Taemin felt like he was sinking.

After a night full of bawling on the bathroom floor, he woke up to a long message from Jongin. It read:

J: “u missed my showcase last night. it was rly important. i was texting u like crazy. idk if u even care but i was rly depressed. i just wanted u to b there for me once. ur supposed to b my best friend.... i don’t wanna talk to u anymore.. ur mean now and it hurts to b around u. i blocked u on everything and after i send this, im blocking ur number. have fun w ur new frends. bye”

Initially Taemin didn’t take the message seriously. Really? Ending a 10 year friendship over not attending an amateur dance showcase? It was ridiculous.

But it was real. Jongin really had Taemin blocked on social media and through iMessage. Taemin found that after that message was sent, he had no means of sending a reply back. This had never happened before. He was blocked. He didn’t know Jongin to be so cold.

Taemin was angry and sad and confused. He couldn’t see how he had done so wrong for everyone to hate him like this. With Kibum, he’d only said the truth. With Jongin, how was he supposed to turn down backstage at a Baekhyun concert? And with Minho.... ugh, he didn’t even want to think about Minho.

“One day it’s, ’I’m so proud of you! You deserve this!’” Taemin mimicked in his mind. ‘Then the next day, I’m getting dumped. .’

What was Taemin supposed to do? He couldn’t go back in time from before he was noticed. His life had done an uncontrolled 180 since then and Taemin felt his only crime was trying to stay on top of it. His friends—ex-friends—didn’t even realize what Taemin was going through. How could they just... ditch him like that?

That may have been what hurt the most. Save for his arguments with Minho, no one even talked to him or shared how they felt about him “changing.” They just eyed him judgementally, made passive-aggressive comments, and eventually, they collectively decided they were done with him.

Well, if that was the case, he was done with them too.

This confusing array of emotions was debilitating. Taemin knew he needed a distraction. He needed to feel his feet on the ground, and soon.

Taemin told himself there he’d give himself a few days away from everyone/everything to be sad about his friends and his relationship, but after that, he was going to come out appearing unphased. If they were going to stop associating with him, he was going to pretend he didn’t care. 

If he saw Jongin in class or Kibum in the dining hall, he ignored them. In fact, he didn’t even look in their direction. He started sitting with the students who fawned over him instead. At least they appreciated him.

Besides, Taemin had to think about his influence. He couldn’t let his fans see him pressed over people who were just ‘intimidated by his success.’ Since he was alone now, he had to be even stronger, to support himself.

And he wasn’t completely alone. He still had Sungwoon and Ravi. Though he wasn’t as tight with them as he’d been with his initial group, they’d still grown to be good friends with Taemin. Since the breakup happened, Taemin doubled down on time spent with his new bffs, After Midnite.

Taemin started hanging out with After Midnite everyday. They went everywhere: malls, clubs, parks, parties, studios. They were practically inseparable, which relieved Taemin.

Ravi and Sungwoon loved publicity, so most places the trio went became a photo op. They usually tweeted where they were or were going to be, which was something very new to Taemin. Before this, he barely went out at all, but now, people were expecting him at events. Needless to say, it was something he had to adjust to. But more or less, he adjusted well.

Safe to say whatever lounge, bar, or nightclub they were at, so were cameras and/or tons of people who adored the group. And for a guy who originally claimed to have hated clubs, he’d started going to a lot of them. 

Maybe it was the loud music or the strobing lights or the guys and girls all over him, but clubbing served as a great distraction for Taemin over the weeks following his breakup. Consistently, he would go out with the boys, drink, rave and have a grand old time, getting wasted every night. Only occasionally, he thought that maybe it wasn’t so healthy to be pumping his veins with alcohol every day of the week, but it just felt too damn good. 

And who cared about that anyway? He was young. He was popular. He was going to finally be that kind of guy AND he was going to show it off. He never missed a beat when it came to documenting his newfound lifestyle, with nearly nightly uploads to social media.

Now, the uploads were important, maybe the most important part of the night. While Taemin was partying to help him forget, he still always had this nagging in the back of his mind. He secretly hoped that his old friends were keeping up with his activities. He wanted to make them jealous. He wanted them to see his new extravagant lifestyle and be sorry they ever dropped him.

It was a nice illusion, his new extravagant lifestyle. The party animal. It looked very real. But it was just a facade. Once he was home and sober, away from all the noise and people he returned to a realer state. A more sad, more lonely state. 

Truthfully, Taemin hated being alone these days. There was just too much running through his mind. It was a billion things, all on loop.

He had his social responsibilities: check Twitter and Instagram feed, reply to fan messages, post content on his platforms, post an ad for whatever paid promotion he was plugging that week. 

There were academic responsibilities: do research for paper, finish homework, study for exams, practice dances for class.

And then there were duties like having to call his parents back because they just would not stop calling to brag to him... about him.

All the while, he was handling a breakup and separation from his friends, having to appear like he was okay. 

It was stressful and tiring, and the worst part was that he couldn’t escape his obsessive thoughts of hopelessness and worthlessness. Especially when there was no one there to pull him out of the loop. He started to become more sad, more distracted, more irritable. More dependant on the nightlife scene for escape.

He hated to admit, but he truly did miss the days when it was just him and his three friends having coffee together after classes. Taemin felt extremely guilty about what he’d said that day... calling himself and his friends losers. He didn’t even really mean that, it just came out. He even tried to ta