Chapter Text
San looked around the doctor’s white office. It felt sterile, but something about it made him feel relaxed. He felt safe here. And yet vulnerable right to his core. The mint green couch he was sitting on was the only colorful piece of furnishing in the room, a crack of light in the emptiness he had been living in for so long.
He looked at the doctor. She gave him an encouraging smile as she kept peeling away layer after layer of his inner walls. He couldn’t even count how many times he had cried here, had cried in general. And then, one day, the tears suddenly stopped.
“You’ve made great progress, San,” the doctor said in her honeyed voice. She had always been so nice to him. Never rushed him, but gave him time to process his own feelings. She led him gently through the initial storm of emotions.
He had been angry. For heaven’s sake, he had been so, so angry! He had wanted to rip the whole world apart for its unfairness. Why did bad things always happen to the best people?
He was still angry and he doubted he would ever get rid of that feeling, but it became blunt just like the pain. San felt that he started being passive. He didn’t like that about himself, but the apathy felt like a blanket protecting him from dealing with the hurtful reality. His heart was still bleeding and San doubted it would ever heal again.
He felt like he had ceased existing. His soul was gone. He did what was expected of him, got up every morning, brushed his teeth, ate his meals, spent time with the rest of his team. But nothing of it felt real anymore. San lived in some kind of limbo, watched the world through some transparent veil that separated him from the rest of the world.
He went to therapy. He had hoped it would help him to restart his life, but no matter what he did, he felt stuck. He couldn’t let go of the past that held him back, couldn’t find the courage to take the next step forward. The future held nothing for him anymore.
“What else have you written in your diary?” the doctor asked gently.
Right, the diary. San was supposed to document his life, the activities he had engaged himself in throughout the day. He strictly kept them in a form of short notes, because if he tried to write more, he would think too much about them and thinking wasn’t good. Thinking hadn’t done him any good lately.
“Er… I… played a game with the members yesterday,” he said, nervously flipping through the pages of the notebook in his lap. He knew what the doctor was going to ask him and he really didn’t feel like talking about it more than necessary. “It was nice,” he added quickly.
The doctor nodded and wrote something down. “What game was it?” she asked.
San bit his lip. He needed a few seconds to remember and he still wasn’t sure he was right. He was there, he played the game, interacted with the others, but the moment the game was over, he let it slip out of his mind like anything else he didn’t consider important.
“It was… Scrabble…” he said slowly, looking at the doctor as if she would know the right answer to her own question.
“It sounds like fun,” she said, nodding appreciatively.
“Yes… I guess,” he said with a deep sigh. He was tired of these kinds of questions, even though he understood their importance. He wished he could give his doctor more than those vague glimpses into his inner world, but there was nothing left within him. Just the shards of lost hopes.
***
“What’s going on?” Yunho asked as he entered the living room in their dormitory. Other members were already there, among them Hongjoong looking dead serious. And even that was an understatement.
“Have a seat,” the leader said, and Yunho took a place next to Mingi. The rapper looked as nervous as the tallest member of the team felt.
“I wanted to talk to you before San returns from therapy,” Hongjoong started, fisting his hands resting on his thighs. “And I need your advice, because I have no idea how to approach him with this. I asked the manager not to tell him anything. I think it’s for the best if we tell him ourselves…”
“Hyung, you’re rambling,” Yunho said, watching their leader, who avoided looking at them and started pulling on the hem of his hoodie nervously. “Tell us what the problem is first.”
“Oh…” Hongjoong glanced at him, but he looked away quickly. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay, we’re in this together,” Yunho tried to encourage their leader, but he felt fear rising within him. Something was wrong. But nothing had been right for a long time already. They had been hanging in this vacuum, waiting for some change to come, and now, when it seemed it was finally here, Yunho was afraid. And he knew he wasn’t alone.
Hongjoong took a deep breath. “The thing is,” he started again, raising his eyes to their faces, but casting his look down again as though he couldn’t bear the heaviness of their worries. “The company has been considering giving us a new member,” he said in the end, and when he looked at them again, his eyes were wet. “It’s not official yet. They want to hear our opinion first, but I’m not sure how much they would care about it in the end.”
There was silence for a few heartbeats before Mingi asked in a small voice, “They can’t do that, can they?”
“They obviously can if they’re considering it,” Yeosang said, sounding annoyed.
“Guys,” Hongjoong took the floor again, “I know what you think. But it’s our future we need to take into consideration. The few covers and videos we released and streams through V LIVE are not going to help our careers. We need to start producing music again. And soon, if we don’t want to end up disbanded.”
“That’s actually true,” Yeosang said. “It’s been seven months already and we haven’t released a single new song. The company gave us enough time to recover and it was just a matter of time before they’d come up with something like this…”
“What are you talking about?” Mingi asked, outraged. “There’s no way to recover from… THIS!” He spat the last word as though it was venom.
“Mingi, calm down, please,” Hongjoong said, pleading eyes on the rapper. “We’ll talk about this later. As for right now, I want you to help me think of the best way to tell San about this. I know he won’t agree, but I’m afraid the information could seriously hurt him…”
“I don’t see why we should include him in this, then,” Yeosang said. “He’s living in his own world and he barely takes notice of what we do.”
“Yeosang, it’s only fair telling him…” Hongjoong said quietly, his voice lacking the certainty of the old days.
“Fair?” Yeosang’s eyes narrowed. “Nothing’s fair anymore, hyung. I don’t want to argue with you, but San is not the only one hurting. And I’m sorry for being this blunt, but his opinion has little value to me right now. If he is even able to have any opinions at all,” he said, unshed tears glistening in his brown eyes. “And I know that some of you won’t like what I’m going to say, but a new member is maybe for the better. And if San is not coming back to us… What else is there left?”
Deep silence fell, disturbed only by the heavy breathing of the other members, and it felt as though everyone was scared to say anything after Yeosang’s unexpected outburst.
“Thank you for your opinion,” Hongjoong said finally, sounding tired. “You have a good point…”
Mingi’s eyes widened. “How dare you?” he cried, standing up abruptly, his fist missing Seonghwa’s nose only narrowly. The eldest member pulled away from the outraged rapper. “Yeosang just said that San is seriously mentally disturbed and has no say in what’s going to happen to the team and that letting a stranger into our family is the best solution to our problems. That’s utter bullshit!” He was shaking with fury. “You are right about one thing, though. There’s no way San would agree with this nonsense and I agree with him. Because eight makes one team. EIGHT. Not fucking nine,” he said, his eyes flashing with angry fire.
“Mingi…” Hongjoong said quietly, standing up as well, but Mingi wasn’t listening to him anymore. He turned around, walking out of the room and not looking back. The leader didn’t stop him.
***
“How was therapy?” the manager asked as he drove through the city, taking San back to the dormitory.
San straightened up in the passenger seat, looking at the high buildings in front of them. “Same as ever. We talked about everything that happened since we had seen each other last time,” he answered truthfully.
The manager glanced at him. “How do you feel?” he asked, concern in his voice. San heard it, but he didn’t understand it. He was fine, wasn’t he? He didn’t have an emotional breakdown for some time already, so things were all right… Right?
“Tired,” he decided not to think about it too much and simply answer the question.
“When was the last time you practiced?” the manager continued in his questions, and this time, San needed a moment to think about it.
“Yesterday, I guess,” he said finally, still not looking at the man beside him. The truth was the dance practice the manager referred to could be any day. San was so lost in his inner world that he had no idea how the time went by. He got up in the morning and went to sleep in the evening and things happened in between, but they were nothing worth remembering. Of course, there were good days when he enjoyed being close to others, and bad days when he felt like his very own existence suffocated him.
“Good,” the manager said and gave San a small, encouraging smile. “It’ll be okay, I promise. I just want you to keep practicing dancing and singing, okay? Can you do that?”
San shrugged. It was what he had been doing lately. He didn’t know why, but the team members insisted on it, so he did it, even though he saw no meaning in it anymore. He felt that the best step would have been leaving the group, but there were reasons why he couldn’t bring himself to do that. He couldn’t do it. Because eight made one team…
“I want you to stay in shape, San. You guys may start working on new things soon,” the manager continued. Gazing out of the window, San looked like he wasn’t listening, but for once, he was.
New things… He didn’t know how he felt about it, therefore he remained silent. He opened his notebook instead, pulled out a pen from the pocket of his hoodie and wrote down the note:
The team may start working on new things.
***
The dormitory was rather quiet even though all the members were home. San could hear the clatter of dishes coming from the kitchen and hushed voices talking to each other – the sounds of a dying household.
Before, the dorm used to be a noisy place. The cacophony of music coming from at least two or three sources mixed with the sounds of videogames, Jongho’s singing, Mingi’s rapping, Yunho’s feet tapping on the floor as he danced or Wooyoung’s high-pitched laughter. San closed his eyes and tried to remember all those sounds. They were so distant now, so untrue.
He shook his head and locked the emotions connected to them in a silver box. He couldn’t let them out, because if he did, they would destroy him. It wasn’t so long ago when Hongjoong had told him that jumping off a bridge would solve nothing and that San shouldn’t even fucking DARE to think about it. That had been the first time San had heard Hongjoong using such strong words. The problem was he had no memory of saying anything like that out loud, but he did remember himself standing by the railing of a bridge and thinking what the fall through the emptiness would have felt like. Would he have seen his whole life in front of his eyes in those few seconds separating him from the end? Would he have been able to see in those fractions of time the moments when he had been the happiest? He wondered even now, but he was careful that no such thoughts got to the outside world. He locked them in his mind with many other things.
He started taking his shoes off when he heard steps approaching him and he knew exactly who they belonged to.
“Hi,” sounded Hongjoong’s soft voice. Whenever the leader was home, he never missed a chance to welcome San back and San was grateful. He was grateful to all the members for taking care of him, because without them, he wouldn’t even get up in the morning. The tragic thing was that he wasn’t able to tell the guys how much he appreciated their trouble. It felt like those words were locked inside of him together with his emotions.
“Hi,” he greeted the leader back, his voice hollow. He could see that flicker of light in Hongjoong’s eyes diminish, but with his emotions under lock and key, San didn’t feel sad about it. He just knew he should.
“How did it go?” Hongjoong asked, reaching for San’s notebook. San let him. He knew that Hongjoong was going to look for the page with the date and time of San’s next appointment with his therapist and then write it down in a calendar for him, because San had no freaking idea when it was supposed to be, if it was in a week or two or in a month. The flow of time didn’t make sense to him anymore.
“Nothing special, the same old thing,” he said, scratching in his hair. “She asked a lot of questions to most of which I didn’t even have an answer. It was tiring.”
“I’m sure that even your lack of answers told her a lot,” Hongjoong said soothingly, giving San another sad smile.
“Yeah, I guess,” San admitted.
“Are you hungry? Do you want to eat?” Hongjoong asked, and San needed to think about the question. He felt hunger, but he had stopped connecting it with food. Hunger was just a different type of emptiness and because San knew that he was never going to fill the empty space in his soul, he stopped caring about the one in his stomach as well.
“I’m fine,” he said in the end. He didn’t feel like getting anything down his throat at the moment. He still felt so raw from the therapy. “Maybe later,” he added and looked around as they proceeded deeper into the apartment. “Where are the others?”
“Mostly in their rooms. Yunho is on the terrace, though, I guess,” Hongjoong said. “Do you want to join him?”
San didn’t need to think about this question. He shook his head. “I’m really tired. I think I’ll just lie down on the couch for a bit. Will you turn the TV on for me?” he asked.
“Sure thing,” Hongjoong said, and they both entered the living room. San lay down on the couch, pulling a cushion under his head. He closed his eyes, listening to the sounds of the leader moving around him.
It was quiet at first. When the guys watched the TV, they always muted it before they turned it off, so that when they turned it on and San was close, he didn’t hear the news block that was possibly just on. It was a precaution based on experience. News was dangerous and unwelcome in San’s world. Especially a certain type of news. The type that no one really wanted to watch, but San was the only one in whom it had caused a nervous breakdown.
“It’s okay, you can open your eyes,” Hongjoong said, choosing a culinary channel – probably the safest one in the whole TV offerings – and unmuting the TV.
“Thank you,” San said, looking at the TV screen.
“No problem, Sannie. If you need anything, just call.” Hongjoong put the remote on the coffee table in front of them.
“I’m fine. Thank you, hyung,” San repeated. He wasn’t thanking him just for the TV that he was always so afraid to turn on and therefore someone had to do it for him, but for the leader’s care in general. He didn’t know if Hongjoong understood and maybe one day San would be able to thank him properly. As for now, he left it at this.
Hongjoong squeezed his shoulder a little before he let him rest and left the room. San heard him talking to someone, maybe to more than one person.
San sighed, watching as the man on the screen put meat on a pan, frying it for some time and explaining how to season it. The show was boring and exactly something San needed at the moment.
“Laaaaaame,” a familiar voice drawled from behind the backrest and soon after Wooyoung rolled over it and landed right on the boy stretched on the couch.
The moment Wooyoung’s body blanketed San’s, the older boy wrapped his arm around his best friend and pulled him even closer. He could move and make some space so that both of them could lie on the couch comfortably, but Wooyoung didn’t complain and San was comfortable enough to stay like he was.
“Don’t you want to watch something else?” Wooyoung asked, glancing at the TV, his hair tickling San under his nose.
“Like what? I like cooking.”
“You like eating,” Wooyoung corrected him. “There’s a rerun of Harry Potter on right now.”
“Which one?”
“The Prisoner of Azkaban.”
San stretched out his hand to the coffee table and grabbed the remote control. He switched the channel and the face of Emma Watson as Hermione explaining something to her two best friends who appeared on the screen.
“Good?” he asked.
“Very good,” Wooyoung purred contentedly. “I wanted to watch this with you.”
“What are you talking about? We’ve seen all of the movies at least three times,” San reminded him while stroking Wooyoung’s back absentmindedly.
“I wanted to watch this particular one at this very moment with you,” Wooyoung clarified, cuddling closer and hugging San around his chest.
San couldn’t stop the small smile tugging at his lips. “Okay,” he said softly, delivering a tiny kiss on the crown of Wooyoung’s head. Then he looked at the screen too, and enjoyed the movie with his most precious friend.