water bottle.

They waited for him to swallow the pills before anyone spoke again.

“Your group must be getting pretty worried about you,” Seonghwa said. “I’m sure we could ask a staff member to find out where your waiting room is, and one of us could come along to explain where you’ve been so you won’t get in trouble.”

Jongho paled. He didn’t know how to explain that he would be getting in trouble either way.

“Do I have to tell them?” he asked. “I mean, I can probably just handle it on my own.”

Hongjoong and Seonghwa exchanged a glance.

Wooyoung snorted. “Unless you can somehow take days off without them noticing, I think you’re out of luck.” He grunted when San elbowed him in the side. “Hey, it’s true!” Then he turned to Jongho with a much kinder smile. “I really think it would be for the best to just tell them. I’ve tried to hide injuries before and, well…”

“All of us yelled at him!” San said brightly. “He deserved it, though.”

“At least let one of us walk you to your room,” Seonghwa offered. “We wouldn’t feel good if we knew we had let you wander off on your own.”

Jongho bit his lip. “If you’re sure it won’t be a big bother.”

“We have fifteen minutes until our call time, and that should be more than enough,” Hongjoong said, checking his phone. “Here, I’ll take you.”

He reached down and held his hand out for Jongho to take, pulling him to his feet with a grunt. He put them in the same position that Yeosang had helped him in earlier, so that Jongho was sharing his weight between his good foot and Hongjoong’s support.

“Goodbye, sunbaenims,” Jongho called just before they left. “Thank you for taking care of me.” He dipped his head as much as he could without dragging Hongjoong down with him.

“Of course, Jongho-ssi,” Yeosang replied. “We’re glad we could help.”

Hongjoong was able to ask one of the staff for directions back to the Arrowheart waiting room, and the walk there was way too short for Jongho’s liking. Every step felt heavier, and though Hongjoong tried to make small talk, Jongho couldn’t even bring himself to be excited that he was having a full conversation with one of his seniors.

Outside of the familiar door with his group’s name stuck on it with some tape, Jongho separated from Hongjoong with a heavy heart. The other man caught his wrist before he could get much further, though.

“Listen, Jongho-ssi, I know that I’m just one of your sunbaenims so it might be a lot of pressure, but if you want to talk about anything, I always want to be an open space.”

Jongho furrowed his brow. That was a strange thing to bring up all of a sudden, especially considering the fact that they had met literally fifteen minutes ago. “Ah, sunbaenim, I don’t…”

Hongjoong slapped himself in the forehead, sending a sudden strike of fear into Jongho that the older was going to retract his offer, having somehow realized in the last half a minute that he actually didn’t want to talk to him. But he shook that feeling away quickly because, one, he was self-aware enough to realize when he was probably overthinking, and two, it would be understandable if that was the case. As thrilled as he would be to get to talk to one of his seniors in a setting where his ankle wasn’t actively swelling, he couldn’t ask Hongjoong to take time out of his definitely busy day just to talk to him.

Instead of doing that, though, Hongjoong simply pulled out his phone. “I forgot that you don’t just have my number.” He handed it to Jongho, a new contact already pulled up. With fingers that barely registered what he was doing, he typed in his information, labeling it as, “Arrowheart Choi Jongho.” 

Hongjoong took it back, looking it over once before sending a text to Jongho’s phone. “I can trust that you won’t be giving my number to just anyone, right?” 

Jongho rushed to reassure him but was interrupted by Hongjoong laughing and waving him off. “I’m just joking; I’m sure you can understand how bad it would be for a phone number to be leaked.”

And he did know—once, a couple of years ago, someone had somehow gotten a hold of Hojin’s phone number. Within a few hours, he could barely use it without getting a notification of a call or text from some “fan” who wanted to talk to him. At first he had tried to stick it out, always the most stubborn of them, but after Jongho and Jaejoon had complained about not being able to sleep because of just how many times his phone kept going off throughout the night, he was forced to admit defeat and get a whole new number. The three of them had been roommates at the time, and Jongho hadn’t been able to sleep for more than a few hours at a time for the entire week it took to wear Hojin down. So, yes, he knew very well how bad it can be for an idol’s number to be leaked, and he wouldn’t wish that on anyone, let alone people as kind as Ateez had been to him for the past half hour.

“Of course,” Jongho confirmed. “Thank you so much for all your help today. Please pass it on to the rest of your members, too.”

“We would do it for anyone,” Hongjoong replied. Then he knocked on the door, giving Jongho absolutely no time to prepare for when it opened up and he was face to face with Youngsik.

“Jongho! Where have you…” Youngsik grabbed Jongho’s wrist, and only then did he notice that there was a second person there. His eyes widened dramatically and he scrambled to bow, almost hitting his head on the door frame in his efforts. 

“Jongho’s back?” Jaejoon called, walking up to join them. When he saw Hongjoong, his reaction was much the same. He was able to gather himself faster, smoothing down his coat. “Hongjoong-sunbaenim, we weren’t expecting you. I hope that our maknae hasn’t bothered you in any way.”

At his words, Jongho could hear the rest of his members begin to mutter inside, but he couldn’t tell what they were saying. The look he got from Jaejoon said that they were absolutely going to be talking about this later, no matter what the response was.

“No, he was no trouble,” Hongjoong said, patting Jongho on the shoulder. “He hurt his ankle a bit, and one of my members thinks it’s a sprain, but he should probably get it checked out anyways.”

Jaejoon’s gaze turned icy, but he still kept his press smile in place. “Ah, I see. Well, we should probably let you get back to your own group. We wouldn’t want to take up any more of your time.”

Hongjoong frowned. “Really, it wasn’t an issue. We were happy to help.” He turned to Jongho, opening his mouth like he wanted to say more, but then thought better of it. He tipped his head in a bow at each of them and walked away.

As soon as Hongjoong was around the corner, Jongho was tugged into the room. Jaejoon scowled as he led him to the couch. “Why did you have to go bother one of our seniors with this? We deal with group matters within the group, not by running to another idol as soon as it happens. Did you think about what kind of impression you were making? No, actually, did you think at all?”

Jongho kept his hands folded in his lap as he listened. At least he wasn’t getting the typical rant that all of them got whenever they were injured, about how they have to be more careful and think about how they affect the rest of the group. 

Byungho was already on the phone with their manager, requesting another van to take Jongho to the hospital. Jongho would be lying if he said that didn’t sting a little bit—he had hoped that maybe at least one of them would accompany him. Though, he supposed, maybe he couldn’t blame them. Whenever one of the others had to make a trip to the hospital, he used to volunteer to go with, but recently even he had been sticking back. At all of 23 years old, he was too tired, too weary, to join those who were supposed to be his best friends when they went to the hospital.

He would do better in the future, he resolved. He refused to let himself go cold.

For as long as they’d been together as a group, they had always known that there was something missing.

Perhaps, at first, they hadn’t quite realized what it was. They were just thrilled to be debuting, the seven of them together, having trained and then gone to America for KQ Fellaz. Their hard work was finally paying off, and they couldn’t have asked to do it with anyone else.

Eventually, though, as they continued to produce albums, it never felt right, exactly. That wasn’t to say that they weren’t satisfied with what they were doing—they had good music and fans that adored them, and they knew that was more than some other groups. But when recording his lines, sometimes Wooyoung felt like there should be someone else’s voice there instead, or Seonghwa thought that maybe the high note he was hitting could’ve gone even higher if they had someone else to do it. The songs still came out good, still sounded good, but when Mingi walked in to watch Hongjoong work on lyrics, he would see the leader continually get stuck on certain parts, thinking about who to give them to. And when he opened his mouth to give a suggestion, Mingi found that he couldn’t think of who should go there, either.

Soon enough, it progressed past just musical problems. When Yunho studied the choreography they were given, his inner dancer couldn’t help but notice how an extra person would add just that much to the performance. When they did their chant, “Seven makes one team,” the thought crept up in the back of Yeosang’s mind that it would sound cleaner with a different number.

Sharing these thoughts with each other helped. It was nice to know that they weren’t the only ones who felt this way. San was the first one who had brought it up to the rest of them, about one sentence away from dissolving into tears, talking about having something to get off his chest, how he felt like he was betraying the rest of them.

“What are you talking about, Sannie-yah?” Yunho asked, instinctively putting an arm around his shoulders.

“I just—I can’t help it. I’m perfectly happy with all of you guys, I wouldn’t ask for anything else, but sometimes I get this feeling that there’s supposed to be someone else, too. And I’m sorry, because I don’t want you all to think that I don’t value your guys—”

Seonghwa shushed him, putting a hand over his knee. “Shh, it’s alright. You’re not ‘betraying’ us, especially not when I’ve been getting the same feeling.”

The rest of them voiced their agreement in a chorus of sames, and the guilt that had been festering within them was absolved, for the time being. There was still the question of what to do about it, but that could be ignored. None of them knew what to do—if there was even anything they could do.

So that was what they did: ignored it. For a bit, at least. If it ever came up, it was always a joke about what they would do if they found their “missing piece”, and it was always in private—the last thing they wanted to do was give the fans the idea that they weren’t happy with each other. Because, when it came down to it, they were happy. Even if they never found the one who was going to complete them in their hearts, they thought that they would probably be okay. It would just be nice to finally have an explanation for their struggles, or to figure out what made this one person so special that all of them could feel it, almost like there was an actual hole left where they were supposed to be. 

That didn’t stop them from theorizing, though.

“Who do you think he is?” Wooyoung wondered, staring up at the ceiling. He and the others were lazing about outside of the recording booth while Yunho did his parts. Hongjoong sat next to Eden, helping direct and share his thoughts, while the rest of them sat and tried to listen (some of them had bigger attention spans than others). They were going for a dystopian theme this time with Guerrilla, and while that was certainly entertaining, it could get tiring to sit there for hours while everyone recorded their lines.

“What are you talking about?” Yeosang asked. His head leaned back into Seonghwa’s lap, who was playing with his hair.

“Our guy! Our missing guy! I mean, he has to be a guy, right? Because I don’t think KQ would let us add in a girl.”

“I don’t know if they would let us add in anyone at all,” San countered. “Besides, what if he’s already in a group?  He won’t want to leave them just to come to us because we have a feeling.”

“The universe wouldn’t do that to us,” Wooyoung said, obviously trying to keep up the hopeful tone. But even he knew that the odds of them not only finding this person, but also being able to convince both him and the company that he should join their already-debuted-and-successful-group, were slim. “Who knows, he could be a trainee here.”

Eden swiveled around in his chair. “I don’t know how you all are so sure there’s this mystery person who’s supposed to be with you.” Though they were trying to keep this quiet from the company, they all knew that Eden would never snitch on them, so he was the only outsider who was privy to this, mostly from times exactly like this one.

“We can’t explain it, hyung. We just know,” San said, pointing to his heart, “in here, that they exist.”

“I mean, you can’t tell me that you don’t listen to some parts and think that they’re supposed to be someone else’s,” Yunho added, stepping out of the booth. He walked over to the couch and shoved Wooyoung. “Move over, I wanna sit here, too.”

Wooyoung did it with minimal complaint, draping himself right back over Yunho as soon as he sat down. 

“You’re up, Mingi. Yeosang, you’re on deck,” Eden read from his list, and then, while Mingi got situated, returned to the conversation. He sighed. “I guess I can see that, but that doesn’t mean I think you have some ‘fated soulmate’.”

“You’re no fun,” Wooyoung pouted, but it didn’t get him anywhere as Eden soon went to coaching Mingi. “Still, though, just for fun, what do you guys think he’s like?”

Seonghwa hummed, considering. “I don’t know. I think he must be pretty amazing if he can fit in with us, though.”

“I hope he’s younger than me,” Wooyoung sighed. “It would be great to have someone else be the maknae.”

Hongjoong snorted. “Oh, please, there are five of you who are the same age. You’re barely the maknae.”

“He’s still younger than us, though,” San pointed out, laughing gleefully as he dodged a decorative pillow Wooyoung threw at him.

“Exactly! I still get made fun of like the maknae even though it should technically be all of us.”

“I think that’s just you, Wooyoung-ah. No need to be the maknae for that,” Yunho said, patting him on the top of his head.

Wooyoung grumbled and crossed his arms over his chest. It seemed he was doomed to a life of torment—but he didn’t deny that he started most of it.

It was a surprise to all of them when Yeosang came back from the bathroom with another idol in tow, limping along at his side.

Of course, they didn’t let it show. They handled it with as much confidence as they could, partly because they just wanted to give a good first impression and partly because even after just a minute with him, they all could tell that the poor boy was one freak-out away from falling apart. The last thing they wanted on their hands was a crying and hurt junior idol to explain to their manager. So, even if Jongho said some mildly concerning things like it was normal, none of them brought it up. 

At least, not until after he was gone.

Barely waiting for the door to close behind Jongho and Hongjoong, Wooyoung immediately flopped back on the couch and said, “So we all noticed that, right?”

“What, the way he would’ve rather danced on a sprained ankle than talk to his own members?” Yunho asked. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. “Yeah, I think everyone saw that.”

“That could just be normal,” San reasoned, but it sounded weak even to his own ears. “I mean, it’s not like any of us are jumping to tell each other when we’re hurt.”

“But we still do, though.” Mingi sat on the arm of the couch. “Even when Wooyoungie got hurt, he told us eventually.”

“And then all of you yelled at me.”

“Like San said, you deserved it.”

“My point is,” Mingi interrupted, “no matter how much we don’t want to, we always say something. Jongho made it seem like he was actually going to try to work through it.”

They all sat and thought about that one for a moment. It was true, and they didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.

“Hyung,” Yeosang greeted once the captain returned from delivering Jongho back to his waiting room, “did everything seem alright?”

Hongjoong grimaced. “I only met one of them—I think his name is Jaejoon—but he seemed more concerned about whether Jongho bothered us than if he was okay.” He held his hand up to stop any more questions. “It could very well have just been nerves because we’re their seniors; we don’t have any right to accuse them of anything. We just met Jongho today, and I don’t think any of us have spoken with his members.” He waited a second to allow for interruption, but there was none. “Even if there is something more going on, and that is a big if, there’s nothing we can do about it. We don’t know any of them nearly well enough to try anything.”

The younger ones didn’t seem very happy with that, but their grumbling was put to a stop by their manager peeking into the room and announcing that it was their turn to go out. They all tried to put it to the back of their minds. Hongjoong was right, as frustrating as it might have been. There was no proof that there was anything underhanded going on behind the scenes and no evidence other than their observations of the behavior of a person who they knew next to nothing about. Maybe they were just reading too far into things—not everyone had the same response to a stressful situation like getting hurt, and for all they knew, Jongho could just get more anxious than usual. 

At the back of the crowd, while walking to the stage, Seonghwa set a hand on the captain’s arm. “Hongjoong-ah,” he whispered, “please tell me you didn’t leave that boy stranded.”

Glancing around, Hongjoong leaned in to respond, “Of course not. I gave him my phone number, just in case. I know it’s just a bad feeling, but…”

“Better safe than sorry,” Seonghwa offered. He gave a small smile and straightened his jacket. Before they knew it, they were behind the stage, they could hear fans cheering on just the other side of the wall, and they had different matters to focus on.

Chapter Text

The next few weeks didn’t turn out to be all that bad. Jongho’s sprain turned out to be a mild one, no cast required, and thankfully his hyungs took it well. After the first few days, all of them seemed to forget about the incident with Hongjoong. 

Throughout his recovery period, he even got hints of the pampering that used to be bestowed upon him just because he was the maknae. Hojin would go out of his way to order from Jongho’s favorite restaurant, and Kyungmin and Youngsik would purposefully tease everyone except him just to make him laugh (and no one would get mad because of it), and Jaejoon even invited him to share his bed with him some nights. Back then, Jongho would protest the actions, saying that he wasn’t a baby and didn’t need special treatment, but they would all just laugh and find more subtle ways to spoil him. Now, though—after so long of everyone acting more like strangers than friends most days, he found himself kind of enjoying the attention. He was sure he would get sick of it soon enough, but right now he was letting himself relish in being treated like a stereotypical maknae—he had nothing against them, he just knew that would never be his style. But, he had to admit, it did have its benefits sometimes.

Of course, there was the occasional day where someone let their temper get the best of them and made a snippy comment about how frustrating it was that he was sitting out while the rest of them practiced, but, well. This had already gone so much better than Jongho ever expected, and he couldn’t ask for much more than that.

He didn’t do anything with Hongjoong’s number. He would have felt bad if not for the fact that he highly doubted the senior had given it more than a passing thought since that day. On the tough days, Jongho would lay in bed and stare at the contact open on his screen, thinking about just how easy it would be to text and let everything out. But then he would think about how unfair taking advantage of Hongjoong’s kindness just to complain about how his silly little feelings were hurt would be, and he would close the tab to be safe.

Still, he was just a boy, and even he couldn’t contain his excitement at having one of his sunbae’s numbers—from one of his favorite groups, at that. He felt like it would burst out of him with the slightest amount of poking if he didn’t tell someone. He chose Byungho, bragging about how Hongjoong had offered it to him without asking and carefully not mentioning anything else he had said when it happened. As much as he trusted Byungho, who had turned out over the years to be the most patient and forgiving member, Jongho knew that the older also had his fair share of mood swings. He wasn’t willing to risk the others hearing about it in a negative light and using it to gang up on him.

His second encounter with Ateez, much like the first one, happened entirely by accident and in less than ideal circumstances. He was happy to say, though, that he didn’t have to be the damsel in distress this time.

Award show season brought along its own set of challenges, among which were heightened tensions. They became even more determined to get their performance right, determined to prove that they deserved the time on stage they were given. And with Jongho’s injury giving him little time to practice with the rest of them beforehand, everyone was hyper-focused on making sure the special circumstances didn’t impact their performance.

All in all, it went well. Jongho was proud of them—though their stage might not have been the flashiest there, they gave their all, and the applause took away any breath they had after such intense dancing. It wasn’t like he had the most complicated choreography anyways, since everyone wanted him to take it easy so soon after his injury (though he assured them he would have been fine). So he did the moves with the rest of them and then let Hojin take center stage for the dance break, passing it off as him standing off to the side for his high note.

The trouble came afterwards, when Jongho once again wandered off from his group to find a bathroom. He stepped into an elevator, only taking notice of the other occupants after he pressed the bottom to go down to where he knew for a fact he had seen a bathroom. Seonghwa, San, and Mingi stared right back at him while he stood there in shock.

“Ah, Jongho-ssi,” Seonghwa greeted finally, “it’s nice to see you again.”

That snapped Jongho out of his daze. He bowed once to each of them. “Sunbaenims! I didn’t see you there, I’m so sorry—”

The elevator lurched downwards, silencing him. It came to a full stop after that, not moving in each direction nor opening the doors to let them out. For a moment, everything was quiet, and then San slowly asked, “What was that?”

“I think,” Mingi responded quietly, voice quivering, “that was the elevator trapping us in here.” His hands were white-knuckling the railing, and his breathing hitched with the words.

Jongho’s eyes widened at that, worried that he would have to improvise a way to comfort him. He wasn’t scared of much, small spaces included, and that was a point of pride for him. But he knew how serious such a fear could be, and he wasn’t sure he was equipped to help with it. Luckily, it looked like the other two knew what to do.

Seonghwa snapped his fingers in front of Mingi’s face. “Yah, Mingi-yah, are you with me? It’ll be okay—all we need to do is press the button and they’ll have people here to get us out in no time.”

At that, Mingi’s eyes seemed to clear, and he took a deep breath. He nodded, leaning into the hand San placed on his shoulder. He turned to Jongho, taking in his shocked and concerned face, and seemed to gain a new determination.

“Sorry about that, Jongho-ssi. Sometimes that happens, but I’m sorry you had to see it.”

Jongho shook his head. “No, it’s alright. You couldn’t help it. Besides, elevators can be pretty scary. Who knows when they might turn on you?” he joked, and immediately regretted it. This was clearly a serious topic for his seniors, and they probably wouldn’t appreciate some random guy trying to make light of it. 

Just as he was about to apologize, he was interrupted by laughter. First San, leaning his head on Mingi’s shoulder, and then Seonghwa, who was trying to cover it up with his hand, and even Mingi himself had a smile spread across his cheeks. Jongho finally chuckled a bit, too, and Seonghwa let his laughter be heard.

When they calmed down, the atmosphere in the room—well, elevator—already felt much lighter. Jongho turned around to press the emergency button on the wall panel. A voice rang out through the speakers: “Please state your emergency.”

He put his mouth up to it and said, “Hi, uh, this is Jongho from Arrowheart, as well as Seonghwa, San, and Mingi from Ateez. The elevator that we’re in is stuck.”

It took a few minutes for the voice to come back. “We’re sorry about the inconvenience. It looks like it’ll be about half an hour to send some guys to get you out of there.”

Jongho grimaced. That wasn’t as fast as he had been hoping for. Still, he managed to force a cheerful enough tone into his voice to respond, “That sounds great. Is there a way you could get in contact with our groups and let them know where we are?”

“We already have. Your managers have been notified about how long it will take for you all to be out of there. Again, we’re sorry for the inconvenience this caused.”

The voice was gone before Jongho could say anything else. Heaving a sigh, he turned back around to face the others. “Looks like we’ll be in here for a little bit,” he said.

San slid down to sit on the floor, dragging Mingi with him. Seonghwa stared at the two with raised eyebrows before joining them. 

“What? Might as well get comfortable while we’re stuck here.” San looked at Jongho, still standing in the corner, and patted the ground. “Come on, you sit, too. We’re all friends.”

Jongho flushed, settling down to sit cross-legged. He leaned back against the wall, letting his eyelids flutter closed.

“How does your ankle feel?” Seonghwa asked. “We’ve been pretty worried since you left our room.”

“There’s no need to be worried,” Jongho assured them. “It’s been slow going, but I was able to get it together in time to perform tonight, so…”

San brightened. “You guys did so well! Everyone sounded good, but your high note kind of stole the show.” He winked, laughing loudly at the way Jongho pointedly refused to meet his gaze.

“Thank you for saying that,” Jongho said, “but it was a group effort. I couldn’t have done it without my members.”

If Jongho had been paying more attention, he would have noticed how Seonghwa seemed to gain a new interest at that. But he wasn’t, too busy wondering about how strange it was that he was already so at ease with three of his seniors (though maybe being trapped in an elevator was a good bonding experience), and so he didn’t.

"So they ended up taking it well, then?" Seonghwa asked lightly. San and Mingi visibly tensed, eyes snapping to watch Jongho's face.

Jongho shrugged. He traced a shape on the floor with his finger, not meeting their gazes. "Yeah, mostly. The hyungs yelled at me a few times, but I was holding them back a little, so they were right. Other than that, they were really understanding, though! I was kind of surprised—I really thought they would be a lot more angry." He laughed a little at the end of it, because it was funny how things had turned out, but a glance up to his companions rewarded him only with deadly serious faces and no traces of the humor he had expected. His smile faded immediately, worried he had somehow offended his seniors. "Is—is everything okay? I didn't mean—"

San shook his head. "We’re fine, Jongho-ssi. We just—you just—"

"You just surprised us with that story," Mingi interrupted, plastering a smile on his face. It faltered in the corners as he spoke, but ultimately stayed in place. "Your members—they really said that to you?"

"Oh, I mean, that was an exaggeration," Jongho stuttered. "Really, they spoiled me basically the whole time."

They quieted after that, and even though Jongho was normally glad for a break from being the center of attention, now he searched desperately for a way to fill in the silence. He wanted to get back to the comfortable atmosphere there had been before he went and opened his stupid mouth. He wasn't dumb; as much as they tried to deny it, he could tell that something he had said upset them. 

"I'm sure Hongjoong-sunbaenim will be glad to know I haven't leaked his phone number yet."

Apparently this was new information to San and Mingi, who both turned to Seonghwa with questioning eyes.

The oldest just chuckled. "I'll be sure to pass on the message. He was actually looking forward to talking to you, but it seems like you forgot all about it." 

His tone was clearly teasing, not truly accusatory, but Jongho felt the need to defend himself all the same. This time was different, though. Instead of feeling like he had to ward off an attack like he often did when his group was in a mood, he felt like he was simply bantering back and forth as he did with his younger brother.

"I just didn't think he would appreciate it if some random dude started texting him about his day," Jongho countered, "but if it'll help him sleep at night to say I forgot, who am I to judge?"

"Joongie-hyung is a fragile soul," San added solemnly. "This news might be what breaks him."

Jongho couldn't help but let out a small giggle. San looked much too proud to have caused that noise for Jongho’s liking.

"But Hongjoong-sunbaenim seemed like such a strong leader," he said, trying to force every ounce of innocence he could into his voice. "Are you sure you aren't the fragile soul?"

This time it was Mingi who burst into laughter, slapping San on the thigh and tucking his face behind his shoulder to hide it. Even Seonghwa tried and failed to cover his smile with his hand.

They spent the rest of their time trading stories and making playful jabs at each other. But Jongho could feel the effects of the long day beginning to wear on him. His jaw ached with how hard he'd been singing and how much talking he had done otherwise, and if it weren't for the conversation he was having or the way his stage outfit pressed into his skin in a way that looked good but dug in uncomfortably in this position, he probably would've given into his heavy eyelids long ago. Even as it was, he could feel his mind growing fuzzier. He kept himself awake purely by force of will.

Thankfully, just as he began fearing he may lose the battle against Sandman, he heard noises coming from the outside of the elevator. A look towards the others said they heard it, too, and all of them stood up against the back wall. The door slid open, revealing that they were about halfway down to the bottom floor.

"We're gonna have you guys sit down and slide out to us. There are people here to help steady you. One at a time, please!" one of their rescuers called. Jongho could see the tops of at least three fire helmets through the small gap at the bottom of the door.

They looked at each other until Mingi motioned to Jongho. "You go first."

Jongho hesitated. "Are you sure? I understand if you wanted to get out—"

"Just go," Mingi interrupted. He gained a gentle smile. "I'll be alright, I promise. You just go."

The other two nodded their approval, so Jongho sat down and slid out of the elevator, careful not to smack his head. Helping hands let him land on his feet without stumbling, and he walked over to where his manager stood.

"Hyung," he greeted, "I'm sorry about this."

His manager gave a tight-lipped smile, more like a grimace. "It's alright, Jongho. These things happen sometimes." It wasn't a great comfort, combined with the distasteful expression on his face, but at least he made an attempt.

"Where are the members?"

"Oh, I sent them home," his manager waved him off. "They were all exhausted, so I figured making them wait wouldn't do any good."

Part of Jongho was tempted to ask if any of them wanted to wait up for him, but he wasn't sure he could handle the answer.

The other three had gotten out and made their way over to their own manager. When they saw him about to leave, they all called out their goodbyes, which Jongho returned.

A look came over Seonghwa’s face. He bit his lip, clearly thinking through something, before appearing to come to a decision.

"Jongho-ssi!" he shouted, motioning for Jongho to come over to them. "You should come visit us some time," Seonghwa continued once Jongho arrived at their side, "either at the dorm or at the company building. I would love to learn more about how you control your voice so well."

"Hyung, what—you don't need—" Mingi began. San elbowed him in the side.

Jongho’s mouth parted, shocked at the invitation. Here was one of his sunbaes, someone who already had an amazing voice of his own, wanting to learn and work with him.

"Are—are you sure? I don't know what I could have to teach you," Jongho couldn't help but say.

"Of course he's sure," San said. "Besides, I want to hang out with you more, even if it's not for singing. We've met twice now—that has to be a sign."

Who was Jongho to look a gift horse in the mouth?

"That would be great," he accepted. "Do you want my number, or my Kakao ID? Or you could get it from Hongjoong-sunbaenim."

Seonghwa was already holding out his phone, looking inexplicably fond, and Jongho flushed. He took it without meeting his gaze, inputting his phone number.

"Thank you, Jongho-ssi," Seonghwa said. "We'll set up a day that works for everyone, okay?"

Jongho nodded. "Listen, I would love to stay and talk, but…" He pointed over his shoulder to where his manager stood, tapping his foot on the ground.

"Yes, we should probably get going, too. See you soon." Seonghwa waved goodbye, San and Mingi following suit. Jongho returned the gesture, bowing his head at each of them, and left with his manager, a new spring in his step.

The building was way more intimidating than it should have been. Standing tall in front of him, at least 20 stories high, with dark walls and tinted windows covering most empty space, it looked kind of like the supervillain lair you would see in the movies. But Jongho had seen similar buildings before—really, that was what a lot of apartments looked like in the city—so there was no reason for his hands to be shaking as he grabbed the handle and pulled the door.

It's just a normal building, he rationalized, making his way over to the elevator. Just a normal building that happens to be home to Ateez, whose home I've been invited to. No biggie.

It was a normal building, but he wasn't here for a normal purpose, and maybe that was what caused his nerves.

The elevator took him up to almost the top floor, thankfully in full operation this time, and let him get off into a long hallway. There was only one door, seeing as he was told that they had pretty much the whole floor as the dorm, but he double-checked his messages to make sure he was at the right location several times before he rang the doorbell.

The door opened and he was face to face with Yeosang, whose normally stoic face split into a grin when he saw Jongho standing there.

"Please come in," he said, making a sweeping motion back inside. "Seonghwa-hyung did a deep clean this morning—go ahead and leave your shoes at the door."

Jongho slid his shoes off his feet, placing them neatly side by side in the last cubby of the shelf by the door. The seven others contained their own pairs (some several), and Jongho assumed that they all only kept their average shoes there, leaving the others in their rooms. With his addition, each cubby was filled. 

"He didn't have to do all that for me," Jongho said. "Our dorm is a mess all the time."

When he turned back around, Yeosang was staring at the shoe-filled shelves with an emotion that Jongho couldn't quite identify. He snapped out of it quickly, looking back up to Jongho with a smile like it never happened.

"Oh, please, he's always looking for an excuse to clean," Yeosang said. He led Jongho to the living room. Yunho and Mingi were already there, playing some video game on the TV, both too immersed to greet him. "I'll go get Seonghwa-hyung from his room."

Jongho stood awkwardly by the couch. He didn't want to sit down and possibly impose upon their game, but he would rather die than just wander around. If he invited someone over for the first time and they took it as permission to explore all of his personal space, he would never want to hang out with them again.

Luckily, the problem was solved for him when Wooyoung came skipping out of the kitchen, his face immediately brightening upon seeing Jongho, and slung an arm around his shoulder, dragging both of them down to the couch. Jongho shoved his arm off, but Wooyoung didn't look too offended.

"I forgot you were coming today," Wooyoung explained. He held out his bag of chips, shaking it aggressively until Jongho took a handful. "How have you been? I heard all about how you guys got stuck in an elevator. Good on you for making fun of Sannie and Mingi—those two need to be humbled."

"Hey!" Mingi exclaimed. "I resent that."

"Yeah, Wooyoung-ah," Yunho continued, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he focused on the game, "if anyone needs to be humbled, it's you." He threw his arms up. "Ha! I won! I'm the best. Guess who lost? You, you loser." 

Mingi glanced at Jongho as if asking for help, but he wouldn't be receiving any. Jongho just grinned, big and wide even though he didn't really like his teeth, amused and confused at the same time. For one, Mingi looked so helpless in the face of Yunho's bragging, almost like a kicked puppy, that it was comical. But what confused him was how, despite the fact that they were all basically insulting each other, no one was getting angry or taking it too hard. 

He had always known that his own group was not the standard when it came to getting along, but in just the three times that he'd met with Ateez in person, he had become even more starkly aware of that fact. With every observation, he was pushed even closer to confronting what, maybe, he had been trying to ignore for longer than he'd like to admit: that his hyungs, those who were supposed to be his brothers, had changed, and they might be too far gone to go back to the way it was. He wasn't so unaware as to think that he hadn't changed with them, but he would like to think that, had they not grown bitter, he wouldn't have become so reclusive, so guarded of himself. But maybe that was just the optimist that still lingered inside him even after all these years, refusing to be beat down.

Yeosang walked back in before Jongho could provide an answer, waving around a slip of paper that had a note written on it. "Looks like Seonghwa-hyung ran out to the store with San." He looked at Jongho with a sympathetic shrug. "I'm sorry you have to wait—I'm sure he wasn't expecting you here this early."

"I have nothing else to do," Jongho said. It was true; they had the weekend off and everyone else was busy. Most were off visiting family. Only Youngsik was home, insisting that he wanted to enjoy having the dorm to himself for once. Jongho had told everyone that he was going to a friend's house for the day and would be back that night—not technically a lie, so he didn't feel too guilty, but more of an omission. No one asked who the friend was, and he didn't tell them, not even Byungho. 

Truth be told, he did feel a teensy bit bad about not telling them he had talked to their seniors at all since his injury. After all, he was the one always wishing they were closer, but at the same time, he was keeping a secret like this from them. When it came down to it, he was a part of the problem that he complained about.

It just felt so good to finally have something of his own, something that no one could take from him for the simple reason that they didn't know about it. He couldn't begrudge himself this small kindness.

To his surprise, Wooyoung let out a loud whoop and stood up, snagging Jongho’s wrist. "I'm gonna steal him until they get back, then."

Ignoring the protests from his members, Wooyoung pulled Jongho down the hall until they got to his room.

"Hongjoong-hyung is out at the studio again, so we can just hang out in here," he explained. They plopped down on the bed that Jongho assumed was Wooyoung's. It was surprisingly neat, blankets and pillows pulled up straight, in contrast to what Jongho had thought he knew about Wooyoung's personality so far.

"Sorry I just dragged you in here," Wooyoung said. "I was just jealous because basically everyone except me has gotten to talk to you more."

"I mean, Yunho- or Yeosang-sunbaenims haven't. Neither has Hongjoong-sunbaenim, for that matter."

"Shush." Wooyoung put a finger over Jongho’s mouth. "Let me have this."

Jongho nodded.

And then Wooyoung frowned. "Still being so formal, huh? You're younger than me, right? What year were you born?"

"Um, 2000."

Wooyoung gasped. "You are younger than me! Call me hyung, okay?"

"Oh—are you sure? I wouldn't want to be too forward."

"Jongho, you're at our house. You got trapped in an elevator with our members. If you can't call us hyung, no one can."

Wooyoung accepted his silence as an answer, continuing on with his own rambling. He spent a lot of time trying to pry information (not that he had to try very hard) out of Jongho. Just silly, inconsequential things, like his favorite color (red), favorite food (anything savory), or his hobbies (singing and working out). The onslaught of questions threw Jongho through a loop; never had anyone been so genuinely curious about him, not even his own hyungs back when they first met each other and things were still what they were. 

Eventually Jongho snuck in his own question, one that had been plaguing his mind.

"Hyung," he began, gaining confidence as Wooyoung gave an encouraging nod, "what do you think makes someone a good maknae?"

Whatever Wooyoung was expecting, it clearly wasn't that. The smile faded from his lips, eyebrows furrowing. Jongho immediately regretted asking and rushed to apologize.

"You don't have to answer that—"

"No, it's okay." Wooyoung bit his lip, speaking slowly as if trying to piece together every word in just the right way. "I don't think there's anything that necessarily makes someone a good maknae above any other role. Sure, it might get you babied a little more, but look at me. I'm only a year younger than our oldest and I have four others the same age. I'm technically the maknae, but that doesn't go above me as a person. You shouldn't have to do anything to make yourself a 'good maknae' more than your hyungs have to do to make themselves good members. Be kind, support your group, and maybe use that maknae privilege to get away with things every once in a while." He winked, and then he took in Jongho’s expression—anxious, insecure, not at all the same confidence as earlier. "Is there… a reason you asked me?"

Jongho’s eyes flicked up to him. There was a reason, of course, and he had thought it best to get another maknae's perspective on it. He wasn't sure whether the answer he got was what he wanted. It should have made him feel better, he supposed, that he was doing all that he could. But then he said that, and—were his hyungs doing what they could to make themselves good members? The answer to that particular question flashed in his mind, a bright red NO, going off with a buzzing sound that indicated a wrong answer in all those game shows. Before—before all of this, before he had ever even gotten injured and been found by Yeosang, he had at least had the benefit of the doubt that his group was normal. Then he met them, again and again, and he saw that they didn't act like Arrowheart did. And this—this was just the final nail in the coffin, the confirmation that if Jongho told Wooyoung about his members, he would say that they weren't okay. Because his members, more often than not, weren't kind to him or each other, and they didn't support the group unwaveringly—they supported their role in the group. Somewhere along the way, it became less about doing your passion with your best friends, your brothers, and more about just making music and keeping up appearances. Jongho didn't know how much longer he could pretend otherwise.

He resolutely refused to meet Wooyoung's gaze. He had barely managed to work up the courage to answer honestly as it was—if he had to actively watch Wooyoung's reaction to what he said, he didn't think he could do it.

"Sometimes," he started slowly, "my group doesn't get along the best. And I thought maybe, if I had been a better maknae, cuter or more outgoing, I would have been able to… I don't know, stop it. Help them get along better."

Wooyoung made a small noise, a soft grunt that sounded both sympathetic and pained. He held his hand out above Jongho’s knee, giving time for him to move away if he wanted, and then set it down gently when he didn't.

"Do you want to be a more typical maknae?"

Without even having to think about it, Jongho shook his head. Though he respected the agenda, he didn't want to be coddled or kissed or asked for aegyo every time he went on a show. He wanted to pull the same weight as everyone else, wanted to be afforded the same level of seriousness as everyone else, and maybe occasionally use his status to his benefit. But he didn't want it to be a big deal.

"Well, then, I don't think you should change anything. If your members don't want to get along, you making yourself into someone you're not won't do any good. It's only going to hurt you." A mischievous smile came over his face, one Jongho was instantly wary of even after such a short time. "For the record, I think you're already pretty cute." 

He reached out a hand to pinch his cheek. Jongho caught his wrist and sent a flick to his forehead. Wooyoung shrieked and fell dramatically back onto the bed, clutching his forehead with his hands while he shook with laughter that reminded Jongho of a more pleasant witch's cackle. 

Just then, Seonghwa peeked in around the door, his face a mixture between resigned and amused. "What did you do now?"

"Hyung!" Wooyoung called out, trying to catch his breath. "Jongho-yah flicked me!"

If Seonghwa was surprised at that, he didn't show it. "You probably deserved it," he deadpanned, and then turned to Jongho with a kind smile. Ignoring Wooyoung's offended hey!, he continued, "I'm sorry I left you waiting so long, Jongho-ssi. Do you want to come with me so we can actually talk like we planned, or do you want to beat Wooyoungie up some more?"

As tempting an offer it was, Jongho supposed that he should probably talk with the person who had actually invited him over, too. He stood up, sending Wooyoung a smirk and wave as he went, and let Seonghwa lead him to the room that he later explained he shared with Yunho.

"He's still busy playing with Mingi," Seonghwa said. He settled on the end of his bed while Jongho opted for a desk chair sitting at a table a few feet away. "I hope they haven't been too much for you. I know that some of them can be loud when they're excited—most of them, actually."

"Oh, no!" Jongho hurried to say. "Everyone is really nice. It's actually been… it's been good to get a change from my dorm. Wooyoung-hyung was really helpful." 

That earned him a soft smile. "You're calling him hyung now? Go ahead and do that for me, too. I actually feel like it should have been me first, but, y'know, I see how it is." Seonghwa shrugged, sticking his lip out in an exaggerated pout. He straightened back up. "I'm glad they haven't scared you off yet."

"I like hanging out with you guys."

"Yeah? Well, we like hanging out with you. Even if some of us," his cough sounded suspiciously like Hongjoong, "are too busy to talk to our guest. You should come over again some time, get to know the rest of us."

Jongho agreed eagerly, still somewhat in shock that they even wanted him around in the first place. He spent the rest of his time at the Ateez dorm with Seonghwa until Yunho knocked and said that he was ordering food for dinner, asking what they wanted. Despite their insistence that they would be happy to, Jongho couldn't quite get himself to now take their food on top of all the hospitality they had already shown. 

They followed him to the door. Jongho pulled his shoes out of their cubby, and even though it made sense, it suddenly seemed a whole lot less full than before. The whole thing was thrown off balance, this one empty spot in the bottom corner of the shelf, and he hurried to put on his shoes so he wouldn't think about it anymore.

"Thank you all so much for everything," he said one final time, hand on the doorknob.

"It was no problem," Wooyoung yelled from the kitchen. "Hey, hyung, tell him it was no problem!"

Seonghwa and Yunho looked between each other and the kitchen.

"Wooyoung says it was no problem," Seonghwa said.

"In case you didn't hear it the first two times," Yunho added.

Jongho nodded solemnly. "I'm glad you cleared it up."

Looking back into the dorm, at Seonghwa and Yunho standing by the door with him, at the light emanating from the kitchen with Wooyoung, at the blankets crumbled on the couch where Mingi lay, at Hongjoong's laptop sitting on an end table, at the hallway Yeosang and San were emerging from to say goodbye, Jongho was struck by the sudden urge to go back on his word and ask if he could actually stay for dinner and maybe a little longer than that.

But he didn't. Because he had his own dorm to get back to, his own group, and he held a responsibility to them. So he said goodbyes and stepped out into the hall, letting the door click shut behind him.

It was only when he was trying to sleep that night that he realized he had never ended up teaching Seonghwa anything.

Over the following months, Jongho only saw the Ateez members more and more often. It was difficult since all of them were in active groups with busy schedules, but even if he wasn't able to see them in person, he always got a text from at least one of them. At some point, their names in his phone had gone from Ateez Choi San and Ateez Song Mingi to San-hyung and Mingi-hyung, and he didn't care to analyze that at all. 

Again, Jongho was only a boy—a boy who was excited that he was becoming friends with his seniors. He had to spill the beans, or he might have exploded. He also prided himself on his logic-driven mindset, so he knew that Byungho was the only one he could tell. The older hadn't told anyone about Hongjoong’s phone number, so Jongho figured that he was still a safe bet. He bragged all about how he texted with them and even visited them in person a few times. Byungho seemed a little jealous but otherwise didn't say anything about it, patting Jongho on the back and saying he was proud the maknae was branching out.

Arrowheart was a smaller group than Ateez. Jongho was grateful and proud of Arrowheart, but it meant that he was usually the one working around their schedules. On a typical day, he had less to do than the Ateez members, and he was fine with that. He didn’t want them coming over to his dorm for more than one reason: sure, it would expose his secret to his members, but he wasn't sure he wanted the others to know the extent of what happened there. He was sure they knew on a surface level, or at least had their suspicions, but he was ashamed of it; ashamed that they hadn't been able to make it work, ashamed that he was too much of a coward to do anything about it, ashamed that he was ashamed in the first place.

It happened one day after his vocal lessons, when he had plans to go over and complete the tournament he had started against Mingi and Yunho. 

Yunho-hyung

hey, jjong-ah, we got called in for a replacement dance practice today so it looks like we won't be able to finish our tournie :(( [5:53 p.m.]

you can come see us at the studio if you want to tho!! dw this is mostly for formality sake so we can say we had the right number of hours so it won't matter if you come too [5:54 p.m.]

here's the address: XXXXXXX [5:54 p.m.]

Well, then. Okay.

Jongho had never been to their studio before, so he gave the driver he ordered the address and prayed he was taken to the right place.

It looked a lot like his own company building, clean hallways and decorations that almost always had something to do with the group themselves. He could hear the music playing as he approached the room. 

"They should be just in there," the staff member who guided him said. "Make sure they get home at an acceptable time, okay?"

He slowly opened the door and was greeted with instant shouts of welcome. He stepped inside, taking a look around. The two walls were covered floor to ceiling in mirrors, and the lights shone down blindingly. His shoes squeaked on the floor with every step he took, going to sit down by Yeosang on the floor. Yeosang just mumbled a hello and went back to scrolling on his phone.

"Thank god you're here," San said, moving to rest his head in Jongho’s lap. He would've shoved him away just to be annoying but decided to take pity instead. "It was so boring."

"That's just because you don't actually want to practice," Hongjoong countered. "We've been here for an hour and ran through a grand total of two songs."

"I'm glad I can save you, hyung," Jongho said, patting San on the cheek.

"Aw, c'mon, why are you just saving him?" Wooyoung whined. "I'm your hyung too, Jongho-yah. You should save all of us."

"How have you been?" Hongjoong interrupted. 

"Fine," Jongho answered honestly. "Not a lot has been happening. The hyungs are themselves." Which meant that Kyungmin and Hojin had gotten into a fight after Kyungmin used the last of Hojin’s shampoo without asking, people took sides, and the whole dorm had been at war since yesterday morning.

They all grimaced at that, and Hongjoong clearly wanted him to elaborate but didn't ask for it. He wasn't sure if he was grateful for that or not anymore. 

"We should probably do at least some actual practice," Seonghwa said, setting the phone to play Guerrilla over the speakers. The others groaned and got into their starting positions. "You can just watch us or play on your phone, Jongho. It won't take too long."

He sat in a short swivel chair at the back of the room, watching as they seamlessly transitioned from goofing off to performance mode. Even from behind, their movement was captivating.

It started out with him humming along to the words, scrolling through his phone as he bopped his head around to the music. And then he began singing softly under his breath, not wanting to cause a distraction. Eventually, though, and almost without realizing it, he crept up to full volume. He held out the long, swelling high note in the post-chorus for the second time, not looking up from his phone. It wasn't his best work, not nearly as stable as he could've done if he was standing up, but it certainly wasn't bad, and he figured no one was going to comment anyways.

He paused for a moment, going back to simply humming, and that was when he heard it—or, rather, didn't hear it. No longer could he hear their footsteps striking the ground in unison, the squeaks from their shoes as they moved across the room. He looked up, and there they were, standing in place, just—staring. The song still played strongly in the background, but the seven of them appeared to have abandoned the dance in favor of staring at him with wide eyes. Yeosang’s mouth was open in plain shock, and Mingi’s hand shook as he reached over to place it on his shoulder.

"What's wrong?" Jongho asked self-consciously, curling in on himself. Still, no one said anything. He stood up from the chair. "No, really, what is it? Did I do something wrong?"

Hongjoong swallowed and then said with a wavering voice. "Jongho, I think you should leave."

Jongho flinched back. "What—I didn't—"

"Jongho," Hongjoong repeated, "now is not the time. You should go."

His face crumpled into hurt for only a second before he hardened it again, slamming down a cold mask of indifference. "Okay," he said, "I'll go now," and this time it was his professional press voice, the one he hadn't used in front of them in months. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw San look a bit pained at that, but he turned fully away before he could see anything else.

He didn't know what he did wrong, other than singing too loudly and bothering them. That didn't make any sense—Wooyoung and San were louder on a regular basis—but it was the only explanation he could come up with. If that were true, then—then he must never have meant much to them in the first place. And, as much as he didn't like to admit it, that felt like a punch to the gut. He was Choi Jongho, strong and independent and confident no matter what. He didn't need other people to like him to live. When he saw hate comments online, he brushed them off. When his members were extra snappy, he brushed them off. 

Somewhere along the way, somehow, these seven had managed to worm their way past all of his defenses, deeper than his own members had been for a while.

Jongho felt stupid. It had only been a few months, yet he had been foolish enough to think that he could have meant as much to them as they did to him. God, he was stupid, stupid and reckless and too hopeful for his own good.

Well, if they wanted him gone, he would be gone. He would be gone, never to return, and all of them could forget each other ever existed. (If his heart ached at that thought, he resolutely didn't show it).

He walked out of the room without looking back, and no one tried to stop him.

Chapter Text

It was kind of worrying to Hongjoong how quickly all of them had grown so fond of Jongho.

It wasn’t like they were an unfriendly group of people, not by any means. Even the ones of them who were more reserved still made an effort to make others feel comfortable around them. They all had friends, all had other idols who they hung out with on the occasional day off or sought out at shows if their promotions lined up.

But with Jongho, it felt—different, somehow. Never before had all of them clicked with someone so naturally, like it was simply meant to be, to the point where not only did they just hang out every so often, they even began making time specifically so that Jongho could come over, or a few of them could go out to eat together. He added something to them: the way he had gone from the shy boy they first met to roasting and beating up on them like it was second nature, the way he could pick any of them up without blinking, the way he could sit quietly with Hongjoong on the living room couch as he worked on his laptop just as easily as he could join the 99z in jumping around and being annoying. 

And yet, none of them thought too hard about why he fell into place among them as effortlessly as he did. After a while, it just became the way things were. The sky was blue, the grass was green, and Jongho was coming over for movie night.

But now—now, it occurred to him, the why. Why it felt like Jongho was meant to manhandle them one minute and then try to innocently lean his head on one of their shoulders the next, why it felt like he was meant to tease them and talk down like he wasn’t the maknae, and, for that matter, why Hongjoong no longer tried to backtrack in his head whenever he subconsciously called Jongho the maknae. 

Because Jongho was meant to be with them. Whenever Jongho hung out with them, it felt like he filled in a hole because Jongho was their missing piece. He was the one that they had accepted they were going to have to live without, the one that they had searched for and yet feared the arrival of at the same time. It was embarrassing that they only realized it because he sang one of their songs. Then again, Hongjoong supposed, Jongho had fit in so well that no one had thought about the missing piece for a long time. 

Hongjoong knew the moment that the rest of them came to the conclusion with him. He didn’t think much of Jongho being there, nor did he focus on it when he began singing—Jongho sang a lot, often out of nowhere, and who could complain when he sounded so good doing it? 

That changed when he hit one specific spot—in the last half of the chorus, the second time around, the rising high note. It was Seonghwa’s part, and while he certainly did it well, they had all silently agreed that it was just… another one of those parts. Hongjoong heard it in the background, and it took a second for him to realize why it shocked him so much—and, looking around at how everyone else had also frozen in their tracks, choreography abandoned, why it shocked them all so much. It wasn’t like they had never heard Jongho sing before. Hongjoong did quite admire Jongho’s voice, and even found himself in the studio sometimes wishing he could see what it sounded like on some of his demos. But this time, it was different. This wasn’t one of Arrowheart’s songs, where Jongho’s voice had been all along. Now he was singing one of their songs, one of those parts, and all of a sudden, it sounded right.

In hindsight, maybe Hongjoong should have realized earlier; in his defense, Jongho had fit in so seamlessly that he had stopped thinking about their missing piece without even noticing that he no longer sought them out. And, as it turned out, that was simply because they had already been found.

As much as he would have loved to run over and pull Jongho into his arms, explain that finally they’re complete, and with someone that they had already grown to love to boot, he knew he couldn’t. He had to force himself to think like a leader: the seven of them had to talk it over together, plan out their next steps, before any more action could be taken.

He only snapped out of his daze when Jongho spoke. 

“What’s wrong?" Jongho asked. He appeared for a second to be trying to make himself smaller, but then he stood up and repeated, "No, really, what is it? Did I do something wrong?"

Hongjoong desperately wanted to comfort the younger boy, reassure him that he was basically a saint in the eyes of his hyungs (them, of course, not the ones who didn’t deserve such a title), but he needed to think with his head, not his heart. Above all else, his own members came first, and he needed to check in with them before anything. So he mustered up his courage and said, "Jongho, I think you should leave."

At his words, Jongho flinched, and Hongjoong closed his eyes so he wouldn’t ever have to see Jongho move like that again.

"What—I didn't—"

He didn’t know if his resolve could hold if Jongho kept talking, so he interrupted with, "Jongho, now is not the time. You should go."

The way Jongho looked at him then, betrayal and hurt painted across his face in vicious waves—Hongjoong would never forget that. And what followed—Jongho shutting down and agreeing, “Okay, I’ll go now,” in the same tone he had when they first met—that would stick in his mind just the same.

The door closed behind Jongho sharply, leaving the seven of them once again alone in the room that somehow felt lifeless compared to just ten minutes ago. No one said anything, until—

“Hyung,” San pronounced slowly, “what the fuck was that?”

“I was just—we need to talk about this,” Hongjoong tried to explain. “We all know what happened there. If we tried to figure it out with him right there we would just confuse him.”

“So? Then we just tell him.” Yunho looked at him with piercing eyes. “Anything would be better than saying he ‘needs to leave’. I mean, really, he probably thinks we hate him now, for no good reason.”

“Hongjoong-hyung is right, though. We do need to talk by ourselves,” Mingi said, rubbing his sleeve nervously. Even he looked torn—torn between his captain and the dongsaeng he had come to adore, maybe the most out of all of them. “But that probably wasn’t the best way to go about it. You know what Jongho’s like,” he finished with a grimace. “You know what his mind will jump to.”

"Yeah, because his own members are pieces of shit who don't know how lucky they are," San grumbled, crossing his arms, but he seemed to be calming down a little bit. He looked at Hongjoong. "I'm still mad at you, hyung, but I know you did what you thought was best."

Hongjoong held back a wince. That wasn't at all what he thought was best. But he needed to put up a strong front, needed to be a rock for his members to lean on even when he, too, was unsure.

"Let's just call it here today," he said. Yeosang had already silently turned off the music, so he knew nothing else would be getting done. "We'll all get some sleep and talk about this in the morning, okay?" He hesitated. "And someone—text Jongho, make sure he's okay."

"Already on it," Wooyoung said, holding up his phone briefly. He stopped and started typing again several times, sometimes erasing the whole message and restarting, before he finally shut it off with a defeated sigh. "It was really short—I didn't really know what to say."

"At least you said something," Yunho comforted, patting him on the back. "Now we can only hope he actually reads it."

Yunho began leading them out of the practice room, keeping a steady hand on Wooyoung's back. Hongjoong hung around so he could shut the lights off before they left.

Seonghwa was waiting for him when he exited, and Hongjoong just sighed and said, "Yeah, I know," because he knew Seonghwa well enough to predict exactly what he would say.

"I'm not going to tell you that you messed up," Seonghwa said quietly as they walked together. The others had already turned the corner, out of sight, but Hongjoong trusted them all to not goof off on the way to the car. "I think you've heard enough of that, from them and from yourself."

"I don't regret asking him to leave, but I do know that I should have been more gentle. God, he's probably going to think we're just like them."

"It's not your fault." And then, when Hongjoong was about to argue: "No, listen to me, Kim Hongjoong. Yes, you made a mistake. But the rest of us could have just as easily interrupted. None of us did, so we're just as guilty." He saw Hongjoong's raised eyebrow and conceded, "Okay, maybe a little bit less guilty."

Hongjoong chuckled weakly. "You're not supposed to say that part."

"You're a big boy, you can handle it. My point is that this isn't just on you."

"I'm worried," Hongjoong confessed. "I don't doubt that all of us want Jongho here, but that makes things so complicated. And—what if we can't fix this?"

"Jongho is strong," Seonghwa said. "If we apologize, he'll at least listen. That's the most we can ask for right now." Then he reached over and flicked Hongjoong on the forehead, laughing when he yelped in surprise. "Take things one step at a time, captain-ah. We can figure it all out together."

"I guess you can be kinda smart sometimes."

"Oh, shut up. Next time I won't even try being nice."

Life continued. It may have been a little bit emptier, a little bit more bleak, but it went on. Arrowheart went on, and with a new comeback in the works to boot.

After so long, Jongho had begun worrying that there would be another comeback. Sure, Arrowheart was certainly successful, but bigger groups had been dissolved without even a hint that it was coming. However, they were in luck, and last week all of them had been called into a meeting to discuss the schedule for the coming months.

The fans hadn't been told yet; they wouldn't be, not until after all the songs had been recorded and the videos filmed. Some seemed to expect something to be announced soon, and that only motivated Jongho to work harder to make this a good one.

Which brought him to right now, standing in the recording booth as Jaejoon and Kyungmin watched from outside. Hojin had already gone, leaving as soon as he was permitted, and Youngsik and Byungho still had time before they were needed. 

"Let's take that last line one more time," their producer spoke into the microphone. Jongho gave a thumbs up, getting back into position.

"We don't have all day, Jongho-yah," Kyungmin said, tapping his fingers on the table. "You're our main vocal, you should be able to get this."

A while ago, their producer might have given him a weird look at that, but now he just let out a sigh and carefully avoided Jongho's eyes. He was relatively new, having been working with them for the first time on their last album after the last producer left. That had hurt Jongho more than he'd like to admit; he and that producer had been friends, he thought, until he up and left the company without a word to Jongho about when or why.

Jongho grimaced, both at the memory and at Kyungmin's words, and flipped through his packet of lyrics again to get to the right spot. He pressed one of the headphones cups to his ear and sang his lines again.

"Nice job, Jongho-ssi. You can go ahead and step out."

Kyungmin stepped into the booth next, leaving Jongho to sit down on the couch with Jaejoon. There was already a bit of distance between them, but Jaejoon still slid further away, and Jongho traitorously thought of how Wooyoung used to make sure they had as many points of contact as possible when they sat together.

"Did you sleep well last night, hyung?"

Jaejoon brought a finger up to his lips and sharply shushed him, but still answered. "As well as I could, listening to Byungho snore."

Jongho snorted at that. "You snore even worse than him!"

"How dare you," Jaejoon gasped, bringing a hand up to his chest. "Insulted by my own maknae!"

The producer was the one who told them to be quiet this time, and Jaejoon's small smile once again faded into the typical indifference. Though he knew it wasn't the producer's fault,  Jongho couldn't help but be upset that he had interrupted one of their good moments.

His phone buzzed—just a text from his mom. She had been more worried about him than normal lately, citing, “You got brighter again for a little bit, and that’s gone again. I just want my son to be as bright as he used to be, Jongho. I need you to take care of him for me.”

He swiped to unlock his phone and respond. What he was met with gave him pause.

Woo-hyung

hongjoong-hyung didn't mean what he said, jongho-yah. he was just really surprised so he said something he shouldn't have. it doesn't excuse it but he's really sorry. we all have a lot to explain to you. please call us when you're ready. [2 months ago]

He had spent many an hour just looking at this message. He had read it for the first time on the ride back to his dorm and was so angry that he deleted it without a thought. The very next day, he went back and removed it from his phone's trash.

Now it simply sat there, unanswered. It wasn't pinned, but it might as well have been considering how often Jongho read and reread it. During those occasions, he considered responding, even went as far as to let his thumbs hover above the keyboard as he thought about what to type, but he always ended up closing out of the app before he could get any words down. 

Part of the problem could have been his pride, not wanting to admit defeat and give in to the people that had hurt him. That, though, was the very root of it: they had hurt him, and he didn't want to go back and open himself up to that again. He did wonder what Wooyoung meant when he said they had to explain, but mostly Jongho didn't want to listen to the explanation and just have it be, "We don't actually like you."

To his credit, he had tried to convince himself that he was fine. Because, yeah, the people he had started thinking might care about him had betrayed that, and yeah, he kind of missed positive human interaction now that he had gotten used to it again for a brief, shining moment, but he had done that before and he turned out fine.

On days when he wasn't trying to forget about it, he was angry. Angry at himself for going soft, for making the same old mistake of getting too close to people. Angry at them for taking the trust he had given them and throwing it back in his face and then expecting him to come crawling back to hear their "explanation". He imagined telling them to get lost, that he had been faking it the whole time, too. If they truly cared, he figured, they would have tried harder than sending one message and never anything else.

On other days, he was just… there. Not sad, not happy, just there. Because it was his fault, really, that he had done something to mess up his chance of maybe finding something that could compare to what he and his members used to have.

Beside him, Jaejoon and Kyungmin switched spots. He could tell that Kyungmin was trying to read his texts and tilted the screen away.

"How did your recording go?" Jongho asked, a feeble attempt at distraction.

"Ugh, fine," Kyungmin groaned, giving up and leaning his head against the back of the couch. "Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we're getting the comeback, this is just so much more work than I remember from last time."

"It is a full album this time, hyung."

Kyungmin's mouth formed an O. "It is? They didn't tell me that."

They very much did tell him that, Jongho chose not to point out. Kyungmin was right there with the rest of them at the meeting, but as soon as the comeback was announced to them, main purpose achieved, he elected to pull out his phone for the rest of the time. Their manager's eye twitched at that, but after several meaningful glances in Jaejoon's direction provided no results (whether the leader didn't notice or just couldn't be bothered, Jongho wasn't sure), he gave up and let it happen. 

"Well, it is," Jongho opted to say instead of all of that. "I like the work. I like feeling useful."

"What, you trying to show off or something? Think you're better than me because you can do your job and hit a few high notes?"

"That's not what I—"

"Forget about it. God, you always have to find a way to make it about you, huh?"

Defeated, Jongho sank back into the couch cushions, and this time it was him that avoided the producer's gaze. He refused to be pitied, especially not by someone who never actually tried to help.

Once again, his thoughts strayed back to the message, to the person who sent it, to all of the others that came with him; back to when he could just brush off the comments from his members because he had somewhere else to go to and find solace in. 

He didn’t have that anymore. They made it pretty clear how they felt when Hongjoong told him to go away, like he was nothing but a stray animal begging for food, like he had never been all that important anyways. No one had said anything to disagree. Wooyoung’s text made sense then, he supposed. Despite everything, he knew they weren’t cruel. They probably just wanted him to come over so they could explain in gentler terms that they didn’t want him hanging around anymore like some dumb kid who couldn’t grasp that the cool teenagers didn’t like babysitting him all the time. They had shown him kindness, and he had taken advantage of it, assumed too much.

Ah.

So it was a just there day, then.

Jongho was sure his members had noticed a change. Given how little attention they paid him (or each other) nowadays, that was saying something. He saw it in the way Kyungmin and Youngsik would give him suspicious glances when he said he wasn't going out like he had been the past few weekends, and the way Byungho kept trying to catch sneak peeks of his phone screen. 

“What’s been going on with you?” he asked, leaning his head onto Jongho’s shoulder. 

“Nothing—” Jongho went to turn his phone over, but he wasn’t fast enough. Byungho’s hands lurched forward, snatching the phone out of his hands and reading the message.

“What is this? What happened?”

Jongho had never wished for a random fire to start more than at that moment. Then he would have an escape. No longer was he eager to have someone to confide in; it was fun, back when things were good, but now he just wanted to bottle it all up and not feel anything at all.

“Come on, you have to tell me,” Byungho whined. “Or else I’ll tell everyone else about your secret friends.”

“You—you wouldn’t! Please, hyung, they would be so mad.”

“Then tell me. I won’t say a word. Promise.” He held out his pinkie invitingly.

Jongho bit his lip before finally interlocking his own pinkie with Byungho’s. “Fine.” He lowered his voice. “A few weeks ago, when we were hanging out, something happened. I don’t even really know what it was, but suddenly they were all super upset at me and asking me to leave. I don’t know if I was the one who messed up or—or if they were.”

“So why haven’t you responded? Obviously they want to talk.”

He shrugged, avoiding Byungho’s gaze. “I guess I haven’t gotten around to it,” he lied. “I’m busy with comeback stuff.” 

Byungho accepted that with a nod, and Jongho couldn’t decide whether he was happy he got away with his untruth or disappointed that, even after all this time, Byungho wasn’t able to tell he was lying. A mixture of the two, maybe.

Hojin even went as far as to suggest that his heart wasn’t fully in the comeback.

That wasn’t true; no matter what, his passion was singing. He would always put his all into that. He owed it, to himself and his family and his fans.

At the same time, he couldn’t say that Hojin’s beliefs were entirely unfounded.

Jongho honestly didn’t know where his future stood in Arrowheart. Some foolish, childish part of him that still clung on back from their debut days begged him to try to make it work. These were his brothers, even if they hadn’t acted like it in a while, and they could get back to where they used to be. Besides, where would he go? He could try making a solo career work, or he could always fall back on the whole athlete thing that ran in the family. 

But he knew he would never be happy doing that. The only other place he could see himself was an impossibility. His only memories of it were nothing more than daydreams about what could have been, generated from tiny interactions that he spent far too much time thinking about.

(Seonghwa and Yeosang walked in the door, plastic grocery bags in hand, before slipping their shoes off and setting them in their own cubbies. The rest of them applauded their arrival.

“Took you long enough,” Mingi complained, leaning to dig through the bags as they set them on the table. His face brightened as he found a chip bag. “I can forgive you if you brought snacks, though.”

Seonghwa slapped his hand away. “Those aren’t for you, Mingi,” he teased, but he started pulling out several small pints of ice cream. “We got one of these for each of us, and then a couple bags of chips for Jongho-yah.”

Jongho felt something well up in his throat that he quickly swallowed back down. It was a silly thing to be so touched by, which was why he didn’t quite know how to thank them for their thoughtfulness. But he tried his best, scooting so he leaned into Yeosang’s side as they all watched their movie. Judging by the small, knowing smile, and the way he just wordlessly moved his arm to rest around his shoulder, Yeosang understood well enough.)

(Wooyoung snatched a piece of fried chicken out of Yunho’s hands. Yunho swiped to grab it, and the two of them fell backwards onto the floor.

“It looks like there was some fowl play,”  Jongho whispered quietly to Hongjoong, and then sat back with a satisfied smile as he watched Hongjoong’s face go through the motions; from processing what he said to ultimately settling on some mixture of shock and anger.)

(“When’s your birthday?”

Jongho looked up from his phone at the sudden question. Mingi didn’t even look in his direction, casually continuing to scroll.

“Why do you ask? You don’t even remember your own group mates' birthdays, hyung,” he laughed. “Hongjoong-hyung has whined about it more than once.”

Mingi chuckled, hand coming up to rub away the pink flush that had formed on the tips of his ears. “I knew all of their birthdays. I just, uh, forgot for a short time. Really, they’re all just dramatic. Besides, you’re as good as one of my group mates at this point.”

He coughed, ignored how that statement sent a pang to his heart, and answered as normally as he could.)

Those days were gone. Even if they weren’t, he would never be able to…

It was no use thinking about it. It only served to cause him more doubts.

He still put his all into his work. The fans didn’t deserve anything less than his best; they had done nothing wrong and, as far as they knew, no one else had, either. So he would try to stick it out, for their sake. Jongho knew that he was strong enough to do that—god, though, it didn’t really feel like it sometimes.

Sometimes, very often recently, it felt like one more push was all that was needed to send him over the edge.

And when he found himself once again staring at that one message late at night when he should have been sleeping to prepare for the schedules they had very early the next morning, he wondered just who it would be to deliver that last push.

That night, he dreamed of another lifetime.

Another lifetime when he was the maknae of a different group, where they weren’t falling apart at the seams, where he wasn’t standing in the center of a crumbling castle whose walls had at one point seemed infallible.

In that lifetime, things were good. Things felt right—more right than they had in reality in a long time.

The details were fuzzy. Only once he woke up did he realize that he couldn’t recall any specific faces or voices. But what he did remember clearly was how happy he was. It was simple, plain old happiness, and it was enough.

The emptiness left behind when he awoke had him clutching at his chest, gasping at the sudden hollow echo bouncing around, and feeling helpless as a tear rolled down his cheek for the first time in months.

Conversely, Jongho knew something was wrong the moment he stepped back inside the dorm after a solo schedule and everyone was sitting in the living room together. They never did that anymore, never voluntarily spent extra time around each other.

“So,” Jaejoon began mildly, crossing his legs, “were you ever going to say anything? Or was this just gonna go on forever?”

If Jongho didn’t know any better, he would think that this was an average conversation. But he did know better, and he liked to think that he still knew his members well enough to recognize that when Jaejoon was quiet was when you truly had something coming for you.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Youngsik scoffed. “Really? You don’t remember becoming best fucking friends with a whole other group and not mentioning it to us at all? Did that just slip your mind? After all this time, you’re lying to us, your hyungs?”

His blood ran cold. There was only one way that could have happened, he realized belatedly, if he hadn’t said anything. And that was—

At the back, Byungho looked at him and mouthed, “Sorry.”

First, Jongho was mad at himself for not being able to just keep his mouth shut, for thinking that it was safe to tell Byungho anything at all. Then, once he had a moment to think about it, once he had a moment to take in Byungho’s expression, the anger shifted. For some odd reason, the fact that Byungho did truly look regretful was what bothered him the most. Because he should have been able to trust Byungho. He should have been able to trust his groupmate not to tell such a meaningful secret to everyone else. He deserved that much respect. And Jongho lost it.

“Are you being serious? Like, actually, would you listen to yourself for once? For the past two years, none of you have cared about all the time we’ve spent together. You’re all too busy acting like pissy toddlers to notice anything else. It feels like I’m the only one who still wants to hold this group together, and now I’m not even sure of that anymore! But the moment I choose to talk to people who don’t spend every single moment of the day hating each other, I’m the one who’s betraying you guys?”

By the end of it, he was panting, his heart racing, pulse echoing in his ears. It felt like he had just finished a marathon; the pride he felt was the same.

The rest of them were stunned into silence. It was clear by the way their eyes were blown wide that none of them had expected him, the youngest, to talk back to them like that. Maybe they were actually so blind as to believe that he had no complaints, or maybe they never thought he would be brave enough to say anything about it.

Then Jaejoon stood up. His face was eerily calm and devoid of emotion as he made his way over to Jongho, step by slow, deliberate step. Jongho expected him to stop at some point, but he kept on moving closer and closer. As he came within a few feet, Jongho began taking steps backwards. He had never before been genuinely afraid of any of his members, but now… He didn’t like the way Jaejoon’s hands repeatedly flexed into fists, fingernails carving small crescents into his palms with how harshly he was gripping.

Eventually, his back hit the wall. He could move no further, could no longer increase the distance between himself and the leader. He tried to flatten against the wall, but it did no good.

“You…” Jaejoon clicked his tongue and then broke down into chuckles. “You really think you did something there? You really think you made a point?” Then, much to Jongho’s surprise, he turned away. He took a few steps away, letting Jongho relax his guard, eyes closing.

The next thing he knew was a sharp sting of pain on his cheek. 

His eyes flung open, hands flying up to clutch at the spot. Jaejoon stood before him, turned back in his direction, rubbing at his raised fist like he was the one who was injured. The others even looked disturbed at what he did. Kyungmin had a hand clasped over his mouth. Still, no one said anything.

“No,” Jaejoon continued, “no, we’re not upset that you made new ‘friends’. The problem is that you told them about group matters. You told them about every little argument, every time one of us hurt your little feelings, like you were the damsel in distress in some fairy tale.”

Frantically, mind still frozen from shock, Jongho tried to think of how they would know about that. He had never mentioned to Byungho what, specifically, he talked about with the Ateez members. It came to him in an instant—weeks ago, when Byungho stole his phone out of his hands, he was able to scroll upwards a bit before Jongho managed to wrangle it back. Byungho never said anything, so Jongho assumed that he hadn’t seen anything too important. Apparently, he had been able to read up to one of his and Wooyoung’s more serious conversations.

He opened his mouth to defend himself. He couldn’t find the words.

“The thing that you don’t see when you’re whining about us is that you’re no different. You think you’re the victim here? You’re just as bad as the rest of us. So go ahead. Go ahead and run to them right now, crying about how awful we are to you. See how it works out. Clearly, they’ve already realized that you’re not worth the time.”

Time moved in slow motion as Jaejoon finally retreated, barking at the rest of the members to go to their rooms just as he did. None of them looked Jongho in the eye as they left. 

Jongho hadn’t noticed that, up until this point, there was still a tiny, crumpled up ball of hope inside that this would all work out. They could go back to normal, back to how things used to be. There would be a way he could keep both his brothers and his friends in his life.

He supposed he would have to stop calling them his brothers now. His family would never treat him like this. It would be an insult to his biological brother to continue to give the members the same title.

With this, that hope was officially extinguished. There was almost a physical emptiness left behind.

Working quickly, Jongho grabbed the backpack he hadn’t even been able to put away before they ambushed him at the door. He threw in a couple granola bars; he wasn’t running away, but he didn’t know when he could face coming back. His shoes were still on his feet, ready to go.

And he did.

He walked out the door, down the elevator, and down the street, selecting a random direction because he really had no destination in mind. He just kept walking, letting his feet lead him whichever way they chose.

He hoped that none of the strangers he walked by thought his watery eyes were from anything more than the wind.

Months went by. No word from Jongho.

They all tried not to let it get to them. After all, they had gotten this far. Five years, just the seven of them, and they were happy. Back when they’d realized all of them had the feeling, they had agreed that nothing would get in the way of them. Ateez came first, above all.

But now that they had gotten a taste of what could have been, what could still be, no one wanted to let that go.

“Still nothing?” Hongjoong wondered when he entered the kitchen. He pulled the milk jug out of the fridge and unscrewed the cap, lifting it so he could smell. His nose scrunched at the sour odor as he poured the milk down the sink. Outside, booms of thunder rocked the walls. The storm had rolled in without any warning, causing a cancellation of their outdoor filming that night, not that any of them minded. They were glad for the time off to relax.

“Still nothing,” Wooyoung confirmed. He groaned, leaning to gently hit his forehead on the countertop. “Do you think I should message him again? Just to see if he’s okay?”

“I…” Yunho bit his lip. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe he just wants space. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk to us anymore.”

“That’s not true! That can’t be true!” Wooyoung protested, stumbling as he sprung up from his seat. Yunho reached out to try and catch him, but he batted the help away. “Jongho wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t choose to go back to those assholes he has for members over us. I can’t—I can’t let that be true.”

Hongjoong rushed over to help Yunho get Wooyoung settled. They guided him out to the living room. “Shh, Wooyoung-ah, it’s okay. Calm down. You know that Jongho doesn’t hate people that easily. He might still be mad, he might be mad for a long time more, but he doesn’t hate us. We can have that much.”

“What’s going on in here?”

Mingi and San walked in, Seonghwa trailing closely behind. The eldest’s hair was ruffled, eyelids heavy from sleep. “I was napping with Yeosang before you guys woke me up, so you better have a good reason,” he threatened, not looking nearly as frightening as he hoped. San smiled fondly and reached over to straighten out his bangs.

“It’s a miracle you could sleep at all with that storm going on out there,” San commented. “I can barely hear myself think over the rain.”

“I’m sorry,” Wooyoung said defeatedly. “I just—I’m worried about Jongho. He still hasn’t said anything. We all know how awful his members are, and—I just want to know if he’s okay.”

He sunk back into the couch cushions, suddenly feeling decades older. Yunho kept a comforting arm wrapped around his shoulder, tugging him closer.

“We’re all worried,” Yunho answered honestly. He swallowed. “Maybe you—maybe you should message him, just asking if he’s okay.”

Seonghwa nodded. “I think that would be a good idea. We can say it’s alright if he doesn’t want to talk more, but we just want him to let us know that he’s okay.”

“I’ve seen some of his live clips online,” Mingi said. “He looked good. Like he was happy.”

“He always looked happy in front of the cameras.” Wooyoung smiled bitterly. “That didn’t mean anything. You know that.”

“Yeah, I know. I guess I hoped it meant something, anyways. I wanted to believe it.”

They were all quiet for a moment.

“They made him so miserable. It took so long to get him to open up, but once he finally did, it was like he latched on.”

“Y’know, he told me once that he wasn’t expecting us to actually like each other. That was what surprised him the most when he got to know us,” Mingi whispered.

Anything else they were going to say was stopped by several knocks at their door.

Hongjoong stood up, clearing his throat. “I’ll get it.” If his eyes were a little bit misty, none of them mentioned it.

Now, he didn’t know what he was going to see when he opened that door. A late night package delivery seemed the most likely, but even that was improbable. Usually anything they ordered was placed in their P.O. box in the lobby of their dorms, not sent straight to their door. This time shouldn’t have been any different.

The last thing he anticipated greeting him on the other side was—

“Jongho?”

Chapter Text

He couldn’t tell how long he walked for. He wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings at all, though he knew he should have been. The staff would scold him for an eternity if they ever found out.

The cold wind slapping against his face was what finally managed to drag him out of his trance. He looked up; the sky was almost fully dark with gray clouds that did not bode well for the near future. In the distance, he could see far bolts of lightning hidden behind fog. Just his luck—here he was, no clue how to get back to his dorm, and a storm was almost certainly going to reach him within the next half hour. It was good that he had been thinking clear enough to grab his coat before he left.

Jongho figured that he had to have gone pretty far if the way his feet were beginning to ache was a sign of anything. He scanned the area; he had somehow ended up on a paved path of a city park that he couldn’t recognize. There was a bench underneath a nearby tree that he eagerly sat on, happy to take the weight off his feet.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened up his camera, holding it up to his face. A bruise was already forming on his cheek where Jaejoon had punched him, hard enough that Jongho would not be surprised to hear that the older had to ice his fist afterwards. He was more embarrassed than anything else; at least, he would rather focus on the embarrassment than any of the other emotions tumbling in his head. Even with his training, he still didn’t manage to see that punch coming?

Across the grass, a group of boys—highschoolers, it looked like, still wearing their uniforms—laughed and shoved at each other. One of them slipped on the dirt, and the rest of them pointed and laughed so hard their lungs might have popped out. However, once they mostly got that out of their system, the boy was given help up, and even got the dirt wiped off of him. He was smiling too, Jongho noticed. He didn’t feel like he was under attack even as they obviously continued making fun of him for it as the group walked away.

Somehow, and not even Jongho himself could explain it, that was his breaking point. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Before he even registered what was happening, tears were streaming down his face as sobs heaved from his chest.

He cried so hard his stomach hurt from the force of it. And when, in the midst of his breakdown, the rain finally arrived and began pouring down on him, it only made him cry harder. Because, really, of course it did. The sounds he made must have been pathetic, pitiful keens, practically inaudible over just how loud the raindrops roared into the ground. 

He couldn’t even bring himself to care that his clothes were being soaked through—his phone, protected in his backpack, would fine with a little water. In fact, he was remotely glad for the weather. Now no one he walked past would be able to tell he had been crying. Not that he would come across many people anyways, he supposed. There was no one in sight as he finally lifted his head up from his hands.

It was difficult to drag himself to his feet. Part of him just wanted to just sit and wallow for the rest of the night, the rest of the week, until someone called the police to come remove him. The logical part said that doing so would almost certainly give him hypothermia. Standing up took a lot of effort, feeling weighed down by his emotions and his waterlogged clothes.

Feeling things was exhausting, he decided. He didn’t want to do it anymore, even if that made him less than human. 

It took even more effort, then, to choose where he wanted to go. Above all, right now, he wanted a warm shower and a warm bed and warm people who would just tell him it was going to be alright, because for once he was tired of having to be the one to tell himself that.

Back at the dorm… he wasn’t going to get any of that. The water might have been warm, and his blankets might have been comfortable, but he would never be able to fully enjoy those luxuries knowing who he was surrounded by.

He peered again through the downpour to try to read the street sign.

XXXX Ave.

Huh. He was actually…

Really close to where he wanted to be.

The place that he knew would find all of those things. The place he had avoided thinking about for the last two months because it gave him a feeling of homesickness that hurt his head when he tried to come up with a reason for. 

He thought back to his phone, nestled in his backpack, and the message locked away within it. Wooyoung didn’t sound upset in it. Even if Jongho’s suspicions about it being simply a nice gesture to bury the hatchet were correct, he knew they wouldn’t turn him away in his weather.

Maybe his mind had unconsciously led him here for a reason.

The building was even more intimidating this time around.

It looked exactly the same, but the anxiety churning in his gut was different. He had become less nervous visiting since that first day. Now it was back, for different reasons.

Once he got to the lobby, he realized he had no idea if he could even get in. He sheepishly walked over to the front desk, looking around for one of the receptionists to ask for permission to go up.

“Ah, Jongho-ssi!”

Jongho spun around, water beads flying from the ends of his hair, looking for the source of the voice. The doorman stood by the elevator, a smile on his face, hand beckoning him over.

“I know it’s been a while since I’ve been around, but is it okay if I go up?” Jongho asked, shoulders curling in. He felt exposed, even with the jacket covering him up. “It’s just that I’m really far from my dorm, and with the rain…”

“Oh, no, you’re good,” the doorman said, waving him off. “They told me to make sure to let you up if you drop by, even if they’re not home.” He looked Jongho up and down, and his face faded into a more solemn expression. “They trust you, kid. Go on up.”

Not knowing what to say to that, Jongho got into the elevator and pressed the button for the correct floor. He could feel his palms getting sweatier as the number went up—though that just as easily could have been the moisture still clinging to him. He had tried to ring off most of his clothes in the entrance way, but that hadn’t done much to help how entirely he was saturated. A puddle had gathered underneath his spot by the time he stepped into the familiar hallway, and he sent a silent apology to whichever custodian worked that night.

It took no time at all for him to arrive in front of the door. It felt like it had been just moments ago he was last here.

He raised a fist into the air and held it there. There was still time for him to back out of this. He could go back to the dorm, beg for forgiveness from his members, and continue on.

But he already knew that Arrowheart would never be the same after tonight. He already knew what he wanted to do; he had known for a while, and yet he ignored it, because as much as he prided himself on his self-sufficiency, he didn’t want to be alone to make that kind of decision.

Hopefully, if this went right, he wouldn’t be.

He delivered three knocks to the door in quick succession before jamming his fist back into his pocket. He waited with bated breath as footsteps from inside approached, and the lock clicked, and then the knob turned, and finally the door began to creak open.

It was Hongjoong. Jongho felt so relieved at seeing the leader that he only barely managed to hold back from collapsing into the other man’s arms (partially because he knew both of them would end up on the floor).

“Jongho?”

Almost instantly, voices started back up again inside, asking increasingly loud questions that Jongho still couldn’t quite focus on. His brain felt fuzzy.

“Hyung,” he breathed.

Hongjoong softened. “Jongho-yah, you’re soaked. What are you doing here?”

Jongho opened his mouth to try to form any words of explanation, any at all, but his tongue felt too heavy to make any noise except another, “Hyung.”

“Oh, come inside. Come on, let’s go.” Hongjoong ushered him in. “Mingi, go get a towel, will you? And someone go wake Yeosang.”

Then, Jongho was surrounded. He had people on every side of him asking if he was okay, what he was doing here, did he really walk here in this weather, why did he choose now…

San tried to reach out to touch his face, but Jongho inadvertently flinched away. The hurt that bloomed on San’s face was enough to make him immediately regret the action, unintentional or not.

“Jongho-yah…”

“Hyungs,” he whispered, voice hoarse from the scream-crying he had been doing just twenty minutes earlier, “can I just take a shower for right now? I promise I’ll explain everything later, but I…”

“Of course you can,” Seonghwa interrupted. “You know where it is. Take as much time as you need, and we’ll all be here when you’re ready.”

Jongho smiled gratefully, sliding his shoes off next to the cubbies, and made his way down to the bathroom. He put his backpack down on the floor, first fishing out his phone to make sure the water hadn’t leaked through and done too much damage. It still turned on, which was good enough in his book. He swiped up; no notifications. 

That was about what he expected. It still hurt.

He turned the shower water on to warm, which already felt boiling against his skin, shivering from the rain. He finally looked in the mirror. He had put his hood up before he entered in hopes of avoiding any questions about the bruise for as long as he could. It was already varying shades of dark red and pink, and despite everything, his first thought was how hard it would be for the makeup team to cover that up once it came time for comeback promotions. And then his thoughts caught up to him, and he wondered if there would be anything for him to promote after this.

Halfway through, when he was just letting the water wash over his face and erase what evidence of what happened that it could, he heard the door open and a voice call out to him.

“Hey,” Mingi said, “I have a towel and a change of clothes for you that I’m gonna leave here. And I’ll take your wet ones, too, so that we can wash those. Seonghwa-hyung basically threatened my life if I didn’t, so…”

Jongho laughed, the sound foreign in his throat, and called back over the sound of the water, “Sounds good! Wouldn’t want you to disappear just yet!”

Mingi barked a laugh at that, too, and for a second Jongho could forget that this was their first time speaking in months and it was because he essentially ran away from home. And then the bathroom door closed, signaling Mingi’s departure, and he was alone once again.

He wasn’t well-versed enough to be able to recognize whose clothes were left for him, but if he had to take a guess, it would be Yunho. The sweatshirt was long on him, probably about halfway down to his knees. The pajama pants he was given could have been anyone’s.

He walked into the living room with his backpack hanging in one hand, a towel still scrubbing at his hair in the other. His stomach turned with every step he took, but he knew there was no avoiding this. Maybe, if he just pretended everything was normal, they would humor him and play along.

It was almost like he could feel seven sets of eyes weighing on him as he entered the room, their concern and confusion all packed into one. He kept his own gaze trained on the floor in front of him, face shadowed, until he finally got over to the armchair and sat down across from everyone else. His fingers nervously traced shapes on his knees. He sucked in a deep breath. He let it out.

He looked up.

Unanimous gasps sounded. Jongho couldn’t tell who they came from; he had happened to lock eyes with Yunho and hadn’t looked away since, for fear of seeing any unpleasant reactions. Yunho seemed transfixed on the spot on his cheek.

“What… what happened?” Yunho asked, hand reaching up to his own cheek as if he could feel the same mark.

Jongho clenched his eyes shut. All of a sudden, faced with the prospect of actually having to explain, he felt completely out of his depth. “Can we just not talk about it right now?”

None of them seemed too agreeable to that. Even Yeosang, who had eyes dreary from sleep and mussed up hair, was alert now. Jongho self-consciously rubbed at his cheek. Seonghwa tracked the movement.

“Of course we can,” he announced, shocking everyone.

“But, hyung,” San cried, “we need to talk about it! I mean, look at him. Someone did that —”

“Not now,” Seonghwa snapped. “He is in the room right now, and I don’t think he appreciates us talking like he isn’t here. Besides—” he turned to Jongho, an infinitely fond expression growing on his face that made Jongho worm back into his seat “—we have some explaining to do, don’t we?”

In the heat of the moment, Jongho had somehow forgotten all about that. “You don’t have to—”

“We do,” Hongjoong cut him off. “What I said to you last time—that wasn't what I meant. And you deserve to hear the truth, Jongho.” He waited until Jongho looked up at him. He gave a reassuring smile. “It isn’t anything bad, okay? Trust us. Trust your hyungs. Trust that we would never want to hurt you.”

Jongho looked around at all of them. He caught Wooyoung staring at his cheek with a frown on his face, clenching his fists. When Wooyoung noticed, though, the older boy’s mouth instantly turned up into an encouraging smile, giving a nod. “Let us explain, Jongho-yah. Let us make it better.”

That was all it took.

“Okay.”

Hongjoong relaxed. “That’s good.” He paused. “I, uh, I just realized I have no idea where to start.” He gave a nervous chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck.

Yunho wrapped a hand around the leader’s wrist, rubbing calming circles into the skin there. “How about I try to start things off, then?” He inhaled, foot tapping into the ground. 

“Ever since our debut, we thought something might be missing. Over time, we came to realize that it was someone who was missing.

“Things didn’t change all that much. But every time we performed a song, we were constantly aware of how it didn’t sound quite right, like there was someone else who was meant to be singing the parts. We just thought we could deal with it, because we were just happy with each other.

“And then Yeosangie brought you into our dressing room. From that moment, I should have known. But I didn’t. Maybe if I had, this could have been avoided.”

He chuckled weakly. Mingi leaned their shoulders together.

“You just… fit in. None of us really noticed at first. Now, I think that might have been because things were finally right, so there wasn’t anything special to notice. And then, that night, you sang our song, and we realized—we realized it was right. It was you the whole time. You’ve been our missing piece this whole time, Jongho-yah. None of us knew what to do. We were scared.”

“So I freaked out,” Hongjoong continued. “I figured that the seven of us needed to talk together before we talked to you, so…” He grimaced. “I freaked out. I yelled at you even though you didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m sorry.”

For a long time, no one said anything else. Jongho’s mind was running a mile a minute trying to process all of the information he had been given in such a short period of time. His mouth floundered. He was, for the first time in his life, genuinely speechless. Their explanation was confusing, not to mention far-fetched, and Jongho was once again struck with the crushing knowledge that they really were just trying to come up with a lie that would let him down easily. 

Moisture gathered in his eyes unbidden, and he rushed to wipe it away. But he was too late; they had already seen, and they didn’t appear to be letting it go anytime soon. Cries of alarm arose around him.

In an instant, San was down in front of him dragging his fists away from his eyes, interlacing their fingers. Jongho tried to pry away, but his grip didn’t loosen at all. “Don’t do that,” he scolded gently. “You’ll hurt your eyes.”

With no way to block them, tears began falling down his face in earnest. Jongho had cried more in the last hour than he had in the last year. At this point, he wasn’t sure if the red rims around his eyes would ever go away.

“You guys—you don’t have to lie to me,” he forced out, voice wavering in a way that caused embarrassment to burn on his ears. “I can understand if you don’t want me around anymore, but please—please, if you care at all, would you just tell me the truth? I’m so, so sick of everyone pretending all the time, so would you please just stop?”

Finally, he managed to wrench one of his hands free, bringing it up to his mouth and biting down on the knuckle of his thumb to stop any more unwelcome emotions from escaping. Even more shouts popped up, begging him to stop. San once again tried to reach for his hand, but Jongho leaned away. They didn’t get it; he already humiliated himself enough by showing up here, and he couldn’t do it even more by crying like the baby they thought he was.

This time it was Mingi who reached up slowly, making sure Jongho could track his movements the entire way, and carefully removed his hand from his teeth. Mingi winced at the bite marks left behind, luckily not enough to break skin, but placed his own hand on top to hide it.

“Why would we do that?” Mingi questioned simply. “No, no, just think about it: why would we lie to you about something like that?”

“Because you need an excuse to get rid of me.”

Mingi put up a hand to stop the others from protesting. Wooyoung shut his mouth.

“And how would telling you that we think you’re meant to be with us give an excuse?”

Jongho couldn’t think of an answer to that one.

“Exactly, dummy,” Mingi said smugly. Behind him, Seonghwa gasped, moving to scold, but Jongho just gave an affronted glare.

“Hey,” he croaked, “who are you calling dummy? I’m clearly the smart one here.”

Mingi didn’t appear at all offended. In fact, he lost some of the tension in his body at the response. “You sounded pretty dumb there, talking about how we didn’t want you around anymore.”

“What Mingi-yah means to say,” Seonghwa hurried to explain, “is that of course we want to be around you. Even if we didn’t have our…”

“Telepathy,” Wooyoung helpfully supplied.

“... telepathy, we would still want you around. Because you’re our friend, Jongho. We’re your hyungs. I don’t think it’s possible for us to not like you.”

Jongho sniffled. “That’s what they used to say,” he whispered before he could psych himself out of it.

At that, the atmosphere thickened. He almost regretted saying it. 

Almost.

“Who used to say that?” Hongjoong asked. It was a rhetorical question.

“My members,” Jongho replied quietly. “My members used to say that they would always like each other. But now they don’t. And I know that it isn’t my fault, but sometimes it’s hard to believe that.”

“Oh, Jongho…” 

San and Mingi settled down on the floor by his feet. Mingi kept playing with his fingers while San laid his head on Jongho’s thigh. The presence was a comforting reminder that he wasn’t alone.

“What happened today, Jongho-yah?” 

It was the question he had been dreading.

It was time.

“They found out that I talked to you guys, that I told you about, well, stuff. And Jaejoon-hyung, he was—he was really mad. So, he…” Jongho gestured vaguely upwards. “And I ran out. Cried in the rain for a while, y’know. Then I came here.”

After that, it was silent. He looked at them anxiously, trying to read their faces that were scarily blank.

Then Wooyoung swore, “Fuck,” under his breath, stood up, and repeated, “Fuck!” louder, kicking at a sock that had been left on the floor. He paced the room muttering angrily.

“Hyung!” Jongho exclaimed, trying to stand up. But San pulled him back down, grappling for his wrist until he had it in a death grip. He held that wrist tightly in his hand, fingers pressed solidly to his pulse point.

“Let him go,” Hongjoong muttered, face buried in his hands.

Yeosang pulled his blanket back up to his chin. His knuckles were turning white around the edges. 

Jongho laughed nervously, voice still inconveniently watery. “I know that it isn’t good that my leader decided to just deck me—” he saw the way Yunho flinched at the words and sent a silent apology “—but I don’t get why you guys are so upset over it.”

“Because we care about you!” Wooyoung burst out, spinning around so fast that Jongho was surprised he didn’t get whiplash. “Because we don’t like seeing you get hurt by the people who are supposed to take care of you. Because—”

To Jongho’s horror, he could see Wooyoung becoming increasingly agitated, until he came up to Jongho, and rested a hand on each of his shoulders. He leaned down so their foreheads rested against each other. “We care about you, Jongho-yah. And the thought of them hurting you makes me so mad. You deserve much more than that.”

“You deserve better than those people,” Seonghwa added. He held sorrow in his gaze as he directed it at Jongho. “We’re all angry that he did that when we should have been able to protect you.”

“You couldn’t have—”

“Maybe not. Maybe we couldn’t have done anything. But you’re the youngest, so of course we want to keep you safe. That’s our job.”

Jongho chose not to dissect that statement. He didn’t know what Seonghwa meant by youngest, or to what extent. That wasn’t a discussion for right now. The excitement of the night was finally catching up to him. His eyelids drooped low, and he tried to cover up a yawn with his hand.

He was already fading out of consciousness when he heard the voices start talking around him, too far gone to be able to decipher who said what.

“Looks like the baby wants to sleep.”

A laugh. 

A sigh.

“God knows he deserves to rest now. I don’t even want to think about him sitting out there in this weather.”

“What do we do if his members try calling him?”

“Something tells me they won’t, but I’ll deal with them.”

“Sounds good, hyung. As long as you make sure to really let them hear it.”

“I wouldn’t dream of any less.”

Then there was an arm around his shoulders and under his knees, lifting him up into a carry that felt weird to be on this end of. He didn’t know how he would like it in a more lucid state, but right now it felt good. Secure, in a way.

“I’ll take him to my bed for the night.”

Jongho opened his eyes just in time to see, blearily, some move his shoes and place them into the empty cubby. He smiled, turning his head to tuck into the arm of whoever was carrying him.

They hummed a tune all the way down the hall, and Jongho was out cold before he hit the sheets.

He woke up the next morning to missed calls from Hojin and Kyungmin, as well as no less than ten from his manager. He barely even had time to process that he was in Mingi’s room before his phone was vibrating yet again.

He sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and swiped up to take the call.

“Jongho!” the manager exclaimed immediately. Just from that one word, Jongho was on edge. He didn’t sound pleased. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”

He glanced at the clock: 11:42.

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t even start with that. Are you kidding me right now? Jaejoon told me what happened. You get in one little argument and, what, you decide to run away like you’re still a teenager? Aren’t you supposed to be the mature one?”

Jongho’s jaw dropped. “One little—? Jaejoon hit me.”

“Yah, he’s older than you. People hit each other all the time. I’m sure you guys can work it out. Listen, I can’t have you blabbing about this to anyone, alright? This could really ruin things for the comeback. The fans don’t like hearing about this sort of thing.”

He could hardly believe what he was hearing. He had thought—or hoped, maybe—that their manager, for all his faults, would at least side with him on this. After all, he had always made sure to be kind to the staff. 

“I’m not going back there. I don’t want to see any of them right now.”

“You’re—you’re what? You don’t get to decide that. In case you forgot, I’m still your boss. But if you keep acting like a brat, that could always change.”

Was he really threatening him?

“You can’t just fire me. I have a contract.”

The manager snorted. “There are ways that can be worked around. It wasn’t too hard the last time.”

Jongho’s pulse stuttered. “Last time?”

“What do you think happened to your last producer? He started talking about going to the higher-ups with complaints about your members if nothing changed. All I had to do was say he breached his contract with us, and he was gone. I’ve done it before. I can make it happen again, but you won’t be out of the spotlight so easily. Neither of us want that to happen, Jongho-ssi. So get back here right now, or so help me, I can ruin you.”

As Jongho sat, reeling from all of that information, there was a knock at the bedroom door. Yeosang peeked his head in, glancing between Jongho’s face and the phone. Jongho nodded shakily, and Yeosang stepped inside, walking over to sit on the bed with him. He set a hand on Jongho’s blanket-covered knee.

Feeling emboldened by the silent show of support, Jongho began gathering the courage to do what he had needed to for a long time. As terrified as he was, as unsure of the future as he was, he was no longer willing to be treated like a doormat. If the manager was threatening to fire him over this, then Jongho was going to call his bluff.

“You won’t have to worry about that,” Jongho said coolly, glad his nerves didn’t come across in his voice. “I’m done. I’m leaving the company.”

Yeosang’s eyes widened; without the context of the rest of the conversation, that was the last thing he expected to hear. “What are you doing?” he mouthed, but Jongho ignored him. If he was to keep up his courage, he needed to focus.

The manager was quiet on the line for a moment. Then he let out a short, incredulous laugh. “Really? Just like that? Hyungs get a little mad at you and suddenly it’s time to go?”

“I’ll be putting in the formal request to sever my contract soon. Bye, manager-nim.”

Before Jongho could press the button to hang up, the manager had to get in the last word. “I can’t wait to see what reason you try to come up with. You’re making things a lot worse for yourself by acting like a bratty kid.”

Jongho hung up and slammed the phone down on the bed before he could say anything else. He buried his face in his hands, leaning his head forward until the top of it hit Yeosang’s shoulder.

Yeosang rubbed circles into his back. “Do you wanna talk about what that was?” he asked quietly.

Jongho took in a shuddering breath. “I left my group.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“Do you think I made a mistake?”

“How do you feel now?”

“I feel… lighter. Already.”

“Then I think you probably know the answer to that.”

“I don’t know what to do now, hyung.”

Yeosang paused for a moment. “I don’t know what to do, either. But you’re not alone, Jongho-yah. We’re all here with you, and we’re not going to leave.”

“What if you guys get tired of being with me? My members did.”

Eventually he was going to have to stop calling them his members. That would be something to get used to.

“Well, they are stupid.” Jongho giggled at how seriously Yeosang declared it, and a bit of pride at garnering that reaction bloomed in his chest. “We won’t get tired of you, not any more than we sometimes get tired of Wooyoung goofing off or Seonghwa-hyung’s neatness. And even then, we always get over it. You can lean on us, Jongho, and we won’t ever leave you for it.”

Jongho hummed, rubbing the top of his head into Yeosang’s shoulder one more time before picking it up. “I guess we should probably get out there.”

“You don’t have to tell the others just yet if you don’t want to. I won’t say anything unless you want me to.”

“No, no, I should tell them. I want to tell them. After everything you all have done for me, they deserve to know.”

Yeosang sighed. “None of us are looking for a reward for helping you.”

But Jongho wouldn’t hear it, dragging both of them up and out. Everyone else was already in the living room, which gave him pause for only a moment. He wasn’t expecting all of them to be there.

Mingi instantly brightened when he saw the two of them. “Jongho! Did you sleep okay?”

“Must have, I was out for so long. Thanks for letting me have your bed, by the way. I didn’t mean to, uh, kick you out.”

“Oh, he’s fine. He just slept with Yunho,” Seonghwa waved him off.

“And he took up the whole bed, too,” Yunho grumbled.

Mingi shoved him.

“Do you want something to eat?” Seonghwa asked. “We ate a couple hours ago, but I can heat it up for you.”

“Already got it,” San said, entering from the kitchen with a plate of food. He set it down on Jongho’s lap and reached to ruffle his hair. Jongho batted the hand away, but expressed his gratitude for the food.

“Shouldn’t you guys be, I don’t know, busy somewhere? Practicing or doing vocal lessons?”

Hongjoong looked up from his laptop. “I called in and got our schedules for the day canceled.”

“You—why?”

“So we could stay here with you. Make sure you aren't alone in the dorm.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“Of course I didn’t have to.” Hongjoong smiled benignly. “But I wanted to. It’s the least I could do to make up for being so stupid last time.”

“That wasn’t your fault, hyung. You said what you needed to. It was my fault for avoiding you instead of letting you explain.”

“But I should have—”

“Oh my god,” Wooyoung groaned. “Can we just agree that everyone was dumb?”

Jongho nodded. 

Then: “But we were a little more dumb.”

“Hey!”

“Nope, you can’t take it back anymore!” Wooyoung put his hands up. “We are the hyungs here. We should have known better.”

“Please, you’re barely older than me.”

“Still older, though.” Wooyoung gave a shit-eating grin. “You're the baby."

"I'm not—"

"The maknae here and—" Wooyoung frowned. "—and in your own group."

Yeosang and Jongho winced in unison. Wooyoung caught it, gaze narrowing in on them.

"What happened?"

"Ah… about that…" Jongho cleared his throat, drawing all their attention to him. "My manager called earlier. He wanted me to come back and pretend nothing happened. When I said no, he threatened to, uh, come up with a way to cut my contract." Jongho grappled blindly until he locked hands with Yeosang, needing the support yet again. "So I kind of just… reacted. And I may have said I was leaving the group."

It was quiet.

"Are you actually going to?"

"I—I think so. Yes. I am. I can't do it anymore. I can't keep deluding myself into thinking things could go back to how they were. After this… I don't want to see any of them again."

Hongjoong tried not to let his hope show on his face. This wasn't the time; all Jongho said was that he was leaving Arrowheart. That hardly meant that he would be open to figuring out if joining them was a feasible option, let alone that he would want to continue as an idol in the first place.

“I’m proud of you,” he said instead. “That seems like it was the right decision.”

“You think so?”

“I think we all do,” Seonghwa provided. “Whenever you talked about them… it didn’t seem like you were very happy. They didn’t treat you well, baby. But you already knew that.”

Jongho fought to keep his face from twisting at the pet name. After so long of trying to prove himself as an adult, it was instinct to shy away from it. This time felt different. Truthfully, he found that he didn’t mind it all that much. Maybe it was because the only time he was called it by his members was on camera as a way to tease, but now it was in private and a genuine pet name, one that no one made a big deal of. He didn’t love it yet, but he thought that he could get used to it without many complaints.

“How does it look?” he asked, pointing up to his cheek.

Yunho couldn’t keep his eyes on the mark for long, feeling anger rise inside him at the sight of what had been done. “It’s getting darker,” he answered. “It looks like it’ll be there for a while.”

Jongho groaned. “How am I going to hide this from the media?”

Hongjoong grimaced. “Unfortunately, once it gets out that you’re leaving Arrowheart, the eyes are going to be on you for a while. I know it’s soon, but have you thought about what you want to do with that?”

“I have no idea. I’ve dreamed about leaving but I never thought about how I would actually do it.” He fiddled with his fingers, the nervous habit coming back at the dawning realization of just how out of his depth he was. Suddenly the reality of what he had gotten himself into was setting in. “All I know is that I want out of the contract. I can get a lawyer. If they don’t want me telling everyone about this—” he motioned upwards “—they probably won’t put up too much of a fight. After that… I don’t know. I didn’t ever think I would get to this point.”

Wooyoung wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “It’s a good thing your hyungs are here for you then, huh? I mean, well, we haven’t done this before either, but there’s power in numbers, right?”

“I guess so.”

“Aw, come on, we’ve got you! Nothing can go wrong with us here to help.”

He sounded so confident that Jongho might have, just a little bit, started to believe him.

“Wooyoung-ah, you’re, like, the king of making things go wrong,” Yunho snickered, yelping when Wooyoung lunged for him. The two of them ended up going to the ground with the force of their wrestling, and the way that Mingi, San, and Hongjoong were chanting, “Fight, fight, fight!” did nothing to stop them.

Seonghwa took the moment to sit down next to Jongho, leaning their heads together.

“He was right, though, you know. We’ll help you get everything figured out.”

“You’re basically one of us now, Jongho,” Yeosang interjected..

“And we protect our own.”

Jongho dared not say out loud how those words made his heart skip a beat. They couldn’t mean… they wouldn’t really want…

He had no more time to dwell on it; Yunho and Wooyoung had almost knocked over a glass on the coffee table, and Hongjoong finally moved to break them up before they caused significant destruction.

BREAKING: CHOI JONGHO (FORMERLY OF ARROWHEART) SEEN LEAVING COURTHOUSE WITH LAWYERS FOLLOWING ANNOUNCEMENT OF HIS DEPARTURE FROM THE GROUP

Yesterday evening, the company of Arrowheart made an official announcement on their social media about the departure of member Choi Jongho from the group. This came as a shock to netizens because of the group’s comeback scheduled in just two weeks. In the announcement, the company also informed that, in light of the recent developments, the comeback will be postponed until further notice. None of Arrowheart’s remaining members (Kim Jaejoon, Cho Hojin, Lee Byungho, Kim Youngsik, Kang Kyungmin) nor Choi Jongho have commented on the situation so far. No reasons behind the sudden departure have been provided. The company thanks fans for their continued support.

“Are you sure this is okay with you guys? I know that it’s difficult having everyone packed in here already.” Jongho bit his thumb worriedly.

San waved him off. “Of course this is okay. We wouldn’t have offered it if it wasn’t.” He adjusted the box on his hip. The elevator door slid open, and he motioned his arm forward. “After you.”

“Still. You all have been so nice to me, and I don’t want it to seem like I’m just using that.”

San stopped them in the hall before they got to the door. He turned to look at Jongho, face dead serious. “Jongho-yah, listen to me: we care about you . We would so much rather you stay here with us, at least until you find your own place, than have to sleep in the same dorm as those assholes.”

Yeosang leaned his head out the door. “Are we talking about those people? Yeah, that wasn’t even an option. I think the plan was to kidnap you if you tried to keep living with them.”

Jongho had officially moved out of the Arrowheart dorm as of this morning (not that he had been there at all since that night), and the others had insisted on helping him move his very meager load of belongings. There were four boxes in total, a product of sharing a living space with so many other people, and the two that had already been carried up were sitting in the dorm. Since the news broke that he had left the group, the seven of them had been much more liberal in describing how they felt about his old members.

Negotiations had been surprisingly easy. Like Jongho predicted, the company was willing to terminate his contract in exchange for his silence on what, exactly, had been going on within the group. He didn’t know if he did the right thing by taking that deal; maybe the fans had a right to the truth about who they were supporting. 

But Mingi had put it like this: “After everything that has happened, you deserve a quiet life.”

And Jongho quite liked that outlook. Besides, the other shoe was bound to drop eventually. If he wanted to hurry it along, all he had to do was get in touch with the former producer—something he was already in the process of. He didn’t want to conceive a plan just yet, but it would be nice to talk to someone who had worked with him and seen what went on. If the two of them decided to, eventually, take it public—well, Jongho considered himself a fairly petty person. He was sure he would enjoy what came of it.

For now, though—for now was his time to recover. Or try, at least. He was getting there.

“I could have stayed with my parents,” Jongho offered. “They would have loved to have me back home.”

“That far away?” San gasped with mock horror. “Sorry, but we’re too selfish for that. Now that you’re here again, none of us are planning on letting you go for a long time.”

“Ooh, are you gonna give me a curfew?” Jongho laughed.

“That depends,” Hongjoong replied, taking the box out of his arms. “Are you going to try to sneak out?”

“He wouldn’t do that to you,” Yeosang stage-whispered to Jongho. “You’re his favorite.”

“Hey, I don’t have favorites!”

“Hmm, that’s a funny way of saying, ‘My favorites are Seonghwa and Jongho’.”

Hongjoong lightly smacked the back of Yeosang’s head, his smile far too amused for the action to be taken seriously. “I don’t have favorites,” he repeated to Jongho, “but I might start getting some if someone doesn’t behave.”

Yeosang and San waited until Hongjoong turned away to rub their fists against their cheeks like they were mimicking crying toddlers.

“I know what you’re doing!” Hongjoong called over his shoulder. He didn’t turn around once to look.

This time Yeosang’s eyes widened in surprise and slight fear, and Jongho laughed as he and San tried frantically to figure out how Hongjoong saw them.

The more time he spent here, the more he could see himself here permanently. The more time he spent here, the harder the thought of leaving was getting to be.

“Would you ever think about joining Ateez?” Seonghwa wondered mildly.

Jongho choked on his coffee. Yunho leaned over to pat him on the back.

“Way to go on bringing it up slowly, hyung.”

Seonghwa shrugged. “What would be the point?”

Yunho opened his mouth to point out the hours of conversation the seven of them had discussing how to bring up the topic.

Jongho cut that off with, “Would you guys even want me to join?”

“I mean, I feel like us asking was enough to answer that.”

“That doesn’t help, hyung.” Jongho glared. “I mean, of course I’ve thought about it. How could I not?”

Seonghwa reached across the table to rest his hand on top of Jongho’s as he gathered his thoughts.

“Watching you guys was what showed me what actual groups were like, not whatever kind of mess mine was. You guys showed me it was possible to succeed in the industry and not come out of it hating each other. How could I see that every day and not wish I could be with you instead of where I was?”

“I’m glad we could show you that, baby,” Seonghwa replied. 

There that pet name was again. Seonghwa in particular had taken a liking to using it on occasion, and as long as everyone continued to not make a big deal out of it, Jongho was growing to like hearing it every now and again.

“But you already have a home with us, whether you’re officially a part of Ateez or not. You’re our maknae, and you joining would just make it so we could brag about you to the rest of the world, too. Nothing would change if you didn’t want to.”

“I know that we would all love it if you decided you wanted to join us. We would love to finally be able to perform as eight,” Yunho said. “But we would also still love it if you decided you wanted to just do your own thing.”

Jongho put his head in his hands. This cafe felt like the last place he thought he would have this conversation, if at all. “I—how would that even work?”

Yunho shrugged. “Groups add members all the time. They even add members who used to be in other groups, too. It might not be as common, but it happens. All of us are determined to make it work if you are.”

“KQ is an understanding company, Jongho. You can take all the time you need to think about it, but if the answer does turn out to be yes, I’m confident we could figure it out.”

Perhaps he should have thought about it more. That probably would have been the smart thing to do. This was one of the biggest decisions of his career, of his life. The last time he decided to sign onto a group, things hadn’t turned out well. So perhaps he should have taken the time to weigh the pros and cons, call his parents, debate whether this was an adventure he was ready to embark on.

But even though Jongho was a creature of logic, his heart was screaming at him to just listen for once to what he wanted rather than what he thought should happen. 

So all Jongho could bring himself to say was, “I’m in.”

The way their faces lit up was worth it 100 times over.

“By the way,” Jongho announced casually upon entering the living room once he got back from the cafe, “I want to join Ateez.”

No one said anything. He began to worry that the whole thing had been a big prank on him.

Then they burst into laughter and delighted screams and Wooyoung tackled him in a hug that Jongho didn’t even want to break out of, and he knew that he made the right choice.

The KQ conference room was compact and homely. The lights that shone from above were a muted yellow rather than a blinding white that made Jongho want to bawl the moment he stepped inside.

He was sitting on the opposite end of the long table, facing the CEO of KQ. Next to the CEO was Ateez’s manager, whom Jongho had met briefly one or two times before, and then his seven hyungs dispersed in seats around the rest of the table. Hongjoong sat closest to the head. Mingi and San bracketed Jongho on either side.

“Let me get this straight: you want to add another member to Ateez after five years? Another member that recently left his own group?”

Jongho tried not to let the scrutiny affect him. He had known this was coming from the moment he learned that the meeting was happening, and he knew that what they were asking was bound to take some convincing.

“Respectfully, sir, it’s been four months, and Jongho had been wanting to leave for months before that as well. And, obviously, it would take a while for us to get things sorted out completely, so it would be closer to a full year before anything was told to the fans.”

The way Hongjoong was able to say it without stuttering almost made Jongho think the leader had rehearsed his response.

The CEO tilted his head in acknowledgment. “Fair point. But what would be the advantage of doing this? What are you boys really looking for?”

“Have you heard Jongho sing?” San asked. “Listen to him once and you’ll know that if we don’t take him, it’ll be someone else, and that would be a major loss of talent.”

They had decided beforehand that they would try to attack from the business angle first. 

“Besides that—well, I don’t know what manager-hyung has told you, but we’ve known Jongho for a while. It’s safe to say that we’re all pretty attached,” Yunho added. “He would be an amazing addition to the team, both because of his musical talent and because we like being around him. You know the fans would love him, too.”

The CEO jotted down a few words on his notepad in front of him before looking up. He looked straight down to the end of the table. “What about you, Jongho-ssi? Why do you want to join Ateez so soon after leaving your previous group?”

Jongho swallowed nervously. He had prepared a response to this question in his head—something about thinking it was an excellent opportunity to continue his career with people he liked—but that didn’t seem right anymore. He took a deep breath and spoke slowly.

“My old group wasn’t the best. We started out fine, and then it went downhill. When I first met the Ateez-hyungs, I was scared they were the same. I didn’t want to get too close because I was scared I would get burned like I did the last time I trusted the people who acted like older brothers.” He met the CEO’s gaze head-on. “But I was wrong. They couldn’t be more different. They welcomed me even when they had no reason to, and I honestly don’t think I could have gotten through the last year if I didn’t have them to lean on. I would be proud to be a member of Ateez because I know that they are good. I would be proud to make music with this group.”

His cheeks burned as he finished his speech. In his peripheral, he could see Yeosang attempting to bite down a smile and San dabbing at his eyes with the end of his sleeves. Mingi set a hand on his leg and rubbed circles with his thumb into the fabric of his pants. Jongho set his own hand on top of Mingi’s and gave a grateful squeeze.

The CEO didn’t appear to be expecting that. It took a second for him to respond, but when he did, he stood up out of his chair. “Well, boys, I can’t promise anything for now, but it seems like you’ve got a pretty good proposal.” He went around the room, shaking everyone’s hands. When he finally got to Jongho, he leaned in close and whispered, “You’ve got a good thing here. They really like you, and you like them just as much, I can tell. For what it’s worth, I really hope things work out.”

He exited the room, their manager following shortly behind. As soon as the door closed, the tension swept out of the room in a great big wave. They were all on top of each other in some monstrous amalgamation that Jongho supposed could be called a group hug even though that was way too cheesy for him to ever be a part of. At the center, with bodies pressing in on all sides of him, he never once thought of how this much physical contact had used to make him so uncomfortable he could cry.

They had finally done it. They were almost there.

BREAKING: FORMER ARROWHEART MEMBER CHOI JONGHO TO JOIN ATEEZ

Following his departure from his previous group, Arrowheart, many netizens thought that Choi Jongho would go on to become a soloist. However, in a shocking update from KQ Entertainment, it has been announced that Choi has found a home as the eighth member of their pre-existing group Ateez. KQ stated that Choi and the Ateez members had been in friendly relations even before he left Arrowheart, and decided afterwards that they wanted to work together on a career level as well. This places Choi as the main vocalist and new maknae of the group. Many Arrowheart fans are conflicted: this report was made just one month after it was announced that Arrowheart would be disbanding following the termination of the remaining members’ contracts. Read our article here for more information.

Tune in to the Ateez livestream one week from today for the group’s first appearance as eight.

Jongho was sure he had never been more jittery in his life. His leg would not stop bouncing no matter how much he tried to. He refused to take anything for it; he wanted to be up and alert for such a momentous stream.

“They’re going to love you,” San reassured him. “I’ve seen you looking on Twitter. Everyone has been super excited. They can’t wait to hear you on our songs or with us.”

“And if anyone says anything mean to our maknae, I’m gonna beat them up,” Wooyoung declared.

Jongho rolled his eyes, looking at him with amusement. “When are you going to stop milking that you’re not the youngest anymore?”

“Never. I am never letting this go.”

Any response he had was stopped when the staff behind the camera called out, “30 seconds until we’re live.”

His stomach flipped over again.

“You will do amazing, do you hear me?” San repeated. “It is, like, literally impossible not to love you.”

“You can say that again,” Hongjoong snorted. “Okay, everybody shut up.”

They all sat still. Yunho interlocked their fingers underneath the table.

The staff member gave them a thumbs-up.

In unison, they inhaled. Jongho felt like he might have taken a deeper breath than the others.

“Eight makes one team!” they chanted, the words uttered for the first time in front of an audience.

The words felt right. He felt right.

For the first time in a long, long while, Jongho knew that he was right where he was meant to be.