always the fool (with the slowest heart)

For three whole years Chan has just been there.

He’s been thirteen and fourteen, fifteen and sixteen, spent countless birthdays alone. He’s had his hair dyed more shades than he can count, he’s worn irritating contacts, and colourful outfits, and he’s sung until his voice cracks painfully, yet it’s still not enough.

It’s still not enough to have him stand out from being anything but a background character - that glimpse in the corner of your eye that you soon forget was ever there in the first place.

Chan enters Korea at 13. He's bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready to tackle anything with a blinding smile on his face.
As the years tick by, that smile begins to fade.

Notes:

For justalittlebraver.

wazzup. i tried to adhere to canon compliance as much as possible but obviously some parts have taken a different turn purely to keep the tl id created up and running lol. nevertheless, i hope you enjoy !
and tysm to my giftee for allowing me to piece this idea of theirs together

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Chan enters Korea with electricity under his skin.

He’s a thrashing lightning bolt barely contained within his heavy clothes of thunder, a live-wire shooting out of the ground, an electric eel twisting and turning through the blue, blue, blue of a grand ocean.

Excitement is palpable along his soft features, within the tremor of his hands, shown through the slight jerk to his bare leg as he hovers just outside of his terminal, full - but perhaps not full enough - backpack slung across his shoulders, single suitcase nestled at his feet.

He doesn’t have all that much with him, admittedly. His mother had told him time and time again that he shouldn’t take too many things.

“It’ll be heavy,” is what the omega had hummed to him as she smoothed a warm hand over his plump cheek. There’d been a slight tremor to her voice, but not one particularly noticeable to her thirteen-year-old with dreams as big as the Milky Way. “You won’t be able to carry it all. I don’t want you hurting yourself, Chan-ah.”

Chan doesn’t mind too much, though.

Korea is different from Australia - smaller, busier, maybe. The pictures on Google had shown tall buildings, populated cities, and a distinct lack of the vast, stretching sandy beaches that Chan is so fondly used to. But it isn’t too different, and he’s sure that he’ll be able to rebuy the figures, the jackets, the fantasy books with their funny pictures, similar to those that he’d left behind back in Sydney.

Back in Sydney, where his whole life is. Was. Is. He isn’t sure just yet. Not one-hundred-percent, at least. He hopes that he can build a new life here in Korea, though, find himself again in his birth country that he was initially deprived of - not that he blames his parents for that at all, mind you.

Australia was undeniably good to him. Made him who he is. Created his beginning. Gave him kind friends, an encouraging family, and a promise of a dog that hasn’t actually come into fruition yet, but his father repeatedly, amusedly assures him that it will one day.

Chan is just excited at a very deep, ingrained level to finally, truly be here.

It’s like a dream come true—has been a dream come true, really, since he managed to successfully pass the local audition for JYP entertainment.

The very local audition that his parents had gently - but pointedly - nudged him towards, all proud, and reassuring, and certain that there’s nothing worse than not trying, when he has the ability to at least attempt it.

Chan had been nervous, but he’d agreed after not too much needling. He ‘had an ability’ as his parents had put it, so, why not, right? Why not just try?

He knows that he has some talent, of course. Not in a self-righteous, braggy sort of way, not at all, he can just do stuff sometimes, like sing, or play the piano, or strum a guitar until the tips of his fingers are blossoming red. He can tap out a compelling beat, and come up with poetic lyrics that make his mother smile wide and his younger siblings giggle childishly at - too young to properly understand just yet.

Chan can do things, things that he really, deeply enjoys. And to have that finally recognised? To have a glowing opportunity thrust towards him because of his efforts? To have all of his hard work pay off in some way, no matter how shaky its foundations are?

It’s everything to him.

He hadn’t needed to think twice about accepting. Hadn’t worried about what it would do to his schooling, how it would affect his friendships, what everyone would think of him because of it. He hadn’t needed to, confident as he was, determined too.

Chan had just said yes, and then he’d packed up with his mother, allowed his parents to smother him with kisses and gentle, but reassuring, scenting, squeezed his siblings close to his chest because he was going to miss them both so, so much, he really was, and that had been that.

A promise to call, an eleven-hour plane journey filled with in-flight snacks and bellowing snoring from an older man seated directly behind him, and then there he was in Seoul, thrumming with nervous excitement as he scans the crowd of people hovering around the metal gates, waiting and watching.

He’s looking for extended relatives - or at least, that’s what his parents had told him. An aunt and an uncle, maybe, but an aunt and an uncle in the sense that they’re not really related to him. Chan can’t properly remember all that well now that his mind is preoccupied with so much - too much, maybe - but he does confidently recall that his mother had assured him that they’d have a sign with his name on it to give him some sort of direction.

As he searches, he partly hopes that it isn’t in Hangul. His Korean still isn’t completely perfect, even though he’s been speaking it at home with his parents since—forever, really.

He just gets nervous sometimes, and he’s been learning so much English at school, that he might get mixed up, tongue-twisted and confused, and his bilingual abilities might slip from between his fingers quicker than sand through an hourglass, and then he—and then—

“Chan-ah! Over here!”

The tight ball of anxiety that had only been growing tighter within his chest, squeezing, and festering, and brimming with something deeply uncomfortable and vulnerably new to him, seems to dissipate the second he sets eyes on his waving aunt.

She’s bright-eyed and smiley, a soft beta beside her similarly soft beta husband who’s holding up a sign with both Hangul and English lettering. Chan doesn’t give it a second thought before he starts rushing over, suitcase now in hand and still staying careful not to bump into any of the other travellers - tourists and returning natives alike - who don’t happen to notice his short stature.

“Hi,” he breathes, Korean slipping off of the tip of his tongue as naturally as ever once he manages to reach them without incident. (He doesn’t know why he’d been as worried as he was about his speech, but that’s okay, he reassures himself, it’s all okay.)

“Hello, pup,” his aunt beams. She’s so bright. “Oh, your mother said you were cute, but I didn’t expect this. You’re adorable! Isn’t he, dear? A right darling.”

“Positively so,” his uncle agrees, reaching a hand out to gently clasp it on Chan’s shoulder. The touch is warm through Chan’s thin, white t-shirt, and he finds himself relaxing a little more. It’s not his dad, and it’s not his mum, who he’d left behind sniffling at Sydney Airport, but it’s something almost close.

“Thank you,” Chan replies, flush high on his round cheeks as he rocks back and forth on his heels. He’s looking up at them, and they’re looking down at him, and he’s starting to feel rather bashful underneath their fond stares. “I—thank you, really.”

His aunt coos again, and this time she’s the one to reach forward, ruffling at his dark locks before pulling back. “Well!” She claps her hands together. “I heard that you’re over here as a trainee, hm? How about you tell me all about that while we head to the car? It’s not too far from here.”

“That sounds great!” Chan agrees immediately, startling only a little as his uncle reaches to grab hold of his suitcase for him, and then manoeuvres his backpack onto his own shoulder. “Oh, you don’t have to—”

“It’s alright, Channie,” his aunt smooths over before he can attempt to rectify the swap. She reaches to hold his small hand and squeezes once. The scent she releases is calming and smells a bit like fresh linen. Chan likes it. “He can handle it. Now, tell me everything, okay? Don’t go sparing any details on me!”

It doesn’t matter that Chan has just gotten off an almost eleven-hour flight where he’d barely been able to catch even a wink of needed sleep. It doesn’t matter that he’s currently vibrating at a rather alarming frequency between a state of strikingly excited, and sickeningly nervous. It doesn’t matter that he’s having to take an extra step as he heads forward, because his aunt and uncle walk just that step too big for him, unlike his parents who are always by his side.

It doesn’t matter, because Chan has made it to Korea now. He’s here, and he’s going to train to be an idol, to show off his talents for so many different people, hundreds of people, if he’s really lucky, and he’s going to absolutely love it.

For him, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, unpresented Chan, thirteen-years-old with dreams still as big as the Milky Way, but perhaps getting a little closer to his reaching, red-tipped fingers, this is perfect - the perfect start to what will be his perfect life.

He just couldn’t ask for anything better.

☘

Overall, Chan spends a grand total of four days and three hours (give or take) with his aunt and uncle.

They trade polite conversation in front of a muted television, share authentic Korean dishes at a low, wooden table, and Chan sleeps restlessly in a small bedroom filled with boxes and odd trinkets that he doesn’t dare investigate. It’s all so unlike his own room back home, his own life back home, but he’s so grateful nonetheless.

Chan is allowed to explore the outside of their home, to step into the small, surrounding town and tiptoe around the large amount of an older generation. He sends messages to his parents, and sends a laughing emoji back to the silly pictures that his siblings send him of each other. He looks around, and he takes everything in as much as he’s allowed to, and—

And then, before he knows it, he’s grabbing his bags again and being hurried over to his aunt and uncle’s car, shipped off to the looming JYP building deeper into Seoul, and then quickly stationed away in stuffy dorms with a bunch of other boys seemingly around his age. They all look just as disconcerted as Chan initially feels when he first steps foot inside of his given accommodation.

He’s not too upset about the whole thing, in all honesty, not even the quick pace of it all - hadn’t really unpacked anything at his aunt and uncle’s home, anyway. But it still happens to leave a little sting in his chest when he waves goodbye to them through large panes of glass, mainly because of how welcoming they’d been to him, even though he was just—his parent’s stray pup, really.

It’s like mourning a notion of kindness that you’re not sure you’re going to receive again, and it feels kind of strange within Chan’s chest.

They’d promised to keep in touch with him, though, in a, what Chan assumes to be, request from his parents, but the sentiment is still there in some underlying sense, and it still makes Chan feel like somebody’s looking out for him, even if it’s by just a little bit.

So, Chan moves on from it.

As determinedly and courageously as taking your stabilisers off of your bike for the first time, he turns his attention to the dorm he’s been situated within instead of dwelling over the recent past. He’s in a room with three bunk-beds, five other boys, and not a whole lot of space for an abundance of growing teenagers, but he supposes that he can’t exactly expect the world.

What he’s been given now is more than enough, a little gracious, even, considering he’d been half-envisioning the bare minimum. Chan can deal with it - can deal with anything they throw at him, no matter what that might be. He has to. There’s no turning back now, no matter what his mother says.

“I don’t mind where I sleep,” he speaks up, when it doesn’t look like anyone else is going to. They can’t stay in stagnant air forever, so he does his best to be confident.

Chan gestures towards the beds - the bottom bunk, and then the top. “Anywhere is fine for me,” he continues when five pairs of eyes snap towards him. He sees trepidation, hesitation, upset in their gazes, and a deep-rooted part of him wants to quell it before it can consume them. (He isn’t really sure why.) “Do you guys have any… any preference?”

The stagnant air builds. And it builds. And it builds, and cloying mould is beginning to drip from the roof of Chan’s anxious mouth.

And then, a boy with dark streaks of hair that curls around his pierced ears shakes his head. “It’s fine with me, too,” he says, voice just a tad stiff, but becoming looser and looser with the more syllables he pushes out. “I could care less honestly.”

Chan perks up a little, grateful that they hadn’t all stayed silent. “Really?”

“Uh-huh. Just a bed, right? It’s not like we’re going to be spending all that much time in here anyway, I’ve heard.” He nudges a shorter boy hovering next to him, then. “He doesn’t mind either. But we’ll bunk together.”

“Okay,” Chan nods, head bobbing up and down in quick agreement. He’s eager to make friends in this place. As many as he can, hopefully. “Do you two…?”

“We’re from the same pack,” the dark-haired boy explains. His lips are pulling into a small smile, and his eyes crinkle at the corners. “We want to debut together.”

“A duo?”

“Preferably. A double act.”

“Wow,” Chan whispers. His fingers tighten around the soft handle on his backpack, and then they release again. It’s a steady motion that calms his beating heart amidst this new burst of conversation. He likes being a social butterfly, but sometimes his anxious brain doesn’t. “That’s so cool, and the fact that you’re from the same pack, too, thats—”

Traditional packs - large ones, made up of multiple mates, varying status’, and a head alpha - aren’t as common nowadays. They certainly used to be, back when Chan wasn’t even a thought, let alone a whole being, but that doesn’t mean they’ve been completely wiped off of the face of the earth.

It’s just that they’ve been replaced by more traditional family types, instead - parents and children, parents and grandparents and children, single parents and children, cohabiting couples and no children.

Monogamy is becoming more and more common, and the values of large packs have been condensed into small, more familial ones. These days, people can receive the necessary supplements through other means, not just from a large pack life that grants it to them.

It’s definitely not a bad thing—maybe not a good thing, either, but still. Not bad. Chan, though, if he was given the option, he’d definitely love to be a part of a full pack. Leading one would be nice, but just being able to have so many different packmates, to have the closeness with so many different people, to have such a huge family, it—it makes him feel good.

He has his preferences, is all.

“That’s cool,” Chan repeats after a little hiccup in conversation, his baby-fat covered cheeks flushing some shade of pink. “Super cool, uhm,” he shakes his head a little, “I’m Chan!”

“Chan-ssi,” the dark-haired boy repeats, as if he’s testing the syllables on his tongue. He seems to be satisfied with them, because he continues to speak not a moment later. “I’m Dongho,” Dongho says finally. “And this is Seojun.”

Seojun, blonde, shy Seojun waves. Chan waves back.

They fall into a quiet lull after that as the other boys begin to sort out their own beds and sleeping situations. Chan himself unpacks a little, places his t-shirts and sweatpants into the small set of drawers placed between the wall and the end of his bunk, and gently thumbs at the creased picture of him and his family that he’d been keeping in a side pocket on his backpack.

A small smile sends the corners of his lips upwards as he looks down at it - at Hannah and Lucas’ laughing faces, at their parents' fond gazes. There’s also something sad that sits in the back of his mind the longer he stares, a cluster of mild upset that rests against the walls of his throat. It hurts a tad as he attempts to swallow past it, but Chan’s almost content with the knowledge that it’s probably just a longing sense of homesickness that he hasn’t been able to shake just yet.

He’ll get over it, though, soon enough, just like everything else.

He’ll move on from the insistent, nagging pull that’s trying to urge him to go back home, to call his parents and ask for them to help him return, and he’ll focus on the present instead. He’ll shake his head, and rub at his eyes, and try to pull himself back together before any more stitches can come undone.

He’ll learn the other boy’s names later on, too, when they’re sitting around a little table together, legs pressed close and elbows just narrowly avoiding stabbing each other in the ribs. He’ll ask, and he’ll receive, and he’ll find that it’s all okay.

Chan will—he’ll make do.

For now, though, just for this moment, he sits down on the edge of his bed, and sets his semi-full backpack at his feet.

He takes a deep breath, lets his heartbeat even out again. He closes his eyes.

‘I’m going to be okay,’ he thinks to himself as he thumbs at the picture in his grip. He takes another breath - less deep, this time. ‘It’s going to be okay.’

There’s sudden laughter from across the room, and it reverberates off of the four walls.

‘I’m going to be just fine.’

☘

Five months in and Chan feels as if he’s on top of the world.

Everything is so—so great.

He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s running on some sort of super adrenaline, or just thriving off of the pure excitement of finally being able to take one step closer towards achieving his dreams, but he’s doing amazing.

Maybe not in the trainee sense, because his dancing has been picked at by their instructor more times than he can count now, and his vocal teacher always has something to say, but in regards to how he feels about it all, and the entire experience, well—it’s an opportunity that he never wants to turn his back on.

Even despite the complete change of lifestyle, and the undeniably rigid schedule that he and the other boys training under JYP have to adhere to, Chan can’t get enough.

It almost feels like he was born for it all - born for waking up bright and early every single morning, a 5am start where he washes his face, pulls his smiley-face covered socks on, runs his fingers through his messy hair, and then heads across his small dorm to wake up the others who groan and grumble their way through getting ready.

It’s like he was born to dance until there are blisters against the backs of his irritated heels; born to sing until his voice is cracking and he’s under orders from the vocal coaches to drink soothing tea to combat the soreness; born to practice, and learn choreography, and spend time with other trainees in a large, open cafeteria - learning new names, and new faces, and new people that he could one day, hopefully soon, be debuting with.

It feels like trainee life was just—made for him.

And sure, he misses his parents, he misses his siblings, and his home, and his friends back in Sydney. He misses swimming laps with his dad, and surfing in the ocean even though he wasn’t that great at it. He misses the beating sun and the sticky feel of sunscreen against his flushed cheeks, but he doesn’t miss it enough to leave.

Even when that sense of longing does happen to get a little too strong, digging piercing thorns into his heart and squeezing desperately at his throat, Chan will just distract himself.

He’ll stretch his muscles or practise a new routine. He’ll read a book, polish off his Korean, scribble vaguely nonsensical lyrics into the notebook that he’d brought with him all the way from Australia.

Sometimes he’ll even head out of his dorm to find somebody to talk to - head into the company building, maybe, punch his pin into the keypad and walk towards the cafeteria where it’s typical for all of the trainees, and even some of the already-debuted members who are just there for some free food, to hang around.

There’s always bound to be somebody there, no matter what time of day it is. Chan knows that well enough now, and yet still feels some sort of pleasured surprise when he enters and sees a group of trainees sitting around a table towards the middle.

A perfect target. (In a nice way.)

“Hey,” he greets as he sits down beside two trainees he vaguely recognises. It’s not too late into the day, thankfully, so there’s an abundance of people at the table right now - he can see one of his roommates, one he hasn’t talked to all that much, towards the far left, and Seojun and Dongho seem to be mumbling about something or another just on the right. “What’re you guys talking about?”

“Chan, hi!” Somebody says, their name is Beomseok, maybe. Chan can’t really remember, but it seems too rude to ask at this point. He’s certain they’ve sat together at least twice by now. “We were just talking about subgenders, actually. You haven’t presented either, right?”

Another trainee - Chunghee, Chan is a bit more sure this time - swats at Beomseok. “You’d be able to smell him if he’d presented. Don’t be stupid.”

“Well sorry,” Beomseok rolls his eyes. “I was just asking.” He looks to Chan, then. “Sorry, dude.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Chan shakes his head. “I don’t mind, and, no, I haven’t presented. Not yet.”

“Well that’s fine,” Chunghee shrugs. “I’ve heard it’s not very fun anyway.”

“I’ve heard it’s super painful,” somebody else tacks on. “It feels like you’ve been set on fire when you present.”

Chunghee raises a brow judgementally. “How would you know what being set on fire feels like if it’s never happened to you? That doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s just what they say! Don’t shoot the messenger.”

“Well, I’d want to present as an alpha if I was going to go through all of that pain for something,” Beomseok speaks up. “Alphas are cool.”

“They’re okay,” Chunghee huffs. “I think a beta would be better.”

“Beta’s don’t do anything. That’s common knowledge.”

“No, that’s just you being rude and stereotypical.”

“I’m speaking from the heart!” Beomseok throws his hands up, and then glances at Chan again, who’s just been watching the—car crash in front of him. He feels a little like a deer caught in headlights when even Chunghee looks at him, too. “What do you want to be?”

“What do I want to be?”

Beomseok nods. “Yeah. What do you want to present as?”

Oh.

Chan’s thought about it, well, definitely a bit.

Not a huge amount, of course. His mother had always reminded him that he doesn’t need to stress over his second gender - it’ll be a thing that comes to him naturally, and there’s no sort of altering it. It’s predestined since you’re a pup, apparently - your body just—just knows. It knows what you need, what you’ll be specifically suited for, what subgender you’ll feel most comfortable in.

Or something like that, at least.

So, he hadn’t tried to worry over it, and still doesn’t, actually. He knows that it’ll happen one day, when he’s ready, and that’ll be that. He’ll just be—whatever he is. Chan the beta, Chan the omega, or even Chan the alpha. He doesn’t mind.

But—there is still some sort of preference in the back of his mind. Just a little one, but it’s a preference all the same. Chan’s not completely perfect, after all. He can’t stay neutral on everything, no matter how hard he might try.

See, in all honesty, if Chan really, really had to pick, he would absolutely, definitely love to present as an alpha. Not because he wants to dominate, or be seen as ‘on top’ in society, or anything like that. He doesn’t want to be seen as burly and growly, with large muscles and a seemingly permanent scowl. He doesn’t want to be like the media depictions he often sees in cartoons—all of the posturing and the patronising.

He just—he likes the idea of protecting others, to put it simply. Of being a reliable pillar in society and towards other people. He wants to have an aura of calm, an aura of reassurance. He wants to be an alpha that can care for a pack, that can look after them, help them in whatever they might need no matter what it is.

He wants to be a good alpha.

Wishful thinking, maybe, but it would be another dream come true.

“I don’t mind,” is what he finally says, instead of attempting to piece together any of his messy thoughts, when the expecting stares from the other trainee’s on the table - more specifically Beomseok’s in particular - begin to get a little too piercing. “I’m open to anything. Any of them. I don’t mind.”

Beomseok arches a brow questioningly, doubtfully. “Really?”

“Really,” Chan confirms with a firm nod. “I don’t mind.”

Maybe he really doesn’t. (But maybe he really does.)

Chan stays with them at that table for maybe an hour longer or so. The conversation eventually drifts away from subgenders and presenting to the more typical things - the heavy practice they all have to endure, the little hours of sleep they get a night, studying constantly on top of that, and tedious piles of homework that they haven’t actually touched yet. The usual. It’s both somewhat mind-numbing and a steady filler for the interaction that Chan has been missing out on.

He can’t stay there forever, though, and he soon announces his leave as he pushes upwards and away from the table. The others wave him goodbye, and he turns to walk out. Conversation continues smoothly behind him.

It doesn’t take Chan too long to get back to his dorm.

When he’s there, despite his solitude, he finds it harder to concentrate on the equations that he has to do for his class - the figures blurring together on the paper in front of him. There’s a nagging feeling at the back of his mind, a repetitive knocking, almost, as his brain is flooded with images of alphas, and stereotypes, and painful bursts of fiery presenting.

No matter how hard he tries - Chan can’t seem to shake the topic that had been brought up earlier.

In the end, it leaves him with an abnormally restless night, and he doesn’t really know why.

☘

Time flies when you’re having fun.

Or so they say.

Chan still thinks that he might be running on some sort of super adrenaline - a super serum, maybe. He’s, surprisingly so, still enjoying pretty much every aspect of his life as a trainee - all the choreo, and the vocal lessons, and the work. He’s still taking it all in, as if it’s his first day arriving all over again, and he just can’t get enough.

Sure, there are some times when he feels like everything is getting a little too much, when a dark feeling of failure lingers at the back of his mind, a sting settles behind his weary eyes, and his hands clench into fists every time his lyrics refuse to come together in the way that he needs them to, but—but that’s just frustration. That’s just normal frustration, and irritation, and—and stress. It’s nothing more than that, Chan assures himself over and over and over again.

He doesn’t need to focus on it. He doesn’t need to waste any more time on it, on those feelings of doubt that creep up the back of his chilled neck and send him spiralling into a dark palace of uncertainty.

So he doesn’t.

And before he knows it, sixteen months have flown by like they were never even there in the first place.

Chan has been gone from Australia for sixteen whole months. He hasn’t seen his parents in sixteen months. He hasn’t seen his siblings in sixteen months.

For sixteen months, Chan has been contacting his family through video call, texting, emails, and silly pictures sent through messages. For sixteen months, Chan has been out of school in Australia and instead enrolled in Korea, learning about new topics, and new subjects, and different aspects and angles to things that he had thought he’d already gone over. For sixteen months, Chan has lived a completely new life.

He’s fourteen now, too, having aged up a year quite a few months before.

That birthday had been spent training, mostly, a two hour vocal session, a round of choreo that left him sticky and sweaty, and then a couple hours of schoolwork. It was only around midnight when Chan was finally able to call his family. His mother had picked up immediately, a bright smile on the omega’s face as she waved frantically to her son.

His father had been present as well, and so were Lucas and Hannah, who wore matching grins that made Chan’s cheeks warm fondly. His grandparents weren’t able to make it, but Chan wasn’t too upset. It was late in Korea, and it was late in Australia. He couldn’t blame them at all.

They’d talked with each other for a while. At one point, his mother had even held up a cake that she’d baked herself. It was dark blue, with bright yellow lettering on the front and two candles at the top. Chan had pretended to blow it out through the screen. They’d all laughed together when Lucas had done it for him (though Chan’s laugh had been a little strained.)

“We have presents for you,” his father had told him at one point. “You come and get them one day, okay? I know that you’ll love them.”

Chan had smiled and agreed, not at all upset that he wasn’t just being shown or sent them. He didn’t need presents, definitely wasn’t annoyed without them, but the sentiment was there and it made him feel so—warm. It made him feel cared for and looked after when they couldn’t do it in person.

It also made him a little unsettled, though, for an entirely different reason from the presents themselves. Enough so that his eyes had begun to water, and his mother had noticed immediately.

“Chan-ah?” She’d called out, tone dripping with a thick layer of toffee-like concern. Her teeth were practically coated with it. “Channie, sweetheart, are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Chan had responded as quickly as he had been able to manage, looking away for a mere moment so that he could furiously scrub at his eyes. He hadn’t wanted to cry on his birthday, and certainly not in front of his family. “I’m okay—”

“You look tired, baby. Are you tired? Is it your sleep schedule?” His mother had pressed. She always worried so much about him. Too much, almost. “Maybe you should go to sleep, hm? We can call you again in the morning, if you’d like, and we can continue—”

“I’m okay, I promise,” Chan had interrupted. He had sniffled once, and then evened out as best he could. “My sleep schedule is fine. I’m just—I was just thinking. Let's just continue talking, okay? I have an early class later, I can’t… I can’t talk then. Let’s just talk now. Please.”

It was true. Sort of. Chan did have an early class, but it didn’t last long at all. He had just wanted them to stop pressing into the sensitive parts of his emotional state before he had broken completely.

His mother, despite needing a few more moments of reassurance from her son, had eventually given in with a soft sigh, and so they’d continued, just like Chan had so desperately asked for.

The truth, though, is that Chan’s sleep schedule really has gotten worse. It was bad on his birthday - the exhaustion paired with the onslaught of emotions sending him into floods of tears very quickly - but even worse nowadays.

It used to be pretty manageable. Chan was once able to wake himself up early, greeting the morning with a bright smile and even brighter eyes. He was once the first one in the cafeteria for morning breakfast. He was once the one waking up his dormmates, and not the other way around.

And it’s not like Chan has stopped enjoying the trainee life, not at all as he continues to live with his ‘super serum’, but now—but now, Chan sometimes struggles to get his eyes open in the morning. He struggles to drag himself out of bed, to pull a fresh set of clothes on - if that’s even available. He struggles with falling asleep, too.

Sometimes, he lies awake at night, eyes wide and somewhat unfocused as he stares towards the slats of wood holding up the mattress seated above him. He almost reaches up sometimes, pokes at the mattress, but then he doesn’t, because he imagines that his bunkmate would probably strangle him if he woke them from their slumber.

So, Chan just lies there.

In the quiet, in the dark, amidst the thick smell of unkempt teenage boys.

He lies there, and he thinks, and he—he listens.

He listens, one night, when an argument picks up from across the room after Chan has been pretending to be asleep for at least half an hour now (maybe if he pretends hard enough, it’ll trick his body into believing it, too.)

He immediately recognises the voices to be Seojun and Dongho’s, even despite his hazy exhaustion that’s cloying against his lash line. Their tones are heated, angsty, rising on certain syllables before dipping again as if to conceal themselves from any listening ears.

It doesn’t really work. Chan hears them anyway.

After a few beats, he hears something about ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ There’s a pause then, a pause that lasts for more than a few seconds and leaves Chan on the edge of his—bed, before a quiet, hesitant ‘I don’t know what to do without this,’ is pushed out as a strangled response.

It’s that last declaration - said with such a shaky yet sincere tone - that has Chan deciding to do his best to shut it all out. It’s not his business. It’s not his argument, and they’re not really his friends. He doesn’t need to be involved with it, even if they don’t know that he’s listening in the first place.

For the good of everyone, he just stays out of it.

Chan wakes the next morning feeling even less refreshed than usual. It’s a little later into the day - later than it probably should be.

He glances over towards Seojun and Dongho’s shared bunk bed. He blinks once. Twice. Three times. They’re both gone.

(Chan never sees either of them again.)

☘

Surprisingly (or maybe not so), it starts to become a pattern - having people just—disappear, that is.

Chan doesn’t really notice it at first. He’s far too absorbed in getting his sleep schedule back on track lest his mother worry any further about him; in getting his choreography spotless so that he hears less constant, harsh comments about it from the choreographers; in polishing his lines of rap until he’s truly satisfied with them, to notice all that’s happening around him with the other trainees.

But when he does happen to notice, it’s as if the whole thing is glaringly obvious, right in his face, right in front of his eyes, splat bang in the centre of everything, and most notable while he’s sitting opposite Chunghee again at the cafeteria one day. It’s quieter than usual. Strangely, or perhaps fittingly, so.

The root cause of the pertaining silence only hits Chan a good few minutes later, when he’s already started absentmindedly pushing around the food in his tray, of why exactly it’s so quiet.

“Hey, Chunghee,” he starts, waiting for the other boy to look up at him and away from his own tray of half-eaten food before continuing. “Where’s Beomseok? I haven’t seen him in a while.”

It’s true, he hasn’t. Not in practice, not in their vocal lessons, not even walking around. Not anywhere.

Chunghee is quiet for a moment. He glances back down to his own tray again, and then back up to look at Chan. He doesn’t exactly seem—sad, just accepting, maybe, and perhaps a little bit solemn. “Beomseok left,” he says, and it almost sounds easy for him to admit. (It probably isn’t.)

Chan blinks, taken aback. “Left?” Beomseok, who had been so determined to debut, who had been so determined to get his name out there in whatever way he could, just—leaving?

“Yeah. He left like—a week ago. Couldn’t handle it anymore. Or something like that. He didn’t really say.”

It doesn’t make sense. Does it? No. But— “So he just—just left? Just like that?”

“Yes,” Chunghee shrugs, shoulders bobbing up and down. “We’re just trainees, it’s not like we’re under a super strict contract or anything. We can leave.”

“But still,” Chan tries, “that’s so much time out of his life just… going down the drain. Isn’t that a little…”

“Look,” Chunghee sighs. His expression makes him seem older, now, older than Chan, even though he’s sure they’re around the same age. “Beomseok wasn’t the first to do this, Chan, and he’s definitely not going to be the last. It happens. It happens a lot in places like this, you’ll come to see that. Hell—maybe I’ll go next. Who knows.”

It’s true, people have done this before. He’ll never forget his roommates leaving without even another word to him. He’s not completely oblivious. Not really. Chan still frowns, though, because while it’s not a particularly hard concept to grasp, it also sort of is, and Chan has always had trouble with letting go. “Don’t say that. You—you can’t just go. Like you were never even here. You can’t just—”

Chunghee smiles, and it’s something small, and sad, and vaguely regretful. Maybe this idol life isn’t for him at all - maybe it never was, never will be, never could be. “Can’t I?”

Chunghee had been right, Chan comes to find. He is the next one to leave, after Beomseok, and Seojun, and Dongho, and a plethora of other trainees that Chan himself had never really met - never built a proper bond with.

And after that—after him, it’s as if they start dropping like flies.

☘

One by one, more and more people leave the trainee program. Gone, just like that.

Unsurprisingly, Chan’s dorm soon becomes too big for just the two people, including himself, left in it.

So he’s moved to another one—a different one this time, in a different area, too. The boys he has for roommates now are, arguably, a bit more sociable than his last - immediately welcoming him with open arms and wide smiles the minute that he steps inside past the threshold. Maybe it’s because they’ve been trainees for the same amount of time as Chan has so it’s in some sort of strange solidarity, or maybe it’s just because they’re all, coincidentally, social butterflies, Chan doesn’t really know.

He doesn’t mind, though, because their friendliness towards him means that he’s almost instantly brought into their larger friend circle outside of just who’s in the dorm room specifically.

And through them, Chan meets BamBam.

BamBam, surprisingly, is just a couple of months older than Chan, and he’s been training for only a hint longer, too. They click almost instantly after meeting one another - all it really takes is a handshake, an exchanging of names, and then they’re just—friends. Just like that.

Chan immediately loves it.

He loves everything about BamBam, his silliness, his idea of fun, his ability to make Chan smile no matter what mood he might be in - no matter how sleep-deprived or homesick he is. The other boy is like the light at the end of Chan’s dark tunnel, always smiley, and always ready to uplift the mood. Sure, sometimes it’s like he doesn’t exactly have an off switch, but Chan, truthfully, wouldn’t change it for the world.

Prior to meeting BamBam - and the others that he’s become fast friends with, of course, but more specifically BamBam - Chan had been going through a bit of a rough patch.

He doesn’t really like calling it that, but it’s probably what it was if he’s being honest with himself for once.

He’d just been a little down, maybe, feeling heavy-hearted and some blue-grey shade of unsettled as he worked through his day with far less enthusiasm than he’d initially started out with. Maybe it was because of the pressure, maybe it was because of the other trainees dropping like flies around him - instigating some deep-rooted fear that he’ll be next, whether voluntarily or not so, inside of him - or maybe it was none of that at all.

Chan doesn’t really know for sure, couldn’t pinpoint an exact reason for it all, he just does happen to know that BamBam is as good at pulling Chan out of a slump as he is at being a songwriter, and a rapper, and a dazzling performer - so, pretty damn good.

They just get each other. All of the time. Two peas in a pod and undeniably inseparable

Plus, they rarely ever fight, if at all, which is always a huge advantage to their friendship. Sometimes there are a few grumbles, because what’s a pair of best friends without a few, small, nagging complaints, but—but other than that, there’s nothing even remotely close to ‘heated’ or ‘volcanic’ erupting between them.

They just aren’t like that with one another.

No, instead, they’re kind - kind, and understanding, and aiming to help the other out whenever needed, and as soon as possible at that point. They don’t hold back, nor do they intend to attempt to hold each other back either. They’re just—equals, equals to one another in all of the best ways, in each and every aspect, and neither would change a single bit of it for anything.

They’re best friends. They love each other. Nothing will ever be able to tear them apart, they’re both completely sure of it.

“Here you go,” BamBam says one day, sliding a drink over towards Chan. They’ve been sitting in his dorm, huddled around a small coffee table as Chan finishes going over his equations, something that he’s been doing for a good two hours now.

Chan perks up a tad as he glances to the cup. “For me?” He asks, raising his eyes a little towards his friend.

“No, I’m giving it to the ghost sitting next to you,” BamBam snorts. “Of course it’s for you, doofus.”

“I’m not a doofus,” Chan counters alongside a roll of his eyes. He smiles warmly only a second later, though, gripping onto the drink and pulling it close. It smells so good. “Thank you. It’s my favourite.”

“I know it is,” BamBam replies as he sits down opposite the other trainee. He brings his legs into a crossed position, resting his arms on top of the low coffee table. “How’s it going?”

“Okay, I guess. It’s not too difficult, but it’s not like, the most amazing homework I’ve ever been given or anything.”

“Figures,” BamBam laughs. He laughs until it naturally trickles out and Chan looks ready to return to his homework again. He straightens up minutely. “Hey, you know, not to change the subject or anything, but I was—I’ve actually been thinking about something lately.”

“Oh?” Chan raises a brow. “You were thinking, wow, that’s gotta be an accomplishment.”

“Hey!” Bambam squawks. The two of them fall into another fit of giggles together, before the - only slightly - older trainee is waving a hand around. “No, no, seriously! Listen! Hey!”

“I’m listening! I’m listening, I swear.”

BamBam points a finger at his friend. “Are you sure? You swear it?”

“I swear!” Chan’s hands go up in, what he hopes is, a placating manner.

BamBam narrows his eyes for a few seconds suspiciously, before settling back down with a soft but accepting huff. “Okay. Okay. So, like I said, I’ve been thinking, and—” he pauses, clicks his tongue. “I’ve been thinking about debuting, right?”

Chan nods. Debuting is always the end goal with coming here, isn’t it? So, it makes sense for BamBam to have been thinking about it recently, hell, Chan thinks about it all the time. Nobody wants to be a trainee forever, after all. Chan certainly doesn’t. He has big dreams, and big ideas, and these sorts of things can’t be achieved if he’s stuck just—practising forever. That isn’t realistic. It doesn’t work for him, doesn’t fit with the life that he wants.

“Right, well, I was thinking about it, and—and I know that we do really well together, you and I, and, and I think if we continue training hard, and doing our work, and helping each other, I don’t know, maybe we could—maybe we could think about debuting together!”

BamBam’s last few words come out rushed and pressed together. They’re almost jumbled up, unintelligibly so, but—but Chan just about catches it, and the moment that he does, it’s as if his whole heart lights up with something so, undeniably warm.

Just the suggestion itself is like a perfect scenario for him - something that he craves.

Ever since the beginning, Chan has always been sure that he wants to debut in a group. Be it four members, five members, six, seven, eight, he hasn’t ever really minded about that much specification. He just knows that he would thrive underneath the group collective - the collective mindset, and the shared creativity, and the bouncing of ideas from one member to another.

Being a soloist would be incredibly cool - Chan has always enjoyed both singing and rapping, and he’s sure that he could do some variation of them on his own - but it’s not the same as being in a group at all, and it’s not what Chan wants nor what he needs. It’s not what he so deeply desires.

He needs group mates, and close friends, and unbreakable bonds that tie him together with other people. He needs that pack mentality. It doesn’t even matter if he and his group mates don’t actually end up forming a pack from it, not at all, it’s just the principle, really.

Chan craves it, almost, craves the familiarity and the knowledge that he won’t be alone amidst everything that happens.

“Are you serious?” Is what Chan finally pushes out, eyes lit up with something blisteringly bright.

BamBam doesn’t take it in a positive manner, at first, as he begins to rapidly wave his hands around. “Look, I mean, yes, but we don’t have to! It was just—it was just something I was thinking about, and—and I thought it might be cool to make that an end goal, but, you know, it—it—”

“No, no, BamBam, no, I’d love to,” Chan clarifies, reaching forward to grip onto the other’s hand. He squeezes once, and then twice. BamBam squeezes back only a second later. “Seriously. I want that so much. I want to debut together. Me and you, and whoever else. Us.”

“Seriously?” It’s BamBam’s turn to ask now, a grin beginning to stretch across his lips - wide, and pleased, and achingly gleeful.

Chan is so happy, so—so elated that things are finally beginning to work out, that things are starting to look up, that his expression matches BamBam’s almost immediately. They’re perfect mirrors of one another - perfect, beaming mirrors. “Seriously. We’re going to do this. We’re going to debut together. I promise.”

☘

Chan and BamBam train together as much as physically possible.

Some of the other trainees like to joke that they’re ‘attached at the hip’ and that you ‘can’t find one without the other being close behind.’ They’re just lighthearted jokes, of course, gentle teasing about the vivid closeness between them, but it’s honestly largely true, and neither would have any ground to stand on if they attempted to deny it.

The two of them practise their choreography together. They practise their singing together. They practise their rapping, and their dancing, and their stage presence together.

They do pretty much everything beside one another - with one another if they can.

Be it going out for food, finishing up tedious homework, or taking a nap between their rigid training schedules, Chan and BamBam make sure to be next to each other, sharing conversation, and jokes, and talks about a bright future that’s hopefully getting closer and closer towards them with each full day that passes by.

They’re as close as they can be, and it’s glaringly obvious to anyone who knows them, no matter if it’s the other trainees, the managers, or the instructors that oftentimes pair them together. They just know.

At one point, they’re even invited to perform on a stage with another trainee, Chaeyoung.

Chaeyoung is sweet, and nice, and very, very funny once they all loosen up and get past any initial nerves that might be brimming. Chan gets along well with her, and he wishes her good luck on one day debuting. She does the same for him, and tells him, with a soft, warm smile, that she hopes he and BamBam can do something good together.

Chan hopes so, too.

All of the hope that he has for the future - the determination, the drive, and the desire - turns to motivation for training more, training harder, training to an increasingly strict degree where he sticks to a tight schedule as best as he possibly can - foregoing trips out with his roommates and friends, politely declining invites to hang out at the cafeteria, and doing so in favour of polishing up his rap, for instance.

He trains, and BamBam trains, and they train together as one complete unit.

Chan’s fluctuating moods, brought on by something that he can’t even begin to accurately pinpoint, simmer down into something so manageable that he could cry.

Gone are the sleepless nights where he lays restlessly in bed, staring up at the slats on the above bunk and pondering over just about everything and anything. Gone is that longing feel of homesickness that had a tendency to rest over his shoulders like some snowy shroud. Gone is the tightness in his chest, the pounding to his head, and the uncertainty that would flood his delicate veins.

Chan begins to feel normal again, begins to feel as if he’s finally getting better after months of teetering emotions.

He begins to feel good. Just like in the beginning.

And then, one day, BamBam presents as a beta.

It happens suddenly. Chan doesn’t notice at first because his senses are still largely dulled, with blunt ends and not much substance, due to his own status as an unpresented pup, and the notoriously faded beta scent doesn’t help with his detection - or lack of - either. But it still happens - an inevitable sort of thing - and Chan still becomes privy to it eventually, even if he now wishes he never had.

Chan had thought it would be fine, initially, that it wouldn’t matter, it was just—one of those things. It happens to all of them eventually, so why should it matter? They can still continue as normal. Things can still go on as they were. Nothing has to change. Nothing.

But then BamBam is ripped away from him. Cold and cruel, just days after his presentation, it’s announced that he’ll be debuting in a group called ‘Got7’.

BamBam is elated. Chan isn’t even somewhat considered for it.

He and BamBam don’t see each other as much after that.

(If at all.)

☘

Chan has been a trainee for three years now at JYP Entertainment, and he’s still not moved anywhere past that status.

For three years he’s sat idle.

For three years he’s watched as his friends have debuted without him. They train together, they laugh together, they eat together, and they exist together for months upon months upon gruelling months, and then they leave him behind.

Just like that.

Chan lays lifelessly in bed as he watches their items being taken away, packed up to be carried over to a different dorm where their group will reside together. He watches as they say their goodbyes, as they pack up and leave and then never come back, because why would they? They’ve achieved their dreams, they’ve reached the beginning point to their golden journey. They’ve made something out of their lives just as they have always wanted to.

They’re going to make their families proud.

Why would they ever spare even a glance back towards him?

Why would anyone care enough about Chan to look over their shoulder?

Why would anyone want to go back just for somebody like him?

He’s just—there.

For three whole years he’s just been there.

He’s been thirteen and fourteen, fifteen and sixteen, spent countless birthdays alone, and cold, and wishing he had his mothers soft arms around him in a tight grip. He’s had his hair dyed more colours than he can count on both hands, he’s worn irritating contacts, and colourful outfits, and he’s sung until his voice cracks painfully, and yet—yet it’s still not good enough.

It’s still not good enough to have him stand out from being anything but a background character - that glimpse in the corner of your eye that you soon forget was ever there in the first place.

He’s not talented enough to do so. He’s not as beautiful as he should be, never dipping his toes into those desired expectations. He can’t dance as well as the others can, can’t hold a note long enough to sound even somewhat pleasing. His stage presence is minimal, choreography poor, and his charisma is more dull than it is enjoyable.

Chan isn’t the best in anything, really. He’s not—he’s not at the top for anything, never chosen first, never placed first, never reaching the highest marks in school or getting the best feedback from his instructors - not compared to everyone else around him.

He’s ordinary. Mediocre. Average at best.

He’s sixteen, verging on a quiet, solemn seventeen, and he’s still unpresented, too. He can’t even give the world that - can’t even make up for his failures in every other aspect of his pitiful life by finally presenting into his given subgender.

It doesn’t matter that most people don’t present until they’re young adults anyway. It doesn’t matter that presenting so early on is more abnormal than it is normal. It doesn’t matter that you don’t even have to be presented to debut. None of it matters, because, surely he could at least do that?

If his talent is nonexistent, if he has no skill, no defining features to put him on a team with others, or have him finally stand out from everyone else, surely his natural biology could save him. Surely.

But it doesn’t, it doesn’t, of course it doesn’t, and Chan presses his face into his damp pillow as he sobs quietly, raw, burning agony pulling and pushing at his delicate rib cage as it aims for his fragile heart.

It’s as if all of those feelings that had been once smoothed over by BamBam’s warm smile and his boisterous laughter, by the hope that would continuously rest against Chan’s beating heart as a soft reminder, have come back again in furious waves. All of the misery, and the sorrow, and the harrowing uncertainty of an unobtained future comes slamming back against him the minute the light at the end of his dark tunnel begins to dim.

He’s restless, unable to sleep, unable to eat, trembling more often than not, and he’s—he’s upset.

He’s upset.

He’s so upset that he feels nauseous, so angry at himself that he wants to rip away his own hair, peel his skin back and dig bloody, chipped nails into screaming flesh. He wants to grind his own bones into dust, gouge out his eyes so that he can no longer see the truth of his failures. He wants to be gone - rid of himself completely, rid of the uselessness of his own mind that only seems to be plaguing the world around him.

It doesn't matter that his roommate, Younghyun, is rubbing a soothing hand over Chan’s shoulder, pressing warm fingers into his chilled skin and whispering something that vaguely sounds like ‘you’re okay, Chan-ah, you’re okay, it’s okay, hyung’s here,’ but Chan can’t really tell because his sobs are too loud in his rushing ears for him to properly think, and his mind is ruthlessly splitting apart into fragmented pieces never to slip together again.

Younghyun wouldn’t get it, anyway—he can’t get it - can’t understand the sickening anguish that fills every orifice. He’s older than Chan, had presented into a fine alpha a year or so ago more smoothly than one would have ever expected for him to, and there are talks - serious, concrete talks - of his debut coming around next year.

His life is set for him already. He’s perfect, so talented and admirable. He’s got all of the great qualities that an idol needs in order to succeed in their industry. Funny, handsome, kind, and skilled. He’s everything all at once. He’s everything that he could possibly ever need. He doesn’t require anything else at all.

Chan is nothing in comparison.

He’s insignificant. A mark against Younghyun’s shoe - a piece of gravel stuck within the ingrained grips there, if that. He’s forgettable, dismissible, plain. He’s nothing special, not in the slightest, because if he was, if he could be, then he wouldn’t be here. He wouldn’t be crying pathetically into his sheets and trying his hardest to quell the worst of his sobs. He wouldn’t be shaking, and shivering, and needing his roommate to take time out of his busy schedule to attempt to soothe him.

If Chan was worth anything at all, anything, then he’d have debuted in a team already. He’d be in a different dorm already, singing every other day, practising with his groupmates, attending shows, touring, and performing in concerts, and—and living.

But he’s not.

He’s not doing any of that. He’s not doing a single bit of it.

He’s just laying here, crying, and sobbing, and feeling so sick that he wants to squeeze his own throat until everything stops, even if just for a mere moment.

He’s pathetic.

Utterly, and totally, pathetic.

That’s probably why all of his friends - all of the people around him - have left. It’s why his aunt and uncle don’t text him anymore, why Dongho and Seojun disappeared without a single word, why Beomseok and Chunghee went back to a normal life, why BamBam, even BamBam, took their dreams into the palm of his hand and so diligently achieved them, all while leaving Chan behind in the choking dust.

They probably couldn’t stand to be around him anymore. Didn’t want to sit beside him and his long-lasting failures that stuck out like a sore thumb. They probably knew that he was a curse upon them, a plague, an infection, a bad luck charm worth nothing more than dirt and grime. A lost cause.

They probably knew that they’d achieve more with him gone, with him no longer around them, with him far, far away, and—and they have, they have achieved, at least in some regard, and Chan hasn’t, he hasn’t, he’s just—here.

He’s still here, curling into his bedsheets and crying his eyes out.

Chan melts a little further into his bed. His shoulder is unbearably cold where Younghyun’s hand had once been.

He doesn’t think that he ever wants to leave this position.

Everything hurts.

☘

The days pass by slowly.

Chan stumbles on.

He tries to focus on things—tries to focus on his schoolwork, on his practice, on the training that he’s meant to be a part of. He tries to be who he was before his whole world had crumbled around him into unfixable piles.

But it’s hard.

It’s really hard, these days, and he isn’t exactly sure why. It’s just—it almost feels like there’s a heavy weight on his chest. Or on his sternum, maybe, he can’t pinpoint it, but it’s there, and it’s large, and made of lead, and making it hard, so, so hard for him to breathe.

Sometimes, his whole body feels like it’s made of lead. That heavy weight is everywhere - in his veins, in his blood, along the lining of his stomach. He can’t lift a finger, can’t drag himself out of bed, can’t bring himself to even attempt to scribble down an answer to an equation. It just doesn’t work.

His motivation has dribbled down between his shaking fingers, slipped away into a pool of nothingness. He can’t scoop it back up no matter how hard he tries. (Truthfully, he doesn’t try that hard at all anymore, but he’s not ready to admit that just yet.)

Everything just feels slow. Slow. Dragging. Pointless, perhaps.

His existence seems bleak - his whole world seems bleak, in a strange way that it never has before. Sure, Chan’s been sad, he’s been upset, and angry, and devastated. He’s been furious at himself and the universe. He’s been torn up and pleading for some sort of change - for any type of change to make things better for once. But this—this is different.

This emotion, this festering, dark emotion that crawls into his pulsing veins and makes a home nestled within the fragility of his stuttering heart, is something else entirely. It’s turning him inside out, changing him into somebody that he doesn’t recognise when he glances tiredly in the mirror at three am.

There’s no more hope, no more drive, no more—anything, really.

It’s just him.

Him. Chan. But not quite. A shell, maybe, that might be more fitting of a description if he had to choose one.

He doesn’t feel normal anymore, doesn’t feel real.

Even as Younghyun cups at his sunken cheeks, peers down at him with a worried frown - brows furrowed together and meeting in the middle - and downturned lips, Chan doesn’t really feel like he’s actually there in his tight grip.

He’s not there, as Younghyun tells him that he needs to snap out of it, that he’s jeopardising everything, that Younghyun’s worried, he’s so, so worried, and he’s there for him, he’s there if Chan needs anything at all to make him feel some shade of better, but Chan needs to do something, he needs to do anything, and he needs to do it now.

He’s not there, as the higher ups pull him to quiet hallways in order to talk to him, tell him that he’s risking his place in JYP Entertainment with his failures and dismissal, with his lack of drive and lack of focus on the things that are on his schedule, scolding him, and scowling at him, and treating him like anything but another being - just something less than.

He’s not there, as his instructors tell him he’s falling behind, that he’s not keeping up anymore as he used to be (was he really ever?), that he’s doing even worse than before, or as his teachers place failed exams down in front of him and inform him of the looming reality of him not passing school if he doesn’t try harder.

He’s not there.

Not entirely so, at least.

He’s just—floating by. An image, a spectre, a ghost. A bundle of haunted emotions. Chan doesn’t feel real. Doesn’t even really know if he wants to be real anymore.

If he didn’t exist, if he wasn’t here, if he was just gone, then at least there’d be no more pressure. There’d be no more heavy weight on his cracking, creaking chest, there would be no more heavy push on his shoulders, there would be no more stress, or tension, or demand that he do better, be better, work harder like everyone else who got to debut had.

There would be no more demand for Chan to be somebody that he isn’t.

Chan takes a deep breath, splashes his face with water and then straightens up. He doesn’t bother getting a towel, lets the water drip down his gaunt cheeks, leak into the collar of his t-shirt, spread down the length of his tight throat.

His eyes are red-rimmed and puffy, and they sting a certain amount. He doesn’t know if it’s from the wailing or the water.

Chan takes another deep breath. He doesn’t really want to be here anymore.

Chan’s fingers are trembling around the phone in his hand. There are tears streaming down his face, dripping down into his sleep shirt. His chest hurts so badly that he wants to scream as if that would somehow help. Everything seems to be burning around him, blistering, and sweltering, and getting close and closer. He wants it all to stop.

“I want to come home,” he whispers into the dark, all choked and trembling. “I want to come home now. I want to come home.”

“Oh, Chan-ah,” his mothers voice comes through from the receiver. She’s as soft as ever, soft, and understanding, and filled with grief for her eldest pup - eldest, but still so, so young. “Baby.”

“I want to come home. I want to come home, I don’t want to be here anymore, I don’t, I—”

“Chan-ah, pup, you’re okay, you’re okay, just breathe with me, you’re—”

Chan’s cries leave his lips wet and trembling. He’s crying himself into an aching migraine. He can’t stop. He wants to, but he can’t stop crying no matter how hard he tries.

“I want to come home.”

☘

Chan’s mother convinces him to stay a little longer.

She talks with him for hours on the phone, doesn’t hang up even when his responses have slurred out into senseless sniffling of his blocked nose. She shushes him when he mumbles that she should probably go to sleep now, that she probably has better things to do than talk to her pathetic son. She looks after him, even though they’re an ocean apart, and does her absolute best to soothe his restless mind.

Through gentle words and that special mother’s love, she convinces him to stay.

Chan doesn’t really want to - really doesn’t want to, even.

But he does anyway, because his mother is—everything to him, all of his family is, truthfully, and if she thinks that Chan, even in this slump, in this stasis of agony and lack of motivation, even in this recurring, lonely nightmare that he can’t seem to wake up from, still has a chance at making it, well, who is he to go against her words?

Who is he to tell her no?

So, he continues.

As best he can, Chan puts one foot in front of the other, takes a deep breath, and tries.

He starts trying a little harder again, even if minutely so, at all that he’s missed out on in the past few—months, perhaps. He picks up his studies and attempts to make up for the work that he’s missed; he stays later in the practice rooms to polish up on the choreography that he’s mostly forgotten; he puts effort into looking after his voice, his body, his mind.

He cooks, and he cleans, and he showers. He brushes his hair, and he does the skin care routine that they’ve been told to strictly adhere to. He talks to other people, and swallows back any of the nausea that rises in the back of his stinging throat when he thinks about stepping even one foot outside of his dorm room.

Chan tries.

There’s no real meaning to anything, though.

It’s like he does these things, attempts these improvements, makes some sort of an effort with these changes, for—nothing. He has no end goal in sight other than pleasing his mother for just a little bit longer. Truthfully, he doesn’t see debuting as something unbelievably soon anymore, there’s no hope of finding groupmates, or even packmates, to become close with. There’s no long-term goal in Chan’s mind.

He’s just doing this… now. In this present, for this present. That’s all it is. That’s all he views it as.

Surprisingly, for the first time in his life, Chan no longer sees a future.

He no longer sees the singing, and the touring, and the concerts, and the fans. He sees no idea of producing, or being around others, or finding friends in this industry. He doesn’t see himself making his parents proud - making his whole family proud - with what he manages to accomplish here in Korea.

And, really, he so desperately wishes that he did. He wishes that he felt as nervously excited as he did when he first arrived in Korea, when he first met his original roommates, when he first explored the JYP building. He wishes that he was as driven as he was back then, getting up early, and writing new songs until dawn. He wishes that he had the motivation, the ambition, the joy, that he did back then.

Chan wishes that he was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, still enjoying his life, every aspect of it, no matter how difficult things would sometimes get.

He wishes that he had BamBam beside him talking, and talking, and talking. He wishes that Beomseok and Changhee were still arguing in front of him over silly, nonsensical topics. He wishes that he actually cared about things again.

But he doesn’t, and he can’t, and he doesn’t think that he ever will again.

There’s nothing for him anymore.

So, he just—goes by.

He isn’t completely there, isn’t completely with it at all times, but he actually gets out of bed every morning when he needs to. He goes to each practice, each vocal lesson, each school lesson. He does his homework, scribbles messy lyrics into his notebook, shows up to every meal time in the cafeteria, he—he tries, to some degree.

It’s better than nothing, isn’t it?

And, really, Chan might not be truly existing.

He might not really be himself anymore. He might not really feel like a true being with a beating heart. But—but he still tries. He tries, and he attempts, and he sits beside his friends - the ones that are still left - and decides that it’s enough. It’s bearable for the time being.

“Hey,” Chaeyoung says as Chan sits next to her on the floor of the practice room. His legs are pulled to his chest. They look thinner than usual. “I haven’t seen you in a while. How’ve you been?”

Chan smiles something small, and sad, and not really all that complete. “I’ve been okay. Just busy.”

“Busy,” Tzuyu giggles. “Aren’t we all?”

Chan’s not doing well.

But trying is all he has.

He can’t stop now.

(Not yet, at least.)

☘

The days pass by, then the months, and then a year.

Chan turns seventeen, and it’s that quiet, solemn seventeen that he’d always dreaded. He spends that birthday sitting lifelessly on the edge of his bed for the most part - facetiming his family only later on into the evening when he’s finally managed to cause a breach in the melancholy cloud hovering above his head.

There’s a cake on a screen, and the promise of presents for when Chan returns home to them again. He smiles at his siblings - his siblings who are older now, and who don’t seem to recognise him as much as they used to - and they shyly smile back, all hesitant waves and no longer wanting to be around as much for the duration of the call. His grandparents aren’t there, they never seem to be, but it doesn’t affect Chan as it once had.

He goes along with whatever happens. He answers the questions, and the inquiries, and the gentle prodding into ‘how much fun he’s having over there.’ He nods his head when talks of visiting him begin to pop up, and then waves a hand understandingly when they agree that it might be a bit too expensive just yet for all of them. He wouldn’t want them to put themselves in financial despair just for him, after all, he’s not really worth it.

The hours tick by, later and later, the questions dwindling, the yawns appearing, the goodbyes spread, and at one point it’s finally just him and his mother. Omega and pup.

The omega’s eyes are inquisitive, gentle, some tinge of a sunny warmth that almost heats Chan’s chilled skin even through a screen. She smiles so that her teeth show, and Chan can’t help but to smile back.

“How are you feeling, sweetheart?” She asks, tone as soft as ever.

“I’m doing good,” Chan nods affirmatively. “It’s just another birthday, and I’m used to them being like this, so—”

His mother waves her hands around. “No. No, with—I mean with the trainee program. With debuting, with everything that’s happening. How are you? How’s everything going now?”

“Oh.” Chan pauses, but it’s only for a mere moment. He doesn’t want his mother to worry too much. Not about him. Not when there’s so many more important things that she could be thinking about. “It’s—it’s going good, you know? I’m—I’m feeling good. Really good. Uhm, there were—there were talks about maybe me debuting soon, which is really cool, and—and I’m excited for that. Yeah. It’s—it’s going better. It’s fine.”

It’s fine, he’s not crying anymore, he’s not curling into a foetal position and wishing that the ground would swallow him whole. He’s not sobbing down the line to his parents at three am, he’s not swallowing back nausea every time somebody tries to talk to him. He’s not breaking apart at the seams with no spare thread in sight. Everything is fine.

It’s all fine.

“Really?” His mother’s eyes brighten. “That’s great! Gosh, I’m so happy for you, I was so worried when you called me those months ago,” she laughs lightly. “I honestly wanted to come and pick you up right then and there, but I knew deep down that you could still do it. And you have! Look at you! That’s amazing, baby, I’m so proud of you, you know that? I’m so—”

His mother is rambling, and she’s rambling, and she’s rambling, and she just won’t stop. It’s too much. It’s too much. All of it is too much. Chan is sinking and he doesn’t know how to get out.

He interrupts after another few minutes of his mother’s speech, physically unable to continue. “Yeah, mum, I’ve—I’ve actually gotta go. There’s—there’s a late night training that’s on, and—” there’s guilt that sits at the back of Chan’s throat. He doesn’t know what to say, how to make it better. He’s dug himself in too deep, maybe, and it’s only been a few painful minutes. His mother’s words sting like thorns into his raw skin. “I love you. Thank you. I really love you.”

He doesn’t wait for a response before hanging up.

Chan lays back onto his bed, and then rolls over onto his side. He squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t really want to think anymore. Not about anything, and definitely not about the cluster of cold remorse nestled within his quivering heart.

In all honesty, there’s been no sort of talk about him debuting. Not since he first joined, when it was initially mentioned as something that they should always look forward to, and that they should view it as both an end goal and a starting point to a new, incredible journey where they’ll finally be able to achieve their dreams.

For Chan, these days, debuting is just—something that happens to people that aren’t him, funnily enough.

It happens a lot for the people around him, for the other trainees practising just as hard - or maybe harder - than he is. It’s happened for BamBam, and it’s happened for Younghyun, and even Sana has recently mentioned that she’s been talked to by the higher-ups about a debut show. (Chan had tried his best not to look as disgustingly jealous as he had felt. He doesn’t think that he’d done a very good job.)

He’d still love to, maybe. There’s still a painful longing for it that sits in the open cave of his chest and just—waits there. It waits, and it wilts, and it mourns with a long, dragging song of sorrow that echoes around Chan’s mind.

But these days, he’s accepted that maybe it just isn’t for him.

Even his teachers, and his instructors, and his coaches, have looked at him at one point - held him back after a session and frowned down at him with expressions that are almost akin to mild disbelief. “You’re still here?” They’ll ask, questioning and surprised, and Chan will offer a weak, cracking smile, and then he’ll nod, because he is. He is still here, after almost four years of continuous training.

He’s still here, just—milling about, really.

Chan likes to think of it as biding his time, perhaps. He’s just waiting for the right moment to leave it all behind - to head back to Australia, back to Sydney where his family resides, and simply live with the shame of failing to achieve his dreams of being an idol.

He’ll no doubt be a laughing stock, an embarrassment, a miserable, floundering, disappointment to all, but he’ll at least be able to do the things that make him happy again.

Chan will be able to swim, and surf (even if done so quite poorly). He’ll be able to build more concrete bonds with his younger siblings again, finally hug his mother and allow her to drench him in that soft, milky scent of hers. He’ll be able to greet his grandparents, and open the presents that his father has always gushed about.

He’ll be happier than he is here, and maybe—maybe he’ll even be able to rediscover his love for music again, something that has slowly been leaking out of him with each day that passes by, leaking away from him, dribbling down past the tips of his tingling fingers and disappearing into somewhere that he can’t quite yet discern.

And Chan would love to find his adoration for music again, he’d love to be able to write endlessly, to produce, to experiment with beats, and submerge himself within a pool of creation, but he can’t.

He can’t anymore, and it hurts, and it stings, and it makes him want to tear out his own hair, and slam his nails into his palms, and—

“Hey!”

Chan startles suddenly from his torturous thoughts as he’s roughly barged into. He stumbles, almost landing against the wall, and a voice from his left immediately begins to squawk obnoxiously.

“Do you not look where you’re going at all!? I was literally walking there, and you just—you just walk into me like I’m some invisible—invisible… nothing!”

Chan blinks rapidly, trying to bring himself back up to speed as quickly as possible. He’d been so immersed within what he was thinking about that paying attention to his surroundings hadn’t even remotely registered to him.

And now look where that’s landed him. Great.

“Oh gosh, oh—I am so, so sorry,” he holds his hands up in what he hopes is a placating manner. “You’re right, I wasn’t—I wasn’t looking where I was going at all. I’m—oh gosh, that was so—”

“Yeah? Really? I never would have guessed! Whole hallway, and no, you decide to barge right into me.”

Chan pulls a face. His shoulder aches a little. “Well, honestly, it kind of felt like you barged into me—”

“Uh, I did not!”

“Well…”

“Hey! You don’t get an opinion on this, considering you were the one with your head in the clouds!”

The last line startles a laugh out of Chan, as put-off and unsure as he is, and he takes a moment to properly look at the fiery person in front of him.

They’re a little bit shorter than him - though really only by a few centimetres or so - with the roundest cheeks that Chan has ever set eyes upon, and an undeniable burning drive that’s so visible within their narrowed gaze. Chan had used to look like that, so passionate and ready for anything. The hollowness that he feels nowadays makes him a little sad.

Beneath all of that though, they have a distinct smell. And not because they’re been running around and have gathered up far too much sweat, not at all, they have—a scent. A highly noticeable one even to Chan, one that smells of smoke, and fire, and then a very underlying hint of rosemary and eucalyptus - soft, soft, soft. It’s strange, but it works.

It also means that they’ve presented, and presented into an—-

“You’re an omega?”

The boy opposite Chan scrunches his nose. He looks even more pissed than before at this point. “And so what if I am? What’s it to you, huh?”

Chan rapidly shakes his head from side to side. He’s been screwing up a little too much for this to be good. “Nothing! Nothing! I swear, it’s—”

“Because if you think you’re going to get away with shaming me for my subgender, just know I’m gonna kick you in the balls. It’s gonna happen. I’ll do it, I’m gonna do it, I’ll—”

“No! No! No, seriously. It’s fine! I don’t care, I don’t—maybe I’ll be an omega, I don’t know, I don’t mind, I’ve not even presented yet, it’s not—it’s none of my business anyway. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have even—sometimes, sometimes I speak before I think.”

Chan’s quick-fire rambling must have broken through to the other boy at some point, because he seems to lose at least an inch of the defensive posture that he’d previously been holding onto like some sort of lifeline. He lets out a breath, crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re serious?” He questions, only a tad steely. “You don’t care that I’m—?”

“I don’t care. Not one bit. I promise. And—and I’m seriously sorry for not looking where I was going. That was absolutely my fault.”

“It was,” the boy agrees with a definitive nod. He seems to sag a little, though, and shrugs his shoulders up and down. “I’m sorry too, though. I guess I was a little—hostile.”

“You’re allowed to be,” Chan denies. “It’s okay. Uhm—I’m Chan, by the way.”

“Jisung, Han Jisung,” Jisung greets, accepting the offered hand that Chan puts forward. “You’re a trainee here?”

Maybe. Once upon a time. Not for much longer, though.

“Yeah,” is what Chan says, instead of putting all of his turmoil onto this stranger. “Uhm, yeah. I’ve been here for—a little bit, definitely. Are you? I don’t think I’ve seen you around that much before.”

“Oh, uhm, yeah, yeah I’m a trainee. I actually joined a few months ago, but I’ve been back and forth from here and home a lot, so you probably wouldn’t have seen me.”

“Right,” Chan nods. “You’re not staying in the dorms?”

“I am now. I wasn’t, but I am. My parents were a little bit… protective, to say the least.”

Chan smiles, and it’s a little more genuine than his usual ones these days. “Oh. Yeah, I get it, don’t worry.”

Jisung’s reflective smile is a little awkward, and a little crooked. “Yeah.”

Chan scratches the back of his head, glances to the end of the hallway. He’d been headed somewhere before this interruption, and— “But, well, it was really nice meeting you, even if we met in a somewhat unconventional way,” his tone lifts upwards with slight amusement. “But I’ve got—I’ve got a vocal lesson that I’m actually already late for, so. I should probably get to that. I hope you don’t mind, I’m not trying to run away or anything, it’s just—”

“No, yeah, of course, I’m—yeah. Sorry for holding you up. And shouting. And threatening to kick you in the balls,” they both laugh lightly, “you do that, though. It was nice meeting you too.”

“Cool, maybe we’ll see each other around?”

Jisung bobs his head up and down. “Maybe! Bye Chan-ssi!”

“Bye!”

Jisung is nice, Chan thinks as he makes his way over to the lesson that he, yeah, is definitely very late for at this point. He’s amicable, and he’s funny, even if he does seem a little forward and perhaps a tad brash. It’s almost a shame that Chan’s not going to be around long enough to see him properly come into himself.

Realistically, they probably won’t run into one another again, and that’s fine, it is, Chan just hopes that Jisung stays well, and enjoys his time in the company as best he can.

There’s not much more that he can hope for, really.

☘

Contrary to his prior belief, Chan does happen to begin to run into Jisung a lot more often than he had initially assumed that he would.

He’d previously thought that it would be a one-time meeting, and that they were simply going to pass each other by and have that be that, and nothing more. They seemed like very different people, after all, Chan was a little more laidback, awkward, and quiet, perhaps, whereas Jisung was defensive, and hasty, and liked to get into other people’s spaces with a snarl on his angered face.

They were opposites, to say the least. Complete opposites, and wouldn’t that push them away from each other more than it would draw them together?

But, people do say that opposites tend to attract, and, well, that’s definitely what happened between the two of them.

Because Chan started seeing Jisung everywhere.

It’s like the minute that Jisung had entered his radar, Chan just—narrowed in on him. All of the time.

He’d notice him squished into the corner of a practice room that Chan was just passing through, a notebook in the omega’s hand as he scribbled furiously into it; he’d notice him in the cafeteria, laughing boisterously with a couple of other people that Chan vaguely recognised; he’d notice him in the hallways, arguing with people outside of their dorm building, and even, weirdly enough, in the nearby ramen shop that Chan has frequented since he was eleven and new to just about everything.

It’s like Jisung is just—all around. At all times. Chan can’t seem to get away from him.

And Chan definitely notices him now, as Jisung is grabbing onto his sleeve one day and tugging. He looks frantic, buzzing with some sort of nervous yet excited energy, and the omega starts talking before Chan can even begin to think of saying something.

“Hey! Chan-ssi, do you—do you produce music, by any chance? Because somebody I was talking to said that you did, and I am so, so stuck on this stupid piece. I can’t get any of it to sound right, like, I-–I have the vocals, and the rap, and the lyrics, and I thought that I had the beat that I wanted, it’s just—it’s just these pieces aren’t coming together at all and I’m going to start screaming, seriously, because—”

Chan doesn’t even have the time to breathe before an earbud is being thrusted into his ear and a song begins blasting out from it. He’s some shade of completely shocked as he listens to it, but, unsurprisingly, he’s able to catch the slight mishap in the notes the minute that it passes by.

Now comes a dilemma.

Because, Jisung obviously wants help. He’s talked about Chan with others, whether he started the topic conversation or not, and he’s explicitly come to Chan to request his aid with a part of his song that he can’t seem to get right. He’s sought Chan out, and it’s pleasing, in some way, it makes Chan feel seen, and heard, and understood for what he knows when it comes to music, but—

But Chan had promised himself that he was going to leave this whole thing behind. He loves music, loves producing, loves all of it, to at least some degree, but he’s not going to get anywhere in the idol world, and he knows it, so why bother continuing to try? Why waste his efforts like this? Why give himself to an industry that won’t see him?

But, on the other hand again, Jisung is looking towards him with wide, hopeful eyes, a slight smile tugging at the corners of his soft lips and cutting into those round cheeks of his, and Chan—Chan is weak. He is so, so weak.

He pulls out the earbud, handing it back over to Jisung. The omega looks dejected for only a moment before Chan starts speaking. “It’s the note that comes after the second verse, it’s flat, it needs to be sharp or else it’ll disrupt the whole flow—like it is doing, really. Here, I’ll show you, why don’t we head to one of the open studious and you can—”

They walk off together, rambling, and talking, and discussing any and every aspect of music that they can come up with.

A part of Chan already feels like he’s in too deep with this, that he’s digging a hole with no ladder in sight, but he tries not to pay it any mind. It’ll be fine, is what he attempts to tell himself. It’ll all be fine. It’ll be over before he knows it, and then he can be gone. This will all blow over soon enough.

(A few days later Chan is now Chan-hyung to Jisung, and Jisung is Jisungie to Chan.

Chan almost wants to bash his head against his desk. Almost.)

☘

After Jisung, comes Jeongin.

Chan had tried to promise himself that he’d only help Jisung for a little bit - just until he was going steady within the company, hopefully finding even more friends who would be able to help him out so much more than Chan ever could. He’d be around for a few days at most, maybe, before retreating back into his shell and going about his schedule until he was ready to tell his mother that he was coming home, and that he’d unfortunately failed miserably.

But Jisung is compelling, unbelievably so, and when Chan gets to learn more about him, it’s like he can’t pull away at all, no matter how much he might need to.

Chan finds out that Jisung uses aggression as a defence mechanism, that he has enough, bubbling anxiety within him that sometimes it makes it hard for him to even leave his bed without his throat closing up, so he does his best to appear as something—somebody larger and more opposing to combat his own, traitorous mind.

He finds out that Jisung is pretty good at English - almost completely fluent with it - as he learnt a lot when he lived with his parents in Malaysia and studied there, which makes Chan feel, well, almost at home again, as Jisung is always open to learning more about the language, and Chan loves using it when he can.

He finds out that Jisung really dislikes getting up in the early morning, has been producing music for as long as he can remember, and is absolutely determined to become a rapper in the industry - even if that hadn’t been his original dream in life, nor the original reason for why he came to JYP.

He also finds out that it’s impossible to say anything even remotely close to ‘no’ with Jisung, so, when the omega comes up to him, rocking back and forth on his heels, hands clasped behind his back, and asks, ”can I bring a friend to record with us? I really like his vocals,” Chan finds himself only able to splutter out - ”Oh, yeah, yeah, sure, of course that’s no problem, I don’t mind!”

And so, Jeongin is dragged into their little—group.

Chan is well aware that the hole he’s sinking into is only getting even deeper, but—he’s working on it. Maybe the friendship between Jeongin and Jisung will be strong enough that they’ll just… forget about him at some point. Which is a little sad, it makes Chan’s heart ache with something fierce every time that he thinks about it, but it’s—it’ll be fine, it’s for the best, and he knows that he can’t stay forever.

For now, though, he’ll greet Jeongin with a wide smile, holding a hand out for the other boy to shake.

Jeongin is fifteen years old, three years younger than Chan at his own slightly overwhelming eighteen. He has fox-like eyes that turn into happy, little crescents when he beams like the sun itself; he’s similarly unpresented, with shy hopes of being an alpha when he grows up a little more (which Chan finds adorable for a reason he can’t quite discern); he’s funny, and sweet, and Chan is absolutely enamoured with every aspect of him.

Which is terrible news, really.

Because now, Chan feels even more stuck.

Jisung and Jeongin are both younger, certainly younger than Chan, and so new to the industry that they’re practically babies. Just getting to know them even an inch has Chan feeling some sense of responsibility towards the both of them - which he shouldn’t, really, they’re not even really friends, right? They’re all just people who work together, or at least, that’s what it is for Chan.

Chan doesn’t really have friends, see. He has colleagues, and fellow trainees, and teachers that have been especially nice to him over the years, but no actual friendships. He doesn’t like to delve into them anymore - too scarred from past mistakes, from the crumbling bridge between himself and BamBam, and the sharp loss of people like Chunghee.

Friendship doesn’t seem like something that works for him, is all. They always seem to end in some sort of disaster, especially here in Korea, and Chan doesn’t want to even slightly damage the pureness that surrounds Jeongin and Jisung. He doesn’t want to taint them, to infect them, to spread his own, cloying darkness over their lighter shoulders.

Chan is defective, afterall, unpresented, stuck in his status as a trainee, left behind by all those he holds close to his heart, and constantly plagued by such a heavy feeling of—sadness, that sometimes it’s almost suffocating.

He can’t push that onto the two of them. They don’t deserve it, not a single bit.

But then Jeongin will turn to him with that somewhat crooked, yet still blinding, smile of his, and say, “hyung, I’m struggling with my homework, do you think that you could help me?”, and Chan will step over to him, ready, and willing, and pretending like his hands aren’t shaking immensely where he’s curled them into fists beside his thighs.

Chan is falling even deeper.

He desperately wants somebody to pull him out.

(“I made two—I met two people. Other trainees.”

“Are they your friends?”

“...I don’t know.”

“You don’t?”

“No.”

“Are they nice to you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like them?”

“Yes.”

“Good! That’s good. It’s good to have friends, or at least people you like.”

“Yeah. I guess. But I—I actually—I—”

“Hm?”

“I—I miss you.”

“I miss you too, baby. We all do.”

“I know, mum. I know.”)

☘

The studio that Chan, Jisung, and Jeongin, have deemed as ‘their own’ (even though it most certainly isn’t), is on the east side of the company building. It’s down a long hallway, past two practice rooms that the female trainees often like to hang out in together, and then through a double set of doors that require a passcode.

From Chan’s dorm room, it takes just about 25 minutes to walk to it, and that’s only if he actually manages to wake up early enough so that he avoids all of the morning rush around the streets of Seoul created by busy workers.

If he gets up early, it’s a pretty standard trip to it. Chan wakes up, gets ready, leaves his dorm building, and then heads to the company, crossing streets and waiting at traffic lights with his chilly hands in his pockets. From there, he enters through the reception, pushes his pin into the keypads to gain access, and then follows the hallways down to the studio.

There are never that many other people around - maybe a few trainees, or a few managers, perhaps, that are milling around with cups of coffee in their hands from the cafeteria, but other than that, it’s quite peaceful, and quite predictable. There’s never much out of the ordinary that Chan happens to notice.

Until today.

He’s almost made it there, trainers scuffing somewhat against the carpeted floor as he goes along, when he hears a slight sniffling coming from his left. It’s not particularly loud, not obnoxiously so, but loud enough that Chan recognises it resonating from the practice room with the closed door.

Immediately Chan thinks that it’s none of his business. People cry all of the time here, hell, Chan has cried almost every day of the week at this point, and still does when his emotions get the best of him. The life of a trainee is just an environment that practically breeds emotional turmoil and upset feelings, so for somebody to be crying it’s—it’s not really a big surprise.

Plus, they’ll probably want privacy in this time of vulnerability, right? They probably don’t want somebody random barging in on them, intruding on their time and space. Chan should just leave it. He should leave it, and carry on the way that he’s going, and continue onwards to meet Jeongin and Jisung without another thought.

But he can’t.

There’s a pull in Chan’s chest the minute that he tries to step forward. It’s a strange feeling, a strange, tight, gripping feeling that makes him falter. His shoes are made of lead, apparently, because no matter how hard he wills himself to - he just can’t take a step forward. He can’t leave behind this crying figure.

He shouldn’t push open the door. He shouldn’t push open the door. He shouldn’t—

Chan opens the door, and is immediately greeted with the sight of a male trainee - despite this regularly being a popular hangout spot for the female trainees - with his back pressed against the glass covering the far wall, knees drawn to his chest, and face buried between them. His shoulders are evidently shaking with the force of his sobs, and it’s harrowing.

It’s also evident that he’s noticed Chan’s presence, or at least, heard the opening of the door and nearing footsteps, because he seems to try to suppress himself, swallowing back hiccups and digging his nails into his legs as if that will somehow force his body to go back to normal, back out of this emotional state.

His efforts don’t really work, as he only seems to cry harder, and Chan finds himself hurrying over with a quicker pace. When he finally reaches the other, he sinks down onto his knees, keeping a respectable distance, but close enough to be evidently there.

“Hey,” he pushes out after a moment. “Hey. Are you okay?”

He’s not, that’s glaringly obvious, but the other trainee responds with an audible swallow and then a slightly jerky nod that only grants Chan with a careful glimpse of his soft features.

“Okay,” Chan hums. “Are you sure?”

“I’m—” another swallow, tighter this time. Chan assumes that he’s cried himself into slight sickness. “I’m fine—I’m—I’m fine. I’m okay. I’m fine.”

“I’m here if you need somebody to talk to,” Chan offers lightly. He doesn’t know if he’s pressing too much or not, but… “If you need an ear. I don’t mind, I’d rather that you felt a bit—”

“I said I’m fine!”

“Okay,” Chan concedes mindfully. “Okay. That’s alright. I’ll leave you alone, okay? I’ll close the door behind me to give you some privacy, and then—”

“No, no—” A shaking hand shoots out to grip onto Chan’s sleeve the minute that he tries moving. The nails on it are bitten and raw. “No, no, I’m sorry—I’m sorry,” a sharp inhale, “I didn’t—please don’t go. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

The trainees voice is so small, so delicate and hesitant, that Chan doesn’t think he’d physically be able to get up and leave him here even if he wanted to.

“Then I won’t go,” Chan decides. He settles down into a more comfortable position, a little closer this time, too, so the other boy doesn’t need to stretch his arm out as far. Chan doesn’t want to make him any more uncomfortable than he already probably is.

Silence befalls them after Chan’s last response, the trainee sniffling quietly every so often, but not offering anything else up past that. Chan doesn’t mind at all. If he just needs a rock, just needs a steady presence beside him while he works through whatever’s going on inside his head, then that’s okay. Chan’s good at being quiet, and he’s good at being mindful of other people’s emotions. He can sit here and wait.

The seconds tick by, and then the minutes. It has to have been at least ten minutes of just sitting there when a voice finally begins to speak up, quiet and reserved.

“I’m sorry about that,” the trainee whispers, speaking more into his knees than Chan—but that’s okay. “I didn’t mean to—I didn’t mean to cry so loud, and I didn’t mean to snap at you, I was just—”

“You don’t need to explain yourself. It’s okay, seriously. I’m just glad that you’re not crying anymore,” Chan offers lightly in response. “Don’t worry about it, we all—”

“No, no, but, but I feel like you should know, I mean, you’ve been sitting with me here for so long when you could probably be doing other stuff,” his voice gets even quieter, “and I’d like to speak to somebody about it. If that's—okay.”

“That’s perfectly fine. I told you before that I’ll listen to anything you need. That hasn’t changed.”

“Okay. Okay. Well—I was, I was—I’m new here. I—I just joined a week or so ago, and—and I was casted. I didn’t…I was casted, and I hadn’t really wanted to tell anyone, I didn’t want to make a big deal about it, but—but some other trainees found out, and then, you know, paired with being an omega, they just started—started saying all of these things about me just being here for my looks, and so I can please people, and it’s just—it just got so bad.”

He takes a shuddery breath into his knees, and Chan reaches out to gently rub at his shoulder. It seems to relax him, even if only minutely.

“I’m not just my face, you know? I like—it’s not like I’ve been training for this my whole life like some people have, I didn’t even know this could be an option for me, but I still like doing stuff, I like rapping, and dancing, and singing, sometimes, but it’s always just how I look to everyone. Nobody sees the effort I put in, but I don’t—I don’t just want to be a visual forever.”

The trainee finally lifts his head upwards and Chan immediately understands the comments about his beauty, because he really is beautiful. He matches the standards to a T, with sharp eyes, and pouty lips, and virtually symmetrical features. He’s stunning. But that doesn’t mean that his only talents, his only achievements in life, come from his face.

“I’m Chan,” he blurts, trying to put words together as best he can. “I’m Chan, and I do think that you’re beautiful, but I know, just from listening to you, that you’re so much more than that. You’re well articulated, and you seem kind, and—and everyone has to start somewhere. I can—not to sound absolutely ridiculous, but I can tell you’re going to be really good at what you like one day. I can see it.”

A flood of sweetened rose water and pink elderflower hits Chan’s nostrils. It’s warm, and it’s soft, and it has him inhaling deeply, as embarrassing as that is.

“I’m Hyunjin,” the trainee responds, and he has a beaming, pleased smile on his face that cuts right into his rose-tinted cheeks. “I really, really appreciate that. I think that might be one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.”

“Well, you deserve to hear good things.”

Hyunjin laughs. “Thank you. Seriously.”

“Yeah! Yeah, no problem. No problem at all. But—how, not to come off too strong or anything, but how about you come with me? I’m going to meet up with some—people, and there’s Jisung, and he’s an omega, too. Maybe you could, I dunno, talk about some stuff together? If you’d like?”

Hyunjin’s smile only widens. It’s pretty. There’s no hesitation in his red-rimmed eyes. “I’d love that. I’d really love that.”

In the end, Chan is at least 30 minutes late compared to their original meeting time, and when he enters it’s obvious that Jeongin and Jisung have already been working on—something, and are quick to start teasingly complaining about his lateness. They understand the situation pretty abruptly, though, when Chan steps inside and tugs Hyunjin beside him.

Jisung scrunches his face initially, grumbling again about sacred time being wasted, but he’s soon beckoning Hyunjin over with a grin and telling him about all that they’ve been doing over the past few months. They hit it off immediately, and Hyunjin is absolutely enamoured with Jeongin.

Chan knows that he’s made the right decision there and then. (Even if later on, he curls up in bed and worries about the searing pain that he’ll feel when it’s time to leave the three of them all behind.)

☘

They bump into the next member of their little ragtag group a little less than coincidentally.

It’s just Jisung and himself walking to ‘their’ studio this time around, arms brushing every so often. Chan’s half-listening as the omega rambles about just about everything that he can possibly think of - the breakfast he had yesterday, the crazy dream he had last night, how much sleep he got, what his socks smelt like.

Chan almost wishes that Jeongin and Hyunjin were there too, so that they could shoulder some of Jisung’s… interesting rambling, but unfortunately they’re both at school, something that’s inevitable for the both of them.

So, it’s just him and Jisung strolling forward, when the omega abruptly stops.

“Hey.”

Chan pauses, glances back for a moment and then takes a few steps backwards so that they’re in line with one another again. “What’s up?”

Jisung crosses his arms over his chest. “There’s somebody in our studio.”

Chan blinks a little. “Is there?”

“Yes—look,” Jisung gestures forward with a huff. “They’ve even left their shoes outside and everything.”

Chan looks, as Jisung had instructed him to do, and—well, he’s not wrong. There are a pair of shoes outside of the door and against the wall. They’re a nice pair of shoes, too, probably quite expensive.

“Well,” Chan clears his throat. “Maybe they’re not in that studio, and—”

“Our studio.”

“—and they’re just… leaving their shoes here. For now. But they’ll be back for them… later.”

“Yeah,” Jisung scoffs. “As if I believe that one. Come on, we need to evict them. Now.”

“Jisung—”

Jisung’s ready to go in all guns blazing, raging, and snarling, and pumping out sharp pheromones that will have even Chan and his unpresented nose wincing. Chan is well aware of that, which means that he needs to stop him quickly, because this is just Jisung bundling up his anxiety and turning it into a spiky ball of defence, which is less than healthy, and they both know it.

“Okay, okay, hold on,” Chan moves to plant himself in front of the omega, holding his hands out to gently grip Jisung’s shoulders. “Let’s think about this for a minute, okay?”

“I don’t want to—”

“I know, I know, but we can’t just go rushing in like some—some—” Barbarians.

“Hey, are you two alright?”

A voice startles both Chan and Jisung out of their - what they were hoping was a hushed - argument. Chan spins around, and Jisung peers out from behind Chan’s shoulder, to look towards the figure that has stumbled upon them.

The other boy is short, shorter than the both of them, surprisingly. He has sharp features, and dark hair, and his scent - that of shea butter and ginger - is strikingly alpha, but not in an overwhelming way, Chan comes to find as he sucks in a deep breath (praying afterwards that he doesn’t come across as—far too forward.)

They seem to take too long to respond, as he speaks up again, this time shuffling as he does so, and looking more awkward than anything. “I heard you arguing from all the way in there,” he gestures back to the studio. “So…”

“You!” Jisung gasps, clearly gaining more of his confidence again now that he’s securely behind the wall that is Chan.

“Me?”

“You’re the studio thief!”

The alpha’s face scrunches. He crosses his arms over his chest. “The studio thief?”

“This—we use this studio a lot,” Chan explains before Jisung can start grumbling again. “That’s all. It’s not ours, though, you’re not stealing it, we’re just going to go and use the other one—”

“Oh—you guys make music?”

Chan blinks a little, glances back to Jisung and then forward again. “Well. Sort of. We try to—it’s just messing around, really, it’s—”

“I do too!”

Oh.

Jisung leans forward, eyes sparkling with excitement. He’s suddenly forgotten his prior reluctance, it seems. “Like—you produce it? Lyrics and all?”

“Lyrics and all,” the alpha nods. “I love rapping mainly, but I can do vocals if need be, and honestly, the producing part has to be the best bit. It’s great.”

“We love rapping too!” Jisung beams. “Don’t we, hyung?” He exclaims, emphasising his words by shaking on Chan’s shoulder. (Chan feels like his brain has just been jostled out of place.)

“Wow,” the other boy beams back. “Well, hey, maybe we could—maybe we could do some producing together? I don’t need the whole studio after all, and it would be kind of cool to be with some other people. I just joined here and it’s a little—”

“Overwhelming?” Chan offers once his brain is back in place.

“Overwhelming,” the alpha agrees. “I’m Changbin, by the way.”

“Chan,” Chan supplies with a smile, “and this is Jisung. We usually work with a few other people, but they should be showing up a bit later. Is that alright?”

Changbin shrugs. “Fine with me. The more the merrier, right?”

The more the merrier indeed.

Jeongin and Hyunjin love Changbin - Hyunjin especially, who immediately drapes his arms over the alpha when he steps inside. (The sight alone makes something warm settle within Chan’s chest, he feels almost pleased, like they’re doing something good. He tries to brush that thought away, though.)

A one-time session of working together turns into Changbin turning up whenever he can and isn’t busy with adapting to his new life as a trainee; turns into Changbin showing up everyday once he’s settled down, bag slung over his shoulder and grin on his face; turns into Jisung, Changbin, and Chan coming to the decision that they want to seriously start producing music together, and posting it, too.

When it gets to that point, when it gets to the point where they have plans for soundcloud uploads, and instagram accounts, and twitter, Chan feels more than a little stumped.

Because it wasn’t meant to get to this point. There wasn’t meant to be anyone else. It was meant to be Jisung, and Jeongin, and Hyunjin, and Chan—to the side, more or less. He was only meant to be around while they settled in, while Jeongin gained a bit more confidence in his singing, and Jisung found a healthy way of combating his anxiety, and Hyunjin showed everyone that he wasn’t just a pretty face.

He was meant to help them, and then leave.

Australia is waiting for him. Sydney is waiting for him. His family is waiting for him. Chan isn’t meant to be in Korea for any longer. He isn’t meant to be stuck as a trainee for any longer. He needs—he needs to get out, to be free, to get rid of the oppressive chains of the industry that have been pinning him down since he was thirteen.

Chan is meant to be gone.

But—but now Changbin is here, and Chan is having a lot of fun making music with both him and Jisung, and maybe—maybe he could give it a few more months.

Just a few more months.

That’s it.

And then he’ll leave. For sure, this time. Chan swears it.

☘

“It’s strange,” Chan says to his mother one evening. He’s just gotten back from a recording session with Changbin and Jisung and he just—feels like he needs to talk to his mum.

“What is?” The omega hums from across the line. She’s tired, Chan can tell from her voice. He won’t keep her up much longer.

“I like them a lot. So much so that I sometimes feel this—tug towards them. In my chest.”

“Like a pull?”

“Yeah.”

There’s a smile in his mother’s voice as she speaks. “Maybe they’re your fated mates, Channie.”

Chan pulls a face. If only. “Haha. Very funny.”

“I’m serious. They could be. It’s not impossible.”

“I don’t think so. I mean—” Chan would love it, he’d—he’s always wanted a large pack, wanted to be a part of one, but that—it sounds too good to be true, and he’s not even presented yet, so surely a pull like that would be impossible.

He’s probably just overthinking things, and his mother is probably just being far too whimsical and romantic again.

“You never know, sweetheart.”

“Yeah,” Chan agrees lightly. “Maybe.”

The smile hasn’t left his mother’s voice. It almost seems like she knows something that he doesn’t. “Yeah,” she echoes softly. “Maybe.”

☘

Leaving keeps on getting put off.

Chan means to break the news eventually—or at least, inform his… inform the others that he’s not going to be able to stay any longer, but… but it’s hard. It’s hard to say anything even remotely like that when he looks at them - when he glances at Jisung’s grin, Jeongin’s smile, when he hears Hyunjin’s bright laughter or Changbin’s giggle. It’s difficult.

So, Chan keeps putting it off.

It’s like his brain comes up with excuses for why he can’t start packing and leaving.

He can’t leave now because Hyunjin’s come down with a cold and needs Chan’s help; can’t leave now because Jisung is stuck on a track and says that Chan is the only one who can help him; can’t leave now because Jeongin is struggling with his homework, and Changbin needs guidance with his rapping, and—

Today, Chan decides that he can’t call his mother at four am in the morning and beg for her to help him get home, because he spots a peculiar figure in the company cafeteria before he can start dragging himself back to his dorm and his phone.

Usually, at this time of night (or morning, really), everyone is either fast asleep and face-planting their food trays, chugging coffee like there’s no tomorrow, or having muted conversations between one another. What they’re not typically doing, is sitting at a table in the corner, coffee cup beside them, as they read page after page of an open book, and scribble furiously into a notepad.

Chan is immediately intrigued, and he doesn’t know if it’s because of the stress, the pounding in his head, or the sleep deprivation, but he starts striding over before he can stop himself with uncharacteristic confidence.

Only when he reaches the edge of the table does he begin to falter, anxiety filling him from his toes right to the tips of his ears, but at that point, the other trainee is already looking upwards.

The boy looks like the sun personified. He has smooth, tan skin, virtually thousands of freckles that line his rose-tinted cheeks, wide eyes, and a delicate scent of lemongrass and sea salt that rests along shoulders. The smile he offers to Chan is almost blinding, even despite Chan’s act of stumbling towards him like some—some creep.

“Hi!” The other, the omega, exclaims. He jolts upwards so that he’s standing like Chan is. “I’m Felix!”

“Felix-ssi,” Chan greets, a little taken aback by the sudden onslaught of—happiness. It’s way too early (or way too late?) to be doing this, surely. “I’m Chan.”

“Chan-ssi,” Felix similarly greets (and only now is Chan registering the English name). “Did you—do you need, uhm, help? With something?”

“Me? Oh—” Right, Chan had just barged over here like a man on a mission, which he… definitely isn’t. He’s just impulsive at the worst of times, unfortunately. “Uhm—I was just, I saw you… writing… a lot. It’s pretty unusual for this time of the night.”

“Writing,” Felix echoes. He pauses for a moment, glances down to his book.

Chan follow’s the omega’s gaze and—right. Now this somewhat stilted, somewhat uncomfortable conversation is making a whole lot more sense. The book is a guide on learning Korean - a quick and easy way to pick up on the language, supposedly. Chan gets it now, understands Felix’s initial bounce and his drive to continue the conversation as best he can.

Felix is in a new place, with a new language, and he’s learning.

Chan’s heart spikes with something warm. English slips back onto his tongue easier than he could have ever hoped for. “Would it be easier for you to speak in English? If that’s your first language, I mean—”

“Oh my God, yes,” Felix breathes out a laugh. “Dude, you don’t know how worried I was about trying to continue that conversation in Korean!” English is the language he’s more familiar with, it seems.

Felix’s brightness is infectious. Chan leans forward a little, eye’s sparkling. “I’m just glad it is English you can speak! My Japanese is not amazing, and I definitely don’t know something like Chinese, so—”

“Yeah, no, definitely English,” Felix grins. “And, not to be presumptuous, but that’s an Aussie accent, right? You’re from Australia?”

“Yes! You too?”

“Uh-huh! Born and raised in Sydney—”

“Me too!”

The two of them stare at each other in awe. It’s almost like two halves of the same heart joining together as one, and it’s—glorious, really. Felix leans back first, sitting back and patting the seat beside him. “Sit? Please?”

Chan’s eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles. “Don’t mind if I do.”

The two of them sit and talk for what seems like hours.

Chan learns that Felix had actually passed his audition sometime last year, but he’d decided to stay in Australia for a little longer before making the move over so that he could finish his school year; learns that Felix’s korean name is Yongbok, and that he’s still getting used to it; learns that being an idol is something that he’s had an eye on for a while now, that he thinks it’s an amazing job.

Chan learns that Felix is pretty much—everything, really, in the strangest of senses.

He’s funny, and he’s kind, and his gaze sparkles like entire galaxies are trapped inside of there when he talks about something he really enjoys. He’s seventeen (and not too excited about turning eighteen), with a surprising ability in taekwondo, and he’s very excited to make some new friends here in Korea.

Chan is immediately head over heels for him, and he immediately knows that he has to take Felix under his wing. He just has to.

“You should totally meet my friends some time,” Chan says as they’re getting up to leave. It’s getting light, and they’re both ready to get some shut-eye. Chan’s so tired that he doesn’t even register the word ‘friends’ slipping from the tip of his tongue. “They’re really nice, I promise, and they’ll be able to help you with your Korean.”

Felix perks up slightly from his drowsy, yawning state. “Really?”

“Yeah. Jisung, he’s—fiery, definitely, but he’s pretty amazing at English, and Hyunjin’s always trying to get me to teach him random English phrases, so I’m sure that you two could work together sometime.”

“That sounds really nice,” Felix smiles. He slings his backpack over his shoulder. “If it’s really okay, obviously, I wouldn’t want to intrude or anything, if you guys—”

“You wouldn’t be intruding!” Chan denies it quickly. “Seriously. We’re always bringing in new people, it would be no bother at all. I think the others would be more upset if I told them about you and then didn’t bring you over.”

“Really?” Felix questions, his smile turning to a shy grin as he glances at Chan.

“Really,” Chan confirms. “Now—why don’t you give me your number? I can text you tomorrow, or whenever you’re free, and we can find some time to meet up?”

“Yeah, okay,” the omega agrees easily, sliding his phone from his pocket and handing it over to Chan.

Chan punches in his digits, leaving his name as a simple ‘Chan-hyung.’ He notices that Felix doesn’t have that many contacts in his phone, but that’s alright, he’ll have more soon enough. Chan will make sure of it.

“I’ll see you around, alright?” Chan smiles. They’re in separate dorm buildings for the time being - Felix might get moved into Chan’s one day, but Chan himself will probably be long gone at that point (he doesn’t dare mention that part) - so they’re heading in opposite directions from where they stand at the entrance to the company building. Chan will go left, and Felix will go right.

“Of course!” Felix smiles.

The omega waves as they depart from one another, a permanent smile seemingly etched into his freckle-covered features. He waves, and he waves, and then Chan turns a corner, and stops looking back because he knows that Felix won’t be there.

That last thought has something twinging awkwardly, perhaps a little painfully, in his chest, but he doesn’t try to think about it too much. (It does make him wonder, though, if this is what it’s like saying goodbye - and not even a permanent one - to somebody that Chan’s just met, what’s it going to be like when he has to say goodbye to everyone?)

☘

The seventh person to join their little—the thing that they have going on, comes with a lot less fanfare than everybody else had. If anything, his arrival is more like Jeongin’s arrival, all quiet, and normal, and without much drama.

Except Chan had actually been informed about Jeongin joining. With the seventh person, he’s just sort of there one day when Chan walks into the studio after a tough session of dance training, sitting neatly - but very obviously sandwiched - between a sprawled Hyunjin and a close Felix.

Chan blinks a little when he notices him, only slightly taken aback.

“Oh. Hello?”

He glances up, and Chan immediately notes that the trainee has warm, brown eyes. Inviting eyes, almost, like they’re telling Chan to come close and open up to them about every single one of his worries. It’s as unnerving as it is calming, if that makes sense at all.

Chan doesn’t try to think too much about it, and doesn’t actually get much chance to anyway, not when Jeongin himself is springing upwards, lips parting as he speaks.

“This is Seungmin-hyung!” He introduces, reaching forward and pulling up the—pulling up Seungmin. “I met him a couple of days ago and I just knew that he’d fit in with us! He’s our age—or, my age, really, and he’s a beta, and he sings really, really well, and he smells like chamomile and oats, and—”

The first thing that Chan registers after Jeongin’s rambling is that Seungmin really does smell distinctly like chamomile and oats. It’s different to the more subdued beta scents, but it’s still really nice.

The second thing that he registers - which should probably have been the first, honestly - is that Seungmin is waving carefully at him. Chan immediately waves back in response, hoping that it hasn’t been going on for too long without him noticing so that he doesn’t seem rude.

A slight smile works its way onto Seungmin’s face. “Chan-ssi, right?”

Chan nods. “Hyung, if you’d like,” he offers. If Seungmin’s Jeongin’s age, he’s definitely younger than Chan, there’s no doubt about it. “You’ve been dragged into this—group, it’s only right that you’re familiar with us.”

Seungmin’s eyes crinkle when he smiles even wider. It’s cute. “If you’re sure, hyung.”

It takes Seungmin a little while to properly come out of his shell. He seems a little awkward at times, stilted and somewhat unsure of himself, but after a few days of hanging around with them - much due to Jeongin’s persistent request (and partly from the other’s easy acceptance of him) - he starts to let his true personality unfurl outwards.

Seungmin is a menace, to say the least.

Beneath all of that dandy awkwardness, and occasionally prim presence, is a devil. A devil in disguise. See, if there’s one definitive thing about Seungmin, it’s that he absolutely loves causing mayhem. He’s snarky, and he’s sarcastic, and pulling Changbin’s chair out from behind him just as he’s about to sit back has become one of his favourite things to do.

He’s always up for joking around with Jisung; always ready to verbally spar with Hyunjin over something or another; always up for pranks, and jokes, and laughing boisterously as he leans into a similarly elated Jeongin.

The two youngest are like two peas in a pod in the worst of ways. Apart, they’re dangerous - together, it’s even worse.

However, beside all of that, Seungmin is also very good at switching into his ‘serious’ mode.

He knows when to stop, to put it lightly. He’s mastered the ability of calming down when it’s time for his vocal lessons and he bows politely before leaving the room; trained himself to switch any silliness off when Jisung is stressing over deadlines and songs and needs advice over a joke; crafted a new identity for himself that’s built up with attentiveness, and kindness, and looking after the others in their group.

Seungmin has two sides, and he uses them both undeniably well.

Chan thinks it’s more than just admirable.

He also thinks that Jeongin is a genius for dragging Seungmin along to the studio that day, practically forcing him to become their friend, because as he looks over them all - watches as they sit in a ramen shop and argue over which sides to order, and how much it’s going to all cost, he can’t possibly think of anywhere else he’d rather be.

(Not that he can stay, of course. Chan has already made peace with that fact.)

☘

Despite already coming to the realisation that Chan isn’t made for this industry anymore, that he has nothing left to give now that he’s spent six, almost seven years training with no end in sight, he still hadn’t started getting ready for his official leave until today. There had been thoughts, and ideas, and a harrowing acceptance that made him sob into his pillowcase, but nothing concrete. Not until now.

It’s a pretty normal day, all things considered. Chan had spent the morning having breakfast with Changbin and Jeongin - the others either asleep, already within prior commitments, or just not feeling very hungry. He’d had a vocal class after that, then a free period where he had a nap in an empty practice room, and then the afternoon had been spent in the studio with Jisung, Hyunjin, and Felix.

Now it’s the evening - long since he’d said goodbye to his—to the others, and he’s sat in his room with a backpack at his feet and a suitcase beside him.

When Chan had first arrived in Korea, standing there alone in his terminal at the tender age of thirteen, buzzing with excitement for a desired future that he had assumed was very near, a backpack and a single suitcase had been enough for him. His mother’s urges for him to not take too much had been enough.

But now, as Chan glances around his room, at every single item layered within it, he realises that it’s no longer true - no longer enough.

During his time in Korea, Chan had rebought the figures, and the jackets, and the fantasy books with their funny pictures that he’d once left behind in Australia, but he’d also bought more. Chan had picked up souvenirs, and t-shirts, and new pairs of trainers to help him withstand the constant, hardcore choreo that he had to undergo.

Chan had spent money picking up even more figures, and even more jackets, and even more fantasy books with funny pictures inside.

And there were also the things that he himself hadn’t bought.

There were—gifts, you could say. Trinkets, items, memories.

There was the soft plush that BamBam had won for him when they went to an arcade together for the first time; the marvel figure that Felix had given to him because he had two and just felt like Chan needed it; the silly drawing from Hyunjin, the pencil from one of his early-grade tutors, the birthday hat from Jisung.

Maybe they were all a reflection of the life that he’s lived here. Maybe it’s a reflection of the time that he’s spent growing up, the large chunk of his childhood that was founded within Korea. Maybe it’s a reflection of the pieces of Chan - of his very being and his very soul - that have been designed within this very city.

Maybe it’s all him.

It doesn’t matter, though. Not really. In the end, it’s all too much.

Even if it is him, even if it is every single essence of his being, or at least, a mirror of it, Chan can’t take it with him. The person that he is now, what he’s created here, all of the misery, and the distress, and the sinking realisation of failure that clings to his stiff body like a poisonous second skin, cannot be what he takes—home.

His family can’t see him like this. His siblings, who he hasn’t felt connected to in a long time now, can’t see him like this. His father, who still sends him funny selfies, and talks about his achievements to whoever will listen, can’t see him like this. His mother, who has rooted for him for as long as he can remember, who has put so much time, and effort, and attention towards him, can’t see him like this.

Chan needs to return—differently. He needs to be different, to be better, perhaps. Somebody that he isn’t, but somebody that he needs to be.

He takes a breath, grips his fingers around the handle of his backpack.

He’ll get bin bags, is what he finally decides. He’ll get bin bags, and he’ll fill them with his things. He’ll donate them, send them to places that will benefit from all of the memories, the pieces, the fragments, of Chan that he can no longer cling onto like a desperate child gripping onto their mother.

He’ll take with him only the essentials.

Chan refuses to return home a broken man.

☘

There’s somebody new in Chan’s dance class.

It’s a little ironic, considering that this is likely one of their first dance lessons in the company, whereas it’s one of Chan’s last, but it’s also a little strange - unnerving, maybe. People don’t usually join this late into the year. It’s possible that they’re a long-time trainee that’s just switched classes, but even then… if that was the case, they wouldn’t look so nervous when it comes to the breaks, right? Or are they just not very sociable? Could it be that—

Either way, the new person is obviously very talented, Chan can quite easily come to that conclusion. He picks up on the choreography that they’ve been learning almost immediately, easily executing moves that took Chan weeks to perfect.

There’s a certain way that he moves his body that’s captivating, almost. He seems to channel the music into each and every limb, morphs himself into some sort of dancing machine in order to get it all done. He’s flowing, sharp when he needs to be, with facial expressions that pull it all together in the nicest way possible.

Chan is practically mesmerised as he watches him, and finds himself tripping up more often than not due to his wandering gaze.

Aside from the wonder that fills him every time he looks towards the new dancer, there’s also that slight pull in his chest. The pull that had drawn him to helping Jisung and accepting Jeongin; to finding Hyunjin and joining Changbin; to guiding Felix and adhering to Seungmin’s constant sarcasm.

It’s a tight and gripping pull, one that’s urging, urging, urging him to go towards the new trainee. The pull has never been wrong before - never once pushed him towards somebody terrible, or cruel, or downright mean, so Chan accepts it as easily as taking another breath, and when their mid-session break rolls around, he finds himself stepping over towards the trainee.

There’s a water bottle in Chan’s hand - a spare one, because he always brings two - and he holds it out in front of him when he arrives in front of the trainee’s sitting form. “Water?” he offers.

The trainee glances up. He has undeniably sharp features, narrowed cat-like eyes, and somewhat pouty lips. There’s a slight sheen of sweat along his skin, and an obvious scent-blocking patch pressed over the area between his shoulder and neck, obvious from where his slightly oversized shirt has slipped somewhat.

It’s likely that he’s an omega, then. Not that it changes anything at all - just an observation.

A few more, vaguely tense, seconds pass by, before the trainee nods. He reaches up to take the bottle, and then unscrews the cap - gulping down a few mouthfuls with his lips politely far away from the rim.

“Thanks,” he says once he’s done, handing the half-empty water bottle back towards Chan. (It really is a good thing that he brings a spare.)

“No problem!” Chan’s voice gets only an inch higher, he swears. “No problem at all. Uhm.”

The omega raises a brow. “Did you need something else?”

Chan fish mouths for a few moments, before shaking his head. “No—not… really?”

“Okay then.”

It’s clear that the other boy intends to go back to doing whatever he was doing before Chan had practically barged over, and for some reason, a strange part of Chan’s mind can’t have that. It’s like—there’s a feeling of loss that’s beginning to creep up from the tips of his fingers, a deep sense of don’t let go, don’t let go, don’t let go, that’s looping around Chan’s delicate throat.

It feels like if Chan were to accept the dismissal right now, to turn away and just—go, then it would be the end of the world. Literally, perhaps.

So, Chan doesn’t. He stays rooted right where he is, mustering whatever confidence he can muster up to the spot behind his teeth - hopefully his next words will come out bravely, instead of trembling and coward-like.

“You’re—you’re new here, right? Or—new to this class, at least.”

The trainee raises an eyebrow, head tilted somewhat to the side. “New here, and new to this class, yes.”

“Oh! That’s—that’s great, well, not great, but I mean—it’s good that you got accepted to train here. It’s a great place, really, and I have—I have a—afriend who recently passed his audition, too. His name’s Seungmin, and he’s a pain a lot of the time, if I’m being honest, but he’s an amazing singer, and he’s so happy that he’s here, and—”

“Okay?”

Chan rubs the back of his neck. This is most definitely the most awkward encounter that he’s had—ever, probably. He sort of wants the ground to swallow him whole, but then again he also doesn’t. The pull is vibrant in his chest, and a part of him just knows that the others would love this person, he just needs to…get through somehow.

“What I’m trying to say is—-or what I was going to say, at least, is that I was wondering if you’d maybe want to… hang out later on? Maybe meet my—my friends? I don’t want to seem too forward or anything, but I just think that you’d hit it off well with them. Even if I don’t actually know that much about you. I don’t know anything, actually—” a silence drags for a moment. Chan swallows. “Uhm, I’m Chan, by the way.”

The silence builds again. It builds, and it builds, and it builds, before the trainee is finally speaking. “I’m Minho,” is what he starts with, and then tacks on, “And I appreciate the offer—”

The loud voice of their dance instructor cuts right through whatever Minho was about to say. The omega looks a little startled, but quickly turns to start putting his bag back to the side, and Chan steps away with a dejected little sigh.

There’s always next class to talk to him, is what he consoles himself with, doing his best to soothe the unnatural ache in his chest. There’s always next time.

At the end of class, Chan is surprised to find Minho lingering behind. He thought that maybe he’d been far too forward - would have scared him away rather than make him want to stay and actually meet the others, but there he is—here he is, really, as he steps towards Chan, backpack slung over his shoulder, and looking only a little bit sweaty.

“So,” Minho prompts, shuffling slightly where he stands. “You wanted me to meet those friends of yours?”

☘

Minho hits it off immediately with the others. They meet at the cafeteria, simply because the studio is beginning to feel a little cramped, and Chan didn’t want the environment that Minho walks into to be so—stifling (even if, these days, it feels right to Chan.)

When Minho arrives at their table, wearing jeans, a jumper, and smelling distinctly like lavender and waterlily, a multitude of happy scents fill the air. There’s rosewater and eucalyptus, shea butter and sea salt, chamomile and Jeongin’s happy grin that probably smells like fresh oranges in some strange, alternate universe.

Chan watches on with the fondest of smiles as they all start scrambling to talk to one another. The conversation topics drift from this, to that, and this, to that. Sometimes Felix looks a little lost - a little confused - but it’s only for a fleeting moment, because Jisung will turn to him, whisper in his ear, and then Seungmin will tack something on in well-developed English, and a bright, understanding grin will return to Felix’s sunny face.

They all fit together like the missing pieces within a puzzle. They’re two peas in a pod—or, seven peas in a pod, actually. They complement one another, every aspect of each other, all of the bad, the good, and then the things that are slightly inbetween.

From Chan’s point of view, it looks like they’re all made for each other entirely, and isn’t it just perfect?

He’s done something good, here, is what he decides as he glances across Minho’s sharp gaze, Jisung’s soft cheeks, Felix’s scattered freckles, Hyunjin’s delicate features, Changbin’s soft eyes, Jeongin’s wide smile, and Seungmin’s playful expression. He’s done something great, even, bringing them all together - putting them all as one.

Hell, maybe this was what this whole journey was meant for. Maybe Chan, spending seven years of his life in Korea, away from his family, and chasing unattainable dreams, was meant to do this all along - meant to build a group of like-minded, kind people who made eachother better in so many different ways.

All of his hardships, all of the pain and the loss, the depression and the desperation, the betrayal and the heartbreak, was done so that he could get to this very moment - to bring these exact people together.

They’ll make a good pack, is what Chan thinks as he stares at them, stars in his eyes and a slight tear in his quivering heart. Changbin will be a good alpha for them, and Minho a powerful luna. Jeongin will make a strong second in command, no matter if he presents as the alpha he wishes for or not. Hyunjin, Jisung, and Felix will be the thick glue, and Seungmin will allow for a cool, calm, collectedness to hold them close at all times.

They’ll do well. Incredibly well, and their young natures - their freshness to the industry - will make them all prime candidates for debuting sooner rather than later. Chan imagines that once their PD-nim catches wind of the talent this group holds, he’ll want to debut them in a heartbeat.

Chan has high hopes for all of them, and he feels strangely content at the idea of leaving them like this.

Sure, there’s some hesitance. There’s a deep-rooted burn inside of him that only grows stronger with each thought of leaving them behind that passes by; there’s a painful twinge inside of his head as he thinks about what life is going to be like without hearing their laughs, their conversations, the silly ideas; there’s a scorch of remorse, a chill of upset, there’s so much—too much that he feels.

But at the same time, Chan knows that this needs to be done. He needs to leave.

It’s for the best, really, for all of them.

Chan stands up from the table they’re sitting around.

There are confused stares, upset murmurs, questions about where he’s going.

“Just heading to bed early tonight, I think,” is what he offers as an explanation. It doesn’t seem to calm them down completely - the unsettled, uncertain expressions they all wear are things that Chan doesn’t quite catch - but they’re not too distraught.

☘

Chan writes letters.

He sits at his bare desk, in his bare room, and he writes letters.

To Jisung…

To Jeongin…

To Hyunjin…

To Changbin…

To Felix…

To Seungmin…

To Minho…

They’re not all the same. It’d be impossible to write the exact same letters to people who are so fundamentally different. But the gist of them are relatively the same - apologies, well wishes for the future, promises to keep up with what they all one day achieve. Chan pours his heart into them as best he can, and keeps his sorrows locked up away somewhere deep.

He doesn’t want to burden them in these last few moments. That would be a dark shade of selfishness that Chan is not yet ready to step into.

He seals them all neatly, stacks them on top of his desk. His suitcase is by the door, backpack just beside it. They’re familiar in an unsettlingly warm way. Chan doesn’t like the feeling all that much, so he turns away when he lies down in bed, facing the wall, with his back towards the cruel reality of what his future is going to be.

Tomorrow is going to be hard - even harder than today - Chan knows that well enough, but for now, he’s just going to close his eyes, and pretend like everything is completely okay.

(Tomorrow is going to be great. He’s going to have breakfast with Changbin and Seungmin, he’ll head into the studio with Hyunjin and Jisung, he’ll finish a dance lesson with Minho, and then they’ll all have some sort of dinner together.

Deep down, Chan knows it’s not true.)

☘

The morning comes, as does that heavy feeling that settles over his shoulders like a constrictive embrace.

Today he’s going to have to make the call to his mother - he’s going to have to tell her that he’s coming home, that he’s failed, that he’s tried, he’s really, really tried, but none of it has gone the way that he had wished for.

The dreams that were as big as the milky way have been crushed, turned into a fine powder, taken away to be given to somebody else who can actually achieve them, and not just sit mindlessly for seven years with pathetic hope that everything is going to fall into place soon enough.

It’s going to be hard.

His mother will probably cry, she’ll probably be upset—most likely for him, rather than about what’s happened. Or maybe it’ll be both. Chan doesn’t really know, doesn’t have enough energy left within his tired body to decide on the correct scenario. He just hopes that she isn’t mad at him - not too mad, at least. He can take some anger about how much of his life he’s now wasted for no reason at all, but not too much.

Too much would crush him, and Chan needs some stability today to get through everything. He needs to get through the early start, through the last minute packing, and through the talk with the PD-nim that he’s now walking to, feet dragging slowly as if they’ve got heavy weights attached to them.

It’s not like he can just leave, after all. He can’t just up and disappear - he needs to at least inform somebody, and who better than the head of it all? This is just a first and foremost necessity.

Chan raises his fist to knock on the door to the main office, anticipation setting his nerves alight as he hovers there. He’s just about to hit it down, when it swings open.

Park Jinyoung, his PD-nim, stands there. He looks surprised to see Chan there, just as Chan is surprised to have the door swing open before he can even knock, but then the surprise on the head’s face mellows out into something akin to pleased.

“Chan!” He greets. “Just the person I was looking for!”

Chan startles somewhat. His thoughts are racing. Him? He was looking for Chan? Has somebody already told him what Chan plans on doing? But—how? How could he know? How could he possibly—

Park Jinyoung steps out of the way a little, holding the door open beside him in clear invitation. There’s a slight smile on his face. “Please, come in, we have a lot to talk about.”

Park Jinyoung sits Chan down at his desk, and then he begins talking.

He talks about having watched Chan for a long time now; talks about Chan’s ambitions, and his drive, and his dedication; talks about debut, and striving forward, and paving a new path in the industry for so many people to follow in afterwards.

He talks about an idea. A new idea that they’ve come up with, a new way of forming a group that will go out into the world and hopefully achieve big, perhaps even great, things. They have a plan, Chan’s PD-nim has a plan, and, despite everything, he’d like Chan to be the one to lead it.

“This is your chance to debut,” is what he says as he watches Chan. “This is your chance. Right here.”

There are talks of a survival show, of different members, of fighting to prove themselves. There are talks of battles, and awards, and producing music from scratch. Park Jinyoung talks, and he talks, and he talks.

And then he tells Chan to put together a team.

Chan, even with his head spinning, and his gut clenching, and his eyes watering with thousands of unshed tears because this has been his dream for seven years of his trembling life, well, he already knows who.

☘

Chan is twenty years old when he finally debuts.

Seven years in the industry, training alone since he was thirteen, and constantly being put through losses, and disappointment, and his dreams being ripped cruelly away from him, and—here he is, finally debuting with a group that he’s come to find is his home.

They’ve survived training together, survived a survival show, momentarily losing two members, all of the suspense and the stress, and now they’ve finally made it—Chan has finally made it.

Chan cries when it’s announced that they’ll be able to debut together.

He cries when his mother finds him after the announcement, pulls him into a hug that he’s been craving for years now, scents him until he’s drowning in her familiarity.

He cries when BamBam calls him only minutes later, whispers down the phone that - “Chan, Chan, Chan-ah, Channie, I’m so proud of you. You hear me? I’m so proud of you. I’m so—so proud of you. I always knew that you could do it.”

He cries when he shoves the letters that he’d written all those months ago to the bottom of his wastebin, this time the tears coming on from relief, from happiness and joy because no longer does he need to run away and hide.

He cries when he steps foot inside of his—their new dorm for the first time, backpack filled to the brim, and three full suitcases resting at his feet.

Chan cries, and he cries, and he cries, and he lets his pack - because that’s what they are now - pull him into a tight, almost constricting, hug, whispering words of reassurance, and words of pride, and words of gratefulness for finding them and bringing them together to face this challenge of life as one.

They love him, is what they tell him, they love him, and they adore him, and they’re so, so glad that he’s their leader, and Chan blubbers back that he loves them too.

It’s them against the world, and he wouldn’t change it for anything.

☘

Chan presents as an alpha at twenty one, 8 months after their debut.

Minho calls it fate, as he curls against Chan’s back and presses a gentle kiss to his swollen scent gland that’s pumping out something akin to black pepper and ginseng. His scent is soothing, is what Seungmin had murmured to him earlier on in the day - unique and soothing in all of the best ways.

The others also think it's fate, some sort of blessing from the skies, but they’re more elated over the fact that their pack alpha and leader is finally coming into himself. Changbin is more than happy to relinquish any sort of ‘leading title’, and brushes his warm cheek against Chan’s flushed one when he gets the chance.

They all cuddle against him as he presents into the position that he’d always dreamed of. They pump out their reassuring scents, smother him with kisses and gentle touches, and make sure to adhere to any discomfort of his that might need soothing.

They’re observant, and they’re kind, and Chan just knows—

He knows that this pack, this group, this friendship is everything that he needs, and everything that he’s always wanted. They’re his future, and his hope, and the reason his heart continues to beat each day.

No longer does his mind wander to the ‘what if’s’ or ‘what could have been’s’. He no longer cries into his pillows over crushed dreams; no longer scribbles notes about his departure to those that he loves; no longer cowers from challenges, hides the darkness of his true feelings, or tries to blend into the background with a heavy weight pressing against his chest.

Chan has been able to move past it all thanks to the love that his pack shines towards him.

They’re truly everything to him, and no matter what they may come to face in the future, no matter what losses, or what disappointments, or what pain, Chan, with his pack by his side, is ready.

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