Chapter Text
One by one they leave.
First Minho.
With his newly shaved head, Felix couldn’t get over how different it made him look. Without his hair softening the sharpness of his features, everything about him felt… clearer. His eyes looked larger somehow, darker. His beautiful bone structure stood out in a way Felix had never noticed before, like someone had carved him from marble instead of flesh.
Minho had always been quieter than the rest of them.
But in the weeks leading up to enlistment, he shut down even more.
Felix knew how worried he was.
Not about himself.
About Jisung.
Felix found him having a lot of quiet talks with Hyunjin leading up to his departure date.
Late at night in the kitchen when everyone else had gone to bed.
On the balcony with the city lights stretching out below them.
Sometimes in the practice room after schedules, when the others had already filtered out and only the low hum of the air conditioner filled the space.
Minho would lean against the wall with his arms crossed while Hyunjin sat on the floor, long legs stretched out in front of him, listening.
They spoke quietly. Serious in a way Felix didn’t see often.
Felix never meant to overhear.
But sometimes he’d pause in the hallway when their voices carried through the open door.
“Just… watch him,” Minho said one night.
Hyunjin tilted his head slightly. “I always do.”
Minho shook his head. “You know what I mean.”
Hyunjin’s expression softened.
Jisung had always been the brightest spark among them, loud, emotional, full of energy that bounced off the walls.
But Felix knew how easily that spark could flicker when he felt alone.
Minho knew it too.
“I’ll be right beside him,” Hyunjin said finally.
Minho studied him for a moment, like he was measuring the promise.
Then he nodded once.
Felix slipped away before they could notice him listening.
The night before Minho left, Felix found Jisung curled against him on the couch, half asleep with Minho’s arm wrapped tightly around his shoulders.
Minho’s hand rested at the back of Jisung’s neck, fingers absently brushing through his hair.
Neither of them were talking.
They were just sitting there.
Like they were trying to memorize the quiet moment before everything changed.
—————————————————————————
Jisung and Hyunjin were next.
They all helped shave their heads in the dorm bathroom, clippers buzzing loudly while someone blasted music from a phone speaker to fill the silence. They joked and teased, took pictures, argued over who looked the most ridiculous.
Hyunjin kept making dramatic poses in the mirror.
Jisung tried to laugh through it.
But halfway through, when the last bit of hair fell away and he caught sight of himself in the mirror, something in him cracked. His face crumpled and he started to cry.
The room went quiet immediately.
Felix moved first, wrapping his arms around him while Changbin rubbed circles into his back and Seungmin shoved tissues into Jisung’s hands with quiet efficiency. Hyunjin stayed right in front of him, hands on his shoulders, murmuring soft nonsense until Jisung’s breathing steadied again.
Felix had never been more relieved in his life that Hyunjin would be the one beside him.
He would protect their quokka just as well, maybe even better, than Minho could.
Minho had fought it.
Hard.
He had wanted to enlist beside Jisung. He had wanted to keep him close, keep him safe, keep him sane.
But it had been pointed out, gently, and then less gently, that it wouldn’t be smart.
The two of them together were chaos. Distraction. Emotion.
If one of them struggled, the other would spiral with him.
Separating them meant at least one of them would stay steady.
Minho had hated it.
But he had agreed.
Jisung was Felix’s sunshine twin. And he would miss their antics together. Their laughter filling the dorm late at night until someone was shouting at them to be quiet. Their antics that left Chan huffing in frustration more often than in amusement.
It always started innocent enough. The two of them sitting on the couch watching reels together. Then one of them, usually Jisung, cackled so loudly he would nearly fall off the couch. Felix wheezed beside him because neither of them could breathe from laughing. The two of them got progressively louder the more they tried to shush each other.
“Will you two shut up?” Chan would shout from his room eventually.
Which only made it worse.
Jisung would slap a hand over Felix’s mouth while Felix grabbed Jisung’s arm, both of them shaking with silent laughter that wasn’t silent at all.
“Go to sleep!” Seungmin or Hyunjin would yell.
“Sorry!” they’d shout back in unison.
And then five minutes later they’d start up again.
Yes, Jisung was his twin.
But Hyunjin. He was his best friend.
The one he leaned on without thinking. The one who could read his moods before Felix even understood them himself. The one who sat beside him during long schedules and late nights in the studio and quiet mornings in the dorm kitchen.
Felix could rely on Hyunjin for anything.
And the thought of being without that for eighteen months worried him more than he liked to admit.
Hyunjin seemed to notice every time the spiral started.
Felix would be sitting alone somewhere, the couch, the practice room floor, the balcony railing, lost in his thoughts when Hyunjin would appear like he always did.
Leaning in the doorway. Watching him for a moment. Then smiling softly.
“You’ll be okay, Yongbok,” Hyunjin reassured him again and again.
Felix never knew if Hyunjin actually believed it or if he was just saying it because Felix needed to hear it.
“I’m not so sure,” Felix admitted one night.
Hyunjin sat down beside him on the balcony floor, stretching his long legs out in front of him.
The city lights flickered far below them.
“You need to do something with your time,” Hyunjin said after a moment. “You can’t just sit around and wait for us.”
Felix stared out at the skyline. “Like what?”
“Your charity work,” Hyunjin said immediately. “You love that.”
Felix shrugged.
“Go travel,” Hyunjin added.
Felix shook his head. “Not without you.”
Hyunjin huffed out a quiet laugh, bumping his shoulder against Felix’s. “You’ll survive.”
Felix glanced at him. “I don’t want to.”
Hyunjin’s smile softened.
For a moment he didn’t say anything.
Then he reached over and squeezed Felix’s hand.
“You will,” he said gently. “And when we come back you’ll have a hundred stories to tell us.”
Felix looked down at their hands for a second before nodding faintly.
He hoped Hyunjin was right.
—————————————————————————
Then it was Changbin.
His Binnie Bear.
Felix had struggled with that one more than he expected.
Maybe because Changbin had always been the loud one. The steady one. The one who filled every room with his voice and his energy and his ridiculous gym routines and the way he would throw an arm around Felix’s shoulders like he weighed nothing.
The idea of the dorm without that presence had felt… wrong.
Felix went with him to get his hair shaved.
Their hairdresser had cried almost immediately when the clippers started buzzing, her hands trembling just a little as the first pieces of hair fell away.
Changbin had laughed softly. “It grows back,” he told her gently.
She sniffed and wiped her eyes, but she kept cutting.
Felix sat in the chair beside them watching quietly, his chest tight as dark strands slid down the cape and onto the floor.
When it was finished, Changbin ran a hand over his newly bare head and made an exaggerated face in the mirror.
“Wow,” he said. “I look tough.”
The hairdresser laughed through her tears.
Felix managed a small smile.
Changbin caught his eye in the mirror and his expression softened immediately.
Afterward they went out to eat. Just the two of them.
A small restaurant they’d gone to a hundred times before. The owner greeted them like always, pretending not to notice the shaved head even though everyone in the room obviously had.
Changbin ordered too much food.
Felix picked at his plate.
“You’re quiet,” Changbin finally said.
Felix shrugged. “You’re leaving.”
Changbin hummed. “Yeah.”
Felix looked up at him then. “You could’ve waited,” he said quietly. “Gone with someone else.”
Changbin shook his head. “It’s fine.”
“But you’ll be alone.”
Changbin leaned back in his chair, studying Felix for a moment before smiling softly.
“I’m not really alone, Lix.”
Felix frowned.
Changbin tapped the table lightly. “I’ve got six idiots waiting for me when I get back.”
Felix’s throat tightened.
Changbin reached across the table and flicked his forehead gently. “And you,” he added.
Felix huffed out a weak laugh. “You’re annoying.”
“I know.”
They ate slowly after that, stretching the time out as long as they could.
Eventually the night had to end.
Outside the restaurant Changbin pulled Felix into a hug. A big one. The kind where Felix’s feet almost lift off the ground.
“You’ll be fine,” Changbin murmured.
Felix nodded against his shoulder, breathing in the familiar mix of detergent and the faint scent of the gym that always seemed to cling to him.
He leaves two days later.
Seungmin clings to him, face buried in Changbin’s neck, small hands gripping his shirt like he’s trying to hold him in place.
“Don’t change, hyung,” he whispers into Changbin’s skin. “Don’t let them change you.”
Changbin presses his forehead to Seungmin’s for a brief second, then pulls back, ruffling Seungmin’s hair roughly, teasing despite the weight in his chest.
He turns to Felix next, expression softening. “Take care of Chan,” he says quietly. “He won’t know what to do with himself with all of us gone.”
Felix lets out a small laugh, glancing across the room where Chan is already protesting.
“He barely knows what to do with himself when we’re all there,” Felix teases, a grin tugging at his lips.
Changbin laughs, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Exactly.”
“I’m right here!” Chan calls out, voice sharp but teasing.
For a moment, neither Felix nor Changbin moves, the three of them frozen in the quiet tension that comes before the inevitable goodbyes.
“Hey,” Changbin says quietly where the others can’t hear.
Felix looks up.
Changbin squeezes the back of his neck gently. “Don’t disappear on everyone while we’re gone, okay?”
Felix frowns slightly. “I won’t.”
“I mean it,” Changbin says. “You do that thing where you pretend you’re fine and then suddenly no one hears from you for three weeks.”
Felix tries to protest. Changbin raises an eyebrow. Felix sighs. “I’ll try.”
Changbin nods once, satisfied.
He lingered in the dorm doorway, pausing just long enough to take them all in.
Jeongin and Seungmin stood there, a little too quiet, eyes glimmering with unshed tears. The emptiness left by the others’ departures still pressed against every corner of the room.
Changbin’s own eyes shone, unbidden, catching the light in a way that made his jaw tighten.
Then his voice dropped, quiet but heavy, as he turned to Chan. “Take care of them,” he said.
It wasn’t casual. It wasn’t joking. It was a command wrapped in worry, in care, in the knowledge that the dorm would feel too big without the six of them.
Chan’s shoulders stiffened, a small nod his only reply, and Felix’s chest ached at the weight of it all.
Changbin gave them one last lingering look, ruffling Felix’s hair quickly, before finally stepping out, leaving the dorm quieter than it had ever been.
—————————————————————————
Last were Seungmin and Jeongin.
They shaved their heads together too.
Seungmin looked exactly the same somehow, calm, composed, like this was just another schedule he intended to complete perfectly.
Jeongin looked younger.
So much younger.
Felix had to blink a few times because suddenly all he could see was the kid who used to trail after them in oversized hoodies and bright smiles.
“Innie.” Chan had gasped and then tears that he hadn’t shed for the others were flowing, embarrassing both him and Jeongin who never did well with outward sharing of emotions.
“Sorry. Sorry.” Chan had gasped, unable to stop the flow.
Seungmin had laughed at him, but his own cheeks were wet with tears as he slung an arm over Jeongin’s shoulders.
“I’ll keep him in line,” he told Chan dryly.
Jeongin scoffed. “You mean I’ll keep you in line.”
“Just look out for one another, yeah?” Chan said.
For a moment none of them spoke.
The dorm felt smaller somehow with just the four of them standing there.
Seungmin squeezed Jeongin’s shoulder once before letting him go and stepping back.
“We will,” Seungmin said simply.
Jeongin nodded beside him, eyes flicking between Chan and Felix like he was trying to memorize them.
Felix felt that familiar tightness creeping up his throat again.
—————————————————————————
And just like that…
They were gone.
The dorm felt too big after that.
Too quiet.
Felix sat on the couch staring at the empty hallway for a long time, listening to the silence where laughter used to be.
He had never realized how loud eight people could be.
Or how lonely two could feel.
Across the room, Chan stood by the window, arms folded tightly across his chest.
Watching the sky like he was counting the days already.