AN: chan pov... hah u thought LMAO

this chapter alone might need a pt. 2 but idk like i didn't explain ANYTHING that i intended to so yall r probably confused but yeah

happy early birthday jamie~

FOR JAMIE

He's the perfect son a family could ever want. Even though he’s an only child, he does well enough and then even better and even more in order to fill in the gaps where his parents either couldn’t afford or didn’t want more children.

His grades are stellar, he’s class president. The teachers love him and he’s well known and considered a kind and caring soul among students. His notes line up in perfect little rows and his grades are just A+ after another. His parents tape his report card to the fridge and everything’s perfect and he’s the perfect students, the golden child, the most filial son.

Except one thing.

It’s one thing that changes their family and sours their future. His dad stops talking to him and his mom won’t stop crying in the bathroom at two in the morning when she thinks nobody’s awake, except he is lying wide awake in bed wondering if perhaps his thirteenth birthday could have passed and he could have kept his mouth shut five years and he wouldn’t be moving to his third high school in the span of two years but he’s too perfect, and a perfect child wouldn’t lie, wouldn’t hide from the truth.

Or maybe a perfect child would know to keep his mouth shut.

--

“Hello,” he says, voice quiet as he stares down at his shoes. “Nice to meet you all. My name is Kim Seungmin.”

His teacher nods and smiles, patting him on the shoulder as she indicates for him to sit down. The kids around him look more bored than wary as he sinks into his seat in the back corner. The girl next to him just gives him a small smile and scoots her pencils over to make more room at the desk, and then everybody is pulling out their books as the teacher begins a new lesson up on the board.

Everything seems fine, but Seungmin knows from past experience that this is only the calm before the storm.

And so, four weeks later as he’s dooling music notes and lyrics into the margins of his notebook during a short break between classes, just the last one before the end of the day when he can finally pack up his bags and rush home with his head down, the lightning strikes.

“.”

It’s followed by a smack to the back of his head, with a book, a shoe, who knows. When his head thunks forward to the desk, he lays it there for a moment with a small smile on his face, thinking, It looks like they found the posts. In this day and age where everybody knows everybody on social media, it seems Seungmin’s secret is getting harder to keep. But he doesn’t mind that much anymore.

He just pulls his head back up with a tight smile plastered across his lips and says, “Sorry guys.”

A few of the other boys in the class laugh at him while the girls shake their heads in disgust. Luckily, before they can do much more, the teacher walks back in and the students settle back down.

Seungmin knows, though, that the thunder will follow not long after.

Later, as he gathers up his books to pack up and run home, avoiding the wrong alleyways in case anybody tries to jump him (for the good of society ), he finds a crinkled note tucked between pages of his folders.

Slowly, and warily, he opens it up, preparing himself to read a message in red ink telling him to leave, to get out of here, that he’s contagious or has AIDs, but instead, he sees purple ink in a pretty and shimmering script that he recognizes from the notes of the girl at the desk next to him.

“Don’t worry about them. They’re just being mean. I know you’re not really like that .”

Somehow, this note hurts him more.

--

Perhaps the lightning struck closer than Seungmin realized because the thunder follows not long after. Or maybe it was the note that was a trap that got him to linger just a moment too long so that he couldn’t escape, disguised in the throng of students moving away and out from the prison of school like a terrified herd of sheep.

Or maybe it’s really only Seungmin that feels that way as the fists and feet rain down on his back and his face where he lies curled up on the ground, unwittingly and unwillingly begging, “I’m sorry, please, save me.”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows that it will stop, that most kids aren’t cruel enough to go as far as to murder but regardless of that, the fact of the matter is that it hurts in the moment and it stings his pride where he has none left. When they’ve all gone and left after spitting on him one last time until all that remains is the dust settling around him, he continues to lie there, body stiff and heart bleeding until the sun starts to set and his mother probably worries in the distance but can’t tell him to come home out of fear of what his father might - or rather, might not do.

But there’s still a small part of him, still there, living and breathing in his mind that tells him he’s alive, the sky is still blue, the sand is still yellow, and together they make green, green grass so he needs to get up, he needs to smile more, he needs to show the world that he’s not an abomination for knowing how to share love more so he picks himself up and dusts himself off and walks over to a coffee shop tucked in a street corner where he can hide and do work until the wolf is asleep.

--

Over the next few months, it becomes a routine to sit in that coffee shop and reflect, and Seungmin thinks that this school is just a tiny bit more open, more liberal than the past two he’s been running from because after that first beating, there’s only a few more, spread out thin across a month, and maybe his standards are lower but that’s okay, because it means that he has standards at all.

The girl next to him still tries to smile and slip him Bible verses when she can as if that will help him feel any better about himself in any way whatsoever, and Seungmin can’t help but feel a little bit abused and used and just overall unloved. Still, she’s just about his only friend these days, if he can even call her that, so he takes her smiles even though it hurts and he lets her copy his notes so that she can go and share it with the rest of the class.

It’s hard being an outcast, but Seungmin is smart and somewhere inside he expected this when he first spoke those words and let the whole world know he was a target to shoot at, so he carries on firmly and plans to survive at this school until they force him out, or at the very least until he can get out to a bigger and better place in life.

--

One day before class begins, the girl next to him has her ear buds in until she startles for some reason, dropping her phone and ripping the cord out of the jack. It blasts a voice that Seungmin recognizes himself from listening to it for hours on end and as the other students giggle, he hands the phone back to her, he asks, “Isn’t this Stray Kids?”

She nods and says, “Yeah, do you listen to them, too?” and suddenly they’re talking and Seungmin realizes that he misses this, this human interaction and that maybe the torture of silence is worse than the beatings, so he laps it up like a starved and thirsty dog even if he’s spilling his muddy mange into Jesus’ holy water.

But then the teacher walks in and class starts and Seungmin is fully ready to cherish that bit of conversation and have it feed him over into the next couple of years of his solitary life, because why would a girl like that ever want to talk to a guy like him again?

Seungmin finds, however, that as smart as he is, individual humans are unpredictable and peculiar things.

After class, Seungmin wanders his way over to the coffee shop where the baristas have seen him enough times to recognize his order and begin whipping it up right away. Just as he’s about to take a seat to wait for his drink to be finished, the bell chimes as a person walks in and he looks up on reflex to see it’s his desk partner.

He’s fully ready to look away and give up this safe haven for another, even more difficult to find place, when she makes eye contact with him and smiles, making a beeline over to his seat.

“Hey, Seungmin, do you mind if I sit with you?” she asks in that sweet, childish voice of hers. He can’t do much but nod, and be mildly uncomfortable as she settles her stuff down before going to get a drink herself. There’re an awkward few moments of silence until she sits up and takes a breath and says, “I just want to say that I think it’s really rude that kids are making fun of you for liking a boy group. Just because you like a boy group, doesn’t mean you’re gay, you know?”

And then, Seungmin realizes that maybe he did misunderstand just a little, in the same way that this girl misunderstood, too. But, as he said, he’s a hungry, stray dog looking for the smallest pat of affection, and although the chance to explain hovers just ahead of him, he can’t speak out and tell the truth, because as much as he puts on a brave front, he’s not sure how much longer he can live like this.

So he takes the bait and runs with it. “Yeah, I guess so.”

The girl smiles and then jumps up saying, “You wait, I’ll grab our drinks,” when the buzzer rings and Seungmin is just left there dazzled.

And suddenly, this girl, Nancy is her name, Seungmin later learns by peeking at the scrawl on her cup, has inserted herself into his routine.

At first, he thinks he’ll be more uncomfortable, but then as they talk, he picks up on little things about her that remind him of himself, or at least what he used to be.

She’s pretty, and nice, and tries her best to talk to everybody in their class no matter their popularity, and does her work to the best of her abilities. She goes to church once a week, and sometimes more than once.

They bond over their shared love of music, and Nancy confides that she actually wanted to talk to him because she’s found it hard to come across fans who stan idols of their same gender, confessing that she’s actually in love with this one group, Momoland, she thinks Hyebin is the prettiest girl she’s ever seen.

And Seungmin wonders, but doesn’t intrude because he can’t help but wonder that maybe he’s reaching, maybe it’s nothing and he’s just projecting.

Still, he laughs and says that he loves Hyunjin from Stray Kids and wants to be just like him, and Nancy nods in agreement.

“I actually really wanted to be a singer when I was younger,” Seungmin confides.

“Me, too! But not anymore?” she asks, eyes wide with genuine interest, kindness, and curiosity.

When Seungmin shakes his head no, he can see that she wants to ask why, but he changes the conversation quickly, afraid to say that an idol with a past like his wouldn’t make it far. “So, I heard that Hyunjin is going to be on Show Me the Money soon! What do you think?”

And she accepts the change and they move on to discussing whether Mnet will do their devil’s editing tricks on him to make him look as bad as they have everybody else that falls into their trap.

It’s comforting, and it’s nice, but it’s not quite enough because as much as Seungmin enjoys the company once again, he feels like a fraud when he goes home on days like these when he times it wrong and as he beeps open the door, his mom rushes to the front of the house and shushes him as he comes in, saying, “Your father is…”

She can’t finish the sentence, because they’re not a normal family. Seungmin completes it for her. “Awake?”

She just nods sadly and lets Seungmin scurry to his room to hide until the beast is asleep.

--

He thinks that maybe he should tell Nancy, because they’ve become close friends as they sit together and watch Hyunjin make his way through the ranks, commenting on the one underground rapper, Seo Changbin, as he ends up showing up in the clips that have Hyunjin in them, too. But, even as the guilt eats away at him, the fear is worse, maybe more so because now he knows the consequences of the truth, he knows that it hurts more than he might be able to handle for a second time.

So when Nancy invites him over to binge watch Show Me the Money together, and then Momoland videos, he accepts the religious iconography littered around the living room and skirts around awkward questions as Nancy’s mother tries to decide if they really are “just friends” because God forbid that a male and a female be anything other than intimate and romantic lovers.

And as they sit there side by side, Seungmin points to the rapper that goes right before Hyunjin’s audition and says, “He’s really good,” to which Nancy wholeheartedly agrees.

But then a couple of episodes down the line, when Seungmin watches the two hug on stage and spies a little pat, he giggles and says, “They seem close. Do you reckon they’ve got something special going on?”

It’s a joke, but Nancy wrinkles her nose and says, “No, that’s weird.”

So Seungmin just nods, “Oh, okay,” and continues watching in silence.

But then Nancy speaks up, and she’s not looking at the screen anymore, but at her hands as she picks at the edges of her shirt. “Right? It is weird, isn’t it?”

Seungmin stays silent, but maybe that’s worse than speaking up. Just as he takes a breath to say something, anything, Nancy laughs it off and says, “Whatever, this is boring. Let’s watch some music videos.”

And Seungmin lets the incident pass, ignoring the strain in her laugh and ignoring the way that her eyes are glued to the screen as they watch girl group videos that Seungmin couldn’t be less interested in.

--

Later, Seungmin wonders if maybe she needs a friend, somebody to accept her so that they can hold her and tell her that it’s okay, it’s not weird, but then it’s revealed to him before he can even ask.

He’s just heading behind the buildings during gym class so he can hide from the other boys that still think it’s funny to spit on him and throw their balls at him - as if that isn’t gay entirely. He thinks he’s safe for the moment, so he’s completely zoned out, head in the clouds as he turns the corner until he looks up and sees…

Nancy.

But. She’s not alone. Pushing her up against the brick wall, clutching her sides is another girl, and when Seungmin gasps loudly, she turns around, hair whipping behind her and smacking Nancy in the face, who still has yet to realize and giggles, pure, innocent and in love as she says, “Ow, Dabin, what was that for.” But then slowly, as Dabin doesn’t answer, Nancy’s giggles die away as she peeks out from behind and finally sees Seungmin standing there, mouth agape.

“Oh, my goodness,” Nancy says, still refusing to take the Lord’s name in vain even at a time like this. She sinks to the floor, and Dabin looks like she just doesn’t know what to do, head turning, back and forth, back and forth, from Seungmin to Nancy and back to Seungmin, before finally she turns and runs, leaving Nancy where she is, collapsed against the brick wall.

Finally, Seungmin moves, slowly easing out of his shock and approaches Nancy, sliding down himself until they’re sitting side by side. He places a gentle hand on her shoulder, but still she flinches under his touch.

“You… you can’t tell anybody,” Nancy whispers.

“I won’t,” he promises, and he keeps it.

--

It turns out it doesn’t matter, though, whether or not he keeps his promise, because Dabin tells her friend, Joowon, and Joowon really can’t help it that she has such a talkative personality, but it ends up spreading all over the school like wildfire.

Dabin isn’t one to care much, with a strong personality to match strong visuals, and hasn’t been considered such a good student in the first place, but Nancy… Watching Nancy fall is like watching himself a few years ago, he imagines, as her head droops lower, and where already she wasn’t considered the most popular, she’s now absolutely ostracized.

Dabin moves on, and laughs it off as a phase, glaring at anybody who tries to tell her otherwise, and begins to join the crowd that shuns Nancy, and Nancy…

One day, Nancy shows up to school with a bruise on her face and a tight smile stretched thin across her face. When Seungmin tries to ask her what’s wrong, she asks, “What are you talking about?” and doesn’t answer again.

She doesn’t come back to school after that day, and Seungmin realizes that he never told her.

He never told her that it was okay, that he was the same way, that it doesn’t really get better yet but that they had to push through and live on to make it a better world for the other people like him and her one day.

--

Seungmin is alone again, and somehow it’s worse the second time. Now that Nancy’s gone, the kids turn their eyes and their words and their fists back on him, except when they’re not beating on him they give him a wide berth, accusing him of being contagious, for being the reason that Nancy became that way.

He has nowhere to turn, so he turns toward himself, looking inward as he sits at the same coffee shop day after day, waiting for night to fall so he can sneak back in at home.

One day, he’s sitting there humming along to the melody that plays over the speakers when the door chimes and another customer walks in. On reflex, he turns to look even though he knows it’s been months since he last saw Nancy, but the person that stands there somehow manages to shock him even more.

After the customer settles down, Seungmin waits a few minutes, deliberating before finally, he convinces himself to stand up and walk over slowly, bowing quickly when they make eye contact. “Hi, oh my gosh, I’m sorry to intrude, it’s just that I’m a huge fan, could I possibly get an autograph?”

He smiles, and there’s that goddamn eye smile, Seungmin’s entire gay awakening except here and in the flesh, a certain Hwang Hyunjin of the boy group Stray Kids. “Of course,” he says happily, “Do you have pen and paper? I’m afraid I’ve only got this napkin on me at the moment.”

Seungmin, ever the prepared student, pulls out his fancy notebook paper and hands over a pen and watches as Hyunjin whips out the most elegant autograph he’s ever seen. He pauses, pen hovering over the paper and then looks up at Seungmin and he’s just so close that Seungmin gasps, stepping back.

“Who should I make this out to?” he asks with a gentle smile, and Seungmin is just about sure that his heart melts a little bit.

“S-seungmin,” he stutters out, voice shaking.

“So it is for you!” Hyunjin says with a small chuckle/

“I’m sorry?” Seungmin asks, confused.

Hyunjin just shrugs, capping the pen and pushing the piece of paper back over to Seungmin. “It’s just that we don’t get very many male fans, so I was excited. Sorry if that was weird,” he says, and Seungmin thinks in his head, Literally, nothing you do could be weird .

Out loud, he says, “Oh, yes.” He doesn’t really know what else to say in this moment, just staring at Hyunjin’s smile until suddenly it’s turning down into a frown.

“What song is this?” he asks, and Seungmin startles.

“What?”

“I’m sorry, that was incredibly rude. It’s just, this song. I’ve been hearing it everywhere but I can’t seem to figure out where I recognize the voice from,” he continues, frown creasing his eyebrows. Somehow, even with this grimace marring his face, Seungmin finds him beautiful.

“Oh, it’s Changbin. Seo Changbin, he was on Show Me the Money with you earlier this year,” Seungmin says.

“Oh. Seo Changbin. Yes, I see,” Hyunjin answers.

Seungmin would have loved to keep up a conversation, but at this point he can tell that Hyunjin’s mind is far away, floating in the distance, so he takes back his pen and paper and makes his way over to his table.

The conversation brings back to mind the time when he and Nancy had been watching the show together, and he remembers how he had jokes about “something special” between the two of them, but now he wonders if perhaps that wasn’t entirely a joke. Maybe he’s projecting, but then again last time with Nancy… It turned out he was right, although he isn’t sure if it was worth the consequences.

Out of curiosity, and with most of his homework already completed but with plenty of time to spare, Seungmin goes to Naver and searches up “Seo Changbin”. He mindlessly scrolls down all of the articles that talk about the new up and coming R&B voice of Korea until it’s back a few years ago, all the way to three years ago when it wasn’t “Seo Changbin” but SpearB.

Seungmin has never particularly been into rap, but when he finds a SoundCloud link that hasn’t been updated in a year or so, he clicks on it expecting to hear the usual , money, drugs kind of rap that usually comes with SoundCloud rappers. Instead, he’s pleasantly surprised to find lyrics that he relates to. Some of the songs are stronger, much stronger by far than the singles that play on the radio that veer into the edge of poppy, but there are a few that are soft, sentimental, delicate even.

Seungmin imagines himself swaying on a dance floor to the beats, unafraid to slow dance with a guy that he loves as they parade each other down school hallways, unashamed to hold hands and show their compassion. Unknowingly, tears drip down his cheeks as he wonders if maybe in future generations, this will be a possibility that is in reach for South Korea, as he mourns the fact that this isn’t a present that he’ll be able to live and love in.

As the track slows and then dims to silence, Seungmin wipes off his face and goes to pack up his bags. As he heads out into the nighttime, he turns and sees that Hyunjin is still sitting there at the table, in the same position as he had been when Seungmin had left him. On the radio, another one of Seo Changbin’s songs plays and Seungmin sees for a moment that Hyunjin is mouthing along lyrics that don’t quite match up to what’s playing out loud.

He shakes his head, thinking that he must be imagining things before turning and heading out into the darkness.

--

It takes a few weeks of listening before he suddenly sits up ramrod straight in the middle of class, realizing just exactly why these songs, these lyrics ring so true to him, deep down into his very soul. His teacher throws him a glare but there’s not much he can do because he’s already bent back over his desk, scribbling away like ever the studious writer taking meticulous notes.

Except he’s not. He’s got one earbud plugged into his ear, hidden down his sleeve discreetly as he scratches away, attempting to transcribe the lyrics as fast as he hears them.

your warm hands

dance around my waist

Calvin Klein cologne

curls around my face like mist

The lyrics go on and on, and Seungmin realizes that he’s listening to a male voice describe what could possibly be his very own male crushes throughout life.

It’s maybe one of the first same love songs he’s heard by a mainstream artist, in his own language at that, and regardless of the fact that these aren’t the lyrics that are currently charting on Melon at the moment, a little seed starts to blossom somewhere within his chest. He thinks that maybe, just maybe, he won’t have to wait for grandchildren or great-grandchildren, but that he might be able to achieve his dreams within a lifetime without projecting it on to future generations.

And so, with no friends, no family who willingly talks to him, and no love to be found, this becomes his sole obsession. He can’t necessarily help it, because right now he’s just looking for a lifeline, anything to hold on to.

He’s always liked literature, so it’s easy to overanalyze, tear it apart line by line, word by word, treating rap lyrics like poetry because once you strip away the beats, the music, the bars, it’s really no different from Emily Dickinson, Oscar Wilde, or even - and maybe especially - Yun Hyunseok.

There’s love and emotion and protest and callouts to society. It’s like enduring a war from a battlefield with no cover, and as Seungmin underlines and marks and circles each word, he feels a stab in his chest because these lyrics hurt to read, only because they reflect the same pain that he has known for a third of his life, and he knows that this percentage will only grow the longer he lives.

But there are reprieves, as well, moments when the song isn’t heavy and dark and doesn’t make his heart pound in fear but rather it’s light and graceful, flirting in his ears just this way and that, enough to make his heart flutter instead of quake. It’s still painful, but a slightly more comforting pain, when your mother kisses your knee better after you’ve fallen off of your bike.

These are the songs that make Seungmin cry harder because even after all he’s been through, his heart is still tender and open and waiting to be accepted; he doesn’t even think to hope so far as loved.

So later, when he falls to the ground, maybe as a result of somebody pushing him from behind, he’ll know the reason was because his head was lost in the clouds and the stars and he thought that he could look at the sun again without feeling guilty only to realize that the world hasn’t changed just quite yet. His earbuds rip out of his ears and the speakers are suddenly blasting into the middle of the road for one short second, one last reassurance before a car, horn blasting, runs over his phone and crushes it, killing the music with it.

His phone isn’t the only casualty, and his knees are the least of his worries as his backpack rips open and scatters pencils, pens, books, and paper all over the streetside as the boys around him whoop and holler. Somebody gathers them up and holds them out to Seungmin, face gentle and kind and so Seungmin trusts him, smiles back because perhaps Spear B’s words have managed to soften him, only to see that hiding behind an angelic face is a demon as the boy’s friends whistle and howl like a pack of dogs, “Ew, Yang Jeongin, don’t let the touch you, I heard he’s contagious!”

And so Jeongin looks down, smile flipping inside and out to reveal a sneer, half disgust and half panic, pulling back his hand full of pens only to hurtle back and throw them in Seungmin’s face. “Go… go away, you’re disgusting.” He spits on the ground and turns away.

Another boy in the crowd makes a show of picking up the papers on the ground, shuffling them together until they’re stacked nice and neat before he rolls it up and smacks the pile against Seungmin’s head with a cackle, waving it in front of his eyes. “Thanks for the homework, homo.”

Seungmin wants to stand up, rip the pages of lyrics he’s been laboring over out of their hands, would rather burn the sheets one by one than have them fall into the wrong hands, but he’s weak as he sits there on the pavement.

It’s like trying to erase pencil with pencil. The eraser on the back has all been worn away, enough second thoughts and misguided choices to last a lifetime.

Laughing, they run off, taking all physical traces of Spear B with them.

It’s disheartening, but Seungmin realizes that it’s about time he learn to get used to it.

--

Coffee is so bitter, Seungmin realizes as he sits in the food court of a mall nearby his school. But the college life is draining, so he makes a face and gulps it down as fast as he can before attempting to wash out the bitterness with a bite of a donut. It’s soggy and equally gross, and Seungmin just sighs before stretching in his chair.

He’s about to get up and throw away the remaining half of his donut when he learns that memories are even more bitter.

“Hey, you’re Seungmin, aren’t you?”

It’s soft, and lightly accented, and leaves a sour taste in the back of Seungmin’s mind when he tries to recall where he knows it from. “No,” he says, moving forward and dumping his trash.

“Wait,” the voice calls out. “I know you’re Seungmin,” he says, catching ahold of Seungmin’s sleeve.”

Finally, he takes a deep breath and turns around, eyes alight with fire. “You should let go of me, I hear I’m contagious.”

Jeongin takes a step back, a rueful smile on his face. “Nah. I already caught it.”

“Oh.”

Jeongin just laughs to ease the awkward tension in the air, and Seungmin is reminded of the ghost of an angel he once saw in his face. Suddenly, a hand is outstretched in his direction and when Seungmin looks down at it quizzically, Jeongin smiles that wide smile of his, saying, “I wanted to apologize.”

“It’s been almost a year, you know.”

“I know. But still. You gave me courage.”

Seungmin notices that Jeongin’s braces are gone.

AN: 

p.s. if u look at the comments i might have replied little alternate scenes that i wrote on some of other people's comments lmao if yall r curious

anyway.... remember mrs. kim? yeah. i meant to have it continue and explain things but this was very confusing and yeah

chan pov coming.... soon? maybe

anyway happy early birthday jamie pt. 2 i snuck in a lil bit of seungjin for u sorry this is a mess heh