"Move, please...!"

Hankyung sprints through the crowded, noisy hallway, crashing into people left and right without bothering to apologize as he normally would have. His legs begin to crumble under him, and he thinks that maybe it's aftershock, a belated reaction to the dizzying events that had occurred, just now, onstage: events that might make or break Hankyung for the rest of his career.

He flees to an empty dressing room and collapses against a wall, making an effort not to hurl. Outside, all hell has broken loose. They are looking for him.

Hankyung closes his eyes, and images flash through his mind. The harsh white lights, the resounding cheers, the hateful words, the way his peripheral vision cleared all of a sudden… and the silver mask, furiously thrown to the stage floor and crushed beneath the tremendous echoing rage of that person. And, oh god, he remembers the smile that person gave him, huge and wide, like the world was finally at the mercy of his vehement, unyielding wrath.

"Damn you, Kim Heechul," Hankyung whispers as he presses numb fingers to his temple. "You really bring nothing but chaos." His ears are ringing, and a spontaneous throbbing in the back of his head sends colorful spots dancing across his vision: flowers drifting through an ocean of gray.

Suddenly, the door opens, and Hankyung can't formulate any thoughts aside from ‘Speak of the devil’. Heechul stumbles into the room, all dark hair and blazing eyes, barely supported on his own unstable, trembling legs. He falls to his knees before Hankyung, who unconsciously notices that he's breathing quite heavily; they both are.

"Shut up," Heechul mutters before Hankyung can say a thing. "Shut your mouth."

The former's hand is on his cheek, and Hankyung can see red marks snaking out from beneath it. Someone struck Heechul, he thinks, and though he's not sure of the reason, it angers him. Disobeying Heechul for the first time he can remember, Hankyung opens his mouth and speaks. “You,” he says in a low voice, pausing to cough into the sleeve of his shirt. “Why did you—“

“I told you to shut up,” Heechul interrupts, glaring at the floor. “Don’t you dare say a word.”

“It’s none of your concern whether that mask should or should not have been removed, so why—“

“Shut up!”

Hankyung falls silent, gritting his teeth. He keeps his gaze stubbornly fixed forward, and though the fluorescent lights are blinding, anything is better than looking at Heechul at this moment. Beside him, Heechul exhales vociferously, so much so that even the sound of his breathing seems aggressive and unwelcoming. Outside, the voices are still there, still frantic.
            After a moment, Heechul hesitantly says, “I tried to find the mask after we finished performing.”

Hankyung doesn’t know whether he’s allowed to speak now, so he keeps silent. Heechul continues stiffly. “It’s gone…disappeared, as it should have.” His tone is dark and loathing, the way Hankyung knows he feels about that mask. It’s foreign, he’d said. That thing…makes me sick when I look at it.

“Heechul…”

“Shh. You’re not allowed to wear anything like that from now on, got it?” Heechul turns to him, and for a moment, Hankyung thinks he’s crying, but it must be a trick of the light, because Heechul doesn’t cry— “Refuse to wear anything they try to force you into. Use your fists if you have to.”

Oh, Heechul can bend words as he bends people.

Hankyung smiles slightly.

“You’re manipulative, aren’t you?”

> 

“So, Heechul-ssi, everyone is talking about the incident that occurred during the ‘Twins’ performance. Would you like to address the matter? Do you feel that it is proper to violate the law if it’s for a good friend?”

“To make things clear, I didn’t do it for Hankyung. I did it because it should have been done.”

> 

Sometimes, Hankyung feels as though Heechul was a justice in his past life—his ridiculously exaggerated sense of righteousness is no joke. Then, after dwelling on it for a moment, Hankyung wonders if a theorist would be more fitting, since Heechul makes and follows only his own distorted rules.

Perhaps that would explain how observant he is; his eyes are always darting from one corner to the next. They overlook nothing, and when they’re fixed on Hankyung, they narrow deviously. Hankyung is reminded over and over again that Heechul is not an honest person.

To the media, however, it doesn’t seem this way. In front of the camera, Heechul is preposterously blunt to a point where even Hankyung, who calls himself Heechul’s best friend, is quite tempted to act as though the two are completely unassociated. There are moments where Heechul, undeterred, blindly spouts nonsense about himself and the members that, were it not for Heechul’s good connections, might have already caused Super Junior to disband by now.

            “Why are you like this?” Hankyung mutters to his ‘best friend’ after a long and exhausting filming. Heechul smiles and runs a hand through his dark hair. “It’s not like I cause any real damage,” He replies. “Maybe you should just speak out more. It’s not like you have trouble speaking Korean anymore, right?”

            “You have too much faith in me.”

            “Hey, isn’t that the point?”

> 

            “What on earth are you doing, Heechul?”

            His eyes are fixed on the computer screen, and he’s jamming the left click so hard, Hankyung thinks it might break. Perplexed, Hankyung glances at the computer screen and sighs. There are pictures of two girl groups: one that Hankyung knows to be the Wonder Girls and another one that he has never seen before.

            “I’m voting,” Heechul replies. Hankyung isn’t sure if he’s blinked in the past hour. “You’ve never done this before, Hankyung? Geez, you need to get more involved.”

            “What’s the point?” Hankyung grumbles, raising an eyebrow. “Fan-votes don’t really count for anything, do they? It doesn’t benefit them in any way if they win.”

            Heechul frowns, perhaps deep in thought. “You don’t understand,” He replies after a moment. “Because I like them, it’s like…I have to prove something to them? It’s hard to explain.”

            “You’re crazy,” Hankyung says, and then he leaves the room.

            Heechul doesn’t move.

> 

            “Great job, Hankyung. You’ve begun to lose the Chinese timbre in your voice.”

> 

            Each day, Hankyung wakes up in a tangle of white blanket and glances over to the bed on the other side of the room. In it lays a rosy pink bundle that rises and falls in a steady, slow rhythm; a patch of silky black just barely visible from behind the feathered pillow.

            Hankyung smiles and glances at the hello kitty alarm clock across the room. 7:46, another fifteen minutes before he has to get dressed. He spends these fifteen minutes staring at Heechul with half-open eyes, timing his breathing with his best friend’s, gently drumming his fingers on the mattress as he tries not to lapse into another sleep. At times like this, he thinks Heechul is the most vulnerable.

            Ah, the slow mornings.

> 

            Hankyung stares at his leader, who is shaking slightly as he puts the phone down. “What’s wrong?”

            “There’s been an accident,” Leeteuk replies, and his voice seems to be lost in the stratosphere. He glances at the other members in the room: Sungmin and Kyuhyun, and swallows carefully. “Can one of you look up the address for Seoul National University Hospital?”

            Kyuhyun eyes him warily  and pulls out his laptop. Neither of them speaks.

            Hankyung, who glances from one to another, eventually asks, “Who’s been in the accident, Leeteuk?” He thinks of Donghae, who is grieving for his father, and contemplates whether, out of sorrow, he might have purposefully crashed the car. But, then again, Donghae doesn’t even know how to start the engine by himself.

            He thinks to the other members who have the day off today; they should all be eating dinner in the other dorm. That leaves only Eunhyuk and… Heechul, who had traveled to the funeral in separate vehicles. Despite himself, Hankyung prays with a great portion of his heart that it’s Eunhyuk who’s been in the accident.

            When Leeteuk finally speaks, he answers Hankyung’s question, but not his prayer.

            They rush to the hospital crammed in a yellow taxi that, as fast as it was traveling, seemed oh-so-sluggish to Hankyung, whose heart was hammering away at a million miles an hour. He grips the seat and tells himself worrying won’t help, but fear and anxiety are simultaneously rising to his throat; he can’t speak, and he knows that everything has finally turned upside down, that Heechul, who is so strong, might be, in another 24 hours, dead—

            “Hankyung, calm down,” Leeteuk says sharply, though he’s not one to talk with all his fidgeting. “Heechul will be fine.”

            Hankyung wants to lose his head and scream at Leeteuk. He wants to scream, how would you know? How could you possibly know? How can you possibly understand Heechul, the way he is, the way his limbs rotate like clockwork? Yes, damn it, he’s Heechul, but he’s a human being too. He’s made of flesh and blood and bones, not nearly as sturdy as they should be, too fragile, much too fragile—

            He wants to tell him the things Heechul says in his sleep: the strange and unintelligible things that he dreams of.

            Hankyung would have said it, too, if he’d known how.

            Instead, he steadies himself and replies, “Yeah, I know, Leeteuk. Thanks.”

            When they arrive at the hospital, the other members are there, gathered in the waiting room. There’s an unspoken anxiety between them, a refusal to meet each other’s eyes.  As Hankyung enters the room, Kibum stands and motions for Hankyung to take his seat.

            “No one’s allowed to see him yet,” he says in that deep voice of his, and though Hankyung had already figured that out, he nods and sits down. He scans the room with baleful eyes, taking in the solemn faces of the members; Donghae is bent over, his face obscured, but Hankyung knows by the way he shakes that he is crying. The rest of the members are anxious and distant: some lost in their own world, praying, some tapping their feet, some glaring at the ceiling with angry red eyes. Only Kibum is perfectly composed with a blank face and a relaxed frame.

            There they wait for what seems like hours, until finally the door opens and a stream of doctors file out of the room. One nurse pauses in front of the members, an unreadable expression on her face. “Would you like the good news or the bad news?” she asks, jumping right to the point.

            Leeteuk says, “Just tell us everything.”

            She nods to him, as if to say, so be it. “He will live,” She begins with the elephant in the room, and there’s an audible exhale from every member. Hankyung finds himself releasing a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Thank the ing gods I don’t believe in.

            “However, his body is severely damaged.” She begins reading from a list, and Hankyung cringes with each word she says. “Femur fractures, ankle fractures, pelvis fractures, knee and hip bone severely injured between the femurs…what’s more,” she added disapprovingly. “Because he wanted to keep from fainting, he bit his tongue so hard that he nearly crushed it, causing damage to the lingual nerve.”

            “Kim Heechul, you fool,” Hankyung mutters under his breath.

            “Once he is conscious, he will need metal rod surgery. It is uncertain whether his leg will ever return to normal, but we are adamant that he does not push himself too much during the recovery. He will also be unable to talk until his tongue is completely healed.”

            That means Heechul is incapable of doing his two favorite things—talking and dancing to Wonder Girls’ “Tell Me”.

            Despite himself, Hankyung is so utterly relieved that he snorts.

            Ignoring this, the nurse steps aside and says, “You may visit him one at a time. He is alone at this moment. Who would like to go first?”

            Leeteuk says, “I would.”

            Hankyung waits until all the members have gone before he enters the room. Heechul is there, clothed in a white gown and looking more like a girl than he ever has. He lies completely still in the bed, head turned away from the door to reveal a scarred jawline, his left leg suspended in the air. Hankyung walks over to the other side of the bed and kneels down on the carpet, staring at Heechul’s face. His dark, feathery hair is all in his eyes, obscuring a small frown in his features, a clench in his jaw.

            When Hankyung brushes the hair out of his face, careful not to disturb his sleep, he thinks maybe Heechul’s eyes open for a brief moment.

            Either that, or there are angels dancing on his eyelids.

> 

            The next day, when Hankyung wakes up, he is alone in the room.

> 

            “Hankyung-ssi?”

            “Eh?”

            “Once the next album is released, do you think you might like to go back home?”

> 

            “Siwon,” Hankyung says in a low voice. “After Heechul is back and settled in, we’re going to promote in China.”

            Siwon gives a start and looks at his hyung with wide eyes. “They’re letting you?”

            “Mm-hm.”

            “You don’t sound very excited about it.”

> 

            Almost 2 months later, when Heechul returns to the dorm draped carefully over the shoulder of Leeteuk, who is currently in mother-hen-mode, Hankyung is almost too scared to breathe. He’s scared that it might not be real, that it might be a dream because the smile Heechul gives him has been missing from his life for who-knows-how-long, and he’s not sure whether to laugh or to cry, at least, not until it becomes apparent when Heechul glares at him threateningly and yells, “Beijing Fried Rice (with a capital BFR), get on it!”

            Oh, brother, Hankyung thinks then. He’s really back.

            Then it becomes apparent that if Heechul is there, the room automatically becomes ten times brighter.

> 

            One day, Hankyung wakes up to the sound of Heechul retching. He slips out of bed, rubbing his bleary eyes, and stumbles over to the bathroom door, which is open just a crack. “Heechul?” he whispers, peeking inside. Said person is bent over the sink, all his weight on one leg, dry heaving as he trembles violently.

            “—nkyung,” he chokes. “It won’t come up.”

            Hankyung glances at the sink and sees that it’s completely clean, perfectly white. “Did you drink?” He asks his friend quietly.

            “Only a –ttle bit.”

            Biting his lip, Hankyung leads Heechul back to their room on tottering legs and sits him down on a bed. “Hang on,” he mutters, and retreats to the kitchen to fill a glass of water. He opens a cabinet, retrieves an extra multi B vitamin, and returns to the room, where Heechul is convulsing slightly.

            “You’re so ing troublesome,” he mutters, casually inserting a vocabulary word he learned from Heechul. “You should know better than to drink when you’re on medication.”

            “You’re not my mother,” Heechul snaps. He pops the vitamin in his mouth and swallows a gulp of water, grimacing slightly. “Why are you acting like one?”

            Hankyung clenches his teeth to keep from a stingy retort and watches Heechul gulp down the rest of the water in silence. It occurs to him that maybe Heechul drank because he wants to feel like a normal person again and not like an object of sympathy. His suspicions are confirmed when Heechul speaks again.

            “They’re all pathetic,” he says bitterly. “Damned Leeteuk and the rest of them. When they’re around me…” his face contorts into a look of quiet rage. “They talk in these sickly sweet voices, like, ‘Heechul-hyung, how are you feeling? Would you like some food? Maybe a hot bowl of  soup? Oh my, can you even eat soup? Oh, poor you, Heechul-hyung, you poor little thing.’” He stops for a moment, a vein throbbing in his temple. “The only normal one is Kibum, but that’s only because he has zero emotions.”

            Hankyung says nothing, mainly because he has no idea how to respond. For a second, he considers telling Heechul to stop being so prickly, that the members only acted like that because they cared about him…but then again, he muses. Do they really care about Heechul? They say that they love him, and that they treasure him…but who among them has bothered to consider Heechul’s feelings? Who among them has bothered to ask? It’s more like they’re trying to graze past him as quickly as they can without getting hurt.

            And Kibum. Kibum is a curious person.

            All of a sudden, Hankyung is grateful for the existence of Kibum.

> 

            “Wonderful progress, Hankyung. You’re practically Korean now.”

> 

            Heechul heals quicker than they expect him to.

            “Hankyung,” he says one day as they are eating breakfast. “I want to see Ratatoullie.”

            “Mm?” Hankyung glances up from his food to Heechul, who is beaming brighter than he has in months. “Rata-what?” He asks after swallowing a chunk of fried rice, wondering how Heechul possibly expects him to understand Korean words of that complexity—

            “The Disney movie?” Heechul raises his eyebrows.

            “Oh…okay. You want to see it?”

            “That’s what I just said, didn’t I?”

            Truly, Heechul is troublesome. Hankyung shakes his head, resigned. “Okay, we’ll go sometime.”

            “Sometime? Let’s go now!”

            “Huh?”

            “Come on, Hankyung, let’s go.”

            Hankyung wonders why in the name of Siwon’s religious beliefs he is sitting with Heechul in a cramped, dark movie theatre on his one free day, watching a movie he a) had no interest in and b) can hardly even understand. Of course, if he voices his concerns out loud, Heechul will definitely slap him.

            “Jesus nonexistent Christ,” he mutters as an ecstatic Kim Heechul gasps in delight and tugs on Hankyung’s sleeve like a five-year-old girl. “Look, Hankyung,” Heechul hisses. “This is a crucial moment! Linguini and Colette are k…k-kissing!”

            “Spare me,” Hankyung groans. “Someone, please just get me out of here--”

            “Hankyung! Can you not appreciate the étinceler of this amazing scene?”

            “Stop! Korean is hard enough, I don’t need you speaking in French!”

> 

            “China, hm?” Heechul runs his fingers through his shadowy hair. “That’s really nice. You’ll be at home for once.”

            “Yeah,” Hankyung replies solemnly, and he’s not sure why, but he’s not as excited as he should be. He lets out a quiet sigh. “It’s only for Super Junior M promotions.”

            Heechul nods once and doesn’t reply. At times like this, when Heechul is relatively quiet, Hankyung feels uncomfortable. Nevertheless, he drapes an arm around Heechul’s thin shoulders. “Will you miss me?” Heechul stiffens slightly, and Hankyung twitches, thinking Heechul might hit him. However, after a moment, Heechul relaxes and murmurs, “I guess,” and his eyes are glassy like the window in their bedroom.

> 

            China is exactly like Hankyung remembered it. The streets stalls are still there, and the subway stations, and the roast duck that Hankyung hasn’t tasted in so long, and the musky air that he hasn’t breathed in so long. Most of all, the Chinese that he hasn’t heard in so long. After all this time, his tongue has not forgotten the feel of Chinese characters on his tongue, nor the echo of them in his ears. They are all exactly as he remembers, but something is wrong.

            This country seems…foreign.

            The other members are exhausted and miserable. He sees by the darkness under their eyes and the tumble in their step that they are homesick like he was a few years ago, when he’d taken his first step on South Korean land. And because he knows these feelings, Hankyung tries his best to support the members.

            He corrects their pronunciation as patiently as Heechul used to correct his. He smiles and tells them, “It’s okay if you’re sad at first.” He treats them to dumplings and holds their hands when they are lonely, like a mother with four lost children. He cares for them like Heechul does for him, and suddenly he thinks that everything he does just somehow has to link back to Heechul.

> 

            “Get off of the stage!”

            Hankyung grimaces as the shout rings loud and clear in the dome, followed by heated cheers of approval. He glances over to Zhou Mi and Henry, worried, but is surprised to see them calm and composed. Henry even yells, “Thank you, everyone!” before taking Zhou Mi’s hand and sinking into a low bow.

They’re strong, Hankyung notes with an admiring tone. They deal with the loneliness, the rejection so well that it makes Hankyung feel ashamed for failing them as a leader. It makes him ashamed that he couldn’t be the same way, and it also makes him furious at the fans who oppose their every effort. He sees the banners that read Only 13 and hears the chants, angry and menacing. Hankyung realizes that this is how Heechul felt toward him with Super Junior first debuted.

            Pain. Frustration at being unable to help a loved one.

            When Hankyung realizes this, he almost cries, but doesn’t.

             “Hey,” he tells Zhou Mi and Henry when they’re back at the dorm. “Don’t be afraid to lean on hyung, okay?”

            It’s not until later he realizes: he’s used the Korean term for older brother rather than the Chinese one.

> 

            “Hangeng!” Heechul yells when the Chinaman strides into Terminal A of the Incheon airport. He sprints over, closing the distance between the two of them, and clasps Hankyung’s shoulder in a one-armed hug.

            “Hangeng?” Hankyung blinks, perplexed. “Why are you—“

            “Did I pronounce it wrong? Damn, I practiced so hard.” Heechul grins at his companion, a glint in his eye. “You call me by my Korean name, so...”

            Hankyung laughs and ruffles Heechul’s hair, which has grown long and silky in the time they were apart. “Thanks,” he says, smiling. “I appreciate the effort, but ‘Hankyung’ is fine.” In fact, I may even like ‘Hankyung’ a little better by now.

            Heechul crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow. “You’re telling me I went through all that trouble for nothing?”

            “Yeah.”

            “You have got to be kidding me.” He glares at Hankyung with impossibly dark eyes, hiding a whisper of something substantial in their midst.

            Oh, Hankyung thinks. Heechul’s eyes are like stars.

> 

            “Hankyung? What’s wrong?”

            “Nothing, Leeteuk. It’s just a stomachache, that’s all. Completely normal.”

> 

            “You’re acting weird,” Heechul says one day out of the blue. The two of them are splayed out on separate couches, and they’re supposed to be watching television, but something in Hankyung’s lower abdomen is hurting. “Sorry,” he replies, pressing against the tender spot in frustration. “It just hurts and it won’t go away.”

            Puckering his brow, Heechul got up and sat down nest to Hankyung. “Do you need to go to the hospital?”

            “No,” Hankyung replies, just a little too quickly. “It’s just a temporary thing.”

> 

            “Stop, Heechul.”

            “Why didn’t you ing tell me?”

            Hankyung grimaces, and Heechul grasps him by the shoulder. “Hankyung, this is not some harmless case of pneumonia we’re talking about; this is chronic gastritis.” He clenches his jaw violently. “This kind of stuff kills, damnit…!” He breaks off, breathing heavily, and it reminds of Hankyung of the Twins performance so many years ago and the aftermath. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He asks, quietly this time.

            Hankyung’s eyes narrow; all of a sudden, he’s angry. “I don’t have an obligation to tell you anything, Kim Heechul.” He snarls. “You know what? Why don’t you just mind your own ing business for once in your ty life?” His eyes widen in shock, and he wonders when he became so callous, and when his Korean became so goddamn fluent, and…

And suddenly he realizes that he’s lost his identity, and it disgusts him: anything and everything in this foreign, hellish world just absolutely repulses Hankyung so badly he feels like throwing up all over Heechul’s white cotton shirt, because Heechul disgusts him too. It feels awful and Hankyung hates himself, but he can’t bear to look at Heechul any longer.

Swallowing uneasily, he slaps Heechul’s hands away and takes a step back, refusing to meet Heechul’s eyes, which are no more like stars than they are wormholes. There has never been so much tension between them.

“Sorry,” Hankyung mutters, head throbbing, and is able to get out the words: “Just…go away, Heechul,” before he falls to the ground, bilious and nauseated. His eyesight begins to blur, and once again he sees those colorful spots just migrating across his vision. Before he blacks out, he vaguely digests that Heechul, somewhere far off in the distance, is screaming.

> 

            Hankyung wakes up in his (or their) bedroom with a miniscule thudding in his skull and glances around blearily. According to Heechul’s hello kitty alarm clock, it’s 3:32 in the afternoon, which means Hankyung missed all of his morning schedule for that day. Exhaling slowly, he rolls over onto his back and stares upward; the ceiling fan is spinning so fast it merely looks like a blur.

            He doesn’t know exactly when he started being more Korean than Chinese, but it scares him. Perhaps they were right. I’m practically a native now. He knows then that it’s not a good thing.

            Suddenly he hears pounding on the door, and it jerks him out of his thoughtful trance. Leeteuk’s muffled voice floats through the silence along with the voices of various other members. Hankyung recognizes Kangin and Siwon.

            “Hankyung!” Leeteuk shouts. “Let us in—“

            “Oh, for god’s sake, Teukie, get out of the way…”

            A loud crash resonates through the dorm, and pretty soon they’ve barged into Hankyung’s bedroom: Leeteuk, Kangin, Siwon, and Kibum, whom Hankyung hadn’t noticed earlier. Groaning, Hankyung sits up and turns to face them. “What’s going on?” he mumbles.

            Leeteuk kneels down in front of him, glancing anxiously at his pale face. “Hankyung-ah, you didn’t tell us you were ill,” he says quietly, taking Hankyung’s hand in both of his own. Behind him, Siwon has a look of concern on his face. Kangin and Kibum merely looked annoyed, but most likely for different reasons.

            “Heechul caused us so much trouble,” Kangin complains grumpily. “Made a phone call to the CEO demanding that you be on sick leave for a month. The company told him it wasn’t possible, but he just kept on raging and eventually started reciting a bunch of cuss words that he had written in this little book—“

            “Kangin-ah! Can’t you tell that Hankyung isn’t feeling well?”

            “Look, you’re the one who dragged us over here in the first place. I was in the middle of a talk show and you just barge in, shouting ‘my poor baby is sick, my poor baby is sick’—“

            “Well, excuse me for caring about my group mates!”

            “I have to give up a perfectly good eight hours of sleep, just so I can go redo the very talk show that you ruined!“

            “Shut up!” Hankyung yells, covering his ears. Kangin and Leeteuk immediately fall silent and stare awkwardly at Hankyung, who’s making a bunch of barely audible groans in the back of his throat.

            “…hyung,” Kibum says after a minute. “Maybe you should let him rest.”

            Leeteuk stares at the maknae, then sighs and concedes, leaving Hankyung alone with his thoughts.

> 

            “So, that’s it, then? You’re leaving, hyung?”

            “I can’t stay, Kibum. The only thing that distinguished me as a person from the other members was my nationality.”

            “Hyung, I don’t think that’s true.”

            “You wouldn’t know. The problem is, before I realized it, I had become so dependent on Heechul and Korea that I basically lost the only that made me unique.”

            “…ah. I know that feeling.”

            “Yeah.”

            “You know, Hankyung-hyung…”

            “Hm?”

            “I’ve also been thinking of leaving.”

            “Huh…?”

> 

            Hankyung leaves in secret, in the middle of the night, throwing a few outfits into a worn out suitcase before silently sneaking out the door. He doesn’t tell Heechul a thing, doesn’t leave a note or drop a hint, only pauses before leaving to gently brush the hair out of Heechul’s eyes. And then he’s gone.

            He needs to get away from Kim Heechul.

A/N: Part 2 will be up soon! I had originally planned this as a oneshot, but there's too many words to read in one sitting, so I split it into two chapters.