One night, Sunggyu made Woohyun sit in front of him on the bed. The other members were gone to sajangnim’s house. He had a slight suspicion that the leader had something to do with this but the thought seem insignificant with the weight of the elder’s gaze on him.

He fidgeted in his place and played with his phone, flipping and twirling it in his hands, in sync with the somersault in his belly. Anxiety and dread rolling deep in his belly and he could feel the bile rising up his throat..

Sunggyu was the one to break the silence first.

“Woohyun-ah,” the elder addressed him and Woohyun raised his eyes from his phone but his hands didn’t stop fidgeting with the device. Sunggyu’s voice attentive, careful. Like the one he used when talking to the CEO or like the one he used when the MC threw a rather risky question to the leader. During those times, he spoke in a sift manner

Woohyun was not one to read fictions that toyed with the idea of the relativity of time but he swore his world stopped.

It took him a while to realize he had dropped his phone on the floor. Woohyun looked up from his lap but the lights were turned off and the moonlight from the window wasn’t much of a help.He hated how the moonlight fell on Sunggyu’s back and forming a halo around him.

Sunggyu looked beautiful, had always been and he still was while ripping his heart out.

Woohyun’s hands were shaking, fidgeting and wringing his fingers and he noted how cold they were. Maybe he had saw it coming, from how Sunggyu had been acting strange these past few weeks. From how he stood far to the side during the schedule. From how the leader stiffened every time he came near and brush their shoulders, Fingers retract when Woohyun reached for his hands. Sunggyu’s eyes looking at him but not actually looking.

On nights after that, he would wake up in the dead of the night with his shirt sticking to his back while that one sentence echo in his head like the bells in the shrine. Each echo slashing his heart deeper and deeper until he didn’t know what was left out of the red muscle.

Sunggyu’s face during that night tattooed on the back of his eyelids. The room was dark but there has been enough nights for him to memorize the curves and lines of Sunggyu’s face that he knew Sunggyu was not looking at him anymore.