Taewoon found SPEED huddled together in the center of the practice room. Their backs were curved, hunched, they seemed to be in deep discussion. Taewoon watched them, a hurricane of emotions destroying his chest.

It had been easy enough to talk to Zico about his plans, easy enough to say he would share his thoughts and plans with SPEED, but when push came to pull, Taewoon felt too nervous. He didn’t see individual memories in his mind when he looked at them, heard their whispering voices. Instead, he just felt the single great, solid weight of all their memories on him.

Sungmin caught his reflection on the large wall-to-wall mirror. He sat up straight, tapping Sejun hurriedly on the chest.

Taewoon forced a playful grin onto his face, striding forward with lunging steps.

“Talking bad about your leader while he’s not here? Is that what you’re doing?” He grabbed the two closest members, Taeha and Yuhwan, and head locked them. Their knees knocked together as they both reached to grab his forearms.

“Argh! Hyung!”

“Hyung!”

They scuffled for a while, the rest of SPEED joining forces to beat up their leader. It wasn’t until Taewoon was forced on his back with six other bodies on him that he called for a truce. Jongkook kept pretending to elbow him even after the other five had settled down. Taewoon grabbed his arm, twisting it behind his back.

“I said truce!”

“Ow, ow, ow! Okay, got it! Ow, ow, ow!”

“What where you kids talking about?” Taewoon said, releasing Jongkook.

“Nothing much,” Jungwoo anwered.

“Oh, just stuff,” Yunhwan added.

SPEED would not look at him in the eye. It made Taewoon feel alienated from them before he had even said what was on his mind. He thought about backing out, about not saying anything at all. But then he would have to face Zico. He would have to explain to him why he had chosen the easy way out.

He rubbed the back of his neck, sighing deeply. “I’ve got to talk to you guys about something.”

Taewoon gave them a few moments to steel themselves before he told them what he had been thinking about for months. They listened without moving. They didn’t say a single word or ask a tiny question. Instead, they all just looked at him with unwavering eyes.

The silence that followed his revelation made him tremble. He could not read s’ expressions, so motionless they were. Taewoon resisted the urge to bite his lip, to reveal his anxiety.

“Hyung,” Yuhwan finally said. “Took you long enough.”

“What?”

SPEED erupted into noise.

“You took forever!”

“We already knew this.”

“Eey, you thought that we didn’t know?”

“We could tell! We could tell!”

“That mixtape pretty much gave you away,” Jungwoo said with a smile. “We’ve all talked it over, made our peace with it.”

Taewoon sat slack jawed. Sejun threw his arm around his shoulders, shaking him playfully. They for being so dense, yet Taewoon still could not breathe a sigh of relief.

“I should go talk to the boss.”

SPEED nodded, smiling as if they knew something he did not. He rose to his feet and Jongkook nearly pushed him out of the practice room, all while wishing him good luck and waving his hand dramatically as if he would never be seen again.

A little smile played at the corners of Taewoon’s mouth. SPEED supported him. They had known his mind far longer than he had. They’d talked it amongst themselves before he had even thought of it deep into the night. It wasn’t difficult to see or admit that SPEED had grown considerably. It also wasn’t difficult to admit that their struggles had also wizened them faster than what was appropriate for their age. Taewoon had once heard Park Kyung say of Zico “He’s becoming an adult by pretending to be one” during an interview. Who was to say that that didn’t apply to anyone in the industry? Especially the leaders.

With the voices and laughter of SPEED behind him, the walk to the CEO’s office did not seem as long or forlorn as he imagined that it would be. Each step brought him closer to the future he desired, yet it took him further from the men he’d come to love as brothers.

Eun Mi stood in the desert. The cracked land revealed the long drought that had spread across the state. There were no clouds in the sky, not a single one. There were no sand dunes either. The entire area was flat as far as the eyes could see. The sun beat down relentlessly. The wind blew harshly, breaking the already wrecked earth.

And yet Eun Mi shivered.

She wrapped her arms around herself, hanging her head to keep the eroded earth from stinging her face. She didn’t want to move; she’d been here before, a million times. She knew what would happen.

Thunder cracked in a cloudless sky. Rain fell. The sun shone harder, brighter. The rain made her long hair heavy, made it cling and cake with the dirt that the wind carried. Eun Mi lifted her head to the heavens, choking back a sob.

“When will you stop?!”

The earth trembled beneath her. She screamed as the world disappeared from underneath her. A black hole swallowed her, colors and shattered images piercing her vision through closed eyelids.

Her ankles cracked as she landed on hard pavement. Her wrists twisted as she caught her full weight on them. Eun Mi lay on pavement; it was wet and hot. She knew better than to get up, she knew what would happen if she did, but looking through the dirty, tangled strands of her hair was more difficult.

Time wouldn’t move so long as she lay on that deserted road. The sun wouldn’t set and the night wouldn’t dissipate. Night and day would coexist impossibly, shining down on her as it engulfed her in darkness.

“Please…no…”

It didn’t matter how often she prayed, her pleas were never taken into account anyway. Eun Mi could spend hours, days, months, eternities laying on that road and she would always be forced to move. This time, the fluttering of little wings made her move.

“Get off! Get off!”

Eun Mi pulled herself to her feet, staggering away from the swarm of moths that had descended on her. Their tiny wings flapped erratically as they followed her to the edge of the road. Sobbing, she collapsed on the wet earth.

Screeching tires. The scent of burning rubber.

She shouldn’t turn around. But she did. She always did.

A brand new Sedan swerved out of the path of an eighteen-wheeler only to be T-boned by a Ford pick-up. Another eighteen-wheeler hit the nose of the Sedan, sending it spiraling. Somehow, it flipped, turned over on itself, and rolled down the road.

“Mamá! Mamá! Mamí! MAMÍ!”

Eun Mi ran as fast as she could. Her feet did not move fast enough. Her heart hammered in her chest. Tears burned her face, blurred her vision.

“Hija…Hijita…”

She could hear her mother.

“Mija…”

She could hear her father.

She could hear the blaring honk of the eighteen-wheeler that was heading for them. How could it not see that the wreck had stopped all traffic? How could he not see her parents were dying?!

“Mamá! Papá!”

She could see her mother’s hand reaching for her. She could see her father’s bright eyes losing their glow. She kept running. They kept dying.

“Mamí! Papí!”

She was almost there. She stretched her arm as far as it would go, her hand reaching for her mother’s.

This time she would reach them. This time she would save them. This time…this time…

This time the same eighteen-wheeler rammed into the Sedan, almost taking her hand with it. Eun Mi covered her ears and screamed. She screamed for her mother. Screamed for her father. She screamed and screamed and screamed.

Eun Mi screamed and screamed until her own screams woke her up.

“Unnie! Unnie!” Chae shook Eun Mi as she tried to wake her.

A scream ripped through her lips, startling her awake. Chae jumped away, knowing that touching Eun Mi would only result in bruises and scratches.

“Unnie…”

Eun Mi didn’t acknowledge her. She hit her chest over and over, sobbing uncontrollably. Scared, Chae bolted out of the room.

“Oppa!! Su Jong oppa!!”

She ran down to the basement, crashing into the practice room without permission. Min Joon started scolding her for barging into a crucial dance practice but Chae ignored him.

“Oppa!” she grabbed Su Jong by the arm. “It’s unnie!”

Su Jong needed no explanation. He ran out of the practice room. Forsaking the elevator, he took the stairs two, sometimes three at a time. When he got to Eun Mi, he found her staring blankly at her hands.

“Eun Mi. Eun Mi-ah, look at me.” He cupped her face, tried to get her eyes to focus. “Eun Mi!”

He pushed her hair out of her face, inspected her and found the usual scratches on her arms. The skin glowed an angry red around each thin line. Su Jong pulled her into his arms, her hair over and over as he rocked her back and forth.

“Did she take her medication today?”

Chae wrung her hands nervously as tears streamed down her cheeks. “I—I don’t know. She wasn’t in the dorm this morning. She—she came straight to the company.”

“Is your manager here? Where’re the others? Schedules?”

“Y—yes. They had a small schedule. T—that’s why unnie took a nap… She said she hadn’t slept much last night and I—Oh! I shouldn’t have let her!”

“It’s alright,” Su Jong held Eun Mi closer. “Don’t worry. She’ll be alright in a few minutes.”

Chae watched as she wiped her tears. No one knew what kind of medication Eun Mi needed, but they all suspected it helped her sleep. Once or twice, when she hadn’t taken her pills, she had woken up screaming. Su Jong was the only one that could clam her down; he was the only one that knew what nightmare caused her to lose control of her own body.

Chae had never witnessed it before. She didn’t know to do except leave the room so that her leader wouldn’t be troubled by knowing that she had worried her. She decided to head back down to the basement to apologize to Joon Min and the rest of L6.

Slowly, Eun Mi regained self-awareness. She recognized Su Jong’s embrace; it had grown stronger, bigger over the years, but it still felt so small compared to the pain that swallowed her whole.

Eun Mi cried into his chest because he expected it, because she couldn’t pretend she was okay in front of him. She didn’t apologize. He didn’t ask if she was okay. They both knew better than that.

“Take your pills tonight.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t go out in the morning.”

“Okay.”

When Su Jong finally returned to practice, Eun Mi had collected herself enough to seek out Chae and head back to the dorms. The pretty blue bag in which she had placed the hoodie of the man from St. Cecilia’s rested on her lap the entire way home. She wanted to go to St. Cecilia’s, but she didn’t want to meet him in the state she was in, nor did she want to feel the bitter sting of disappointment if she didn’t find him there.

So Eun Mi went home, took her medication, and allowed herself to sink into a familiar darkness. Chae took over making dinner for the other members, resolving not to mention anything to them, except maybe that they should take better care of Eun Mi.