The alarm goes off. Taemin doesn’t feel rested at all, but at least his headache is gone. The sheets rustle, the alarm is silenced; the memory of their argument leads Taemin to hold his breath, to pretend to be asleep still, because he knows he will have to face Kibum’s justified anger otherwise.

“Yah, get up.” Kibum’s voice is sleep-rough, but not noticeably angry.

“Five minutes,” Taemin says, not because he needs it but because that’s what he always says, and he waits for Kibum to respond like he always does; with a long-suffering sigh and a kiss pressed to his head, a gentle hand running through his hair.

He gets one but not the other. Kibum heaves a sigh which is not altogether affectionate, kicks his way out of the blankets and goes into the bathroom. Taemin sits up, fully awake. His earlier assessment is wrong; Kibum is most definitely still angry. He kicks himself as he recalls the hateful words he’d thrown at Kibum yesterday over so small an issue. As much as his friends and family like to poke fun at his absent-mindedness, he’s not the sort to intentionally disrespect the rules in someone else’s house.

Breakfast, he thinks. That’s how he’ll apologise.

Comme des and Garcons come running when he exits the bedroom and he takes a moment to pet them both. They follow him, running between his legs and whining for more attention, as he get the coffee going and gathers ingredients for a simple yet satisfying breakfast. For carb-conscious Kibum, he decides to make eggs and an open-faced peanut butter and banana sandwich, and for himself, his usual breakfast of chocolate cereal in milk. He hums a song to himself as he cracks two eggs into a pan, taking care to keep the yolks whole because that’s how Kibum likes them, and lets them fry as he reaches for his cereal-

-only to find his fingers grasping at air. His cereal is missing. Did he run out and not notice, Taemin wonders. It’s certainly happened before, but he definitely recalls the box being more than half-full yesterday. Did Kibum hide it or throw it away? As soon as the thought occurs to him, Taemin dismisses it; Kibum is not so petty or cruel.

As he’s mulling over the mystery of his missing cereal, Kibum steps out of the bedroom. He’s already dressed, which is unusual because he likes to eat breakfast in his pyjamas so that his clothes don’t smell of food. His eyes widen with surprise when they land on the kitchen. Taemin nervously waits for his response, hoping that the plating of the eggs and toast and the relative un-messiness of the kitchen will be enough to earn Kibum’s forgiveness.

“You’re still here?”

That’s unexpected. “Where else would I be?”

Kibum’s eyes narrow and his gaze becomes sharp. “At home. What kind of question is that?”

“Hyung.” Taemin’s heart sinks. It’s clear enough that Kibum is not just angry, but furious. “I’m sorry. You can have breakfast, and I’ll clean everything up and-”

“We agreed it wouldn’t become like this,” Kibum says, cutting him off. “I let you sleep over so that you don’t drive when you’re tired, but…” he trails off as Taemin tries to figure out what the hell he’s talking about “…today it’s breakfast and tomorrow it’ll be you spending the weekend over and before we know it, we’ll have gone way past casual and inevitably someone will get hurt.”

There is nothing Taemin can say in response. He doesn’t know whether he heard Kibum right or whether Kibum has gone mad or he has gone mad or whether Kibum is breaking up with him-

“Thanks for breakfast, but you really should go now. I’ve put your clothes out on the bed.”

It’s so unfair, but Taemin can’t think of any way to defend himself. With tears clouding his vision and his heart racing, he dresses in the clothes Kibum laid out, grabs his keys from the key-holder by the door and leaves. Kibum doesn’t even bother to see him off.

*

Something is off. Taemin’s flat looks nothing like it should. He barely lives here anymore, but now he sees his clothes thrown over the couch and food on the kitchen counter. His reading glasses are on his coffee table, not the nighstand in Kibum’s bedroom where he does most of his reading these days. There are post-its and schedules stuck to his fridge which should have been tacked to Kibum’s schedule board instead. It feels like someone else is living here, but instead of just occupying his house, they’ve taken over as if they were him.

His phone rings. It’s Euisoo-hyung, calling to say that he’ll be in the garage in ten minutes. Taemin robotically promises to be down in time.

In his bedroom, Taemin finds more evidence of the intruder. His bed is a mess; the sheets are crumpled, the duvet is piled at the bottom of the bed and there is an indent on the pillow. His cupboards are full of clothes he remembers storing in Kibum’s flat.

He’s late to see his manager, though only by five minutes or so. Taemin thinks that’s eminently forgivable considering everything he’s gone through today.

“You look rough,” Euisoo says, peering at him. “Is everything okay?”

Everything is most certainly not okay, but Taemin can’t explain why. Instead, he says “I have a headache,” and it’s a truthful answer because he’s got a dull throb building up at the back of his head.

“I’ll get you some paracetamol.”

Taemin hums in agreement, already lost in thought as his mind bounces from the problem of Kibum to the problem of his strangely lived-in flat. He pays no attention to where the manager is driving until they come to a stop somewhere that is not SM.

Only, he knows this place, it’s Kibum’s flat. The back door of the van slides open and Kibum climbs in. “You’re late,” he grumbles. “I’ve been waiting for ten minutes.”

“Blame this one,” Euisoo says, jerking his head towards Taemin. Kibum just huffs.

The ride to SM is mostly quiet in the sense that there is no conversation, but it is far from a peaceful journey for Taemin. For one, there is no conversation to distract him from noticing that things are ever so subtly different, like the charm on Kibum’s phone and the brand of air-freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. The songs on Euisoo’s playlist are the same ones as always but played in a different order. He’s just pressed shuffle, Taemin tells himself, but that explanation doesn’t ease his sense of disquiet simply because it’s not something their manager is prone to doing.

Things do not get better once he’s made his way to the practice room. Jonghyun’s hair is just a shade shorter than it should be and Jinki’s shoes have green, not orange, embellishments. Minho, thankfully, looks and acts the same. Taemin hangs on the fringes of their conversation as he stretches, not quite trusting himself, and he’s thankful when their trainer comes in to start the session.

The familiar beats of their title track pump through the sound system and Taemin’s anxiety eases just a little bit. This much, at least, has not changed. He loses himself in dancing. Their trainer puts them through their paces again and again, righting one small move at a time and in the process, Taemin forgets about Kibum’s anger and his lived-in flat and the strangeness of s and manager; everything fades away and all that is left is the way his body responds to the music.

*

“Let’s get jjampong at Singgil,” Jinki says to Minho, who nods in agreement. “I’m starving.”

Taemin’s stomach growls. The jjampong at Singgil is spicy and flavourful; he’s not had breakfast and practice had run late into the afternoon before their trainer was satisfied that they knew the dance well enough to film the dance practice MV tomorrow.

“I’ll break out,” Jonghyun whines.

“You can have something else,” Minho suggests. “I’ve tried their grilled mackerel, it’s good. Or you could split the jjeongol with Kibum.”

“Count me out, I’m going for a salad,” Kibum replies immediately, and though it’s obvious from their expressions that Jinki, Jonghyun and Minho – Taemin too – think that he doesn’t need to be dieting, they don’t contradict him. Over the course of their long relationships, they’ve learnt that this topic is not one that Kibum will entertain any discussion on.

“I want a salad too,” Taemin says, seeing an opportunity to get Kibum alone. Minho laughs. Jinki and Jonghyun seem to find the situation funny too, and it’s only when he doesn’t laugh as well that they then look at him as if he’s sprouted a second head.

“For real?” Jonghyun asks, and Taemin wonders whether he should be affronted that s think that he’s incapable of eating a salad.

“Yeah, I’m watching what I eat until we get all of the filming done.”

That sets Jonghyun off. “Did someone say-”

“No one said anything, I have eyes and a mirror-”

“If you need to diet, then we all do-”

“I don’t care! You guys go and have jjampong, Kibum-hyung and I will have salad,” Taemin says, with as much authority as he can muster, as he pretends not to notice how stressed and suspicious Kibum looks.

*

Taemin’s not had many salads in his life, but even he can tell that the choices offered at SM’s cafeteria are both overpriced and uninspired. And if he can tell, so can Kibum, so there must be a reason why Kibum chose to eat here instead of one of the many, many cafes surrounding their company.

The place is mostly empty. There are a couple of suited men in a corner, whose faces are vaguely recognisable, and a handful of younger boys who keep glancing at him and Kibum and who leave by the time the waiter brings their food to the table; Caesar for Kibum and Thai mango salad for Taemin. The mango is unripe and under-seasoned and bears little resemblance to the mango salad he had enjoyed in Thailand. Taemin munches on it disconsolately as he tries to figure out how to begin the conversation.

“What do you want?” Kibum asks then. “I know you’re not here to eat terrible salad.”

“Are you angry with me?” It’s a stupid question – anyone would be angry and rightfully so – but the way Kibum has been expressing his anger is uncharacteristic.

Kibum’s lips flatten into a thin line, as it always does when he’s angry, but a moment later he deflates. “Look, I’m not angry, it’s just… we agreed to keep things casual. And if you don’t want that anymore, we can talk about it. I don’t appreciate being ambushed with breakfast, as if some grand romantic gesture will make me forget everything we discussed and just go along, you know?”

“Okay.” Taemin croaks out the most anodyne reply possible. His head is empty and his hands are starting to shake; something is terribly wrong and he doesn’t even know what went wrong, let alone how to fix it.

*

Taemin returns to his flat and as unsurprised as he is to find it just as lived-in as it was when he left this morning, he feels like his carefully built world is crumbling to pieces before his eyes.

There’s soju in the fridge; he pops the cap and swigs it right from the bottle. The sting of alcohol helps clear his head, just a little, and he wanders around for a bit poking this and that until half the bottle is gone and the restorative effect has worn off.

Yesterday, he was a man with a boyfriend who he lived with and with whom he had quarrelled and today, he’s apparently a man who has no boyfriend but is in a casual fling with a co-worker who doesn’t seem too keen to take things further; he has no idea how or why things have changed.

It’s as if he has fallen into some alternate universe.

Taemin brushes the thought aside as soon as it crosses his mind, but a moment later it surges to the forefront of his thoughts. Has he fallen into an alternate universe?

It’s stupid.

But it would explain why everything is just a little bit different from what he remembers.

Or, Taemin tells himself, he just never noticed that his cereal had been moved or that Kibum had changed his phone accessory or that their manager had changed the line-up of his playlist and it’s only today that he cared enough to pay attention to these things; isn’t that what Kibum always complains about, that he’s too absent-minded to notice little things about the people around him? Or, Taemin tells himself, he’s had some sort of breakdown due to his argument with Kibum and he’s lost his grip on reality. He needs a psychiatrist, not a mad scientist.

He’s thirsty and the bottle in his hand is empty. Taemin pulls another from the fridge, a fruit-flavoured one that he doesn’t remember purchasing, although he knows well-enough that alcohol has a dehydrating effect. He’s hungry too, but he doesn’t have an appetite, and so he wanders around the flat, sipping his soju as if he’s drinking milk and tears himself in two as he both tries to find things that are different and tries not to notice anything so as not to feed this ridiculous alternate universe theory.

In the end, when Taemin grows tired of pacing in circles like a caged animal, he flips the TV on and settles on the couch. He goes through the channels until he finds a rerun of some music show, which is oddly comforting in its familiarity. He watches his juniors in the industry – few of whom he can name – dance and loses himself in cataloguing their moves and formations, comparing their execution to how he might do it and judging the finer nuances of their performances. Even as his eyes lose focus and he stops being able to tell the difference between one song and the next, he stays on the couch.