“Junsu, stop eating”, Jaejoong ordered as he took away the packet of cookies away from his dongsaeng.

“Jaejoong-hyung…” Junsu acknowledged before he tried to take back the packet of cookies that did belong to him.

“No!” Jaejoong scolded, “you need to stop eating like this!”

“Hyung~” Junsu frowned, already upset that he couldn’t grab the packet of cookies.

“Excessive eating like this won’t take your mind off things”, Jaejoong began lecturing the younger, “if you want to take your mind off things, work hard, go review over Tears of Heaven!”

“Hyung, I am”, Junsu holds up the script he was reading whilst he was pigging out on the cookies, he tries to send a plead towards Yoochun who was leaning against the door but fails to as Yoochun avoids his eyes.

“Well then, only concentrate on your script, if you need a distraction, just let your musical do that for you, Junsu, seriously, you need to stop eating all this junk food. Nothing is going to change even if you eat yourself silly”, Jaejoong ranted, he pinched the other’s cheeks harshly, “look, don’t you feel as though your cheeks are a little chubbier than yesterday?”

“Hyung, that hurts”, Junsu rubbed his cheek painfully when Jaejoong finally let go.

“I swear, you need to stop eating like this”, Jaejoong glared at the younger man, “from now on, you can only eat after you confirm with me what you’re eating.”

Junsu felt like crying.

“Wait, hyung!” Yoochun finally spoke, grabbing Jaejoong’s arm, “isn’t that too harsh?”

Taking his arm back from Yoochun, Jaejoong sighed, “no one is in a happy mood today, I understand that we are all going through an excruciating amount of pain, but we can’t have Junsu eating until he barfs.”

“Hyung, you’re exaggerating”, Junsu whined.

“Don’t even try sneak food to eat, I’m watching you”, Jaejoong pointed at Junsu, “devote your time to perfecting Tears of Heaven, you know we’ll always be there supporting you, so don’t let your mind wander, or else”, Jaejoong placed a hand on Junsu’s shoulder and squeezed threateningly, “I’ll take away your kittens for myself.”

Junsu did not say anything and just stared at Jaejoong with a forlorn expression.

Yoochun ruffled Junsu’s hair as Jaejoong left the room, “he’s just worried to death about you, we’re really worried you know?” Yoochun smiled sadly, “when you’re in pain, you can always talk to us about it, your brother is always willing to listen to you too, you do remember right?”

Junsu did not want to admit that he had forgotten that there were people he could lean on. The shock had been too big, the sadness was too overwhelming. When everything came crashing down much harder than expected, it had turned to be too stressful, forcing the tears that weren’t from heaven to come pouring down, “I’m doing fine”, Junsu muttered as he flipped through his script for his upcoming musical.

“If you were doing fine, Jaejoong-hyung wouldn’t announce that he’ll be monitoring your food intake”, Yoochun reasoned. When Junsu did not say anything, Yoochun sighed and continued talking, “you do know that now that you’ve tweeted your worries, everyone is incredibly worried?”

Squeezing his eyes shut, Junsu did not want to discuss that specific topic.

“I’m sorry that you felt so bad to let your emotions overcome you”, Yoochun patted Junsu’s shoulder, “cheer up, find a way to cheer up otherwise, Jaejoong-hyung really will go hysterical”, Yoochun gave Junsu one last smile before he left the other alone.

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Yunho traced his Thanks To message in his copy of Keep Your Head Down album and wondered what kind of expressions people showed when they were reading his words of gratitude.

“Hyung, what are you doing?” Changmin asked, peeking into Yunho’s room before walking in.

“Oh, Changmin”, Yunho smiled, patting the seat next to him, “I was just looking through my Thanks To message again.

Changmin’s face turned a little sour, “is it because of Junsu-hyung?”

Smiling sadly, Yunho reached to pinch Changmin’s cheeks, “well, probably, but I don’t even know for sure myself.”

Changmin rubbed his cheeks softly, he still finds it hard to get use to Yunho’s affection like that sometimes. Probably because it hurt, “hyung, when will the pain stop hurting?” Changmin asks almost innocently, referring to a different type of pain.

There were certain questions Yunho found ridiculously hard to answer. There was no way he could gauge who hurt the most. It was impossible to find a comparison to measure the pain. His only excuse being he was still too young to have a wide range of overly painful experiences. And every time Yunho thought of Changmin, he did not wish imagine how much the maknae was suffering.

“The pain and the tears, it’ll all stop when the time comes”, Yunho finally answered Changmin as he placed their new album on his desk, “come on, let’s go practice.”

As Changmin follows Yunho and leaves the room, he notices the pile of junk food wrappers in Yunho’s bin. His eyebrows scrunches and he understands that Yunho is trying to eat his depression away. Changmin suddenly grabs Yunho’s arms and stops his leader in his tracks, “hyung”, Changmin looks at Yunho seriously in the eye, “you need help.”

Yunho looks blankly at Changmin, “what for?”

Changmin sighs and takes another glance at his leader’s rubbish bin, “first off, hyung, you need to stop taking my snacks”, Changmin crosses his arms and takes a wary glance at Yunho, “when was the last time you went to go see the psychologist?”

Yunho does not answer. Sometimes, there were just some topics he didn’t want to discuss, with anyone.

“Hyung, you need help.”

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The day after the set of ambiguous tweets, Junsu went to go see his psychologist after the words of his persisting friends. The psychologist tells him a couple of sentence, “I heard about the tweets. I really don’t think there’s a better way to heal yourself slowly but by this”, the psychologist handed a notebook to Junsu, “whenever you feel like you’re confused or unhappy, just write a letter to your hyung in this notebook”. And Junsu does not question why he should write to which of his hyungs, because he already knows that his psychologist knows who he’s talking about. In favour of writing letters, Junsu stopped recording his thoughts in the diary he made a habit of when he first met his psychologist.

There was a dream Junsu remembered having during those long nights where he tried to stay up practicing for his musical and ended up over sleeping the next day. Truthfully, it was more of revisiting old memories than a imaginative dream. Junsu looked over at his calendar, it was the middle of January. He looked up towards his ceiling and decided that he was going to forget about everything else and place his musical as priority.

The next day, Jaejoong hassled him about not eating enough. Junsu decided it would be best if he stopped going to see the psychologist for a while and to just continue writing letters that would never be read by the person to whom it was dedicated to.

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Changmin’s words – “hyung, you need help”, kept ringing in Yunho’s head for a while until he finally made the decision to go see his psychologist.

“I need help”, Yunho stated even though he knew that his psychologist already knew that he needed help, for there would be no other reason as to why Yunho would be there in the first place.

They open up Yunho’s diary and start interpreting, they talk about small things and big things, things that could have possibly influenced Yunho’s mood, his thoughts and feelings. They talk about more ways to relieve stress and as Yunho goes to see his psychologist more and more, he feels as though he’s undergoing therapy.

“Why is reality so hard to uncover?” Yunho asks his psychologist, brooding.

The psychologist taps Yunho’s chest with his pen and solemnly tells the other, “that’s only something you can discover through yourself.”

Yunho decides at the start of February that he really didn’t want to discover reality alone. And even though he starts to lessen his meetings with his psychologist, he writes more and more in his diary, rambles that no longer made sense when Yunho read over them the day after as he hoped that the stress would just obediently leave him alone. His thoughts are filled with nothing but fond memories that seemed like they never existed in the first place.

The next day, Changmin wonders why Yunho has lost his appetite all of a sudden.

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When Junsu checks his calendar one morning, the date ‘February 6th’ blinds his eyes. All he can think about for the better half of the day is Yunho. Fed up, Junsu decides that maybe a walk will help cheer him up. He wanders around, hops on a random bus and gets off somewhere awfully familiar. The snow that covers the path he is walking on is pretty, but he could feel the coldness through his boots. Finally he stands outside a café, and stares. Junsu wants to say something, but he knows that nothing will come out even if he tries.

He pushes open the door into the café and walks inside. It was warm, so warm his heart felt like it could flutter. Junsu remembers the café, the small party that was held here so many years ago, he remembers the table in the corner they were all sitting in, celebrating and laughing. Junsu takes a seat, orders a drink and closes his eyes, he could see his memories play out before him like a movie.

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He puts on a warm coat and scarf before he leaves his living quarters with a, “Changmin, I’m going out.” As he left, he could vaguely hear Changmin tell him to not go out for too long, there were still schedules for the day.

There wasn’t really anything Yunho was hoping for as he steps out, the cold wind burning his skin as he wandered around the streets, Yunho automatically finds himself in front of a small café. The one from too many years ago, where he spent his first birthday with SM trainees, with Junsu.

The bell above the door of the café tinkled sweetly when Yunho opened the door. A wave of nostalgia hit him when he saw Junsu sitting in the corner of the café, his eyes closed.

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Junsu wakes up and opens his eyes, the cafe is dimly lit. When Junsu felt someone squeezing his hand, he was alarmed and looked over to his side quickly and saw the one person he had almost been dying to see. A smile graces his features as he speaks, “Yunho-hyung, happy birthday.”

And when Junsu blinks, his smile disappears when he realises he doesn’t see Yunho’s face. Junsu rubs his eyes blinks again, only to confirm that Yunho really was not sitting beside him. It wasn’t until Junsu got home that he realises the scarf he was wearing did not belong to him.