[part two]

When you were young, people used to tell you that love – a true love – was difficult to find.
They used to circle your shoulder and talk in whispers, as if revealing a secret, but their words were always the same, always filled with such a melancholy and mystery, you wondered if you’d have ever found what they were talking about.
They also used to tell you that love was a journey, that it didn’t happen in a moment, but that was something that carried you, slowly, keeping you company through your days until the emotions you felt inside were clear enough, strong enough for you to name them, to accept them.

It’s a late summer night when you think back on those words and decide that they were not so true in the end. Not completely at least.
You’re lying on the sofa in the small living room, leg crossed one over the other, resting your head on the armrest. The window of your small terrace is slightly open, letting the warm breeze bring a bit of freshness in the suffocating heat of the Japanese summer.
Japan. What a strange country, you think. With its difficult language – kanji always mixing up with each other and a foreign sound hovering over your lips – with its cherry blossom painting the streets of a light pink, so wonderfully beautiful, and with a mixed smell of ramen and sake lingering in the air. It’s been a while since you’ve arrived and you are still trying to fit in, trying to make a place for yourself in this foreign land, but despite the difficulties, the stress, the pain, somehow you’re starting to love it too. To love it back.
And it’s love, again. An unusual constant in your life now.
You’ve never been used to be surrounded by such a feeling, and you find it difficult to get used to it. It’s not immediate, you have to grow around it as it starts to grow on you, slowly, but by the time you release your second Japanese album it comes naturally, and you find yourself mesmerized by its simple beauty.

You close your eyes to the faraway jingle of dishes in the kitchen and relax to the smell of food coming from there. Jaejoong is cooking again, despite the tiredness of the day and the continuous yawns that keep awakening on his face. You wonder where he finds all those energies – to think, to cook, to care – but Jaejoong is like that, a box full of treasures that surprises you in the most unexpected moments and leaves you unarmed in front of the generosity and affections he so casually spreads around. Jaejoong is someone born to love. It’s something innate, long tangled in his way of speaking, his way of behaving, always putting others before himself and making sure everybody is well taken care of. If it meant people he cared about could fly, Jaejoong would even enjoy the fall.
A sudden laugh distracts you from your flow of thoughts and when you turn your head to the source of the noise, you see Yunho hugging the other guy from behind. Jaejoong is still moving around the counter, cutting vegetables and preparing the meat, and you swear you hear him cursing at the other’s proximity. They’re too close and Yunho is probably interfering with his movements, but Jaejoong barks and doesn’t bite, leaving the other pressed over his back.
You feel your body getting light, the stress accumulated during the last days evaporating by that warmth of which you don’t just see hints now, but admire in its fullness.
Yunho tickles the older guy on the hips and you hear Jaejoong squeaking and agitating in his arms, trying to break free, but kept still in the former’s strong embrace. And you see kisses too, small pecks tracing down the way from Jaejoong’s ears to his shoulders, treasuring the taste of the guy’s skin surrounded by the smell of kimchi jjigae – the smell of home –, looking at the pale complexion getting darker bite after bite.

And it’s then that you decide that those words you were told so many years ago were not so true in the end.

Love is a journey, indeed.
A long trip from the very first moment you see each other, unprepared and unexperienced, to the later ones when your hands meet in a silence understanding, gestures almost automatic forged by years of intimacy, and the heat in your heart burns with the same strength but just more silently, used to the familiar feeling now. It’s a discovering: a never-ending search of who you are alone and who you become together, of those qualities that come alive just when the two of you are closer – possession, madness, love –, of those flaws that seem to disappear in the beauty and almost perfection of your shared feelings. They can’t disappear, however, but that’s the most beautiful part of it too: it’s not perfect, but it’s human, it’s real.

Love is not that difficult to find though, you realise.
You’re barely eighteen years old, barely legal, but the freshness of love has already hit you several times through the years with a random perseverance you wonder how can people say – and believe – that love hides itself from the claws of human beings.
The point is, you reason, that most people don’t appreciate it when they meet love, and sometimes, they don’t even realise love is there, filling the air with that characteristic lightness and pureness. People often mistakenly narrow love to human relationships. But that’s not the end of it. Love is so much bigger than the mere romantic connotation people define it with.
You look beyond the half-opened window of the living room where the stars shine so feebly over the dark sky, and you think of the different shapes love has presented itself into to you.
You think of music, of singing, of how it hasn’t been love at first sight, but a journey, again, which you started to appreciate more as it developed through time.
You think of the first time you held your sister in your arms, how she was so little and so fragile, but you felt this wave of something towards her, something big, something meaningful that only grew stronger by the days and suddenly she was walking and you were holding her hand and loving her with such a passion, with such a dedication, you wondered if there was anything bigger than that. And there was. Because when your second sister was born and you didn’t think it was possible for you to have more feelings in your heart, your love for her came like a thunder in a clear sky, unexpected, but incredibly powerful too.
You turn your head around and you think of Jaejoong and Yunho, of how their souls bumped into each other and melted so well you can’t even tell them apart anymore. There is no Jaejoong without Yunho’s continuous attentions, and there’s no Yunho without Jaejoong’s constant caring. They are not individuals anymore, you try to reason, in a sense that yes, they do stand as individuals and their life is not driven by the other, but at the same time Jaejoong is not just Jaejoong, he’s Jaejoong, the old and grown up version of himself, with an unnoticed subtitle to most that is the result of him loving the other. It’s a “Jaejoong – in love with Yunho” kind of movie. Old Jaejoong would get into fights, and go out drinking every night, but new Jaejoong doesn’t, at least not as much as he used to, because he knows Yunho doesn’t like it and he loves him enough to grant him that. And Yunho’s the same. Old Yunho would go on picking on everyone’s mistakes all the time – not in a bad way, just trying to turn them into strength or to fix them – but new Yunho doesn’t, because he has understood that sometimes flaws are not so easy to change, sometimes they’re delicate topics people don’t want to talk about and if he has Jaejoong, he doesn’t need perfection anymore.

You think about the way they changed, the way they matured together and how common people probably wouldn’t even notice, but you’ve seen them growing up through the years, they brought you up in a way, and you can’t help but see all the little things they lost along the way, all the things they put a band aid on or just let them be.
People usually refer to them as your second parents, because of Jaejoong’s caring attitude and Yunho’s protective one, but you don’t like the labels and you surely don’t think of them as your mother or father. It’s true, though, that they do have a strong influence in your life and helped you become the boy you are today. Jaejoong’s affections rubbed you off in the wrong way at the beginning, you found them strange and inappropriate, but now you live on those small gestures. And the same goes with Yunho’s leader attitude, how at the beginning you couldn’t stand his continuous remarks, but now you realise they were necessary and it is thanks to them that you can now perform in front of huge crowds in a country you never even dreamt of conquering.

Jaejoong and Yunho start blossoming together.
You thought the way they were around each other before was them being affectionate, being so desperately love, and it was already so much you thought it couldn’t grow any more, but now, now, it’s something completely different. The old affection is there, still, unchanged, but there’s something new too, a new form of expressing their feelings you didn’t know could exist between them – they didn’t know it in the first place – but that’s here now and it’s incredibly strong and you suddenly find yourself right in the middle of it.
It doesn’t happen much when you’re in private. Strangely, hidden in the small four walls of your apartment, it’s easier to avoid their rainbow bubble of untouched happiness and run away from it. But when you’re standing tall in front of the public eye, when you think they would tone it down at least for the time required by this variety program or that interview, then, it’s impossible to escape. You all have to bear with it, of course, but you’re so lucky your spot is right in between the two of them and of course they never have any intention to contain their never-ending love for each other.

Jaejoong likes to play with words. Which is weird considered he has never been able to express himself clearly – and he still isn’t – but when it’s about teasing fans on national television, then he’s an expert. And you know it’s just a matter of time before the press or management realise he’s taking fanservice a little bit too far and that there’s definitely something hidden behind that. But Jaejoong is a wild spirit and likes playing with fire. It has to be, otherwise he wouldn’t go around confessing how he thinks Yunho doesn’t really treat him as a male or how he feels nervous when the other hugs him. They’re short statements, random confessions casually drop here and there, but once all the pieces are collected it’s difficult not to see something behind it. And maybe it’s you being overdramatic, worrying too much because you know for a fact that there is something more, but you can’t help wondering if he isn’t being too straight-forward, letting people picking up a little bit too much about them. For you it’s just too evident for others not to see it too.

Yunho, on the other hand, is more of an action guy. Taking his leader-image up, he doesn’t really spend so much more words for Jaejoong that what he does for the rest of you, but he surely does in side glances, intimate touches and warm hugs. You are not completely sure if he does realise how close he is with Jaejoong on stage, how intense are the looks he sends the other, bypassing you with such a force it makes you feel invisible, how intimate they seem whenever he touches his hands, shoulders, cheeks. He probably knows he’s being over touchy, but at the same time he also probably thinks he’s smart enough to get away with it,  and you would just like to scream to his face that no, he’s not being secretive, everyone can see the sparkle in his eyes whenever he’s near Jaejoong and that there’s no need to catch them in the spotlight because them being together is a constant showcase, as if they were actually displaying their love on a pedestal for others to watch.

But maybe that’s how real love is supposed to be, you wonder. So powerful and intimate at the same time.

***  

Jaejoong is walking around the kitchen with just a towel around his waist, wet hair dripping off on the floor every sudden movement, the diaphanous skin blessed by first rays of that mild autumn morning. The sun shines mirrored in the water drops rolling down his body, forecasting another sunny day outside.
You are sitting at the kitchen table, leg crossed, with your head resting on your hands, while you watch Jaejoong moving around and playing with utensil, harmonious movements that blend together perfectly and result in another incredibly delicious breakfast.
While he dances to the sound you’re humming, an unknown melody that just came up to your head, you take a minute to look at his body. You’ve seen him many times, in an all-boys dormitory with tight space and frenetic schedules it would be hard not to, but looking at Jaejoong is somehow different every time. It’s like his body keeps changing in a way that let you mesmerized by it: the hair, now shorter, then longer again, the arms, more muscular yet somehow still delicate, his lineaments, so defined now and so blurred the next moment, each time something changes and his body gives you back a different vibe.

Then there’s tattoos. Jaejoong is obsessed by them.
You remember when he got the first one, TVXQ SOUL, so much black ink covering forever the skin of his back. You remember Yunho getting mad and Jaejoong yelling about body freedom and personal choices. You weren’t that happy at first either, but now you love the thought of having some part of you bonded forever on the other’s skin. Then there were the wings, and honestly they didn’t even surprise you anymore. They were so Jaejoong in a way that when he came back home and showcased them, you all just laughed. They fit so well on the other’s shoulders, you almost didn’t even notice them. Jaejoong was born free in a way a lot dreamed to be and the tattoo was just a reminder of that freedom he always searched for, that freedom to fly away and over everything whenever he needed to. Despite being such a lovely person, Jaejoong had lot of dark moments too and in those times he needed a safe space to take refuge in: those wings allowed him to.
You squeeze your eyes and try to read the sentences that form two treble clefs right on top of the wings design. The best thing of that tattoo, you think, is how it all blends together so well, how the style, the drawings, the writings look just like the continuation of his skin.

Jaejoong finishes preparing breakfast and turns around to put the dishes on the table. He catches you staring and smiles.

“Seeing something you like?” he jokes.

You smile back, “Just admiring the tattoos”

Now that he’s facing you, you notice the striking contrast between his back and front side, how all the black adorning his shoulders disappears on his chest, leaving the pale skin untouched if not for a small writing just over his heart.
“Always keep the faith” it reads. And you know that it is more than a simple sentence tattooed just because. You know that it is a reminder not to get lost in such a scheming and sick industry, a reminder to remain himself, not to be driven by others’ beliefs, but just his own. Sometimes you see him struggling between the appearance he needs to sustain and the wild spirit he hides that would just like to explode in a waterfall of colors. You know that tattoo is a way to keep his true self even if not everyone gets to see him.

“Thinking about making one?” he asks

“Maybe. Should we make one together?”

Jaejoong lights up at that. “Yes! Yes! Yes! That’s a wonderful idea Min”

You chuckle, it is so easy to make him happy, you realise. Jaejoong is such an easy person to love.

Yunho enters the kitchen just then, and some yawns and good mornings later, you are all on the table eating.
You watch them together, and you can’t help thinking how can two things melt together so well like these two. Everything they do looks like a perfect combination of moves, as if they were made to be one the complementary part of the other: Jaejoong raises his face and looks up the same moment Yunho lowers his and their looks meet and they smile and everything feels lighter.

Jaejoong is good for Yunho, he easies the other, showing him a whole new world beyond responsibilities and work. He also helps him balance the importance of things: how it can be good to replace an hour of extra practice with a night out with some friends, how it can be fun to run away from a company dinner to kiss in some forgotten alleys in the frozen winters of Seoul. Somehow, Jaejoong makes Yunho a little bit more alive, a little bit more the kid they both still are.

At the same time, though, Yunho is perfect for Jaejoong because he gives him a harbor when the multiple trips in the open sea become too much and all the other needs is a place to come home to, a place to rest and feel loved and Yunho is always there to catch him. When life gets too full and too complex, too confused, he helps keep Jaejoong centered on what truly matters: how gaining some more fans isn’t worth starving himself, how he doesn’t need to be loved by the whole world when his family and friends, the ones closest to him do love him to death.

Sometimes you wonder if you’ll ever find someone like that, or if their kind of love is something too unique to be felt by the whole common world. You still don’t know yet, but you sure dream about it.

*** 

November is a month you’d always considered too bland, a short interlude between the warm colors of autumn and the frozen snowflakes of winter. A standalone month on its own, lacking festivities, lacking anything that could characterize that short amount of time that preceded Christmas celebrations but still brought the first hints of a colder weather.
For you November had always been an item to tick out of the year check-list, weeks of wind and rain and hot teas, of frozen bathroom floors and too thin blankets, of staring out the window wishing time could go faster.
This year, however, November comes with great joy.

You’re sitting with the others in the big Olympic stadium in the middle of Seoul, a place so full of artists that makes your mind go blank. You’re placed near one of the stairs, pretty close to the central stage and from your spot you see so many people coming and going, switching places, mentally practicing their performances. Everybody is nervous, it’s an important event, one that will celebrate the best albums and singers of the year, but at the same time you notice most of the people there are genuinely happy. You are.
You look at your side and you see Yunho scrutinizing the whole stadium: he squeezes his eyes and it almost seems like he’s trying to memorize the names and faces of everyone there, like he’s taking his notes on the competition.
Then you look at your right and there’s Jaejoong who’s looking like a child full of energy that can’t just sit still. He makes you smile, his positive energy so contagious and soon you’re thrilling with excitement too.
They have been hard months, the past few ones. You’ve practiced and practiced, registered so many interviews, took part in so many shows and fled back and forth Korea and Japan so many times that in your head the two languages are kind of mixing by now. Sometimes you’re ordering some food in Japan and suddenly all you can remember is kimchi and jjajangmyeon; other times you are home in Korea and you go out to buy some clothes and you find yourself greeting the staff in Japanese – konnichiwa, arigato.

However, the new year has also brought exciting work. The new album you’ve released is so great and peculiar and you can’t wait to show the audience today what you worked so hard on. Today you came to conquer, and the more time passes and people start settling down, the more you feel the blood in your veins burning, getting you all powered up.

“What do you think of Sp?” Yunho had asked one morning of so many months ago now.

You had been asked to try to find a name for your new single, something that gave the idea of iness and seduction, something that made you fall under a spell.

“You know, like a combination of spell and , it gets the point, doesn’t it?”

“I think we want to sell our CD to teenagers not to a website” you had replied, chuckling, but straight-forwardly sinking Yunho’s absurd idea.

“Also, that sounds more like than spell so” Yoochun had commented, and you had all laughed at Yunho’s embarrassed face.

“What about Mirotic though?” Jaejoong had then asked. “You know it gives you the same vibe but it’s not too direct”

“And it’s just a made-up word, but Yunho gets his part” he had joked, looking at the other’s face getting another blush.

“Mirotic mhm?” you had tried the name on your lips, seeing how it sounded, and you had loved it immediately.

Yunho had stood up then, hands on the kitchen table and a 32-teeth smile on his face.

“I think we’re ready for this new comeback”

It had been a rollercoaster since then, but the song was getting so popular and you were being so loved that the old days of ramen cups for dinner and 4.00am alarms for practice seemed so far away now. You still had inhuman schedules of course, but now you were finally getting the results you were dreaming of, you were no longer running blindly towards something you couldn’t even get the layout of, you were seeing the goal right in front of you now, and it was so satisfying for it to finally be in reach after years of exhausting blind work.

A sudden movement brings you back from your flow of thoughts reminiscing past days. Yunho is whispering something to Jaejoong but since you happen to be between them – a torture you always wonder what you did to deserve – he stretched out in front of you and Jaejoong did the same in order to listen over the background noise which leaves you there stuck between the two, uncomfortably trying not to listen.
It’s always like that with them. You are painfully aware of their presence at both your sides as you feel like standing in a crossfire of looks and jokes and touches which sometimes makes you wonder if they do realise that there’s someone – you – between them or if their blindside love somehow has the innate power of making you completely disappear. Given their precedents, you’re more inclined on the second one.
Thankfully you all stand up at a certain point to greet some senior artist and when you get back you make sure to claim the spot near Yoochun because you have no intention of spending the whole ing night in the middle of those lovebirds.
In the past you used to think they would be different outside, in public spaces where everyone could see them, feel them, but with time you realized it wasn’t the case. Looking at them even now, you see the same affections they show at home, maybe a little bit less explicit – thank god they never actually kiss – but nothing much changes, if you carefully look at them you see the same love not even hidden.
It makes you smile, how Yunho places his hand in the air and it doesn’t take a second for Jaejoong to fill it with his. How they whisper and laugh and talk and touch as if they were someplace else, far away from the crowd, in a world of their own. It’s like they have this connection that constantly brings them back to each other and lives on their shared time.  

You perform in the end. It’s a medley of different songs, one for each member of the group with two final full exhibition all together.
You love how it turned out: short fragments of your main comebacks telling the story of your group, where you started, where you landed, how you got there. You felt the adrenaline running through your body like an electrical shock and you’re not one to get all fired up, but there’s something about tonight that makes it special, that makes it about you.
You come back to your chairs and you are all laughing, you’re all happy. You turn to look at Yunho and Jaejoong and you swear you see something magical mirrored in their pupils, something emotional, or maybe it’s just the realization of finally been there, here, for real.

“Let’s shake hands if we win” Yunho states, excited, to a confused Jaejoong.

“What?”

“If we win, when we have to go on stage to get the award, let’s stop and shake hands. With the slam and fist, like we used to do when we were trainees”

“In front of everyone?” Jaejoong asks shocked “What do they care” he laughs then.

“They don’t. But we do. I do. You know, as a memorial of old times, of what brought us here”

You see Jaejoong staring deep in the other’s eyes for long moments, memories of two young boys dreaming the big life in their hostel rooms awakening in his mind.

He nods after a while, a big smile making his dimples come out.

“Ok let’s do it”

You look at him and you don’t see the y singer or the young man that’s making half Korea bow down to him. You see a boy in love, eyes wet thinking about the past, melting under the warm gaze of Yunho.

And you do win. Album of the year. It takes you a moment to actually realise it’s your name the one they have called on the microphone. It doesn’t seem real at first and you wait for the dream to finish and wake up to another early morning, but instead Yunho turns to you and screams and hugs you and takes you to the stairs and now everybody is looking at you and screaming and applauding and you’re just so happy.
When they first told you to get to basement room that winter morning of so many years ago, you never thought you would have ever got this far. You dreamed with it, but in your mind you always feared you would have never been good enough to make it.
But you did. And the tears rolling down your face now are tears of joy.
You make your way to the stage, Jaejoong is the first one to get there and he stops in the middle waiting for you. Waiting for Yunho, you realise, as he relax his shoulders and look at the other ready for their memorial-handshake moment.
Yunho gets on stage, eyes still on Jaejoong, steady and determined, but when he gets there, he goes straight to him and hugs him all around, breaking all the previous plans.
And it’s warm, so warm, you think.
You stop on your feet and look at Jaejoong’s body hidden in the other’s long white coat, his face resting on his shoulders and his hands slowly circling Yunho’s back, tightening around him.

And you smile, again, tonight, but the emotions are too much and the happiness you’re feeling – for the win, for yourself, for them – is so big it’s overwhelming and in seconds you’re crying. Not small drops of water adding up at the side of your eyes, but a full liberating cry.
And it’s good, it’s freeing, it’s rewarding.
You accept your award and Yoochun corners your face with his big warm hands trying to calm you down but it’s just too much, you want to say, words still running in your mind looking for their way out. Then you feel the other coming too, hugging you and whispering soft cheers, walking you down, arm in arm, hands in hands, hearts beating the same melody.
And you’re home. Finally, you’ve come home.

*** 

There is something about Jaejoong and Yunho that you never saw. Something that was very much there but that always got shadowed by their lovely affection or their constant caring for the other: midnight apology-dinners, flashy jewelry, make-up . However, despite the recurrent adornments that try to make it pass unobserved, you know it was and it still is very present, as well as you do know it is something extremely dangerous.

You start noticing it years after: obsession and dependence, but a raw and wild kind of. At first you thought it was just the need they both had to know where the other was, how he was, if he was indeed safe, but with time you realise it is something more than that, something possessive, sometimes even self-destructive, an unstoppable desire to always be together.
With time you realise the unhealthiness of it all.

Of Jaejoong locking himself in a room for days when Yunho is away visiting home, not eating, not speaking, just staring at the blank space between the bed and the roof of Yunho’s bedroom. You remember him playing with pens, trying to write something of the uneven surface of some scrabbled pieces of paper, only to get mad and rip the whole thing out some after. You remember the dull eyes he had, the absent mind, the lost energy, and you remember his smile too, once the other came back, how his face glowed with life in a blink of an eye the moment Yunho opened the door and shouted “I’m back!”. Jaejoong had thrown himself out of the bed so quickly he had fallen down and you saw him crawling to reach the door as fast as he could, slamming it open and jumping on Yunho taking him down with his weight. They ended up laughing together and hugging and kissing, but you do remember the tears they both had hidden somewhere in their eyes.
And that was the first time you asked yourself how. How could a few days apart hurt them so much when they shared their whole life together? And maybe that was it, the reason behind it all, the fact that they had always been so together – too much, if you asked him – that they couldn’t- they didn’t even know how to live apart.

Of Yunho always be around Jaejoong, every move he makes, every step he takes. At home, outside, with friends, during interviews, during concerts, Yunho is always there, behind, beside, you don’t even know how he does it, how he always finds a spot where to be in order to always stay in the other’s field of view. And Jaejoong loves every second of it. But you see how unhealthy that bond is becoming when situations come up in which they aren’t allowed to be together: solo shoots, dramas, recordings, family meeting, friends sleepovers. The day the album collaboration between Jaejoong and Yoochun was announced you swear you saw Yunho losing some heartbeats, not because he wasn’t happy about it – Yunho lives for making other people happy – but because of the inevitable time they would have had to spend apart.
You think it’s something they have no control over, and that’s what scares you the most: how drunk they are on each other without even realizing it. And you’re happy for them, you are, you always have, but you also smell danger and somehow you start having a bad feeling for the future.
Like that of an imminent crash or a sudden collapse.

*** 

And you were right.
You don’t really know how it happens or what caused it directly, you just know one day you wake up and something feels different. The air smells different – no coffee, even though it’s a free day –, the atmosphere in your small apartment is different, so heavy for such an early hour, and even the way the little birds are singing on the railing of the windows sounds different: so feeble, so dull.
The moment you woke up to the screaming in the living room, you knew something was off. This never happened before, never in six long years, because you all knew that whichever reason you had to be mad so early in the morning, those few hours of sleep were all the others had and no one had the right to take them away.
However, for how irritated and angry you could – and should – be at the moment, you don’t feel mad, you aren’t tired either, but there is this wild feeling running through your body you take a minute to notice and some more to recognize it, but in the end you just know it. It’s fear. A deep and strong kind of fear, one of those that takes your breath away and makes it difficult to move, to think, to even feel properly. And you know the cause, you’ve known for days, for months even, but maybe you were too scared to face it and now you find yourself submitted to the dark feeling which makes it even more difficult to deal with the whole situation.
You lie to yourself when you say you don’t know what’s going on, because you clearly do, but at the same time you’re not because you would never have expected something so big, something so painful to actually happen to you, and you don’t really know what was the source or how it developed either. You know, but you don’t know. And what’s for sure you didn’t expect it to increase and explode so quickly and right in front of your eyes.

When Jaejoong said he wanted to leave the company, a month or so ago, the air around the kitchen table where you were eating the few calories you were allowed for the day just froze. You remember Yunho dropping his fork, Yoochun raising his gaze and Junsu gulping for the surprise, but all you could think of in that moment was no. Yours was an instinct and sudden reaction, like those of wild animals in danger which do not have time to think, but just act for their survival. No. The dream, the promise, the life you shared for so many years weren’t breaking just because Jaejoong was tired and decided to give up. No. You weren’t saying goodbye to another friend like it happened with Hangeng because you knew that once you were out the company, there was no going back. No. Jaejoong was too important. Dong bang shin ki were too important. Your ing life was too important to suddenly change like that, to suddenly fall apart like that. No. Tears started forming in your eyes, one after the other waiting to be shed.
No.
No.
No.
You remember standing up and turning around, running to your room so fast as if you were running for your life, which sadly enough you kind of were.
Denying reality wasn’t going to make Jaejoong change his mind but maybe if you denied it long enough the fantasy you started living in from that day on could have become your new reality.

The months that followed were a mix of “maybe we should” and “maybe we shouldn’t”, of Yunho leader-talking every member with his honor and sense of what was right and what was wrong, but really at that point you couldn’t even distinguish the night from the day, let alone think about what was the right thing for the band, the right thing for Jaejoong, the right thing for you. You could see Yoochun and Junsu were thinking about it too. Jaejoong hadn’t just suddenly gone crazy, there were reasons – and solid ones – behind his decision and he had only had the courage to speak up what all of you were secretly feeling. You were working harder and harder every day and getting nothing but dust. It wasn’t right. You all knew it. You also all knew you signed an eleven-years contract which meant if you wanted to leave the company, the only way to do so was suing it.

However, nothing of it actually developed in your head.
You had always been regarded as the realistic one, the one with his feet stamped on earth, but when hell was released, you just turned off your mind, blocking yourself out of whichever apocalypse was about to happen. And that’s why the day you woke up to screaming in the background you knew reality was coming at you asking for the price of having denied it for so long.         

You get up and sit on the bed, staring at the texture of your blanket trying to find an answer in the multitude of lines and colors that mix in the unusual design. You keep looking, so deeply and so intensely for several minutes, lost in the flow of thoughts you keep trying to give a logic to. How did you come this far. How the walls of your home suddenly became a cage. How could something so beautiful as your friendship, as your group, as your love become the subject of so much sufferance. You keep looking for an answer in things that cannot talk and the frustration of not getting any just results in you arching your toes and slamming you fists on the blanket, as if the anger unrelished could take you back to what you once had.
But reality comes sweeping in again on the low notes of background fights and you decide it is time to finally face it. Regardless of the outcome, it is time you all make your decision so who wants to stay can accept the new reality and try to go on and who wants to get out can finally break free.
You stand up and look at Junsu who meets your gaze with a frightened one. You stare into his deep and dark eyes, but it doesn’t take long to see the uncertainty and fear behind them too. Nobody has an answer yet. That’s why you need to talk.
You take his hand and you both make your entry in the living room where you’re met with the broken and non-reassuring results of the ongoing discussion: Yoochun is sitting still on one of the kitchen chairs, looking at them but getting lost in the anger and disagreements that has been filling the air since earlier that morning; the sofa pillows are scattered all over the floor, unwilling victims of a way too violent fight, but what really unsettles you is the body language: fists clenched, jaws wired shut, postures firm and such hurt and angry expressions that make your inside turn upside down.

Yunho and Jaejoong are still yelling at one other, each of them firm on his position and beliefs and unwilling to compromise now. They both have reasons to choose on one side or the other: Yunho believes in his dream, in the dream they once all shared, and he doesn’t want all their efforts to be vain. They worked hard and they sacrificed so much to give up now. He knows if they sue the company, they will likely be erased from the music industry and after all they’ve lost, he doesn’t want to risk that. But Jaejoong talks about life, about rights, about making things fair. He believes in their dream, but he also believes in a bigger goal, in a future that doesn’t have to be so dull and grey and dark when music can be so much lighter and easier and healthier. Jaejoong puts on the table their health, how the company is making them work unimaginable hours per day, how they haven’t rest a day since their debut, how they haven’t had a proper meal in so long, how while their bodies are getting thinner and thinner, someone’s pocket is getting bigger. And Yunho doesn’t really know how to reply to that because he was the first one to see that, to notice how Jaejoong’s skin was now so light, the layout of his bones so clear through the pale complexion. He was the one who sneaked treats at night so that they wouldn’t faint the next morning, who talked to the managers to get one more hour of sleep or one less of practice, that they were good enough and they didn’t have to die to prove that.
There seem to be a mutual understanding of that.
Jaejoong closes his eyes and let some tears roll down freely. He’s so tired. Of practicing, of working, of fighting. Singing used to be his dream, but now it has become some sort of hell, a prison he got himself locked into.
Yunho comes closer and hugs him. It’s a strange hug, you notice. They’re both still mad and hurt and the fight is still there in the air, but they also need a moment of peace, a moment to put down weapons and recharge and that’s how they do it, that’s how they always did it: with each other. They find the strength they need to survive in the other’s warmth, in a hug that smells so much of despair but that maybe hides a little hint of hope too.
It almost seems like there’s a meeting point between the opposite opinions and plans of action that ran through the house for weeks, it seems like maybe the common ground that unites them all – their safety – can overcome the secondary issues that are dividing you all: money, responsibility, contracts, music independence.

But there’s a fundamental difference between Yunho and Jaejoong, one that keeps them inevitably apart in the end, and it is freedom.

Yunho lets his freedom been guided by others’ rules – his parents, the company – and gradually becomes a slave of their own interests. He’s not stupid or weak or whatever one might think when looking at the situation, it’s more that Yunho values his word, promises and respect them over anything else and so he lives, honoring what he swore to, even if the promises he made when he was just a naïve child are going to bring him to his grave. In the same way, he follows his parents’ orders and wishes because they were the one who brought him up and in a way he feels responsible for them, as if he had to pay them back with the power of deciding the course of his life. Yunho is not stupid, but sometimes you believe his sense of honor is going to be the death of him.

On the other hand, Jaejoong is a free spirit and a wild one. He lives by whatever he desires, whatever he feels at the moment and no one is truly able to cage his burning soul anywhere. He flies and falls, he runs and hides, and one can only follow him this much before realizing Jaejoong is just like that, an off-course compass so full of life he always has to find a new place where to unleash all his feelings. However, this doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to settle down, it’s more that he is the one that will decide when and with who to do so, who’s truly able to fully understand him.
Jaejoong lives by respect too, but he doesn’t let it come in the way of what’s right for him, what’s right for the people he cares about. When bitten, Jaejoong doesn’t bow down: he fights back.

It’s when you realise it that you finally decide to enter the discussion because you know now that there won’t ever be a solution that will make everyone happy. You have always seen them as a single entity that in between hid the different sparkles of each one of them and even though it was so difficult to see them apart back then, one always behind the other, always following, always a step forward, now it scares you how defined they are as individuals. Maybe it’s just because you’ve all grown up. It has been more than six years since you first met them and when you did you all were barely children looking out at the real world for the first time. Now you have all matured up, you’ve all found your way to see things, to live things, you’re all a whole person and not just scraps of ideals and emotions rounded up in a teenage body.
And that’s why you know things won’t end up easy and happy.

“We need to stop this; it’s not getting us anywhere”

The room is quite now. Everybody turned to look at you, Jaejoong and Yunho disentangled from their broken hug, Junsu sat on the pillow-free sofa and Yoochun moved his chair a little closer.

“I-” you start, but it’s hard to find the right words, it’s hard to shatter your world once for all. “I think it’s time we all take sides”

“For everyone’s sake” you add, “this can’t go on forever”

There’s a very long silence after that, scanned by the frenetic rhythms of your hearts and the growing fear of a split nobody wished for.

Yunho is the first one to speak.

“I’m staying” he says, and you can see Jaejoong crouching on the ground, tears rolling down more than ever because you know he is leaving, everybody does, and the clear consequences of it are crashing down on him harder than ever.

But Yunho goes on.

“I’m staying because I believe in us. I believe in the name we built ourselves from scratch, in the power we have, in the energy we spread, in the love we share. I’m staying because I don’t want to lose it, I don’t want all these years to be just a vague memory of some teenage girl. I want to stand on stage 10, 20 years from now and see the same teenage girl with her children and her husband and I want to be able to say that’s still the same us. That’s still dong bang shin ki. If I go, I will lose that. But I know things aren’t fair now. I know we’re being exploited for nothing, I know we’re barely getting by. That’s why I won’t force anyone of you to stay.”

He looks down at Jaejoong, tears in his eyes. “Because I love you. All of you. And I know this isn’t what we deserve, and I can’t promise you things will get better – they haven’t – so I can’t tell you what to do. Of course, I would love for all of us to stay and keep on being together because we’re a family and families stick together, but I also know we all have different priorities and different breaking points which is what makes us unique and what I love about us. I don’t want any of us going beyond their breaking point because for how beautiful this all is, doing that is not worth it. You all are the most important thing and you should live and decide by that. I just hope everyone will find their way and I hope it will be a good one because we all ing deserve it.”

By now Yunho is crying too, body aligned to the wall, a running nose and a long waterfall of tears rolling down his cheeks. It’s weird to see Yunho crying, he never does and it just emphasizes the gravity of the situation.
 

“I just can’t do that anymore” Jaejoong cries out between tears and sobs “I can’t” and Yunho crouches down with him and hugs him and with his head resting on the other’s he starts soothing his body trying to calm him down. But Jaejoong doesn’t, like always, when he starts pouring his heart out it’s difficult to stop the hurricane of emotions he keeps locked inside. And beyond the watery mirror your eyes have become, you see some of their old warmth too, something that goes past the insecurities and fears and differences, something that keeps them locked together despite the world coming down on them.

“I believe in this dream too, I swear I do” Jaejoong says “I just can’t go on like this anymore. I can’t ask for permission every time I want to write a song or to say something publicly. I can’t turn my back on all the injustice and inequality that’s running in this company. And I’m grateful, I swear I am for all they’ve done for us, but we’ve done quite a lot for them too. And when I pass the hallways, when I open dance rooms or studios all I see is pain and sufferance and music shouldn’t be like this. Living your dream shouldn’t be like this. Not for us and not for all the boys and girls dreaming of becoming artists. When people in the streets stop us and tell us how they want to become singers just like us, we tell them to pursue their dreams and work hard because it’ll be worth it, but is it really? ‘Cause lately all I want to tell them is to run away as fast as they can, at least from here”

Jaejoong takes a pause before going on.

“I want to do something. Not just for us, but for all the kids that want to sing who don’t deserve to die from it. I love us-” Jaejoong feels the tears coming up again but goes on between the sighs “I love us and I am sorry for breaking us apart, for not being strong enough. I’m so sorry for making you choose, for bringing this down on us, but I can’t breathe anymore.”

You look at Jaejoong and for the first time in a while you don’t see your bandmate, the guy who basically raised you for the past few years. You see a kid with a dream and a ed-up reality, and you see a boy trying so hard to pretend to be ok that he forgets to be ok in the first place. Jaejoong is a very fragile essence: behind the walls and the strong and rocky façade he showcases the world, he is made of glass. And Jaejoong needs the love from people to keep that glass intact, not to break apart as well as he needs to express himself in order to keep the fire and wind that build his glass going. Without any of the two, the very core of Jaejoong starts cracking. And the fact that he’s willing to sacrifice and bet his need of feeling loved gives you a clear evidence of the pain he’s been into for so long.

Yoochun is the first one to reply and take sides.

“I am with Jaejoong” he says “It’s just too much. I- We live exhausted all day, every day, and get nothing from it. That’s just not how it’s supposed to be. And it’s not about the money itself, as he said, it’s about what’s right, for us and for everyone else”

Yunho nods, showing his acceptance. But you can see him starting to wonder if everyone is going to leave him. Which he would accept, of course, but his whole life would suffer irremediably from it. Jaejoong just hides more in Yunho’s warmth, as if he was taking everything he could from it now that he could and save it for the future when he would mostly need it. Surprisingly enough, Jaejoong hates conflict, especially with loved ones and maybe that’s why he’s just taking shelter in Yunho’s hug now, as if his arms were large enough and strong enough to protect him and them all from the raging storm outside.

You start to wonder about what you will do, which side you’ll choose. It’s hard, mostly because you know that with the choice of staying or leaving, you’re choosing something else too: Yunho or Jaejoong. Nobody is talking about that because it’s already so hard, but it is inevitable that once the choices are made publicly, there will be walls of bureaucracy and journalists and attorneys between you all which will turn everything so much more intense and difficult. It’s not a light-hearted choice, and you know it’s not a choice you’ll ever be 100% sure of because the mere thought of having to choose between them and not them is something you’ll never overcome.

You look at Junsu who’s still uncertain too and that keeps staring at Yunho and Jaejoong as if they had the right answer for him. Somehow, you know he’ll choose leaving too. Junsu was born for music, it is something that comes natural to him and staying will always mean to put the company first and music second.
What you hate about that it’s that that makes you in charge of the final choice, of how things will be from then on. And you hate it, because you’re just a child and you don’t have the wisdom to decide something important like that.
Yunho knows that too and he looks at you with reassuring eyes, as if he was telling you to choose freely, not to be biased, not to be influenced by the others.

You come closer to them, sitting on the ground, you have this need of feeling them, as if having them all around you will make things easier. Yunho puts a hand on your shoulder and smiles a little; Jaejoong moves in the hug and takes your hand, squeezing it. Somehow, they take you back those many years ago on that winter morning when you found yourself spying on them from the practice room door. Even though times were different and so was your relationship, you realise the warmth that has always characterized them is still the same.

You think of all the possible outcomes that can result from the choice you’ll make: staying, leaving, Yunho, Jaejoong, 1 to 4, 2 to 3, alone, together, music, dancing, ballads, high notes, low notes, friendship, love.
And in the end, you do decide. You make that choice thinking about the future, about how to have the least collateral damage from the hurricane that’s about to be relished. You think about how to have a future for everyone, how to have a solution that will make everyone happy, al least somehow. You do know you’re all talking about a consolation kind of happiness, something to be content with in comparison to how bad it could have turned out to be. You all know the happiness you shared the past few years won’t ever be the same. However, you do hope that someday in the future you’ll find a way to be ok again, to be together again, somehow.
You decide to stay and you look Jaejoong in the eyes and you know he understands you and that he accepts your choice, but you also see how much it hurts him to give up on you.
And you love Jaejoong, god he’s one of your favourite people in the world and you don’t have many. Jaejoong with his way of bulldozing into your life like it was anything. You kinda hated him at first. Maybe not hated, but you were indeed annoyed by his attitude. But he grew on you with his kind manners and his sweet voice and everything that makes Jaejoong Jaejoong, even that insane instinct to end up broken he always has. You don’t want to let go, it physically hurts you to let go of his hand, it hurts to think of a life without him in it. You tell yourself you already lived a life without him, for so many years, and you were happy and carefree, but you wonder how can you do so after having had him in your life for so long and so deeply and after having loved him so much.

You guess it’s something you’ll have to get used to: a life without him. At the same time, though, you wonder if it is something you’ll be able to survive.

[end of part two]

N.b:

I am so sorry to publish the sequel of the first chapter so late and I really apologize for who was waiting for it, but I haven’t been inspired a lot to write recently and I didn’t want to give you a half-assed chapter just to take it off a check-list. I hope you enjoy it and I swear – this time for real – to publish the third and final part as soon as possible.

I just wanted to say that the fic is centered on the characters of Jaejoong, Yunho and Changmin and that’s why we mostly see their points of view and everything is related to them. It is an introspectic kind of fic so its point is not to tell how things went or what happened but how certain people reacted and felt them. This is why for example we only see the lawsuit extremely focused on them.