May 28, 2026

Yongguk gets married to Himchan a few months after his 35^th birthday, after a secretive near ten years they’ve been together. They get married on the anniversary of their relationship, just like Himchan wanted, to Yongguk’s embarrassment.

The event is overexposed and well publicized, because it’s what the fans wanted. The cameras continued to flash and beam at every moment, wanting to make up for the ones the couple had hidden from the world for a decade.

The cameras are eventually chased away an hour before the actual reception, and only family and friends are let in from then on.

Everything feels perfect. Himchan personally dresses the other four members in sleek black suits with ridiculously bright pink bowties.

Himchan himself is wearing an unbelievably immaculate white tuxedo, and Daehyun and Junhong poke fun at it. The oldest grabs the two by the bowties and ushers them back to their seats.

Minutes before the reception, Yongguk sees two very familiar people waving at him from the back row. The smile on his face stretches from ear to ear as he practically runs to them, slowing down when he hears Himchan yell about wrinkling his clothes.

“You’ve sure grown up.” Maslo says, the age showing very visibly on his face, bringing Yongguk into his embrace with his arm. Rilord joins in, awkwardly nudging his body against the two with not much success. Yongguk’s eyes light up when he looks up and sees the child in Rilord’s arms, long hair tied up with a yellow bow.

“Your daughter?” Yongguk asks, to which Rilord gleams proudly. “Haneul couldn’t make it,” The man explains. “She’s eight months along, a boy.” And as he says this, the three men all share a broad grin, silently congratulating each other. The little girl claps her hands and giggles.

“What about you, Hyung?” Yongguk turns to Maslo, who shakes his head with a small smile. “The girlfriend and I are doing well. Not sure if we’ll be getting married anytime soon.” Yongguk is about to respond when he hears Jieun announce the ceremony will be starting soon.

Yongguk flashes his bright smile every time he sees Himchan that day, he can’t help but feel that everything was too perfect to be true. And he continues to smile as brightly as he flips through the freshly printed photobook that evening, pausing at the last page, the picture of all of those who attended the reception.

He runs his fingers down the laminated sheet, looking at each detail from his and Yongnam’s identical smiles, how Himchan was in the midst of fixing his hair when the photo was taken, and how the other members were completely disorganized, trying to put bunny ears on each other’s heads with their fingers. Yongguk’s mouth is wide open, frozen in mid-laugh.

And at that moment, Yongguk decides he is going to write a love song.

Not just a love song, but the love song. He’s written plenty of love songs in his life but this one would be the song of his career; the song of his life. Not just the song for Himchan, but also the song for himself.

Yongguk locks himself in his customized study turned studio. He alternates between the desk and the piano, crumpling up every sheet of paper and banging his hands onto the keys every so often.

Others offer to help but Yongguk politely brushes them off. The only allowed in his room is Himchan, who comes downstairs every evening to talk to him and bring him out of his reveries.

The conversations start to become shorter and shorter, and words soon cease to be said at all. Himchan’s hand is just placed on Yongguk’s shoulder for moments of every day, in hopes of taking the latter out of the world he’s created; the world revolving around the creation that does not exist.

Weeks locked in Yongguk’s study stretch into months and Himchan’s hand continues to grow colder and colder. The date is November 3, 2027 and Himchan doesn’t come downstairs at all.

In the mess of empty notepads and cloying lyrics, Yongguk doesn’t notice the missing presence. The nearly corrupted music sheets taunt him to try harder.

A few months later, a few days shy of their second anniversary, Himchan leaves him. Yongguk gives his attorney carte blanche, as long as the proceedings can be over as soon as possible and his project can continue.

Yongguk moves out of the beautiful house he and Himchan shared and moves into a small apartment, taking his desk, his piano, and his clothes. At first, his phone rang constantly and Yongguk gave short, vague answers so he could hang up and go back to writing.

The phone calls came from the members, his friends, his family, and one from Himchan, worried about his well-being. They lessened and lessened every day, and in a matter of weeks, they didn’t come at all.

Yongguk continued to separate himself from his reality to escape into each bar of the song. It was inside of him but he didn’t have the strength to find it.

Yongguk is too distracted to be ashamed of his life, too possessed to take care of what he’s become. And one evening, well past midnight, the instant noodles he’s preparing for dinner becomes forgotten. The fire spreads but Yongguk’s too lost in his broken memories and failed ambitions to notice immediately.

He barely has the strength to drag himself out of the house when he starts to feel the flames reach the rest of the apartment. He watches as the work put into his last two years becomes engulfed in orange and red.

This wasn’t how his song was supposed to end.