“Jongdae? What are you still doing awake?”

Jongdae looks up from his spot at the kitchen table, rubbing his eyes. “Minseok-hyung?”

“I thought you went to sleep hours ago,” Minseok sighs, opening the fridge and digging around for something. “You need to get some sleep, you know.”

Jongdae shakes his head, holding up the lyric sheet. “I need to learn this. By tomorrow.”

“No, you don’t have to, Jongdae.” Minseok pours himself a glass of milk and sticks it in the microwave. “We’re not recording for a long time, you know. You have time to learn it, it doesn’t have to be perfect.”

“No. I have to prove myself.” Of course Minseok wouldn’t understand, he’s old and all and old people get respected more easily. Not that he’d ever tell Minseok that he was old. That’s just rude.

Minseok purses his lips and removes his milk from the microwave, taking a sip before setting it down in the table, folding his hands around the mug. “You’ve already proven yourself, you got in and debuted, haven’t you?”

Jongdae doesn’t answer him, instead bringing the lyric sheet closer to his face, as if it would somehow morph into something more understandable if he did so.

Minseok, knowing a lost cause when he sees one, sighs and ruffles the younger’s hair. “Go to sleep, Jongdae.”

“Later.”

~*~*~*~*~

Jongdae wakes up to the feeling of someone poking his face.

“Chen.” Poke. “Chen.” Poke. “Wake up.”

He groans a little, blinking blearily to try and wake himself up. “Who is it…?” he mutters, rubbing his eyes.

“It’s your favorite hyung!” a cheerful voice announces.

“I don’t have a favorite hyung.”

“You .” Luhan sticks his tongue out at Jongdae, who merely blinks at him stonily. “Come on, get dressed, we’re going out. And why were you sleeping on the table?” He shakes his head and pulls Jongdae out of his chair.  “Chop chop. We need to get going.”

Jongdae stumbles off to his room, still half-asleep, and somehow manages to dress himself semi-decently (well, Yifan and Zitao gave him slightly dirty looks when they caught sight of his hoodie and jeans, but nobody really listened to the resident fashionistas anyways).

“Can we go now?” Jongdae yawns, pulling a baseball cap over his messy hair. “I wanna go back to bed.”

“We’ll get coffee.” Luhan grabs his arm and practically drags the vocalist out the door and down the street. “You need to get out more. When’s the last time you left the dorm?”

“…two days ago?”

“Schedules don’t count.”

“Oh… I don’t know.”

Luhan gives an exaggerated sigh, shaking his head. “Unacceptable. Let’s go. Coffee awaits.”

“But I don’t even like coffee.”

“Then get hot chocolate. Or steamed milk. Whatever. I don’t care. You just need to haul your out and I am not taking no for an answer.”

Jongdae sighs, allowing himself to be dragged along by the older male, knowing from experience that it was a lost cause to try and argue with the oldest Chinese member.

~*~*~*~*~

“Isn't this nice?” Luhan asks, taking a large mouthful of… whatever his massive iced coffee drink was. “Very relaxing.”

Jongdae just shrugs, sipping meekly from his own cup of tea. He had to admit that it was a very nice atmosphere, but it didn’t really do much to relax him—his mind was too busy elsewhere, thinking of things that he needed to do.

Like learn Mandarin, for one.

“Luhan-hyung,” he says, putting the cup down on the table, “could you help me with something?”

“Depends on what is it.”

Jongdae starts fishing around in his bag for his lyric sheet, but it’s nowhere to be found. He frowns, and Luhan sighs.

“Jongdae, you need to take your mind off of these things. You can’t be stressing all the time. You’re going to end up hurting yourself if all you do is focus on these things.” Luhan’s voice is quiet, and would be calming to others, but it only serves to make Jongdae more irritated.

“You’re Chinese, you don’t need to learn how to sing perfectly in another language. And there’s no tones and weird pronunciations and whatnots in Korean.” Jongdae drinks some more of his tea, but he can’t really seem to taste it anymore. “I have to do better.”

Luhan opens his mouth to speak, but is interrupted by the arrival of two teenage girls, cheeks tinged with pink and giggling nervously.

“Luhan-oppa! Can you please sign this for me?” One of the girls holds out a flat, square object towards Luhan—EXO-M’s CD.

“Um… sure. Do you have a pen?” Luhan asks, noticeably awkward about the whole situation, but the girls don’t seem to notice, instead eyeing Jongdae curiously.

“Oppa, who’s your friend?”

And Jongdae wishes that the ground could swallow him up right then and there.

~*~*~*~*~

“Jongdae-ah, I’m really sorry about that.” Luhan apologizes profusely as they walk back to the dorm, but Jongdae just sighs.

“It’s okay, hyung, it’s not your fault. Stop apologizing.”

“But I feel bad! They shouldn’t have treated you like that!” Luhan unlocks the door to the dorm, and slams it shut angrily behind them. “I can’t believe some people.”

But Jongdae can.

He waves Luhan off, telling him that it’s alright and he can take care of himself. He’s not that hurt by it, really, hyung, I’m fine.

Luhan doesn’t seem to believe him, but doesn’t push the matter any further, retreating to the living room with pursed lips.

Jongdae just sighs, heading to his room and collapsing on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.

He just can't escape the fact that people just don’t really care about him, that he’s so easily forgotten.

So he reaches underneath the mattress and pulls out the bottle of pills, holding it up to the light.

They helped him take away the pain last night, didn’t they?

So they would work again, right?

Jongdae drops the bottle on the bed and heads to the kitchen, digging around in the cabinet until his fingers close around the neck of a glass bottle. He tucks it underneath his arm and returns to the room, setting the bottle down on the floor and twisting open the lid of the pill container.

He takes one pill.

Then another.

A third, a fourth, a fifth slip down his throat, washed down with some of Yifan's imported hard liquor, straight from the bottle.

He can already feel himself feeling numb, the alcohol and morphine doing wonders to his body and mind, reality fuzzing around him,

“Jongdae, what the—”

“ing , what did you do?”

It's Minseok and Yifan—the latter is shaking him by the shoulders, shouting something that Jongdae cannot comprehend.

“It's going away, hyungie,” he manages to hiccup, the corners of his lips curving up in a sad, pitiful smile. “The pain's leaving.”

“I called the ambulance,” Jongdae hears Minseok mutter to their leader, his voice thick with tears. “Jongdae-ah, you're gonna be okay.”

“.” He blinks slowly, the amount of time his eyes remain closed lengthening every time his lids slide shut.

“Goddammit Jongdae, stay awake!”

He's dimly aware of something striking his face, but he's too far gone to notice.

“'Night, hyung,” Jongdae whispers, as he feels the blackness overtake him. Yifan shakes him hard, again, in another desperately futile attempt to keep the vocalist in the conscious world.

“Jongdae, keep your eyes open! Dammit, Minseok go get me some ice water or something, we need to keep him awake—”

“Maybe... I won't be forgotten this time.”

yaay evil cliffhangers are evil.

yes, this is the final chapter.

i noticed that a lot of you asked for a sequel... or an epilogue... or some sort of continuation.

i'm sorry, but i really don't have any intention of writing anything more to this. i know it's really mean to just leave it like that but i want to let you guys make the ending how you want it. if you want jongdae to survive, then so be it. of you want him to die... then he dies. haha.

personally... well, i won't tell you how i personally envisioned this fic to end. because i'm evil. :)