V

The phone rang three times before the voicemail came up again.

                Hello, you’ve reached Kwon Jiyong. I’m busy and can’t get to my phone right now, so please leave your name and a detailed message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can! Thank you!

                Seunghyun pulled his phone away from his ear at Jiyong’s greeting and flicked the ‘end call’ button directly before the beep. He really despised Jiyong’s voicemail message. It was so unlike him. So formal. It had to be. If he had a personal phone, which he was planning on getting soon, he’d be able to sound more relaxed. But since he never knew who’d be contacting him and how important they’d be, he had to sound prim and proper. It only made sense. Seunghyun’s own automated message sounded almost exactly the same. It was an odd sort of façade.

                Drunken Seunghyun didn’t care much for the pre-recorded message either. Jiyong would laugh, showing him the messages he’d received from him the night after their outings, each one starting in the middle of a word, a sentence. Seunghyun had either thought the ‘Hello,’ was really live-action Jiyong, or he just wanted the recording to shut up, because he seemed to have a habit of interrupting it.

Seunghyun ground his cigarette into the ashtray, jammed his phone in his pocket, and stood up with a grunt. He’d taken his smoking break as an excuse to get outside. He decided he’d left enough ‘missed call’ notifications on Jiyong’s phone. It was time to go back in.
                Dancing hadn’t been going well. It hadn't seemed that hard while Seunghyun was with Jiyong the day before, but GD was gone at some other meeting today. He wasn’t able to show up.               

                Youngbae noticed Seunghyun’s spirits were oddly down, and had tried to cheer him up. He’d stuck by Seunghyun’s side to make sure he understood the choreography that he usually had such a difficult time with. But he just seemed so distant. When Seunghyun arrived back in the stuffy room, he just nodded at him to acknowledge his presence, and started the music.

                And five, six, seven, eight.

***

                He felt like an idiot.
                Standing outside. Alone. Phone out, no response.
                Jiyong had called him back every chance he got, but the two kept missing each other. Seunghyun was busy while Jiyong was free; Jiyong was busy while Seunghyun was free. Five days straight. Not a single real conversation passed between them.

                Seunghyun dusted himself off and reentered the restaurant.

                Every night that week, Jiyong had been exhausted and grumpy by the time he got home. He went straight to bed. Seunghyun followed him to pretend to go to sleep too, so he wouldn’t worry.

                But the way the kitchen and bathroom got cleaner and cleaner every morning didn’t go unnoticed by Jiyong.

                The separation was taking its toll on Big Bang’s leader, too. Though Seunghyun didn’t see any of it, Daesung would occasionally talk about Jiyong’s constant insistence to do repeated run-throughs of every song on the track list of the new album at vocal practices. Youngbae would sometimes mention how Jiyong would yell at his own feet during their private dance lessons.  He’d gone into one of those states where nothing pleased him. Every little miniscule detail needed to be altered and perfected.

But it was just the normal stress getting to him, Seunghyun supposed. Nothing new. Nothing to worry about.
 

***

Running Man was scheduled on Monday morning. It was almost a fifteen-hour gig. Saturday night, Seunghyun went to bed at a decent hour, forcing himself to stay lying down even though he felt violently restless. He knew he’d most likely be wasting his time, that nothing he could do would put him to rest. But he knew he still had to try. It would be a good idea to get a few nights of decent sleep before Monday.
                The empty feeling had come back over the last few days. He didn’t have Jiyong to console him over it. He couldn’t adequately describe it to anyone else. Seunghyun had figured from how was able to define it, Youngbae would think he was depressed. Reaching out to the other members was decidedly out of the question. Now that he thought about it, he didn’t even know why he’d told Jiyong. But he was glad he did.
                The numbness spread exponentially as he lay in the dark, resisting every urge to get up, clean, go on a walk, play cards, get a drink. He was determined to beat his racing mind. He hardly realized how significant it was that he didn’t have anything to distract him from himself.

His eyes sprung open in the dark. The thought had flicked right in front of him before vanishing. The sense of it resting on the edge of his skull was eerily tangible. It was infuriating. He furrowed his eyebrows at his ceiling, trying to force the evasive thought to show itself. He wasn’t scared anymore. He just wanted to know what the hell was wrong with him.

He slowly analyzed when he’d started getting upset, when he’d felt better, why he’d ignored facing the problem…

                And after a few moments’ meditation, there it was.

                He was bored.

                He never would have wanted anyone to know what that initial thought was. It wasn’t nearly the entire issue. It was a terrible summary. But it was a start.

Seunghyun was relieved he was alone, in the dark, in his room, door tightly shut, with all the members asleep, as the drama of this reflection sunk in.His hand flew up to his face and his eyes shut securely. He shot up and turned so his legs were hanging off the side of his bed, leaning so his elbows were on his knees.

Not bored, he continued, struggling to verbalize what he was thinking – even while it was within his own head.Sick. Tired. He chipped at the image slowly, knowing he had all night to fully understand what was going on. Fed up. Jaded. There was no going back to sleep. He was scared to sleep now. Now that the problem had been brought up to his face, the usual dreamless sleep he’d taken for granted would likely be replaced by some upsetting image from his subconscious.

Yes; at least for tonight, staying up was definitely better than sleeping.

This is what his life had become. There was no going back, no not being famous – Seunghyun’s fingernails scraped the back of his neck to keep him from losing himself. Every day was the same routine. But nothing happened.

Instantly, a memory played in front of his closed eyes as clear as if it was on a movie screen.

Ji. On that wretched treadmill.
“It doesn’t matter how fast you go, you’re still in the same place.”

                Seunghyun exited the vivid recollection from a sort of haze, the last thing he saw being Jiyong shaking his head dismissively. This Ji was from a whole different world. A whole different reality. He didn’t realize that what he said was exactly what Seunghyun wanted. Exactly what he’d needed. The very definition of the fatigue that leaked through every pore in his body. What he’d been looking for since the insomnia had begun setting in.
`               Though he still wasn’t sure how he’d go about verbalizing his issue to anyone else, Seunghyun was overwhelmed with his discovery. The puzzle pieces fit together as the missing fragment clicked into place. The metaphor was just what he needed for the picture to be constructed in his brain, what his subconscious had been trying to tell him for almost two months. He was on a treadmill.

                Seunghyun had no idea what was going to happen in the future. All he could see in front him was a stretch of conveyor belt, endless forks in the road, all leading to more and more screaming fans, paparazzi, stages, recording booths, meetings, practices…

                He bent his head and tucked his hands over his neck as if he were preparing for an earthquake drill. One of those things he had to do when he was still back in school. Before he started training.

                Now he was stuck.

                He squeezed his neck tightly, his biceps flexing.
                The more he thought about it, the worse it got.

                Hyun-Seung.
                He’d been rejected.
                How – How – Seunghyun cursed himself, could he possibly be complaining about his success, when there were others who’d gladly take his place? Who’d gladly work hard without batting an eye?

He pushed his palms into his eyes and forced himself to stand up, wobbling a bit, as if he was drunk. He stabled himself and trudged to the bathroom.
                The cold water was refreshing against his overheating face. It reminded him that he really did exist. But it did confirm that he wasn’t dreaming. Seunghyun’s last hope vanished.
                He raised his head slowly to face his reflection. Without noticing, his own tears must have mixed in with the water, because even though he’d toweled his face dry, streaks remained smeared down his cheeks. He glared deep into the pair of red eyes facing him, forcing them to challenge him.
                His lip faltered once before all-out trembling.
                There weren’t words strong enough to describe the hatred he had for the man standing in front of him.

A/N: Well. Here we go, back to the sad... ._.
I hate to write TOP like this. I really do. But this is where my inspiration came from, okay?
BUT NOW THAT WE HAVE THIS OUT OF THE WAY THE WHOLE PROBLEM-DEVELOPMENT-THEN-REALIZATION-THING NOW I GET TO WRITE THE GOOD PARTSSSS
I AM SO SORRY THIS IS LATE T.T I wanted this up yesterday, but my beta wasn't able to read it and I wasn't confident with it yet.
I hope you enjoyed it. I have a Taoris one-shot on the way ^.^ and this next chapter I'll try to get up before Friday, it'll be another poem thing now that the story has caught up with the first one :)
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING MY LOVELIES, I HOPE YOU'RE STILL LIKING IT
IF YOU GET TOO SAD ABOUT IT
JUST REMEMBER - THE LAST CHAPTER - THAT SCENE - SOMEHOW WENT DOWN - IN REAL LIFE