I got in…

I got into Big Bang…

I was chosen as the final member…

I succeeded…

I was Victorious.

I saw him laughing while I was listing out the reasons as to why I should be chosen as the final member. He didn’t laugh because it was funny. He laughed because I was audacious.

I saw him glaring through the mirror as I was singing. He wasn’t glaring at me because he hated me but because he knew that this song had won over Hyun Suk. He was glaring at his new member.

But then maybe I misunderstood because when I finished the song…

I saw that he didn’t applaud me like all the other hyung did…

I saw him nodding his head. I saw him smiling. It wasn’t strained. It didn’t seem like it was simply done for the camera filing our every move. It felt like real approval.

Maybe I was victorious in this sense too…

For my win, Youngbae hyung hugged and congratulated me.

For my win, Daesung hyung offered me a gentle smile.

For my win, Seunghyun hyung nodded his head at me and shook my hand.

For my win, Jiyong hyung stopped glaring at me.

Turns out, I was wrong. Jiyong hyung still continued to ignore me.

We were preparing to debut as a quintet soon and he still hadn’t spoken a single word to me that wasn’t harsh criticism.

But he did stop glaring at me. He voice stopped sounding like it was hate… just disapproval.

I felt homesick.

This felt so different from the groups I saw them debut on TV. In most of the idol groups I’ve seen, all the members are so close. So close that people often blurred the lines between friendship and romance.

It still didn’t feel right. I felt so out of place.

I felt homesick…

I felt alone…

Nights were getting harder. After practices I’d just spend time in my room all by myself. All the other members had roommates, except for me. I resulted to watching dramas in the evenings. It helped with my homesickness.

But when I’m in my room at night, I cry. I try to stop myself from feeling so lonely. I try to stop myself from missing home and my mother. But it’s so hard so I cry.

Then it happened… Three months later it happened, and it changed our entire relationship.

All the other hyungs were already in their beds resting after a long day of practice. I was sitting in the lounge flicking through channels waiting for Goong, a drama I’ve been keeping up to, to start.

“When is Goong playing tonight?”

Jiyong hyung had asked. I wondered at first if the question was directed at me as his voice lacked any hint of malice. There was no one else in the lounge but him and I.

I stared at him blankly as he raised his eyebrow at me, staring back. 
The question was directed at me.

“Hyung, the drama starts at 8pm.”

I answered politely with as firm a voice as I could muster given the circumstances of our current relationship.

He simply walked back to him room.

My chest was pounding. I could almost hear it. I could feel the sweat slowly run down my scalp as all the tension left my body when he walked out.

Did that mean anything? Are we okay now?

Apparently so because at exactly 8pm he walked out of his room and sat beside me as Princess Hours played.

At the start, I hardly paid attention to the drama. I just mirrored Jiyong hyung’s reactions. This led to him reaching his hand to poke my cheek until it dug into my teeth.

“Pay attention to the drama. Not to me.”

With that I started to watch properly. Hyung asked a few questions because he had missed a few things bingeing the show at night. I answered each question with an unnecessary excitement, only too eager to please him.

When the episode ended, he turned his body to face me. His expression somewhat blank.

I waited for him to say something. He didn’t, he just continued to look at me.

“Yes, hyung?”

“Don’t cry in your room by yourself. If you cry about being along while being alone, it’s gonna feel like you’re drowning. It’s counter-productive.”

“Even if I wanted to cry with someone, there’s no one to cry to so yeah I cry about feeling lonely alone.”

“It won’t be like that anymore, Seunghyun. I’ll make it easier.”

He got up from his seat and started to make his way back to his room.

“Will you be there so that I don’t have to cry alone, hyung?”

He stopped walking. Silence ensued between both of us. But there was no tension.

He didn’t respond.  He just continued to walk back into his room.