You're also like a butterfly
You fell because you were too weak
You fell because you were too gentle
I'll have to put you to the side

~=~=~=~

Taemin stared nervously at their dorm door, anticipating for someone to enter at any moment. His fingers rapped a finicky rhythm on the arm of the couch he was leaning on. Onew was sitting on the couch watching TV, his eyes occasionally flickered towards the younger boy; he knew what was on his mind. Taemin could be read like a book.

“Taemin.” He finally sighed, “They’ll be home soon, stop worrying.”

“B-but, hyung, they were supposed to come home two hours ago. What if something happened?” The younger turned around and flopped down on the couch, outstretching his arms towards Onew, but not yet reaching him.  

The older just rolled his eyes and smacked Taemin’s check lightly, “They’re fine. They probably just went to go get a drink or something. It’s only midnight, Taeminnie.”

A pout appeared on Taemin’s face, he expected such an answer from the level headed leader, and he rolled off the couch to return to his and Minho’s dorm room.

Only Onew was allowed to have his own room since he was the oldest. Even Kibum and Jonghyun had to share a room – not that the two minded; they were lost in their own fantasies.

The wooden door opened and closed softly as the mushroom headed boy wandered aimlessly in. Within minutes he found himself with his back on the bed, staring at the white ceiling. His mind was blank, but his heart wasn’t.

It had been only a couple years since he’s come to know his hyungs and only a couple years since he’s come to ‘fall in love’. He didn’t want to call it ‘gay’ he just wanted to leave it at ‘bromance’ but he knew that the other saw him as nothing more than a cute little dongsaeng. If fact, sometimes he didn’t even know if it was love or not. Love is too strong of a word to be directed at someone like that. How could Taemin ever love someone like that? Love is reserved for the people in your life to whom you have an affinity for and an intimate relationship with. They are the people who you can tell anything to, whisper secrets to, and honestly say that you’d put your life on the line for them.

~=~=~=~

Even if I try to avoid you, I can’t find a place to hide
I’m trapped by you, who I can’t even deny
If it was love, if you really loved me, don’t do this to me

~=~=~=~

Finally, after what seemed like eternity, the front door opened and closed.

“Yah!” he heard Jinki yell from the couch. Taemin didn’t feel like opening the door to check who had returned, but he could safely assume it was the three missing hyungs: Kibum, Jonghyun, and that. “Why are you home so late?! I thought we made it clear that there’s an 11 o’clock curfew in this dorm unless scheduled.” Onew’s words were muffled by what Taemin presumed to be a pillow to the face.

“Calm down. We were on our way home, but we ran into some friends on the way back. They took us out for a few drinks.” He heard Kibum throw some change and the dorm key down on the coffee table.

“Which friends?” Taemin guessed that Onew threw the pillow onto the floor after a soft thud.

“2PM, they were scouting out a place to shoot their Hands Up music video.” Jonghyun flopped down on the couch. The sound of his jeans sounded rough against the cloth of the sofa.

“Then,” Onew paused for a while. He was waiting for Kibum and Jonghyun to settle down and grow silent, “where’s Minho?”

Taemin’s stomach sank. He could have sworn that there were three sets of footsteps walking in through that door. He could have sworn on SHINee that there were set feet pattering on the hardwood floor.

“Uhm…” Jonghyun scratched at the back of his head.

“I want the truth guys.” A pitch of seriousness overcame Onew’s normally cheery cherry-soda voice. It was something the boys weren’t used to.

Jonghyun and Kibum paused for a long time. Taemin utilized this moment of silence to roll silently off the bed and inch on his stomach across the floor to the door. Soft flannel shirts grazed his body as he slid further along and he could feel little crumbs of food and dust press into his hand. He would have to remind himself to thoroughly clean their room later.

“Hyung,” it sounded like Key flopped down next to Onew as Taemin heard a grunt and more rubbing of fabric against the poor couch as the leader tried to scoot away from the lightly intoxicated diva, “Minho isn’t coming back tonight.”

He thought it wasn’t possible for his stomach to sink any lower inside his abdomen, but it did. He felt like vomiting. Taemin quickly got up and scurried out of his room and into the bathroom down the hall.

“Hi Taeminnie” Jonghyun and Kibum called at the same time. He bowed on his way into the restroom.

Once in he knew he was going to throw up. He shut the door tightly behind him and leaned over the toilet as if he was bowing to the president. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. His gut contracted, but nothing came out. Now, Taemin just felt sick – like there was a lump in his throat, like a burp that wouldn’t come out. He slammed his fist down on the hand-towel next to the sink. The numb thud it made was still loud enough to alert his overcautious hyungs, but only one rose to the occasion (the only one who wasn’t half drunk), Lee Jinki.

“Minnie, are you okay?” the bubbly, almost hoarse, sound to his voice had returned.

Taemin collected himself without looking in the mirror, “I’m fine.”

Onew laughed and tried to come up with a joke, “It really sounds like you’re ting bricks in there, buddy.”

Taemin, who was utterly under par at the moment, didn’t even bother to courtesy laugh at Onew’s joke. Onew, met with the awkward silence which followed what he thought was a pretty mood-enlightening joke, stumbled backwards from the door a bit, “If you need anything…”

“Yeah.” He tried to dismiss the leader without sounding rude. He wasn’t mad at Onew, nor Key nor Jonghyun. He was mad at himself.

Taemin unraveled from his hunched over position from punching the counter and looked at himself in the mirror. This was a mirror who was very fond of him, after all, he was the ‘group’s face’. Taemin secretly spent hours in front of this mirror making sure he looked perfect, but his perfection wasn’t for SHINee or SM, it was for a certain Choi Minho who wasn’t coming back tonight because he couldn’t resist the temptations of another group’s men. He just couldn’t say no to ing another pretty face.

The word ‘’ felt like some trash bin had just leaked a large amount of mystery liquid into Taemin’s head. He hated ‘bad words’ and more or less, he hated the people who were associated with these ‘bad words’.

Disturbing as his thoughts may have been, another disturbance yanked him out of his mental cursing about ‘bad words’. His phone buzzed in his back pocket.

Taemin wondered what could have happened as he opened the text message on the little led screen. ‘That Minho…’ The sender was anonymous which brought curiosity to surface in Taemin’s mind. He flipped the phone shut and it made a loud clack. As expected, Onew returned to the other side of the door.

“You good?”

“Actually, I was wondering, who are we having a show with tomorrow?” Taemin rolled his phone over and over in the palm of his hand.

“Ah… let me think… I think it’s 2PM.” Onew paused, “What a coincidence.”

“Okay” Taemin cooed, “thanks hyung.”

He made sure Onew was back in the living room before he crept back to his vacant and cold room. This was a room filled with memories, and if they were memories worth keeping Taemin would have to decide later whether to burn them or not. It was always kept PG in this room, he wouldn’t let it go any further than that, but now he was unsure if he was regretting it or not. Maybe it would have been better to have let things like that happen. Then he wouldn’t be thinking in the back of his mind if that son of a bi- gun… actually liked him or not.

~=~=~=~

Since before, something has been wrong, you’ve been weird
The love I knew left my side, one by one
All I have is you

~=~=~=~

The next day it finally happened and Taemin knew who sent the text to him the night before. Sitting one leg over the other in the 2PM dressing room was a swollen eyed Jang Wooyoung and even though Taemin didn’t notice it during the teaser recordings, he noted now that one eye had a slightly blue wash around it. Earlier he thought it was just smudged make-up, but now his concern reached an ultimate high.

“He-hello.” He crept up to Wooyoung cautiously. The 20-something year old had a straight face on and a lowered head.

“Hello.” He mumbled, only letting those five letters slip past his lips. A strong hand came to squeeze his shoulder and as he looked up a stern Ok Taecyeon led him into a different dressing room.

Before he was able to ask any questions to the man, he was surrounded by four of these gigantic beasts and one littler one. Taemin wasn’t only intimidated by their numbers, but also their expressions and the fact that there was one flower-boy missing from the group.

It wasn’t long before Onew, Jonghyun and Kibum were also brought to the room. He guessed it was some kind of pre-show conferencing, but as he had come to learn, his innocent mind was usually wrong.

“What’s the big idea here?” Onew instinctively stood in front of his three present dongsaengs.

“The big idea is that we have a black-eyed dumpling sitting in the next room.” Taecyeon pulled Onew close by the collar. Jonghyun was about to step forward to help, but was beat to it.

“Taecyeon, calm down.” The youngest, Chansung, pulled the elder-cat away from the chicken-lover, “You need to act rationally.”

“Maybe it would help to explain what happened first.” Junho suggested.

“No, this is ridiculous, it’s a conspiracy!” Jay threw up his hands, “I’m not going to be the one to explain this .”

Junsu snapped at him, “Not everything is a conspiracy.”

“In some countries this is…” the other Jun-brother chided.

“I’ll explain then.” Chansung let the now-calm Taecyeon out of his grasp as he began the explaination, “You see we finished looking for clubs to shoot our new music video last night around 11. We ran into Minho, Kibum, and Jonghyun around that time. We decided to go out for a drink, just one drink and that’s what most of us did. We sent Jonghyun and Kibum back home after a couple shots and the rest of us seemed to be at our limit too – since today was a shooting day – so we headed home as well. Except for Nichkhun who was just so excited to see Minho; the two had drank a lot already, a ridiculous amount in fact. Anyway, we were at home, minus Nichkhun who was still out clubbing I guess, getting ready for bed, showering and what not. I was with Wooyoung in the living room. He was beginning to get worried about the whereabouts of our Thai prince. So, like usual, I call up Nichkhun, but he doesn’t pick up which isn’t common for him. Jay tells the managers and they start looking around town and couldn’t find him.”

Junsu took over for Taecyeon, “Yeah, but they found him earlier this morning. Wooyoung stayed up all night next to the door waiting for Nichkhun to come back. He’s just like a puppy.”

Taemin could tell the story was getting interesting because then Chansung interrupted Junsu to continue the story, “So this morning while everyone except Wooyoung was still asleep, the managers barge into the dorm with a hungover Khun! Wooyoung was right there sitting on the couch.” He grabbed Junho and made him sit on the couch in the dressing room as they tried to reenact the scene, “And he nags Khunnie about staying out all night and worrying everyone and the managers.” Taemin watched as Junsu pulled Chansung to play the role of Nichkhun, “So then Nichkhun is pissed because he has a hangover and he’s delusional and he’s mad because the managers ruined his good time with your band-mate and now he has to deal with the chastening that Wooyoung is giving him.”

Taecyeon took over the story again as he moved Junsu towards the door, “The two of them start yelling at each other like an old married couple and about two minutes into the fight, grandpa over here wakes up and wanders out into the hallway right as Nichkhun lands a hard punch right in Wooyoung’s gut.” SHINee watched as Junho slowly hunched over as Chansung’s fist gently collided with his stomach, “So Wooyoung starts blabbering on about being sorry about pissing him off like ‘Khun, calm down. We don’t need to exchange punches over this. Why can’t you calm down?’” Junho put one hand out while he was hunched over, showing that he was ‘begging’ Chansung to stop, “Right after that Nichkhun winds his fist up and just punches Wooyoung straight in the eye saying ‘Why can’t you just mind your own business?’ and even you guys know this is uncharacteristic of Khun. Wooyoung and he are best friends. They wouldn’t fight like this.”

“Alcohol makes people do crazy things.” Kibum’s mouth was covered by one dainty hand. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“So how did you manage to calm him down?” Jonghyun was curious. This kind of thing seemed only to happen in the movies or in sitcoms, never in real life and especially in a K-pop group.

Junsu rubbed the back of his neck, “Well, I ran back down the halls to wake up a few more members because, hell, I can’t take down Nichkhun on my own. All the while I keep hearing screaming from the living room which I guess was Wooyoung and Nichkhun still fighting. By the time we had gotten back out Wooyoung was shaking as he tried to stand up and the front door was ajar.”

“We were lucky enough that Nichkhun calmed down a bit before we had to record today.” Jay crossed his legs in the wheely chair.

“I’m sorry this happened” Onew felt bad for Wooyoung, but at the same time he found it completely unrelated to themselves. Minho didn’t play a part in beating up Wooyoung.

“Well,” Taecyeon took a step forward, “we just thought that you might want to control that hyungwhore friend of yours before he starts eating some real .” He cracked his knuckles, “We’d hate to see other groups and their members get hurt like this.”

“My deepest apologies.” Onew bowed softly, a troubled expression on his face.

~=~=~=~

The memories I swiped in my heart

It hurts, when will I be able to mend my feelings

The fateful approaching day of goodbye

~=~=~=~