(A/N:  In this fic, note that Kibum did not left and Kangin did not go to the army, so they are still with SJ. I know it doesn't make sense for them to be here but I did that to highlight Hankyung's absence. ^^ )

(YESUNG’S POV)

It’s been a month since Hankyung-hyung left us. All of it seemed like happening in a sudden flash, sometimes it made me wonder if it was really a reality and not a dream. True, I wasn’t the closest person to Hankyung-hyung, but I can still feel his absence.

After 5 years standing together as one, it felt odd when someone was missing. The atmosphere was weird.

“Leeteuk-ssi, we are running late, can we go now?” the driver asked impatiently.  I was in the van with Heechul-hyung, Leeteuk-hyung, Eunhyuk, Donghae and Shindong, while the others were in the other van. We were supposed to leave for M-net variety show recording 10 minutes ago, but Leeteuk made a fuss. He kept saying something was wrong, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. He made us check our stuffs in the van and he even went up back to our dorms to check if he left something, but it really wasn’t helping. He still couldn’t figure out that missing thing.

“Hyung, can we please go now? Manager hyung will freak out if we turn up late!” Donghae whined, Eunhyuk nodded intensely beside him.

Leeteuk-hyung scratched his non-itchy head in frustration, ruining his styled-hair. “Aish..alright, alright! I guess we should.” He hoped into the van and sat beside the blank-expression-ed Heechul, and the vans finally drove off. But even after 15 minutes after the journey started, Leeteuk couldn’t sit still.

“Jungsu,”Heechul finally spoke, after few minutes observing the scene before him. “Stop fussing over something that is not here.”

“Eh?” Leeteuk perked up. “Did you figure out what’s missing? What is it?”

Heechul looked outside the window and stared at something in the distance. “Correction, not something. It’s someone.”

Leeteuk-hyung gasped. “SOMEONE? Who??” he looked around frantically around the van, trying to figure out who was missing. He then fished out his iPhone and was about to call Sungmin who was boarding the second van, when I quickly stopped him.

“Aish Yesung! Wae??”

At first, I just blinked back at him, not knowing what to say. Sighing, I looked at Heechul-hyung for a moment before returning my look at him and mouthed ‘Hankyung’, making Leeteuk-hyung’s expression softened almost immediately. He stopped fussing and sat quietly in his place throughout the journey.

Seeing 12 set of things prepared for us, it was just wrong.

“BOYS! PALLI!” our manager hyung screamed at us once Sungmin and I opened the vans door. Our recording session was just in an hour, and no one was ready yet. Manager-hyung quickly led us into our changing rooms, shouting orders frantically on the way. “6 persons do their hair, others change outfit. There are 12 set of clothes prepared for you guys in the room, and don’t forgot your mics too. I’m positive there are 12 of them; you guys can found them in a white container near the door. Everyone take one mic each. Now palli!”

We rushed to the rooms, but behind me, I could hear Kyuhyun whispering to Ryeowook, a little bit too loud. “Why is everything  12?”

“Kyu, we are 12,” Ryeowook reminded him. “At least for now.”

I couldn’t help but smiled. I liked his answer. Wise kid Ryeowook. Yes, we were 12, at least for the time being.

But the worst situation would be when Leeteuk-hyung started what we called ‘the count’.

It’s something we do everytime before we got on stage for a show or a performance, to make sure everyone was there. Over the backstage fusses, he would shout ‘One!’, followed by Heechul-hyung shouting ‘Two!’, and so on. This method is very useful since there was no way Leeteuk-hyung could spot who was where in the middle of the chaos. Once he heard Kyuhyun shouted the final number thirteen, he knew everyone was there.

But since the past few weeks, the final number was no longer thirteen.

And since the past few weeks, my number had changed.

It was no longer ‘four’; I got a new number now.

Number three.

And I wasn’t happy about that. Not like I didn’t like the number or anything. It was just…well, I wasn’t ‘number three’.

I wasn’t the lead dancer, and I just don’t have that skill to be one. I wasn’t the leader of our successful sub-group SJ-M. I did not speak chinese nor know any chinese word except ‘wo ai ni’, and my Korean was a little bit too fluent. I barely know how to cook anything, let alone Beijing fried rice. I was never the person who would calm Heechul-hyung when he was raging. In fact, I hid away. My personality was far too boring to match number three’s always sunny self.

And most of all, I didn’t know if I have number three’s strength if I was in his shoes. Being away from parents and family, surviving in a completely different place from where you were from, ignoring the alienated feeling that would of course came once in a while, enduring the endless physical and mental pain…

I’d probably just hang myself in my room and be a male version of Ju-On, haunting the dorm afterwards, and make Bada barks non-stop. Ha-Ha.

But this was number three we were talking about, not me.

But even so, he’s a human too. He could get tired. There would be a time when the entire thing was too much for him to bear. The day when he got up and left was both shocking and expected to me. Expected, because of all the pain he had to go through. Shocking, because I didn’t expect him to leave that way. He left us without a word, not even a goodbye, leaving everyone confused and numb. We didn’t know what to think. We didn’t know what to expect. We didn’t know what to do. We were just dumbfounded, at our wits end, especially Leeteuk-hyung.

“You don’t know how it feels like when a leader lost his soldier.”
(A/N: Stole this phrase from an author, I don’t remember who but I remember the fanfic is about Leeteuk’s birthday surprise. Credit to that author! =] )

But we were Super Junior. We were more than just 15 pretty boys dancing and belting out our tracks on stage. We were comrades in arms, best friends, and brothers. We fight together, we cry together and we laugh together. We were 15 brothers standing as one, protecting each other’s back and being each other’s shoulder to cry on.

And like our precious ELFs famous tagline, we had Promi15e to 13elieve.

And we fight for what we had Promi15e to 13elieve.

“Super Junior, please get ready! You will be on stage in 5 minutes!” someone unknown announced from near the stage entrance.

“SHUPA JUNIYA COUNT!” Leeteuk ran the usual routine while fixing his microphone. “One!”

“Two!” I heard Heechul-hyung shouted from somewhere.

It was my turn.  I remained silent for a moment. I wasn’t number three. I didn’t want to take his place. That place was his, and someday, he will return to that place. Because number three was there when we made our prom15e to 13elieve.

I let out a long sigh and squared my shoulders. “Four.”

Between the peoples, I could see Leeteuk-hyung froze. I felt sort of bad, I was positive he thought someone was missing.

“SHUPA JUNIYA COUNT, recount!” Leeteuk-hyung shouted, panic in his voice. “One!”

Heechul appeared out of nowhere and continued the count. “Two!”

“Four,” I repeated my number.

This time, Leeteuk-hyung lifted up his head and looked around. His eyes hawked around the room, trying to spot each of the members.

“SHUPA JUNIYA COUNT! EVERYONE PLEASE ALERT! SHOUT YOUR NAME WITH YOUR NUMBER! ONE, LEETEUK!”

“TWO, HEENIM!”

I stepped to the centre of the crowd and stood opposite to Leeteuk. “Four, Yesung,” I said without hesitating.

Two pair of brown eyes met. “Yesung,” Leeteuk Umma mode kicked in and he automatically placed his hand on his hips. “Your number is – “

“Four,” I cut him off.

“It’s four until 4 weeks ago,” Leeteuk-hyung argued. “Now it’s THREE.”

“No, it’s not,” I answered calmly. “My number is four, because I am number four. I can’t be number three because I am not number three.”

Leeteuk-hyung’s face fell when he realized what I was trying to say. Seeing him speechless at the moment, I continued, “Hyung, that number three place is his. I don’t want to take it because I know he will return someday to fill that place again. We had promi15e to 13elieve, remember?”

Leeteuk bit his lips and stared back into my eyes with glassy eyes.  “Yesung…” he managed to choke out. “Yesung you…..”

“Gomawo, Yesung,” I heard a voice said behind me. I turned around to see Heechul-hyung smiling at me. I smiled back at him and made an ok sign with my fingers.

Silence fell between us despite the noisy noises of the backstage fuss. Leeteuk-hyung had hung his head with his hands covering his face. Heechul came near us and pulled the crying leader into his chest, one hand his light brown hair. I walked around Leeteuk-hyung and leaned my head on his back.

“Five,” Kangin, who was listening to the whole thing along with the other members, stepped out from behind a crew and walked toward us, wrapping an arm around Leeteuk’s waist and another arm around Heechul’s.

“Six,” Shindong joined the hug.

“Seven,” Sungmin wrap his arms around Shindong’s arm.

“Eight,” Hyukjae slid his fingers between Sungmin’s, tears streaming down his face.

“Nine,” Donghae threw his arms around Heechul’s neck.

“Ten,” Siwon hugged Sungmin and Hyukjae from behind.

“Eleven,”Kibum did the same to Heechul and Donghae.

“Twelve” Ryeowook squeezed in beside me.

“Thirteen,” Kyuhyun said the final number while sliding himself between me and Ryeowook. Well, at least I thought that was the final number, considering Zhoumi and Henry weren’t there. But then, someone patted Kyuhyun’s shoulder from behind.

“We don’t know if we should be here,” he said in a low voice. “But…fourteen, Zhoumi,” he said his number.

“Fifteen, Henry,” Henry stepped out from behind Zhoumi, eyes glued to the floor.

Everyone turned to their direction. No one knew why they were there, but no one bothered to ask. Heechul extended his neck to have a better look of the 2 chinese members. “Stop the nonsense, of course you guys should be here.”

“There wouldn’t be a Prom15e without you two,” Leeteuk finally said something between his sobs.

Henry and Zhoumi beamed. “Kamsahamnida, Leeteuk-hyung!” Zhoumi bowed 90 degrees, followed by Henry. Siwon and Kibum opened an arm for them, both smiling warmly. Zhoumi ran into Siwon’s waiting arms. Henry, despite not knowing Kibum much, went into his arm and joined the group embrace. Soon everyone was holding each other tightly and crying in each other’s arms. All the hyung, dongsaeng and maknae titles were forgotten. The crews watched us in awe, some in confusion, but at that time, we could care less. When we were all together like this, no one else mattered.

Okay, scratch that. I meant when we were almost all together.

Silently, I broke free from whoever’s arms that was embracing me and looked at my 13 brothers faces, one by one. Even I felt happy enough with the 13 of them; I couldn’t help but wanting one more beside me.

“SUPER JUNIOR on stage in 3 minutes!” someone interrupted our brotherly moment. Everyone automatically broke free and wipe their faces free from tears. The makeup artist noonas rushed to our side to fix our tears-streaked face.  When we were about to go on stage, Leeteuk nudged me.

“Yesung, thank you for reminding me about our prom15e.”

I smiled. “No problem hyung. Now don’t cry, you’ll ruin your make up and the makeup noona will freak.” Leeteuk chuckled at my reminder.

A year later, Super Show 3.

Location, SS3 Beijing Backstage. My watch showed 7.45. 15 Minutes more before the show starts. We could hear our ELFs screaming outside, making us more and more excited by every minutes passing. The usual backstage fuss was going on; the crews were making final system check-ups, some helped the members with their mics. The make up noonas made final make up touch-ups, running here and there with their make-up equipment. Me, I was standing in front of a mirror, admiring my own reflection.

“SHUPA JUNIYA COUNT!” Leeteuk-hyung exclaimed happily from the centre of the small crowd. “One!”

Heechul-hyung, who was still fixing his already perfect hair, clicked his tongue in annoyance hearing the count. “Aish, TWO!”

“Three!”

“FO – “  I stopped mid-word when I was saying my number when I realized the number sequence were correct. I mean, it shouldn’t be. And it couldn’t be, right?

I turned to the equally dumbfounded Donghae who was standing by my side. We stared at each other for a few seconds, confusion clearly written on our face.

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