Chapter 3: Pinch

The door bursts open and someone rushes in.

“What happened?” The person demands as he crouches down to my height. It’s only then that I realise that I’m sitting on the floor.

I look up, and I don’t know what to do, so I just stare.

The person in front of me is Jinki, yet he’s not Jinki.

Onew’s hair is supposed to be black, not brown and wavy. His voice is deeper, too. But he’s definitely not the one that woke me up. He looks more well-built, not like the skinny, awkward teenager I knew him to be.

“Taemin?” He shouts, shaking me. His voice trembles this tiny bit. I think he’s frightened, from all the staring I’ve been doing. I’m starting to rock back and forth, because none of this makes sense. I want to answer Onew, but I can’t speak anymore.

Jinki places a hand on my forehead, lifting up my thinned brown bangs. A moment later, he frowns and retracts his hand from my skin. I almost sob at the loss of his warmth. In all this confusion, I yearn for familiar contact, even if it isn’t as familiar as I remember it to be. “There’s no fever. What’s wrong, Taemin?”

I wanted to say it was my hair.

My face.

His face.

His voice.

Penguin.

My room.

Everything.

Everything was wrong. I didn’t know why. Everything’s changed.

Kibum promised everything would stay the same.

This wasn’t possible.

… It wasn’t possible….

So it must be a dream.

I started calming down. After all, if it was all a dream, it was fine.

I’ve heard about dreams that were surreal, and so real you couldn’t tell if it was reality. So this must be one of those. When I wake up, everything will go back to normal. For now, I just have to go along with it.

“I-I’m fine,” I breathe. My voice wobbles like I’m supressing tears. It sounds abnormal, and deeper, like all the voices I’ve heard so far.

Onew doesn’t look convinced, but he straightens up any way and looks away. Like he can’t wait till he’s away from me. Like it isn’t his business, whether or not I’m alright… Like he doesn’t care anymore. “Just get ready, quickly. We have a performance at Music Bank next. We’re already late for our schedule.”

I nod from the ground, and slowly get up. He starts to walk away, but I call out to him. “Jinki hyung…”

He freezes on the spot and turns slowly, a flash of something – shock? – disappearing from his brown eyes. An annoyed look surfaces on his face. “What do you want now, Taemin?”

Frankly, I’m frightened by his behaviour. Onew isn’t that way. Onew has always been the gentlest one, towards me. Now, he’s just behaving too professionally, too distantly towards me. So I don’t say anything.

I just shake my head.

“God, Taemin, could you please stop wasting our time and hurry up?” Jinki sighs exasperatedly and leaves. Just like that.

I feel my heart shattering, but I close the door and finish my morning business anyway, while trying to stop my hands from shivering.

It’s just a dream.

When I wake up, everything will be better.

Everything will be fine again.

When I’m done, I head out to the living room area.

In the small kitchen, Onew is eating some cereal, finishing up the last few spoons of milk. He looks up briefly when I enter the room, then looks away again and moves to the sink to dump his bowl. It’s the plastic one with a blue pattern. The same one he used before.

I have to stop my jaw from dropping, when I move on to observe the other members.

Jonghyun’s hair is brown, as well, and his fringe falls into his eyes, even though it’s shorter than I remember it to be. He’s tan and he looks firmer. He’s not skinny anymore, and I can see his muscles imprinted on the wife beater he’s wearing.

Like Jinki hyung, Jonghyun hyung only glances at me before looking away, back to his phone. Our phones have not been with us since a week before our debut. Somehow, he’s gotten it back from manager hyung.

Minho rests next to Jonghyun, relaxing in a buzzing massage chair.

I’ve never known that we have a massage chair.

Minho looks at me for a second longer than the other two, but looks away and closes his eyes to rest. He looks the most like the Minho I know, but there are dark eye bags under his eyes. His hair is much shorter than I remember it to be, and coloured brown.

Kibum sits on the other side of Jonghyun, his eyes focused on the laptop that is balanced on his thighs. He taps the keyboard a few times before he looks up and sees me.

Key has blonde hair, with his natural black below it. His features are more suited to his face, and like all of the other hyungs, he doesn’t seem as thin as the one I know.

Out of nowhere, Kibum slams the cover of the computer down.

I jump slightly in shock and stare at him. The boy I call my umma looks at me in disgust and rolls his eyes, smirking for a second before his features shifted to a glare.

By this time, I’m incredibly confused. Why are the hyungs behaving like that? Why are they treating me like I’ve done something to make them hate me?

“Look who finally decided to wake up.” His voice is rough, and I recognize it. Key was the one who’d woken me up this morning. He walks up to me and snarls. “What’s with the scream, finally found out how ugly you look?”

All of the members could hear my scream… yet only Onew got up to help me. From the treatment I’d gotten, it was only probably from a leader’s duty that he even checked up on me.

I’m shocked Kibum said something so hurtful to me. I don’t understand why he said that.

I don’t understand why the hyungs are acting this way.

So I just stare at him, because my mouth can’t make any coherent noises.

I think he mistakes my shock as defiance, because he just huffs and stomps away, jamming his shoes onto his feet before he walks out the door. The other members follow behind him, and Onew looks back just once to remind me to hurry it up.

When they’re gone, I pinch myself twice, so painfully my skin breaks.

But I still don’t wake up.

A/N: Early update.

Happy New Year. School is starting tomorrow though :[

What have I done? Poor Taemin...

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