it doesn't hurt when it's invisible

A crack of thunder wakes Jonghyun up abruptly on a Tuesday morning, and it really starts to sink in. He turns his head to check the time, see the exact minute the flash of light illuminates his hotel room and forces him awake. He hasn’t remembered to check the past few days.

8:09am. Tuesday. Again.

The hotel room is starting to feel like his childhood bedroom, in all of its horrible glory. Every morning he wakes up to stare at the popcorn texture like it’s at fault for all of this.

It very well could be. It could be anything, and Jonghyun would have no idea. He could be here for days or weeks or years and come to find out that all he had to do the entire time was burn this place to the ground.

For almost four straight minutes, he considers throwing his phone out the window when it starts to ring. And then, damn his reflexes, he instinctively picks up the call.

“Good morning.”

“Oh, Jonghyun-ssi. I didn’t realize you were awake,” the voice on the other end of the line says, tinny and cold the way it has been for the last four days.

Jonghyun sighs. “You probably thought you’d get my voicemail.”

“Yeah,” Jihoon doesn’t stutter. “I’m just calling to let you know that the shoot is canceled today because of the rain. It’s too dangerous to have you guys out there with all of the equipment, and we didn’t book the indoor venue until tomorrow.”

He knows all of this, of course. The rain is loud and harsh and never ending.

“Thanks.”

The line goes dead because Jonghyun decides that he actually cannot be bothered to listen to Jihoon’s speech, and maybe he’ll feel bad about it if he wakes up and tomorrow is Wednesday. He knows it won’t be. At this point there is no consequence from shortening the conversations he’s had three times in a row.

Jonghyun’s fingers move quicker than his brain does, dialing Taemin’s phone number and bringing it up to his ear and collapsing back onto his pillow.

“Good morning!” Taemin’s voice is bright and cheery and Jonghyun can’t bring himself to cut him off. “Happy day off, hyung.”

“It didn’t work,” he says after a moment. “I did what you said to do and it didn’t work.”

Taemin’s gears turn and Jonghyun can almost hear them through the phone. He plays along, he always does. It’s refreshing, even though it’s impossibly frustrating. “Right. What exactly did I say to do?”

He groans. He’s going to have to find the best way to get through this conversation every single day.

“I’m stuck in a time loop.”

“Seriously?” Taemin doesn’t say it the way Kibum said it and will continue to say it. He doesn’t say it in disbelief. He says it with excitement. “How long have you been in a time loop?”

Jonghyun looks at the clock beside him as if that would give him an answer. “Three days. Well. Three repeats. This is the fourth Tuesday in a row.”

“Wow. Okay. What did I tell you yesterday?”

“What time did you get home from your run? This is probably easier a conversation in person,” Jonghyun gets out of bed and grabs the same clothes he put himself in yesterday.

Taemin tells him that he got back home around ten minutes ago and Jonghyun knocks on the door to his apartment, and thinks he’ll just show up like this next time. He’s not wet, because he brought his umbrella, but it still feels like he’s in a drama showing up to Taemin’s apartment in the middle of a storm like this.

The apartment is warm and quiet and almost like home. Jonghyun slips into the house shoes that he uses every time he comes over, almost protective over them. Taemin is freshly showered and has a cup of tea ready for him once he walks past the entrance to his apartment.

“So what did I tell you yesterday? I’ve been extremely patient.”

Jonghyun rolls his eyes and they settle down into his couch. “You basically gave me a list. Confessing to my first love, making everyone believe that I’m in a time loop, doing good deeds. I’ve tried everything.”

Taemin’s eyes flash with something quickly before it’s gone. “Alright, there’s no way you did all that in three days. Did I help you with any of this?”

“Other than telling me what to do, no. I haven’t even seen you since Monday.”

“So, like twelve hours ago.”

“For you,” Jonghyun says, and he can hear the resignation in his voice. He knows that this is the way it’s going to be until it’s over. “For you that was like twelve hours ago.”

For a second, Taemin looks guilty, which is very nearly endearing. Taemin is gentle and thoughtful and it’s exactly why he’s come to him four days in a row. Only he would feel guilty over forgetting for a moment that the laws of physics and time and space have ceased to impact Jonghyun’s life.

Taemin purses his lips after a moment. “So who have you seen?”

“I’ve had dinner with Kibum every night so far. I don’t think he believes me when I tell him about the time loop, though. I saw Jinki and Minho yesterday. I see the Blue Night staff every night–”

“You see the Blue Night staff every night?”

The question is so sudden that it shakes Jonghyun out of his drone. “Yes?”

“So when does it reset?” Taemin’s eyes are fiery and swirling, like Jonghyun’s somehow breaking some extra secret law of the universe by having a job to do from midnight to two in the morning.

He tries to remember when he fell asleep on Monday. It must have been about 3:30am, but the days are already starting to stack up against each other in his brain. He’s gone to Blue Night every day so far, gets back to his hotel room not too late, and sits with his thoughts and his confusion until he falls asleep and wakes up again in the morning at 8:09am. “I don’t know.”

Taemin claps loud and right into Jonghyun’s face.

“Okay, awesome. Today we’re going to stay up all night and find out,” Taemin gets up, a ball of energy, and makes his way to his kitchen. And Jonghyun doesn’t protest, he can’t even consider it. It feels like he’s aged decades in three repeated days and he’ll take anything, really. Any change of pace.

They watch movies and order takeout and Jonghyun thinks: this was how I was supposed to spend my day the first time.

Jonghyun asks what will happen if this doesn’t work, and Taemin looks at him funny.

“Then we’ll know that this didn’t work, and then we’re closer to finding out what does.”

Things are very simple with Taemin. They’re obvious and they’re cut and dry and he’s so self-assured that he doesn’t consider failure enough to be afraid of it at all. He swirls like the storm outside.

It’s intoxicating.

Jonghyun could write a song about it.

Writing it down will be futile because it will be gone tomorrow. He doesn’t let himself be frustrated with that.

They watch movies where the main character relives the same day over and over again, and Jonghyun would be exhausted of this concept if it weren’t for the fact that Taemin insists they’re doing research.

He ignores the call from Director Ko in the middle of the day, and texts Kibum that he’s at Taemin’s apartment so he doesn’t show up at Jonghyun’s hotel room for dinner.

Taemin comes with him to his Blue Night recording and sits in the booth with a smile, and it doesn’t stop a viewer from asking the same question they have for four nights in a row: how do you remain positive on gloomy days like this?

This time, he answers while looking right at Taemin. “I think that happiness can come directly from other people, sometimes. Having other people around you is always good.” he says, voice soft, his radio persona melting into the microphone.

He thinks this answer is right this time. It’s what people tell him when he’s feeling down, that surrounding yourself with people will make you happy. He never really bought into that, but he thinks that sometimes it can be true. Like today, with Taemin.

They get a ride back to Taemin’s apartment where they sit until 8:09am. If they’re lucky, maybe it’ll even be 8:10am.

And it’s been so long since they’ve just spent time together, just the two of them, curious and kind and up way too late like little kids stuck in a dorm room. Piled on top of each other.

Taemin makes sure that Jonghyun stays awake, and Jonghyun sits with iced coffee from Taemin’s refrigerator and tired eyes and more and more movies, until the sun comes up and it shines off of the raindrops that don’t stop, even for a moment.

They laugh like thunder and smile like lightning and they lose track of time, delirious off of rainwater and caffeine.

“Why do you insist on taking notes on these movies? It’s going to be gone when I wake up and it’s today again,” Jonghyun says, straight backed, exhausted but persistent.

Taemin shrugs. “When you write something down, you remember it better. If you wake up again and tomorrow is today - or rather if today is yesterday - then you’ll remember it better. And I know I don’t remember all of your yesterdays, but I’d like to keep trying.”

“You are so completely Taemin.”

Jonghyun isn’t quite sure he knows what he means by that, but Taemin beams at him anyway. He does this thing, where his eyes actually sparkle to the point where Jonghyun is positive he’s started seeing things. It seems impossible that someone is this bright, is this so complete all by himself.

He’s known Taemin for so long and seen so many sides of him that he wonders if there’s anything left to see.

They sit, and it’s bright in the room now, and Jonghyun doesn’t check the time but he’s sure he’s going to get another call from Jihoon about the location for the indoor shoot any minute. Taemin almost looks like he’s going to drift off but he keeps his gaze forward and his hands on Jonghyun’s shoulders like he wants to say something, or do something, and Jonghyun wonders what is possibly left unsaid or undone between the two of them.

Taemin’s lips light up from the flash of lightning through the curtains.

It’s silent for a moment while they wait for the crash that always follows.

Day 5

It comes and it jolts Jonghyun awake, sweaty and unrested, tangled in white hotel sheets.

The digital clock blinks 8:09am. Again.

He checks his phone. Tuesday. Again.

Jonghyun feels about how rested as he did on day two: like he didn’t just stay up for twenty-four uninterrupted hours. Like he got that four or five hours of rest. He wonders if anything changes other than the fact that he remembers . Stuck.

He doesn’t even bother getting fully dressed to go to Taemin’s apartment, doesn’t bother to bring an umbrella, doesn’t bother to pick up Jihoon’s phone call telling him what he already knows.

He’s sopping wet when he knocks on Taemin’s door at about 8:30 in the morning, and he doesn’t care.

“Jonghyun-hyung?” Taemin’s eyes go wide when he opens his door all the way. “If you get sick the director is going to kill you.”

“I won’t get sick,” Jonghyun says. He didn’t get tired even though his brain has been awake since yesterday morning. Nothing changes. Not a thing.

The slippers that Jonghyun wore yesterday and spilled a drop of teriyaki sauce on are exactly as they were twenty four hours ago. Taemin drags his feet over to his kitchen and starts brewing the same tea that Jonghyun already drank. The wind and rain and thunder roll in the same never ending cycle the way it has for five days.

“You’re invincible today?” Taemin raises his voice to ask, and Jonghyun stops dawdling at the entrance and joins him in the kitchen and waits until Taemin isn’t handling boiling water to tell him.

He breathes. “I’m invincible every day.”

Taemin laughs like it’s a joke and pours him some tea, and they sit at the bar stools around the island of the kitchen. “Please drink it. I want to say I helped you when you come to set with a fever tomorrow.”

“It won’t matter, you know,” Jonghyun says, finally breaching the subject. “I didn’t sleep at all last night and I’m just as rested as I was five days ago, so if you remember your list at all you can note that it didn’t work.”

Jonghyun watches the gears creak in Taemin’s mind. “I think I’m lost.”

“I’m stuck in a time loop. It’s been today for five days in a row. I wake up and it’s 8:09am on Tuesday and Jihoon calls me to tell me that Director Ko fucked up and we’re not filming today. And then I do whatever I want for fifteen hours and it doesn’t matter. And then I go to Blue Night and I go to bed and I wake up and it happens again.”

He wonders if there’s an easier way to put it, but he imagines that he’ll refine it with time. If anything, the story will get boring enough to fit into a single sentence.

Taemin sits and processes but he doesn’t look at Jonghyun like he’s crazy. “Woah,” he says, finally.

“Yeah.”

“Wait, you go to Blue Night every night?” Taemin sticks out a finger like it’s accusatory. “When does it reset?”

Jonghyun can’t help but smile, just a bit. “It must reset at 8:09am. You and I stayed up all night last night to check.”

“Woah.”

“Yeah.”

“You know, I listened to last night’s show this morning while I was on my run,” Taemin says. “I was going to tell you about it so I probably already have.”

Jonghyun’s heart squeezes tight in his chest. “You told me on the first day. You said you wanted me to stop praising you on air so much because people are going to start expecting great things from you.”

Taemin’s eyes are blinding in response. “Well they will!”

“What a nightmare, Taemin, people expecting you to do your job.”

“It’s not our job to do great things.” His voice isn’t too serious but it does pitch itself lower, and he makes eye contact that reminds Jonghyun of last night right before he woke up again. “It’s our job to make things we think are great. It’s different.”

Jonghyun ponders that, wonders what the difference is.

But Taemin has so many questions, the same ones he’s had every day so far. He asks the last thing Jonghyun remembers before he woke up this morning, and he asks if anything weird happened to him on Monday, and he asks him what else he’s tried.

It’s twice in a row now, that Taemin’s made a weird face when Jonghyun has told him about the other days.

And Taemin thinks for a while. And then he says: “I wonder what’s happening in those tomorrows.”

Jonghyun can’t articulate an answer beyond a furrowed brow and a look into his tea cup to see if there might be some logic in there. There isn’t. He doesn’t know what Taemin is talking about.

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

“You know,” Taemin says, like he says everything, like it’s obvious. “You stayed up all night with me until right before you woke up again. Those events didn’t just get erased. They still happened, because you remembered them. There’s some universe where it turned 8:10am and you were still in my apartment, that’s just not the universe we’re in.”

Jonghyun blinks. “I watched too many time loop movies yesterday to be thinking about alternate realities. Why can’t I just decide to be in one of those?”

“You clearly need to learn something. Something is supposed to happen today that changes your outlook on life. Or you’re supposed to run into someone who teaches you a lesson, and you just haven’t met them yet. These kinds of things don’t happen overnight.”

And he means that, because they don’t even pretend that today is going to fix the time loop.

“That is so annoying,” Jonghyun says.

Taemin shrugs. “I think it’s nice. Try to imagine that whatever you do will matter in some version of tomorrow, even if it’s not the one that you end up in. Maybe that’s what gets you to tomorrow.”

So they fuck around all day, and brainstorm, and Jonghyun feels a little bit like he’s unlocked this wisdom-filled version of Taemin that he doesn’t always get to see.

When Director Ko calls, he picks up, because Taemin lives inside his brain and forces him to consider things like how someone might feel in an alternative timeline.

“Afternoon, Jonghyun-ssi,” she says, just like the first day.

“Afternoon, Director Ko,” he says, making eye contact with Taemin who mouths something that looks like has she called you before?

Jonghyun waves his hand in Taemin’s face while he smiles, almost too bright. “I just wanted to give you a call to apologize, you know, I know you’re staying in a hotel this week for shooting and we got rained out so it’ll be a day longer.”

“I’ll be alright. Thank you for calling, though.”

“Of course. I got pulled into about a hundred meetings today, so at least you got the day off. Did you visit your family?”

Jonghyun’s been so flustered, what with the supernatural recurrence of the same day over and over again that he hasn’t even thought to visit them. He tries to remember what he said before. “I’ll see them soon. After filming, at least. Should only be a few more days.”

“Well the rain should let up tomorrow. At least that’s what the forecast says. I’ll try to get us to go as quickly as possible so you don’t have to delay going home much longer. And we have the indoor location as a backup tomorrow anyway. So I’ll see you then, alright?”

“Alright,” he says, still in his own head.

She responds, soft as always, with: “be gentle,” before the line cuts out.

“She always says that. Be gentle .”

Taemin shrugs. “Maybe it’s a clue. I’ll write it down.”

He remembers to text Kibum again that he’s over at Taemin’s apartment, and he showers in Taemin’s bathroom, so the Jonghyun in Taemin’s tomorrow doesn’t get sick. He uses Taemin’s shampoo and bodywash and wonders what he would be doing if Jonghyun hadn’t derailed the last five Tuesdays for him.

He supposes he’ll figure it out at some point.

Jonghyun knows he’s not good at this part. Waiting. Trial and error and trying hard every day even when it feels like it doesn’t matter. He already struggles with convincing himself it does under normal circumstances.

It’s the fifth day and it already feels like it’s aged him years.

The rest of the day floats by the way he wished the first one did. He floats to Blue Night and the same person asks the same question they have for the last four days.

His response, this time: “rain washes things away. Don’t think of a gloomy day as something to be gloomy about, think of it as an opportunity for something new.”

It doesn’t let up even a little on the car ride back to the hotel. No one is awake at this hour.

Jonghyun wishes this rain was something new for him, but he knows exactly what tomorrow will look like.

Day 51

Thunder. Rain. 8:09am. Tuesday. He doesn’t have to check. He knows.

Jonghyun feels the day swirl around him over and over again, taunting, teasing, endless. The ceiling looks like static and the rain crashes on the balcony and the sheets cling to his legs and he wonders if he waits here like this for long enough that the flood will make it all the way up to his room.

His phone rings and he picks it up even though he knows what Director Ko’s god damned assistant is going to tell him. His voice is level and practiced and he has played this game for weeks, getting the script down so well that he doesn’t have to be fully awake to play.

If this is a game, he’s going to win. He has to find a way to win. “Hello?”

“Oh, Jonghyun-ssi, I didn’t realize you were awake. I thought I was going to get your voicemail.” Divine punishment. Jonghyun has known for nearly two months now that he would be awake.

“The thunder woke me up.”

Jihoon hums kindly. Sympathetically, but like he’s giving good news. “I’m just calling to let you know that the shoot is canceled today because of the rain. It’s too dangerous to have you guys out there with all of the equipment, and we didn’t book the indoor venue until tomorrow.”

“Thank you very much.”

“It’s torrential out here. Director Ko wanted to apologize that you’re stuck in the city for another day but she got roped into some meeting. She might call you later, though, okay?”

“Sounds good. Thank you for letting me know.”

The more polite Jonghyun is, the better he finds his day to go. It could be that that’s the case because Taemin cursed him like six weeks ago into thinking that any of these days could actually matter. And he can’t bring himself to have a potential future where he’s hurt someone, even if he knows that’s not the future where he’ll be.

And maybe that’s wrong, maybe the lesson is that he has to be honest and angry and stick up for himself or something. Maybe the point is that he doesn’t take charge of his own day, of his own agency.

Maybe this is some sort of simulation from the higher-ups or maybe from Lee Sooman himself who want him to find a way to do work on his day off. They know he has a song living in his brain somehow and are finding the easiest way to get him to write it down and turn it into something profitable before the month ends.

It’s no use, though, it simply doesn’t matter what he does or says or thinks or creates. It doesn’t put an end to this. Nothing does.

He dials Minho’s phone number. On Jonghyun’s yesterday, the conversation he had with Minho ended with Minho asking if they could go to the gym “tomorrow.”

And just because it’s not Minho’s tomorrow, doesn’t mean Jonghyun won’t follow through. The only reason he hasn’t completely fallen apart is that he’s managed to change his schedule enough every day to trick a bit of himself into thinking that time is actually passing.

“Did you want to go to the gym today?” Jonghyun asks as soon as Minho picks up.

His conversational skills have clearly been dormant for too long. “Hello to you too, Hyung!”

Jonghyun smiles. Relaxes his shoulders. He’s gonna figure this one out today.

“Good morning, Minho. Happy day off.” He’s probably stolen that greeting from Taemin. “Do you have plans for the day?”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line, and the hair on Jonghyun’s arms stand up. “Have you had breakfast yet?”

So Jonghyun ends up at Minho’s apartment. He’s been here a few times over the past fifty-one days, usually to visit both him and Jinki. Trying to get them to believe him. That’s no use. But he might as well get more insight. Maybe this is just something he needs to understand so that tomorrow will happen.

This time is different, though.

“Where’s Jinki-hyung?”

Minho is notoriously not great at lying, but he shrugs. He’s facing this stove frying some eggs, so that’s all Jonghyun can see. “He had plans.”

“Oh,” Jonghyun says, a little stupidly. Jinki has never had plans in all of the days he’s seen him. And this could mean one of two things.

The first possibility is that something is changing. Finally. He can feel his heart skip a beat, like it’s rolling with the thunder. The possibility rumbles around his chest: something has changed. He’s doing something right.

The second possibility is so frustratingly likely that it nearly crushes his hope.

“This early?”

Minho pauses for a second too long. The second possibility, then: Minho is worried about him. Typical.

When Minho turns around to slide an egg onto Jonghyun’s bowl of rice, he has the awareness to look guilty, at least.

“I wanted to hang out, just the two of us,” he says, cracks another egg into the pan for himself. “It’s been a while, you know? I miss you.”

Jonghyun knows that there’s no way that Minho knows that he’s been avoiding him for most of his Tuesdays, but his heart sinks just a bit.

Minho is just so full of love and care. It’s overwhelming. It’s scary.

He shrugs. “Are you liking the shoot so far?”

“I really am! I can’t believe the freak rain, though, it was so nice out yesterday. Like spring has really started. You know?”

It’s been raining for weeks. “Yeah, I know.”

“Are you feeling okay?” Minho turns from his pan and gives Jonghyun a look like he knows what’s going on with him, even if that’s not possible. Especially because Minho has never once believed him.

“I’m feeling okay,” Jonghyun looks down at his food and pierces through the egg yolk with a chopstick. The more repeats he has, the more frustrating and pointless it feels, and the harder it is to pretend that it’s all fine. But he’ll wait until later to bring it up. “Where did you send Jinki-hyung off to?”

The smile in his voice is evident even though he’s facing the stove again. “I sent him over to Kibum’s place. Figured they could hang out for a bit. Do whatever the two of them do. I never know with them.”

This is more comfortable territory. “They do tend to live in their own little world, don’t they?”

“Like some others I know. But I don’t really get it,” Minho finishes his egg and turns it over onto his rice. He has a little rag over his shoulder like a real chef that Jonghyun only notices when he sits down and pulls it off. He probably got that from Kibum, too. “Though I never really understand Kibum. Jinki’s much better at decoding him.”

“Kibum isn’t very hard to decode,” Jonghyun pulls some rice into his mouth.

“I mean we all have wildly different relationships with each other, so of course you think he’s easy to understand. But you tend to sort of get everyone.”

“That’s not true,” Jonghyun says. He pauses. He wonders if he should wait until they’re at the gym, but decides against it. “Sometimes you confuse me.”

Minho’s eyebrows raise up. “How so?”

“You’re very. Up front,” Jonghyun says.

“I feel like that would make me pretty easy to understand.”

He scoffs. “You would think. I just don’t get how you can be so open like that. You don’t hide anything.”

Minho takes a moment, then, to look down at his food. Jonghyun watches his eyebrows twitch together and his lips thin out just a bit while he thinks. So expressive. Without fail. “I think I can be pretty selective about it. Like, I know how to keep my private life private. I think we sort of have to have that. But the reason I’m so open with you is because it’s important that you know I care.”

“I know you care,” Jonghyun says, voice a little tight.

“I can tell it gets on your nerves, though, because you’re just as easy to read as I am,” there’s a lilt in Minho’s voice that he gets when he’s trying to make a point, or trying to provoke. “I remember like a decade ago, you said something about me and Kibum being so alike that we just have to constantly butt heads, but you know that it’s the same with you and me, right?”

Jonghyun rolls his eyes. “Using my own words against me is pretty cruel. Don’t forget I’m older than you.”

“I don’t care, you need to hear it. You’re probably the most caring person I know. And then when I show you that I care, all of a sudden it’s the worst thing in the world.”

“You just worry about me,” Jonghyun swipes Minho’s hand away from where it had been sitting stretched out into the middle of the table. “You worry about me so much all the time.”

“People are allowed to worry about you,” Minho’s voice is deep now. Low. Serious. If Jonghyun looks up, he’ll find Minho looking at him the way he sometimes does, intense and loving and afraid.

Jonghyun sort of wants to fight that. It’s not uncommon for him to want to fight back on the things Minho says, which only really proves him right. They’re far too similar. He stuffs his mouth with more rice.

“You’re hungry,” Minho extends a long finger in his direction. “You probably would have shown up to the gym without breakfast if I hadn’t said not to, right?”

He pushes hot air out from his nose in a puff. Minho being right is insufferable.

“I can take care of myself, Minho. It’s fine.”

“So I’m right, then,” Minho shovels more food in his mouth to the point that it would be off-putting if Jonghyun hadn’t become so accustomed to it. He speaks through a full mouth, then. “You’re right, you’re completely capable of taking care of yourself. You just choose not to, sometimes, and I get it.”

Ouch. Minho swallows his food.

“Look. I can tell you have a lot going on a lot of the time. You’re really smart and talented and caring, and you’re one of my best friends in the entire world. I don’t worry about you because I pity you. I worry about you because I know how hard it can be for you to worry about yourself.”

It’s quiet for a bit while they eat. Minho doesn’t say anything more about it while they sit.

He’s not sure he fully understands, but maybe this is one of the things that he needs to do before tomorrow comes.

They end up going to the gym for a few hours, even though it doesn’t matter. He won’t feel the ache in his muscles tomorrow and he won’t wake up more rested from exertion. He won’t wake up stronger because nothing changes, none of it matters.

But for Minho it will matter. Taking care of himself and spending time together. This Minho’s tomorrow will be good, and the Jonghyun he spends it with will be grateful for him.

They're sweaty and exhausted and it feels inappropriately genuine when Minho pulls him in for a hug after their workout. Minho is always inappropriately genuine.

“I don’t ever want to be overbearing to you,” he says, back bowed in their embrace. Jonghyun sort of feels like he might start to tear up, but those might just be the exercise endorphins.

He breathes, hopes it isn’t shaky. His fifty-first Tuesday is more emotional than some others. But that’s not exactly unlike any of his normal days.

“You’re not overbearing. I think it’s just overwhelming. It’s sort of hard to explain.”

“Try,” Minho says, like it’s easy. He’s always looked at things plainly like that, though. He’s never been nearly as emotional as Jonghyun or Kibum, but he’s always made an effort to empathize.

“You love me so much. All of you do, and a lot of people do. And sometimes it’s hard to really understand why, even if I know logistically all these great things. It’s hard to accept them. And you worrying so much makes me worry that I might not deserve all of that, even if I’d sit on the sun for you. Does that make sense?”

Minho pulls back to smile, like his smile wouldn’t count if he hid it in the crook of Jonghyun’s neck. “That makes sense. But I also want you to know that you don’t have to convince me of how you feel.”

“Don’t I?” He says it with a laugh, like a joke, but Minho’s too earnest for his own good.

“You know, the only person who doubts you is yourself. That’s the only thing I ever worry about.”

Kibum echoes him while they order room service later that night. They sit in Jonghyun’s unmade bed cross-legged with fancy pasta that Kibum swears he could have made himself. That’s a constant, whenever Jonghyun lets him come over unannounced on these Tuesdays.

He swallows before he speaks, unlike the others. “So I heard that you had a talk with Minho today.”

“Oh? Who’d you hear that from?” Jonghyun sticks him in the side with his fork. He waits for the warmth of Kibum’s blush to creep up his neck.

“Whatever,” he says. “I’m glad you did. You’ve been on his ass lately.”

Jonghyun scoffs. “He’s been on my ass lately! I can’t do anything without him worrying about me.”

The look Kibum gives him is calculated. “He cares a lot, is all. I don’t think the poor thing can help but to be on everyone’s ass all the time. It means he loves us. You should just suck it up. We’re all going to be here with you for the long haul whether you like it or not.”

“I know you’re right.”

“I know,” Kibum says, and they’re silent while the rain crashes onto the balcony. “I know you think you’re, like, the exception to whatever cosmic rules you think applies to everyone else about life and love. But you’re not. You give out a lot of advice, but you should consider taking it, too.”

Jonghyun thinks about that for the rest of the evening. After Kibum leaves and while Jonghyun writes lyrics in his notebook even though they’ll be gone in the morning. He journals a bit, because he heard somewhere that writing things down helps you remember them, even if they disappear along with everyone else’s memories.

On Blue Night, someone asks: “how do you remain positive on gloomy days like this?”

He says: “It can be hard to find the positive on days like this, I think. But don’t be afraid of letting other people help you out. We’re not alone in any of this.”

He knows he’s right. He knows he’s not alone in the cosmic sense. But in his hotel room bed without his family or his friends, with a world that will wake up in the morning again on a Wednesday feels so excruciatingly lonely that it kind of hurts.

The rumbling of thunder and rain puts him to sleep.

Day 13

It never gets less jarring, not after nearly two weeks. And Jonghyun knows he wakes up just as rested as he usually does, just as rested as he was on the first day, but it’s starting to seep into his bones.

The ceiling laughs down at him while he waits for the phone call.

Jonghyun will get like this even in his regular life, when he wakes up to an entirely new day every morning. Even if it’s too blurry to remember, he knows the first day was like this too: gray and static and numbing.

“Oh, Jonghyun-ssi, I didn’t realize you were awake. I thought I was going to get your voicemail.”

He wonders if this is what stage actors feel like on their tours. Listening to the same lines and giving the same responses over and over again. Concerts were never like that, but then again he’s never been much of an actor.

Jonghyun responds with his lines and Jihoon responds with his voice crackling through the speaker. For a second, Jonghyun wonders what it would feel like to drop his phone off his balcony or crush it with his fist or throw it into traffic.

It wouldn’t matter. It will ring again in the morning.

Is this the motivation that actors draw from? Deep exhaustion and repetitive agony and a flicker of condensed anger with no direction to point it to.

He doesn’t even realize that the call ends or how he wants to spend his day until he’s already in the car telling his manager where he wants to go.

His mother gives him a surprised look when she opens the front door. “Oh honey, what are you doing home?”

It’s the first time Jonghyun had seen her in two weeks, and the greeting almost makes him dizzy.

“Our schedule got canceled because of the rain. I missed you guys.”

“We saw you just a few days ago,” she says in her soft voice. She pulls him into a hug and he can feel it wrap around his heart. He could do this for a few days in a row if he wanted to. It wouldn’t matter.

Jonghyun is still holding on tight when he speaks. “Can I sleep here tonight?”

“Of course,” she pulls back and swipes a thumb across his forehead. “Are you doing alright? You look exhausted”

“I’ll be alright, I promise. Where’s Sodam?”

“We were just about to head to the store. Do you want anything in particular for dinner?”

He shrugs. “Whatever you were going to make is fine with me.”

“Okay,” she says. She looks worried and Jonghyun’s gut churns with guilt. He knows he can’t do this every Tuesday. “Why don’t you lay in bed until we get back?”

Jonghyun’s room is exactly how he left it, clothes only thrown around because he had packed hastily before leaving for the week. Some papers he’d been practicing composition spread out on his keyboard. There’s a snuffed out candle on his windowsill that he smells but doesn’t light.

His ceiling is smooth, without the popcorn texture of the hotel, and it doesn’t taunt him the way that one does. His sheets are soft rather than crisp.

He feels the exhaustion pulling at his back, but messages the group chat and lets them know he’s with his family today. He can’t make them worry too.

The rain that crashes against Jonghyun’s window is different from what he’s been listening to for thirteen days. This rain is new, like all rain is, like rain is supposed to be. It rolls and rolls.

Even though he’s done this before, and even though it will be gone in the morning, he opens the notes app in his phone to write down the same few lyrics that float around in his mind.

With the room so warm and comfortable, Jonghyun doesn’t even realize he’s fallen asleep until the ringing of his phone wakes him up.

“Afternoon, Jonghyun-ssi.”

“Afternoon, Director Ko,” he says. He clears his throat so the sleep isn’t so thick.

“I just wanted to give you a call to apologize, you know, I know you’re staying in a hotel this week for shooting and we got rained out so it’ll be a day longer.”

This director hasn’t known him for very long, but he feels the worry in her voice. It strikes more guilt in his bones that he’d been trying to sleep off.

“Don’t worry. I’ll stay dry and healthy.”

“Good.” Her voice can be so final. “I got pulled into about a hundred meetings today, so at least you got to take the day off. Did you visit your family today before heading back into the city?”

Jonghyun smiles a bit. This is the first time in two weeks that he’s been able to say that he was. “I’m here right now, actually.”

Her voice brightens up, like she’s surprised. As if she’s also been waiting for two weeks for him to see his mom and sister. “I’m so glad! You deserve a rest sometimes. You work very hard.”

“Thank you,” he says, but he’s not sure he deserves that. Maybe that’s the repetition talking, or the way his brain is coded to respond. But he’s going to be polite, not ask too many questions.

“Well the rain should let up tomorrow. At least that’s what the forecast says. And we have the indoor location as a backup tomorrow anyway. So I’ll see you then, alright?”

“Alright,” Jonghyun says, respectful.

Like always, she says: “be gentle.”

Sodam’s voice wafts from the entrance to his room before he gets the chance to think much about their conversation. “Good morning, sleepy-head.”

“What time is it?” He stretches his arms above his head, pressing up against the frame so that his toes hang off the edge.

Her smile is contagious as always. She shrugs, and it ruffles the plastic bag of chips she’s holding. “Mid afternoon. We got back from the grocery trip a while ago but figured you needed to sleep. Until I heard you on the phone, that is.”

“That was the director for the shoot this week,” Jonghyun rolls up and scoots over to make room for his sister. “She’s nice. A bit weird. Pretty intense.”

“A lot like you, then.”

Jonghyun shoves her, smiling bright. “She ends all of her phone calls with this weird, vague advice. But I guess she means well.”

Sodam puts her bag of chips down between them and they stare at his ceiling together, hands alternating to grab a bite.

“So what’s going on? You usually don’t miss us this much.”

“I always miss you guys when I’m not here,” Jonghyun offers. It’s true, even if he is dodging the question.

She gives him a look. “I talked to you on the phone, what? Fifteen hours ago?”

Two weeks and fifteen hours ago . He doesn’t explain himself. That’ll only make her worry. It makes almost everyone worry.

“Do you ever feel like every day is the same?”

“Yeah,” she says, voice colored with a bit of humor, like she can’t decide if Jonghyun is being serious or not. “But I have a normal job. Is idol life really that repetitive?”

He almost feels guilty. “Not usually. Just lately.”

Sodam hums. They share the habit, so he’s always been comforted by it.

“Maybe repetition isn’t all that bad. I’m sure you can find comfort in that, you know? How some things stay familiar even when other things change.”

Jonghyun feels the weight of two weeks dragging him back into the mattress, feels his cheeks get wet, knows he can’t explain it to his sister. It feels worse.

“That kind of feeling runs in the family, you know. Sometimes it’s like that.”

“Yeah I know.” Knowing doesn’t make the feeling melt away, though.

“You’re really smart, you know that? And you’re really talented and loving and caring. But that’s a lot to carry,” Sodam’s voice is very soft. They don’t often talk like this, but when they do, it helps. Even just for a little bit. “You can put some things down for a while. I don’t know exactly what’s going on with you today, but it’s something you can handle.”

Jonghyun keeps his eyes trained on the ceiling.

He tends to forget that putting things down is an option, like it’s his job to carry everything for everyone all of the time. He knows it’s a symptom of a larger piece of his chemistry, but he still finds it hard to remember that he can put it down on his own.

They sit for a while and let the rain pour and pour. Their heads are close and Sodam’s hair tickles Jonghyun’s ear, and they don’t have to speak much. They communicate with the rain and let the rain talk back.

The smell of ginger and gochujang wafts into the room, spicy and savory, and Jonghyun’s stomach grumbles. “What’s she making?”

“Dakdoritang,” Sodam says, turning and smiling.

“God,” he says. He pulls himself off the bed. “I changed my mind, I should never leave home again.”

Sodam gives him a soft sort of smile that hits him deep in his heart. “I think you’d get tired of that really quick. You’re not built for the same thing every day.”

“I guess not if it isn’t my choice.”

They drop it, at least, heading to the kitchen to help cook. Dinner is often like this, a family activity with music and dancing. The dakdoritang is delicious and spicy, and they catch up on the kdrama they’d been watching before Jonghyun left for the shoot. He tries not to feel bad that technically now he’s watched it before they have.

Time flies with the three of them, the same way it flies with the rest of his group. Jonghyun can feel the weight of the last several Tuesdays melt off his shoulders by the time he has to leave.

“How do you remain positive on gloomy days like this?”

“I try to remember that I’m not ever alone. Time passes even if you don’t think it does.”

The manager takes him back to his house, and he creeps into his room quietly so he doesn’t wake up his sister or mom. He goes to sleep in his real bed even if he won’t wake up there.

Day 35

Clap. Thunder. 8:09am.

Polite phone call.

Rain.

The days blend together like this. The same sound of the storm pouring down like it’s directly above his head. Like no one else can see it or feel it or know that his clothes are stuck like paper to him and he’s going to get a cold.

Taemin can see it, though.

There are some things that Jonghyun goes back to. Every few days, he tries to spend the day writing, pretending like this has been one big vivid dream, does what he tried to do on the first day. It never works, but it’s like a system reset. Turning himself off and turning himself back on again. Sometimes that feels better than trying to force his way through it.

Some days he gives up and goes to his mother’s house. Sometimes he’ll go with them to the grocery store, or help his mom cook dinner.

Some days he tries convincing everyone. No one usually believes him.

“Jonghyun-hyung?” Taemin answers the door brightly every single time, almost like he’s gotten accustomed to seeing him this morning. “Happy day off! Is everything okay?”

That question, when it comes from Taemin, is always wondrous. It’s never a question that means something else, a hidden mental health check. Taemin asks if everything’s okay because there might be a hurricane or a zombie apocalypse or an extremely sudden craving for a hug, and he’d help, no questions asked. Even if it were, say, a time loop.

Taemin always believes him.

“I have something to tell you, but you should sit down for it.”

Taemin gives him a funny look. “Alright. Um, do you-”

“I’ll have some tea, yeah,” Jonghyun says, collapsing onto his couch. He waits. Taemin’s quizzical expression is charming. Not as charming as it gets when Jonghyun actually tells him.

“Alright, I’m ready. Hit me with it.”

“Okay,” he starts. He takes a breath. Sometimes watching Taemin anticipate is the best part. “I’m stuck in a time loop. It’s been Tuesday twenty-six times in a row, and you’re the only one who ever believes me.”

“Woah,” Taemin’s eyes swirl.

Jonghyun holds out his fingers and starts counting off Taemin’s usual questions. “I always go to my Blue Night recording. It resets every morning at 8:09, right before I wake up. I’ve done good deeds and confessed to my first love and tried to get everyone to believe me. We watched all of those time loop movies for research. Nothing changes. It’s almost been a month.”

Taemin leans back on his couch. “That’s insane. You’re right, I did need to sit down for that.”

“A couple of weeks ago I told you while you were still getting us drinks and you dropped your tea kettle on your foot. We had to go to the emergency room,” Jonghyun scrunches up his nose at the memory. “It was awful, I’d like to avoid that next time.”

Taemin laughs, loud and toothy and bright, drowning out the rain. For just a second Jonghyun forgets about all of that.

The days blend together but Taemin never does.

“You always believe me,” Jonghyun says, high off his smile.

Taemin shrugs. “You’re pretty convincing. I’m pretty sure I’m predisposed to believe in supernatural stuff anyway.”

They sit in a comfortable silence for a few minutes, sipping their tea and staring at the ceiling.

“If you were me,” Jonghyun says, breaking the silence, “and you’ve done the same day thirty-five times in a row, what would you do? Not to try to break the loop. Just that one crazy thing people do in those movies that they would never have the courage to do if tomorrow mattered.”

Taemin purses his lips. They’re round and soft and Jonghyun’s gotten distracted by them even back when his life was normal. Jonghyun’s been drawn to Taemin for as long as he can remember.

“Hmm… skydiving?”

“Would you need a time loop to go skydiving?”

“Probably not…” It’s almost comical how seriously Taemin takes it. Like it’s a personality assessment that will determine something real and true about him, something hiding just under the surface that he wants Jonghyun to be able to dig up for him. “I’d take a plane to Antarctica, maybe.”

Jonghyun scrunches his nose. “It’s too cold. And I only have one day. And I wouldn’t want to go by myself.”

“I’d keep you warm, hyung,” Taemin’s voice is colored with humor and provocation.

“Very funny.” Jonghyun has to dismiss it outright. Sometimes it’s necessary. Some unlocked corner of his mind that he refuses to entertain, and he doesn’t know exactly what will happen if he does. Maybe one of these days. “But you’d definitely get in trouble tomorrow. Even if it works, we’d both be stuck in Antarctica or wherever and I’m pretty sure Jinki and the director will take turns breathing fire at us.”

Taemin’s grin falls from being mischievous to something more relaxed. Jonghyun sort of wants… something. He’s not quite sure.

“We can stay here if you’d like. We can make food or play games or watch movies or pretend like this isn’t happening at all. But I’d do anything you wanted to. Even if you weren’t stuck like this.”

It makes Jonghyun’s clench and release and clench harder. Taemin is always like this. Honest and open and unafraid and it’s inspiring and sweet and he feels special to be on the receiving end of it.

It’s almost a bitter feeling. That Taemin sees something too special inside him that Jonghyun knows isn’t there.

And then it’s like Taemin sees that, changes his tune, rewires his brain to accommodate for Jonghyun’s sometimes too-persistent negativity.

“Okay, get up,” he says. Taemin is standing, and his hand is outstretched, and Jonghyun takes it. He doesn’t consider not taking it for even a moment.

The two of them end up on the roof of the apartment building, backs against the raised ledge, hands wet and still pressed together.

The rain beats down on the two of them and it drowns out all of the persistent thoughts he’s been steadfastly ignoring for all of his Tuesdays and for months and years. Their jeans stick straight to their skin and their hands are suctioned together so that they can’t even consider separating without breaking the loud quiet.

They sit for a while like that, watching planes overhead and trying to feel the world turn.

“Is it raining everywhere, you think?” Taemin has to speak loud enough that he can be heard over the rain, but his voice still feels soft.

Jonghyun shrugs. “I’ve only stayed in the city and visited my mom and sister.”

“Hmm. Promise me something. On day one hundred, if it hasn’t been fixed by then, don’t tell me about the time loop, just take me somewhere it isn’t raining.”

The clouds above them are dark and Jonghyun doesn’t even know what time it is, but it doesn’t matter, really. Nothing does except for this.

“How do you know you’d come with me?”

Taemin turns his head to look back at him, hair in long wet clumps, eyes squinting so the rain doesn’t get in. “Of course I’d come with you. Wouldn’t you come with me?”

“Of course,” Jonghyun says, and almost breathes but I’m in love with you . It gets caught in his throat, the thought that he’s been ignoring for so long. “Of course I would.”

Of course he would. Of course he would.

And then, like a flash, Jonghyun is on fire and he’s sopping wet, and he’s lovesick and done shoving the piece of him that’s always loved Taemin down deep. He’s never gotten the chance to let it burst from his chest, he’s never let himself look too long or act too thoughtlessly.

He’s never considered that he could be loved back, though that is the farthest thing from his mind.

It occurs to Jonghyun that he could find out. He could lurch forward, spin the earth and the moon on its heel, taste Taemin for the first time like this on his rooftop, drowned in their own clothes. He could see if Taemin kisses back or pushes him away and then he’d know.

Taemin’s eyes search his face. “What are you thinking about?”

Jonghyun doesn’t want to find out and have to go back, though. He doesn’t want to go back and not take Taemin with him.

“I’m worried you’re going to get a cold. What happens if you wake up sick tomorrow?”

He pulls himself away and drags himself to his feet, jeans sticking to the concrete and palm magnetized to Taemin’s, squints his eyes through the pouring rain.

Taemin looks up at him from the ground. Shrugs. “I don’t know. What’s going on?”

The wind and rain feel like they’re swirling around him angrily, chaotic. He was sitting on a rooftop realizing he’s in love with one of his best friends, one of his bandmates, coworkers, overwhelmingly someone he should not have .

This kind of panic is worse than other kinds, and the worst part is that for the first time in thirty five Tuesdays, for the first time in years , Taemin looks at him like he’s worried about him. The same look Minho gives him, the reason he hasn’t gone to their apartment in days and days.

And some truly desperate, selfish part of Jonghyun wants to pull Taemin up by the soggy collar of his shirt and kiss him silly. Get it over with, spend the next few Tuesdays in a pile of his sheets while he comes to terms with this part of his time loop lesson he’s supposed to learn and figure out how to move on with time.

But he doesn’t.

“Nothing’s going on,” Jonghyun says, wildly, like it could be the truth. And he can tell that Taemin trusts him. He always does. It does something wicked and violent to his heartstrings. “I think you should probably go shower so you don’t get sick tomorrow.”

Taemin does his best to see Jonghyun for what he says; a realization that stabs him with guilt, but one that gets them down the stairs and out of the rain and into separate buildings for the rest of the day.

He gets a text on his way back to his hotel that there will be no evidence of in the morning: was I totally weird on the roof? I hope you have a good rest of your day, hyung!

He gets a phone call that he forgets to ignore and their director tells him to “be gentle,” so Jonghyun does send a text back to Taemin apologizing for leaving so abruptly, and that he’ll tell him tomorrow if it ends up being a clue into getting the loop stopped, which of course is not going to happen.

The heat from the shower loosens all of Jonghyun’s muscles and clears his mind and he ends up staring at his ceiling, trying to decide whether or not this feeling he’s getting could be just his big romantic heart getting ahead of itself again, or if maybe Taemin and Jonghyun could possibly think of each other as something more special than either of them do already.

There’s a knock on the other side of his door. “It’s me.”

Jonghyun drags himself over to pull the door open like he hadn’t been expecting a visit. “It’s you!”

“I love your warm welcomes,” Kibum says, wrapping an arm around Jonghyun’s back for a hug that he doesn’t realize how badly he needed. “I hope you don’t mind that I came over. I figured if you weren’t off writing somewhere that you’d be locked in your hotel room.”

“You probably know me too well.”

The corners of Kibum’s mouth turn up into something small and sweet. “How’s this for knowing you too well: want to order room service?”

“So badly.” Jonghyun collapses back onto his bed, hair still wet and splayed against his sheets.

Kibum is another person that Jonghyun could probably spend uninterrupted hours or days with and not get tired. He sort of wonders why he couldn’t have fallen in love with him .

It’s not until they’re halfway through half-watching a documentary about the history of calligraphy that Jonghyun says something about it. “I have a weird question, and you’re probably going to get defensive about it, but please don’t.”

“Strong start,” Kibum says, eyebrows raised. “But sure.”

“When did you realize you loved Jinki?”

Jonghyun figures ripping off the bandaid will probably be the best. Kibum doesn’t flinch too hard but his collarbone gets a little flush and his lips get tight around his teeth and Jonghyun wonders if he’s going to get a sarcastic remark or a real response.

Kibum clears his throat. “I love all of you guys.”

“Alright,” he rolls his eyes. Sarcastic remark it is. “Don’t play dumb; I know you’re not.”

In a moment, Jonghyun can see the flicker of mischief in the curl of Kibum’s smile and knows it’s coming. He brings his sparkling drink up to his lips slowly and resting it there while he asks. “When did you realize you loved Taemin, then?”

If it were possible, Jonghyun’s heart beats so loud in his chest that it could probably be heard over the white noise of the rain. “Like three hours ago.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Kibum’s smile melts into something far sweeter, now. “I don’t really know, then. It just sort of happened where I was loving him the way I love all of you, and I looked away, and when I looked back, it was like-” he cuts himself off with a wild gesture with both hands. “You know how Jinki-hyung is, he looks at you like he’d take anything you gave him and you realize you want to give him everything you can.”

Jonghyun’s smile is quiet and sad and overwhelming and he still feels like he’s in the rain, or maybe above the clouds looking down at the way it pours and comes back when it hits the pavement.

“Yeah,” he says.

It’s nice seeing Kibum like this. He’s so open, but he can be so private about these things. A little avoidant, guarding his paper heart, and Jonghyun can really empathize with that. But if anyone deserved to feel that kind of love, it would be Kibum.

“Do you ever worry, like, you can’t give him everything he wants?”

And Kibum searches his face, eyes a little squinted at him. Jonghyun isn’t quite sure what he’s looking for, but he never is. “I think that if I always worried that what I gave wasn’t enough for other people, I’d be really unhappy.”

Well, Jonghyun can’t really argue with that. Kibum’s always been the kind to let go of what other people thought of him, like it doesn’t matter. Like the disappointment of not getting it wouldn’t ruin him completely.

“Yeah.”

“You keep saying that,” Kibum says, not unkindly. His hand reaches over to Jonghyun’s wrist. “I think you’re capable of more than you think you are. Taemin would never want more than you could give him, anyway. You know that.”

And Jonghyun sits with that. Jonghyun considers what it might be like to feel like he’s enough and they talk about their days and Jonghyun leaves out the part where he’s done this already like thirty times. They finish their food and their documentary and Kibum goes home and Jonghyun goes to Blue Night.

A viewer asks: “How do you remain positive on gloomy days like this?”

Jonghyun says: “everyone around you is having the same day you are. You should lean on them when you can.”

Day 27

It’s getting annoying.

Jonghyun can’t lie and say he doesn’t have a short fuse, but he does typically try not to fire off at people just because his own personal life is annoying and frustrating and endless and when Jihoon calls his greeting is too loud for the quiet of the hotel room. He shouldn’t have picked up, but his ringtone is loud and it shocks him every time.

He’s not phased. “Oh, Jonghyun-ssi, I didn’t realize you were awake. I thought I was going to get your voicemail.”

Jonghyun hangs up. He thinks about dropping his phone off the balcony. He considers flushing it down the toilet. He considers going down to the manager’s car, dropping it off onto the street, and running it over.

He calls Taemin. Maybe that’s muscle memory.

“Good morning! Happy day off, hyung.”

That sort of strikes his chord too hard, but getting off this call is harder. Taemin is the type to come over if he’s so inclined. He’ll never make a big deal out of it or voice pity, and usually that burns hot in the center of Jonghyun’s chest like a campfire. And he’ll usually ignore that. But in this moment Jonghyun’s pretty sure the company of another person might make him rip all of his hair out.

“Any plans today?” Jonghyun asks, as calmly as he can manage.

He can hear Taemin’s shrug over the call. “Nope. But it’s still morning. I’ve still got time.”

Jonghyun knows what Taemin will say if he stays on the phone any longer, because he’s had this conversation before, and that’s the whole problem.

“I’m going to write today, I think. But I just wanted to say good morning,” he says. He doesn’t know why that’s the truth, either. He doesn’t often let himself think too much about what draws him to Taemin.

Taemin stretches and yawns. “Well then good morning, hyung. Text me later.” His voice is bright and some of the tension eases out of Jonghyun’s shoulders in response, and he thinks he probably will. Not entirely sure how Taemin manages to have that effect on him.

And they hang up the way they always do, without saying goodbye, because there’s no reason to.

The fire under Jonghyun’s skin is different from the first day. He doesn’t feel that same mourning of inspiration, that desperation for something to come to him, that willingness to force it somehow. Today, it simmers under his skin. It bubbles up, and he takes his notebook and an umbrella and walks to the cafe by his hotel, the same one he went to on the first day.

The two words he writes first are the same from that first day, and this time he adds more: ocean of storms. He adds lyrics about the drum-beat of the rain against the pavement and against the window. He writes lines about monotony and the endlessness of it all, and he ignores the way the patrons glance over at him with his mask and hood on and wonder if he’s the Kim Jonghyun.

He stays there for hours. He doesn’t take Director Ko’s phone call. He orders a coffee and another and another and he knows he probably won’t sleep well, but he’ll wake up as if he had slept for at least a few hours. He always does. It never changes.

Day twenty-seven is hard. It’s especially hard because the writing comes so easily and tomorrow it will be gone. Tomorrow he will open his notebook and it will be empty and it won’t matter.

He leaves the cafe and rips the pages out of his notebook to drop them into the street and watches them get soaked and run over, watches them melt in the rain and flow into the storm drains in little pulpy clumps. He’d feel bad for littering if he thought there might actually be a tomorrow to worry about, and he’d feel bad for it if he thought there was a single chance that those words wouldn’t be destroyed in twelve hours anyway.

He’s feeling particularly cynical and he’s letting that take over his entire day. He’ll let the people in his life who wake up on their own tomorrows scold him for being reckless and stupid, but he has to allow himself this one thing or the monotony might drown him too.

Jonghyun allows him this one day of catharsis so he doesn’t burn up, and he doesn’t know if that even works until Blue Night hits and he’s sitting in his chair, and he’s recommending his songs, and passing out advice, and he gets a question and formulates an answer.

“Hmm,” he says, because he is going to let himself take this whole day by the reins, and because he likes the closeness of letting his listeners hear the mechanisms of his overthinking brain. “I don’t think the weather will always affect your mood if you really don’t want it to. If it’s been raining for weeks, the rain is going to feel gloomy because it will feel like it will never stop. But if you think about it, if it was nice and sunny for days and weeks, the rain will feel refreshing. Don’t you think? There’s always something different to do. There’s always a chance for it to feel new.”

Jonghyun is highly caffeinated when he comes back to his hotel room, and he watches the clock pass eight in the morning, and he sees the exact flash of lightning illuminate the room, even though he knows he’ll be waking up to the thunder.

Day 3

There’s a clap of thunder that wakes Jonghyun up for the third day in a row. This time when he wakes up, his first instinct is to panic. Jonghyun usually tries not to let circumstance get on his nerves this much, but he does start to wonder when he’ll finally get a good night’s sleep again.

He doesn’t bother picking up Jihoon’s call when it comes in, because if it’s still Tuesday then that means that he’s assuming that Jonghyun is asleep anyway and he’ll leave a voicemail. And if it’s still Tuesday he’d rather prolong the inevitable. It’ll probably be easier if the news comes from Taemin, anyway. Things typically are.

“Good morning!” Jonghyun almost hears something different in Taemin’s voice. He hopes. “Happy day off, hyung.”

“Fuck,” he says, defeated.

Taemin laughs loud from his belly, and it crackles through the receiver. He puts on a tilted voice that Jonghyun knows is supposed to be mocking, even if Taemin’s never been good at that. “Yes, Taemin, good morning to you too. I’m the one who called you as soon as I woke up, so it would be totally weird of me to swear at you for no reason.”

“Right, yes, sorry,” Jonghyun huffs, trying not to smile too wide. It’s pretty annoying that Taemin can just pull the smile right out of him without trying. “I have something totally weird to ask.”

“I’m intrigued. Ask away.”

“Do you remember yesterday? Like, it was Tuesday and it was raining and you listened to Blue Night on your run and you want me to stop talking about you?” He knows his voice sounds a little desperate, but three days of the same thing will do that to you.

Jonghyun can hear the cogs in Taemin’s brain turn. “How long have you been awake?”

“Only like,” he turns to look at the clock, 8:16am. This information is unhelpful, because he doesn’t know what time he woke up. He should check tomorrow. “I don’t know, like five minutes?”

“Hmm. Vivid dreams?” Taemin’s voice is kind and helpful and only a little bit teasing. Jonghyun can sense the wonder underneath that means that Taemin is already halfway to believing what he’ll say.

“No. I haven’t dreamt in three days. I’m stuck in a time loop.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not,” Jonghyun says, rolling over onto his stomach. “Unfortunately this is my third Tuesday in a row.”

“That’s so freaky,” Taemin says, with no trace of disbelief.

Jonghyun hums in response and they sit in silence like that for a moment. He actually didn’t have a plan after this. For some reason, he really thought that telling Taemin that he was stuck reliving the same day would clue him in on it, at least. Bring Taemin inside the time loop with him so he’s not alone, if not break the entire thing apart.

Taemin breaks that silence. “What was my advice yesterday?” There are sounds over the receiver that sound a lot like Taemin’s scribbling noises. It would be nice if the notes made it until the next day, though.

“Well yesterday I made you believe me, and I tried making Kibum believe me too, but I don’t know if he actually did. I think I’ll go over to Minho and Jinki’s place today and try to see if they have any advice. Jinki’s kind of weird like that, don’t you think? I think he’ll believe it.”

“Ha!” Jonghyun almost has to pull his phone away from his ear so it doesn’t burst his eardrum. He wonders distantly if it did burst, would it heal by tomorrow morning or would he be stuck with it. “Yeah, Jinki would humor you, at least. I think Minho might get worried, though.”

He pushes hot air out of his nose. “Minho’s always worried.”

“He loves you,” Taemin says, very plainly.

“Yeah. But I’ll try to tick off more of the things you listed off for me yesterday. See if that works.”

“Oh, what did I say yesterday? I’ve been writing stuff down while we were talking, I want to see if it matches.”

Jonghyun counts off his fingers. “You suggested making everyone believe that I’m in a time loop, which I guess didn’t work. You said something about confessing to my first love. Doing good deeds. And then I think because we talked about my whole day you said that I might have answered someone’s question wrong on Blue Night. And I thought I fixed that, but I guess it was still wrong. Or maybe that wasn’t it either.”

“This is so freaky,” Taemin says again, a little breathless. “That’s exactly what I wrote. Except for the Blue Night thing. What was the question you were asked?”

Twice now, he’s heard it. Jonghyun recites the question in a low voice, and tells Taemin the answer he gave last night and the answer he gave the first time around.

Jonghyun can almost hear the tilt of Taemin’s mouth when he responds. “Hmm. I don’t think either of those answers were wrong. But I guess the more you change the more likely something’s bound to stick. Time loops are usually about some big moral or lesson you have to learn in order to change your outlook on life. Or whatever. If it’s not fixed soon you should come over and we can watch a bunch of those movies to look for inspiration. I can name like ten off the top of my head.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Jonghyun says, voice sweet, muscles relaxed. “I should probably go work on all that lesson learning. Or confessing to my first love, or doing good deeds. I’ll let you know if it works.”

“Alright, hyung. Text me if you need anything.” Taemin’s voice is a bit more flat when they hang up, but Jonghyun doesn’t question it. He’s practically already out the door.

He’s a bit clumsy on his feet, sort of feeling the swirl of three days of the same thing, but he’s determined to get it fixed. This was never ever something he wanted. He’d watch movies and dramas and read comics where some poor soul had to relive the same day over and over again to learn a lesson, and Jonghyun always thought that that would be miserable.

Jonghyun’s already a person with a tendency to feel like he’s doing the same thing over and over again. He knows he doesn’t have the luxury to do all those crazy, destructive, or selfish things that people in the media get to do. His conscience would never let him.

“Good morning!” Jinki’s bright and awake even though it’s before nine in the morning and they have nothing scheduled. Maybe years ago, he would be curled under his blankets or picking up after everyone, but he’s fully dressed in warm clothes and holding a mug of tea, and it’s almost the same thing.

“Good morning, hyung,” Jonghyun says. It occurs to him that he hasn’t seen either of them since Monday. And that might have been about twelve hours ago for Jinki, but it’s been about sixty for him. A bit jarring.

When Jonghyun sits down on Jinki and Minho’s couch, he knows two things immediately. First, that he has to tell them about the time loop, and secondly, they are not going to believe him. If he’s not careful, Minho is going to be extremely worried and caring and gentle about it, and Jonghyun is going to have to leave without getting anything productive done.

Jinki hands him a mug of tea and reclines on his chair. “It’s been a bit since you’ve visited. I’m glad you came over! I kind of figured you’d spend the day in your cafe.”

“Well,” Jonghyun tilts his head back and forth, trying to decide if this is how he wants to broach the topic. “I sort of did. It’s a long story. Where’s Minho?”

If he had to hazard a guess, Minho is probably at the gym, or out for a morning run, or in some meeting with a designer brand or acting gig or other backup project he has going for him. Minho is always moving around, and it’s kind of admirable. Kind of overwhelming.

“He got out of the shower I think like right before you came over, so he should be out any minute now.” Jinki’s eyes sort of search for something. “Did you want to talk to him about something? I can leave.”

Jonghyun blows some cool air into his mug. “No, I wanted to talk to both of you. It’s kind of weird.”

“Jonghyun-hyung!” Minho’s voice booms brightly into the room not too long after. He’s still scrubbing his hair dry with a towel when he falls into his couch on the other side of him. “What’s up? Have you had breakfast yet?”

“Not yet.”

“I can make some! What brings you over?” Minho hops to his feet and goes to the kitchen, and Jonghyun sort of figures it’s no use trying to stop him.

“Okay. Something’s going on, and I wanted to tell you guys about it.” Minho looks back with wide, worried eyes. Jonghyun tries not to be annoyed. “It’s not serious. I mean, it’s kind of serious, but it’s not bad. Kind of. I’m stuck in a time loop.”

Jinki blinks. “A time loop?”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean?” Minho asks from the kitchen, pitching his voice over the island.

And Jonghyun does his best to explain the situation without making it seem like he’s lost his mind, and Jinki listens with a concerned but warm smile, and Minho looks over every few minutes like he’s considering suggesting he see a doctor about this.

“Okay,” Minho says, when he’s finished frying the eggs for the three of them. “And you’re sure this wasn’t a dream?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. You can even check my phone, I didn’t take Jihoon’s call this morning and I haven’t listened to the voicemail.”

Jinki takes a deep breath. “Freaky. You haven’t done anything reckless, have you?”

“No, I don’t think I will. I just want it to be Wednesday already,” Jonghyun says, chopsticks poking at the egg yolk.

“Good. So how can we help?” Jinki is kind. That’s how he’s always been. “Can we help?”

“Well, so I’m hoping that making you guys believe me will break it. Taemin says that sometimes that’s the answer. I told Kibum yesterday but I think he was just humoring me.”

“Kibum can be like that,” Jinki says, cheeks a little pink, like the memory that Kibum even exists is precious and close to his heart. Something about that makes Jonghyun feel just as warm.

He’d like something like that, though he’s not quite sure he’ll ever get that kind of unconditional love back.

Minho has been a bit quiet from his seat, listening intently but clearly worried. He stands up with his empty bowl and heads back into the kitchen, but Jonghyun still bristles under his gaze.

“I’m gonna head to the gym. Did you want to join me, hyung?”

There’s an undercurrent of tentativeness in his voice, something that’s always there. And Jonghyun knows that he means well, but it still grates on him in a way he can’t really understand.

Jonghyun manages to shake his head without looking too put off. “I kinda wanna hang out here for a bit, but maybe tomorrow?”

Minho nods and grabs his gym bag on the way out the door. Some part of Jonghyun wonders where he gets that kind of motivation. For him, everything feels like a push. He tries not to exhale too obviously when the door shuts behind him.

“You have to talk to him about that,” Jinki says, not unkindly.

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

“Okay, fine,” Jinki raises his hands in defeat. “I won’t push you, but you do know what I’m talking about. I’ve known you for a long time, and you’ve always butted heads with him, and I know it’s because you don’t know what to do with all of that worry. But he just loves you. Just like all of us.”

Jonghyun concedes. “Fine.” He wonders if he’s going to have to do something about it in order to get out of the loop. He hopes not.

“Alright. So what do you want to do? Is there anything else I can do to help the whole time loop thing?”

“You not thinking I’m crazy is enough, I think,” Jonghyun says, shrugging. Something does occur to him - something from Taemin’s advice yesterday - and he suppresses a chill. “There is one thing, actually, but it’s kind of embarrassing.”

He hasn’t been this nervous in a while, especially not around Jinki. As always, Jinki’s face is soft and unassuming. Immediately reassuring.

“Go for it. I’m sure it’s not really embarrassing.”

“It is, especially because, well,” Jonghyun purses his lips, tries to revert to his comfortable flirty posture. “Taemin said that in media one of the ways people get out of their time loop is to confess to their first love.”

Jinki blinks, but his face stays the same. “Oh.”

“Yeah, so I just figured I’d let you know that when we were kids I was in love with you. Not anymore, obviously. I don’t really know why I never told you.”

And Jinki surprises Jonghyun by smiling brightly. “You’re a really private person.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” he feels his eyebrows draw together and tries to think of a time when he hasn’t been a hideously open book. “I’m probably the least private person out of all of us.”

Jinki shakes his head. “You’re open in a lot of ways, Jonghyun, but you can be really closed off about some things. That’s okay, though, I just mean I understand why you didn’t tell me. You like guarding your heart because it’s bigger than anyone else’s.”

Jonghyun does his best not to blush. “Maybe.”

“And I don’t want to embarrass you,” even though this is something that Jinki will say immediately before embarrassing someone, “but I kind of knew. Or, at least, I thought you might have liked me. All the way back then.”

“Ugh!”

“I’m sorry! I said I didn’t want to embarrass you!” They’re both laughing like this and Jonghyun has his head in his hands.

Jonghyun groans into his palms.“Why didn’t you say anything?”

He can hear Jinki shrug. “I figured if it was something you really wanted, you would have taken it. Your guarded heart and all that.”

Things are really easy like this with Jinki, and they always have been, and Jonghyun remembers what it was like loving Jinki from a spot far in the corner where he didn’t know if he was allowed to ask for love back. He doesn’t remember when or why it stopped.

“I think that’s a funny thing to break a time loop, though,” Jinki says, putting his bowl down and curling up in his seat. “Confessing to someone you don’t love anymore. Don’t you think it would make more sense to confess your love to someone you still loved?”

“Oh,” Jonghyun blinks. “Well I’m not. In love with anyone right now.” He doesn’t know why that feels like a lie. The look Jinki gives him makes it clear that he can tell.

He waits until he gets the director’s phone call before he leaves Jinki’s apartment, decides to take the same steps he took on the first day, try and narrow down what the problem might be with his day.

Kibum is sitting cross-legged on his hotel bed when Jonghyun figures he should ask.

“Do you think I take the things I want?”

He’s met with a weird, hesitant little look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I was talking to Jinki earlier, and I told him about the huge crush I had on him ages ago,” Jonghyun starts, and is interrupted by Kibum’s harsh laughter.

“What on earth inspired you to do that?” He cackles and pushes Jonghyun’s arm. They had been especially close when they were younger, so Kibum was intimately aware of Jonghyun’s crush. “What did he say?”

Jonghyun smiles at the ceiling. “He said he could kind of tell.”

“You were very obvious.”

“You’re not exactly in a position to talk about how obvious I was when I was in love with Jinki,” he says, pointing a firm finger at him.

“Whatever.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Jonghyun says, pitching his voice into a mocking tone. “But he said that he never said anything about it because he figured that if I really wanted to be with him I would have done something about it.”

Kibum’s face softens. “That makes sense. You tend to be very… sure of things. And when you’re sure of things you tend to make big moves. You take opportunities when you know they’re already yours, or when you want it too much to care, or when you’ve convinced yourself it’s worth it. If you don’t think it’s worth it, you won’t do anything about it. I think that’s what he means.”

Jonghyun sits with that for a bit, long after Kibum’s left his hotel room, right up until Blue Night when someone asks “how do you remain positive on gloomy days like this?”

He isn’t quite sure of his answer, but he figures he’ll get to try again tomorrow.

Day 54

It’s kind of funny how Jonghyun never really used an alarm clock. After a few days or weeks of the same thing, his brain would just choose to tune it out, and he’d end up trying to sleep through it. His body just starts to ache for sleep that it will get selective about what can take it up.

But it’s been almost two months and every single morning at 8:09am, the same groan of thunder shakes him awake with a panic. It should be exhausting. It is exhausting.

At 8:09 on this Tuesday morning, Jonghyun gets out of bed before he gets his first phone call.

“Good morning, Jihoon.”

“Oh, Jonghyun-ssi, I didn’t realize you were awake. I thought I was going to get your voicemail.”

Today, the rehearsal sort of feels like the show. “The thunder woke me up.”

“I’m just calling to let you know that the shoot is canceled today because of the rain. It’s too dangerous to have you guys out there with all of the equipment, and we didn’t book the indoor venue until tomorrow,” Jihoon says, like he hasn’t been saying this every day for months.

Jonghyun is able to tune out the conversation even as it’s happening, gathering his things. He should bring his notebook, in case Taemin wants to take notes, or in case he wants to write down those lyrics. He’ll wear a different outfit today - one that is appropriate for the rain - and he gets changed without Jihoon noticing anything out of the ordinary. Not that he could.

Today it feels like he’s dangling on the precipice of something new.

After the call ends, Jonghyun writes two lists down in his notebook, because he knows Taemin will ask when he gets to his apartment.

“Jonghyun-hyung? Happy day off!” Taemin sort of makes Jonghyun feel like he’s been sitting under the sun lately.

“Happy day off, Taeminnie.”

They sit on Taemin’s couch and drink the tea that Taemin makes every morning without fail, and Jonghyun says, “I have something to tell you.”

He’s been putting it in vaguer and vaguer terms lately, playing a little game with himself to see how long it is until Taemin breaks, begs for more information, or whines and flops and they can laugh together. He likes making Taemin guess, too, because first his mind goes to aliens and then to time travel, and by then Jonghyun is too endeared by such a close guess that he folds.

Today Taemin sits a little straighter, face a little more composed. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s not bad,” Jonghyun says, desperate to keep Taemin from frowning. “I’m stuck in a time loop. I have been for weeks, but today feels different.”

It only takes him a moment to pull himself together. “Different how?”

“I don’t know, I just feel good today. I’ve been waking up every morning at the same time for two months, to the same roll of thunder, but this morning I just felt different.”

“You have a strong intuition,” Taemin says, smiling.

Jonghyun pulls out his notebook. “I know you have a lot of questions because you always do, so I made a list this morning. Well, two lists. The first one is a list of all the things that needed to change that I’ve already done, and the second list is the stuff that I’m not quite sure of.”

“Made up with Minho? I didn’t know you guys were fighting. Stayed up all night, visited mom and Sodam, watched those time loop movies – did I make you watch those?” Taemin reads off the page, the corner of his mouth turned up a little bit.

“You did. It was very informative.”

Taemin’s eyes flicker down quickly and his eyebrows draw together, and it’s the same face he makes every time Jonghyun tells him about the things he’s already done. “Um, doing good deeds, went to work - in parentheses it sucked - confessed to Jinki?”

“One of the first things you suggested was to confess to my first love? Something about letting go of all the secrets I’ve had,” Jonghyun shrugs, leaning over to peek at the rest of his scrawled handwriting. “Obviously that didn’t work.”

“I didn’t know you were in love with Jinki,” Taemin says, smile on his face, voice kind of soft.

“I was. It was ages ago, and it was really obvious. Obviously he’s got that thing with Kibum now, but when we were younger it used to just be the two of us against the world. You know? I guess that’s how it felt back then.”

Taemin sparkles. “Jinki sort of makes everyone feel like that, I guess.”

“You too, then?” He doesn’t know why he’s nervous to ask.

Taemin shakes his head fast, strands in the back of his neck that have grown out a bit and are still wet from his shower stick to him. He tries not to stare. “No, I was too busy, I think.”

“That’s fair. We were all busy back then.”

They share a look, the look that Taemin has given him so many times on this Tuesday, one where he looks like he’s deciding whether or not to say something , even if Jonghyun doesn’t know what it is. Like he’s dangling over the edge of some big thing. Jonghyun lets his hand reach out, just a little. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Taemin says, taking a deep breath, and Jonghyun can feel the stutter of his heart through his pant leg. “I was actually too busy being in love with you. Back then. To be in love with Jinki.”

“Me?” His ears roar loud over the sound of the pouring rain, and his pulse beats hard and he can’t keep himself from asking: “ why? ”

Taemin winces a little bit. “What do you mean why? ”

“I mean, when did you stop?” His brain can’t quite wrap his brain around it. He’s always considered himself intuitive, and Taemin’s never seemed interested, and he’s Taemin and Jonghyun never expected to be loved back. Even if they ended up missing each other.

Jonghyun feels hands on his shoulders, Taemin’s eyes meeting his. His voice is gentle. “I can hear your brain working from out here.”

He nods. “Okay.”

“I didn’t stop.”

A flash of lightning brightens the room and Jonghyun almost assumes he’ll wake up in his hotel room when the thunder comes.

The thunder comes. “You didn’t?”

Taemin shakes his head, softer this time. His smile presses into his eyes. “Do you have any idea who you are? Seriously. Of course I didn’t. I think you’re so amazing, hyung, everyone does.”

“I think you’re amazing,” Jonghyun says, a little breathless.

“I actually wanted to talk to you about that. I was listening to Blue Night this morning–”

“Yeah, I know, you told me on the first day.”

His shoulders relax and Taemin leans back. The notebook sits on his lap. They’re sitting cross legged on Taemin’s couch facing each other and it sort of feels like the sun is breaking through like this.

“I never told you that?” Taemin asks, tilting his head a bit. “In any of the other timelines.”

“No, you haven’t.”

He nods. “Is it okay?”

And Jonghyun could answer him with words, he could. He thinks about all of the things he’s done these past few weeks in his own little world. He thinks about how hopeless some of it has felt, and how lonely.

He thinks about how this morning felt so different, the way sometimes it feels on the first warm week after a long winter. The way this week was supposed to be

Taemin’s lips are always pursed and soft looking and even just since Jonghyun realized he’s loved him, he’s had to hold himself back from leaning in. Afraid of something or another.

It sort of sounds like the rain stops when he makes the decision. It goes quiet around him and he feels like he’s being magnetized forward, wondrous and bright like the slow crash of an eclipse.

He tastes like tea and his mouth is parted and Taemin is firm under his hands and Jonghyun thinks he could probably cry like this. Even though crying in front of Taemin is particularly embarrassing because he’s never quite that emotional. He still thinks he could.

Jonghyun always sort of feels like Taemin is everywhere all around him, wrapped around his back and behind his teeth and swirling around in his brain.

And Taemin kisses back the way he does every single thing. Eagerly. Smiling. Like he’s been waiting for it his entire life.

They dig their fingers into each other’s hair, catch their teeth on each other’s tongues, press their chests and hands and hips together, and Jonghyun thinks that this is probably the way he was meant to spend the day in the first place.

Taemin pulls back first, eyes shining, and Jonghyun can hear the rain again. “So it’s okay, then?”

“I love you,” Jonghyun says. He breathes. He can’t really hear it over the shine that Taemin sends back.

“Do you think,” Taemin says, still catching his breath, “that tomorrow will be tomorrow?”

Jonghyun unwraps himself, keeps at least one hand on Taemin’s waist even while they readjust. “I don’t know. I hope so. You saw the list.”

The notebook is on the floor, now, a little crinkled.

“Be gentle: question mark. Blue night: question mark. Confess: question mark, question mark.” Taemin reads out.

Jonghyun would flush if he was ever the kind to be embarrassed over that kind of thing. “Those are my theories as to how to get out of the loop.”

They sit on the couch and neither of them stray too far, letting one limb or another keep in contact. The room gets darker when storm clouds pass by, the same storm clouds that make Taemin’s house dim every day he’s come over.

He can hardly pay attention, lips tingling and chest bursting.

When Director Ko calls, Jonghyun takes it on speaker phone, and Taemin scribbles all over Jonghyun’s notebook, and he can’t bring himself to mind. He hopes it will still be there in the morning. Every time he considers it, the rain seems to settle a bit. Just a bit.

Taemin makes him practice being gentle, though he’s not quite sure what that means. He hasn’t been able to figure that out since the very beginning, since before he was even stuck like this.

“I feel like you’re a very gentle person,” Taemin says, soft and gentle in his own way as well. Jonghyun had taken be gentle to mean that he was judgemental or harsh in a way he wasn’t aware of. Tamin’s always been more perceptive to that kind of thing. He can be quiet and observant and he’s a good judge of character.

Though, Taemin does love him.

“I must not be,” Jonghyun says.

“Or maybe she’s just like that. Maybe it’s not about that, maybe it’s about Blue Night. Or maybe it’s about us.”

There’s that warmth again. He can’t help it, even if he’s not positive he deserves it. He wants to bask like that.

Taemin ends up asking to go to Blue Night, talks to him on the way about if he remembers what he said that first night, try to figure out what exactly was wrong with it. But it’s been weeks, and he’s said so many things.

“How do you remain positive on gloomy days like this?”

The thing about Jonghyun is that his heart is very strong. He hardly noticed the way the sun hid behind the clouds because he had his own ray of light in front of him. He didn’t feel gloomy this entire day, can hardly remember the last time he did. Even though it could have been yesterday, or the day before.

He takes a deep breath and tries to find the truth of today - something that would be true and something that would be helpful for this person who wants to know.

“If you come to expect gloominess out of a rainy day, you’re going to limit yourself to the opportunities that come out of a day like that.”

Jonghyun’s manager takes both of them back to Taemin’s apartment. The only other place he’s gone to sleep since this started has been his mother’s house. It’s always hard the next morning when he wakes up in his hotel.

“I feel good about that,” he says when they fall into Taemin’s bed. The blankets are wrapped around them and Taemin is exhausted, and he’ll be exhausted in the morning too when their schedule has to continue.

But now Jonghyun knows what he tastes like. He knows what he feels like and he’s as gentle as he’s ever been, and he knows that Taemin wants him just as badly, even if he isn’t sure why. He’s confident he has the time, now, to figure that out.

Taemin says, “I hope I remember this tomorrow.”

He swears the rain slows to a drizzle, and that’s what puts him to sleep.

Day 55

Thunder claps.

Jonghyun peels his eyes open.

He’s in his hotel room.

Sweaty and tangled and alone.

It’s 8:09am.

He goes back to sleep.

The rain doesn’t stop for hours and hours and Jonghyun stays in bed the entire day. He ignores Jihoon’s call. He ignores the director’s call. He ignores Kibum knocking on his door.

He doesn’t call Taemin, doesn’t visit him, doesn’t want to think about him.

He gets room service and watches shitty romcoms alone and he catches up on the hours and hours of sleep he’s missed over the past several weeks. All of these Tuesdays, waking up at 8:09am, getting his hopes up to wake up on a Wednesday.

It could even still be raining. That would even be okay.

His eyes are raw around the edges and his heart is sore and he wants to be alone, but he also wants this to be over. He wants to get the things he wants and he wants it to work. He wants to learn the fucking lesson already.

It’s late when his phone rings at a time that it hasn’t before. He picks it up on instinct, desperate for something new, before looking at the caller ID.

“Hello?” Jonghyun can hear that his voice is unused and rough.

“Are you in your room?” It’s Minho.

He sort of wants to lie, make an excuse. “I am, yeah.”

“Let us in.”

Especially after the conversation that he had with Minho just a few days ago (a conversation that Minho didn’t have and won’t remember. A conversation that doesn’t matter), Jonghyun feels a well of guilt in his gut for making him worry. The hardest thing of all is making the others worry.

When he opens the door, it’s all four of them there in varying states of concern, in varying states of exhaustion. Jonghyun hasn’t checked the time in hours.

“What’s going on?” He manages to ask when his groupmates filter in, piling onto his bed.

Kibum’s eyes are sharp. “You’ve been ignoring us all day. What’s going on with you? ”

He curls up in the sheets, tries to figure out what he could possibly say to them that would make any kind of sense, that won’t make him seem crazy.

“Today was shitty.”

They have to understand that. They’ve all had shitty days. He knows he’s predisposed to them, but he’s not alone there. Not anywhere.

Day 55 is slow and sad and it’s almost over, but they talk to him until he gets tired, but not in the way he’s felt all day. He’s exhausted but he feels warm.

Minho wraps himself behind him, pours off heat like a furnace. Taemin is on his other side, thumbs tentative, like he can remember the way the base of Jonghyun’s back felt yesterday, even though Jonghyun knows he can’t. Kibum curls himself at the base of the bed, keeping one hand on Jonghyun’s ankle like he’s afraid he’ll float away, and Jinki is cradled around him.

It’s the most full his hotel rooms ever are - he usually will go over to their apartments, tries to get out of these kinds of spaces as much as possible when he’s forced to stay here. This is the first time in all the timelines that he’s been with all four of them.

The rain doesn’t sound so loud with all of them here.

They don’t have to tell him that they were worried, because he knows. That’s not what they’re here to tell him, anyway. They’re just here to be with him.

He feels like he should apologize to them, but he knows that in a few hours it will be 8:09am and they won’t remember this feeling, and maybe on his very last day he can make it up to all of them individually. He’ll talk to Minho again, hopefully let his words sink in. Maybe he just needs to hear that advice again. He’ll thank Kibum for coming to visit every single day with a bad documentary and a menu. He’ll thank Jinki for being honest with him. He’ll get to love Taemin and be loved back and it won’t get taken away from him.

The rain doesn’t seem so loud.

Day 61

Thunder wakes him up.

It’s okay.

It’s been two months. He wonders if he’ll get to take Taemin somewhere it isn’t raining on day one hundred. He wonders if he’ll get the courage to kiss him there.

Jonghyun stays in his hotel room today. He sits up in his bed, and he takes Jihoon’s phone call. He calls Taemin afterwards, just to talk to him. They say the same things to each other that they said the first day, and Jonghyun doesn’t have to force it.

Sitting under his warm shower loosens his shoulders, clears his sinuses, makes him feel fresh.

He does some writing, even though it’s going to be gone tomorrow. The more he workshops it, the better it will be. That’s a good thing too.

The director calls and he takes that too. Her voice is short and pointed, but that’s how she tends to be. When she takes her breath to end the call, like she always does, he changes the narrative. Just a little.

“Before you go, I have a question,” he says. The words tumble out of his mouth clumsily, because he hasn’t gotten the chance to say them before today.

“Of course.”

He sort of wishes he got the chance to formulate something clearer. “Every time we’re on the phone together, you tell me to be gentle. What do you mean by that?”

Jonghyun sort of gets the impression, as soon as the question comes out of his mouth, that this is significant. It had always been on the list of things to figure out, but it hadn’t occurred to him to ask.

“What do you think I mean by that?” The director’s voice tilts up at the corners, like she’s amused, like she’s been waiting for him to ask. She always seems like she’s in such a hurry, but time slows like this.

“Am I too aggressive? Or too impatient? I might take things too far.”

“Hmm,” she hums, considering. “I don’t think so, Jonghyun-ssi. I think you’re very kind and very patient with a lot of people. Almost everyone.”

He ponders for a moment, and there’s a sound on Director Ko’s side of the line. “I really should go now. But think about it. Let me know tomorrow if you’ve figured it out.”

The line goes dead. Jonghyun scribbles down notes. Questions.

He calls Sodam, first. Starts the call with a question instead of a greeting. “Do you think I’m nice?”

“Do I think you’re nice? ”

“Yeah.”

“That’s such a strange question,” she says, a little defeated and a little clearly used to this. Jonghyun sort of wishes he’d visited more. Kicks himself mentally for not thinking of it.

He clears his throat. “Okay, well, I’m trying to figure something out here, and you and mom know me better than anyone.”

“Hmm,” Sodam makes a show out of considering the question, a slight tease that Jonghyun misses. He wants to see her again soon. Hopefully he’s close. “I’d say you’re nice. You’re kind to basically everyone.”

“Basically everyone?” He groans.

“Yeah, basically, I don’t know! What are you so worried about being nice for?”

“It’s a long story. But I was recently given some really vague advice that I can’t figure out.”

He can hear her shift on the other end of the line. “What was the advice?”

“To be gentle , but I’m not sure who I’m not gentle to. Do you think I’m gentle? I don’t even know what that means, it’s driving me crazy,” the ceiling stares back at him, and it’s almost a comforting constant. That’s all this ceiling ever does.

Sodam is silent for a moment. He hopes she’s thinking about this as hard as he is.

“It sounds like it’s frustrating you a bit,” she says, like she’s choosing her words carefully.

“Yeah.”

“So, what, you’re kind of annoyed at whoever gave you this advice?”

Jonghyun winces, takes a second to think. “No… I don’t think I’m annoyed at her. I’m more frustrated at myself at this point, I feel like I’ve been thinking about this for months and I can’t figure it out.”

“Maybe you should have more patience with yourself, Jonghyun.”

At Blue Night, someone asks him the same question he’s gotten every night for two months. He tries to remember what he said the first time. It doesn’t come to him, but it starts to.

Day 2

When the rumbling of thunder shakes Jonghyun awake, the first thing he notices is that it’s still raining. Second, that it must be early, again, because the sky is frustratingly bright even through the rain clouds. He thought he’d shut the curtains last night.

Third, it’s awful and humid and he doesn’t have the energy to detangle himself from the sheets. He should probably figure out how to use the thermostat at this place.

Jonghyun sits with his eyes closed for a bit, hoping that today is better than yesterday.

This morning, when his phone rings, he thinks to check the caller ID this time. It’s Jihoon again. At least today they’ll be heading to that other venue.

“Good morning, Jihoon.”

“Oh, Jonghyun-ssi, I didn’t realize you were awake. I thought I was going to get your voicemail,” Jihoon’s voice is tinny through the speaker, just as tinny as it was yesterday. The rain must be just as bad, then.

“Thunder woke me up again.” Jonghyun looks over at the clock. It blinks 8:14am at him.

The rain sort of drowns out his thoughts. He shakes his head to clear his mind. “I thought you booked the indoor venue for today.”

“No, sorry, we dropped the ball. Didn’t realize it was going to start pouring overnight,” Jihoon says, as if it weren’t pouring all day yesterday. Jonghyun is too tired for this. “It’s torrential out here. Director Ko wanted to apologize that you’re stuck in the city for another day but she got roped into some meeting.”

“Are you screwing around with me?” That would be funny. A weird prank for eight in the morning, but Jonghyun’s always liked Jihoon. He’s always been kind on set. And Jonghyun tends to be a good person to pull pranks on.

But Jihoon sounds offended almost. “No? I’m sorry, we don’t really have anything planned, but Director Ko might call you later, she said she feels bad.”

“Oh,” Jonghyun immediately feels guilty. “No, you’re fine. Thank you for letting me know. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The tenseness evaporates and Jonghyun’s heart speeds up and after the call ends Jonghyun just sits there staring at the ceiling, afraid to check his phone for the date.

Jonghyun’s had vivid dreams before. Not like this, though. He considers going back to sleep. Maybe then he’ll wake up and it will be Wednesday, and this is the dream.

Jonghyun takes a deep breath, reaches over to his bedside table where he put his notebook last night before bed. And the night before. He opens it.

Empty. He hadn’t written much in there yesterday, but he searches the pages for anything that indicates that yesterday happened.

Nothing.

He reaches for his phone and his fingers move quicker than his brain.

“Good morning!” Taemin’s greeting makes him smile despite the creeping panic. “Happy day off, hyung.”

“Good morning, Taemin. Is there something weird about today?”

Taemin’s confused giggle rings through the phone. “Something weird? What do you mean?”

“I’m going to sound crazy,” Jonghyun says, mainly to himself.

“Never.” Taemin’s voice is stern.

“I think I already did this,” he manages. “Like, I already did today and we’re doing it again.”

“Like you went back in time?”

“Like yesterday I woke up and it was Tuesday, and Jihoon called to let me know the schedule was cancelled, and I did some walking and some writing. I don’t know, I did the entire day. It was boring except for some of it, and it was almost twenty hours long, and all the stuff I wrote down in my notebook is gone and Jihoon called at the same time to say the same thing.”

Taemin is silent while he listens, because he tends to do that when he takes things seriously. It kind of feels silly to be listened to so carefully when it sounds ridiculous coming out of his mouth.

“Okay, there are a few things this could be.”

“Okay.”

“So you could have had a premonition? Though those are sort of short and you said your day was long and boring, right?”

“Terribly boring,” Jonghyun says.

He can almost see Taemin nodding. “Okay, so I’ll stick with time travel. Did you touch anything weird?”

“I don’t think so?”

“It could be a time loop, maybe. Like if your day yesterday kind of sucked, maybe you have to make it not suck.”

“Okay,” that makes him feel like he has agency, at least. “How do I do that?”

Taemin’s side of the line rustles, like he’s pulling out his own paper. It’s kind of sweet. Taemin likes to take notes. He hears the click of a pen. “There are lots of ways, but basically you just have to figure out what happened yesterday that shouldn’t have happened. Or what didn’t happen yesterday that should have.”

“That’s incredibly vague,” Jonghyun says.

“It’s more obvious in fiction! If it’s not fixed in a few days I can show you some movies about it. You’ll probably like them, and even if you don’t, it’s good research,” Taemin scribbles on the page, voice a little far from the receiver but raised so Jonghyun can still hear him clearly. Charming. “But I know some off the top of my head. Usually they’re, like, the main character has to realize they’re a bad person and learn empathy, but I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

Jonghyun doesn’t exactly want to rule it out.

Taemin keeps talking past Jonghyun’s thoughts. “The other answers are to do good deeds, confess to the one that got away or your first love, make other people realize they’re in a time loop, that kind of thing. It can vary. I’ll let you know tomorrow if I remember. Wouldn’t that be great? I could help.”

“That would be nice,” Jonghyun says. He never really feels lonely with Taemin around.

“I think so too,” Taemin relaxes on the other end of the line, Jonghyun can tell. “Why did yesterday suck so bad? Just bored? You should have called me, I wasn’t planning on doing anything all day.”

“I tried to write, but I sort of felt uninspired.”

“That’s the worst. I hope today rights itself.”

He can almost feel Taemin’s soft hand on his arm, his little piece of comfort. “Me too. I’ll try to start working on all that stuff, too.”

“You better,” Taemin says, shining through the line. They hang up and even though they never say goodbye, this time it feels like proof that Taemin will remember tomorrow.

He ends up going to the cafe today, too, this time really taking in the scenery, and all the passersby. The people who double-take at him and people who look away. He wonders if this is supposed to be a weird superhero moment where he’s supposed to catch someone falling or run into his one true love or whatever romantic bullshit that’s probably in all of those movies that Taemin likes.

The same barista makes him the same drink, and the same people watch him while he stares out the window.

Jonghyun taps his pen against his notebook in the same spots he ran over yesterday, traces over the ghost of the chicken scratch that should be there already.

Inspiration should be easy to find like this, in a situation that honestly has an equal chance of being hallucination or supernatural. He should probably stop watching so much sci-fi. Words start to flow out of him, and he hopes they’ll still be there in the morning, because they feel good.

Today it doesn’t feel so much like time is crawling by, at least. He’s taken by surprise when Director Ko calls him that he picks up forgetting that he’s going to have the same conversation he had yesterday.

“Afternoon, Jonghyun-ssi.”

“Afternoon, Director Ko,” he shuffles a little more delicately out the door today, into the pouring rain with his umbrella ready this time.

“I just wanted to give you a call to apologize, you know, I know you’re staying in a hotel this week for shooting and we got rained out so it’ll be a day longer,” she pauses, the same as she did yesterday. “You sound like you’re outside though. Do you have an umbrella?”

“Of course.”

“Good. And I got pulled into about a hundred meetings today, so at least you got to take the day off.”

He almost laughs. “Yeah, at least there’s that.”

“Did you visit your family today before heading back into the city?”

“No. Kind of wish I did, though.”

“Alright,” Jonghyun says, waiting for it.

“Alright. Be gentle.”

The line goes dead.

This sucks.

He tries to remember what happens next.

After the call, he took a shower, which would probably be nice. And after that, Kibum came over. After that is Blue Night. And then he can see if this worked.

He decides to keep doing the same thing he did yesterday.

Waiting for Kibum feels like the final confirmation. Even after everything today, he still thinks there’s a chance this has all been some kind of weird coincidence. But Kibum doesn’t usually turn up out of nowhere. Kibum is calculated and he’s intentional.

And then there’s a knock at his door.

“It’s me.”

Jonghyun opens the door, and Kibum is in the same outfit he was in yesterday, down to his shoes and his watch. “It’s you.”

Kibum shrugs, has a bright smile that almost looks like he’s mocking him. “Want to get room service and watch a weird documentary?”

And they do, and it’s exactly like it was the day before, except he hasn’t bothered to make the bed this time. They orient themselves on it the same way, on their stomachs with the heels of their palms under their chins. Kibum dodges questions about his love life and asks Jonghyun the same questions so that he can dodge them too.

They end up pushing each other off the bed again, same as yesterday, and Jonghyun feels the anxiety melt off of him the longer Kibum is here, and he just has to tell him.

“Can I tell you something weird?”

Kibum’s eyes brighten up at the question, almost like he’s aware that it’s off the script that’s supposed to be Tuesday. “Yeah, of course.”

“I think I’m in a time loop,” Jonghyun says, takes a sip of his drink that’s been sitting on the floor.

“You think?”

Jonghyun shrugs. “It’s only been like a day, but we did this yesterday. You came over and we talked about how you could make this pasta better than the chef at this hotel, and I asked if you saw Jinki so you pushed me off the bed.”

“That’s,” Kibum squints. “I’ll play along. I feel like the second day of a time loop would be really confusing. It’s before any of the fun stuff gets to start.”

“Like what?”

“You know, like confessing to your one true love, or jumping out of an airplane, or learning all of the languages on earth, or mastering an instrument. I feel like you sort of have to stick with one, though,” Kibum’s ditched his pasta, now, smiling wild.

“You’d jump out of an airplane?” Jonghyun raises a playful eyebrow at him, daring.

“Not in a million years. But I’d probably pay to watch you do it.”

And Jonghyun can tell that Kibum is just humoring him, that he doesn’t really believe it, because Jonghyun probably wouldn’t if he weren’t experiencing it himself, but it’s nice to joke around with him like this. Just like yesterday, it’s like the day washes off of him.

And when he leaves, it’s empty again.

Quiet until Blue Night.

He gets to the studio early because he doesn’t have anything else to do, really, greets everyone who works there the way he likes to, keeping in mind what Taemin’s said about being kind.

He wonders if he should make different song recommendations, or answer people’s advice differently.

The last question he gets asked almost takes him by surprise by being the same from the day before. Jonghyun settles into a routine when recording that always feels new. And then someone asks: “How do you remain positive on gloomy days like this?”

He really thinks about it this time. Maybe his answer from yesterday was wrong. Jonghyun sometimes worries he’s not in the position to give advice, not if he can’t really take it himself. And certainly not if he can’t usually find a way to remain positive on days like this.

“You don’t have to remain positive,” he ends up saying. “I think the repetition of dark days can be comforting. I know I like the rain, but even if you don’t, I’m sure you can feel the way it’s consistent and repetitive, and try to focus on the way those things feel every day. Even when it’s hard.”

Again, it feels a little fake coming out of his mouth. Maybe that’s something he’ll have to fix. Maybe he should have said something that felt more like the truth. Even if he knows he’s right, he wishes that kind of thing applied to him too.

Day 62

Thunder claps, and shakes Jonghyun awake. He’s wrapped in his white sheets, humid and stuck to him. He has to kick them off, but he does it slowly, waiting the four minutes it will take for Jihoon to call him.

The call is the same as it always is. Jonghyun makes sure to be kind and thankful, because Jihoon means well, and Jonghyun is going to have a good day. He finishes the call and gets out of bed and tells himself in the mirror that it’s okay if tomorrow isn’t Wednesday.

He showers first thing, not like he usually does. Usually he waits about halfway through the day, when he’s bored and rain-soaked and burnt out. This morning, he takes his time.

There’s a spider outside on his balcony spinning a web in the rain. That’s as much of a sign as he needs.

His first stop today is Jinki and Minho’s apartment. In the backseat of the car, he scrawls the first of the lyrics that he can remember. Pieces of the puzzle that he’s gathered these past two months. It’s never been this hard to write a song, but usually his lyrics stay on the page for more than twenty-four hours.

Then again, it usually does take more than one day. So there’s that.

“Good morning!” Jinki smiles brightly, dressed for the day. The rain feels like it slows down outside.

“Good morning, hyung. Happy day off,” Jonghyun makes his way into the foyer, doesn’t take his shoes off. “Is Minho around?”

Jinki steps back into the apartment, almost tripping over the steps. “Yeah, I think he’s going to the gym soon, but I’ll go get him for you.” He smiles, like he knows. Jinki usually knows.

Before he walks away, Jonghyun reaches out to grab his sleeve. “I hope you have a good day today, okay? I love you.”

Jinki’s smile lights up the room almost blindingly. “I love you too, Jonghyun.”

He’s deep in the apartment when Minho comes out, and they end up leaving the apartment together. Jonghyun doesn’t have too much to say, but he does want to make sure that he gets it out before Wednesday.

It’s quiet for a few steps while they walk down the corridor. Of course it is. Minho and Jonghyun from Monday had been at each other’s throats for a little bit now. Jonghyun from today wants to understand, and he wants to be better, but Minho from today doesn’t know that yet.

“I love you, you know,” Jonghyun says. He doesn’t have to worry about his words very much with Minho, doesn’t have to censor himself or restrict himself. Minho takes what he says and knows what he means. “I know I’ve been a little irritated lately, but I’m not upset with you.”

Minho releases a breath like he’s been holding it in. “Thank God.”

Jonghyun can’t really hold his smile back. “You care about me very loudly.”

“Of course I do,” Minho’s hand finds the small of Jonghyun’s back. Warm against the cold of the storm. “I know you don’t like being worried about. But really, if you aren’t going to worry about yourself, I’d like to.”

Jonghyun sort of feels like the younger brother here. “I’m working on it. But thank you.”

Minho pulls him into a long hug in the lobby of the apartment, warm and tight and suffocating in the best way. “Is that all you wanted to talk about? You could have called me.”

“I wanted to see you,” he says. He doesn’t say that he hasn’t seen him in a few days. He doesn’t say that he’d been ignoring him and avoiding this for most of his Tuesdays. Not because Minho will worry, but because he’ll tell him later once it’s over. He wants Minho to remember it.

He gets his hair ruffled on his way out the door, when Minho walks in one direction and Jonghyun gets back in the car.

The walk to Taemin’s door is difficult. It shouldn’t be, but it is. He’s done this most days, so it shouldn’t be hard. He almost doesn’t knock.

“Jonghyun-hyung? Happy day off!” His greeting never falters. Jonghyun always smiles.

“Good morning, Taeminnie,” he says, tries not to lurch forward. “I have two questions.”

Taemin smiles and the drum roll of thunder matches his heartbeat. “I have two answers.”

“Okay. Do you trust me?”

“Is that the first question?” His voice is teasing and his eyes are wild.

“Yes.”

“Then yes,” he says. “Absolutely. That doesn’t mean I don’t think that question is incredibly vague, by the way. I hope the second question is more forward.”

Jonghyun smiles. “It’s okay, it is. Do you want to come to Blue Night with me tonight?”

“I would love to. I’ll probably have to take a nap beforehand, though. I took a run this morning.”

“I know,” Jonghyun says, not censoring himself. If he keeps this up, he’ll never leave. “Okay. I’ll see you tonight, then. I’ll pick you up on the way, okay?”

Taemin looks a little dumbfounded in his entryway. “Okay, hyung.”

“It’s a date.”

His manager takes him to the cafe again, where he orders the same coffee he has every time. He sits against the same window he always does, looks for spiders spinning webs. He traces the lines of the lyrics he’s already written nearly sixty times already.

Oceanus Procellarum: ocean of storms .

He creates something out of nothing.

The ringtone goes off at the exact time he knows it will, when he’s already packing up his things, getting ready to walk back to the hotel.

“Afternoon, Jonghyun-ssi,” Director Ko says, voice already apologetic.

“Afternoon, Director,” Jonghyun says. “I actually had a question for you.”

“Oh! Fire away.”

“Do you tell everyone to be gentle?” Jonghyun’s been wondering. The others haven’t noticed.

But he can hear the nodding of her head through the line. “I always have, yes.”

“What do you mean by it?”

“I guess it’s something that everyone needs to hear,” she says. “I know I do. Some people need a reminder sometimes. It’s good to be gentle.”

Jonghyun nods. He watches the rain splash against the sidewalk in front of him. It falls gently. “I think I needed to hear that too, so thank you.”

“Of course, Jonghyun-ssi.” He lets her go through her entire speech, answering the questions he answers every day. Same as yesterday, it sounds like someone else is telling her that she has to get off the phone. “Remember to be gentle, alright?”

Before Kibum comes over, he tells himself in the mirror that it’s okay if tomorrow isn’t Wednesday. Today passes quickly enough that he thinks that it could be this easy every day, even if he knows that’s not true.

The question he gets asked on Blue Night every night comes back up and wraps around his ears. He thinks about what it means to be gloomy and he wonders what it means to remain positive .

He writes down a little note to himself: it’s okay. Even if it’s you.

Kibum knocks on his door at his usual time, says “it’s me” the same way he always does.

Maybe it’s just his brain tuning it out after two months, but even now the rain seems softer. He swears.

Sometime in between talking about Jinki and the ending of the documentary that Jonghyun can’t seem to get tired of watching, he turns to look at Kibum. He’s worn the same outfit to visit every single day. He’s bare faced and relaxed and comfortable and happy.

“What prompted you to come over?” Jonghyun asks, tilting his head off the bed.

Kibum smiles. “I don’t really know. I feel like we haven’t had time just the two of us together in a while,” he says, eyes soft, shrugs like it’s nothing.

It’s kind of funny, because Jonghyun’s seen him most days, the same thing almost every time. He tries not to feel guilty about the times he’s missed it.

Jonghyun rolls forward to pull him into a hug, and Kibum lets him, even though he makes a show of being suffocated. “I love you, hyung.”

“I love you too.”

And Kibum leaves, and Jonghyun scribbles a few more notes, and they pick Taemin up on the way to Blue Night early. Jonghyun makes sure to greet everyone brightly, wants to host a good show tonight.

At the end, for hopefully the last time, what’s become a comforting voice asks a question.

“How do you remain positive on gloomy days like this?”

“I think that you can’t go into your day and let something like the weather ruin it for you. It’s okay for there to be lots of rain or clouds. I like the rain and the clouds. It’s okay to be gloomy with the weather. But a storm can be an opportunity you didn’t realize you had, too. If you’re patient with yourself, you’ll make it through the day.”

He watches Taemin smile through the booth.

He looks at the open notebook on his desk, covered in papers and fluorescent light.

Chicken scratch hangul looks back up at him: even if it’s you .

And Taemin comes back to Jonghyun’s hotel afterwards, tired and clumsy and happy and calm. He thinks it’s okay if tomorrow isn’t Wednesday.

“Why’d you have me come tonight?” Taemin says in the dark, once they’re finally in bed, tucked into the hotel sheets. The rain comes down hard outside, and that’s okay too.

“I had a weird day,” Jonghyun says. “It’s kind of a lot.”

“I’ll be awake for a while, anyway, I think.”

So Jonghyun tells him most of it. He tells him about the movies and about the notes, and about all the days he went to see Taemin because he didn’t want to see anyone else. He tells Taemin that he realized a lot of things, but he doesn’t say exactly what they are.

They drift off in between stories, fingers dancing over hips and shoulders and the palms of each other’s hands. Jonghyun tells Taemin about the time they sat on the roof and he promised to take Taemin somewhere it wasn’t raining on the hundredth day.

“How many days has it been?”

“At least sixty. Less than sixty-five. I can’t exactly keep track with a calendar or anything. And anything I change just turns back.”

Taemin nods, stone serious. “Of course that would happen to you.”

“What?” Jonghyun can’t help but smile. “What does that mean?”

“You know what I mean. You’re amazing.” Taemin’s voice is lazy and quiet like this. Jonghyun hopes that when they wake up, he’ll still be here.

“You know I think you’re amazing.”

Jonghyun wants to kiss him.

They’ve been sitting like this for hours and Taemin is so close and Jonghyun has waited so long for this. He almost makes a move. Even if he has to start over again in the morning.

Every flash of lightning that brightens the room makes his heart race.

It’ll be okay if tomorrow isn’t Wednesday. He’d like to do this again.

Taemin’s eyes are always wide and searching, and Jonghyun notices them flick away for a moment before returning with a smile.

“What are you smiling about?” It’s contagious, it always is.

Taemin’s smile sometimes gets in the way of his speech. It’s charming. He draws his eyebrows together. “What time did you say you always wake up in the morning?

“8:09am.”

Taemin brightens and his cheeks take up his entire face and he takes Jonghyun by the shoulders to spin him around.

The alarm clock blinks back at him. 8:10am.

Day 1

A clap of thunder wakes Jonghyun up on Tuesday morning, only one day into the first warm week of spring. It shocks him awake with a jolt, and it takes a minute to remember where he is before he’s able to relax into the bed. The humidity has seeped into his hotel room, tangling in his sheets so they stick to his skin.

He’s never liked how the sharp cracks of thunder and lightning make the hair on his forearms stand on end, but he loves the way the rain will drown it out after, like running cool water over a burn. His eyes trace around the popcorn ceiling of the hotel, carving out shapes before he’s ready to sit up and start his day. The clock beside him flashes red next to him but his alarm hasn’t gone off, so he takes the time to watch the rain pour outside his window.

Back when he used to live with the others, Minho would always draw the curtains the second the sun came out, and it would be Jonghyun and Jinki who would groan and hide under their blankets and smack Minho with their pillows on his way out of their room. At some point, he would be the one to wake up first and draw the curtains in Minho’s room to make him stir.

But ever since he moved out, some nights he’ll leave the curtains drawn for a ghost of that forced brightness in the morning that springs flowers in his chest.

Jonghyun watches the rain fall and he’s glad he’d opened them before bed, right when the air outside was cool and smelled wet, and Sodam’s voice on the other end of the phone line told him about the clouds that looked like feathers.

His phone rings and at first he assumes it’s his alarm, but the digital clock blinks 8:13AM in startling red.

“Hello?” Jonghyun brings his phone to his ear before checking who it is.

“Oh, Jonghyun-ssi, I didn’t realize you were awake,” a tinny voice on the other end of the line says. His brain is too foggy to recognize it. “I thought I was going to get your voicemail.”

Jonghyun hums, pulls the phone from his ear to check the contact: Jihoon, the assistant to the director for the video they’re filming this week. “The thunder woke me up.”

There’s a silent moment of acknowledgement in response. “I’m just calling to let you know that the shoot is canceled today because of the rain. It’s too dangerous to have you guys out there with all of the equipment, and we didn’t book the indoor venue until tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Jonghyun yawns into the word, lets his eyes glaze over watching the rain fall and the lightning strike far away.

“It’s torrential out here. Director Ko wanted to apologize that you’re stuck in the city for another day but she got roped into some meeting. She might call you later, though, okay?”

He tries not to be annoyed at the fact that he’s away from his mom and sister for another day for filming, and it mainly works. He’s polite and he’s kind and he thanks the assistant director again and lets his body melt into bed with the knowledge that he has nothing to do for fifteen hours.

Jonghyun typically feels on rainy days like it's his responsibility to be productive, but he also feels like the rain is beating into his chest and forcing him back to stare at nothing. Like his eyes can glaze over and he can be massaged by it for days.

It’s not a mindset he’s extremely comfortable with, but it is a mindset that seems to be comfortable inhabiting itself inside him. It digs and nestles and makes a space like a dog spinning around in bed.

It says: for other people, their productivity is not tied to their self-worth. For other people, relaxation is important. For other people, a change in plans is an opportunity.

It says: for you it is not .

He thinks about opening his notebook and just the glance over weighs on his neck and head. He considers laying here for the entire day, ordering room service and calling his mother and gathering the energy in the evening getting ready for Blue Night. He could do that.

He considers asking the manager who was going to be driving him around today for a ride back home and sitting on his mother’s couch until it’s time to leave for Blue Night recording. Though, that might worry them.

He spends time scrolling through social media and through the news, considers calling his mother or falling back to sleep.

Because his hotel is so close to the recording studio for Blue Night, he didn’t get back too late last night. Exhaustion wore out his brain by 3:30 in the morning, so he probably got about four and a half hours of sleep. He could take a nap and restart his morning at a later hour. He could also push through and do some writing.

He pouts and dials Taemin’s phone instead.

“Good morning!” Taemin’s voice is always so clear. Like they’re in the room together. “Happy day off, hyung.”

The corner of his mouth draws up. Lazy. “Good morning. Did you have any back-up plans in case we got rained out?”

“Nope, but it’s still morning. I’ve got time.” Jonghyun takes a purposeful cold breath through his nose. Sometimes Taemin’s point of view startles him. He says things like they’re obvious: mornings mean the rest of the day is still coming; fifteen hours is a long time. These things are obvious and yet to Jonghyun the passage of time is looming and scary.

“You’re up early.”

Jonghyun doesn’t realize he’d zoned out until Taemin speaks again. His voice is surprised but not judgemental. For all his frenetic energy, he’s never judged Jonghyun for his periods of stillness. “Thunder woke me up.”

“Ugh,” Taemin sounds actually upset, like he’d been the one to have been rudely awakened. Jonghyun can hear the exaggerated pout. “Do you think you’ll be able to fall back asleep?”

He considers it again. There are a lot of things he should do. He should write and he should compose and he should feel inspired. It’s days like this when he usually is. The way the rain hugs his window on the way down, the fact that he can hardly see across to other buildings this high through the fog. He wants it to inspire him.

He also wants to lie in bed.

Things like this frustrate him more than anything. Knowing that he has high expectations for himself and still failing to reach them. Even things as trivial as this. The more he wants it, the faster it slips away, the more frustrated he feels.

He’s been given an opportunity with a free day, and he wants so badly to take it.

“I don’t know.”

Jonghyun can tell his voice comes out low and tired and he wants the warmth of this week to wrap around him. He wants it to make him brighter when he feels dull. It sometimes feels like an ache in his bones, like a deep itch he can’t reach.

“I was thinking you could come over because the day’s shot, if you wanted to watch movies. I know you don’t really like staying in the hotel,” Taemin says, and it comes out gentle like it’s something he needs rather than something Jonghyun needs.

He always does this. Taemin knows that if Jonghyun feels pitied, he won’t want anything to do with it. It’s part of why he dialed Taemin in the first place. Part of it.

With that little flower blooming in his chest from Taemin’s sunshine, he lets his shoulders relax. Sometimes they’re hunched up to his ears without realizing.

“I was actually thinking I might go to a cafe and try to write a bit,” he says, his voice coming out gently. “If the rain keeps going tomorrow, I’ll come over.”

Jonghyun can feel Taemin nodding through the line. “Of course. Oh! I wanted to tell you! I listened to Blue Night from last night on my run this morning and I decided something.”

“Do tell,” Jonghyun says. He can feel the build up to a Taemin kind of punchline coming.

“Well you talked about how professional and talented you think I am, which is great and all, but I think you should probably stop praising me on air so much. People are going to start expecting great things from me.”

“Oh, that would be a nightmare. Having to work hard all because I think you’re so talented and great,” Jonghyun listens to Taemin’s distinct laugh that he breaks into as soon as Jonghyun acknowledges his jokes. It rolls like the rain. “And I’m sorry, did you just say you took a two hour run this morning? What time did you wake up?”

“Oh don’t worry, I only listened to your bits, so it wasn’t the whole two hours,” Jonghyun can hear the shrug in his voice.

“Ridiculous. It’s a radio show and you completely missed the radio part.”

Taemin huffs, and Jonghyun wonders what he’s doing with his morning. After his run and before making plans to do something else. His voice is teasing and soft when he says: “but I was there for the show.”

“You are too much, Lee Taemin,” he decides to roll out of the hotel room bed, grunting into the microphone.

“You love me,” Taemin says it definitely. Jonghyun doesn’t even have to confirm.

“I’m going to the cafe,” he says back. “I’ll text you later.”

“If you forget your umbrella and get sick from the rain, Director Ko will be so pissed, so don’t even think about it.” Taemin says quickly before hanging up and Jonghyun smiles.

They don’t say goodbye on their calls, none of them do. When things are abrupt it’s almost like they'll never end.

And because it’s Jonghyun’s day off, and because a part of him (just a little part) is worried that if he rushes himself he’ll burn out, he takes his time getting ready. Some days are like this: brushing his teeth even though his arms are heavy; staring at the window so he can unfocus his eyes and try to feel it wash over him; forcing himself to call someone so that he can go to bed having heard their voice. It’s hard and that’s okay, and brute force is sometimes the only way to push past the storm.

Brute force and an umbrella.

Sodam once laughed when she saw him carrying the comically little thing, domed and clear, just so he could watch the rain land on it and drive down the sides in a thousand little races.

He’d pouted at her for laughing, and she said, with decades of love: “you are such a romantic. Of course you want to watch the rain fall on a clear umbrella. You like keeping an eye on the sky.”

The sun doesn’t peek through the clouds much today, so the walk to the cafe is a little gray and a little wet inside his shoes. This is the cafe he typically goes to when he’s staying in this particular hotel. It’s a short walk and it’s a small room and there are usually stray cats that sit out on the porch inside boxes and on blankets.

The footpath is the same repeating pattern of bricks. He steps on particular pieces at particular angles, listening to the crash of the rain and the run-off into the drains. When he can’t sleep, even on nights where he’s already been driven back to his hotel after Blue Night, he’ll walk to and from this cafe with his hands in his pockets and the glow of the streetlights casting his shadow in circles as he walks.

The others never ask why he doesn’t just move into this part of the city, on his own or with one of them. Minho and Jinki lived together for a long while, and their dorm days weren’t completely perilous, so it would be possible. But they know he couldn’t live away from his mom and sister. Not even when stretches like this, long days that force him to be up and deep in the city, or even farther out to film, where it wouldn’t make sense to go all the way back home for a few hours of rest.

It’s not like he can’t afford his own apartment where the other four of them live, but it feels too much like putting down roots.

His face is covered, and if the barista at the cafe recognizes him, she doesn’t show it. She takes his order with a polite smile and he’s grateful to sometimes feel overwhelmingly human. And Jonghyun takes his notebook and his pen and his coffee over to a far window where he can see the park he’d walked past, where he can usually watch the stray cats nap, and he watches the rain fall.

And he watches the rain fall.

And he waits for something to come to him.

He’s suddenly very aware of the other people in the cafe who have come to do work and seem to have made progress. He’s aware of the storm clouds that have twisted angry into graphite and of the sheets of water that come down in waves in a way that makes him feel like he’s in a fishbowl in this cafe.

Patrons come and go and the radio plays songs he’s written and composed and sung for and performed onstage, and he thinks: people are going to start expecting great things from me .

His watch tells him he’s been here for hours and only two words are on the page: oceanus procellarum . It’s latin; he’s heard it somewhere, maybe on a late-night internet rabbit-hole or an obscure podcast. The largest sea of the moon. Ocean of storms. An entire ocean of this.

The coffee sitting on the table in front of him has created a ring on the little leather coaster, and he stares, a little ashamed, at the progress he’s made.

Days like this are the hardest. It’s not hard that he’s uninspired, because he knows he can’t always be. He has at least an ounce of patience for himself, somewhere, he knows. It’s hard because days like this are where he’s supposed to be at his most inspired.

He’s at his typical cafe in his favorite weather and his favorite drink and he’s spoken to some of his favorite people. Routine is safe and it’s good.

What’s hard is that everything is set up to be good and easy and productive and it’s not. And the frustration and the guilt simmers and makes it more impossible to get anything else on the paper. And that guilt boils over, steaming with the thunder and lightning and rain outside.

A ring interrupts his thoughts, and he picks it up immediately, jolting out of his seat and out of the cafe, bowing his head to the baristas on his way out. He feels too impolite to take a call in the cafe, though he’s not sure if leaving in such a rush is more polite than taking the call.

He’s too flustered to ready his umbrella before he steps outside, so a crash of rain lands on his shoulders before he has the chance to shield himself from the downpour that has only gotten heavier as the day’s gone on.

This time, at least, he checks the caller ID before picking up.

“Afternoon, Jonghyun-ssi,” a tired but kind voice says on the other end of the line.

Jonghyun doesn’t know what time it is but he doesn’t check his watch. “Afternoon, Director Ko.” He attempts to speak over his face covering and the sound of the rain and the commotion of putting up his umbrella.

“I just wanted to give you a call to apologize, you know, I know you’re staying in a hotel this week for shooting and we got rained out so it’ll be a day longer” she says. “You sound like you’re outside though. Do you have an umbrella?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll stay dry and healthy.”

“Good,” she says. She sounds like she means it, but she does tend to be very harsh with her words, they come out a little rough like she’s being critical of him. “And I got pulled into about a hundred meetings today, so at least you got to take the day off.”

He doesn’t say “lucky me,” but he certainly thinks it. Instead, he says “thank you.”

“Did you visit your family today before heading back into the city?”

Jonghyun purses his lips. He’d only considered doing this for a moment. “I thought about it, but I’ll be seeing them at the end of filming anyway.”

“Alright,” Jonghyun says, polite.

And then, as she has said by way of parting since they met a couple of weeks ago, she says “be gentle.”

The line goes dead and Jonghyun has found himself under his umbrella passing a park he hasn’t passed before, where a huddle of kids kick a ball around on the cement. They’re dripping wet, seemingly without worrying about getting sick, and for a second, he considers letting his arm fall so the rain can soak him through as well. Maybe it’ll do something to inspire him.

Except he’s been told twice today that he can’t get himself wet. Even now that his hair is wet from catapulting out of the cafe, he knows he has to shower once he’s back in his hotel. Even though it’s a warm rain. The drops don’t chill his back when they crawl down. They kiss the knobs of his spine.

Water is like that. Gentle.

That’s probably what Director Ko says when she tells him to be gentle. Like water.

(Though water can be scary too.)

So when he gets back, he washes it off himself with the heat of hotel shower water. He stays in there for longer than strictly necessary, letting it soak his back until it’s red. It’s almost as good as letting his umbrella down in the park.

He takes his time settling back into his room, sitting with his computer on his lap and staring out the window. It’s days like these where he wishes he could fast forward to the good part. The part where inspiration strikes and he can feel it run through his heart like adrenaline. The day starts to drag until that spark.

Or until there’s a knock at his door.

“It’s me,” Kibum says from the other side.

Jonghyun pulls the door open, head cocked to the side. “Hey, what are you doing here? It’s pouring out.”

Kibum shrugs. “I felt like coming over. I figured if you weren’t off writing somewhere that you’d be locked in your hotel room.”

“You know me so well,” Jonghyun says, trying to put on something that will combat the flat affect he knows he has. “Want to order room service?”

They sit in his bed, which Jonghyun had made neatly before Kibum had come over.

“Want to watch a documentary I found?” Kibum asks, kicking his feet up in the air behind him. “It looks extremely weird.”

Of course it does. Being with Kibum is like this. Calming and forward. They don’t hide anything from each other, and most of that is just the fact that being in the same room opens up Jonghyun’s chest so uniquely that he can’t help himself.

Even their teasing and evading is more open than they say out loud.

“Did you see Jinki today?” Jonghyun asks, spinning pasta around his fork.

“Why would I?” Kibum fires back. He keeps his eyes trained on Jonghyun’s utensils. “It’s easier if you use the spoon too.”

“I’ll pick the food next time we order dinner.”

Kibum’s smirk is sickly sweet. “Next time let’s eat in. You come over and I’ll make you this, but it will be better.”

“I’m sure it will be,” Jonghyun says.

“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic. But I don’t care. I’m thinking of becoming a chef.”

Jonghyun gives him a look. “I think you’re a little too busy these days to go to culinary school.”

“I don’t know,” Kibum says, twirling his fork a little more delicately. “Like, far off in the future, when we’re all too old to go on tour anymore, I’ll settle down and run a restaurant that capitalizes on our popularity as an iconic boy group from the twenty-first century.”

“I like that you’re implying that you’ll also be traveling to the future to do this.”

“Desperate times.”

“Are those desperate times related to me asking about Jinki?”

Kibum drops his fork and uses both hands to push Jonghyun off the bed, and they end up laughing until the documentary is over and their plates are empty and Kibum has to leave.

And then Jonghyun is in the silence of his room, staring at the ceiling, waiting until it’s an appropriate time to get ready for Blue Night.

His manager calls him down, and he gets into the car, tries to shed the remaining negativity from the day. He doesn’t bring his notebook with him the way he usually will. Sometimes while songs play, he’ll write down keywords that he thinks sound nice, but he knows it will just frustrate him, crawl down into his bones and settle there.

Blue Night passes quicker than most of the day has. Jonghyun shows up to set early and greets everyone there and tries to be this force of positivity. He doesn’t really have an option not to be.

And then he gets a question that makes him really think, right towards the end of the show.

“How do you remain positive on gloomy days like this?” Someone asks, and it’s like it’s a manifestation of his fears. Why can’t he remain positive on gloomy days like this? Why does he have to remain positive.

Of course there’s a way. Of course there’s advice there. Of course there’s an answer that he can give, even if it doesn’t really apply to him. That’s okay. Not everything has to apply to him.

He’s almost disappointed when he ends the show there, exhausted from the long day.

Wishing he had the time to be patient with himself like that.

The rain seems to fall harder when he gets back into his hotel room. This morning, he’d been grateful for keeping the curtains open, but it feels like the rain is laughing at him now, so he closes them.

He loves the rain. It sings him to sleep.

Wednesday, 8:10am

A clap of thunder doesn’t wake him up. It comes and it shakes the room, and it dissipates there.

He spins back around to Taemin, who’s awake like he hasn’t stayed up for the entire night, shining like the sun through the clouds.

Jonghyun can feel his eyes well up, doesn’t have the time to warn Taemin about it. He can’t see a foot in front of his face. Taemin tries to pull him into a hug, but he keeps them apart for just one more second.

“Are you okay?” Taemin asks. He almost looks concerned. It would be okay if he was. It would make sense.

He nods. “I love you.”

The ocean spills over because the moon tilts too far on its axis. He crashes hard. Taemin tastes like saltwater and candy and rain, and even though there’s still thunder and lightning and a downpour outside that could flood the balcony, the storm is over.

Notes:

Thank you so much Rose for motivating me and looking through this and letting me know that this wasn't an awful idea, actually.
I hope this is comforting to read. It was comforting to write. I listen to Blue Night a lot when I can't sleep, and he just has such a comforting voice and such profound advice. I think he believes all of it, too, even when it's him.

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