"Hey, you guys still remember how we got Baekhyun to debut with us?"

An innocent conversation was striked up in the car, heard from all but Tao and Lay who slept like little babies. Baekhyun looked around uncomfortably, eyes hiding behind wavy brown locks.

"Yeah,"  Sehun laughed.  He nudged Baekhyun's knee.  "Hyung, remember?  Tell us the story."  He stutters, faltering, and in the end gives up.  He doesn't want to tell it.  He can't.  

"MC Chanyeol will tell it,"  Chanyeol says, not sure why he wanted to save the agitated Baekhyun.  It was always his duty to make fun of him.  Manager hyung at the driver's seat was listening.

"One day CEO-nim told Baekhyun that he wanted to speak with him. Everyone was still practicing at that time.  Baekhyun went in... and boom!"  Chanyeol had his brilliant raconteur face on.  "Told Baekhyun that he couldn't debut with us.  Better yet,  he told him to quit SM."

Baekhyun shifted in his seat, trying to go unnoticed.

Chanyeol continued.  "The boy was sad for... four, five days?"

"Five," Sehun corrected.  Kyungsoo smiled eagerly, waiting for the best part.

"So we finally got out of him why he didn't want to talk to anyone for five days.  Should've seen his face!  It was so cute like a sad puppy's."

"Chan--" Baekhyun finally interrupted.

Chanyeol continued-- it was funny.  Why stop here?  "So we begged and pleaded the CEO to let Baek stay in Exo.  Chen baked a cake.  All of us bowed on the floor.  Even the Chinese members who didn't know how to do it!"  The car burst with snickers; all but Baekhyun found it funny. 

"So the CEO said that he'd think about it.  He must've been so embarassed at our sincerity.  A few days later, Baek was allowed to debut with us.  Man, we did good."  He applauded himself.  He looked over to Baekhyun, who wasn't smiling at all.  He had the look of death on his face-- perhaps because he knew the story wasn't entirely true; perhaps because Baekhyun didn't want to be reminded of the truth.

When the car stopped, Baekhyun was the first to get off the van.  He paced unnaturally to the door and walked in, taking off his shoes and locking himself in his and Chanyeol's room.

"What's up with Baek?"  Lay finally woke up, rubbing the blurriness away from his vision.

"I don't know."  Chanyeol's stomach knotted. He knew something was wrong, that he should've just protected Baekhyun all together and played off the story.

 

"Open the door, Baek!" Minseok barked, thumping the door.  "Bacon-ah, let us talk to you."

"Baek, we have your favorite food!  Samgyeopsal~~"  Kris exclaimed, in an effort to budge the kid who locked himself inside.

No response.

"Baek..." Suho didn't bother knocking.  "We'll leave you alone.  Get some rest.  Talk to us when you're ready, Kay?"

"Kay."  Response.

When the others left, Chanyeol quietly knocked on the piece of annoying wood that kept him from his Baekhyun.  "Baekhyun-ah, are you crying?  What's the matter."  The latter came off more as a soft statement than a question.

Still, he couldn't answer him.  He couldn't.  And it was killing him inside.

It really was.

---

Love was the thing that kept him from hurting the people he loved for three years;  this love only stabbed him in return.  He did want to say it, so much.  But the valiant Baekhyun inside of him wanted to wait for death to trickle through the cracks of the door, alone.  That way, he could save some smiles.  Like the handsome white beams of happiness in the pictures that they framed up to put on display.  Those smiles.  He wanted them to last a bit longer. 

"Baekhyun-ah," Chanyeol approached, after waiting for an eternity.  "Yah, babo, if you don't open, I won't have a place to sleep tonight."

He grunted.  "Baek.  Baek.  Baek.  Baek.  Baek.  Beck.  Paek. Baekpaek.  Baekhyun."

The door jostled open.  There was no one else.  Just Park Chanyeol.

"Surprised to see only me?"

"Where are the others?"

Chanyeol smiled, slid his head through, and shifted his whole body into his room.  With his back facing the door, and his front facing the smaller man, he faintly clicked the door shut.  It was just him and Chanyeol, and his footsteps approaching his bed.

"Baekhyun, aren't you hungry?"  He didn't ask him about earlier, and that surprised him.

"Nope."'

"I'll go get you food from outside."

"It's ok."

"I cooked."

"You can't even cook, Park Chanyeol."

A moment later, he was back with the food that he himself cooked, its sweet aroma filling the narrow room with the smell of noodles.  The chopsticks sat horizontally on top of the bowl, sweating from the heat of the white smoke.

Baekhyun was hungry, alright.  But he couldn't eat it.  He couldn't eat anymore.  He scraped his eyes off the surprisingly appetizing Udon noodles and settled them on Chanyeol's.  "You made this?"

"Consider it an apology." His countenance was somewhere between grave and content.

"But--" He was caught.

"Esophageal Cancer."  The CEO said once Baekhyun sat down.

"What."  Chanyeol urged him to finish his sentence.

"Why wasn't I noticed about it?  You're going to debut in a few months."  He continued, with an air of grandeur.

"I..."

"CEO-nim," he took a deep breath, "Please let me stay in Exo."  Baekhyun tried to sit the backest and innest that he could on the seat.

"I can't eat.  My throat hurts."  Baekhyun tried to be as true to Chanyeol as possible.

"I can't let you.  I'm very sorry that you don't have much time left, but what are all your fans going to do when they learn that their idol has cancer?"

"Baekhyun-ah... is something wrong?  Why does your throat hurt?"

"I won't tell them.  Nobody as of now knows."

"I don't know.  It's just been hurting a lot.  I think it's just my cold."  What a big lie, however small a cold was.

"Baekhyun, people will find out.  You can't stay in Exo.  Get some rest."

Chanyeol let a sigh escape, his childish face showing signs of being twenty-two.  "Where does it hurt?"

"But the symptoms aren't showing up.  It's different," Baekhyun almost pleaded, letting his pride slip for a little.

"It doesn't matter.  I'll get better, Channie."  Another lie.

"What if the symptoms show up after you debut? Are you going to opt out whenever you have a solo?  You're one of the three main vocals,  Baekhyun."

"You better.  My noodles are waiting."  Chanyeol resigned, but didn't yet give up.  He was being weird.

"And that's why I have to stay in Exo.  They need me.  They can't do without me.  I can't do without them."

"I'll think about it."

"Do your parents know?"

"Yes."

He sighed, frustrated.  The office walls were green, he stared at them.

Tears welled up in his eyes and he tried to sniff them back in.  Life was too short to cry.  He pulled Chanyeol close to him and rested his head on his chest.  "Chanyeol, Chanyeol, Chanyeol, Chanyeol..." 

He wanted to say his name many times before he couldn't say it anymore, and he wanted Chanyeol to hear his voice many times before he couldn't hear it anymore.

His voice was getting hoarse and ugly by the day, that's a fact.  He couldn't eat because food would get lodged in his esophagus and jab his esophageal lining, that's a fact. His chest felt crushed, his back felt pain, his heart felt agony.  Facts.  Everyday he hid it from the other eleven because he thought that it would be better that way.  But it was too much.

Fact.