Chapter Text
Three years ago, Lee Minho had still been the kind of person people naturally gravitated toward. Unbearably but adorably loud, sarcastic without effort, and always rolling his eyes while happily taking care of everyone around him.
Back then, he used to complain when the apartment got too quiet. He found comfort when Jisung would stay up until three in the morning talking nonsense from the couch while Minho cooked something neither of them needed, and somehow that had become normal. Their friends had been over constantly. Felix and Jeongin stealing eggs out of the fridge, Hyunjin arguing with Seungmin from a completely different room, Changbin wrestling a squawking Jisung onto the floor while Chan laughed so hard he cried. The apartment had always felt warm. Lived in. Real.
Now it feels abandoned, even despite the fact Minho never leaves it.
The curtains in the living room stay closed almost all the time because he hates sunlight now. It makes the dust too visible. Makes the apartment look emptier than it already is. Delivery bags pile near the kitchen because sometimes he forgets they’re even there to begin with. His world has narrowed down to the same handful of rooms, the same routines, the same silence that presses against his ears so hard some nights it feels physical.
He works remotely for a company no one even knows he works for because after the breakup, he had quit his old job without warning and disappeared so completely that eventually people stopped asking questions. The new job pays well. Too well, honestly, considering he barely speaks during meetings and keeps his camera permanently off. But he works constantly, takes every extra assignment, answers emails at four in the morning, because work is easier than sleeping and sleeping is easier than remembering.
Not that remembering ever really stopped.
Minho sits in front of his laptop for fourteen, sometimes sixteen hours a day, shoulders hunched under oversized hoodies that hang off him now. He’s lost so much weight over the years that his own body feels unfamiliar. His wrists look fragile. His collarbones push sharply against pale skin. There are days he survives off coffee and whatever delivery food he can force down without getting sick.
His hair grew past his shoulders about a year back because he stopped caring enough to cut it regularly. Sometimes a hair stylist comes to the apartment when it gets too unmanageable. Even then, he barely speaks during appointments. Just sits there silently while someone trims dead ends and tries not to stare too obviously at the condition he’s in.
There are still pieces of Jisung everywhere if someone looks closely enough. A hoodie shoved into the back of the closet that Minho had never washed because it still faintly smells like him three years later. A ramen bowl with a stupid cartoon fox on it that Jisung used constantly because he said food tasted better in “cute dishes.” Photos turned face down in drawers because Minho can’t bear looking at them but can’t throw them away either. Nothing in the apartment has really changed since the night Jisung left. Minho had thought about moving once, briefly, but the idea of strangers packing up their life together into cardboard boxes made him physically sick.
So he stayed.
Three years.
Three years since Jisung had stood in the middle of the apartment shaking so hard he could barely breathe, staring at Minho like he was someone unrecognizable. Three years since Minho stumbled through the front door barely able to stand upright, clothes wrinkled, skin covered in bruises and hickeys that looked violent under the apartment lighting. Three years since Jisung screamed at him to tell him it wasn’t true, and Minho – still dizzy, still nauseous, head splitting apart – couldn’t get the words out correctly. The memory comes in fragments now. Jisung crying. The sound of something breaking against the wall. Minho trying to reach for him and nearly collapsing because his legs weren’t working right. Jisung backing away like Minho disgusted him.
Then the front door slamming.
After that, everything happened fast. Too fast. Felix and Hyunjin blocked Minho’s number before morning, and the rest of the group followed suit in a matter of days. Chan had lasted the longest before finally cutting contact too, and Minho had never blamed him for it. None of them had asked for explanations after a certain point because what explanation could possibly exist? Minho had come home destroyed and covered in another person’s marks. Jisung had been devastated. The evidence had spoken for itself.
At least that’s what everyone believed.
Minho rubs both hands over his face and leans back in his chair, staring blankly at the dim apartment around him. His laptop screen glows against the darkness. 2:14 AM blinks from the corner of the monitor. He hasn’t eaten since yesterday morning, though hunger barely registers anymore. His phone sits facedown beside the keyboard, untouched except for work notifications and the occasional grocery delivery reminder that pings in weekly.
Most days Minho didn’t even bother looking.
The worst part was that time hasn’t made any of it feel farther away. If anything, it feels sharper now. Cleaner. The shock had worn off years ago, leaving behind something quieter and uglier. Back then, during the first few months, Minho had still thought maybe eventually someone would listen to him long enough for him to explain. Now he wasn’t even sure he wanted them to. Some things sit too heavy inside a person for too long before they start turning rotten. Every time Minho thinks too hard about that night at the club, his stomach twists hard enough to make him feel sick. There are still gaps in his memory that terrify him. Still moments that come back out of order. A drink shoved into his hand. Hands grabbing at him. Someone’s familiar laughter. His own voice sounding weak, pleading.
Then Jisung’s face when Minho finally stumbled through the apartment door.
That part stays perfectly clear.
~~~
The first time Chan came back, Minho honestly thought he was hallucinating.
It had been a little over a year since the breakup by then. A year since everyone disappeared from his life so completely it almost felt coordinated. Minho had gotten used to the silence after a while. Not accepting it exactly, but adjusted to it the same way people adjusted to chronic pain; eventually the body stopped reacting so violently because there was no point anymore. By then, his apartment already looked half-dead. Curtains permanently shut. Dishes stacked in the sink because he forgot they existed. Laundry left untouched for weeks at a time. He had already started working remotely and avoiding cameras during meetings because people at his new company kept asking if he was sick.
The knock at the door had startled him enough that he almost didn’t answer.
He remembered standing there for several seconds just staring at the wood, trying to figure out who would even come looking for him anymore. Nobody did that now. Nobody called. Nobody texted outside of automated delivery notifications. For one irrational second, something awful and desperate inside him had thought maybe Jisung.
But when Minho finally opened the door, Chan was standing there looking nervous in a way Minho had never seen before.
Chan looked healthier than Minho remembered. Rested. Hair shorter. Better clothes. Like life had continued normally for him while Minho’s had stopped completely. He had taken one look at Minho and visibly lost his breath.
At the time, Minho had been too exhausted to care. He’d just stared at Chan blankly from behind the black mask covering the lower half of his face, one hand still loosely holding the doorknob. He remembered Chan’s eyes flickering over him in quick, horrified pieces — the weight loss, the long hair hanging limply past his shoulders, the hollow eyes, the oversized hoodie swallowing his frame whole. Chan had probably expected anger. Or screaming. Or bitterness after disappearing for an entire year.
Instead, Minho had felt absolutely nothing.
Not relief. Not happiness. Not even resentment.
Just tired.
“Minho-yah,” Chan had said quietly, like he wasn’t sure the person standing in front of him was actually real. “Uh… hey.”
Minho didn’t answer.
The silence had stretched long enough to become uncomfortable, but Chan still looked like he was waiting for something. A reaction maybe. Some sign that Minho cared he was there. Eventually Chan awkwardly cleared his throat and asked if he could come inside.
Minho had just blinked and headed back inside without a word.
That was how it started again, if it could even be called that. Chan began showing up every week or two after that, always carrying too much food or random things Minho didn’t need. Sometimes the groceries that had been abandoned by the front door. Sometimes extra clothes. Once, a humidifier because Chan said the apartment air felt dry enough to kill someone. Minho never thanked him. Not because he was angry, but because speaking itself had started to feel exhausting. Conversations required energy he genuinely did not have anymore. Chan would sit at the kitchen counter rambling softly about work or music while Minho answered in one-word responses, if he answered at all.
Chan kept trying anyway.
That was the part Minho didn’t, and still doesn’t, understand.
Not once during those visits did Chan ever ask why Minho wouldn’t look at him directly anymore. He never asked why Minho always kept the black mask on even inside the apartment. At first Chan probably assumed it was because Minho didn’t want to be seen after everything that happened, and honestly, that was partly true. But mostly it was because of the scar.
Even now, three years later, Minho could still remember the feeling of Hyunjin’s ring slicing into his face.
The day after Jisung left, Minho had still barely been functioning. His memories of those first few days were smeared together strangely, distorted around the edges from lack of sleep and whatever the hell had happened at the club that night. He remembered sitting on the floor against the kitchen cabinets sometime in the afternoon because standing felt difficult. His head had been pounding so badly he thought he might throw up. Jisung’s side of the closet had already been emptied. The apartment felt wrong without his things in it.
Then the front door slammed open hard enough to hit the wall.
Hyunjin had stormed inside looking genuinely murderous, with Changbin following helplessly behind him. Changbin had tried to grab Hyunjin’s arm once, quietly saying his name like he already knew this was a bad idea, but Hyunjin shook him off instantly. Minho barely had time to stand before Hyunjin was screaming.
He remembered pieces of it clearly. The words “cheating whore.” The sound of Hyunjin crying while yelling it. Changbin standing near the doorway looking pale and deeply uncomfortable but not stopping it either because what defense could Minho possibly have? From their perspective, Jisung had spent years loving someone who betrayed him in the worst way imaginable.
Minho had tried to say something once. He thinks it might've been Hyunjin's name.
Then Hyunjin punched him.
Hard.
The force of it knocked Minho sideways into the edge of the counter, the corner digging painfully into his ribs before he crashed onto the floor, and for a second he genuinely couldn’t process what had happened. His vision had flashed white, and there had just been this warm rush down his face followed by Changbin suddenly swearing and grabbing Hyunjin backward. Hyunjin’s beautiful, 3 carat diamond engagement ring had cut straight through Minho’s cheek in a brutal diagonal line, deep enough that blood immediately started pouring down his jaw and onto his chest. Changbin had gone white when he saw it.
“Oh my fucking god—”
Minho remembered touching his face slowly and staring at the blood covering his fingers with complete detachment. Hyunjin looked horrified for maybe half a second after realizing how deep the cut actually was, but then his expression twisted right back into rage.
“Good,” he spat shakily. “You fucking deserve worse.”
After they left, Minho slid down into the pool of his own blood, sobbing.
He probably should have gone to the hospital. The cut had been deep enough that every small movement of his mouth reopened it for days. Blood stained his pillowcases. His hoodies. The bathroom sink. But Minho couldn’t bring himself to care. Taking care of it would have required effort, and at that point he already felt like something inside him had shut down permanently.
So it healed badly. Ugly.
The scar stretched from high on his cheekbone nearly down toward the corner of his mouth, jagged and uneven because it had never been stitched properly. Some parts remained raised and dark while others sank inward slightly. It changed his entire face. Back then, Minho used to obsess over scars and blemishes, and hated anything that disrupted clean skin. Jisung used to tease him constantly for spending longer on skincare than anyone else in the apartment.
Now he hid half his face behind black fabric every time another human being saw him.
Especially Chan.
Because even after everything, Minho couldn’t stomach seeing guilt on Chan’s face too. And he knew exactly what expression Chan would make if he saw the scar and tried realizing where it came from.
But the worst part of all this? No one, not even Chan, knew about Minho’s parents.
A month before Chan showed up at his apartment again, Minho had gotten a phone call in the middle of a work meeting telling him there had been an accident outside Gimpo. Wet roads. Drunk driver. Instant death, apparently. The woman on the phone kept using words like immediate impact and painless like those things were supposed to comfort him. Minho had traveled back home alone. Handled the funeral arrangements alone. Stood beside two caskets alone. Not a single person from his old life knew.
Chan had sat in Minho’s kitchen days later talking about some annoying coworker while Minho silently drank cold coffee across from him, freshly returned from burying both of his parents, and never said a word about it.
He wasn’t even sure why. Maybe because grief felt embarrassing now. Maybe because he genuinely believed none of it mattered anymore. Or maybe because after losing Jisung, then everyone else, Minho had quietly started believing he was the kind of person terrible things simply happened to.
And after a while, people like that stopped asking for comfort.