Eventually, we all were too tired to have any midnight convos and I was left being this saddening insomniac on my own. The rest of the day turned out pretty sour that I did not want to talk anymore later that night. I opened the door, went to the kitchen to take a glass of water, and lied on the couch. I was tired, my eyes were heavy, and even my mind was idle, but my consciousness wouldn’t give up on me. I only wanted to sleep.

In the end, I learned the next morning that I did sleep.

I woke up to the sound of clanking china bowls on the counter. Someone preparing meals.

It took a while for me to fully wake up, the sound of clanking still audible from my seat. My neck hurts from putting my head on the armrest.

It should be Kyungsoo taking our bowls for breakfast.

“I tried to wake you up,” said he from the kitchen, with low volume as if I was in the conversational distance, “but you batted me away, so.” Kyungsoo ended the sentence hanging like that.

I moved from the couch to Joonmyun hyung’s seat on the dining table, nesting my head in my neatly folded arms.

“Kyungsoo,” I mumbled in my half-sleep.

“Hm?”

“What do we have for today?” I raised my head and stretched, finally deciding to wake up and twist my body to face him.

“Like, leftovers? I don’t have time for serious food right now.” He brought the fogged, cold, glass bowl and clicked the microwave door open. “You might want to help your cutest hyung on earth over here.”

I slid from my seat and took the cold glass bowl away from his hands, putting it into the microwave and setting it to five minutes.

“Eight minutes, Jongin,” he said referring to the microwave, but when I looked to him he was already in front of the rice cooker. I shrugged and pressed the buttons.

 “You’re supposed to be on the news, but everyone in the company was kind enough to protect us as much as possible from reporters. You should thank them.” Kyungsoo looked up to me, and I could not feel anything. “Wake up the guys. I can take care of these.”

I knocked on Joonmyun hyung’s door, and it opened almost instantly. He smiled at me with a still puffy face and ruffled my hair. He then proceeded to knock on Chanyeol hyung’s door.

We ate breakfast and went out of the house. The van ride felt normal: people in the back sleeping or looking outside the window, Chanyeol and Baekhyun joking to each other, currently inventing new versions of gwiyomi, and Joonmyun hyung softly chatting with our manager up front.

Sehun, though, preferred to socialize thoroughly with his phone.

We arrived to the TV station and zapped straight with heads down to the backstage rooms. The fans waiting outside, some of them hold gigantic lenses, some of them hold their phones. They were screaming upon our arrival. As usual, with the occasional boos that grew after the news got spread.

You thought it was easy having to go through people booing you every time? No.

We entered the building and bowed to people we met. As soon as we were able to sit, we sighed. I took a glance at Sehun again. His hand was clutching hard to his phone, turning the screen on to turn it off again. The stylists came about and started retouching in case there were any erased powder.

I took a seat beside Sehun. He immediately turned off his screen and looked down.

“What have you been reading?”

“Nothing, though. Hehe,” he said to the glitter on his pants.

I sighed and looked away. I don’t exactly like nosing into what people read.

“You can tell me later,” I said facing him, as an alternative.

“Alright,” he said, then we heard a knock on the door. It was the crew asking for a backstage camera with the other bands.

As soon as the recording finished, we went back to the van with similar situations like the way we came out. I sat at the back, with Sehun in the middle and Kyungsoo on the other side. I realized that Sehun took out his phone to read again, so perhaps, I would want to know now.

But then I decided to not blatantly ask, and slept instead, leaning uncomfortably on the window, and then on Sehun.

I did not really close my eyes, and I waited until Sehun would reach his browser, but all he did was scroll around the menu.

“Go to sleep,” he said.

I did not answer, in hopes that I could just fool him.

“Stop acting, Jongin, really.”

“Hm,” I mumbled, just to make it a far cry from realistic.

Alright. Mission failed.

I decided to really sleep until we got home. People started scrambling doing whatever was their priority first. Some opened the fridge, some went straight to bed, some went to shower. Sehun opened the fridge, I headed for bed.

The phone was there, on our desk.

I looked to the door hesitantly and decided to take it.

I the screen, and put my thumb on the first node of the pattern lock.

“You might want some of these,” Sehun said, holding an opened pack of cold cookies while closing the door with his back. He saw my hands and what they were holding.

HOOOOZZZZZAAAAAAHHHHHHH HI GUYS I MISSED YOU. I might give you a slight warning for the future updates: it's going to touch a pretty touchy topic. Please interpret that yourself. REALLY I MISSED YOU GUYS. is all. I love you <33