Taemin can’t remember where he last put his dance rehearsal diary but when he finds ripped pages stuffed into the locker where he keeps spare water bottles and towels and clothes, he realises. This is not an example of his magic hands, making him lose everything, but something else entirely.

“Taeminnie! Come on, the car’s here.”

Taemin nods even though Key can’t see him, “Coming hyung!” He takes a deep breath and stuffs the loose pages into the binding and throws the tattered diary into his bag.

It’s a few weeks later, almost time enough for him to forget about the incident, when some rumour begins saying that Taemin’s sleeping with the singing coach to get more lines, that’s why he always locks the door to the dance studio and closes the curtains at night. Really it’s because he hates feeling their stares through the door as they leave when they’re done for the day, sharp with jealousy and anger and bitterness.

Jonghyun gulps down the whole bottle of water, “Sweetheart? Want me to top your bottle up?”

Taemin blushes at the endearment, “Thanks, Jjong.” He checks the blinds are closed and pecks Jonghyun’s cheek before Jonghyun leaves, grinning. Taemin’s left alone, the others already having headed home, just him and Jonghyun staying back to get the dance break as smooth as possible. Even though it happens all the time, Taemin is never any less pleased when somebody asks him to hang back and help them. He’s humming the melody and shaking out his limbs when he notices dark silhouettes outside the door. He freezes. There’s something kind of ominous about the way the shadows through the blind don’t move, just stay there. Taemin shifts from side to side, pinches his thigh, highly uncomfortable.

He’d go out there and confront them. He’s not a coward. Only they’re older and taller and their arms are two times more muscly than his. But he’s not going to stand around passively doing nothing, so he takes a deep breath and heads towards the door…

Then the shadows are moving and he can hear laughter and Jonghyun opens the door again. With the door wide open, Taemin sees just a glimpse of their flashing eyes and laughing mouths contorted into smirks when they catch sight of him.

“You ok, Tae?” Taemin nods, but turns away from the door nonetheless. “Have a good time at karaoke!” Jonghyun calls over his shoulder, then shuts the door and says to Taemin, “Damn, don’t you miss being able to just go out like that?” Taemin hums his agreement and Jonghyun pauses, maybe picking up on the maknae’s mood shift. “Shall we…uh, shall we continue?”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks for the water.”

“You’re welcome.”

Two days after the rumour finally dies down, Taemin is followed back to the dorms at night. It’s dark, and in between the streetlights he hears the footsteps. Jinki keeps warning him about walking home late, reminds him it’s their driver’s job to pick him up even past midnight, but Jonghyun understands and supports Taemin’s argument that when all the roads are quiet and the only pedestrians are office workers heading home after overtime or the sad people with the night shift, nobody recognises him, nobody mobs him. And he loves the feeling of the black night against his skin, usually. But not tonight; instead the sky above is pressing down and in and his ears are ringing with the pressure and the soft footsteps on the pavement behind him.

He knows it’s not a sasaeng because they always ambush the members, they don’t just follow them, and there are no fan accounts the next day about how he stopped at seven eleven for banana milk. Although he does want the milk, that’s not the reason he goes in; it’s for the solace of the bright lights and member of staff manning the till. When he leaves twenty minutes later, after sipping his milk slowly and peering out into the gathering gloom warily, there are no more footsteps, which just scares him even more because that means somebody did follow him, then got bored and left.

He closes the door quietly then leans back and sags against it, sighing. “Taemin? Why are you back so late?”

“Jinki! You didn’t need to wait up for me,” Taemin tells him, tone slightly reprimanding and edged with guilt for making Jinki stay up late. He slips off his shoes and enters the living room, finding Jinki curled up on the sofa, the most recent episode of Running Man playing mute on the television.

“I wanted to,” Jinki assures him, making grabby hands at him. Taemin obligingly cuddles up with him. He lets the safety he feels in Jinki’s strong arms calm his heartbeat. They turn the television sound on, quiet enough not to disturb the others, and laugh at Jae Suk’s clever deceptions and the mock-fight between Gary and Kwangsoo, until they both start yawning uncontrollably. “Time for bed, sunshine?” Taemin nods into his chest. They stumble to the bathroom and bump hips as they sleepily brush their teeth, then fall into Jinki’s bed together.

Taemin’s wearing his favourite shirt, the stripy one that Key complains makes his head hurt and which goes kaleidoscope crazy in his reflection when the beat’s fast. He’s wearing it because the night before still has him so on edge. He’d woken up and Jinki had already got up and left him and in the empty bed the memory of footsteps in the distance had come rushing back and scared him all over again.

Taemin thinks maybe wearing the shirt will help him feel better, but it only makes him feel worse because his hyungs are overheating and after four hours of straight rehearsal and they send him to get slushies from the machine downstairs. Which is right next to the trainees’ dance studio.

He doesn’t know when exactly he realised it was them. Maybe he’s known all along, just hasn’t been willing to accept it. Either way, he realises that their hostile side-glances and barely whispered muttering has finally escalated into something more, and with this newfound knowledge, walks with heavy, reluctant feet downstairs. He takes a deep breath before rounding the corner.

They hear him, he doesn’t know how, and they come out, he doesn’t know why, and after the night before he’s hyperaware of their footsteps approaching him. The next thing he knows there are four slushies on the ground and the last one have been poured over his head. When he returns to practise, after a while spent frozen in shock, watching the sticky pink ice drip from the ends of his hair, his hyungs nag and about the huge pink stain down the front of his shirt and he has to blink quickly so he doesn’t cry. Luckily they think his hair is wet from sweat and don’t question the water dripping from it.

When they’re called in to watch the finalised and near-perfected dance for their next comeback, Taemin fights not to meet their gazes, tries harder than ever not to make a mistake. He ends up looking stiff and all the members laugh when their coach scolds him good-naturedly and Jonghyun pretends to be a robot doing their dance moves and Key’s cackle is piercing his head.

Taemin has to excuse himself and run to the bathroom where he splashes cold water on his face to make himself calm down. All that does, though, is remind him of the slushies and of his favourite shirt with the pink stain remaining even after he’s washed and scrubbed it until his hands are sore and the skin of his knuckles is splitting. He doesn’t move for a long time, fingers tightly gripping the edge of the sink and his legs weak and wobbling.

When he returns, all his group members are happily talking to the trainees. Nobody, except Minho, greets him as he walks back through the door, and even Minho is drawn immediately back into the conversation. He stands in the open doorway watching them and wonders why Minho, who is barely older than him, is accepted, is admired and why he’s the one trying to pull himself together after five minutes of judgemental staring tore him apart.

“Taem?” calls Minho, “I’m going out for a run, want to come with?” The others are all busy - Jonghyun’s locked his door and put up his ‘song writing sign’ so they know not to bother him, Jinki’s napping on the couch and Key is out shopping with Irene and Wendy - and Taemin doesn’t feel like being alone. He’s sort of worried where his thoughts might take him.

So he says, “Sure, why not?” And changes into workout clothes, and grabs a bottle of cold water from the fridge. Minho holds the door open and he pinches Minho’s hip as he passes, “You’d better not leave me behind.”

Minho laughs, “Never.”

Jinki’s the clumsy one, not Taemin. So he’s sort of waiting for the questions about his bruised hands and knees, with a sick kind of anticipation. He can’t for the life of him just start talking about it, because even to him it sounds petty every time he says aloud the latest trick pulled by the frustrated and furious trainees, but maybe if they just asked he’d be able to find the words.

Only they don’t ask. It’s probably because nobody would ever expect it. Sunbaenims are supposed to be respected, so why would trainees ever play tricks on a member of a debuted group? Why would they ever trip a sunbae up when he’s running late to dance practise or kick his water bottle so hard down the corridor that the plastic snaps and water ends up everywhere?

When his dance teacher asks him if he’s okay to kneel for the dance move during the second verse, it’s confirmed that they can see the bruises clearly but just aren’t mentioning it. Taemin merely nods in response. Every time his knees or palms twinge with the pressure he’s putting on them, he thinks about how it’s exactly that expected respect that’s got him into this situation. After all, why should somebody younger debut before them?

Taemin learns, in a melancholic, surrendering way, to expect, and in some ways accept, the little pushes and snide comments. Besides, what they’re saying does make sense, he shouldn’t have been allowed to debut when he did, he shouldn’t be allowed to drag his other members down with his incompetence and he should show his elders more respect, even if they’re lower than him in terms of company hierarchy. Previously, his hyungs had convinced him not to work so late, but he slips back to his old ways, practising later and later until there’s no room for hateful glares, only sweat and bloodshot eyes and the rhythm carrying his leaden limbs.

“Taemin!”

“Jongin-ah!” Taemin spins around just in time to avoid being whacked in the face as Kai flings his arms out to wrap them around Taemin and squeeze hard. “Eek, you’re gonna kill me.”

“Come get ice-cream with me,” Kai’s eyes are sparkling and Taemin needs to blink to avoid becoming blind. “I asked my bodyguard and he says it’s ok. Besides, we’re promoting Baskin Robins at the moment, so manager-hyung was easy to convince.”

“Ah,” Taemin sighs mock-wistfully, gazing off into the middle distance somewhere over Kai’s shoulder, “I remember when we promoted them.”

Kai pushes his cheek, “Shut up. Come on, we haven’t hung out in ages.”

“Yeah, I know,” he drops his eyes to study their feet, “Look, I wish I could but-“

“Hyung?” Kai’s voice is serious and Taemin automatically looks up and finds himself locked in Kai’s gaze. His friend looks worried. “Hyung, are you feeling ok? Only, every time I’ve seen you recently, you’ve seemed kinda down. I didn’t want to ask in case it’s something bad, but we do tell each other everything…?”

Taemin doesn’t give in to the expectant silence. He’s almost immune to it, after living with Key for so long. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing. Just tired.”

Kai hums and doesn’t look like he believes him, but he doesn’t press the matter.

There are more rumours. This time, he’s sleeping in the studio again, but alone, because the other members have kicked him out of the flat because they’re angry at how he’s holding them back yet still tries to steal the spotlight. The gossip makes all the dongsaengs too scared of the members to confront them about it and the perpetrators are careful that it doesn’t reach the older members of the company. Taemin knows it’s not true, obviously not, but he makes a big show the next night of going back to the dorm, declaring his intentions to the band members loudly enough for the trainees to hear as they walk past in a gang, heading out for karaoke. Later he lies in bed wide-awake and pictures the smirks on the trainees’ faces at his loud statement. He’d wanted to show them that the rumours were false, wanted to show they were wrong and he was right, but those smirks told him he’d lost anyway.

They’re all drinking and having fun, at the after party following another successful set of concerts, a collaboration between Super Junior and SHINee, when Ryeowook subtly steers Taemin to a discreet corner, Sungmin by his side.

“Hi hyungs!” Taemin grins and Ryeowook wrinkles his nose.

“Are you drunk already?”

“We started right after the concert finished,” Taemin explains, waving his hands energetically and hiccupping intermittently throughout the sentence. Sungmin laughs raucously and knocks back the shot in his hand like it’s nothing. Ryeowook rolls his eyes, knowing that later that night will see him dragging Sungmin back to the dorms. Unlike some, Ryeowook can hold his liquor.

“Anyway, Taemin-ah, we wanted to talk to you about something. Want to nip outside for a bit?” Taemin nods, forehead creasing as he tries to guess why his sunbaenims want to speak with him. Ryeowook takes him by the elbow and expertly manoeuvres them out onto the balcony of the bar Super Junior like to frequent; they manage to rent it out for special occasions.

“How may I help?” Taemin asks.

“I’m not going to tip-toe around it, Taemin. Rumours have filtered up to me - let’s just say that unlike most of my lovely colleagues, I actually have eyes and a brain and the fortune of being so quiet many people don’t realise I’m there until I’ve already overheard everything - and they’re not pleasant. People are saying you treat the trainees like .”

When Taemin startles and almost chokes on his beer, eyes widening and mouth falling open, looking pleadingly between Ryeowook and Sungmin, Ryeowook knows he was right in his assumption; “Taem-ah, don’t worry. I know you wouldn’t do that.” Taemin breathes out a sigh of relief, alcohol lowering his inhibitions and abolishing his already patchy acting skills.

“Look,” Sungmin breaks in, “We know some of the trainees are older than you and probably pissed off that you debuted so young and I just want you to know that me and Hyukjae and Shindong will go beat them up if you say they’re giving you a hard time.”

“Wha-? Oh, oh no-“

“I could probably rope in Siwon if I pitch the idea to him right. You know, saving an adorable dongsaeng and all that,” Sungmin lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “His guns aren’t just for show. He packs a good punch.”

“You’d know,” Ryeowook mutters darkly, before saying to Taemin, “What Sungmin is trying to say,” Taemin fixes his gaze on Ryeowook’s face with such concentration it almost makes Ryeowook stutter, “Is that it’s not unheard of for older trainees to pick on younger idols. It’s understandable but it doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. I know I’m not in the best position to say this, considering my short trainee period, but I bet Teukie-hyung would’ve killed anyone who so much as yelled at somebody younger than them, even when he’d been training for years and loads of people debuted younger. Do you get what I’m saying?”

He can see the tension in every line of Taemin’s body, in the trembling of the boy’s shoulders, and he hates it; as far as Ryeowook’s concerned, that’s an admission to being bullied right there. Only he won’t tell the others to go yell at the trainees without Taemin’s verbal agreement because he doesn’t want to seem like he’s betrayed Taemin.

“Yeah, I,” Taemin manages to say, “I understand. Th-thanks hyung. You too, Sungmin-hyung.” Sungmin ruffles Taemin’s hair.

“That’s alright kiddo. Keep it in mind, yeah?”

Taemin nods but only says, “Will do. If you’d excuse me?” Taemin slurs his words, “I promised Jongin a dance, and my glass is empty.”

“That,” Sungmin chuckles, throwing an arm around the younger man’s shoulders and pulling him indoors, “Is simply unacceptable.”

Ryeowook watches them go, eyes sad. He has a feeling Taemin isn’t actually as drunk as he appears, but is about to drink himself stupid. He only hopes his beloved dongsaeng doesn’t completely forget this conversation when he wakes up with a headache tomorrow.

Despite him gradually getting used to the treatment within the SM building, Taemin isn’t ready when a newly debuted group, average age twenty-five, brush past him in the corridor brusquely enough to make Taemin stumble back. He would have thought it an isolated, accidental incident, only it happens again later. Furthermore, he finds a note in his bag and he’s certain they put it there. It reads “ off back to your maths textbooks and leave the stage to the big boys. SM only let you debut so that pretty face of yours could pull in elder women.” The last point hurts because he worked so hard on his dancing, worked his arse off just to be looked at twice, and now they’re saying it was only his pretty face?

He sits in front of the mirror in his room and presses his face with his hands, pushes and pulls at his cheeks and contorts his eyes and mouth and eyebrows and wonders, if anything ever happened to his face, would he still have any use? Of course the fans would hate it, of course it would ruin SHINee, but is it true his value lies only in his face? The ugly face grimacing back at him in the mirror. He sticks his tongue out and the result is so horrifying he freezes, then lets his hands fall slowly to grip each other in his lap, nails forming red half-crescents in his skin and knuckles white.

The boys - or rather men, because they’re older than him, more deserving than him, that’s the whole problem here - shove him and trip him and kick him and tear his stuff up. But it’s the women, who use their almost sadistic intellect to dig their talons into his weak spots, who follow him backstage and corner him when the corridors are empty there and run their nails over his bare arms, that scare him the most.

“Do you know where Taemin is?”

The make-up artist shakes her head, shrugging. “Last time I saw him, I dabbed up his face then he headed off that way.”

“Thanks,” Krystal bows quickly, before hurrying off in the indicated direction. She doesn’t have much time before SHINee and f(x)’s shared stage and there’s this little bit she wants to practice just one more time.

Also, Victoria had taught her how to do the splits and she wants to show off.

She rounds the corner and is almost bowled over by a group of women, who apologise profusely and smile her own apologies away. “Good luck with your performance!” they bid, and Krystal bows gratefully. Their perfume lingers.

“Taemin?” she calls down the corridor.

“Kr-Krystal?” comes a muffled reply. It sounds like Taemin, but also…not.

“Tae? Are you alright?” she says, when he exits a door on her left and blinks at her like he hasn’t seen her in years. Which, all right, they’ve both been busy recently, but it hasn’t been that long. “What’s up with you?”

He shakes his head like he’s trying to wake himself up, then slowly arranges a smile on his face, “Nothing, I’m fine.” He chuckles awkwardly, “I might have gotten lost?”

Krystal giggles, “How many times have you been backstage here?” She rolls her eyes at him and he checks her with his hip playfully then spins her round to head back the way she’d come. She relaxes at his usual mischievousness, back in familiar territory. She slings an arm around his waist and he rests an arm around her shoulders leaning his head against hers as they head backstage. She squeezes his waist, and her hand comes into contact with…a label? “Uh, Taemin? I think your shirt’s inside out.”

“What?” He looks down and all the colour drains out of his face. “.”

“It’s not a big deal, we’ve still got time,” Krystal tries to reassure him, though she’s not sure why he needs the reassurance in the first place. It doesn’t look like her words help at all, Taemin’s face remaining ashen.

“Look, I’ll see you in the wings,” he says, pecking her cheek distractedly and already jogging away without waiting for her reply.

“What the hell is up with him?” Krystal mutters, checking her fringe one last time and rearranging her headband before moving into her ready position.

They knock his shoulders as they pass him in the corridors and out of the sides of their mouth slip the words, “Watch where you’re going, .”

He sees them coming and is so focused on not paying them any attention, is hurrying so fast, that he trips over, “And you call yourself a dancer? Talk about coordination.”

Hyoyeon pulls him into a sweaty hug and ruffles his hair as they part ways after a fun dance-based work out together and the second she disappears with a flick of blonde hair around the corner, one of them calls down the corridor, “ yourself out to the sunbaes huh? How does it feel to know your promotions hang on how good you are with your hands?”

Taemin rushes into an empty wardrobe room and locks the door behind him with trembling hands, feels his whole body shake as his legs give way and he sinks to the floor, resting his forehead against the wall.

They knock on the door and laugh when he screams at them to leave him alone.