Less than six months after we finally debuted with our group Seventeen, my best friend and crush Jeonghan left. Disappeared, more like, as no one realised he was going to leave. It was a silent disappearance, too; he left while there were no members in the dorm. It was Chuseok when it happened, which although generally lasts only a couple days and took place halfway during our promotions was extended. I always liked to thank God for the fact that my family live in America at this point as we ended up getting a week, but I wish that I didn’t now. If I didn’t, we would’ve got only the days Chuseok was on, and maybe Jeonghan wouldn’t have had time to leave, or at the least not as quietly.

       I last saw him, my angel as I liked to call him, on the day I was to leave South Korea for the week. He came with me to the airport, the only one to do so as he didn’t have to travel far to see his family. My last words to him were normal; “I’ll see you in a week, Jeonghan!” just before I left. After then, there’d be no communications between us – no phone calls, no text messages, nothing.

       Despite what happened afterwards I had a fun week back home in California. After rarely seeing my family in the flesh, let alone my extended family, every moment was precious. I also caught up on some sleep; although I had jetlag, I was also exhausted from promoting so regularly which made it easy. Supposedly stuff started going fishy on the Wednesday I was gone, according to Seungcheol who was getting worried after he couldn’t get any replies from Jeonghan. I didn’t know about this though, as the phone plans we were given were limited and we weren’t allowed to use them abroad in fear of getting extra charges.

       I arrived back at the dorms a week after I had left, ready to promote again, but when I got there the atmosphere was gloom. The other members were sat in the living room, either on the sofa or on the floor. The CEO was also in the room with them, which was unusual. After I bowed and greeted him appropriately he told me to sit down with the others as he had some news. I sat next to Hansol and Chan, the former of which whispered to me in English, “This news is going to hit you hard, bro.”

       The CEO took a deep breath before starting. “While you all were away I had a conversation with one of your members, Jeonghan. He was very stressed out and after talking we believed it was best that he left the group. I’m sorry.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He had left? “Your promotions will be postponed for another week as you practice your altered choreography as 12 members.” The reactions of the other members were varied. Hansol just stared at me apologetically while other members were more open about what they were feeling. Seungcheol was hit pretty hard, being the leader he began to feel that he had failed. Others felt sad that one of the team had just gone, but decided that life goes on and that was going to happen eventually. Jihoon was probably the only one who was mad about this, as he started screaming about how he creates all the music that we preform just for someone to leave and how no one appreciates his hard work.

       Life would go on as normal as it could be for a few months after that. As 12 members, our way of describing our group name Seventeen didn’t work anymore, so we had a large reshuffling and a member from each of our original teams were placed in a new team that specialises in variety shows and other activities. From the performance team Junhui was taken out, being a child actor. From the vocal team Seungkwan was taken out dispite his vocals being one of the best; supposedly it was because of his personality. From the hip-hop team, it was Seungcheol. In his case I never got why he was taken out instead of any of the others.

       One day our maknae Chan was making us ramyun for dinner in our kitchen. He had lost a bet with Soonyoung over who was the better dancer, a quite stupid bet, and he ended up taking dinner duties from him. We hadn’t cleaned any of our dishes in a while as we hadn’t been indoors much, so Chan had to look in the back of cupboards for bowls to eat out of. Within one of them was a note, which he ran out with. “Jisoo! It’s got your name on it!” he said while passing it to me. Although the other members started pestering me to open it, I didn’t open it until everyone else was asleep.

       I eventually unfolded the note, written on quite thin notebook paper. I took a close look at the handwriting and my heart stopped for a moment. It was Jeonghan’s handwriting. How long had it been in the cupboard for? I read the note: “Dear Jisoo, I don’t know how to write this, but I’m leaving Seventeen. I’ve probably been gone for a long time by the time you get to reading this. Are you reading this out loud? I assume you’ll be reading this at night but if you aren’t please don’t read this to the others, nor let them read it. This is personal.

“I don’t mean to place any stress on you, but you are the reason I left. Jisoo, all my life I had never loved anyone. I nearly began to think it was impossible until I met you. I was so confused, especially because we’re both boys.

“I read up on it and supposedly it’s called being gay? And it’s looked down apon here. And very bad, supposedly. Maybe you don’t like it, that your old best friend is gay and had feelings for you. I understand.

“Obviously I can’t let anyone know this while I’m here because all hell will let loose. I’m going to talk to the CEO to leave because of ‘health issues’ and ‘stress.’ I’m not really suffering from either of those things but I don’t want to leave in a bad way.

“If there is a chance that you are also what people call gay and you have (or had) feelings for me, then you’ll find me in LA. I read that being gay is fine there, and I want to have a bit of you at all times. I’ve already leased an apartment for two years thanks to my parents (I didn’t tell them why I was going, but they agreed anyway) so if you want next time you come to LA to visit your parents and your family come visit me? Okay? I’ll meet you back where you came from.”

An address was scrawed in English underneath.