“I’m not doing this,” Yoochun says flatly, and Jaejoong fights not to roll his eyes, “if you think I’m handing my best compositions to some little punk with pink hair, you’ve got something coming.”

“Yoochun,” Jaejoong sighs, long sufferingly, and Yunho laughs softly, leaning his chin on Jaejoong’s shoulder. “You need to get your compositions out there. This is some of your best stuff. It deserves to be on the radio.”

“For the hundredth and one time, hyung, then you could sing them,” Yoochun grumbles, “you have a ginormous fan base, your last album was disgustingly successful and surprise, you actually can sing.”

Jaejoong frowns, shaking his head, “you know you’d hate that, Yoochun-ah. You didn’t write them as rock ballads.”

He runs his fingers down the lovely, musical chords with a wistful sigh. ”You need someone pure for this. Someone who’ll carry the words the way you want them to sound. Naïve, sad, a little hopeful.”

“Give him a shot,” Yunho says, turning his laptop to Yoochun where a Youtube video of “XIA Tarantallegra Tour in Nagoya” is playing.

Yoochun crosses his arms with a grimace, as he watches the pink-haired figure bounce on stage, falling in perfect unison with his backup dancers. The music starts, and Yoochun immediately hates it. It’s auto-tuned within an inch of its life, heavy on the electronics, and a deep thrumming bass pounding so loudly in the background it distracts everyone from its utter and complete lack of musical substance. The crowd of teenagers roars as the dancers perform a set of complicated moves, XIA, the main focus. Despite his vigorous dancing, Yoochun snidely notices, his voice never wavers. It’s perfect.

A little too perfect.

“Someone who can’t even give his fans the decency of singing live doesn’t impress me.”

“He’s a pretty solid dancer though,” Yunho interjects unhelpfully, eyes still glued to the screen. He’s even starting to bop a little to the music.

Typical, Yoochun thinks, fond and exasperated, choreographers.

“Hey,” Jaejoong says reaching over to shut the laptop before Yoochun smashes the screen or something equally dramatic, “just give him a shot. He’s good, Yoochun-ah, they don’t call him the voice of Asia for nothing.”

“One meeting,” Yoochun says, huffily, gathering up his compositions, “and only a meeting. I’m not promising anything.”

When Yoochun leaves, closing the studio door with a determined slam, Changmin turns to the two of them with a bemused expression.

“Kinda reminds you of someone doesn’t he?”

“Shut up,” Jaejoong says and Yunho laughs into his hair, the sound happy and sweet.

The SM Artist building looks the same as it did ten years ago - white washed rooms imposing and somehow always managing to smell like fresh paint. Every year hundreds of bright-eyed, eager trainees shuffle in these doors and reemerge as soulless, manufactured pop artists.

Yoochun had been one of them. Standing in the fluorescent-lit rehearsal room reminds him of his first time at SM Entertainment so many years ago when he’d mistakenly bet his entire life savings on a one way plane ticket to Seoul, believing that it was the way out of his trailer park existence in ia, USA.

He’d stuck it out for four years but nothing had changed and he’d known better than to stay, disillusioned by SM’s complete disregard for his musical compositions in favor of churning out predictable SMP hits with guaranteed mass market appeal. That’s why he had left — the conformity, the heavily choreographed routines, and the overwhelming feeling that he was going to suffocate under it all.

The past ten years hadn’t been easy, but he’d loved music too much to give it up, and one lucky day he had met Kim Jaejoong, a kid from the suburbs with a chip on his shoulder the size of Alaska and dreams of being a rockstar. And now he stands in SM again, this time an award winning composer instead of a failed trainee.

Despite his success, Yoochun finds himself ill at ease as we walks down the halls to the artist building. Luckily, the hallway is empty on a Saturday afternoon, except for one room. Room B.

It’s the tinkling of the piano that draws Yoochun to the space, and without thinking, he pushes the door open.

The only occupant in the room is a young looking boy with floppy blonde hair sitting alone at the piano. He’s bent over, his fingers dancing across the black and ivory keys. The chords are simple but sweet, the notes falling into a lovely melody.

When Yoochun steps in he glances up with a surprised look, and stands quickly falling into a bow.

“Hello,” the boy says uncertainly, “can I help you?”

Yoochun scritches, “I’m. Um. I heard you playing.”

Yoochun is about to say something else, but the music sheets, smudged in grey pencil catch his attention. “Are you composing?

The boy nods, his cheeks flushing an adorable shade of pink. “It’s nothing. Just something that I’ve been playing with. It’s been in my head for a while.”

“Mind if I take a look?”

The boy shakes his head with a wry smile but scoots over. “It’s not very good.”

“It’s a dance track,” Yoochun says scanning the notes with slight amusement, then he frowns noting the difficulty of the piece, the complicated running chords, “you wrote this on a piano?”

The boy shrugs, holding his hands up almost defensively, “it’s what sells nowadays, right?”

“Yeah,” Yoochun nods, feeling a slight pang of sympathy. “Right.”

They sit in silence for a moment and the boy stares at his hands self consciously and doesn’t say anything more. So Yoochun smooths the score out on the music desk, poises his fingers over the keys and says, “can I?”

The boys nods, and Yoochun tests the opening bars, they slide over his fingers as the rich sound of the piano fills the room. It’s a mid tempo melody, and suddenly Yoochun feels something anxious and crawling under his skin, begging to be, to play, to add more.

“Can I try something?” Yoochun asks, and the boy grins so wide Yoochun feels blinded by the strength of his smile.

“Go ahead,” he says, unconsciously shifting closer, brushing up against Yoochun as he watches over his shoulder.

Yoochun’s fingers take on a mind of their own, and he slows the piece down, so it’s classical and dramatic, accompanying the rich melody with haunting minor chords so the song is at once melancholic and full of gravitas.

The boy watches, entranced by the new take on the song, and then he begins to sing, airy and wavering at first, but then his voice gains traction as he gains confidence and he really sings, lovely lilting notes, and long, powerful verses, his voice effortlessly cutting and soaring through the air, crystal clear like glass.

It’s intoxicating, and Yoochun has never heard such a pure voice as his in his life, delicate and melodious one moment and strong and powerful the next. It leaves him spellbound.

The song comes to an end, the boy’s voice wavering sweetly on the final note, and Yoochun wishes the moment would never end.

“How was it?” The boy asks, nervously, looking a lot like he’d like Yoochun’s approval.

“Good, great.” Yoochun manages, “you have everything you need.”

“Thank you,” he says softly, then shakes his head a little self deprecatingly, “I mean it will sound a little different with the auto-tuning and the bass but …”

Yoochun watches the way the boy’s eyelashes flutter as he ducks his head, embarrassed.

“Actually, I have something I could use your input on,” Yoochun says just as the boy gets up, because for some inexplicable reason he doesn’t want him to leave, not yet.

“Hmm?”

Yoochun gently pats the seat next to him, and obediently he sits back down again, blinking.

“This is what I’m working on,” Yoochun murmurs, setting them on the piano, and wondering why on Earth he’s showing these to a complete stranger. He’s always been protective of his work, most pieces he doesn’t even show to Jaejoong until they’ve been worked to within an inch of their lives. But he thinks, somehow, his heart hammering in his chest with something like hope, that this boy will understand.

Yoochun settles himself  and plays the notes that have been stuck on his mind for the longest time.

It’s a beautiful love song, delicate and innocent. The kind of love Yoochun has dreamed of his whole life, but that has always felt out of reach.

The boy begins to sing, then, reading effortlessly off his score, soft and tentative at first. But then along the way his voice picks up, and he really gets it. And then he’s singing, singing it like it’s his heart breaking, like it’s his world ending, like every emotion Yoochun envisioned for the song, soft and sweet and sad and hopeful all at once.

A silence falls over he studio when the song ends and Yoochun finds himself blinking back tears.

“That’s,” the boy breathes quietly, as if he’s afraid to break the silence, “that’s beautiful.”

“No,” Yoochun says, because it hadn’t sounded anything like that in his head, it had been all wrong, until now. You made it this way.

The boy looks like he’s going to say something else but is cut off by an irritated, “Junsu! Meeting!”

Yoochun looks up to see an older man standing in the doorway, his arms crossed. Wordlessly, Junsu gets up, giving him a shallow bow and trails after him.

Yoochun spends the next three days thinking about the boy. The dark shadows under his eyes, his smile, open and bright like sunlight, his voice, husky and lingering and powerful. His name is Junsu, and that is all Yoochun can remember from the day, that and his smooth hands caressing the piano keys, and his lovely, lovely voice.

“You didn’t go to that meeting with XIAH did you?” Jaejoong asks, exasperated and Yoochun shakes his head, grinning unrepentantly.

“I got sidetracked.”

“This isn’t funny, Yoochun-ah,” Jaejoong glares, as he slices a head of cabbage kimchi which Yoochun promptly steals a handful off,  “he’s huge. You don’t want to offend him. I can’t believe you missed the meeting! They were waiting for an hour. And you don’t know how long I—"

Yunho lifts a comforting hand to Jaejoong’s hip, kissing the side of his neck.

“Omo,” Jaejoong murmurs to his boyfriend, relaxing against Yunho’s strong chest, “please talk some sense into him.”

“It’s fine,” Yoochun says breezily, “because I met a guy.”

“Yoochun,” Jaejoong says warningly, “this really isn’t the time to be worrying about your dating life.”

“No,” Yoochun rolls his eyes, “my singer. I wandered into one of the studio rooms yesterday. He’s young, probably a trainee, but he has the voice of an angel and he sang my , hyung, sang it better than that corporate little puppet XIA ever could.”

Jaejoong looks slightly appeased, “I guess Changmin could pull some strings… did you get his phone number?”

“Nope.”

“Email?”

Yoochun shakes his head and Jaejoong’s voice raises a few decibels higher, in sheer desperation, just shy of screaming. “Do you at least have his name?”

“It’s Junsu.” Yoochun says triumphantly.

“Last name,” Jaejoong presses, but looks a little less homicidal now.

“Uhh…”

“Yah! Park Yoochun do you know how many people work in SM Entertainment? And how many people are named Junsu?”

Jaejoong is about to throw a pot across the kitchen counter, but Yunho gets there first and wrestles it silently out of his hands.

“Relax,” Yoochun says, confidently, “I’ve got it covered.”

Because now he’s heard Junsu’s voice singing his composition, he’s not letting that boy go.

So Yoochun spends the next week prowling outside SM’s training offices with Jaejoong’s spare key, like a stalker. Its no big deal. I mean, he just wakes up and spends every waking moment he has sitting in Room B composing listlessly on their ty piano that’s not even half as good as his baby grand, as swarms of trainees file past the room, peeking and whispering curiously.

He’s in the midst of playing his nineteenth run of the song in the sad desperate hope that a blonde haired angelic boy will come along and just help him record it when…

There’s a hesitant knock on the door and Yoochun looks up to see Junsu, his blonde hair falling floppily around his eyes, in a sweater two sizes too baggy for him, fresh out of hair and make up. If it were anyone else Yoochun might think he looks a little silly, but it’s Junsu so Yoochun thinks he’s heartbreakingly adorable.

“You’re here,” Junsu says, brightly, and his eagerness, painted all over his face fills Yoochun up with instant warmth, “I was hoping I’d see you again.”

He perches on the edge of the piano seat and holds up a CD, “I recorded a demo,” he says shyly, “do you want to listen?”

“I’d love to,” Yoochun says honestly and feels his heart skip a beat when the boy grins and practically bounds over to the speaker to plug in the new track.

They sit by the stereo and Yoochun tries not to smile as Junsu shoots little nervous glances over at him whenever he thinks Yoochun isn’t looking.

The song starts up and the first thing that hits Yoochun is the bass which starts the song hard and heavy, the backing track that just won’t quit and the cheesy heavy breathing thrown in the mix. There is no melody, but some auto-tuned electronic sound effects come in during the chorus, and now Yoochun recognizes the bare skeleton of the melody Junsu had sung to him before, but instead of the solemn, melancholic love song, it’s been sped up and auto-tuned within an inch of it’s life so it’s just another soulless pop hit.

“Well?” Junsu looks so hopeful as the song fades out, and Yoochun doesn’t have the heart to tell him the truth so he just shrugs and says, “it’s good, I think it’ll be really popular.”

Junsu looks at him for a minute, then sighs quietly. “You hate it.”

“I—,” Yoochun begins to protest, then realizes it’s futile because he’s never been good at hiding his emotions.

“It’s a great song,” Yoochun says, “for someone who doesn’t have a Voice. But you, you deserve so much more than a synthesized auto-tuned mess.”

Junsu drops his eyes to the ground with a sigh.

“I used to be able to sing,” he says, his breath hitching, “it was all I had. I lived it, breathed it. I dreamt everyday about coming to Seoul to become a singer. And then one day, I turned thirteen and I just  couldn’t. I couldn’t anymore. The doctors said it was puberty. That it would come back, so I waited. I really did. I played soccer, I joined the dance team. But then six years, six years and it never came back.”

He looks back down at his hands, absentmindedly fiddling with a loose piece of thread on his t-shirt, “and then one day I was so tired, tired of waiting. So I went to the top of the hill outside my high school and I started singing, shouting until my voice was hoarse.”

Yoochun’s heart breaks, watching the way Junsu’s shoulders shake, the way his voice thickens with emotion. “I ruined it. I ruined my voice. I’ve seen so many doctors, and they say it’s permanent. The vocal chord damage.”

He looks at Yoochun with red-rimmed eyes and sniffles, “you’ve heard my voice. It’s husky like I’ve smoked a thousand cigarettes. And the doctors say I’ll never be able to fix that. I’ve destroyed it, this is all it’s ever going to be. I’ll never be able to sing again because I was too impatient to wait another year for puberty to be over. This, auto-tuned, dance tracks, they’re the best I can do.”

“Oh Junsu,” Yoochun says, and cups his chin. “That’s not—"

“It’s.” Junsu says, looking pained, “it’s not the kind of music I intended to sing. I wanted to be in musicals.’ He laughs a little self deprecatingly, “um. But you know, it takes real talent to do that kind of thing.”

“You have real talent.” Yoochun wants to say, but doesn’t. Because Junsu looks so sad and miserable and small. And Yoochun thinks if there’s one person in the world who shouldn’t be ashamed of his voice or talent, it’s Junsu.

“Look at me,” Yoochun says, “your voice, that timber, it’s the best voice I’ve ever heard in my life.”

Junsu bites his lip.

“Junsu,” Yoochun says, quietly, “I want you to sing my song.”