Ever since Kangin came back to be a part of Super Junior officially he had felt like a waste of space. He had a hard time getting the hang of things again after his long absence and he felt like he dragged his brothers down every time he shared the stage with them.

He was slowly falling into depression as he fought to find his place in a group that had managed to do fine without him for almost three long years. He didn’t know what he had expected when he entered the army but somehow it hurt him deeply that the members seemed to just move on without him. It made him realise that they didn’t really need him for Super Junior to work. It was not that he expected the group to go on standby but he had somehow hoped that his absence would be noticeable.

It seemed like it was not only on stage they managed everything without him. Off stage everybody seemed to have become so used to his absence that he no longer had a defined role in the group. He had been Eeteuk’s pillar of support whenever the older man had a hard time dealing with all the stress of leading a huge group like Super Junior, but somehow Eeteuk had replaced him with Siwon during the time he was gone and it seemed like Eeteuk no longer needed Kangin. Whenever he would have turned to Kangin in the past, he now turned to Siwon and Kangin felt his heart break a little more every time he witnessed it, making him feel a little more disposable. He had been the group’s appa, taking care of both dongsaengs and hyungs alike whenever he could but everybody seemed to have found some kind of replacement, a person to take care of them where he used to do that and again he felt useless.

He remembered how he had talked to Kyuhyun when the maknae had problems with his girlfriend; the maknae had come to him and asked for advice and his fatherly heart had swelled with pride at the fact that the maknae trusted him enough to confide in him. He remembered how Ryeowook had called him from a bar one time when the eternal maknae had had a bit too much to drink and needed to go home before something went wrong. He remembered the feeling of happiness at the younger’s dependency on him and the trust he was shown in that situation. He remembered how Sungmin, despite all aw