Working Overtime

                Yoseob stood at the huge double doors, his body holding one door open. He looked back at Junhyung, who was still seated at the long table in the middle of the conference room. Junhyung was bent over his sheets of paper, scribbling and erasing and grunting every so often.

                “Hyung, aren’t you going to come home?” Yoseob spoke softly, still looking behind his shoulder.

                Junhyung raised one hand and waved it around. “Neh, I will in a few hours. Go ahead.” His eyes squinted and his hand dashed faster across the paper.

                “It’s one in the morning, hyung,” the younger boy reminded.

                “It’s fine. I’ll just get this finished.” He sat up straight and looked at Yoseob with a soft expression and a gentle smile. “Get your rest, Yoseob-ah. You look exhausted.”

                “You do, too,” Yoseob whispered, but Junhyung had turned back to his writing. A tiny sigh escaped his frowning lips and with one last look at the ever-busy Junhyung, he left the conference room and closed the door behind him.

                “Doojoon-ah, and you accuse me of snoring,” Yoseob grumbled as he lay awake on his bed. The other members were sleeping soundly on their bunks—it was five-thirty after all. For some reason, Yoseob couldn’t bring himself to sleep, even after tossing and turning and messing his bed sheets for hours. Some few hours ago he tried to believe that it was because of Doojoon’s snoring that he couldn’t fall asleep, but now he didn’t even want to close his eyes.

                Yoseob sat up on his bed and peeked over the edge to see if Junhyung was back yet, but the rapper’s bed was empty. Impatiently, he snatched his phone and looked at the time. 5:31am. Right. Yoseob sighed and slowly dialed Junhyung’s number.

                Yoseob called and called, but no one was picking up. He must have left a dozen missed calls before he crawled down his bunk and changed into street clothes. With his phone in his pocket and one hand on the doorknob, he heard someone stir behind him.

                “Yoseob?” Kikwang croaked and rubbed his eyes.

                “Hey,” he said softly.

                “Where are you going?”

                He took a deep breath. “Somewhere. Go back to sleep, Kikwangie.”

                It didn’t take much to make the dancer give in. Kikwang dropped down on his bed again and in a moment, his light snoring returned. Yoseob then turned the doorknob and left as quietly as he could.

                The conference room doors burst open and Yoseob ran in, sweating, panting, and worried. “Junhyung-ah?” He looked around the room, but there was no one there. The lights were closed and all the seats were in place—as if no one had been in the room the past few hours. Yoseob switched the lights open and noticed the pile of crumpled papers overflowing from the trash bin at the corner of the room. Even more anxious now, he shut the lights and ran out of the room, slamming the huge wooden doors behind him.

                “Junhyung-ah!” he felt no hesitation to scream as he ran around the corridors in that floor. He turned every doorknob and opened all the doors that were unlocked. He kicked open all the bathroom cubicles, but Junhyung was nowhere. “Junhyung-ah,” Yoseob called out weakly as he slid to the floor after coming out from the fourth bathroom he searched in.

                Yoseob was close to tears when he entered the elevator and punched the button to bring him down to the lobby. As he felt the shaft descend slowly, the boy closed his eyes, his mind racing with thoughts and worries. The doors then opened and he stepped out, his eyes still closed. He let out a long, heavy sigh and he blinked his eyes open, ready to walk out of the building and return to the dorm. Instead, he was met with a concrete wall. Yoseob looked to his side, at the plastic board that read Basement.

                He shook his head and turned back to the elevator, but it had shut, and he pressed the button again. The doors immediately opened, and he had one foot stepped inside already when he noticed a light from behind one of the closed doors in the basement hallway. Yoseob pulled his foot back and dashed to the room.

                When he put his hand on the cold knob, he hesitated. He’d given up searching for Junhyung already—if he wasn’t at the floor he just visited, why would he be here? There’s no harm in trying, Yoseob said to himself and he turned the knob. “Hello?” he said quietly as he poked his head into the room. His eyes landed on one ball of paper at the center of the table, and his gaze moved from that crumpled sheet to another, to another, to another, to a half-toppled pile of crumpled papers. At the foot of the pile was a hand. Yoseob’s eyes widened and he stepped further into the room. There he found Junhyung, sleeping with his head on the table and one arm outstretched. His other hand still held the pen he wrote with.

                Yoseob felt tears in his eyes as he moved closer to the sleeping rapper. Before he could wake him up, he was distracted by the number of lyric sheets that were rejected and placed into the pile. He took one in his hands—the one closest to Junhyung’s outstretched arm—and opened it up. His eyes scanned the paper.

                “Girl no, I’m not trying to capture you/It’s just that I want to stop the time because/It is so special to me,” Yoseob read aloud softly. “You and I rock with this love all night long.” His lips curved into a smile and he folded the sheet of paper carefully before placing it into his pocket. He turned to Junhyung and shook him gently. “Junhyung-ah, wake up.”

                “Hrrrnnngggg?” Junhyung mumbled as he opened his eyes. He sat up on the chair and his dry lips. He blinked a few times then looked at the boy that stood beside him. His eyes widened. “Yoseob! Why are you crying?”

                Yoseob laughed and wiped the droplets that flowed down his cheeks. He sniffled and tried to bite down on his trembling lip to make it stop.

                “Hey, hey, hey, why are you crying?” Junhyung got up on his feet and embraced the boy.

                “I-I was looking for y-you every-every-everywhere, and... and-and-and I couldn’t f-find you, and then y-you w-were just here a-a-after all, and—”

                “I’m sorry,” Junhyung sighed into Yoseob’s soft hair. “I’m sorry I made you worry. But why didn’t you sleep at the dorm?”

                “Doojoon w-w-was snoring and I-I c-couldn’t slee-eep.” Yoseob buried his face in Junhyung’s jacket, his arms wrapped around him tightly.

                Junhyung chuckled.

                Yoseob giggled, tickled by Junhyung’s lips on the top of his head. He pulled away from the rapper after a moment. “Let’s go home, Junhyung-ah. It’s sunrise already, I think.” He wiped his eyes.

                “Yeah, it’s so hard to tell the time in this basement,” Junhyung said with a light laugh. He gathered the sheets of paper that weren’t crumpled and tucked them under his arm. Yoseob helped him collect all the paper balls and they tossed them away in a big garbage bag near the door.

                “You wrote a lot,” Yoseob said as they stepped into the elevator.

                “Yes.” Junhyung sighed and looked down at his feet. “A lot of them were failures, I think. I’ve got the most trust in these.” He gestured to the papers that were now in his hands.

                Yoseob nodded and put his hand into his pocket. A second later, he pulled out the folded sheet of rejected lyrics and spread it out. “I like this one,” he said softly. “Can we try it out?”

                Junhyung looked at the paper, trying to make out his handwriting through the hundred creases on the sheet. “Freeze?” His eyebrows knit together. “I’m not sure if it will be any good—” He looked at Yoseob, who looked back at him with a soft, supportive, encouraging look in his eyes that made the dismayed rapper smile. “Okay, we’ll try it out.”

                The elevator doors opened and they were met with light that poured in from the high glass windows. Junhyung stepped on the marble floor and held his hand out. Yoseob cheerfully held on to it and they left the building and returned to the dorm hand in hand.

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a/n: Gosh. I am just so, so, so pleased with this one that I'm starting to think that I'm being to conceited. :( But really, I so enjoyed writing this oneshot! I think it's my longest so far, and it's definitely my favorite as of now. =) Please tell me what you think of it! I'd love to know~

So this is kinda like a fictional backstory to how they came about with FREEZE, which is produced by our JOKER rapper boy himself, and it's such an amazing song <3 I just had to include the lines from my favorite part of the song. <3

This is based on this article that I read this morning =D And I got the lyric translation here.