[2003 – 2018]

Together?
Together.

It’s a chilly autumn morning and Jaejoong has just entered the SM building when he’s suddenly dragged by his coordi noona in one of the training rooms in the basement. He’s told to sit and wait and so he does: he sits and waits, and waits again. Minutes pass and the hand of the clock has turned at least ninty degress before another kid enters the room.

Jaejoong knows him, he has seen him sometimes around the building; he’s the American.
He cannot quite recall his name, though. Not that he cares anyway.

Jaejoong shifts on the ground unconfortably. He was supposed to be in his vocal rehearsal with Yunho that morning, but he somehow ended up trapped with that spaced-out foreigner in a room under the ground.

Before he’s given the chance to complain, however, the guy’s coordi speaks up.

“You wait here too, Yoochun”

Yoochun, he suddenly remembers: that was the name.
He steals a glance from the guy and notices his features are all a little bit too much: his hair a little bit too long, his eyes a little bit too deep, his shoulders a little bit too broad. Jaejoong doesn’t know what to think of him yet.

The guy simply nods and politely bows to her, before she disappears behind the door. He then stretches his arm, raising his grey hoodie and reavealing the bare skin of his torso, and sits down beside him. Jaejoong thinks he’s also a little bit too close and slightly moves away.

“I’m not gonna eat you, you know that right?” he asks, noticing his movements.

“I know” he somehow breathes out, his annoying tone covering the shyness of his soul. “I was just unconfortable”.
As soon as he speaks, however, he doesn’t fail noticing the hurt expression on the guy’s face and somehow he decides that shyness is still better than being unfriendly (and than being a jerk too).

He raises a hand and offers it in his direction.
“I’m Kim Jaejoong” he adds, looking somewhere past him.

Yoochun smiles and squeezes his hand.
“I know” he laughs “I’m Park Yoochun”

“What do you mean you know?” he suddenly asks, a confused expression decorating his ethereal face.

Yoochun laughs again and Jaejoong realises his laugh is really contagious, and pure, and funny. And a little bit too loud, but he keeps it to himself.

“Eveybody knows you, Kim Jaejoong: amazing singer, but clumsiest kid ever. Is there a place in this building you haven’t fallen on?”

Jaejoong can feel his face burning and he’s about to die from embarassment when they are suddenly interrupted.

“Guys!” someone screams, entering the room, “Stand up!”

They both fall silent after that and obey the young man who is now imparting orders: “Warm up”, “Set the stereo”, “Close the door”. He looks to his side to catch the other’s reaction, but Yoochun is not looking at him.
“I’m gonna be your vocal instructor from now on” he announces somewhere along his list of orders.

Saying that he’s surprised is an euphemism: Jaejoong is completely astonished and his raised eyebrows and big eyes totally reveal it. He loved his past teacher, he was nice to him and didn’t yell when he was tired or when his throat was sore and couldn’t reach high notes; he really didn’t want to change him.
It takes so much to get used to new people and Jaejoong doesn’t really like changes.

“What about our old ones?” he tries to argue.

“You will not need them anymore” the guy quickly answers, destroying every possibility of going back. “You’re gonna debut soon. Together. So we need to work, you know, together” he states, pointing back and forth between the two confused trainees.

Jaejoong’s already big eyes double in size as he stares at the instructor’s face, still not truly understanding his words.
Debut? That was so far away.
But debut with Yoochun? That sounded even more improbable.
They had just met after all.

“Together?” he asks again.

“Yeah, together” Yoochun replies, having waken up from his trance, “Haven’t you heard him?” he asks then, turning and giving him a light punch on the shoulder.

“Yeah Kim Jaejoong, are you deaf now?”
Jaejoong would like to ask how the guy knows his name, but then again he is an instructor which means he probably has a list of all the trainees’s names. He still hasn’t properly introduced himself, though, and Jaejoong finds it slighty rude. He also would like to spit in the face of the so called instructor that he had already been in more than five projects which then turned into ashes, so forgive him if he didn't believe in debut anymore.

“Anyway” he continues “Some guys are gonna join us in some minutes. You’re gonna debut as a five-boys-group and we need to work on your harmonization”

Is with those words that Jaejoong and Yoochun understand what’s really happening and realise that there is no joke. That they are really gonna debut. That they are really gonna become stars.
They turn and face and share a look for the first time:  they look into each other’s eyes and despite the weird situation the have suddenly found themselves into, they find their own dreams reflected in the other’s eyes. They both see a big stage, a screaming crowd and soft melodies filling the air. They both see warm smiles, shared laughs and hands holding on to each other.
Hidden behind the other’s pupils, they both see a stranger becoming a friend, becoming a brother and can’t help smiling at the strange awkardeness of their present.

In the cold basement of that old autumn morning, Jaejoong and Yoochun build the basement of their friendship, the basement of that relationship that would have linked and supported them for the years to come.

***

Yoochun  is lying on the grass of the majestic island of Bora Bora, his gaze lost among the stars, when Jaejoong joins him, a couple of beers in his hands.

He lays down beside him and pass him a can; “Have it” he says.

Yoochun grabs it without looking and sips the golden liquind down his troat. It’s bitter, but he somehow came to like it. Cheap beers were all they could get drunk on anyway.

“What are you staring so intensly at?” Jaejoong then asks, trying to catch the immensity the other was finding in the sky.

Yoochun wasn’t really focusing on the sparkling dots, he was just using the mesmerizing background as a canvas where to paint his thoughts.
He was thinking of his family: of his parents and his twin brother who he hadn’t seen in months and who he missed like a second soul. The group was becoming his new family and they helped him adapt to the new reality which soon became a routine, but nobody understood him like his brother and he missed that familiarity, he missed being read just by a simple glance.
He was thinking of his future too, of how their new singles were selling, of how they would soon become somebody in the country, a role model for younger kids just how so many had been to him. He liked the thought of being useful to somebody, of having the power of changing something, of making someone else’s life better.

“Nothing” he just replies “I was just thinking. It was quite here, no one talking” he says.
“You know, before you came” he then adds, giving him a light punch on the shoulder.

“Bad for you then!” he quickly answers.

Jaejoong laughs and Yoochun drifts his thoughs to the sound that’s know breaking his confortable silence. He loves hearing the older guy’s laugh, it sounds so free, so beautiful, so warm. Maybe it’s because Jaejoong is a little bit drunk, he doesn’t know, but the sound somehow melts with the magical noises of the island, with the light breeze whispering between the trees, with the roaring waves smashing against the rocks. Yoochun realises there wasn’t silence before either, but the intensity of his thoughts had blocked away everything from his mind.

“Jaejoong” he calls then, grabbing his free hand.

“Uhm” the other replies, the empty can of beer left somewhere by his side.

“I love you” Yoochun chuckles. “And Junsu. And Changmin. And Yunho too.”

“Uhm” he replies again, feeling his mind wandering among the memories of the last few days. “Me too” he then adds, “But I love Yunho more than you do”

Yoochun smiles one of his kindest smiles and gets closer, placing his head over the guy’s right shoulder.
"Of course you do" he whispers softly.

“Jaejoong” he calls again then, squeezing his hand.

“Uhm”

“We will be together forever, right?”

Jaejoong nods, his eyes still closed, dozing off to the night.

“Yeah, together”.

***

Jaejoong is sitting in the backstage of the concert hall, hands still on his knees and feet knocking the ground, bouncing his head at the same rhythm: he’s nervous.
Rationally, he knows there’s nothing to be nervous about: it’s not his first concert, nor the most important one they have ever done, but subconsciously he still shivers. It’s the first whole concert in which he hasn’t got the other four by his side and he feels stupid to think of it, but their presence has always given him some kind of secret support that has always helped him reach the higher notes.

He suddenly feels alone, even though he knows he shouldn’t be: Yoochun is still there, still filling his right side and that somehow reassures him. He smiles, unconsciously: Yoochun has always been there.

They’re like brothers, Yoochun and him, even though they have no blood relations.
They fight a lot: with screams and kicks and punches, sometimes.
But they make peace a lot too: with soft kisses and hugs and big smiles.
They care a lot. And they love a lot.
Sometimes, Jaejoong thinks he loves him more than he loves himself, but Yoochun always says not to think that, that Jaejoong should think he is important too, that he should be aware of the goodness of his own self, so Jaejoong never says that aloud anymore.
He still thinks so, though. Yoochun is so easy to love.

They’re different, but not opposite different.
One could say they’re more similar than different.
If he was to compare them, they would be like melody and harmony, two sides of the figure that work together in order to create something new: like melody and harmony create music, like different sides build a polygon.

That’s why they chose it as the name for their new single anyway.

He’s still absorbed in his flow of thoughts when Yoochun arrives: he’s in hurry and his styled hair is now completely messy now, but that’s not important tonight: their voices are.

Jaejoong stops his movements to look at the other guy, searching for the same old reassurment in his words.

“Together?” he asks, uncertain, extending his hand.

“Together” Yoochun assures him, pulling him up and squeezing his hand a little.

***

Jaejoong is lying on his side of the bed in the hotel room he shares with Yoochun. It’s late in the night and no moonray has managed to filter into the dark room whose features are barely recognizable. There is no sound either, except for the guy’s light snorts.

Jaejoong thinks about the reality he has suddenly found himself into: the controversy of their contracts, the quarrels, the fights, contrasted opinions turning into a lawsuit and Yunho and Changmin’s hands impossibly further and further away. He thinks about the past, about those long six years now turned into ashes on the burning wounds of their crashed present, about those smiles which used to give him peace, but that now hurt over the scarred skin of his heart.

Jaejoong doesn’t know who to blame anymore, and he wonders if their choices have been worth it, if they’ll ever be worth the price they are paying. He feels warm tears rolling down his cheeks in another one of those sleepless nights that don’t seem willing to let him go lately.

“Yoochun-ah” he whispers to the darkness, “Yoochun-ah” he repeats in sobs, unable to stop.

“Yoochun-ah I’m scared” he says once again, his words broken sounds distorting the silence.

“Yoochun-ah”

“Yoochun-ah”

“Yoochun-ah”

Yoochun wakes up to the light noise of suppressed moans filling the room. He turns around, facing the other side and finding a pair of red eyes staring back at him, sullen and full of doubts and hypothetical regrets.

“Yoochun-ah I don’t want to suffer anymore” Jaejoong cries out, another waterfall flowing down his ethereal face.

Yoochun slowly wraps his arms around the other’s waist as he’s so used to do, and brings him closer, hoping for the tight embrace to erase all his pains. He secretly wishes for his own wounds to be healed too.

“You’re not alone, Jaejoong” he softly answers, hugging him tighter, “I won’t let you alone in this”.
Yoochun knows they are both suffering an incredible amount of pain and he knows people might consider Jaejoong unfair for his way of relying on others so much, but Yoochun also knows Jaejoong is the one who has lost the most with the choices they’ve made.
He has lost two bandmates, as all of them, but he has lost a boyfriend too.
He has lost the person he loved the most, the person who made all their days a little bit less tiring, a little bit brighter.
But most of all, he has lost his reason to live, his reason to go on.
Yoochun also knows that he doesn’t regret it, but what’s for sure is that facing the consequences of their actions isn’t an easy task to fulfill. What’s for sure is that none of them had foreshadowed this amount of sufference.

“Together?” he hears Jaejoong asking, tilting his head a little higher.

He looks back into that pair of doe eyes that seems to have the whole world hidden behind them and forces himself to smile a little, at least for tonight.

“Together”.

***

Yoochun is sat in the middle of an empty room, trying to empty the mess of his heart and mind.
He needs emptiness.
He needs it in order to forget about the chaos that’s raging on beyond those closed curtain, about the clicks and flashes of cameras, about the screams of journalists, about the smashing sound of the hammer in the tribunal.
He needs emptiness.
He needs it in order to replace his troubled feelings with an effimeral sense of peace, in order to calm down his flows of thoughts before they become a danger for his own life.

Yoochun has never thought about suicide. Even in his darkest times, when the pain seemed impossible to be dealt with, when the joys of singing were lost forgotten in a cloud of thick schedules, orders and people he was supposed to appeal, to be grateful to, even then, he never thought about suicide.

However, as he finds himself stuck in an empty room, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to think, he considers the idea for the first time.

Yoochun would have also never thought that words could hurt so much, but as he finds himself stuck in the middle of a crowd defining him as a molester, as ar, unable to get away, he feels the words reaching his heart as sharp knives.

In the middle of an empty room, Yoochun lies on the floor and closes his eyes, listening to the drops of rain knocking on the windows. He wonders how much time they would need to drown the whole room. He wonders how darker they would turn if mixed with the devilish colour of his blood.

He needs help, along with emptiness. He knows it.
He needs support, and reassurement, and strong arms holding him up during his fight. But Yoochun is too tired to fight, he has done it for so long and he doesn’t seem to have the strenght to do so anymore.

Dying would be so easy, instead.
One single bullet.
Some drops of cyanide.
A brief jump over the balcony.
It is so easy people don’t even realise it.
He could die right now, and nobody would notice it before hours.
He could die, and nobody would actually care.

A sudden whistle, however, wakes him up from the dephts of his thoughts and as he brings out his phone, a new message welcomes him.

“Together”.

Yoochun cries reading the new text which he knows being more than a simple text: it’s a reminder of who he is and of who still believes in him. It’s a weapon to fight with. It’s an answer to un unspoken question whispered to the silence of the night, but that came loud and needy to Jaejoong’s ears and soul.

“Together?”
 

***

When Jaejoong thinks about the word together, he thinks of shared beers and clubs, of warm Christams sweaters and hot chocolate, of soft smiles and low pitched songs. He thinks of a second soul tattoed on his skin, of strong arms ready to catch him when he’s falling, of light kisses stamped on his forehead, the shape of a pair of lips almost visible.

“Together?”

When Yoochun thinks about the word together, he thinks of cocktails and pubs, of fashion clothes and tea, of warm hugs and high pitched songs. He thinks of a peculiar kind of heart that’s always more willing to give than to take, of soft hands ready to hold him, of sweet lullabies whispered throught the night.

“Together”.