“Do you… think… I’m doing the right thing?”

- - -

The days had gone agonizingly slow. Day by day Himchan would watch Yongguk come and go. He had become pretty busy these days, and he would find him rushing from one stage to the next. He would follow him while he can, but there are days when the stages are a lot farther and Yongguk couldn’t let him go further.

“That’s enough for today,” Yongguk would always tell him with a smile.

“You’ve been to four of my stages today, with the same set of songs, I think that enough torture,” he would laugh, but Himchan would find each laugh ringing more hollow than the one before it.

And the cycle would come again the next day and the day after that – until Himchan finds the man drooping lower, his voice huskier and his smile a little mellow that it has always been.

“Do you… think… I’m doing the right thing?” Yongguk speaks out of the blue. Himchan was half thankful and half agonized by the question. They had been sitting on the same café for over an hour without a single world escaping through their lips. He had gone through the same magazine for more than ten times not that he has lost count.

For a minute there he thought the man had already gone off sleeping, he had been awfully silent for a while, and kept leaning on the glass windows. Thing was, Himchan really felt unsettled with the idea of Yongguk going off into his own world and drowning in his thoughts. The man was too deep for his own good. He wanted to just help him swim out of his own deep thoughts and just let it out. But then again, with questions like these, he didn’t think he would be caught any more unprepared.

“What do you mean?” he asked back, just to reach a certain degree of clarity.

“I’m… going to train, sign up for it, the real thing,”

Himchan wished he never asked.

- - -

“You’re just going to be that one fan who’s bound to be forgotten,”

It was almost official – everything was almost at the end of the road. But Yongguk says they are nowhere near close, if anything, he’s just going to begin a chapter of his new found ‘stage’.

The papers were strewn against Yongguk’s table, with Himchan looking thoughtfully at each page. There were too many words, too many technicalities – others were even in English, many that Himchan could not understand. The papers were drafted carefully, “As per Mr. Bang’s wishes”, as the small written note suggested. They know a gold mine when they see one – and Yongguk is probably the one at the end of the rainbow. A sought out talent. Himchan has never heard of any talent getting his papers signed right away, for him to decide for himself, without even auditioning. The papers said he was going to retain his artistic freedom, that he could write the songs and pick out concepts himself. Everything was too detailed, too well thought out – it scared the heck of Himchan. It’s real and it’s happening. He’s going somewhere now, and the terror of being left behind made him sweat in places he didn’t know could.

“You don’t look too excited,” Himchan said, breaking the silence, as he saw each hair in the man’s brow knitting and furrowing further.

The man looks up at him, a bit startled, casts his gaze upon the papers and smiles. He heaves a sigh just as quick as the smiled disappeared.

“It’s a dream come true, really,”

“You don’t seem happy,” he rebutted.

“No, it’s just…”

“You wish you it were a larger company?” he asked, if only to connect the train of thoughts.

“No, it doesn’t matter where, so long as I got my message across,”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“I’m… I’m not sure I can do it alone,”

- - -

“I’m gambling my life away with this. I – I turned down a prestigious university and a sought out internship to follow this dream but… I’m not sure where this road leads to.”

Himchan once heard that the only thing that you can be certain about the future is actually – uncertainty. But when someone so certain of himself, of his dreams and his passion – like Yongguk, starts to doubt himself, he finds that there really is nothing certain about the future anymore.

He watches him closely on stage as he ‘sings’ to the crowd. Yongguk shines his brightest when he sings in a sea of people. He is at his strongest when surrounded by deafening cheers. But these days, he finds him losing his sparkle, with every bit of uncertainty gnawing at him.

He soon finds the man walking off the stage, a bit limp, shoulders drooping – his exhaustion scribbled in plain view. There was no denying that everything is taking its toll on the man. Whatever it was that he can do, he wanted to jump right at it, but there was nothing, but a cold bottle of water which he handed to the man.

The walk home was silent, “You don’t have to walk me home,” Himchan said, as he found the man swaying languidly on the streets. “But I want to,” he says, without much protest. He was tired, sure, and Himchan debated the thought of just making a run for it to force the man to walk back home. But he knows that he will just make a run for it too, chasing him just to catch up to him – and running in this silly cold weather isn’t really the brightest of ideas.

With a sigh, he walks steps further and faster, halting right in front of him, and heave a huge sigh.

“You…” he starts.

 “You’re going through a lot right now, and frankly, I’ve been very little help,” he continues.

“Just, do this for me okay? Go, you need to rest.” He says, as he gently shoves him to the opposite direction.

Yongguk smiles, perhaps, for the first time that day, after the hectic day, and the hectic stages he had gone through. It felt warm, and strange – but in a good way. The rapper catches the hand that repeatedly tried to shove him away, looks thoughtfully at it, closes his eyes, and smiles.

“Being with you… is… just comforting,” 

“Himchannie, will you be with me?”

And the world fell still.

- - -

Note: I hope you had a great week : )