“It’s not like you to be up at this time of night. You would think with me being back, you could have rested more easily,” Daeyeol sighed, sauntering into the company cafeteria, bed hair covering his all knowing eyes as they settled on the anxious boy with his head down on one of the tables. “You’d also sleep better if you were in your bed,” he snorted, ghosting past him to the coffee vending machine.

            “Then, why are you up—and having a coffee at this time of night?” Y countered, finally raising his head and slightly dragging his body to look behind him.

            “I didn’t say that I was a good role model,” he sighed, “no matter how hard I try to be. What do you expect? I couldn’t sleep either with all the news of today and meeting those lovely girls and what not,” he muttered with a nonchalant shrug before his mind drifted back to Lylah and her calm smile. If he had her by his side, he convinced himself, he could easily fall into a good night’s sleep. Alas, here he was in the all too brightly lit company cafeteria with Y’s demons as well as his. He had imagined life after military service as something he could jump back into, resume like he was in a movie. He hadn’t seen war, after all. He had no reason to cry PTSD, but still, the army was a kind of regiment that no music industry could rival. It was both more lenient and more rigid than the life he had chased for so long and grown to know. It was the dissonance between the life that he wanted and the part of his life that he needed to live that made it so difficult for him to readjust. He still had to wake up early though the schedule was not the same. He still had to work with others through good times and bad times, though there were no twinkling lights or paparazzi to blind and hound him. He still couldn’t completely be himself for he had a job to do, though this was far less glamourous but all the more necessary. He didn’t have to support the entire squadron as his back as he had to here. He had fallen so out of touch with this part of him that now, he was afraid to turn back to look at Y, who was still staring mindlessly at his back.

            “Do you think that I’ll be like this when I come back, hyung?” Y asked, breaking the silence. Daeyeol grabbed his coffee and whipped back around. “No matter how much you prepared for it, you’re still not prepared to be back, huh? It’s like a whole other world, right?” he probed, seemingly reading the elder’s mind before gesturing for him to sit next to him. Daeyeol sighed before taking a seat next to him. Y instinctively placed his head on his shoulder, always finding comfort in the warmth that Daeyeol had thought he had lost. “What’s it like in there, hyung? Everyone thinks that it should be better than what we do out here, right?” he asked rhetorically, trying more so to distinguish for himself what was real of the reality he was imagining for himself. He would be safe, hidden away from the fansites and headlines, but the anonymity frightened him more than he would have liked to admit. Though he considered himself largely humble, it was the sheer thought of losing what he thought made him so valuable, made him so loveable that horrified him. He would not have to worry about antis or comments, not because he wanted to, but because he had to. Though he had not spent much of his life training or acting as an idol, he had grown to love and live this life so much so that he often found it difficult to remember what he had done before this. Surely, he had attended high school. Surely, he had childhood friends and memories. Yet, it had been so long since he had transformed into Y from Sungyoon that he didn’t know if he would be able to act in Sungyoon’s body, follow orders to Sungyoon’s name, or live Sungyoon’s life with fidelity. As cheesy as it sounded, he truly gained his strength from the other members and from the Goldenness, ones like Alex—particularly Alex.  Sungyoon didn’t know Alex and she didn’t know him. This was an alternate Y didn’t want to face.

            “Were you called, or was this by choice?” Daeyeol huffed, drooping his head to the side, defeated as if he were sending his only brother off to a war that didn’t exist.

            “I was waiting for you to come back,” he began. “I wanted us to get through the tours and be able to say hello to our beautiful Goldenness. Once you returned, I wanted to leave, get it over with so we could all be together again before seeing Jangjun off not soon after me. I wanted to have another tour, one with all of us together, so I decided to hurry and go, but that was before—”

            “Before you realized how much you would be missed? Before you realized what was missing? You know, earlier I said how I was jealous of all the fun you had on this tour, but I can’t say that any of that makes what you are about to do any easier. If anything, it complicates things in ways that I don’t even want to begin to imagine. You got to see faces and smiles that I will never get to see the same way, but those same faces and smiles will come back to haunt you when it is just you and your new family in training.”

            “But I don’t care about any of those faces, hyung,” Y snapped, nearly jolting out of his seat. “I only care about hers. I-I only care about her,” he confessed, pausing to process and mull over his words as soon as they had escaped. While Daeyeol was far more discerning than he would let on and could read Y like a book, Y had purposely kept the nuance, kept the plot away from himself. He had convinced himself long ago, for Seungmin’s sake, that he was a friend, that they were the same person. It wasn’t right to fall in love with yourself, he had thought. But, it was right to check in, to appreciate, to care for yourself, just not love, so he wouldn’t call it that. He didn’t call it love when the sight of her struck him at the concert. He didn’t call it love when his hands s around her waist before the picture, only for her and the photographer to correct him before taking the picture. He didn’t call it love when he wanted so badly to be with her at the party. He didn’t call it love when he draped the necklace around her. He didn’t call it love when seeing her face brightened his entire day, let him sleep at night. He didn’t call it love when she entered his dreams, waltzing through like the haunting memory that she was. He didn’t call it love when he had cried to himself before trudging downstairs to the cafeteria, muttering his pitiful rehearsal of what he might say to her, mimicking what she would say back, anticipating the heartbreak. It wasn’t love, he said. It couldn’t be.

            Daeyeol knew what it was.

            “And you can’t just go away for a year and half with these feelings, whatever you want to call them,” Daeyeol pointed out, cautiously, considerately. “But you also can’t go away without telling her. Think about it. She’s scrolling through the headlines on her break and sees that you left without a trace. That would be the same kind of heartbreak, the same kind of feeling of being lost and abandoned, that you feel now except it wouldn’t be fair to her because at least you knew. You’re running through all the possibilities in your head right now without considering which one would hurt her the most.”

            “And, how do I do that? How do I leave without hurting her?” he asked, desperately, willing to sacrifice his own emotions for hers.

            “You don’t,” Daeyeol replied bluntly, taking a sip of his coffee. “Anything you do is going to hurt, but some will just hurt less than others. The best-case scenario is that you hurt together while the worst case scenario…” he trailed off, recollecting all the stories from other idols he had served with during his time. There had been numerous stories of them hurting the other members with their leave, especially the foreign ones who would not have to enter, the ones who exchanged cultures and gratitude. Several idols felt just as both of them had, that they had no life without being in the lives of others. Some idols even had partners that they had to leave behind so they could fulfill their patriotic duties. None of them hurt the same, but they all hurt. Yet, they all completed their service, knowing it was their natural-born duty to do so for the love of their country and for the love of each other that they now called brothers, even if they couldn’t when they returned to the spotlight. It would be up to Y to determine for himself how he would hurt and how he would prevail. “Don’t worry about the return. As you can see, I’m doing just fine,” he reassured him, taking another long sip from his cup.

            “Says the one downing coffee at this ungodly hour of the day and the one who almost ruined the comeback,” Y grumbled lightheartedly, managing to pull one part of his soul from the depths of despair.

            “I said I was fine, not perfect. Of course, it will take some getting used to, but I’m grateful for being able to get right back to work. It’ll help me get my mind off of things,” he retorted with a shrug and another sip of coffee. “Don’t worry, as soon as you are back, I’ll make sure to cram the schedule with tons of activities and a comeback so you can hopefully meet your precious lover as soon as possible,” he cooed coyly, shoving the younger member who was now futilely trying to hide the blush creeping back to his cheeks.

            “She’s not a lover,” he countered with a hiss, “she’s just a friend,” he insisted though his voice and legs quivered at the lie.

            “O yes, a ‘friend’  that happens to be the only face and smile you care about~” he crooned mockingly, clasping his hands over his heart, putting on the best K-drama performance he could. “You know, from what you all told me earlier, it sounded like Seungmin was the one in denial, but I see it was contagious. Something must have been in the water while I was gone because friends don’t lose sleep over other friends,” he pouted, rolling his eyes.

            “You’re insufferable,” Y groaned, sliding away and up from him.

            “I could go back. I did put on quite a lot of muscle while I was there. My jawline even chiseled out, see?” he joked, dramatically caressing the back of his hand against his jaw as if he were in a shaving commercial.

            “You may have come back with harder muscles, but like the others said, you certainly came back far softer. I think a folding chair has more of a bac