WARNING; mentions of feeling dizzy and being sick, I will put stars around that area so if you're sensitive to that stuff you can skip it.

________

I stare at my reflection in the mirror
Why am I doing this to myself
Losing my mind on a tiny error
I nearly left the real my on the shelf

Jessie J - Who You Are

~~~~~~~~~~

"Get up!"

Jeno is once again awoken by the sound of Mark's voice. Slowly, he opens his eyes and stares at the white ceiling for a couple of minutes.

But wait, isn't it their free day?

Jeno gets out of bed and is greeted with the sight of messed up beds. Where are Jisung and Renjun?

As he walks out of his room he sees that the door to Haechan and Mark's room was still open.

Jeno peeks through the gap and sees Haechan standing in front of the mirror looking at himself with his hands on his belly.

"What are you doing?" Jeno asks suddenly while opening the door fully. Haechan gasps and turns around with a surprised look on his face. Right before he gets to say anything...

"Jeno come eat breakfast, otherwise it'll all be gone!" Mark interupted from some other part of the dorm.

They both go to the kitchen to see plates of pancakes with the other members already eating. "Come sit here, there's still some left" Renjun says, patting the chair next to him.

After all the pancakes are gone, the members play rock paper scissors to decide wich unlucky pair will wash the dishes today. In the end it turned out to be Jeno and Haechan.

Here we go again.

Jeno's been doing the dishes for the last 3 days, which makes him think that the members rigged the stupid game.

"When will you stop losing?" Haechan asks while picking up the sponge and dishsoap. Which means that all Jeno will be doing is drying them off. Giving Haechan a small thankfull smile, he takes the towel and starts to dry the plates.

"What are you doing today?" Haechan asks after a long silence, seeing as they were both still quite tired.

"I don't know...I think I'll just go practice my dancing a bit."

"Practice? You do know we are free today right?" Haechan scoffs not believing that when they finally have some free time, Jeno wants to spend that practicing.

"What do you need practice for anyway your the best at dancing"

Jeno doesn't say anything and so they continue washing and drying the dishes in silence.

If only I really was the best

~~~

After Jeno changed into his training clothes, he puts on his trainers and tells the members he'll be back later.

Going out of their dorm, Jeno walks into the empty street alone. Luckily, the company was very close to the dorm so it only takes like 5 minutes to get there.

Passing by a store he decides to buy himself some cold water since he forgot his bottle at home.

Jeno turns to the company and enters the lift to the 3rd floor, where his favorite practice room was.

What would the others be doing now?

He wonders as he slowly begins to stretch with some music in the background. Usually while stretching, Jeno thinks about the mistakes he has to fix, but honestly there were just too many to count.

In the recent Music Bank performance my arm was a bit crooked.

Last Friday at the fansign I was a beat late.

At Show Champion I kept bumping into people.

Getting more and more angry at himself he stops stretching and goes straight into the choreo. He also remembers his dance teacher scolding him numerous times this last preparation.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Why do you keep messing up?"

"Is this all just a joke to you?"

But the teacher's words and his own, those he could still handle, it is the fans' reaction that keeps him up at night.

'Why does Jeno keep bumping into the others?'

'Smh, once again a useless visual'

'Imo Jeno rly doesn't deserve to be in nct, they'd be better of w/o him'

And Jeno still remembers just crying his eyes out for hours in his room after he read those comments.

He also remembers Haechan finding him and comforting him, that's probably why earlier he was kind of concerned about Jeno going to practice.

But that was in the past, and Jeno will not allow himself to be so bad, so untalented, so worthless.

And that's the reason why recently he has been non stop practicing. Even when promoting he finds the time to beat himself up even more.

Noticing he has been staring at himself in the mirror, Jeno slaps himsels back to reality and starts dancing the choreogrophy that's been engraved into his brain.

And so he just keeps on repeating and repeating and repeating until his legs literally give out and after 3 hours, he just sits on the floor completaly done.

~~~

The track starts again but Jeno can't hear any of it anymore. Hearing a loud beep in his right ear, Jeno starts seeing black dots, at first only faintly but they kept growing and growing.

It was as if the world was spinning, around and around.

***

Beeping in his ear, his vision blackening, Jeno feels something coming up his throat.

Holding his hand to his month, he tries to stop himself and run to the bathroom, but he feels as if the whole world was weighting him down.

With no other choice, he quickly gets on his knees and hunches forward, the pancakes for earlier now lying on the floor in a disgusting oatmeal like consistensy.

Feeling his stomach turning around again, he turns away from the vomit and takes a deep breath. He crawls to the water bottle a couple of feet away and cleans his mouth, spitting it out on the floor.

***

After what seems like an hours of just sitting on the floor and trying to even out his breath, Jeno finally stands up, one foot before the other.

He stumbles to the cupboard and takes out the mop, which he then cleans the now very dirty floor with.

Turning of the song which has been continuously playing, he looks at himself in the mirror. And he just stares.

At his pale lips.

At his sunken eyes.

At his very skinny body.

And without knowing, one single tear managed to pass by his eye and made its way to the corner his lips, the salty taste spreading around his mouth.

Wiping it away quickly, he finally picks up the phone call he has been ignoring during practice.

"What do you want?" Jeno quietly mutters trying to disguise his tired voice. Without even knowing who it actually was.

"What do I want? What do I WANT!?"

Haechan's voice boomed through the lonely practice room.

"Do you know how worried I was!? You've been gone for 6 HOURS Jeno, 6! I almost got a heart attack when you didn't pick up!"

Jeno couldn't speak. He was looking for words to say.

"I'm sorry" Jeno says, voice giving away at the last sylable.

"Just...are you still at the practice room?" Haechan says sighing.

"Yeah"

"Stay, I'll be right there" Haechan hangs up and all there is left is silence.

~~~

Jeno was laying on the floor with closed eyes when Haechan came in. Without words, he walks to Jeno, sits down next to him and puts his arms around his neck.

So that's how they spend the next hour. Just in silence, holding each other.