Work Text:
Sitting on his desk is a piece of paper titled “Future Aspirations - min. 300 words.” Who asks middle schoolers what they want to be eight years from now anyway?, he asks himself, but Sunwoo picks up his pencil anyway.
He’s about to start writing the answer everyone expects from him— “professional soccer player,” the first word underlined twice— but he stops himself, and he pulls the tip of his pencil off of the paper’s surface, leaving a single, lonely dot of lead on the sheet of paper.
Something in him stirs and he grows pensive, as pensive as middle schoolers get. He has an audition next week, his fingers itching for something new. Kim Sunwoo has always been good at everything, good enough to take chances like spontaneously agreeing to audition for LOEN Entertainment after a casting director had tapped him on the shoulder at an arcade last weekend. Besides, he’s been reaching for his guitar more often these days, and spends too much time on music-centric Naver boards once he gets home from soccer practise everyday. In a state of ambiguity, Sunwoo smiles, slightly coy and ever-confident, as he’s poised himself to be, and puts pencil back to paper.
When Sunwoo is fifteen, he asks himself what it means to “be,” and decides the answer is “something.” So that’s what he writes.
#
There's sweat dripping down his neck, soaking the back of his school uniform, the autumn sun just barely hovering over the far distant Seoul skyline. Sunwoo glances at his watch, kept in motion by the balls of his feet, as his mind debates between sprinting towards the station or riding the bus anyways. He hasn't told anybody about this, he's probably going to be scolded by his mother once she finds out that he not only woke up late, but also skipped school for the day to audition for an entertainment company. There are two things that Sunwoo knows about LOEN: one, that IU is an artist under their label, and two, that AOA trains in their building. But Sunwoo has no time to fix his hair or check his under-eye circles at the chance of a spontaneous run-in, because his audition is in ten minutes, and he's nowhere within the vicinity of Samseong-dong.
He decides against the bus and jogs towards the street to hail a cab-- his wallet is going to hate this, and he's been eyeing that knockoff Champion hoodie from a shop in Hongdae for awhile, but he's sure he'll be able to afford more than a knockoff once he passes the audition. The ajusshi in the driver’s seat takes one look at the address-- scrawled on a crumpled up piece of paper in Sunwoo's surprisingly legible script for an adolescent boy at the tail-end of his middle school days-- purses his lips, and steps so hard on the gas that Sunwoo flies into the backseat, fumbling awkwardly for his seatbelt, taking the first couple of deep breaths since he started his day barely fifteen minutes ago, his hair sticking up in all the wrong places and sleep still ridden in his eyes.
The staff members guarding the doors to the audition raise their eyebrows when he shows up in his uniform, but pass him a number anyways. Sunwoo peels it back, pastes it on his shirt lopsidedly, before stepping into the waiting room, where another staff member looks him up and down, takes another second to note his number, and says, "you've barely just made it."
Sunwoo shrugs. The man scribbles something onto the clipboard in his hand, then nods in the direction of the room. "Well, you're next. You can leave your jacket and backpack out here, just take yourself into the room, and don't say anything until they ask you to begin."
The doors are big and blue before him, almost threatening, but he’s Kim Sunwoo, the best soccer player his school has ever seen. Sunwoo waits for the music that echoes inside-- was that Lucifer, by SHINee?-- stops, before an anonymous face exits the room and pushes past him. Sunwoo summons all his courage, takes a deep breath, in through the nose and out the mouth, and steps through the open doors.
#
Naturally, he passes the audition. When he steps into Cre.ker for the first time, weary after a day of school (his parents were enthusiastic about him passing the audition-- less enthusiastic about him playing hooky-- as they were when he picked up a guitar for the first time, when he told them he wanted to join the soccer club in third grade, as they always are about his new pursuits... so long as he stayed in school), he’s given a locker, then told to follow a hyung named Sangyeon. He introduces himself to Sunwoo with a polite, practised smile.
When Sunwoo asks him how long he’d been training, he rubs the back of his head and responds with “Today? I came in at eight, maybe nine in the morning? As for how long I’ve been a trainee… I guess we’re coming up to five years now.”
It’s at that moment that Sunwoo realizes exactly what he’s gotten into. The halls are quiet until they turn a corner, and he sees a door that seems to belong to the only room currently in use. He feels the bass thumping under his feet, the beat growing more and more resonant as he and Sangyeon approach its source. As if on cue, the music cuts as soon as they open the door to the dance practise room, and Sunwoo’s eyes meet seven other pairs.
When Sunwoo is fifteen, he meets Sangyeon, Jaehyun, Younghoon, Changmin, Juyeon, Haknyeon, and Chanhee for the first time. Winter is at its cusp, but the cool draft that hits Sunwoo’s back from the door that he’s opened is more refreshing than unwanted when standing in a room of sweaty, tired bodies that haven’t left it for hours.
A week into training and Sunwoo comes to realize that he isn’t the best at anything anymore.
When Changmin dances, he feels like he’s watching an idol perform onstage; Sunwoo sees him and knows he’s where he belongs, that it makes all the sense in the world for Changmin to be here. He’s never heard anything as robust and melodic as Sangyeon’s voice, and isn’t surprised to find out that Chanhee is a vocalist either, given that when he speaks, his voice twinkles. And he doesn’t stand a chance at being the best looking, not when Jaehyun, Juyeon, and Younghoon exist in the room.
And Haknyeon… Sunwoo doesn’t think he’s met anyone that shines as bright as he does. He’s a bit of an enigma, and only shows up to the training room on weekends. Once he’s there, though, he never seems to leave, until Monday whisks him away again. Given how infrequently Sunwoo sees him in the practise room, he isn’t shocked to find that Haknyeon isn’t always on the same page as the rest of the trainees whenever he shows up to practise.
Sunwoo’s trying to hide the second-hand disdain from showing up on his face one day, when Haknyeon just isn’t landing a sequence properly, causing their progress to stagger. From the corner of his eye, Sunwoo sees their manager, stood in the shadows with crossed arms, his lips pursed, and expression stoic. Then out of the other, he sees Changmin dart across the room, gently grasping Haknyeon by the upper arm to pull him aside so they can practise one-on-one. Juyeon walks to the head of the studio to lead in Changmin’s stead, and Sunwoo’s attention is pulled back to training.
It’s only after Changmin tells him that Haknyeon flies in from Jeju every Friday night, and leaves late on Sunday evenings, that he begins to understand a little better. Sunwoo doesn’t pry, and continues to converse with Haknyeon in brief intervals because he doesn’t want to detract from either of their practise time. At least, that’s what he tells himself.
“Here,” Sunwoo says, handing Haknyeon a cold bottle of vitamin water he’d just pulled from the vending machine in the hallway. It’s a Saturday evening, and they’re taking fifteen to rest before practise starts up again. Sunwoo pulled two bottles just in case, but when he noticed that Haknyeon wasn’t leaving his spot on the floor anytime soon, he decided to kick his compassion into gear.
“Thanks,” Haknyeon breathes, pressing the bottle against his forehead. It’s been a strangely warm week for winter in Seoul, but the building’s internal heating system failed to adjust to the change in time so things feel exponentially warmer than usual. Sunwoo slides onto the floor next to Haknyeon, their backs pressed against the floor-to-ceiling mirrors of the dance practise room, the heat of their bodies leaving shadows of steam on its surface.
Saturday evening means that Haknyeon has to leave again tomorrow, hopping onto the express bus to Gimpo that leaves from the station two streets over from the training building. The only thing he’ll take with him is a backpack and the duffel bag that holds all of his clothes for the weekend-- mostly comprised of training gear. When he stays for the weekend, he alternates between staying with Jaehyun and Changmin, and sometimes with Chanhee, who currently occupies a rundown officetel owned by his aunt. Strangely enough, Sunwoo hasn’t thought about offering his home up yet. He makes a mental note to ask his parents if it’s okay before next weekend.
“Isn’t it hard coming back and forth all the time?” Sunwoo asks. It’s a bit of an obvious answer, but he wants to hear it from Haknyeon anyways.
“Hm? From Jeju to Seoul? Well, it gets harder in the winter, especially if there are winter storms or something,” Haknyeon smiles, his eyes downcast at the bottle held between his hands. “Last year, since the blizzards over Seoul were so bad, sometimes the trainers would have to Skype me into practise sessions.”
When he speaks, Haknyeon’s voice isn’t tired or pitiful, only nostalgic-- so what triggers the words that Sunwoo says next? Thinking back on it, he realizes that the pang of jealousy that overcame him may have stolen his ability to form words as well.
(Much later on, Sunwoo makes up for it in other ways.)
"Wow, they’re really trying hard for you, huh?” Sunwoo knows his words are dancing on the edge of a very sharp blade, that they might imply something that Sunwoo doesn’t think he means for them to. That they might cause Haknyeon to hurt, to overthink.
Haknyeon laughs slightly, the taste on his tongue a little bitter. “I know right? Sometimes it’s tough, sometimes I wonder what I’m still doing here, but--”
“-- but don’t we all?”
Sunwoo puts the conversation on hold, hauling himself to his feet to stretch before moving to the center of the room. “Well, there must be a reason for it. Both for why you’re here, and why they want you here. Don’t sell yourself short, Joo Haknyeon… hyun--”
“You don’t need to call me hyung.” Haknyeon interrupts with a smile. “Just Haknyeon is fine. Thanks, Sunwoo.”
As if on cue, Juyeon and Chanhee enter the room again, signalling the end of breaktime. When Haknyeon walks past Sunwoo to take his spot on the floor, he drops his voice and whispers, “Well, you can drop the ‘hyung’ when no one else is around to hear it.”
#
Sunwoo meets his middle school friends once, out of obligation to himself after a half-serious promise he made the week or two before his audition ("If I pass, we'll go out for chicken, on you guys." "Wait, that makes no sense, we know you'll pass-- you should buy the chicken for us!"). He slides into the booth they’re sitting at with a trayful of three orders of yangnyeom chicken and three cans of Chilsung cider, Junjae and Hwiseong staring hungrily at the steaming plates before them before looking up at Sunwoo with cheeky, smug smiles on their faces.
"Chilsung? You're weak, Kim." Hwiseong quips, as they all dig into the meal.
Sunwoo puts on a strained smile as he pops his can open and recalls Chanhee’s advice to him before he left the dorm: keep them entertained for forty-five minutes, and if you feel like it hasn’t been worth it when that amount of time is up, don’t force yourself to stay for any longer.
He’s quiet throughout dinner, not because he isn’t in the mood to speak, but because the things Junjae and Hwiseong talk about are so unrelatable that he finds his mind wandering to other things in the interim of their conversation. It’s to the point that he redirects attention from himself whenever they ask him about his life by making the excuse that he’s worn out from training.
His friends never prod. It’s as if they’re uninterested in his life, something that irks Sunwoo, who isn’t cocky, per-se-- but very sure that he leads a much more interesting day-to-day than they do. It’s something he wants to share, but not because he wants to brag about it… so why aren’t they asking any questions?
Instead, they banter-- about girls, their shitty teachers-- and it puts a vivid and unfamiliar sour taste in his mouth. He remembers one of the lectures from their managers about what to avoid in conversations with people outside of the company, of how they should limit contact with people they don’t think they can trust with their reputations. When Sunwoo left for dinner, he didn’t think his feelings for his friends had changed very much, that he hadn’t changed-- but with how the night seems to be progressing, he’s realizing that isn’t the case at all. It’s a realization that sends an unfamiliar form of fear up and through his spine that he does his best to ignore, but the feeling grows sharper as the evening deepens. For once, Sunwoo doesn’t know what to do. Maybe it scares him a bit. He’ll ask Chanhee about it later, if he can’t figure it out on his own.
Out of discomfort, and before the conversation potentially takes a turn for the worse, he decides to change the subject.
“So, you guys still in the soccer club?” Sunwoo asks, taking a sip from his cola.
Bringing up soccer was a defense mechanism, because it’s always been something Sunwoo founds confidence in. When they were in middle school, classmates, seniors, and juniors alike looked to Sunwoo with admiration, since his skills stood out above the rest.
“Soccer? Nah, Sunwoo. What high schooler wants to spend their time in a club after school every day? Now it’s all about going to the noraebang, or PC-bang. After school clubs are for kids.” Junjae responds, flecks of food flying out of his mouth and onto the table between them.
Sunwoo’s eyebrow twitches. Have his friends always been so uninspired? And if so, how the fuck did tolerate them for so long?
Chanhee’s words mingle with their manager’s, and he takes a deep breath through his nose, closing his eyes for a moment no one would notice. Maybe he’s being a little over-dramatic, but at this point, he just doesn’t have the energy to care. He’s going to fake it.
Isn’t that what idols do, anyway?
Somewhere along the conversation, his friends praise him for how much he’s changed. He forces a laugh. “Really, I don’t think I have, though.” He lets them have their fill of chicken with one eye on the watch on his wrist. It hits the 45 minute mark, and he gets up to leave.
“We’ll support you, Kim Sunwoo!” Hwiyoung cheers, a half bitten piece of chicken in one hand. On his way out, he hears a girl ask them who he is. “Oh, him? He’s one of my friends, and he’s training to be an idol…”
Well, if Sunwoo gets his friend a girlfriend, he guesses that’s one way to be remembered.
#
Though he’s new at the company, Sunwoo learns quickly-- catching up has always been one of his strong suits-- so being dropped into a pool of trainees that all have more experience than he does, doesn’t faze him. Not before long, he finds himself standing second-from-the-front during dance practise, and is invited to join advanced vocal lessons with Sangyeon, Chanhee and Jaehyun, to his delight. His sense of time shifts, and Sunwoo forgets what it means to live according to when the sun rises and sets. Instead, he spends his days in Cre.ker’s windowless practise room, skips meals-- some because he forgets, others because he’s told to-- and timekeeps according to the number of loops their practise playlist has gone through.
It’s July 2016, and they have a dorm now. Moving during summer’s peak was absolute hell, but Haknyeon doesn’t have to fly back and forth anymore, to everyone’s delight. Three new trainees-- Jacob, Eric, and Hyunjoon-- have joined, and Sunwoo isn’t the youngest anymore. When Jacob walks into their apartment with three huge suitcases, a cardboard box (full of cereal, they discover later on) and a guitar slung over his shoulder, Sunwoo makes sure the first thing they do once he’s settled in is start a jam session.
He hasn’t played in a long time, and finds his fingers red and swollen after an hour and a half of plucking and awkward small talk, mostly because Jacob isn’t confident enough in his Korean to speak comfortably. Nonetheless, something about going back to his instrument makes the apartment instantly feel like home.
“When I was seven, my dad handed me a guitar and taught me how to play. I’ve been playing since, but I never took my playing out of the house.” Sunwoo smiles at Jacob, who smiles back. His eyes are wrought with exhaustion, and Sunwoo wonders for a moment why Jacob agreed to jam in the first place, wonders if it was because he was too nervous to say no.
Sunwoo continues, “It’s nice, being able to play with someone different.” Then, he stands to leave Jacob to settle in once he sees Sangyeon watching them from a corner, ready to step in as his guide.
“I hope it makes Korea feel a little more like home for you, too.”
All eleven of them are sitting in a circle in the living room. Sunwoo has never lived with this many people before; they draw sticks when deciding room assignments, and he ends up in the biggest bedroom with Younghoon and Juyeon.
The days pass, and they grow used to one another. While everyone’s roles are pretty much written out in stone, given that they all excel in separate things, Sunwoo is instead tasked with deciding what his “thing” really is.
It’s another question about being or becoming, and not one he’s particularly eager to answer, because it’s a decision he knows he’ll have to carry with him for the rest of his life. One day, their manager calls him into a separate practise room, one of three on their floor that are usually designated for use by the members that are vocalists and rappers.
“You’re good at a little bit of everything, Sunwoo,” he says, flipping through written notes on Sunwoo’s development since he began training a month or so ago. “But we don’t have a main rapper right now, and your timbre is great, so why don’t you focus on that?”
Sunwoo never expected artistic freedom or anything of the sort when he chose to join the company, although something in his chest longs for that choice, the ability to perform the art that he’s created on his own, he’s willing to be patient to get to that point. So he agrees with their manager’s suggestion, fuss-free. Maybe if he were a little more driven, he would have pushed for a vocal position instead. It’d be unfair for Chanhee-hyung and Sangyeon-hyung to carry the group vocally, and Jaehyun-hyung is already poised to be a dancer and a visual-- is the reasoning he probably would have used for himself, but he keeps those words, locks them in a box, and throws away the key.
It’s one of the things that makes him a little boring, he thinks to himself as he leaves the practise room to return to the dance studio, raising his index finger to his lips to nibble at the calloused skin there, feeling strangely, completely fine.
#
It’s the Sunday after Sunwoo’s decided on his position, and winter is rapidly descending onto Seoul, leaving all its trees bare. It’s been a long three months; living with ten other people is harder than Sunwoo expected it to be, even with two bathrooms. Tripping on the unnecessarily huge pile of shoes at their entryway when leaving and coming home each day is mundane, the collection of shoe sizes and styles seemingly growing with each passing week, courtesy of “sponsorships from company friends.” Sunwoo gets the feeling that Cre.ker is a lot more important than he made them out to be the week he auditioned.
He’s been having trouble sleeping as of late, finding that even the slightest rustle of sheets, or too loud of a breath from his roommates, renders him wide awake. Sunwoo doesn’t blame his hyungs, and has instead taken to quietly descending from his top-bunk to sleep on the large leather couch in their living room, only to be shaken awake by their manager in the wee hours of the morning to weakly shuffle back to his room.
He stumbles into rehearsal after a particularly long day at school to find Haknyeon and Changmin already there. He waves, greeting them as per usual, but something in the way Haknyeon greets back-- a pursed smile-- strikes him as unfamiliar. Their manager opens the door, calling Haknyeon into the hallway again-- again?-- and leaving Sunwoo and Changmin alone in the practise room, the air around them stale.
Changmin brings a thumb up to his lips, nibbling at it as he stares at himself in the mirror.
“What’s up?” Sunwoo asks, shrugging off his backpack to lay it against the back wall. He lifts his hands to unbutton his shirt, letting the weak air con in the room through his shirt. When will they ever fix the airflow in this building?
“It… hm.” Changmin hums, his voice flat, gaze not leaving his own reflection.
“It’s just me, hyung--”
“They want to send Haknyeon. To Produce.”
Sunwoo’s eyes widen, and he fingers stop in their tracks, the button in his shirt abandoned, halfway through its hole. He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know what it means for them and the team, is too afraid to ask. So he doesn’t say anything, can only manage a quiet “oh,” in response, before Jaehyun and Hyunjoon enter the room, and the air is light again.
It doesn’t last, though. Once all eleven members are gathered, their manager sits them down, and explains what the next couple of months are going to look like. Haknyeon’s going to audition at the end of December-- that’s next month-- and if everything goes according to plan, he’ll be gone from February to June.
There’s a cold silence that fills the room, Sunwoo’s eyes shifting to Changmin’s appalled face, completely different from the expression he wore when he let the words slip earlier. Jaehyun-hyung, with knitted eyebrows, nibbling on his bottom lip, whose gaze isn’t lifting from the floor-- clearly he was the obvious choice for the perfect, well-rounded trainee that would do well on a survival show. What did it mean? Sunwoo doesn’t know what to think, know what to say, only remembers Haknyeon’s dejected face from when he was struggling to keep up a couple of days ago, his eyes void of the spark that Sunwoo saw the first time they met.
“Well,” Sangyeon says, “that's that, then. Let's keep going.”
It’s a stupidly blunt thing to say, but the tension lifts from the room as soon as the words leave Sangyeon’s lips. No one wants to fight right now; no one except Haknyeon has the rhyme or reason to, either. Sunwoo watches Haknyeon’s reflection swallow his tears, watches Jaehyun swallow his pride, and realizes that if the people around him are learning, it’s high time he does, as well.
Weeks pass, and before they know it, Haknyeon’s audition is just around the corner. He’s been coming home late each day, carrying the shadow of a burden on his back, but never failing to shoot Sunwoo a smile before he enters his room and isn’t seen again until the following morning. A couple of days ago, a new kid named Kevin joined the company, and moved into Changmin and Hyunjoon’s room, now an uncomfortably tight setup. Most of the time, though, he and Jacob, and sometimes Eric, are sat in the kitchen, chattering eagerly in english about things like home; Sunwoo can’t recall if he’s ever seen Jacob smile like that.
The Sunday after he passes his audition, Haknyeon leaves the dorm with a suitcase and the same old duffle bag that’s so familiar to Sunwoo. He smiles at them nervously before he leaves, eleven faces with mixed expressions of worry, fear, excitement, longing that stare back at him, all crammed into their tiny, crowded, shoe-ridden entryway.
“Just pretend I’m going back to Jeju for the week, just like old times,” he sniffs into a laugh, trying to lighten the mood.
“We’ll miss you, Haknyeon.”
“Make us proud.”
“Shut up, Jaehyun. That’s a given, isn’t it? You will make us proud.”
Amongst the banter, bickering and laughter, Sunwoo thinks of what he wants to say, but time is ticking and the crack in the door is growing bigger for Haknyeon to leave through, and Sunwoo’s always thought that words were his strong suit, but in that moment, he’s left with none at all.
So he lifts an arm, puts on a tight smile, and waves goodbye.
#
Today, Sunwoo’s sprawled across his bed, catching up on the latest season of Show Me The Money. He’s in the midst of questioning his decision to watch the show at all when there’s a knock at the door; it’s their manager, a thin stack of papers held in his hand. He cuts straight to the point, peering up at Sunwoo from where he’s stood by Sunwoo’s desk.
“How confident are you in your free-styling right now? If we give you two weeks notice from today, would you be interested in starring on High School Rapper?”
Sunwoo sits up immediately, careful not to bang his head on the ceiling, and his manager tells him everything. It’s another survival show by Mnet, and a connection to the company had offered them a slot after seeing a short clip that Sunwoo had submitted to management as a part of his monthly evaluation, which they eventually uploaded onto the “Cre.kerz” YouTube channel.
A surge of confidence, akin to what he felt that week before he auditioned for LOEN, flows through his veins. Sunwoo has the upper hand-- he’s Hanlim, after all. He’s wanted to experiment with lyricism for a long time. The bubbling naivete of 15 year-old Kim Sunwoo rises to the surface, and Sunwoo shrugs casually. “Sure, what’s there to lose?”
Their debut date is ambiguous, even more so now that Haknyeon is off to Produce. At this point, no one wants to admit it out loud, but of all twelve of them, Haknyeon is a liability the company is willing to risk for a reason. In other words, they’ve invested enough in him to keep him in the permanent lineup… but they’re also to go without. Something tugs at Sunwoo’s heartstrings-- perhaps that same naivete-- that hopes and prays that whatever the outcome, ‘Cre.kerz’ debuts as twelve.
If the opportunity to distract himself from their situation for just a moment, to grow, has fallen straight into his lap, then what’s to stop him?
He’ll take that chance by the neck with both his hands, and refuse to let go.
#
It’s over before he knows it. In two weeks, Sunwoo is back in Cre.ker’s practise room, going about his days as if he’d never left. When he returns to the dorm, that night after they’ve filmed episode two and his school is eliminated, Sangyeon and Jacob greet him at the door with tired smiles, walk him into the kitchen to hand him a pack of his favourite hanyak. Sangyeon pats him on the head, and tells him that he’s done well, to get to bed soon, he must be tired. No one’s upset with him, not in the slightest-- a part of him feels that the reason why is because they all hope that this is how it’ll go all the time, that Haknyeon will come home just the same.
He’s given the weekend of his birthday off, so he spends it with his family. Sunwoo remembers how to bicker with his younger sister, but is a little disappointed with himself when he realizes he’s almost forgotten how his mother’s cooking tastes.
They’ve blown out the candles on his birthday cake-- a decadent chocolate mousse from Paris Baguette, as the Kim’s always do-- and sent his sister to bed, because she has cram school tomorrow. Before she leaves the living room, she blows an angry raspberry at Sunwoo, which he dutifully returns.
It finally hits Sunwoo that he’s home.
His father slides a parcel, wrapped in delicate brown paper towards him. His parents aren’t old, but he doesn’t recognize the crows feet that appear when his appa smiles.
“Happy birthday, Sunwoo.”
Sunwoo lifts it into his hands, pulling on the twine that ties it closed. “Thanks, dad. Sorry I couldn’t be here for yours.”
His father shakes his head. “You’re doing important things, though I’m sorry they don’t all turn out the way you expect them to. You did well, Sunwoo.”
Sunwoo chuckles, pulls the paper aside to reveal a simple, navy-blue travelers notebook, small enough to hold in one hand, but with pages wide enough to tell stories on. It’s much too pretty for rap lyrics, he thinks, but he’s sure to make up for that somehow.
“A notebook?” he folds it open and closed in his hands.
“Rappers are lyricists right? I think that’s the extent of my knowledge on hip-hop.”
Sunwoo laughs; the way it bounces off of their living room walls is warm and familiar. “I mean, sure? I guess I’ve been writing a lot more… writing lyrics is a lot like poetry.”
“Poets of the rhythm. Slaves to the beat.” Sunwoo’s father says through a smile. They laugh, with Sunwoo playfully launching the remnants of his wrapping paper across the dining table towards his father.
“Spare me the poetic Dad jokes, I'm begging you. But thanks, again.”
His father leans back into his seat, arms stretched towards the sky, before he folds them behind his head. This is Sunwoo’s father, the man that taught him how to play, that passed him a guitar, held in both hands, then years later, passed him countless footballs with his feet. His father never asked questions, never treated him badly, only better. He’s lucky-- he knows that now more than ever.
“I know you kids have your iPhones and iPads and such nowadays, but this old man here trusts that the best, most honest feelings leave your fingertips through a pen or pencil. Just my two cents, though.”
Sunwoo smiles tenderly, opening his new notebook to page one.
“No, Dad. I think so too.”
#
The boys have taken to ending rehearsal early every Friday night, so that they can return home and sit around the TV when Produce airs, an assortment of cheat foods scattered across their coffee table, chewing quietly as their television flashes shades of blue and grey, as they wonder if they’re watching Haknyeon’s future unfold, wondering when he’s coming back, if he is at all.
Sunwoo hasn’t told anyone, but he never votes for Haknyeon at the end of each episode. Something in his gut tells him that no one else does, either.
#
Haknyeon comes home, and there’s a collective sigh of relief-- Sunwoo isn’t going to lie and say he doesn’t feel a little bad about it. They crowd him excitedly, giving him hugs, rubbing his head, roughhousing and celebrating his return with cake, and chicken, and pizza, and all of their favourite things, and Haknyeon smiles bright, as if none of the shit that he had to put up with while he was in it alone happened at all.
The first thing Sunwoo notices is how he’s improved, how nowadays, Sunwoo’s shirt is drenched in sweat before Haknyeon’s is even close. They’ve unintentionally swapped places, with Sunwoo inching further towards the back of the room, giving Haknyeon the space between Jaehyun and Juyeon where he once stood. It’s sort of a given, now that Haknyeon’s name echoes true in every adolescent girl in South Korea’s brain. Hyoje-ssaem starts to choreograph with Haknyeon as the center in mind; he’s given more and more lines with each weekly vocal evaluation. And through it all, he doesn’t complain once, instead running on the same piece of clockwork adrenaline that he’d been conditioned to when under nationwide pressure for four months straight.
More than anyone and anything, they know that Haknyeon is strong-- but that doesn’t mean the hurt never happened, that behind that infectious smile and familiar laugh, that there aren’t any scars. Sunwoo can see it in his eyes. He wants to pull Haknyeon aside, to yank that screw out of the machine so that it slows down, and stops running, even if it's just for a minute.
He waits until the crowd in the practise room thins out for the night before tapping Haknyeon on the shoulder, asking him to stick around so they can work on the routine together. Haknyeon blinks twice, and nods in agreement. “Sure.”
They run through things once or twice, recording each other the second time, and while they’re rewatching one of the takes they took a couple of days ago to compare with their progress today, they’re finally left alone, Eric yelling a “bye” in their direction before the door closes behind him.
“How are you?” Sunwoo starts, shifting his gaze to stare right into Haknyeon’s eyes. They’re sat on the floor, crowded around Haknyeon’s phone screen.
“Me? Um… good? I think?”
“You think?” Sunwoo knows this; Haknyeon isn’t very good at lying.
Haknyeon exhales loudly before falling backwards onto the ground, spreading his arms far over his head.
“Yeah, I mean… I’m glad they let me go home last month, straight after everything ended. It’s weird, but I don’t think I’ve gotten used to being back yet. Even though this was my everything, this,” Haknyeon gestures towards the room with two great swipes of his arms, “is everything I thought that being an idol would be. I left and… all of that changed so quickly.”
Sunwoo watches him, Haknyeon’s eyes wide open as he stares at the blank wall above them. Slowly, he turns his head so that their gazes meet, and smiles tiredly.
“Sorry things didn’t work out the way they were supposed to.”
Is he apologizing to himself, or Sunwoo?
Sunwoo stills, caught in his thoughts as Haknyeon gets to his feet, stretching before he turns around.
“You good for one more round?”
But Sunwoo grabs him by the wrist, using it to pull himself up. They stare at each other through the mirror, their bodies worn after hours of practise, clothes patchy and sweat ridden and hair disheveled. Sunwoo reminisces; he looked a little something like this when he auditioned, didn’t he?
He recalls a memory from middle school, one of his coach on the soccer team. They’ve just lost a match, one they’ve trained weeks for. Members of his quirky middle school team are sat in front of a massive mirror they randomly had in their changing room, feeling sticky and worn on top of the bitter flavor of loss. Sunwoo remembers his frustration mangled with exhaustion, how it was more than just being upset over losing, how there was something that nagged at his feelings that he just didn’t understand.
But their coach stood tall in front of the team-- he was tirelessly enthusiastic, probably someone that watched too much Captain Tsubasa growing up-- and gave them all a great big smile. He hauled Sunwoo to his feet, grabbing him by the shoulders so that they faced a mirror together. His coach wore an expression nothing like his own.
“You had fun, right?” The room nodded, a droning “yes” echoing throughout the crowd, almost out of obligation-- but it isn’t completely untrue.
“Okay! Now, at yourselves in the mirror, just like Sunwoo and I. Do you see someone you’re proud of looking back at you?”
It’s a little harder for the middle school team to answer this one; the ones that do say “yes” wince at their words. Sunwoo kept his mouth shut because no, no he wasn’t, and he doesn’t know why, because soccer isn’t that important to him anyways. His coach, as if reading his mind, gripped his shoulders tightly, fixing his posture.
“Then, until that day, no matter the outcome and what gets us there, we’ll try and try harder, to become those people. Okay team?”
Next year, they return to that same tournament and win the game. Their coach doesn’t bring it up again-- maybe he’s forgotten, maybe to him it was just another one of his pep talks. But those words stay with Sunwoo, because they meant something to him.
Because they made him want to try again.
“Are you proud?” he asks Haknyeon. “When you think back on everything you did, above it all, are you proud?”
“Wh--”
“Did you have fun? And if you didn’t… you know you can be honest with me, right?”
The taken aback expression that Haknyeon wears doesn’t deter him; in fact, Sunwoo presses on.
“It was scary, right? Being in there all alone… it was like that for me too. I was really scared. But my journey was nothing like yours, was it.”
“Sunwoo…”
“Haknyeon-hyung, when you look into your reflection each day, are you proud of the person staring back at you?”
The glaze that coats Haknyeon’s eyes as soon as the words leave his mouth say enough. Sunwoo turns to envelop him in a tight embrace, pulling Haknyeon flush against his chest, in an attempt to quell the shake in his shoulders as he cries onto Sunwoo’s shirt, moisture piercing his skin.
Sunwoo doesn’t need a response; he knows Haknyeon is listening between his tears, through his gasps for air. He shuts his eyes tightly, turning to hug Haknyeon closer, pressing their heads against each other to bring his thoughts closer; the burn in Sunwoo’s chest is so tight, he doesn’t think he can manage to say what he’s always meant to. So he thinks, as loud as he can, so that he’ll never forget, so that maybe someday, he’ll be able to tell Haknyeon what he’s always believed.
I don’t want you to forget that we’re a team, that we’ve been one from the beginning, that when your heart ached, ours did too; that when you stood on that stage and sat in those chairs each week, we felt the same adrenaline for different reasons. And more than anything, I don’t want you to forget that through everything, no matter how shitty things get, we’re ready to be there, to overwrite those memories and make them better. Because reality is, but when we’re together, maybe, just maybe, we can make things feel okay.
Sunwoo’s throat is left dry after all the tears. He pulls away from Haknyeon, roughly swiping his palm against his cheek as if it’ll make a difference to the stream of salt they’ve left behind; Haknyeon laughs, swatting his arm away.
“Then until that day, until our dreams come true, and you realize what that pride feels like, I’ll be here, I’ll support you, I promise.”
Somewhere in between all the thoughts and tears, Sunwoo makes a promise to himself, too.
#
It's three in the morning, the day before the showcase, and Sunwoo can't fall asleep. He doesn’t know what time it is, just stares blankly at the living room ceiling from where he lies on his futon, and though he's alone, he can feel the apartment breathing with him.
He feels Hyunjoon's legs shaking restlessly on his top bunk, keeping Changmin awake on the bed beneath him (but Changmin's too nervous to ask him to stop, because he's just as afraid of tomorrow as Hyunjoon is); Eric and Chanhee are fast asleep because sleeping is what they do best-- but maybe Chanhee kept his eyes open for a little longer than usual, questioning whether or not he’s ready for the sun to rise just yet. Sunwoo already knows that Sangyeon and Jacob are still awake, whispers about fulfilled promises, fears and responsibilities echoing against the thin walls of their shared room. He can hear the snores from Jaehyun and Haknyeon’s room leak through the crack under their door, a sound he’s grown used to falling asleep to each night. His own roommates have stopped stirring, but before they fell asleep, he heard Younghoon’s quiet voice gently call out to Juyeon in ten minute intervals; the imagery makes him smile, because it doesn’t suit Younghoon’s cool, chic, prince facade at all.
He’s fiddling with the pages of the notebook his father gave him last April, laid atop his stomach. Sunwoo’s almost filled it to the brim, margin-to-margin, on all its pages. It’s kind of heinous in retrospect, given that he received the gift less than a year ago. But he’s found a strange comfort in his words, in the time he uses to piece them together and create meaning for not only himself, but the people around him. After flipping through it one day, their manager nodded approvingly, only to come back the day after to tell him that the company is allowing him to write his own raps moving forward. It’s exhilarating, it’s a step in the right direction; Kevin and Chanhee slung their arms over his shoulders and congratulated him, wearing proud smiles on their faces.
“We’ll catch up soon enough,” Kevin said cheekily, a tinge of competitiveness in his voice.
Sunwoo couldn’t beat the smile that appeared on his lips as well.
He exhales into the night and thinks about how far he’s come. Two years have flown by-- he wonders what would happen, who he’d be, if they’d waited just a little longer to debut. The paper between his fingertips is dry, and crinkled-- Sunwoo wonders if this was the page he’d spilled iced coffee on that one time. How many more notebooks would he have filled if they’d debuted next year, or the year after that? Would anything have changed-- and if so, would it be for better, or for worse?
As the years passed, Sunwoo came to know that the thought of “change” didn’t scare him as much as it used to; the only thing about it that does are the moments that might cause it.
Drowsiness begins to overtake him. They ended rehearsal pretty late, late enough that it only left them five hours to get a decent amount of sleep. How many has he wasted on these thoughts that have seemingly come out of nowhere, unearthing themselves and rising to the surface of his mindspace from the depths of his soul? Tomorrow’s only the beginning, after all. He has his whole life as an idol to grow, to mature and learn right from wrong, to learn what it means to be hurt and to love.
A warm pink light begins to filter through the curtains, and he laughs quietly to himself, knowing he’ll definitely regret not getting enough sleep when standing onstage in less than eight hours. He closes his eyes, the last few specks of adrenaline in his body fading to dust, and lets his dreams come true.