February 10th 2015

Acid Teochii hated being called into the meeting room at Ace Entertainment. Nothing good ever came of it, at least, that’s what they all thought. When CEO Lee wanted to talk to them, it was usually something very good or something very bad.

They’d had enough bad stuff happening to them recently to last a lifetime, they really didn’t need anything else happening for a while, their mental stability couldn’t take it. Their fans probably couldn’t take it either.

“Oh, good, you’re all here.” CEO Lee had smiled over at them once the group had pilled into the familiar room, the room in which they’d been introduced to Yue just a month previous. “We have two things to talk about today.”

“Neither of them are bad, are they?” Myung asked, his voice small and concerned. After all, he still hadn’t heard anything back from CEO Lee about dropping his leader position. He knew it would take some time since they had to work out who the new leader would be… but he was getting antsy, and it was starting to feel as though he was stuck in the leader position with no way out.

CEO Lee laughed slightly, shaking his head. “No, Myung,” He confirmed with a small smile. “It’s nothing bad, at least, I don’t think so. Firstly, we finally have a fangroup name for your followers.”

“Oh?” Hope asked, eyes lighting up at the thought. “You mean like SHINee have the Shawols and NU’EST have to L.O.V.Es?”

The man nodded. “Yes, exactly like that. We’ve decided that we’re going to go with the fan favourite name, the one the fans themselves had come up with and have been using as the unofficial name for a while, which is Rattlesnakes. Now, it sounds unpleasant I know, but I feel as though it fits the theme of your group well. Therefore, the official name of your fanclub is the Rattlesnakes. We will be giving an official statement about it later today, releasing it to the public. Before I went ahead with it, I wanted to ask if there were any objections to the name?”

Almost everyone stayed silent, well, everyone apart from Sherlock. “My only concern,” Sherlock began, picking at the hem of the huge woolly jumper he had decided to wear to the meeting. Big woolly jumpers brought him comfort after all. “Is that I don’t think Rattlesnakes suits the sub units, and most groups keep the fanclub name for the sub units… I don’t know, I don’t feel as though ‘Rattlesnakes’ suits the calm, romantic music that Antidote Teochii are going to have.”

CEO Lee furrowed his brow, nodding slightly. “Yes, I see your point. I hadn’t thought of that… thank you for bringing it up, Sherlock.” He smiled at the blind boy. “I believe what we should do then is continue our trend to be unnatural and rare in the kpop industry and have a different fan name for each of the sub units. Have Rattlesnakes for the Acid Teochii fans, and something else for the Viral and Antidote fans separately. Thoughts?”

“I feel like that’s much better,” Hope nodded. “I agree that Rattlesnakes is a bit harsh of a term for the sub units, but it works well for the main group as a whole.”

CEO Lee grinned. “So are we all in agreement?” At the chorus of nods he received, he stood. “Right, so the next thing I had to talk to you about… it isn’t bad, exactly, but it isn’t really happy. Harl-EE of Symphon-EE really looked up to Hyo.” CEO Lee flinched slightly as he saw the entire group tense at the sound of their friend’s name. “Because of what happened, we were made to push their debut back by Harl-EE’s recommendation. He asked that their debut song be changed to a tribute for Hyo, and I agreed that it would be a nice thing for them to do, so that’s going to be happening… however, we’ve also been working on a Ace Dynasty idea for a while. I wanted to show that everyone at Ace Entertainment is a family, Trainees and Debuted idols alike… so I was thinking that everyone under Ace, people training and people in groups, are going to release our first single, much like SM have SM The Ballad albums… Our first single release as a family will be a tribute to Hyo.”

The entire room stayed tense and uncomfortable, CEO Lee and Namjoon slowly looking over the members. Ae-Cha was staring at the floor, unable to meet anyone’s eyes while Yuuki held her hand tightly in support. Cho looked near tears while Sherlock just looked out of the window with a blank expression, Namjoon almost shocked at how perfect the angle was considering he couldn’t see the window. Hope was shuffling nervously from foot to foot while Hanni was rubbing at his eyes. Marco had gone completely still, watching CEO Lee’s face but practically emotionless himself, Jin was hugging himself, rubbing his own upper arms as a form of comfort while Vann sighed slightly, being the first to speak up.

“How far along in this process are we?” He asked, watching as CEO Lee relaxed slightly since someone had finally reacted.

“We’re actually ready to record. Aiko from Bara No Hanabira has composed the track and already recorded the piano music for it, while Airi has written the lyrics for us all… everyone has already recorded their parts, you are all the last ones to do so.”

“And you didn’t contact us sooner?” Jin asked, frowning a little.

“We wanted to make sure it was going to work before we got you all involved, since obviously you were the closest to him. We didn’t want you to cause you unnescisary pain.”

Ae-Cha turned to Marco with a frown. “Are you okay with this?”

Marco slowly looked up to meet her gaze, his eyes slightly teary… but he nodded giving her a damp smile. “Yeah, he would have loved it.”

Jin nodded a little bit. “He would have, he loved music so much… it’s only right to honour him with a song.”

“It also shows people that even know they beat us down, we’re not going to give up. Hyo wouldn’t have wanted us to fall apart and split up, so we can’t let that happen.” Vann started, staring at the floor.

“That’s right,” Ae-Cha continued with a smile. “We can’t let that happen. It’s time to get our head back in the game. The breakdowns need to stop, the anxiety needs to lessen, and we need to get back into this. We can’t let the haters win the game, this is our turn, it’s our hand to play, and we have a really freaking good one.”

CEO Lee grinned over at the young girl, nodding slightly. “Exactly. Although it was a tragedy, we can’t let it ruin us. We all miss him, I know that… but honouring his memory will do us all some good. I have also decided that Ace Entertainment will not be getting any of the profits from this song once it goes out, which I’m planning to have it go live online within the next few days. All the money that comes from buying the song, whether it be from iTunes, other online stores or a physical copy once we get that out, will go towards charity. Charities that help people like Hyo who get swallowed by depression. The song will not get a music video release, since I feel as that would be taking light of the situation, but it will be performed by the Ace Dynasty at every one of our shows, whether they be solo shows with just one of the Ace groups performing it alone, or all of us at an Ace Dynasty concert with the Trainees. The song will never be forgotten, because Hyo will never be forgotten, and I’m very happy that all of you agree with me that this song has to be made.”

“Now,” He continued, walking over to the group while holding some sheets of paper. “Here are the lyrics,” He handed them a CD after this. “And here is the instrumental. I want you all to learn this song by tomorrow, even if to the point of being to keep up with the lyrics in front of you. I don’t mind if you have to read it while we record, just know the tune and know the lyrics well enough to get through it in one piece.”

The group nodded in agreement.

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2 days later, Acid Teochii were all in the recording studio, singing their individual parts for the mixers to place into the song. There wasn’t a dry eye in the studio, everyone was emotional while singing their lines, struggling to keep their voice steady. It was even harder to keep the tears at bay when they weren’t having to record their lines.

The song was slow, a ballad, with lyrics that held Hyo in a beautiful light. It didn’t sugar coat the situation, but it shows Hyo’s best qualities. It didn’t show him to be a saint, but just… held his memory in a beautiful way.

The track went up less than 24 hours with no promotions, no advertisements apart from a short, 10 second clip on the youtube page. Within 24 hours, it had over half a million purchases. In a week, it had over 2 million.

It was the most an Ace Entertainment track had sold to date, and yet CEO Lee still refused to take any of the funds it earnt.

Goodbye (Please don’t go) was an overnight sensation. Marco had a call from Hyo’s mother in tears, sobbing about how beautiful the track was, thanking him for allowing it to happen.

Marco could only hope that somewhere out there, up in heaven, Hyo was smiling down on them, happy that they’d gotten themselves together, and honoured over the track.

He could hope, and so he did.

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Hey there everyone! This chapter wasn't originally planned, it wasn't in the original chapter run down... but one of my best friends, Shynamite, who writes Symphon-EE, gave me the idea, so I slipped it in here... I quite liked how it turned out too! This should be the last of the major Hyo feels for a while...