Paranoia at its very best.

It’s a shopping mall, you tell yourself.

It’s only a shopping mall, you say.

You have been in malls before, you continue whispering. But it’s different from all the malls you have been, different from all the times you were forced to go to a mall because schedule dictates you so, because there is a signing to be held in XX mall, a fanmeet session in YY mall. It’s different because in your mind’s eyes, malls are not like this. Malls are platoons of security and convoys of bodyguards, malls are seas of pressing heated bodies and malls are masses of screaming fanaticism.

And now, you are here alone. into this lonely place all by yourself. Although lonely isn’t the right adjective for the description, because this mall is far from desolate. It’s a thriving, buzzing hub, filled with people who move smoothly past each other, eating, drinking, chattering. They are doing everything except recognizing you. And you are panicking.

And that’s the reason why you’re panicking.

You are not used to this new status quo, not used to being deprived the attention that you get, wanted or otherwise, whenever you head out into public. It’s kinda contrived and definitely twisted, you think, but you can’t help it. When speaking to bandmates or other idols in your same glorified position, you would always wistfully mention anonymity and how you want it so badly. But now that you finally have it, it frightens you, it scares you and it makes you a hundred times more uncomfortable than the time Jonghyun stopped speaking for a week, or the time Key started wearing your tees.

It’s unnatural. It’s weird. It’s ing strange as hell.

And now you officially know you have lost it. Because Onew doesn’t curse, not even when he is rambling in his own mind like some ing hobo off the streets. The strangeness of everything has finally driven you up the wall, and you are desperately wishing for everyone, anyone to start recognizing you, to call out “Onew” or even “SHINee”. Because this anonymity is making you minded sideways and you want to go back to the times when you are stuck in a throng  of crazy fans, with only a thin line of bodyguards separating you from them. Because that’s familiarity, because that is status quo, because that is how it always has been.

The people milling about you are making you crazy and the sounds of the foreign blabbering are making you dizzy. You are lost, desperate and going slightly haywire. You are out of your depth and you wish hard for familiarity. You regret badly now for not taking note of where your group members are going, for not keeping tightly to the entourage, for falling behind and getting yourself trapped in this mall where you are not the eye of the hurricane.

Someone is now stopping beside you, asking something. There is a tone of concern in his voice but you can’t make out anything other than that because you have never been that good with languages; Key is the one who picks it up naturally. You have to make a conscious effort to learn it. And you have to force yourself. Oh how you have to force yourself, because you are the leader and those are the times when you have to step up to fulfill you leaderly duties which include giving introductions for the whole ing group because everyone else is too lazy, too busy to do that.

The person is now holding your arms, albeit gently. You absentmindedly shake off the grip and mumble something along the lines of “No, I’m fine” although you have no idea whether has it gone through or not because the locals are always mocking the foreigners for their English, for their accent and you are pretty sure you have one. The person seems to be unconvinced and you catch the word “colour” before everything else goes right past you as if your ears are stuffed with cotton candy and you can’t quite make out the rest of the words. It annoys you, this powerlessness, this uselessness. You have no idea what to do in this situation and how to handle this man.

And you are angry all of a sudden. You rudely fling the man’s hold away from you and yell that of course you look pale, because they are all so ing dark. And then you recoil a second later, from the man, from yourself, from this foreign situation. Because you are pretty sure what you have just said is ing racist and that’s not you, has never been you. And you are now frightened what sort of monster would you turn into if you have to be trapped in this ing mall for another second.

You are now shrinking from everything, everyone. You back yourself into a wall and you can spot the man staring at you with suspicious eyes. He probably thinks you are a druggie or a crazie, not that it matters much because you don’t really care about what he thinks, other than the fact why the hell is he not recognizing you. Because if he does, that’s something familiar you can fall back upon. Fans’ recognition and idols’ evasion. You even miss the Tom and Jerry game you used to play with them.

Where is everyone? Where is everyone? You now feel like you are someone worthless; someone who after the title of “Leader of SHINee” is stripped away is left with nothing else. Because that’s how everyone else around you are behaving. No one knows you, and no one cares about you. No one is willing to fork out her life’s fortune just to buy your album and no one is willing to fly a hundred thousand miles just to catch your concert. You are now something unremarkable, like a pebble on the roadside, a stray cat in the junkyard.

You , you , you ing .

You think you are going to hyperventilate now, because the weight in your chest is starting to get suffocating and your vision is blurring and everything is kinda spinning and melting and dancing. You wonder if this is how the first stage of insanity begins and you wonder if it is curable. You want to cry so badly now but you don’t dare to, because this is still the public. And somewhere, some place deep inside your head, you still remember that you shouldn’t cry in a place where everyone can see you, where all your actions are up for display and something as trivial as tears can be blown up by fans’ overprotection.

But , this urge to cry is not going away. And you decide, somewhat logically that proves that maybe you are not about to go insane anytime soon or perhaps you have been insane from the very start, that you should head to the restroom. Because that’s where you can probably find some privacy, away from the public’s prying eye. However, you do not fail to ironically note that you actually don’t need that now, because there’s plenty of privacy for you in the cloak of anonymity and you speculate if it’s just pure pretentiousness and hypocrisy that is forcing your legs stumbling one after another forward.

Thank god for universal signs.

You stumble and you stumble and you crash into someone accidentally. You keep walking straight for 15 minutes or so before you realized you have probably missed the restroom already and now you have another reason to go to that place, because nature’s calling and you would prefer not to become a public embarrassment.

Your eyes are scanning frantically, looking for signs to the restroom, darting from one place to another. The foreignness of everything around you is not helping and your paranoia is starting to rise as bile from your throat before you finally spot a hint of black hair in the crowd around you.

And tears start rolling down your cheeks and you don’t ing care whether you are in public or not. And then you are laughing. Laughing because it only makes sense that even when you are in a country where the average height is 178cm, he would still stick head and shoulders above the crowd, that he would be the easiest to spot.

You are laughing and crying like a maniac and your legs are threatening to give way. You know you probably look like some Asian crazy, but it doesn’t matter the moment you hear the familiar ‘hyung’ calling out for you and seeing his familiar figure striding towards you through the tears in your eyes.

, you miss him so much.

You know it’s ing un-leaderly but you fall into his arms once he reaches before you and you are now laughing and crying into his shoulders, make-up probably a mess. But everything is fine as you grasp at his shoulders and feel the plane of his back, because this is familiarity and you would have it no either way.

Minho, you whisper to yourself.

Minho, you whisper to him.

He hugs you tighter.

(And you think this may just be the way love feels like.)

No flowery descriptions, no bombastic words. I'm keeping this short and simple because it's meant to give you a sneak peek into someone's mind. The words are kinda tripping over themselves, and run-on sentences are commonplace. But I hope you will forgive me for them, because I don't think any of us think in perfect grammar.

Here're my excuses for the imperfection in this fic, and I hope you enjoyed it :D

P.S. If you are a reader of my other fics, let me assure you that I am still working on them, 'kay? I have not given up on them and I will finish them sometime once my new routine is settled (I miss school. I don't like my job D:). Love ya <3