AN: Sorry if the timeline seems funky i honestly don’t remember when and what order things happen in anymore lol also sorry it's been over a year and then i trollop back toting this gem, eh? i think seungmin pov might even need a pt. 3 so that's going to be fun, unless yall dont mind an open ending or something

AN 2: Camellia’s mean longing (yellow) or waiting (white)

--

The phone rings, one, two, three, four rings. He’s not sure if they aren’t picking up because they’ve deleted his number by now and think it’s spam, or if they’ve saved his number with a sign for “Do Not Answer”. 

But then, on the seventh ring, just as he’s about to chicken out and hang up, there’s a click. 

“Hello?”

The voice is almost unfamiliar because of how long it’s been since he’s heard it, but Seungmin recognizes the deep gravellyness from years of smoking (and spreading second-hand smoke to his wife and child, without a care in the world as he flicked ash onto the white collars of Seungmin’s button-down uniform) and the fake politeness that drips through even a single word. 

“Hi, Dad. Is Mom there?”

There’s a long pause, and then, a response. “Who is this?”

He doesn’t mean to, he really doesn’t, but against his will, tears prickle at his eyes until they’re overflowing onto his face. “It’s. It’s Seungmin. I’d like to speak to Mrs. Kim if she’s available.”

There’s another long pause, and then the voice speaks up again. If Seungmin strains his ears, he thinks he might be able to hear the slightest hints of sorrow. “She doesn’t live here anymore. I can give you her personal cell phone number.”

Seungmin feels both guilt and vindictiveness warring away in his heart as he nods and writes down the number. He’s about to hang up and close the door permanently on this chapter of his life, names out and memories burned when suddenly the man on the phone speaks again. “Wait. Please. Please tell her that… I miss my family.”

Seungmin’s breath hitches in his throat as he nods at first, forgetting he can’t be seen over the phone. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”

--

It’s a little bit more exhilarating but at the same time terrifying when he calls his mom, now that potential saturates the air. She picks up and says, “Hello?” and Seungmin almost feel like he’s going to cry, throat clogging up so he can’t respond until she says once, twice more, “Hello? Who is this?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Oh my God, Seungmin,” she says, and he knows immediately from the minute she says the second word of that sentence that she’s bawling. 

“Mom,” he whispers, and it’s only as he speaks himself that he realizes he, too, is crying. He’s not sure whether it’s sorrow at finally hearing his mother’s voice after almost two years or if these tears stem from anger, at knowing that this wasn’t necessary, knowing that he might have felt a mother’s love for just one more year if society didn’t spit on people like him, and if his father hadn’t been spending every moment bending over backward to hide his own family behind a fortress of lies. 

Whatever it is, though, it doesn’t matter now as the tears ebb away, slowly but surely as he clutches his phone to his ear, trying to soak up every word that his mother speaks so that he can treasure it more than he ever knew he should have. 

She tells him how after Seungmin left, for a new life, a new start at college, completely independent of his parents, she, too, realized that she couldn’t stay with his father anymore, knowing that he and his twisted ideals forced a family to break apart. 

Seungmin learns that she’s living with her sister in a neighborhood not too far from where Seungmin is staying in a one-room studio in a co-op. He tells her a little bit about his life, how he’s majoring in English but also picked up vocal lessons on the side, how he has some friends now, and people in college are too mature to really pick on him for… the old issues. 

At some point, he looks down at his watch and realizes that over an hour has passed, and his class is set to be starting soon, so he has to end the call. Before he can go, though, his mother asks him if he’ll be free to come to her home for dinner at some point during the week, and Seungmin finds himself choking up once more as he nods at first, forgetting she can’t see him, and then chokes out a watery, “Yes, of course,” because it’s really been so long he can barely remember the taste of his mom’s home cooking, but he remembers standing in the kitchen, inhaling the aroma of whatever soup she was cooking up while he looked on from the step stool that he stood on as his dad sat in the living room, smiling at the two of them. 

There was a time when their family wasn’t so broken when they loved each other, and maybe Seungmin is the one who broke that, but at least now he can love himself. 

--

“You seem happier today,” Jeongin says as he slides into his seat in the lecture hall next to Seungmin. 

Seungmin wishes he could blame the fates or coincidence for this particular arrangement in his schedule, but in reality, Jeongin has been sticking to his side since the first day they ran into each other on campus. This class, in particular, Seungmin knows, Jeongin only signed up for so that he could steal Seungmin’s notes and drool on his shoulder for an easy A. 

Seungmin just shrugs and smiles, hesitating for a second before deciding that it’s worth sharing. “I’m going over to my mom’s place for dinner.” 

Jeongin’s eyes bug out, and he’s about to scream “WHAT?!” but just at that moment, the professor walks in the door and Seungmin hastily shoves his fist into Jeongin’s mouth, effectively stopping him from uttering a peep. Instead, he discreetly opens up his computer, pretending he’s about to start taking the most efficient notes on Microsoft OneNote but instead opens up Facebook messenger to explain the situation to Jeongin. He’ll have to ask Woojin sunbae for access to his drive folder with the notes again later, but that’s a problem for future Seungmin to worry about. 

The minute class ends, Jeongin is pestering Seungmin again. “So, when are you going to see her? Tonight? Tomorrow night? Do you want me to go with you? Should I pretend to be your fake boyfriend?”

Seungmin just sighs and continues to walk while looking forward, stoutly ignoring all of Jeongin’s questions. “I will literally never need you to be my fake boyfriend, Jeongin, so please. Stop.”

Jeongin sighs dramatically and throws up his hands in the air, exclaiming, “But hyung! The least you could do is sign my marriage pact?”

Seungmin snorts, “Yeah, and join your harem of upperclassmen who fawn over your dimples? I think not.”

Jeongin grumbles, “It’s not a harem, there’s only like, seventeen members so far.”

Seungmin shrugs, “Sounds like a harem to me. Anyways, I’m going this weekend. And please, don’t make a big deal about it. Literally, everybody goes home to eat dinner with their parents from time to time, and that’s just what I’m doing.”

“Alright,” Jeongin answers, deciding to back off the topic for now. But promise to let me know if you need to talk about it?”

Seungmin sighs, “Yeah, yeah, don’t worry about it.”

--

Standing in front of his mirror just a few days later, Seungmin finds that he is, inevitably, making a big deal out of it. It’s been so long since he’s seen his mother face to face, he’s afraid that he’ll get to the address and not be able to recognize the woman who raised him from birth. Nevertheless, he shakes his head and thinks about the home-cooked food he’s going to have for the first time in… Two years. 

Two whole years. That’s how long it’s been since he got to feel the embrace of family, the comfort of his mother’s arms around him. For two long years, he’s been out here, surviving on his own with his barely-there sense of adulthood. Seungmin releases a shaky breath and realizes that he’s not just nervous to see his mom tonight. He’s afraid. 

He’s absolutely and utterly afraid because he doesn’t know if he has the courage to forgive her just yet for abandoning him when he needed her the most. 

Seungmin shakes his head roughly and does his best to act as if that was enough to expel the dark thoughts from his mind as he pulls down his sleeves over his arms, straightens out his shirt and heads out in the night. 

He can do this. He has to do this. 

--

Dinner goes… surprisingly well. When Seungmin had stood awkwardly in front of the door, shifting his feet from side to side, he could feel the sweat pooling in his hands and dampening his just-ironed shirt. He admits that it took him a few tries to so much as ring the doorbell, even going back down the elevator and out into the street for a moment before he finally was able to pluck up the courage and press his finger down. 

His mother opens the door immediately as if she’s been waiting for him to come, and it’s likely she has. It’s already fifteen minutes past seven when they had originally agreed to meet and Seungmin knows that the joy on her face wouldn’t nearly be as stark as if it wasn’t preceded by fear and worry and heartache from the thought of Seungmin never showing up.

And it’s that knowledge exactly that allows Seungmin to let go of whatever resentment he had been carrying on his shoulders just enough that he can buckle up and step inside without concern, watching as his mother carefully edges away from the entryway to give him as much or as little room as he needs, watching the way her fingers flick forward as if she wants to help him take off his shoes like he’s a little boy who still hasn’t quite figured out how to unstick the velcro without getting distracted by the ripping, a little boy who didn’t realize that a family could rip apart as easily as the velcro on his shoes. 

He stands up, coming in a little closer and peers around the tiny apartment his mother is living in now. He realizes that it’s about the same size as his own, just on the other side of town and a little cleaner; the help of a mother’s touch. 

Seungmin clears his throat, breaking the heavy silence that’s weighing down on them both and Seungmin’s mother startles for a moment flitting this way and that way before deciding on the kitchen, running over as she calls behind her, “Get settled in! I’ll be right back with the food, it’s all ready, just on the oven!”

Seungmin steps forward and grabs her wrist before she can get far (not that there’s much room to run in this apartment) and pulls out the flowers he’s been hiding behind his back. “Hi, Mom. These are for you.”

His mother stops in her tracks just then, and lets out a gentle, “Oh.” Seungmin feels panic rising in his throat for a second as he sees tears welling up in her eyes and wonders if he’s made a grave mistake, until suddenly the flowers are falling out of his hands, falling in a heap on the floor as he releases them to catch his mother instead, both of them collapsing in a pile next to the camellias.

“Seungmin, Seungmin, Seungmin,” his mother sobs, and Seungmin can only grip harder, knowing that each iteration of his own name means a different thing. 

Seungmin means I love you and Seungmin means I missed you and Seungmin means I’m sorry and each sob and gasp in between means she’ll never forgive herself for something that was out of her control and that she’s suffered so much and that all that matters is that her son is back in her arms and all Seungmin can do is nod and say, “I know, I know, I know,” while caressing her back because he doesn’t have the words in his head either, all he knows is that they understand each other, finally, freely and without barriers. 

“I know, Mom.” I love you, too . “It’s okay.” I missed you, too. “Mom, please.” I’m sorry, too.

Seungmin knows that this will likely become one of those things that they never talk about again, a glitch in their past that hovers over them but remains taboo, so he cherishes the moment while it lasts, until his mother collects herself enough to pick herself off the floor, gently picking up each camellia to gather it in a mug because she can’t really afford the luxury of a vase when she has no husband to bring flowers home anyway. She collects herself and she collects the flowers and she doesn’t know it but she collects the pieces of Seungmin’s heart that’s been shattered since the day he came out to his mother and she cried tears of anguish and disappointment, and she puts those pieces back together and sets it gently back into Seungmin’s chest where he feels a warm glow that he didn’t think he could feel for a long, long while. 

When she’s done, they sit down together.

They eat dinner.

They are a family. 

--

Jeongin is waiting for him when Seungmiin gets back later that night. 

“So, hyung, how was it?”

“Holy ,” Seungmin says, flinching back suddenly. “What are you doing here?”

Jeongin shrugs, waving his hand in the general direction of Seungmin’s door, “Don’t act so surprised, everybody knows you keep a spare key above the doorway. Now tell me everything, was she mean? Did she yell at you? Did she cry?”

Seungmin rolls his eyes, kicking off his shoes and making his way over to slump over on the bed-currently-serving-as-couch next to Jeongin, who’s already got himself settled in with a bag of popcorn and the movie he’s been streaming while waiting for Seungmin muted. “It was fine. Just like a normal dinner. We ate mackerel, we caught up, I helped her do the dishes.”

“You caught up? About what? Did she ask you if you had a boyfriend? Did you say yes? Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Jeongin! Please,” Seungmin sighs in exasperation. “First of all, I don’t have a boyfriend, and you know this! Second of all, we talked about, well. We talked about normal stuff. Like how my studies are going, that I have a part-time job as a private tutor, that I’m majoring in Literature and minoring in music. Things like that.”

“Oh?” Jeongin says, still leaning eagerly forward. “And what did she say?” 

“Nothing. Or well, nothing important. Just, you know. Normal responses,” Seungmin answers. Even as he says those words, though, he can’t help the smile stretching across his face as he thinks back to those moments at dinner when his mother would smile at him and nod when he answered a question. “She said that she always thought I would be a singer because I liked to sing so much as a kid. And that it was nice to hear that I was minoring in music.”

“Oh,” Jeongin says softly, and now he’s smiling, too. “I’m really happy for you, hyung.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure, let’s just watch this movie. What’d you pick out?”

“I really am!”

--

The days pass by and Seungmin almost feels… At peace. He breathes in the fresh spring air, visits his mother every few weeks, or on some occasions a few times a week. He studies for his exams and turns in his homework, and continues promoting for the small showcase that the music department is putting on. 

He’s sitting in his mother’s apartment, half studying and half flicking through songs that have accumulated on his iPod over the years, wondering if he should add a piece or two to sing for his showcase. As he scrolls through his old playlists, he pauses as he comes across a song from an artist he hasn’t heard much of lately, realizing that he stopped keeping up with certain singers as he threw himself into finding himself and growing up too quickly. 

He hums along to the melodic rapping that flows through the tiny speakers of his phone and lets it wash over him as he recalls the comfort it provided back when he was younger. The song is drawing to an end when his mother comes out of the kitchen with a plate of fruit in her hand and asks, “Oh, do you listen to him?”

Seungmin shrugs, picking up a fork and speaking through the apple slice he’s chewing on. “I used to, although I haven’t really heard his songs lately.”

“He used to live in this apartment building, you know,” his mother says, a little bit of her old gossipy habits coming back as she chuckles and walks back to the kitchen. “You know before the scandal erupted and he had to go to the military.”

“Wait, what? He’s in the military?” Seungmin asks. “But he was so popular… And still pretty young. What scandal?”

Mrs. Kim sombers up at that moment, sighing. “Maybe it’s best if you don’t look into it. Society hasn’t changed one bit in the past years. I pray your generation learns to be less harsh.”

Seungmin drops the subject, as he doesn’t want his mother to linger on negative feelings, but it stays in the back of his mind for a while. 

He finishes up his work and the fruit and calls out to his mom as he heads out. “Bye, Mom! I’ll see you next week.”

His mother hurries out, grabbing a bag of food she had packed and makes him promise to stay well-fed and study hard for his exams. Seungmin just groans with a smile as she hugs him tight and watches him head out towards the elevator. 

Once he’s on the elevator, Seungmin puts on his headphones and begins to play the song he’d been listening to earlier, humming the tune to himself. He lets the nostalgia wash over him, half good and half bad as he remembers his adolescence and the bullying he endured only by listening to these lyrics time and time again. The ding of the elevator reaching the lowest level startles him out of his reverie and he hurries to step out, accidentally bumps into another man getting on.

“Sorry!” Seungmin exclaims as he accidentally drops his iPod. The headphones become unplugged and the song he was listening to comes blasting out of the speakers. The man freezes where he stands and simply looks down at Seungmin as he gathers his things once again. Seungmin stares up at the hooded man curiously, wondering why he’s so heavily wrapped up in nice weather like this. 

When the elevator doors start beeping a complaint at being held open for too long, Seungmin hurries to move out of the way at the same time the man jumps and rushes into the elevator, hurriedly pushing the close door button. They stare at each other as the doors slide shut, making eye contact with the song still playing in the background, and Seungmin can’t help but feel like that gaze is familiar to him. 

Nevertheless, those sharp eyes are instead replaced with the cold elevator door and the moment is shattered. Seungmin struggles with his iPod for a few moments more before finally plugging in his headphones and making his way home. 

--

It’s around one in the morning that Seungmin jolts up from his desk, paper sticking to his cheek and highlighter marks streaked across his face. 

“Ugh,” he groans to nobody in particular, rubbing at his face as he realizes he fell asleep once again while doing his work. “I’m so tired,” he mumbles, emphasizing the statement with a yawn. Slapping at his cheeks to wake himself up a little bit more, he looks around the room and sees his iPod thrown in the middle of his bed. 

Thinking back to his conversation from earlier with his mother, he pulls his computer closer and pulls up the Naver search window, typing in two words.

“Seo Changbin”

Articles pop up immediately, and Seungmin gets a nauseous feeling rise in his stomach as he realizes exactly why his mother had wanted him to drop the subject.

They’re still the most relevant articles related to Changbin, even though they’re dated to almost two years back. Seungmin’s stomach drops further as he clicks on them and scrolls down, reading through the comments. Tears prickle at the back of his eyelids as he reads through hundreds and hundreds of malicious comments, not entirely sure why he continues torturing himself, reliving those same comments that were once hurled at his back and branded on his desk. 

user b**8nj

Disgusting lol he shouldnt even be allowed to enter the military

user m**0yj

I can’t believe it hes tarnishing the reputation of hip hop. I really knew he was a f*ggot from the first time i listened to his songs the music videos are all so girly and disgusting hah he looks like a ing bottom to me

user mij***

Stay away from my oppa! Youre going to infect him!!

user n***7h

He looks like he has aids

A part of Seungmin wonders if maybe, just maybe he should be happy that a singer he once idolized is gay as well until he reads the company statement which only makes his stomach continue to churn. Frowning, he clicks on a link to a blog post from one of the other articles. Based on the date, it seems as if this is the one that started the whole scandal, exposing Seo Changbin. 

Seungmin’s hands shake as he scrolls through pictures of lyrics that have been scribbled over again and again in red, orange, purple glitter gel pen. 

He really thinks that he might throw up because he realizes that this is handwriting that he can recognize. All he needs to do to identify it is look up at his desk where his homework sits, prettily outlined, unlike the analysis he remembers doing once upon a time on SpearB’s old lyrics. 

It’s at that moment, with the digital clock next to him blinking 2:35 AM, that Seungmin discovers he himself was responsible for ruining the career of his very own idol. 

Seungmin soon after recognizes a second fact that had been hidden within the shock of discovering such a thing. 

There was no chance in hell that Seungmin could ever achieve his outdated dreams of becoming a singer. Not when society would scorn him as if he bore an uncurable disease. 

--

The next day, Jeongin sits down with Seungmin at lunch, hands wringing and shaking as he nervously looks up at him. 

Five minutes later, Seungmin has left and Jeongin continues to sit at the table, crying silent tears into his lap. 

--

Jeongin had asked him out. All this time, Seungmin had never thought of Jeongin as more than a good friend, a younger brother to cherish and protect. And it had truly broken Seungmin’s heart to shatter Jeongin’s in the way he did.

The worst part is, Seungmin wonders if karma is punishing him, giving him a close friend and then pulling him away just as swiftly. Seungmin heads to his mother’s house to wallow in his self misery, but it seems that bad things really do come in threes. 

Seungmin bumps into the same mysterious man in the elevator once again. Seungmin looks at the mask and black hat pulled down as far as it can go and wonders for a second if he’s here to rob somebody, but realizes it’s far too early in the day for criminal behavior. Shrugging, Seungmin reaches to press the elevator button, only to realize that the man in the elevator with him has already pressed it. A chill runs down Seungmin’s spine, but he shakes it off as they ride up together to the fourth floor. 

Seungmin turns left and the man follows along for a few steps before stopping at apartment 419. By that time, Seungmin’s already come to 423, his mother’s apartment, and opens the door to enter, but finds himself pausing and looking down the hallway at the man. 

Somehow, framed in the long hallway that stretches down, down, down in either direction, Seungmin can’t help but think that perhaps, combined with the weary slouch of the man’s shoulders and the mussed up hair that’s revealed as the man yanks off his cap, wringing it together in his hands, he looks… lonely. 

The man simply stands at the door, neither keying in a number or ringing the doorbell for a few seconds, before finally heaving a sigh and putting in the passcode before entering. 

The slam of the door shutting echoes down the hallway and reaches Seungmin, startling him out of where he’s standing with his own door half open. 

“Seungmin? Is that you?” his mother calls, appearing from the kitchen. 

“Hi, Mom,” Seungmin says, walking inside a little bit further. “Is it okay if I stay here and do a little bit of work?”

Seungmin’s mother frowns, as she always does whenever Seungmin tentatively asks a question or permission for something that any other kid would take for granted, unable to shake the habit of shrinking around his family. “Of course, sweetheart.”

Seungmin sits in the living room, working in silence at the coffee table for the next few hours while his mother walks around the apartment picking up this and that to clean or organize. Sighing after a while of being unable to focus, Seungmin sets down his pencil and looks up at his mom. “Hey, Mom. Do you know who lives in apartment 419?”

Seungmin’s mother frowns, setting down the dishrag she’s holding and sighs. “Did you run into Hyunjin, then?”

“Hyunjin?” Seungmin asks, confused. “Do I know him?”

Seungmin’s mother shakes her head. “Probably not personally. Changbin lives in 419. Or lived, I guess. I’m not sure when he comes back but I’m sure it’s sooner or later. Hyunjin, well. He was in that idol group you listened to all the time, remember?”

“What,” Seungmin asks, chuckling, “Hwang Hyunjin? You mean I ran into Hwang Hyunjin on the elevator?” When his mother doesn’t respond, Seungmin slowly tries to recall his memories and realizes that those sharp eyes he recognized were familiar for a reason. “Wait, you mean Hwang Hyunjin lives in Seo Changbin’s old apartment? That’s crazy.”

Mrs. Kim shakes her head with a rueful smile. “No, he’s just visiting.”

Frowning, Seungmin tries to take in all that information when suddenly, they hear shouting coming from outside, followed by a slam. Startled, they run out to find their neighbors have also poked their heads out of the door and are staring down the hallway at the commotion. 

In front of apartment 419 sits the man from the elevator, or Hwang Hyunjin, as Seungmin has now identified. His shirt is wrinkled and his hat and mask are missing. But what really catches Seungmin’s eyes are the bare feet, lying haphazardly on the cold, concrete floor. 

Against his better judgment, Seungmin rushes forward, his own feet bare as well, and kneels by Hyunjin’s side, shaking his shoulder and asking, “Excuse me? Are you okay?”

Seungmin’s hand is roughly shoved off, and it’s only then that Seungmin notices the tears that are glistening on Hyunjin’s cheeks as he heaves deep breathes, sobbing like there’s no tomorrow. Seungmin feels a hand on his own shoulder and looks up to see his mother pulling him back, face lined with concern. Standing up, Seungmin looks up to see if anybody else will help, but he sees that the neighbors are either avoiding eye contact or looking on with faces of disgust. 

Seungmin lets himself be dragged away from the scene, but can’t help himself as he continues to look back at where Hyunjin lies sprawled on the floor, shoulders still shaking as sobs wrack his body. 

It’s then that Seungmin realizes.

He can’t simply be a bystander.