JiYong and Seunghyun tumbled out of the studio teasing each other good naturedly.  They had just finished a planning meeting with YG for their special Oh Yeah stage with Bom.  Seunghyun was mimicing JiYong reaching for her hand when JiYong suddenly stopped walking, turned to stare at Seunghyun and spoke with the most agony Seunghyun had ever heard from his leader.  “Hyung please don’t tease me about her.  I love her Seunghyun-ah.” 

Seunghyun was completely still.  For long seconds there was silence then JiYong almost yelled, “Say something! Tell me how to make her love me!!  I need her. She makes me feel like nothing else… if it hadn’t been for her I’d have committed suicide about that drug thing and she doesn’t even know I exist most of the time, I think she’s in love with Daesung.  Hyung!!  Help me!!”  His words echoed into silence in the long hall around them.  Finally Seunghyun looked at him, that second nature expressionlessness on his face that just for once JiYong wished wasn’t there.  Then JiYong saw his eyes and blinked at the intense pain he had never before seen in them. 

“I can’t help you this time JiYong-ah.  I love her too.”  He whispered hoarsely.

“Wha-what??”  For a moment JiYong sounded like a small child who had just been told something very bad had happened and was pleading to be told it wasn’t true.

“I love her.”  The second the words were out of Seunghyun’s mouth JiYong wished he hadn’t wanted them repeated. Coming from his hyung’s mouth they seemed to take on a passionate faithfulness and depth of selfless loyalty that shamed JiYong to the point of angry embarrassment. 

“Y-you??”

“She always needed someone to just relax with, someone who could be stupid with her and make her laugh when she needed it.  She needed to have someone who wasn’t really close to her that she could come to with problems when she needed too, someone who understood things the others couldn’t.”  He shrugged helplessly.  “But then, I don’t know how…  I couldn’t help falling in love with her.”

JiYong was still hearing the words “she could come to with problems when she needed too.”  Something inside him revolted at the thought of Bom trusting some other man to the extent of sharing her problems – whatever they were – with him.  Common sense deserted him and JiYong did something he had never before done.  He lashed out at Seunghyun.  Almost incoherently he raged about Seunghyun having no right to take advantage of Bom like that, how Seunghyun had betrayed JiYong and what kind of stupid, naïve idiot was Seunghyun to even consider the idea of Bom loving him…

Seunghyun listened to his leader, eyes never leaving the younger man’s face until JiYong shouted “what does it feel like to hold her?  Huh?? You know don’t you??  When she’s blubbing out her problems to you, don’t you hug her and comfort her? Huh?? What’s it like??”

Seunghyun didn’t answer.  He simply turned and walked away.  Not back to the double dorm the two men had been sharing while their album was in process but back to his old empty room.  Once there he locked the door and sat down on the bed in darkness, JiYong’s angry words still shouting in his head.  According to his nature Seunghyun did not defend himself or even feel the unfairness of JiYong’s accusations.  He simply felt his leader’s fury descend onto his heart and soul and let himself be crushed under its weight.  Leaning back to switch on the lamp beside his bed he opened a drawer in his bedside table and pulled out a small sheaf of disorderly papers.  Some of them were cards, some of them notes; from Bom.  Turning the first one over he reread the words she had written to him.  “Dear Seungyun,  thankyou for helping me exercise today.  Thanx to u I can have corn now!!  Kkk,  sh don’t tell Sabunim!  You always make me laugh and somehow exercise is easier when you are here.  You’re so silly bingu T.O.P!!  If you ate more corn it would make you more sensible.  See how sensible it made me??  Anyway, you know what it’s like to have people judge you about your weight and you help me fight that, but you never seem like you are.  Gomawo bingu TOP! <3 u bro.”  Seunghyun put the piece of paper on his bed and picked up the birthday card lying underneath it.  In it was drawn a cartoon of surprising detail in four boxes cross the card.  A girl – Bom, and a boy – Seunghyun.  No one else knew Bom could draw.  Only Seunghyun knew and she only showed him when she was trying to tell him something she couldn’t say.  The fact that she trusted him with this gift of hers made him jealously guard every bit of her artwork that came into his possession.

In the first box of the cartoon the girl was bowing and holding out a gift to the boy.  In the second box, the boy was opening the box in front of a clearly excited girl but there was disappointment on his face because there was nothing in the small parcel she had given him.  In the third box the boy was thanking the girl although he was disappointed and she was turning away, a happy expression on her face.  In the last box the boy had found a piece of paper in the parcel that said, “I want more than anything to give you something you’d love but I have nothing.  Everything you have given me is so priceless and I can never give you anything that could begin to repay you.  All I can give you is this:  you give me life when I feel like only death is around me, you give me laughter when I can do nothing but cry, you see good where no one else even bothers to look and you have seen bad where no one else has ever been allowed to look.  Please know that I am forever indebted to you, in so many ways, for being there for me when no one else could or would.  Happy birthday.”  Above the box of the disappointed boy thanking the girl she had written in such tiny Korean that he could hardly read it in the inadequate light of his lamp, even when she disappoints, he still treats her as though she has done something great for him.  He knew what Bom wanted him to understand from that and the card was one of his most treasured belongings.  If ever there was a fire in YG Building he had long ago decided he would grab that card, clothes and then if there was time worry about anything else.

He ran his finger over the slight indents on the card paper where her pen had pressed into it then slid it by itself back into the drawer, a slight smile on his face.  The next piece of paper was simply a strip of note paper torn from a book.  Again there was a cartoon version Bom drawn on it with an expression of childish longing and the words, aaaiiii seeeuuunghyuuuuun.  Come help me resist corn while exercising today!!  He had gone and the two of them had spent over three hours in the gym before either of them realised the time.

There were others as well, longer letters in which Bom had spilled onto paper all the things she simply could not voice aloud to another human being.  All the times she had read negative comments about her, all the times her voice had not been perfect because of nerves or a cold, all the times she felt ugly and not worthy to be part of 2NE1, the times she felt guilty for not supporting her sister better, one particularly long and agonising one about the time her mother had been a car accident and almost been killed; all of them had been written with painful honesty and then tremblingly given up to Seunghyun who she knew would read them without judgement in his mind and with understanding in his heart.  Seunghyun didn’t read them all just then, instead he put them carefully on his bed and unfolded one more longer note.  This was the letter he reread the most often because that had made him realise just how much Bom trusted him and how alike they were.  Unconsciously cradling it in his hands he once again read the scrawled Korean words.  I’m sitting on the bathroom floor and I don’t know why I’m writing this or why I’m thinking of you as I write it but I have to write it and you always seem to be there when I need you.  Seunghyun I just vomited my lunch.  I made myself do it.  I had too.  I’ve put on five kilos in the past week and we have a concert in three days time.  Why am I fat?  Why can’t I be like Dara who is just skinny all the time?  Seunghyun I’m scared.  I don’t want to become anorexic but right now I feel like I can’t help it.  I HAVE to be slim.  People talk so much about how much I weight, how fat I look in whatever I wear… I have to be slim and I have to lose weight.  I can’t stop eating, the others would worry, and I LIKE eating.  So I have to do this.  Please help me.  Stop me.  If I can’t stop myself then I’ll die.  I know I will.  I’m crying and shaking but I can’t stop.  This is the third day I’ve done it and yesterday I vomited breakfast and dinner.  I didn’t eat lunch. I hate myself for doing it but I hate myself for being fat a well.  It feels so good knowing that the food coming out of my body can’t make me fat but I know it’s bad for me.  Please Seunghyun rescue me before I die.  You told me you were overweight but you didn’t die.  Please don’t let me kill myself either.  Please, please, no one else could help me.

She had never meant for Seunghyun to actually read it, but two days later when he found her in the gym, adding to it and crying.  He had seen his name at the top of the page and forcefully taken it away from her to read.  Sitting there on his bed, Seunghyun shuddered, drawing in his breath painfully with longing as he remembered how he had sat down on the floor and pulled her into his arms and how she had cried against him, her body shaking with her sobs.  Yes, he did know what it felt like to hold Bom and he treasured the memory.  When she had stopped crying for sheer exhaustion, he had stood up, gone to Daesung’s room and come back with a needle.  She had looked up at him waiting and looking back, Seunghyun could see it as clear as if that same face were in front of him in his room, the innocent, tear-streaked face and the beautiful, unhappy eyes, misty with unshed tears.  He had pulled her to her feet, handed her the needle then slowly shrugged his shirt off, still wondering if he was doing the right thing and feeling extraordinarily uncomfortable as he asked her, “Do I look fat?” 

“No.  Of course not.”  Her voice had held surprise that he could even ask that question.  He hadn’t bothered to dispute it.  Instead he had turned her sideways, lifting her arms slightly and made her look at her side-on profile in the full length mirror that ran along one wall of the gym.

“Do you look fat?”  He had asked in exactly the same way as he had asked if he looked fat.  Bom had dropped her eyes and pulled her hands away from him to fold her arms against her protectively.

“Yes.”  She had whispered.  Seunghyun remembered the anger he had felt at people for making this beautiful girl believe she was anything other than the perfectly slim, healthy weight she should be and that anger had intensified his voice as he had grabbed her hand that still held the needle.

“I want you to take that needle and stick it into my hand then.”  He held out his left hand, palm up.

“No!”  Bom had gasped, jerking away but Seunghyun grabed her wrist. 

“Listen to me Bom.  You can think you’re fat.  That’s fine with me, but if you can look at me…”  He took a step back from her, still shirtless.  “…and say I’m not fat, then you must not think you are fat.  You are lying to yourself.  Every time you lie to yourself and say your fat, you are going to stick that needle in my hand.  Because that’s how much it’s going to hurt me when you think that about yourself.”  Bom had tried again to get away but Seunghyun’s fingers had closed over her own holding the needle and he had forced her to press the needle into his own flesh while she screamed at him not to.  His fingers had been shaking and Seunghyun had found himself seriously hoping he wouldn’t pass out from pain but he didn’t release her hand until half the needle had disappeared into his palm.  Then he had let go and Bom had sprang away from him and collapsed sobbing for the second time that night on the gym floor. 

Almost unconsciously Seunghyun found himself rubbing his thumb back over the spot where the needle had been driven into his hand over three years ago.  His lamp was switched off now and he was lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling while the papers rustled on the pillow beside him.   Just then his phone vibrated and he started slightly.  He let his hand brush over his bedside table, find his phone and squint at the message on it from JiYong.  “didn’t mean to yell hyung.”  That was all.  There was no apology for what he had said and Seunghyun didn’t expect or even look for them.  all he felt was gratitude that JiYong had texted him and he let himself relax back onto his pillow as he saw again that day in the gym.

It had taken all his will and courage to grip the needle between his teeth and wrench it out and then he could not for the life of him refrain the half gasping groan of agony as he felt it move through his hand then leave it completely.  Then without bothering to do anything with his hand he gone to Bom, once again pulling her to himself.  This time however she had not let herself be comforted by him, instead she had reared away from him then turned around and yelled at him through her tears to go away.  He had simply waited then tried to explain why he had done it, how much it hurt him to see Bom thinking she was fat, how afraid he was for her now he knew what she was feeling and how desperate he was that she never feel that way again.  Gradually Bom had come back to him and before they left the gym there was a bond between forged deeper than any Seunghyun had ever had.  The day after there had been a YG family dinner at a restaurant near YG building.  Seunghyun had watched Bom, made sure she ate and also made sure she laughed a lot.  He had been teased almost too heavily by his other members for his outstanding stupidity but he didn’t care.  Bom had been fine for a while but then he had seen her gradually stop talking, laughing and smiling.  Finally she had quietly left the table and slipped out the door and without even considering not going after her, Seunghyun too left the table.  Once outside he had seen her entering the one bathroom in the small restaurant but by the time he had caught up with her she was already vomiting over the toilet bowl.  Seunghyun simply knelt behind her and held her hair back from her face.  When she stopped, gasping, Seunghyun had pulled her around so she was facing him. When Bom cried for him to let her go so she could be sick again he had shaken his head.  “No.  If you want to, you can be sick on me.  Otherwise don’t be sick again.”  She had fought him, told him she couldn’t help it but he hadn’t let go and finally she fell against him in defeat and let her body slowly settle down under his voice and hands as he smoothed her hair back and rubbed his hands over her shoulders.  She had never done it again, and over time with his constant encouragement and repeated assurances, Bom stopped worrying about her weight to any great extent.  She still took her exercise very seriously and discussed multiple diets with Sabunim but never with the desperation that Seunghyun had rescued her from.

Seunghyun rolled over and sighed.  it was doubtful whether Choi Seunghyun would have known a spiteful thought if one walked up and hit him in the face, and it didn’t occur to him now that he had an extremely large advantage over JiYong if it came down to who Bom would marry if she was to choose one or the other.  In his own, quiet way, Seunghyun held his memories and the knowledge of Bom’s trust close to him, then deliberately decided that if Jiyong loved Bom then Seunghyun must not get in his way.  That Bom might choose him over JiYong never really occurred to him but if JiYong considered him a rival then Seunghyun must not be one any longer.  If JiYong could make Bom happy then Seunghyun couldn’t see there was much point in him even bothering to try as long as both his leader and Bom could be happy with each other.  He could not express his agony in tears.  It was too deep and harsh for that but there in the darkness; Seunghyun’s eyelids slid shut over the pain that nobody else would ever see and whispered into the silence, “She’s yours.  If she loves you then I won’t stand in the way.  She’ll never know I love her; I won’t try to make her love me.  You can love her if she wants you to and I’ll bless you because you make her happy.  For her sake, I’ll sacrifice my love.”