MEMORIES

Changmin was so young when he first met Yunho that he barely remembered it. Looking back, he thought it must have happened when Yunho's mother would bring him down to visit his Auntie Minjung when he was little, and the two of them would wind up playing in the yard together, bonding as quickly as little kids always did. He couldn't remember much else about it, or what Yunho was like in those early days. Yunho's mother always called him a troublemaker, and of course he was well at the age of remembering when Yunho moved there permanently after getting in trouble for skipping his classes. But Changmin still didn't think of him that way, as a badly behaved kid. When you imagined a truant, you thought of a high school student with tattoos and dyed hair who slipped off to smoke and hang around with older women who provided alcohol and lipstick kisses. Yunho, in contrast, wasn't even a teenager yet. He was firm in his thinking and very single minded, but he was nice. He bought Changmin ice cream a lot with his allowance. One time Changmin even dropped his ice cream cone right after Yunho bought him one, and Yunho bought him another one immediately, that one with two scoops instead of one. If anything, Changmin was more prone to bullying Yunho than Yunho was to bullying him.

He wasn't sure how they wound up becoming inseparable, either. He liked Yunho, but he wasn't the kind of person who got attached to people easily. But Yunho never demanded attachment. He had a lot of other friends from the moment he started at his new school and plenty of other people to spend his time with. But Changmin noticed that Yunho spent more time with him then with anyone else. Sometimes he would even decline to go out on other outings and purposefully spend his evenings with Changmin, helping him to put together his model figurines or playing video games that he couldn't beat Changmin in to save his life.

Changmin asked him about it once. Why are we hanging out? You have friends your own age. And Yunho would shrug. Because I want to.

That was how it was. He just did what we wanted to. And it dawned on Changmin that he also wanted to hang out with Yunho, for whatever reason. And so he did.

0o0

They met Yoochun and Junsu fairly early, too. Auntie Minjung used to babysit Junsu and his twin brother from time to time, and it was impossible to know Junsu without knowing Yoochun, too. In fact, Yoochun would always come along to be babysat with Junsu and Junho, even when his mother was around and perfectly capable of taking care of him herself. It was almost impossible to tell who was the ringleader out of the two of them. Yoochun was always teasing Junsu and rough housing him, but at the same time, he had a habit of mimicking whatever Junsu did, as if he only knew what to do if Junsu did it first. If Junsu wanted orange juice, Yoochun did, too. If Junsu wanted to go swimming, so did Yoochun. There was one memorable occasion when Junsu wanted to climb a tree, and Yoochun went up right after him, even though he was terrified of heights. Auntie Minjung had to get a ladder and help him down afterwards, since he was crying so badly when he actually made it up to the high branches to make his way back down.

It just kind of worked out that they were all best friends. It went from Yunho always hanging around him to Yoochun and Junsu always hanging around them. Before they knew it, they were always together after school. Yunho, Yoochun, and Junsu got jobs working in the same market. People in town joked that they would all go into the food industry and grow up having children that would be best friends as well. Talk like that always made Junsu restless. I don't want to spend the rest of my life around fish, no thank you. It made Yunho restless, too, but he never talked about it. Changmin knew he had bigger dreams for himself, too, though his family had conditioned him to hide it. It made Changmin feel a little weird. When we grow up, it will probably only be me and Yoochun here. Unless Yoochun chased after Junsu. Or he chased after Yunho. He didn't see himself as they kind of person who would do that, but then again, he didn't think he knew himself very well at all yet. He could imagine himself staying in his hometown forever, but he could also imagine himself going out and being something bigger. He didn't have any clue which one he would choose, but he liked having options. It was a big world. Things were subject to change. They wouldn't be the same four children forever. They were going to grow up, and their world would, too, but whether that meant they were going to be together or weren't, he simply didn't know.

0o0

Years later, he wasn't all that amazed by the way things had turned out. Sure, Jaejoong coming into their lives had been an unexpected element. As had Yunho falling in love with him, and the five of them becoming Dong Bang Shin Ki. A younger Changmin may have scoffed at the idea, but really, it made sense when you thought about. Quiet Jaejoong had turned out to be a lot bolder and more of a dreamer than they'd thought. He'd pulled Yunho into his dream, and made Junsu realize his. Changmin had chased after Yunho, just like he thought he wouldn't. Yoochun had chased after Junsu, just as it was inevitable that he would. They'd come together. They'd become bigger. Maybe it wasn't the exact way he thought it would happen, but it wasn't an unbelievable life they'd made for each other.

It reminded him a little bit of when they were kids, after Auntie Minjung had safely gotten Yoochun down from the tree. Yunho immediately ran off to fill up the bear shaped ice pack called “the boo-boo bear” which Auntie Minjung had used whenever any of them were hurt to make them feel better. Not physically hurt, in most cases, since she had a first aid kit for that, but the boo-boo bear was for intangible hurts. Wounded feelings, bad tempers, inexplicable blues. Trust Yunho to think of that first. Yoochun wasn't in physical pain. He'd made it out without even a scratch, but even Yoochun didn't cry for no reason. There was a hurt somewhere, somewhere they couldn't see.

Junsu stayed by Yoochun on the couch, also crying. “Why did you go up?” he sobbed. “You hate being up, you shouldn't have followed me!”

“Because I wanted to be up if you were up,” Yoochun wailed right back. “I forgot I was afraid until I looked down.”

“Don't forget next time! And stop following me!”

“But I wanted to go where you were going!”

“Then next time DON'T LOOK DOWN!”

Yunho returned with the boo-boo bear, which Yoochun hugged tightly to his chest. Changmin followed Yunho's lead by going to Auntie Minjung's kitchen and digging up the boxes of peppero Yunho kept hidden, and passing them along for Yoochun to make him feel better.

“You don't always have to follow Junsu ah everywhere,” Yunho was saying. “You'd still be waiting for him at the bottom of the tree, wouldn't you?”

Yoochun nodded uncertainly.

“Well, that's how it will be for us,” Yunho said. “If we go somewhere else, we'll wait for each other! So you don't have to worry or cry, because that way we'll always be together, even when we're not.”

“But,” Yoochun whispered. “I think it would be the happiest if we went with each other anyways.”

Yunho nodded. “But only if it would really make you happy. I wouldn't want to take you to anyplace where you would be afraid if you looked down.”

“Me either,” Junsu said firmly.

We wouldn't do somewhere that would make one of us unhappy, Changmin thought. Because when one of us is unhappy, all of us are unhappy. He looked at the two damp faces of Junsu and Yoochun, Yunho worriedly looking at the boo-boo bear as if it wasn't doing its job quickly enough. He couldn't look at himself, but he knew that he liked actually being together more than he liked waiting. He knew that much.

And he remembered that day often. Every step of the way, he asked himself that question. Standing on the stage the first time. Flying to Japan. Their first solo concert. Jaejoong and Yoochun falling when the high beam light hit their eyes. The screams in the airports, the rumors, the lies they had to tell, the happy moments together, the fear of losing Junsu and Yunho in the earthquake, listening to their songs on the radio. Have you taken us to some place where we're afraid to look down? He didn't think so. Even at the times when it was terrifying, there was a red ocean to look down into, the rapt attention of thousands of eyes who watched them and held them inside, even though those eyes belonged to strangers. He didn't feel lonely when they were together, both with the members and with the Cassiopeia. It really was happier, going together.

He looked at the faces together with him in the hotel room they were sharing. Jaejoong resting his head on Yunho's stomach, his smile serene and warm as he was held close to him. Yunho with his head tilted back and eyes closed, his fingers working idly through Jaejoong's hair. Junsu singing even though they had just spent the entire evening onstage, because it was something he loved to do. Yoochun humming along, his low tone vibrating deeply in his throat. When one of us is happy, all five of us are happy. It goes both ways.

Changmin still couldn't see himself, but he knew he was also happy that this was where he ended, and that he had found it in his stubborn heart to follow after his best friend. He didn't even ask himself why he'd done it. He was sure the answer was the same for all five of them: it was because it was exactly what they had wanted to do.

Headed for level ground, going down every path
I still can't see the goal
Even if I'm reborn into the next life
I want to see everyone

We ran along as if cutting through the wind
Bathing in the brilliant sunlight
We thought we would always be together forever, no matter where we went
These are my precious memories