For at least a half hour, Taemin and Amber sat in the room just playing games and fooling around. The other members never came back, but Taemin knew the hectic costume-swapping and stage-changes enough to know that wasn’t surprising and didn’t even worry the slightest. When a voice came screaming through Amber’s earpiece, he heard it from his seat feet away and could only give a sympathetic smile as she winced at it. “We have to go now… Come on.”

“Why am I going with you?” Taemin stumbled after her as she left not all that slow.

He barely kept up, but Amber didn’t slow down. “Because I’m supposed to be watching you while no one else can and right now there is no one else.” She slowed up a little as they got closer to the entrance to the stage and just before Taemin sat down in a chair, she completely lifted him without warning.

“Put me down! Where are you going?!”

“You really are as light as they say… Hm.” With a smirk, she just continued up the steps to the stage, ignoring Taemin’s yells and light pounding on her back. As they passed people, she only nodded to them and no one questioned the screaming boy. “Just enjoy the surprise.”

“What?” Taemin finally calmed to listen to her, but in that moment, she ran onto the stage still carrying him and placed Taemin in a chair in front of everyone. He only watched wide-eyed as Jinki, Jonghyun, Key, and Minho stepped forward towards the chair slightly, but not close enough to reach him. Amber kept Taemin held back with a hand on his shoulder, but he was too shocked to move even if he could as he saw everyone who was anyone in the company there. “What is this?”

“Taemin-ah!” Jinki was the one with the microphone first and he made sure to get the boy’s attention before he spoke. “You’re going through tough times right now.”

Jonghyun lifted his own mic as the light shifted down the line slightly to him. “But you aren’t going through them alone.”

It was Key now and there were tears in his eyes without even saying anything yet. “We are all here to stand beside you…”

“To help you stay strong.” Minho held out a fist to the boy as if they were going to fist-bump, but they were too far away even as Taemin reached out his own shaky hand.

“To believe in you.” Amber’s voice came from right beside him and he had never even realized she had a microphone in her hands.

“To be your family.” It was all of the company that yelled the last line, formed into three lines at some point. The first few notes of Dear My Family began to play and Taemin saw microphones appearing in hands all across the stage as the singers of it started, but everyone joined in. The first line crouched down to the ground and flipped over cards Taemin just realized they were all holding.

Kai was on the end without a card but held a megaphone. Without even looking at the cards, he read out what it said. “Get well soon Taemin!”

Tears pricked in his eyes at it all, but the next line was already crouching above the others and turning their cards around. One both ends, Sulli and Krystal stood and read it together. “We love you!”

By now, he let the tears just run down. The last line turned the cards around so that he could read it, but everyone, even the fans, joined in on reading as the song faded out. “You can do it!”

Confetti was falling on them and more was still being dropped down along with balloons, but Taemin didn’t focus on that as he looked at his fellow stars and then to the crowd with water-filled eyes and tears running down his cheeks. Amber held her microphone in front of him so that he could speak and be heard, but Taemin was choking up so bad from crying it was almost impossible. “Thank you… Thank you all so much…” She wrapped her arm over his shoulders as his small frame began to shake from the sobs, but he was still trying to get out what he wanted to say. Before s got close enough, he managed to hold off the crying long enough. "Thank you for believing in me. For all of this… For being here.”

Even if he wanted to say more, there wasn’t a chance to as first one pair of skinny arms wrapped around him, and then three more. With the rest of SHINee there, he allowed himself to break down into sobs.

But that wasn’t the end and the screens at the back of the stage came back to life as they all heard a familiar voice come through. “Hello! I’m Lee Taemin, age 12.” He looked up to it as the lights in the stadium dimmed to see it better. “Please wait for me to be a big star some day!” It switched from his little introduction clip to his dance audition, continuing through videos of him dance and covering years in minutes. “It’s Taemin!” His voice wasn’t as squeaky when he spoke in it the second time. “It’s our debut day, so expect me to be famous soon!” On fast-forward, the camera went through his whole time filming as he went through the halls and all the way up to entering the stage, picking up again when he got back off.

From there, it switched to different clips of the members and him fooling around. All the years he had spent training and performing were put into the video, all the way up to a video filmed only the day earlier at the interview. “To all of my friends: thank you for being by my side for so long and being there for me all this time. Without you, I wouldn’t be here as I am, so thank you. To my hyungs: thank you can’t even begin to cover what I want to say to you. We’ve been through thick and thin together and know each other better than family. You guys have changed my life completely and I’ll never forget you.” The him on the screen was having a hard time blinking to hold the tears back, but as Taemin watched, he just let them flow. “And to the fans… you have supported me for years. I might not be able to show it right now, but I’m still the dancing maknae you all know. I’ll try and come back as soon as I can, but please take care of my hyungs and my friends for me right now.”

The screen went to black and most of the crowd went to applaud, thinking it was over. And then Jinki’s face appeared on the screen. “Is this on?” There were laughs all around and Taemin even managed one through his tears as he continued to watch from his place in the arms of his hyungs. “Taemin-ah, listen to hyung, okay? You’re always really good about it, but listen this one time better than you ever have before—never give up. You’re strong enough to make it through this and we need you to be complete. Times might look rough right not, but you have your hyungs here to make them smoother.”

“Stop trying to act sappy hyung.” An on-screen Jonghyun not-so-gently pushed Jinki out of the chair and took it himself. “But listen to hyung, Taemin. We all need you, so you can’t give up. I still have to make up for the times when we were kids and all I did then. So you can’t give up now. Understand?” He got up and close to the camera, pointing at it until his finger hit the lens and then walking away, revealing Key in the seat now.

“Minnie… I don’t know what I would do if you were gone. But I don’t expect you to leave, so I don’t have to think about that. Right? Make umma proud then. I want you dancing at next year’s concert. Understand?” He gave a smile to the screen and blew a kiss at it before walking back where he entered from and pulling Minho on, sitting the rapper down before walking off.

“Taeminnie… I don’t know what to say.” Minho seemed to have been the worse off out of the four of them when they filmed it, tears running down his cheeks. “The hyungs already stole a lot of what I wanted to say and you know I’m never good when it comes to speaking…” There was a laugh from somewhere in the background that sounded a lot like Key and Taemin gave a smile to real-life Minho before looking back at it. “But do you remember your promise to me that we made as trainees? We would never leave each other, you said. And you have never broken a promise before, so don’t go breaking this one. Okay?”

There was a pause as the other three entered the screen again. “It’s not SHINee without you Taemin, so come back soon. Okay?” Jinki was the last one to speak, but they waved at the screen with smiles as it faded out and left the whole stadium in complete darkness. Even light-sticks had been put down and it stayed that way for a whole minute before one aqua light stick went up in the front. As if it was a sign, many more went up, bathing the whole stadium in the color. Nowhere was left in darkness, but it was still left silent.

Taemin looked from the other stars on stage to all the fans and then to the members before standing and going to the very front. Every eye in the place watched him as he grabbed Amber’s microphone again on the way, but when he reached the edge, the first thing he did surprised them all. Not caring about his hat or anything, Taemin gave the deepest bow he could and held it for over a minute, even as he cried. His hat had fallen onto the stage when he did so, but he didn’t grab it as he looked back around, eyes rimmed in red and still spilling tears. “Thank you… I…” He shook his head a little as he blinked and even tried wiping at the tears with his palm, but they just kept coming and he didn’t bother after a minute. “These five years have been the best of my life. While I hope there are many more to come, I want to thank all of you, fans or not, for just being here and supporting my family. I hope I will be better soon to give everyone a proper thank you for all they have done for me.”

He bowed again and when he didn’t straighten, the spotlight that had been focused on him turned off. But he still stayed like that, counting the tears that dripped from his face to the ground. Only when five had fallen did he stand—one for every year he had to thank them for.

And it was only then that the cheers came.