I do not own SHINee.

You wonder when it started.

It isn’t a sudden tumble down the valley of love for you. It isn’t an unexpected revelation out of the blue for you. It isn’t any of those things, you tell yourself. It is something closer to the gentle lapping of waves against beaches, insistent and unstoppable.

He has this strange ability to dance on the boundaries you set; this ability to unsettle and unbalance you and turn you into a mass of fluttering butterflies and burning faces. He does this with an almost careless disregard, with a casualness that both pain and frustrate you. The effect he has on you is remarkable and inexplicable, because the others certainly don’t feel the same when he drapes an easy arm around their shoulders or says breathy whispers into their ears. They don’t, you are certain. Because none of them ever has a bone for acting in their bodies.

Key is flamboyant and outrageous, but when it comes to feelings of the heart, he wears them on his sleeve. Taemin is young and inexperienced, but he knows what he wants and is never afraid of reaching out for it. Minho is inscrutable and cryptic, but living with him for years has taught you how to read the slight arch of his eyebrows, the light quirks of his mouth as if it is a language written and spoken.

You know that you are the only one.

You want to tell him how you feel; you want to let loose all your feelings and let them run amok. But you are not Key, not Taemin, not even Minho. You are not them, and you are a coward. Because you know that in this cut-throat industry you are working in, where new groups sprout every few months, you can never afford to slip or fall. It may just spell the demise of the things you hold dear, the things your bandmates hold dear, the things he hold dear.

It will never do, you tell yourself. It will never work out, you cry to yourself.

But you stop crying soon enough. Because if it isn’t to be known by anyone else, you will have to do your best to keep up the façade of a happy and life-is-perfect Jonghyun. So you learn how to keep your feelings tamped down and controlled, hidden from the public’s eye. No, not only the public’s, but everyone’s—including your closest friends, your bandmates and him. You know he doesn’t feel the same way about you, and you don’t want to make him guilty and awkward around you. The status quo is fine, you try to convince yourself.

So, you set out on a grand scheme to deceive everyone around you. Peering into the mirror, you imagine him being next to you, being intimate with you, and you try to suppress the uncontrollable heat the rushes to your face, the involuntary stumbling of your tongue. You do your best, and you do it every day. And eventually, you succeed. You learn how to divorce your true emotions from your facial expressions and you have become a masterful liar.

But that skill took you a long time to pick up. And during the uncomfortable transition period when your body isn’t quite yours to control, you took a leaf out of the oldest trick in the book. You share hugs and kisses with Key, you hold hands and sing duets with Key. You did everything you could possibly do to highlight the wonderful and close friendship you share with Key, knowing that the fans would read more into it and create a mountain out a molehill. It was a genius course of action, you admit to yourself. Because, look, the number of Jongkey shippers has increased exponentially.

Grand master of deceit—misinformation and misdirection have become your tools of trade.

But how hard he makes it for you. Even armed with your newly drawn mask and newly minted armour, he threatens to pierce through all you have built up with just some simple words. He nearly unravels all the defences you have painstakingly worked on with just some light smiles and promises of eternal friendship.

The sheer effort it takes for you to repress the confession from spilling out helter-skelter is gargantuan, but you manage to do in the end. You want to give all credit to your hard work and diligence, but somewhere in a corner of your mind, a little voice that is wiser than you ever will be tells you it was only possible because he didn’t say what you really wanted to hear.

I love you—those were the words you were willing him to say. But he never did.

You are so desperately in love with him, but you dare not say it. You dare not let the light of the day touch this ugly truth hidden deep within your heart. Because you know, despite for all the fangirls and their pairings, the society at large does not approve of such relationships. Even the supposed bastion of freedom in the world has laws against homouals, what chances are there for you who is working in a conservative Asian society?

No, you tell yourself firmly. No, you deny yourself.

You won’t mind falling from grace yourself if you can only lay your hands upon the rumoured happy ending. But you won’t do it because you know even if you have fallen, you will never be able to get your desired conclusion. This is a one-way route you have embarked on, and a ‘happily ever after’ has never been one of the endings set out.

You continue smiling even when you are not happy, you continue laughing even when you are not amused.

And everything is fine, you swear. Everything is fine till the day you find yourself looking down at the metropolis with tears streaming down your cheeks. Cars rush through the roads a thousand metres beneath you, and you suddenly realise you have reached your limits.

You are in nine kinds of pain, but you are so locked into damage control that you are not quite sure what is happening inside you anymore.