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oiwxa · 9 months

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UMAZANE MISLI | c.bg

STARRING: Choi Beomgyu x fem!reader

CAST: Lee Heeseung (EN-), Lee Geonu (Just B), Jung Sungchan (ex-NCT), Yang Jeongin (Stray Kids), Felix (Stray Kids), Choi Seungchol (SVT)

RUNTIME: 35.9k (sorry)

SYNOPSIS: Beomgyu thought that a life of academic excellence, popularity contests, and ego trips were left behind the moment he graduated from a prestigious private school. However, he found himself locked in an intense, three-year rivalry with you. He always had to be number one in everything that the two of you were involved in, but god damn, your band makes incredible music. Lord knows what would happen if one day, you find him moshing to one of your basement shows. Alas, you were oblivious, and he managed to convince himself that several streaks of messy, temporary red dye and ripped jeans immediately transformed him into a spy that infiltrated your band's smelly, sweat-infused, beer-rotting basement.

GENRE: Coming of age, slice of life, romance, comedy, band!au

DIRECTOR'S CUT: hi everyone !! this will be my debut into txt writing !! i hope you enjoy this fic, and as always, PLEASE triple check all warnings and make sure you read this work at your own discretion. You are responsible for the content that you consume. also !! of course, some facets of the band is inspired by the lovely joker out, the slovenian band that stole all of our hearts in esc 2023 !! the family dynamics and rich kid problems in this fic is inspired by succession, the HBO tv series. i also just wanted to give a quick shoutout to alice @jayflrt and her stoner's guide to starbucks smau, which inspired heeseung's character in this fic !! do give it a read if you have the chance !! she's vv funny LOL. also !! another shoutout to @jitaros for the e2l law school dynamics !! i tried my hand at the trope (watched too much better call saul for this LOL) !! this is an homage to crying lightning, and i hope reading this will inspire you to complete law school!hyuck :")))

SOUNDTRACK: Umazane Misli, Plastika, Demoni, Vem da Greš, Proti Toku, Carpe Diem, A Sem Ti Povedal, Bele Sanje, Katrina, and Dopamin by Joker Out (basically the entirety of Joker Out's discog tbh)

VISUALIZERS: Joker In // Law school Beomgyu

I. SHAGADELIC, BABY!

The studio has seen worse things. Pizza boxes covered in mold spreading toxic mildew across the entire room; broken drum sticks that were basically tetanus-inducing pieces of legos on the floor for the unlucky person sans socks or sandals; curled ends of guitar strings strewn across the floor like upturned nails; permanent stains of beer scattered in patches on the wooden floorboards; broken lightbulbs for more tetanus and other forms of infectious diseases; a nest of fruit flies concentrated on one of the leaking pipes next to the generator; an unidentifiable liquid etched on the edge of a dirty carpet with an equally mysterious source; crude graffiti filling up the bare cement walls; the temper of a lead singer with a god complex; and lastly, the simmering temperament of a guitarist that believes he deserves more credit than he is currently given.

To call the basement of an abandoned house on the distant outskirts of Hongdae a studio was an insult to professional musicians who spend their entire lives in a well-insulated creative space. Your band barely had the budget to install acoustic foam panels across the basement—not like you needed it, though. Nobody in their right mind would dare take the last train to the station and hike at least an hour atop a closed trail to record music in a dilapidated house. It wasn’t like there was anything or anybody listening to the so-called “noise” you and your friends made at ungodly hours, too. If there were, it was probably the ghosts of those who once populated what you assumed was a small, forestry village before the war.

Nonetheless, it became the meeting place that would house all of the band’s creative endeavors—and to be fair, you didn’t mind the musty smell or the murky leakages of dirty water. All of it to you slowly became a sanctuary that broke you free from the bondage of a degree you weren’t even interested in. What was even better was the people that occupied the rather decrepit space. Sure, there was a lot of infighting in the band that made you want to throw your drum sticks at each member or assault them and get charged with battery, but in the end, it was growing pains for the fruition of an otherwise decent band. For you, the disagreements everyone often faced were a testament to the band’s potential longevity. Even if you didn’t consider yourself the most vocal member of the ensemble, you had a reliable voice of reason that validated the input you’d give to every suggestion or performance discussed.

“Disagreements should be normalized, you know?” You once remember saying when Jeongin would often cry about the heated arguments Geonu and Sungchan would have. “I don’t think we’d be as good as we are now if we never fought or stood up for what we wanted in this thing.”

A word had to be said about the duo before proceeding into important matters—after all, it was the two of them that had the longest overall experience in Seoul’s university basement scene. Geonu in particular was who one might call the “veteran” in your band. He practically grew up around independent musicians his whole life, and his brother was in the garage rock scene since Geonu graduated from middle school. It was the norm for him to show up underage inside bars, venues, taverns, and any place that reeked of spoiled beer, sticky sweat, and copious amounts of cannabis abuse. Of course, Geonu managed to stay clean save for a few sips of beer here and there; he was notorious for his inhumane self-restraint and resilience, after all. When Geonu was fifteen, around the end of his last summer as a middle schooler, he started a hardcore band and toured a couple of basements around Seoul and beyond. The problem, though, was that his lead singer was a late bloomer. Instead of obtaining the gruff, aggressive, and extremely hardcore (for lack of a better word) tone that was required for the genre, Geonu had to suffer through his band receiving “baby noise” status. To his credit, he took it extremely well, using the ridicule to his advantage. It became a common gimmick later on for the band’s cult following to bring pacifiers and cry like an infant during the breakdown of each song. He even began attaching packets of powdered milk with each tote bag or cassette tape purchased from his fans for extra humor.

That period of his life closed when he was in his second year of high school, where he founded an indie band and completely changed the direction of his music. The hardcore punk to soft boy indie pipeline was a pretty common shift in many musicians in the current generation, and by then, Geonu had grown out of the nu-metal craze of gelled, spiky hair and repetitive power chords. He wanted something more out of his music and thus formed an unexpected friendship with Sungchan, who at the time was the star football player in their high school. Since then, the two had been in the same band together, often changing the lineup depending on where they were music-wise. The first generation of the band was called King Suit, and most of their shows consisted of covers translated from English to Korean. King Suit was perhaps the most radio-friendly iteration out of all the bands that Geonu and Sungchan were in, and they broke off for the exact same reason.

“Nobody really wanted to write music,” Geonu explained one time after a freshman party. “I mean, I can’t blame them. It takes a lot of effort, and most of us were self-taught. Sungchan was the only one who was willing to make the academic sacrifice to write and produce music with me, so we broke off after graduating high school.”

From what you could tell, Geonu didn’t seem to look back at King Suit with the rose-colored fondness of nostalgia. Each time he complained about his former members in a drunken pursuit, his voice would drop an octave lower, seething bitterness and poison in his slurred cadence. Geonu also only complimented Sungchan when he was drunk.

The second iteration of his attempts into the underground indie scene was with a short-lived shoegaze venture that was ironically named DARE. One surprising fact that you managed to squeeze out of Geonu was that Sungchan conjured the idea of starting a shoegaze band. He had been listening to a lot of my bloody valentine and Cocteau Twins owing to his nightly Naver scrolls and Spotify recommendations. According to an extremely inebriated Geonu, Sungchan became obsessed with collecting effectors and pedals, blowing his entire savings and part-time earnings into expanding his ever-growing collection of overpriced battery boxes. Truth be told, his obsession for pedals didn’t necessarily come from a place of musical interest—he just thought that some of the artworks plastered across the Keeley or Electro-Harmonix pedals looked cool. He managed to learn how to use them through deep research on YouTube and Reddit, but he would never admit that the sole reason for his collection was the pursuit of aesthetics. Geonu would also never admit that he wanted DARE to live a longer life, simply because his stubborn pride wouldn’t allow it. He would always argue with Sungchan about how the genre of shoegaze itself was a cut-and-paste replica of each other, and for Geonu, it would be embarrassing to admit that his opinions can change over time. He was too much of a staunch idealist in the sense that he stood by most—if not all—of his opinions, thus it would take an eternity for him to admit that he was either wrong or misconstrued about whatever statement came out of his loud mouth.

Then, Joker In was born—at least, that was what the current band was called. Prior to the name change, the band didn’t have an official name, so each gig just listed your names as individuals. It was the only iteration of Geonu’s bands that consisted of you in the lineup, in addition to Jeongin’s replacement as the current bassist. Prior to Jeongin’s untimely recruitment, the band had an upper year who promptly had to leave because he graduating and he was an exchange student. You didn’t know what went inside Geonu’s mind theater when he recruited Felix, but you assumed that the short-lasting membership was worth it if he was that good of a bassist.

And to your judgement, Felix was amazing. He was a veteran of the instrument and played the double bass at his university’s big band back in Australia. Naturally, he would adjust to the electric bass pretty quickly, mastering all the techniques and genres by the time the band scored their first gig. Felix wasn’t particularly good at Korean, but he didn’t need the language when his skills spoke for themselves. In addition to mastering the instrument, he was a phenomenal performer that captivated the audience through his laid-back playing style. Every note he plucked was effortless, and his deep, sultry voice complemented Geonu’s powerful vocals quite well.

The first time you saw Geonu cry was when the band dropped Felix off at the airport, bringing Jeongin along despite the awkward, one-sided tensions between them. Felix didn’t mind Jeongin’s presence since he joined the band knowing it was a short-term commitment, but Jeongin thought otherwise.

“What if he’ll hate me?” Jeongin would lament. It was your job to comfort him whenever he would dive deep into his woes about filling such a big role. Geonu was too cutthroat, and Sungchan was too much of a deadpanner. There was no way those two could ease the noisy thoughts of an anxiety-ridden boy.

“Felix doesn’t hate, Jeongin,” You’d reply as you stuffed his mouth with endless slices of pizza. “Have you seen the guy? I don’t think he could get angry even if he wanted to.”

The band became Joker In after Jeongin’s obsession for Eurovision came to light. At first, the three of you eyed him with confusion and bewilderment, wondering how a boy born and raised in Korea could care about a Europe-exclusive song contest. After being subjected to an entire week or two of arduously rewatching past contests and performances, you’ve grown to realize that Jeongin never watched Eurovision for the quality of songs that each artist produced. Sure, there were some good hits that grabbed your attention, but Jeongin didn’t care about the meaning of the songs written for the contest. For him, Eurovision was specifically created for drama and political tensions, paired with ridiculous, overtly surreal, and over-the-top staging that made you question the infinite potential of the human mind. What initially started as Jeongin’s sole hyper fixation now influenced the entire band’s direction, and Eurovision became a pact of friendship in Joker In.

“You have to watch Viktor Plushenko skating on a fucking ice rink on stage with Dima Bilan,” Jeongin said, pushing his phone screen on Geonu’s face.

“I’ve already seen that performance dipshit. You’ve shown it to me like, I don’t know? Every single time we go to the studio?” Geonu would reply, then keep his eyes glued to the performance. He didn’t want to admit that his go-to stage costume of a wifebeater and loose, silver parachute pants came from endlessly watching Dima Bilan on YouTube, but the avid Eurovision fan could pretty much piece his inspiration quite easily. Luckily for him, Korea didn’t have a lot of people that were willing to watch four whole hours of countries they’d never heard of sending artists runnings around in hamster balls singing about dusting a turkey in 2000s-era technicolor.

“They sure did bring a wholeass ice rink on stage, did they?” Sungchan said, using his tall stature to tower over Geonu and Jeongin. He kept his eyes focused on the Olympic figure skater as he gracefully slid around the small, constrained ice rink in Belgrade.

“Anything for Dima Bilan. Anything.” Jeongin cooed, eyes never leaving the blue-tinted stage on his phone screen. “Look at him! He’s so… sexy.”

“Take a shot every time Jeongin simps over Dima Bilan,” You interrupted, snatching the phone from Jeongin’s hands. You went on the search bar and typed in the keywords that led to your favorite Eurovision winner, Duncan Laurence. Once his deep, solemn voice began to reverberate across the vast emptiness of the basement, you felt the three roll their eyes in your direction.

“Of course, you’ll always play Duncan Laurence’s performance,” Jeongin sighed as he shook his head. He yanked his phone back from your hands and paused the video, momentarily admiring the tall, Dutch man playing the grand piano before shutting his phone off altogether. You returned the sentiment and folded your arms, closing your eyes from exhaustion.

“Jeongin, you know that people can enjoy the contest for the actual music they produce, right?”

“Well… yeah, but where’s the fun in that?” Jeongin replied, giving you his signature foxy smile. “You’re free to argue that Stefania won last year because of its musicality and experimentation with hip-hop and Ukrainian folk music, but man, you can’t deny that people liked it because of Mr. Pink Bucket Hat and MC Kilimmen’s breakdancing.”

“I don’t know, dude.” Sungchan interrupted. Whenever the topic of Eurovision 2022 came up, he always felt the need to join the conversation. “I think Chanel with Slomo deserved the trophy.”

Sungchan always had a penchant to enjoy female entries in Eurovision. When the band rewatched Eurovision 2010 and host their first sleepover in the basement for the first time, Sungchan fell asleep until Lena’s “Satellite” came on. The moment he heard her voice, he jolted awake as if someone shocked him with a defibrillator, posture immediately upright as he leaned his tall frame too close to the projector that they managed to hook up. For the whole week since, he kept replaying her performance whenever he had free time. When he was doing chores around the basement or setting up for practice, he would constantly hum the chorus of the song, following the singer’s odd, breathy cadence while swinging his hips to the rhythms in his head. It got to a point where it became an earworm for the entire band, and for a while, Geonu decided to ban the song from playing whenever they were together.

“You can’t keep playing Satellite when Alexander Ryback was way better,” Jeongin would bitterly mutter under his breath. He would then pretend to hold a violin and prance around the floorboards, using his light, airy steps to do several failed pirouettes.

Eurovision became the center of your band, and it became a gimmick to put at least one Eurovision song on your setlist—much to your chagrin. On the one hand, you would enjoy the songs that Jeongin would pick, such as “Believe” and Lordi’s “Hard Rock Hallelujah” for your university’s Halloween bash. In those moments, you were into it because you enjoyed the songs. On the other hand, the songs that were often chosen for your gigs were too “poppy,” for lack of a better word. There was not much you can do except keep steady beats intact while you watched Geonu and Jeongin mess around on stage. It was fun watching them get extremely drunk on copious amounts of cheap beer and vodka cranberries, but in the end, you were left performing basic 808s while the rest had their share of fun.

It wasn’t unfair. It was just the way music was evolving. You weren’t much of a connoisseur to begin with as well, so you sucked it up and kept the musical harmony of the band. After all, what was important to you wasn’t the ability to execute flashy fills or steal the stage from the rest of the members. If you wanted that for yourself, then you wouldn’t be in a band in the first place. The sole purpose of forming a group is to produce quality as a collective, not as individuals—as such, you kept your role practical. So long as you sounded good as a band, that meant you were doing your job right.

Maybe that was why you got along with everyone very well. Unlike Sungchan, who had a greedy streak of outdoing Geonu’s vocals with his shrill fills, or Jeongin, who had the opposite problem of staying behind and lowering the volume of his bass on the amp, you kept a good balance between showing off your skills and keeping the band’s overall sound in mind. That dynamic was also reflected in the way you interacted with the rest of the band. When you were with Geonu, you were an agent that showed him humility. You would always slap him in the back without any ill will, making sure he understood that there was no hierarchy in the band.

“We’re not Geonu and friends, you jerk,” You would often say to him while pinching his ears. “We’re Joker In now, and I don’t recall seeing your name at the forefront of our group.”

“My bad, my bad,” Geonu replied, feeling the pain inflicted wherever you pinched him. Sometimes, it would be a drum stick thrown in his direction. When you were feeling generous, you just shook your head and taunted him.

“I could do your job just as well, wanna bet?” You’d ask, pushing him to your drum kit in jest. Geonu could take jokes pretty well, but whenever this threat would reach his ears, he’d often see his life flash before his very eyes. Even if he prided himself in his skills as a multi-instrumentalist, he didn’t want to admit that he was terrible at the drums.

You had a relatively peaceful relationship with Jeongin, owing to the fact that you were both in the same section. As such, you had to parle with Jeongin the most about the musical direction of each song Geonu wrote or translated. Since the genre that you often played with the band was along the lines of contemporary indie rock or pop, you didn’t struggle a lot with learning the songs or creating a soft, basic beat that can go along with Geonu’s vocals and Sungchan’s playing. Jeongin’s case was rather different. Although he was a great bassist that had an impeccable sense of rhythm, he lacked the confidence to properly execute all the bass lines he had in mind. Whenever he felt daunting, it would take him a few drinks or a few words of encouragement until he could finally swallow his insecurities and face Geonu.

“Why are you so scared of that tiny angry man,” You’d often joke, sticking your elbow to Jeongin’s sides. He would look back at you with a flushed and nervous look, scrambling for answers in his fast-paced head while looking back at Geonu.

It’s not to say he was scared of Geonu, because you can’t really be scared of a man who was his height. Rather, Jeongin was intimidated by Geonu’s presence—and you completely understood where that unfounded sentiment came from. Jeongin was the only one who did not have any experience with live performances prior to joining the band. Sungchan had been playing with Geonu since high school, and you paid your dues back in high school when you were forced to play jazz drums in the big band. Sure, you had a bit of a blank when it came to performing live, but it was easy to get back in the motions of it all when you already knew what to do. Jeongin didn’t have the experience; he only had skill. No matter how great he was at the instrument in theory, he often didn’t know what to do once he was on stage. Geonu would have to pull him back an hour before rehearsals and sound check just to tell him to let loose—which ironically wasn’t something anyone could teach.

“Loosen up, kid. You just gotta get out there and play! Don’t think about being perfect or fucking up, because once you do, you mess up. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, so you gotta get in there with good vibes only.”

Jeongin’s gotten better now, but he still shared the same meekness and apprehension when it came to Geonu. You were sure that it’d completely disappear with time, but you weren’t completely confident about the band’s status in a few years. There was a part of you that still considered it a short-term gig—something you’ll eventually grow out of once you graduate from university and get a “real job.” For this reason, you got along with Sungchan quite well.

Another word about Sungchan: Though he had the longest track record of witnessing Geonu’s god complex, he was also someone that didn’t take the band seriously. In fact, your shock persisted to this day when Sungchan drunkenly told you that he planned to leave the band and music altogether after he graduated.

“This is just a hobby for me,” You vaguely remember him saying with overly dilated pupils and languid, hazy steps. “I think I’ll quit when I get my shit together someday.”

It wasn’t until you were four months deep into the band that you realized why Sungchan didn’t want to pursue music forever. At first, you thought it was an uncomfortable, yet silent and covert tension between Sungchan and Geonu. They’ve known each other for so long; it was natural to have disagreements. Then, you realized through Sungchan’s work ethic and his commitment to the Varsity baseball team that he simply had more going for him than a four-piece cover band. He wasn’t the smartest of the bunch, but he was extremely athletic—which was always a plus when it came to the unlikely colliding worlds of mosh pits and Olympic-level stamina.

Joker In often had its moments of explosive fights and passive-aggressive silent treatments, but you wouldn’t have had it any other way. Usually, all it took was for Sungchan to complain that he was hungry, or for Jeongin to take his phone out and plug it into the projector, screening his niche obsession of odd European performances for everyone to see.

Unfortunately for you, though, the topic of today’s fight was around the one thing that should have brought the band together: Food.

“What should we eat tonight?” Geonu asked, adjusting the microphone stand with one hand while scanning the messy, crumpled, and coffee-stained lyric sheet in his hands.

“Pizza?”

“Sungchan, we’ve been having pizza for the past six months. If we order the same shit again I swear I might throw up,”

“Yeah, I’m siding with Jeongin on this one,” You added, leaning your head on Jeongin’s shoulder while clutching your unruly, growling stomach. “Pizza’s just not it right now.”

“Then what the fuck do we order, captain?” Sungchan snapped, heaving a sigh as he groaned in pain.

“Hey, don’t call me that!” Geonu replied and returned the sentiment, scratching his head in frustration and confusion. He looked out at the sky and checked his phone, taking quick glances between all the furniture in the basement. The skies were dark, and the only source of light the band had was the dim, low glow of an ancient, yellow light bulb that was still there before they called the place their studio.

“Didn’t I say we’re all equals here?”

“Well, you’re technically writing all the songs that we’ve played so far, and you’ve been really anal about the solo I’ve considered for Butterflies and Katrina…”

To be fair, Sungchan was right. For the past three weeks or so, Sungchan has tried his best to add more input into the mixing process, but Geonu would either turn his suggestions down or ask him to play quieter in recent gigs. At first, Sungchan could understand the frontman’s qualms; it was never in his best interest for anyone to overshadow each member. However, he disagreed with the way that Geonu played favorites. Two nights ago, he caved in and allowed you to perform a drum solo—but then again, that was out of the request of the audience. You were lucky enough to have half your friend group and the entire law society show up to embarrassingly chant your name over and over again until you had the opportunity to strike. For Jeongin, it was much more forceful. Geonu had been trying to replicate the same charisma that Felix had brought to the band, and as a result, he has given Jeongin complicated bass lines that aren’t the easiest to execute in front of a crowd. Geonu had his own moments as well, but he chalked it up to being the “face” of the band. Disagreements between the two were commonplace, but it wasn’t common to completely diminish Sungchan’s role to basic chords and simple riffs.

“Sungchan, for fuck’s sake,” Geonu replied in his usual tone. “I’m not being anal because I don’t like it. I’m being anal because I know you could come up with something better. This is the same, lazy, cut-and-paste solo that you’ve been playing in every single show so far, and we need more diversity in our tune to get everyone to eventually listen to the stuff we put out.”

“Geon, we’re a cover band. Don’t you ever forget that,” Sungchan chimed. He was sick of hearing Geonu tell him the same thing since they were in high school.

“So? Translation takes a lot of work! Besides, the only reason we’ve gained our following so far is that we do something unique and original that Joker Out don’t do on their shows.”

“Oh please, all the gimmicks you do on stage basically count as stealing. You see fan videos of Bojan online and regurgitate that.”

“Oh? Like what? Please give me an example, because from what I can see, the crowd loves what we already do.”

Usually, all it took was for you and Jeongin to step in and break the two apart. Jeongin would console Geonu on the sidelines, and you would take Sungchan out for a “walk” until he came back with a fresh perspective. Sometimes, it took hours—days, even—for both of them to set their differences aside and swear an oath of momentary truce. However, this was the first time you’ve seen their bickering evolve into a full-fledged fight. You snuck glances between a panicked Jeongin, who slowly unplugged his bass and turned off the amp. He looked like an ostrich that constantly peaked his head in all directions, eyes rapidly scavenging the best time to step in and do what he does best.

“I don’t know? You call our music shagadelic sad boy rock—just like how Joker Out describes themselves,”

“It’s an original word!”

“It’s not if they’re already using it…”

“Guys!” Jeongin finally screamed. “I’m hungry! Can we just postpone this little lover’s quarrel for another time?”

“Jeongin’s right,” You backed up, watching the two attempt to bicker amidst Jeongin’s ear-grating, dolphin-like screech. “We haven’t eaten anything since we arrived, you know? We’ve just been busy going through our setlist like, five or six times. Can’t we just call for a break and get back once we’ve eaten?”

“I hate that you’re always right,” Geonu finally responded after a light, pondering pause. “Pizza?”

Before Geonu could start dialing the usual pizza place’s number on his phone, a light creak bounced back and forth between the gray, cement walls of the basement. It came in little waves, then echoed with a booming shriek. The four of you immediately looked behind you, catching the lanky silhouette of a man wearing an oversized rugby shirt with marinara stains all over its striped pattern. He tipped his cap off and gave all four of you a smile, the very definition of heavy embodied in the soft, yet dense movement of each footstep. He wasn’t even wearing leather boots or platforms; his sneakers seemed to shake the entire room with every step he took. Once you were able to catch a glimpse of the intense redness in his eyes, you finally knew why someone who appeared so light carried such weight with him.

“Oh my god, you scared me, Hee!” You jokingly exclaimed, greeting him with a strong pat on the shoulder. He cocked his head back and forth, giant, glassy eyes adjusting to see the blurriness of your face. Once he was able to stay still, he returned the gesture with a wave that almost knocked him down to the ground.

“You losers didn’t call the shop so I got worried you died or something,” Heeseung said, passing the large box of pizza to Sungchan before slumping his entire body on one of the couches in the studio. “This place looks pretty gnarly, so I kinda expected a horror movie plot going on where one of you goes insane and murders everyone in the room.”

“To be fair, you did come at the right time,” You said, practically shoving a glass of water in Heeseung’s mouth. “Geonu was one step closer to ripping Sungchan’s head off just now.”

“Did you bring the usual?” Sungchan asked, knowing the answer just by the whiff of garlic, tomatoes, and mozzarella that wafted throughout the entire basement.

“Yeah, so every single one of you better pay me back. This was out of pocket.”

“You have the employee’s discount though, so the total price was probably around like, 12,000 won or something,” Jeongin said, trying his best to hold his laughter while taking a slice of pizza out of the box. Whenever Heeseung came with pizza, the war zone between Geonu and Sungchan subsides into a peaceful truce.

“Hey, shit’s brutal lately, okay? I gotta get my money back.”

Heeseung kept his body within the crevices of the old, unwashed couch, sinking his body further and further until he practically disappeared from your current realm of reality. At this rate, you would be surprised if Heeseung could get up and go home on his own. Though he was notorious for smoking copious amounts of weed every day, it wasn’t like him to show up to work completely fried. While the boy had problems with addiction, he was perhaps behind Geonu went it came to self-control and resilience. One time, he was able to quit weed for an entire month to focus on his studies. In those four months, he refused temptation altogether like a patron saint. No matter how many people tried to tempt him with a single puff or a bong rip, he would cover his nose and run away from the room. So far, he’s never caved in during these periods of asceticism.

“Fine, you stingy ass motherfucker,” Geonu replied, opening his phone to send a few Wons to the demanding pothead. “Broke ass bitch.”

“Can I talk to you real quick?” Heeseung suddenly interrupted. His brain shouldn’t be capable of multitasking in his current state, but the addition of money to his bank account was enough for him to forget about collecting his debt from the band.

“If it’s about that guy then I don’t wanna hear it. Besides, that’s all you talk to me about.”

“Beomgyu’s not bad if you give him a chance, trust me.”

Beomgyu. Hearing the name alone was enough for you to reach the same levels of anger that Geonu and Sungchan had just presented. Whenever the topic of Beomgyu came into the conversation, Geonu and Sungchan’s outbursts seemed like nothing but child’s play. While their arguments could easily be solved between a slice of pizza or a pint or two, you could never imagine yourself sitting idly and peacefully at a dining table with Beomgyu.

“Trust you?” You suddenly interjected, anger slowly seeping into your brain with each passing second. “Trust you? The person who gets insanely high and goes to Starbucks because you find the barista cute? No thanks!”

“Hey, man,”

“Don’t hey man me, you prick.”

“But you’re gonna love what I’m about to tell you,” Heeseung shushed, doing his very best to lull your unquenchable temper. The funniest thing to him was how being quick to anger was never in your personality. Throughout all the times that he’s known you, he was sure that it took infinite attempts to get you to at least crack or start getting annoyed—not angry. This was why no matter how much he tried to restrain himself, he couldn’t. It was too much fun watching you explode over some guy that apparently made it his life-long goal to get under your skin as much as possible—the best, or worst part about it is that it worked too well.

“I caught Beomgyu listening to Joker Out lately,” Heeseung started, barely containing the eruption of laughter that was bottled within the confines of his throat. “It’s probably your doing,”

“Of course he would,” You snapped, rolling your eyes at the thought of Beomgyu listening to your band’s idols. “He’s nothing without me,”

“You know what the better part is? He’s trying to learn Slovenian so he can one-up you and see them live in Europe or something,”

“I don’t care,”

“You clearly do,”

When it came to Beomgyu, you were terrible at keeping your temper in check. This was a well-known fact among your bandmates and a funnier gag to Heeseung. While your bandmates tried their best to pretend Beomgyu didn’t exist in your so-called friend group, they counted on Heeseung to spark the dormant anger within you. It’s not as if they were afraid of you, per se. It was more so the idea of taking responsibility; they’d rather let Heeseung take the fall than have you endlessly scream at them throughout practice for even mentioning Beomgyu’s existence. To be fair, they were right. With Sungchan and Geonu, things were simple. Even if they were to start punching each other during practice, everything could be solved if they ordered a slice of pizza. With you, however, things were different. You would endlessly talk about how much you hated Beomgyu regardless of the occasion. Even if there were pizza or expensive tickets to see your favorite band live, you would never let your loathing for Beomgyu come to a timely rest. It was always in the back of your brain, itching to come out at every opportunity you had.

“Look at you, little miss I have to be number one in everything,” Heeseung mocked in his inebriated state. He took a dab pen out of his pocket and inhaled its contents, watching the world around him slow down by the minute as your warped, contorted face continued to deepen its wrinkles. You were tempted to take a huff, but adamantly shook your head in absolute refusal.

“Say that one more time and I’ll hit your already empty head,” You replied, already hitting him a couple of times on the shoulder.

“Ouch,”

“Who the fuck does he think he is?! He’s the one who started this whole thing! I never even wanted it to be this way!”

“Yeah you kinda did,”

“How?!”

“I don’t know? Like, that one time you got angry because he beat you in a project,”

At this point, the band dropped everything to pay attention to Heeseung. He was already somewhat dangerous when he was sober, but he practically had no filter when he was high—which was, to be fair, about ninety percent of his existence. Whenever Heeseung was high, all social filters were removed, allowing him to gain access to all of the things that would incite anger in you. This time, it was the sacred project that sparked the endless rivalry between you and Beomgyu. The band knew to keep their mouths shut around the topic to maintain the peace that they kept between you, but Heeseung? The word peace itself didn’t seem to exist whenever he was too high to even think about what he would order at Starbucks.

“Well, that’s because he kept rubbing it in my face! I wanted to congratulate him!”

“He told me you got this close to beating him up in the lecture hall,” Heeseung replied, failing to contain the large grin that was permanently etched on his face. “One of the TAs practically had to grab you before you swung your knuckles in his face.”

“Well, that’s because he kept being annoying about it! He said I got a good mark because I sucked the professor’s dick!”

“You should know him by now, though. He has no filter.”

“But he said it like he meant it,”

“Yeah… about that…”

Even if Heeseung was, indeed, high, he was not a snitch—at least, he believed himself to be a man of his word. Even if tormenting you with talks of Beomgyu was one of his favorite forms of entertainment, what he refused to tell you was that Beomgyu was doing it out of his weird ways of telling you he had the hots for you. Heeseung didn’t know much about Beomgyu, to begin with, but to him, obsession in all forms was a pure sign of attraction.

“Look, I think you two just need to lock yourselves in a room and fuck,” Geonu interrupted, rolling his eyes at the scene playing in front of him. A part of him enjoyed watching you lose your cool at a single man that couldn’t even utter proper insults correctly. Whenever Geonu had the displeasure of seeing you and Beomgyu fight, he ironically laughed at the two of you without realizing that it was pretty much a reflection of his own battles with Sungchan.

“Hee’s right,” Jeongin quietly muttered, breaking his silence after devouring the last pizza slice. “I think you just need to get laid.”

“Excuse me?” You replied, mouth agape at the thought that Jeongin out of all people would call you out in your endless musings towards Beomgyu. “For your information, I do get some.”

“Oh really? When?” Sungchan joked. “When was the last time you fucked?”

“Last month!”

“Rebounds don’t count.”

“Yes, they do!”

“No, they don’t.”

A word about your rebound: it didn’t count. It was just a quick hate fuck with an ex that you haven’t talked to in three years. There was no preamble; it was action without thought. You didn’t even bother asking for her contact information after, and the two of you parted ways in mutual acknowledgement to never cross paths again. In that sense, it didn’t count.

“Anyway, you better sort whatever beef you got going on with Beomgyu out. It’s getting really annoying watching you two fight all the time.” Heeseung said, taking another puff out of his dab pen once he started to feel the ground on his feet again.

“Why is it up to me to fix things?! As I’ve said so many times before, he’s the one who started this whole mess!”

“Sure…”

“Why don’t you guys believe me?!”

“Have you seen yourself?” Geonu interrupted, scratching his head at your poor attempts at salvaging your once calm demeanor. “You’re like, little miss perfect. You’re in like, a million different student clubs, you’re volunteering around campus to the point where you live there—hell, you’re even running for student government this year.”

“Well, that’s because I need to! I need my resume to look good or else I’ll be unemployed for the rest of my life! It’s not like I’m doing so much because Beomgyu does a lot too!” You rebuked, treating the basement like a criminal court. So far, all the witnesses acted as judges with a gavel, striking each of their hammers down to denounce your alibi. Even if you believed you were right, it was up to them to recite the final verdict: Sure enough, you were guilty. Guilty of the vice that is competitiveness.

“I mean, I believe you when you say that, but you have to admit that you’ve been overworking yourself since you met the guy like, three years ago,” Sungchan admitted, shuffling his feet towards you to give you gentle pats on your back.

“No I haven’t!”

“Listen,” Geonu started with a deep sigh. “You’re in varsity, you’re in charity, you almost joined a cult, you’re in debates, you used to be a senior editor for the school paper, you completed your internship like last month, you’re acing all your classes, you’re in the administrative board for your faculty’s association, and you’re in Joker In. That’s overkill, and I’m betting my dick on you not doing this much had you not met Beomgyu.”

“He just brings out the worst in me!” You screamed to no avail. This was the dead end of your court case, and you had to leave the basement without the last word.

“He brings out the private school overachiever in you that’s for sure,” Heeseung joked, his pupils consuming the whites of his eyes until they were overly expanded like obsidian marbles.

“That was so uncalled for, Hee. Put a trigger warning before you make my PTSD worse,”

“Sorry, princess, didn’t realize that going to a super rich private school would be the same as surviving the Korean War,”

“Get the fuck out, Hee.”

You had to stand your ground. Every single time the conversation led to Beomgyu, you were always seen as enemy number one. To be fair, you were the more aggressive out of the two of you. While Beomgyu limited himself to crass insults, you elevated the threat of physical assault and a free boxing match for all of the university to see. Sure, it wasn’t your intention to want to beat him up into a neat, fine pulp, but there was something about Beomgyu that always made you so violent.

“And tell Beomgyu that he’s a prick!” You shouted, after finally managing to push an incredibly high Heeseung out the door. Through the small cracks that you left open, you could see him stumbling on his feet as he began to walk away, waving your figure off with a haughty grin. As always, he left his hat in your basement, and once you descended to the meeting point, you picked it up and threw it out of the broken glass windows, watching it swing back and forth between its sharp shards.

“You two really need to see a marriage counselor or something,” Geonu whispered, watching your rage slowly disperse into your usual calm.

“Geonu’s right, and I rarely agree with that cunt,” Sungchan added, attempting to flail his elongated arms on Geonu’s shoulders.

“Hey! We’ve been playing together for centuries and this is how you repay me?”

“My bad, captain,”

“I think you two need to go to couples therapy instead of them,” Jeongin interrupted, using his thin, fox-like eyes to slyly look at the pair. “I mean, you guys have been at it since high school. They’ve only been at it for like, three years.”

“Thank you, Jeongin. Thank you.”

As always, it was up to Jeongin to fix things whenever the entire band was on the brink of disbandment. For Jeongin, though, it was another stressful addition to his reluctant ventures as a member of Joker In. First, it was his anxieties about keeping Felix’s legacy after he left. Then, it was helping you mitigate the couple’s quarrels that Geonu and Sungchan always found themselves in. Now, it was helping you calm down after the mere mention of Beomgyu’s existence.

“Anyway, let’s get back to practice. Rhythm first,” Geonu snapped. The one thing about him that made him an efficient frontman was his ability to gather the team back into practice. No matter how many times he’d often want to throw his microphone stand in Sungchan’s face or duct tape your mouth shut whenever Heeseung would come in and deliberately bring Beomgyu up, he had faith that the entire band would succumb to obedience once he took control.

“Why?” Jeongin grumbled. To his detriment, Geonu had asked the rhythm section to double their practice time for the past week. At first, he didn’t really see an issue with this, but now, he was skeptical. You, too, shared the same sentiment, looking at Jeongin in confusion before reluctantly shrugging your shoulders and picking your drum sticks from the floor.

“I have to talk to Sungchan about something important,”

With this, you gave Geonu a salute and watched the two climb up from the basement and disappear altogether. Once they were gone, you started to hit your sticks together, counting from two as you waited for Jeongin to play the backing track.

As for Geonu and Sungchan, they eased into the abandoned kitchen of the rustic house, watching Heeseung’s slumped, sleeping figure on the broken couch. They made sure to drop him home before you finished your round with Jeongin, and they hurried to one of the care packages they’d often pack for a bottle of water.

“How do we tell her that Beomgyu’s been sneaking into our gigs?” Geonu asked in a hushed voice, his ears turned to the direction of the stairs that led into the basement.

“I mean, I don’t think we need to tell her,” Sungchan replied. “It’s gonna ruin the band and everything we’ve got going for us so far.” He nonchalantly took a sip of his water and took a quick glance at Heeseung, who was knocked out cold.

“What do you mean? I think she deserves to know so the two of them can finally fix things,”

“Geon, it’s not that easy,”

“How would you know?”

“I don’t, but I can tell,” Sungchan muttered, trying to keep his already quiet voice even lower. “It’s probably just them blowing some steam off because they couldn’t find a way to do it before,”

“Hate fucking?” Heeseung joked, keeping one eye open before slumping back down into the comforts of the smelly, tic-ridden couch. Geonu also reminded himself to tell Heeseung to visit the doctor and take a long shower once he got home.

“Not quite,” Sungchan said, returning the sentiment while walking towards Heeseung with another bottle of water. “You know, if you think about it, both of them come from a pretty well-to-do background. They’re both in the same program, and from what I sort of know about her situation and from what I can guess about Beomgyu, they’re both just facing the consequences of overbearing tiger parents,”

“What did she tell you?” Geonu asked. He was always one for good gossip. Unfortunately, Sungchan wasn’t.

“That’s not my story to tell, I’m just trying to see it from her perspective,”

“So we don’t tell her?” Geonu asked again, rolling his eyes at Sungchan’s tight-lipped nature.

“I mean, if she finds out, then she finds out. Just let it happen on its own.”

“And how do we make sure that nothing too messy happens in our gigs?”

“I don’t know, let them fight it off if it happens,” Sungchan muttered after a long, quiet thought. He’s thought about the scenario one too many times, but he wasn’t one to stop the inevitable. “It’s good to let all that pent-up frustration out I guess…”

“You’re too nice, Sung.”

“I know, Geon. I know.”

“What?! Come again?!”

For Heeseung to call Beomgyu’s voice a scream was an understatement. If a dolphin were to learn to speak, it would sound better than Beomgyu whenever the topic surrounded you and your entire being. It was for this reason that Heeseung sometimes loathed the idea of coming home; he supposed the price of free rent came at a cost of living with the earthly incarnation of wrath.

“Gyu, I know you heard me the first time,” Heeseung said, attempting to cover his ears to no avail.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Hee. My ears are getting bad from hearing her name!” Beomgyu screamed again, fury visible in the twitches of his eyes.

“Jesus, you don’t have to shout at me… I’m just your messenger boy,”

“And I don’t need to hear about her! So what if she’s playing their songs? She’s probably gonna fuck it all up anyway…”

“Says the person who went to their gig two nights ago,”

In the same way Heeseung knew all the tricks and tactics to turn you into a red, fuming ball of anger, he also knew how to push all of Beomgyu’s buttons. Then again, it wasn’t that difficult to get Beomgyu angry, for Beomgyu was the type of person to get angry at a mere fly that happened to land on his shoulder. It was very easy to tick Beomgyu off, but only you had the power to get him into a continual period of rage that never ceased to disappear the moment he hears your name or catches a whiff of your scent. Heeseung wouldn’t compare Beomgyu’s so-called hatred towards you in a predator-prey dynamic—to him, both of you were blood-thirsty warlords that could never come to terms with a ceasefire to the detriment of the rest of the world.

“Hee, I swear, if you told her that—”

“Don’t worry, Gyu. I’m not a snitch.” Heeseung interrupted. “What I am, though, is a messenger boy, and if I’m being honest with you, I’m getting sick of my job. Just admit that you like her and I don’t know? Go fuck her or something,”

“Hee, I don’t like her. Let me correct myself: I will never like her. I like her band, not her.”

Beomgyu was an enigma in many, many ways, but what never failed to amuse Heeseung about his reluctant roommate was how hatred was stronger than attraction or any feelings of love. Beomgyu was the type of person to go through lovers like a page in a novel—fast, yet detailed, but never stuck on the same page for too long. And yet, when it came to you, he seemed to be an avid reader that ceaselessly consumed and repurposed every page of a novel, adding and subtracting everything that he could concentrate all of his energy on understanding the layers and complexities of a text revered by schools and institutions alike.

“All you talk about is how impeccable the mastering is on the drums whenever you listen to their SoundCloud…”

“So? I just happen to like how she plays. That’s not a testament to me liking her,”

“Why do you hate her so much, Gyu? I don’t think I’ve had the chance to properly ask,”

Heeseung never had the chance to ask Beomgyu out of fear, even when he was high. That was the one thing that never went away no matter what state he was in. To be fair, he had every right to be scared or fearful in any shape or form; he’s never seen a type of hatred as intense and raw as the one Beomgyu harbored over you.

“Because she exists, Hee. She exists.”

“Can’t you just let it go?”

“No, I can’t.”

“Why not?”

Beomgyu took a deep breath. He hated that he always ran out of something so essential to life whenever you came up. “Because some dipshit keeps telling my parents that she’s basically beating me in everything! Her!”

“So…?” Heeseung replied, rolling his eyes at the underwhelming result of their rivalry. “Why can’t you just tell them to shut up and mind their own business?”

“I wish it was that easy, Hee. God, I wish. Every time they call me it’s like Oh that girl got number one again! Oh that girl’s president of the law society, why are you VP external? Beomgyu-yah, why can’t you be better?”

Another word about Choi Beomgyu: If it wasn’t as clear as day, then it would be helpful to explain it now. He was from a well-to-do family with no financial obligations or the threat of living a brooding, middle-class life chasing paycheck after paycheck to sustain the bare necessities in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. With this in mind, Heeseung begins to paint a kaleidoscopic diagram of the various reasons why Beomgyu may be so hung up on always being number two against you. He closed his eyes, allowed the remaining traces of cannabis to set the cogs in his brain into motion, and came up with an epiphany that shook him to the core: Beomgyu was a bored, rich kid that needed something to keep him at his toes, and you were the very stimulant that he was looking for. Sure, it was, in a sense, an underwhelming conclusion, but Heeseung could only digress. He wasn’t born into a family that had it all, and he reckons that if he didn’t have to worry about his finances, he would end up being a bratty, bored student out for blood just like the very person that offered him a taste of wealth in a sky-high apartment.

“Yikes… Talk about Tiger King and Queen…”

“So yeah, it is personal.” Beomgyu spat. It would be rude to call the boy tone deaf—especially in his hot-headed state. Heeseung kept his mouth shut, something that he rarely did when he was inebriated in any form.

“You don’t have to tell them about her, you know?” He asked after finding the right words to say. Beomgyu rolled his eyes and huffed under his breath, his hands twitching to throw his phone off the balcony.

“I’m not! That’s the point! I’m not telling them about her! They’re just stalking me on their own!”

At this moment, Heeseung thought of trying his best to reconcile the bad blood between you and Beomgyu. Then again, he pondered—another thing he never seems to do. If he were to succeed in getting you and Beomgyu to set your respective differences aside, then he wouldn’t have his very own source of entertainment anymore. As much as he would’ve hated to admit, he always looked forward to getting high just to hear Beomgyu complain about you. What made it even funnier to him was how you were nothing like the devil that Beomgyu pictured. It wasn’t to say you were an angel that descended from the heavens, either. You were, in fairness, just an average university student that couldn’t—and shouldn’t—care less about a rich boy that endlessly yapped about you. Without Beomgyu in the picture, you were just a drummer that had to deal with another pair of noisy rivals that needed to go to some form of couple’s therapy.

“Hee, you don’t get it, do you?” Beomgyu suddenly spoke, breaking the short-lived silence that Heeseung tried to salvage.

“Afraid not.”

“I can’t get along with someone like her. I just can’t. She gets on my nerves, and I wish she didn’t exist!”

It was common for Heeseung to hear Beomgyu complain about his parents and his brother in the few months or so of him living with the boy. In fact, it was a routine for Heeseung to hear Beomgyu complain. That was what he was good at, and he was glad that he was putting his skills to good use by choosing the right program and career path. Now that Heeseung had the chance to picture it, Beomgyu would make a fine lawyer, incessantly nagging his way through each court case until the jury rules in his favor so he would shut up.

“Jesus, you rich kids are kind of an ick…” Heeseung whispered. He gave Beomgyu a quick wave and headed straight to the balcony, closing it to see his roommate flash him the middle finger. He returned it with a smile, and fished a lighter out of his jean pocket to light the stem of a dirty, unwashed bong that was filled with beer instead of water.

“You should be lucky I’m letting you live here for free,” Beomgyu mouthed through the glass windows just enough for Heeseung to see.

“Yeah, I guess hearing you pine about a fellow overachiever and trauma dump about your terrible childhood is better than paying for rent,” Heeseung replied, opening the door to let Beomgyu into the balcony. Beomgyu hated it whenever Heeseung would smoke. A part of it came from the stench that stuck to his hair and clothes despite three laundry loads in the washing machine, and another part came from his irrational fear of anything related to drugs—which was rather odd since he was the type of person who was pretty loose when it came to drinking copious amounts of alcohol at social gatherings.

“Hee, if I go to jail one day, you’ll probably be out of this earth to witness it.”

“Oh, I’m so scared!”

Heeseung tried his best to stifle a bout of laughter that began to accumulate in his lungs but to no avail. In an instant, he was a laughing mess with red-laced eyes, and all Beomgyu could do was cover his nose as the hooded boy continued to blow smoke on his face.

“Close the fucking door when you smoke, you’re hotboxing the entire apartment,” Beomgyu screamed, storming out of the balcony to close the glass windows shut. Before he could go back to his room, Heeseung stood up and opened the door again, letting the stench of weed laced with moldy beer enter the ventilation system.

“You should try it sometime, Gyu. It’d loosen the stick up your ass for sure,” Heeseung said with a languid touch to his cadence. Every word and movement he uttered was met with heavy restraint, and Beomgyu knew that Heeseung wasn’t on earth anymore.

“Are you coming?” Beomgyu asked. He knew there was nothing he could do to reason with someone that was properly baked.

“To what?” Heeseung responded, almost shattering the bong in his hands as he languidly danced back into the apartment.

“Joker In’s gig tonight,” Beomgyu said reluctantly—almost too quick for Heeseung to catch.

“Gyu, I deliver their pizza like, every day. I don’t need to go there again unless they give me shrooms for free.”

“Whatever,”

Beomgyu stormed off into the bathroom to grab the essentials that he relied on for the perfect disguise: a disappearing can of Manic Panic hair dye in neon red, a pair of scissors and a bunch of razorblades that he used to tear his jeans and his tank tops, a pencil of kohl eyeliner that he stole from one of his first hookups during freshman year, and a near-empty bottle of black nail polish. Heeseung often joked about how his so-called “disguise” was just a blast from the MySpace, scene-girl past, but Beomgyu refuses to admit that his go-to look to your gigs was less-than-perfect. He’s snuck into your gigs since he saw you secretly put posters of a Valentine’s bash on every crevice of the law faculty; he was sure a couple more gigs couldn’t hurt before the inevitable occurs.

“You’re going alone?” Heeseung asked, waving at his reflection in the mirror while trying his best to stop himself from uncontrollably laughing.

“Yeah, why?”

“What if she sees you?”

“Have you seen her play? She only focuses on rubbing two sticks. I doubt she’d even notice me.” Beomgyu replied, sharpening his eyeliner. Heeseung knocked the bottle of nail polish and caught it, a wide grin of pride on his face as he carefully placed it back in its original position near the sink.

“See? You’re constantly horny for her,”

“I’m not, she’s ugly and she’s annoying,”

“And yet you’re going to her gig,”

“Man, shut the fuck up.” To Beomgyu’s surprise, this had become his way of saying goodbye to Heeseung whenever he would go to your band’s gig. He used to push Heeseung out of the bathroom so he could concentrate on applying eyeliner on his waterline, but he’s become desensitized to the stings that he would feel when he would accidentally poke his eyes. Sometimes, Heeseung was willing to help Beomgyu apply red dye to his hair, tracing the lines of his tattoos around his arms and calling them crude shapes such as dick nozzle or pee pee stains. Whether he liked it or not, it had unfortunately become a ritual to have Heeseung with him when he was going through his transformation, and now, he was afraid that Heeseung’s absence wouldn’t give him the push and comfort he needed to go through with his covert operation to see you play the drums.

“I’m calling out to you, I wish I could hide,

Oh, no one loves me tonight

It’s just my demons and I,”

This was supposedly the hundredth time that Beomgyu had seen Geonu sing, but he could never learn from his mistakes. Alcohol, nicotine, and Geonu’s voice seemed to give Beomgyu the worst cross-faded experience of his life. Contrary to what others might believe, Beomgyu felt like this during all of Joker In’s gigs because Geonu was too good at his job. His voice had an enchanting quality to it that made Beomgyu’s walls collapse into putty, turning the decrepit paint-job of the basement into one, giant quicksand that continually pulled Beomgyu in. It didn’t help that the rest of the band amplified Geonu’s hypnotic timbre; Sungchan’s guitar acted as a second voice that harmoniously meshed with the mystic melodies that left Beomgyu in a trance-like reverie; Jeongin’s bass didn’t act as a stabilizer with its own heavy renditions of weightless bliss—and, of course, you.

Suspension of disbelief was something that Beomgyu thought he could never accomplish, and yet, the moment you started to strike each tom with your drum stick, he knew that everything in his life didn’t matter to him anymore. He supposes it was the power of music, but he also hatefully admits that your skills carried an unbreakable spell with each note you hit. Rhythm wasn’t even something he particularly enjoyed, seeing as most of the music he listened to was melodic and lyrical in nature. It was only when you took the seat to the drum kit that he was finally able to stand close to the speakers, in the very corner he saved for himself, just to see your tireless figure effortlessly match the energy of the rest of the band. He didn’t know what it was that made him nearly obsessed with the way you played: What it the nonchalance you brought to the stage? Or was it the fills you’d add here and there whenever there was an instrumental break? Was it perhaps the almost-melodic nature of your playing that aroused not just him, but everyone in the room into a mosh-pit frenzy? Maybe it was the way you looked when you played—but he wasn’t drunk enough just yet to admit something so… raunchy.

The walls started to fade one by one, and the group of people that crowded all corners of the basement slowly blended together into various forms and colors. The neon, old gray test lights that dyed the room in a diverse spectrum of colors swirled into one, hazy, hypnotic vision that almost made Beomgyu nauseous. Geonu’s voice began disappearing into thin air, and all he could hear was the muffled bass drum that you kicked with patterned intervals.

This was out of the norm, and Beomgyu’s recklessness amplified into tenfolds of fear. He couldn’t feel the sensations of his skin anymore; his eyes continued to swirl into an amalgamation of colors and people that looked like blurry amoebas; time seemed difficult to track as everything was moving too fast and slow for him to ground himself; each body he bumped into felt like he was getting crushed under its weight; Beomgyu couldn’t breathe; Beomgyu couldn’t see anything anymore; the only thing that Beomgyu could hear was an all too familiar voice that he wasn’t sure he hated or loved.

“Hey, you alright?”

When Beomgyu opened his eyes, he was outside the concert venue, crouched down on the same levels of the tall grass that tickled his face. His cheeks felt cold to the touch, almost as if someone had thrown a bucket of ice water on him. He felt through his hair and tried to contain the fear that embraced his body, locked in a state of panic at the sight of bright red staining his palms. It took a while for him to realize that it was just the temporary dye that he’d placed on his hair, but the apprehension and trepidation came to haunt him again when he looked up to see your concerned, glassy eyes.

“You don’t look too good,” You repeated, kneeling down to his level as you lit a cigarette and blew the smoke against his direction. There were several empty water bottles next to you, coupled with an entire cooler filled with soft drinks, fruit juice, and whatever Beomgyu could see in the dimly lit outdoors of the outskirts of town.

“No, I’m fine.” He breathlessly replied, staring down at the soles of his scuffed, leather combat boots. There was no way he could look up now. He could tell that you weren’t convinced; your chuckles made the pits of his stomach dance with the bile that was piling up in the organ. You took a water bottle and gently held his face in the soft surface of your palms, letting the liquid slowly refresh the corners of Beomgyu’s mouth. The haziness that he felt in his vision slowly dispersed into clarity—which worsened the nausea that overwhelmed Beomgyu in waves. It was the first time he got this close to you without wanting to rip your head off. He didn’t know how he felt about it, but the remnants of alcohol that swirled throughout his bloodstream made his cheeks flush in a bright shade of red. He quickly took the water bottle away from you, drowning himself in its cool temperature. Maybe that way, he would wake up and remind himself that you shouldn’t be a friend.

The cool winds of the summer night grazed his cheeks in a tender embrace as he tried his best to keep his head down. He relentlessly prayed that the dimness of the venue’s entrance would hide his worst-kept features from you, fearing for the worst. Ever since his first visit to your band’s gig, he’s never felt something so close to a palpable sense of freedom—a euphoric high that gave him the taste of being a carefree young adult caught up in the fast times of rock music and decadence. He’s thought about making amends just to keep his little, secret sanctuary intact, but his stubborn pride wouldn’t allow him to yield to someone like you. Now that he was sober enough to think about it, he found the irony behind you embodying both his shackles to parental approval and a one-way ticket to liberation quite laughably fascinating. During the day, you were the very picture of something his parents wished he could be, and during the night, you had all the qualities of becoming a musician he idolized. He cursed fate under his breath, wishing that you weren’t blessed with the gifts of intelligence and innate leadership skills. He refused to admit it, but in another life where all you were to him was a drummer in his favorite band, he would’ve given you the benefit of the doubt and let you into his life.

He was reminded of your presence when you hovered a thin, white stick in front of him that glowed within the vast darkness of the night sky. He politely refused, shaking his head as a way to tell you that he didn’t smoke. You stifled a bout of laughter and tucked the cigarette back into its flimsy, dilapidated box, taking a languid seat next to the boy that you decided to take care of without realizing that he was the main source of your misery in your school life.

“What was the last song that you guys performed? I think I missed it because I blacked out or something,” Beomgyu asked with slight hesitance.

“A new version of Vem Da Greš that Geonu translated a few days ago,” You replied, humming the tune to the song that he wished he saw you play live. Something inside of him was telling him that he shouldn’t stay here any longer, so he got up and stretched his arms and legs, callously calculating his angles so you wouldn’t see a single hint of his face. He reveled in your denseness but despised your natural amiability. Once you got up and mimicked his stretches, he turned his head back and stuffed his hand in his jean pocket, fishing for his keys as he mustered a small goodbye in your direction.

“Are you sure you can go home alone?” You asked. “I can drop you off at the bus stop or something, since this place is pretty far out from the nearest city,”

A part of Beomgyu knew that the city lights would reveal his identity, but another part of him also knew how stubborn you can be. Even if he were to tell you that he was fine, and that he’s been known to rely on drunk navigation a lot, he was sure you would ceaselessly insist on taking him home. That was another thing he hated about you—you were too nice, too caring, and too kind to be his rival.

“I’ll be fine,” Beomgyu replied, trying his best to change the tone and cadence of his usual voice. As expected, your cackles echoed across the large stretches of grass and greeneries that surrounded the abandoned house that your band inherited, and you slowly walked closer to his side to poke his shoulders.

“You were literally wobbling around the basement, and if it weren’t for a nice group of girls that nursed you back to health at the sofa, you wouldn’t be here standing up to go home,”

Beomgyu covertly checked the time on his phone, afraid that the phone case filled with his cards and IDs would give his identity away. The time read 03:46 A.M., and he heaved a long, drawn-out sigh. He should’ve called Heeseung a little earlier to pick him up before he got absolutely wasted. In fairness, he could just call an Uber and hitch a ride home, but the transaction would raise another round of suspicion for his parents. He already had enough to worry about when he turned off his location and lied about going on weekly hiking trips with his friends, and he didn’t want to subject himself to another endless lecture and the threat of heightened surveillance from his parents.

“Fine,”

You jogged back to the venue and quickly came out with several water bottles in your small backpack, tossing one in Beomgyu’s direction. It was already bad enough for him that you out of all people saved him from his drunken downfall. The last thing he needed to end his night was to go on a long walk back into the city with someone he was supposed to hate.

“So, where do you live, if I may ask?”

Beomgyu pondered. He didn’t have to tell you his exact address. “Around Mapo-gu, near Mapo station.”

“Oh?”

He didn’t like the lack of response on your end. A low, vibrating hum escaped your lips, and you snapped your fingers as your mouth widened in amusement. “That’s where my friend lives! I can ask him to pick you up once we get there!”

You quickly took your phone out of your pocket and held it in your ear, too quick for Beomgyu to protest and stop you from doing so. Now, he was sure it was all over. The moment he heard the receiver pick up, he braced himself for what was to come.

“Hee, are you awake right now?” You asked, impatiently tapping your foot on the concrete roads that led to the only bus stop in sight—a shadowy silhouette of a thin, metal pipe with a flat circle that read Supsok Village Complex 2. He took a quick glance at your fretful stance, fidgeting with the straps of your phone’s drum keychain while fiddling with the pair of sticks that were lodged under the straps of your loose, billowy joggers. A satisfied hum huffed out of his breathless mouth when he saw you irately throw your phone inside your backpack. Even if Heeseung didn’t pick him up from the venue tonight, he knew that he could always rely on his copious cannabis routine to fall into a deep, unyielding sleep around this hour.

“I’m sorry, my friend’s a bit of a pothead so he’s probably knocked out cold or something,” You apologetically muttered. I would know, he’s my fucking roommate, Beomgyu thought to himself, returning your regretful sentiment with the only form of forgiveness he was willing to give you. Now, it was just the two of you, and Beomgyu had no clue if he should take the long, arduous hike back to his apartment or be thankful enough for your clumsy attempts at assisting him back to his domicile. The fact that he leaned towards succumbing to your aid made him realize that he wasn’t as good with alcohol as he would’ve liked—and now, he was sitting right next to you, eyes glued on his warped reflection in the glass windows as he watched you idly fidget in your seat. He was more than willing to suffer through the entire bus ride to his area of town in awkward silence, but judging from the way you tapped your feet and snuck quick glances between his brows and the tip of his nose, he knew that there was no escaping your desires for a tangible conversation.

“So… did you enjoy the show?” You asked after passing through six different bus stops. Beomgyu played with the loose hems of his tattered tank top, letting the seams go undone. He didn’t expect you to take your hoodie off in one motion, tossing it to the side of his neck as you quickly looked away. He tried his best to etch the rare shyness he saw written on your curved, cat-like spine; this was definitely something he’ll be bullying you for tomorrow.

Was he at fault for catching you in your most vulnerable state? No. You were just too dense to realize that the handsome, messy, rocked-out, drunk stranger right next to you was the very bane of your existence.

Beomgyu’s glory was short-lived, though. Now, he had to make the move. He remembered what his brother had taught him back in middle school, when Beomgyu was still struggling through incessant voice cracks and embarrassing one-liners that he’d religiously recite to get the girl of his then-dreams to bat a single eyelash in his direction. Step one, take a deep breath—because oxygen is the key to looking good, apparently. Step two, expand the diaphragm to fill the ribcage and beyond. It provided the facade of chest muscles. Step three, turn the chin low enough so the vocal cords could only register low notes—he didn’t know the science behind it, but he found that doing these three steps immensely lowered his already low, baritone voice into unknown depths (Beomgyu would like to add that he would never do this sober. It took courage for him to fall for his brother’s tricks, and he was only ever so courageous when he was drowned in eighteen glasses of tequila sunrise).

“Y-yeah, you guys did great as always,” Did it work?

No, it didn’t. The timid shyness in your slouched stature was gone, replaced with your best attempts at keeping your laughter within the confines of your throat. He couldn’t tell if you were choking on air, stifling your dinner and pushing it back into your stomach, or suffering through an intense, sharp pain in your abdomen. All he knew at the moment was that the tension that was once present in the air instantly dispelled into the flowery picture of two young adults failing to hold their laughter back in the empty seats of the night bus. It was certainly an odd experience for Beomgyu to not just share a ride home with someone he would very much murder in the confines of an empty, night bus, but he couldn’t deny how right things felt at the moment. Within the dim, flickering fluorescent lights of the shaky bus, all he could see was another universe through the reflections of the glass windows—a universe where he met you under different circumstances. A different reality where he would take you home and house you in his apartment, watching sad movies in his bedroom until the first sunrise.

Are you more of an action person, or comedy? My favorite genre is melodrama, he wanted to say. Maybe in his “new” identity as a faux washed-up youth in leather combat boots and ripped jeans, he might have some leeway into managing his double life. Tirelessly hating you for three years straight certainly added tired him out, so perhaps it would be a new thing to try

“Ah, a repeater,”

“That’s… odd? I don’t see you around a lot, though,” You replied. It was often common for your band to track and befriend those that constantly attend your shows—then again, you weren’t the best judge of that. Each gig always ended in

“That’s because I don’t stick around after the encore. I just leave once the song is done,” Beomgyu replied, trying his best to alter the tone in his voice. He couldn’t tell if you were just extremely tired or if you had too much to drink, but the deep swirls of colors under your lids was enough for him to feel a sense of security in his identity being under wraps. Just like the milkiness of the dark skies that danced with several shades of navy, you swayed back and forth with the motions of the car, heavy lids slowly going in and out of sleep as you tried your best to stifle a yawn and pay attention to your somewhat new companion. The driver announced the last stop, acting as an alarm for you to slap yourself in the face and hop off your seat.

To be fair, both of you were in an equal state of fatigue and inebriation. Beomgyu was waddling as he tried to balance himself on the railings of the exit door, and you placed your weary palm on the semi-wet surface of the bus, momentarily taking it away after the driver had angrily beeped at you until you did so. Once the bus zoomed away, you felt a wave of nausea hit you—at first, it began at the back of your stomach, then, it slowly climbed its way up until you were hunched over at the nearest sewer, coughing out everything that was supposed to fuel you for a one-hour set. Beomgyu turned away and reluctantly placed gentle pats on the small of your back, hiding his face from the city lights that threatened to blow his cover off.

“My apartment is this way,” He muttered. You nodded after a few rounds of coughing, then doused yourself with the last water bottle that was inside your backpack.

“Mine’s on the other end of the street,” You replied, wiping your mouth with your jacket and quickly waving off his concerns with a tired grin. He couldn’t imagine the toll it took on you, or any musician for that matter, to play intense, fast-paced songs back to back without any rest, but perhaps that type of stamina was what it took to become a professional of sorts. Maybe that was also why you were such a feisty fighter, because you needed the energy to carry yourself throughout the day.

“See you around?” You asked. He didn’t turn to look at you. He simply stood still, lowering his head until all he saw were the messy, beer-stained surface of the degrading leather in his combat boots. He gave you a quick nod, then stuffed his sweat-ridden hands in his jean pockets. Somehow, he could still feel your presence lurking around, waiting idly until he entered the apartment. It wasn’t until he was within the comforts of his building, swiftly jogging up to the elevator, that you began to walk away. Through the large, glass windows of the apartment building, you were but a mere ant, eyes lingering on the path he took as if it were a complex maze. He could see you taking quick glances between your road and his, a satisfied smile on your face as soon as you confirmed that he was, indeed, safely home. That was another thing he hated about you. There was no need for you to have gone that far to make sure a stranger from your gig got home without getting mugged.

He didn’t need to be cautious when he opened the door to his apartment. Heeseung was already fast asleep on the sofa, strewn with empty bags of potato chips and bags of Starbucks takeout that he probably went out to get once Beomgyu had left to go to Joker In’s show. In his current state, it was practically impossible for him to get up and pick Beomgyu up. Beomgyu was pretty much used to ending his night with the role of a babysitter, but now, he didn’t feel like he had the energy to keep up with his routine. Heeseung could probably manage fine on his own, and Beomgyu desperately needed a cold shower to refresh his head at the unexpected encounter. God, she’s so fucking dense, Beomgyu thought, smiling to himself as he plopped his body on the warm, soft surface of his duvet. The shower will have to wait until the morning, and until then, he didn’t mind the extra load of laundry that came with massive spots of red dye on his pillowcases.

II. VOTE NO.24 ON EUROVISION! GO SLOVENIA!

To your luck, Geonu didn’t announce a practice session today. Normally, the band was privy to five hours of practice every single day—including the weekends. A part of it came from Geonu’s penchant for perfection, but another came from the growing bond that the band had developed over time. While Geonu and Sungchan didn’t necessarily need more time together, the daily sessions helped the entire band get to know each other and experiment with compatibility in the most esoteric way possible. In your first sleepover with the band at the eerie, decrepit basement (Heeseung would call it a horror movie set), you were able to call Jeongin a friend after he gently sat you through one of your first acid trips, gripping your hands tight as you endlessly cried about the visions and voices that still manage to chain themselves in your nightmares to this day. Another thing you learned about Jeongin that day was that he had a problem with mushrooms during high school, only quitting in his second year after an intervention that led him spiraling into a near-death experience of impulsively taking his car out in the middle of the night. You didn’t ask him for the specifics, nor did you mention that you were surprised that someone like him had gone through rehab, but you learned that Jeongin had trusted you with his story.

“Believe it or not, but Eurovision was what got me through that entire ordeal,” You remembered Jeongin telling you at some point. He was confined in a psychiatric ward for nearly a month, his schedule and time dictated through therapy sessions, group activities, and worksheets that he haphazardly filled. He also told you that time passed differently when one was locked inside the same, white walls every day, and so the only time started to move for him was when the person next to him invited him to watch several Eurovision performances in preparation for the finals in Rotterdam two years ago.

“I knew nothing about Europe then, but the guy next to me was married to a Swedish woman for a decade before she passed. They made it a routine to watch Eurovision every year, and he still tries his best to keep up with it even when she’s gone.”

You expected him to mention Maneskin as the band that got him through his slump, but Jeongin was a man full of surprises. For someone with beady, glassy eyes and a geekish demeanor, you didn’t think that Finland’s Blind Channel would be the one that would get him out of the institution.

“I mean this sounds like an edgy fourteen-year-old’s confession on an anonymous forum, but man, I’ve never really seen a band like that go so hard on live television, you know? Every time I see crazy antics or bands that had the same energy as Rage Against the Machine, it was always in the 90s or the early 2000s, when things weren’t too radio-friendly. And it wasn’t just them being hardcore like that, but it was how down-to-earth they all were—almost like they really loved what they were doing.”

Jeongin didn’t tell you why he started taking mushrooms or what led to him getting institutionalized in the first place, but it was enough for you to know that what you once perceived as an odd affinity for Eurovision was to him, an important getaway that cemented him back into the ground. Since then, the topic of Eurovision had become a daily part of your life—and now that the 2023 semi-finals were coming, Jeongin and the rest of the band had been keeping tabs on the latest culmination of the contest. In your downtime, Sungchan would update the Discord server with his ever-evolving tier list of entries, and Geonu would log on just to argue and contest Sungchan’s opinions. Of course, both would know their places once Jeongin would enter the conversation, but nonetheless, it came to a point where your days would feel empty without someone mentioning anything Eurovision related.

There was Eurovision, and then, there was Beomgyu.

Oddly enough, your days also felt incomplete without Beomgyu. Ever since you made the bold mistake of scheduling the same office hours as Beomgyu, the two of you had been in a constant stalemate of academic excellence. For you, it wasn’t necessarily the fact that you needed to prove something; you initially enjoyed seeing someone get so riled up and bothered at the fact that you were always better in everything you did. In a sense, your goals, ambitions, and fortitude didn’t come from a place of parental pressure or identity-building—you had to be on top of your game to the detriment of your well-being. While Beomgyu may have seen it as a competition, you saw it as a zero-sum game. To you, your entire livelihood basically depended on being the best at whatever, whenever, and wherever—excluding your role as a drummer in Joker In.

“Good morning, dipshit,” An all too familiar voice rang in your ears. You didn’t need to turn your head around to see who took the spot next to you in the vast lecture hall. Keeping your head to the busy tabs on your laptop, you heaved a sigh of both relief and exhaustion. Despite the absence of practice, you still had another part of your daily routine in check.

“What the fuck do you want, Gyu,” You coldly spat, knowing that the response you were going to get had to do with your gigs last night.

To the surprise of many—yourself included—your persona as the drummer of Joker In had been one of your best-kept secrets. Sure, being in a band was something most college kids got to experience, and student musicians were a common phenomenon across all facets of campus life. You nonetheless kept those two aspects of yourself as separate as possible, creating a clear divide that made sure none of those parts of your world intertwined and meshed together in any way. The law society didn’t need to know about the nightly debauchery you involved yourself in within the confines of the basement; those were stories that you kept to yourself to your grave—a musical pandora’s box that was meant to stay a secret.

“Heard through the grapevine that Little Miss Perfect got shitfaced last night,”

This time, you closed your laptop and snapped your head towards Beomgyu. Heeseung was terrible at keeping his mouth shut, but he wasn’t there to bear witness to the copious amounts of alcohol and weed that muddled your body that night. In a flurry of panic, you did your best to remember everyone that was present at the gig, scouring through the entirety of emails on Eventbrite that signed up for a ticket or two.

“And?”

Then again, what consequence would you get if you got caught? It wasn’t like the Law Society could strip you of your position; you were single-handedly the only president of the contemporary generation that managed to revive the organization from near death. If you told any of your professors about your musical ventures, you doubt they would look at you differently. In fact, they might even check out your gig or look up Joker In’s several sites across the internet, either becoming a fan of the band or not. Truthfully, there was no certain risk that threatened your current position and reputation on campus as the face of the Faculty of Law. The only thing that mattered to you was the unpleasant nature of combining your professional life with one that you exclusively created to escape the shackles of boundless perfectionism and tireless efforts to maintain all that you had built.

“That’s not a good look for the law society,” He grinned, perching his chin on his palm as he flipped through his notes. You did the same, clearing your throat as soon as the ten-minute mark on the digital clock succumbed all students into a quiet, dreary dread of a two-hour lecture.

“Last time I recall, you’re the one seen at a super sketchy rave last summer,” You whispered, keeping your head low enough so the professor couldn’t see you. “If you’re ratting me out for my band, then I’m ratting you out for doing lines with Heeseung at the Seoul Jazz Festival,”

“I only did one line, mind you,”

Another odd occurrence between you and Beomgyu’s rivalry was how both of you had accumulated so much dirt on each other, that it was practically impossible to call everything a truce. For the past three years, each intense battle between grades, essays, and projects was met with threats of outing the other for reckless behavior. Whenever Beomgyu would bring up your period of weed addiction in first year, you would rebut with some of his worst speeding incidents. If he were to draft an email to the program coordinator about your experiments with DMT when you just began your friendship with Geonu, then you were ready to send pictures of him doing lines with his rich friends at a yacht in Mykonos. Three years of constant rivalry also meant constant surveillance, and now that the two of you had reached the finish line to your respective degrees, the tension and threat of total exposure increased tenfold.

“A line’s a line,” Beomgyu silently spat through gritted teeth. “I’d never do coke, so you should be thankful I’m not kicking you out as president,”

“Fuck you,”

“I wouldn’t.”

“I’m lucky, then.”

“That’s the only luck god’s gonna give you, Gyu.”

Three years of unyielding pride and egoism also meant that the two of you knew when to stop arguing. Even if most of the people around you saw you and Beomgyu as a pair that didn’t know when enough was enough, there were certain limits that introduced a silent armistice in the war that Beomgyu had waged on you. For one, if fights were to occur before a lecture began, both of you were willing to swallow your feelings of pride and pay attention, ushering the competition elsewhere in the form of aggressive keyboard smashing and who could raise better questions to the professor. This was one of those instances, and as always, you left the lecture hall as the main victor, even being called after class to discuss the prospects of constitutional reform with the professor. Beomgyu simply stood to the side instead of leaving—another trait about him that you grew too accustomed to. Every single time you were either called after classes to discuss further questions or network with the professors, Beomgyu would always be behind you, scanning through every nook and cranny to seize any opportunity to either sabotage your efforts or present himself as the more eloquent and intelligent version between the two of you. Usually, professors didn’t mind this type of engagement—in fact, many academics would thrive in an environment where their students would actively contest and participate in the discourse surrounding topics that interest them the most. However, between you and Beomgyu, this would be a strenuous experience for any professor that was unlucky enough to be caught in your competitive mess.

Luckily, in every case, Heeseung would always be the savior, dragging the two of you out of the lecture hall in the nick of time.

“You two should just make out already,” He would often say while muttering strings of apologies to the meek, slouched professors that would hastily grab their bags and rush back into the comforts of their own offices. Albeit humiliating at first, you were now too accustomed to the lanky, tall, and especially inebriated man taking both you and Beomgyu’s collars throughout the ends of the campus, only momentarily seating both of you at the edge of the cafeteria to either laugh or complain.

“That’s giving him too much luck, Hee,” You bitterly retorted, giving Beomgyu the middle finger as a late greeting.

“She’s privileged enough to be a rich private school nerd who sucks people’s dick on LinkedIn. I can’t give her too much action,”

“You’re the nepo baby, Gyu! Last time I recall, you got in because of your brother’s recommendation letter,”

Talks about Beomgyu’s brother were what always riled him up the most—of course, second to talks about you.

Here’s the thing about Choi Seungchol: Though he wasn’t in the Faculty of Law, he was a memorable student that continues to be the face of the Faculty of Medicine. An accomplished oncologist with a prestigious tenureship at John Hopkins, he was one of the few Korean medical students who were able to break the difficult threshold of Western-dominated academia, proving himself with his tenacity, wit, and ever-expanding knowledge of cancer research. From the young age of seventeen, he had already graduated high school and shortened his study as an undergrad, dedicating his entire life to an ambitious—but certainly commendable—dream of finding an affordable, accessible, and efficient cure for cancer. Coupled with a look that was universally easy on the eyes, having a brother like Seungchol would have definitely sparked a deep-seated inferiority complex in anyone who had the displeasure of being his younger sibling.

Tit-for-tat seemed to be the game that you and Beomgyu often engaged in, and if his kryptonite was his brother, then yours would be the long line of lawyers that you descended from.

Unlike Beomgyu, who chose to study law out of an intense desire to separate his identity from his brother, you treaded onto the same path that marred your family name with generational pride. Sure, it wasn’t to say you wanted to become a lawyer, but rather, you wanted to become the best lawyer out of your family. Rich people had a different set of issues that they needed to face—a constant, mental battle that cut all ties between blood and family. In your family, there was no such thing as a maternal or paternal bond; every one that bore your name was wrought with the constant pressures of living up to it. Each generation was always compared to the last, and each brought the troubles of the past to the realities of the present. All the woes, infighting, and distasteful pride have unfortunately been a product of an entire familial generation that fought hard to keep its legacy intact—and for you, that meant your ticket to leave all of that behind was outdoing the family altogether, reigning supreme in the lifelong struggle of succession.

With you, your family wasn’t family anymore—they were stepping stones. A key to success and freedom that can only grant liberation once you did everything to prove yourself.

In a sense, all rich families were Darwinian. The Chois were a household name in medicine, and yours happened to dominate the legal system. One wanted to break free by independently taking another route in life, while the other aimed to destroy an old empire from within. To those that didn’t have the taste of prestige or the amount of free time to comprehend the psychological detriment of wealth, it was a simple case of money bringing too many unnecessary problems. Why worry about such minute issues like reputation and status when your windows didn’t work?

To you and Beomgyu though, things were different. Too different, in fact. When both your lives were mapped out to success and filling in the shoes of the past, it was inevitable that you would define yourselves and your actions around your family’s troubles. Something as simple as joining a band would cause immediate ruin to the decades of perfecting your role as the ideal candidate to take over your family’s law firm.

What Beomgyu didn’t know, and what you kept as an even deeper secret than your nights of musical debauchery in the basement, was that you were a bastard—the only child to a second, hidden marriage that broiled your entire family’s law firm in a mess that led to buying out several news outlets and tabloids who eventually took the money to erase all evidence regarding the scandal. You were paraded as the legitimate daughter of your family, and every single facet of your life had been broadcasted to the public since. From bagging first place in an essay-writing contest as a child to constantly making headlines as one of the best debaters in each high school debate competition, you had maintained the aura and image of a perfect successor. And now, all your accomplishments throughout university had been scantily advertised in university newspapers, online gossip forums, and local magazines—from your events in the law society, the talks you’d organize and give in legal seminars, down to the minuscule acts of charity you would do with the Cold Case Foundation. All of your life was documented for the world to see, prepping you up so the family could contain its skeletons within the safety of its closets.

This was why you couldn’t contain the hatred and anger you’d managed to keep to yourself for so long when Beomgyu would bring your family into the conversation. An inferiority complex paled in comparison to a family secret that threatened to bring the mighty walls of your family’s empire down to the ground with a single slip-up.

“News flash: I’m not the one who comes from an entire family that practices law,”

Ah, there it was. You stood up from your seat like always, never looking back as you stomped out of the cafeteria in blood-curdling, fuming anger. It was natural for Beomgyu to assume that you had an uncontrollable temper—after all, to him, you were a figure of contempt. Someone who was lucky enough to be born into a profession that he took up just to escape his lack of medical skills and affinity for science and mathematics.

“Jesus Christ, she’s so entitled,”

“Not cool, dude. Not cool,” Sungchan suddenly appeared as he always does, carrying a carton of coffee milk and sipping its sweet contents into his throat. Heeseung never really understood why Sungchan would always come to defend you whenever it came to any mentions of your family, but he chalked it up to the behavior of a secret admirer. Spending time together every day in the basement and playing in a band is a great way to get to know a person, and an even better chance to fall in love. If that were the case, then Heeseung certainly felt bad for the guitarist. Although you were already perceived as a picture of admiration, awe, and intimidation from afar, nobody truly knew how cutthroat and blunt you were behind the sheer curtains of model excellence. Heeseung was one of the few that bore witness to how ruthless you can be, and if it were him, he would thwart all chances of attempting to woo you. If Beomgyu was already enough of a testament to your mercilessness, then it was the strict, iron command you had at the law society that made you a less-than-ideal lover in bed and beyond.

“So I’m the bad guy for bringing up her family,”

“To be fair, she was the one who brought it up first…”

“Thank you, Heeseung!” Beomgyu exclaimed. Sungchan rolled his eyes and tossed the carton of coffee milk; a perfect shot right into the plastic opening of the bin. Heeseung watched with envy, lamenting at his failed basketball career. If only he had been taller, then maybe he might’ve had the chance to skip college altogether and fly to the US to sign a contract with the NBA. He’s always wondered why Sungchan didn’t opt for basketball as a sport, playing for the university’s varsity baseball team instead. He had the height and build to quickly gain ranks as a star player, and he certainly had the agility and aim to entrench himself as one of Korea’s best three-point shooters. Whenever Sungchan would look in Heeseung’s direction, the sense of being tinier than an ant in the entire universe maximized tenfold. It wasn’t just Sungchan’s height, but his general aloofness coupled with his nonchalance made everyone feel small under his presence.

Sungchan raised his hand at Heeseung, waving goodbye once a mutual high five was sealed and locked—a pact of honest brotherhood, as one might say. He mustered a quick, awkward bow in Beomgyu’s direction and ran off the same way you treaded, ignoring the pair’s curious gaze as he scoured through the maze of crowded young adults and intertwined hallways to catch you in your usual spot.

Beomgyu trailed Sungchan’s tall frame, watching his forehead graze the entry of the cafeteria. He huffed a sigh and grabbed his backpack, slinging it on his shoulder while knitting his eyebrows in frustration.

“Gyu, you’re not red anymore. You’re green,” Heeseung joked. Before Beomgyu could land a clean, painful hit on Heeseung’s neck, the boy quickly waved and ran past the swarm of students that crowded the hallways, waving his dab pen in the air as a quick sign of surrender. Beomgyu rolled his eyes and stared in the direction that Sungchan treaded, wondering if he should follow along.

Then again, what was it to him? Why was he so angry over something that didn’t even concern him in the first place? You were the one who brought his brother up constantly, so it would only be right for him to hit you where it hurt the most. He didn’t know much about you, but an aching, swelling pang of guilt began rising up in the form of acidic bile, swirling like rough tides in his stomach until a bout of nausea overwhelmed his entire body. Why the fuck do I care? She’s the one who started it all, Beomgyu thought. He gave the hallway that led to the Law Society’s office one, last glance, completely turning his back in the other direction. He had another lecture to catch; he shouldn’t be worried about you.

Once he found your figure crouched under the table of the Law Society’s main office, he knelt to your height, placing a firm hand on your shoulder. You swatted it away with faux bravery, rigorously wiping the soft tears that marred the apples of your cheeks.

“Hey,” He greeted.

“Leave me alone,”

“I can’t,” Sungchan laughed under his breath. “I’m witnessing you cry like a baby for the first time,”

“Shut up, Sung.”

For Sungchan, striking a friendship with you was unexpected. He’d at least expected himself to be on good terms with Jeongin before even attempting an acquaintanceship with you. When he initially met you, he had to admit that you were a deplorable person of sorts. You carried an air of superiority wherever you went, treated everyone like they were below you, and you always had a ruthless, competitive streak that turned everything sour with a single blink of an eye. From the moment he laid eyes on you, he was sure that he was going to tell Geonu to look for another guitarist.

“I can’t work with her,” He confided right after he heard you play the drums in a mock-up audition for a new recruit. “She’s… bitchy.”

“Sung, she’s a professional,” Geonu would often retort, ignoring Sungchan’s complaints about his own strict standard of musical perfection. “I’ve never seen anyone play with so much dedication and tenacity. If only you took this shit more seriously, then I think you can learn to put those feelings aside and actually play the way I want you to.”

For a while, Sungchan did his best to avoid you. Every time you would ask him to play with you so you could synchronize your playing style with his, he would politely decline, opting to send you recordings of his guitar practices from home or outright pretending he didn’t hear you. Granted, he anticipated that you were the type to not let passive-aggression go. One thing he knows about all law majors was their argumentative streak—to him, that was the reason why so many of the people enrolled in that program were born under the star of Aries. Hot-headed, independent, and defensive—those were all the characteristics that aligned with Aries Suns and anyone practicing the legal field.

It wasn’t until he got too drunk to stand that he experienced your rare displays of kindness. Though it was common courtesy to take care of drunk people at parties, you and Geonu were the only ones who actively checked up on him, closing the door to one of the rooms that became his personal infirmary while constantly feeding him water and a few, light snacks. Whenever he felt like throwing up and Geonu was unavailable, it was you who took him straight to the bathroom, lifting his head of hair as he lurched out his organs into the once pristine, white ceramics of a toilet bowl. Instead of asking him why he hated you, you simply kept your mouth shut, actively giving gentle massages on the crook of his neck and on the small of his back, gently feeding him more water in timed intervals as he continued to hurl and belch in the tiny, squared space of someone’s bathroom.

“Aren’t you gonna ask me why I don’t like you?” He asked, completely aware of his slurred words. You laughed and pretended you didn’t hear him—the exact same way he behaved whenever you would ask him to practice some of Joker In’s parts with you.

Perhaps he had too much to drink, or perhaps he just felt safe in the small, cramped, yet cozy spaces of the bathroom, but the first thing he told you—sans re-introductions—was the fact that he wasn’t sure if he was attracted to Geonu or not. In what felt like hours of him trying his best to keep his voice down amidst the blaring, muted, and bass-booted music that streamed into the tiny cracks of the wooden door, he sobered up in a crying fit, watching your figure transform from blurry blobs of wooziness into swirling, tear-soaked waves that made you look like you were submerged into an ocean of his woes and worries. He admired your silence; he admired the small smile that you gave him throughout his entire episode; he admired the way you screamed at whoever was banging at the front door to fuck off; he admired how head-strong and confident you were, even if he knew that you didn’t return those qualities to yourself.

From that day on, there was a mutual, unspoken pact that formed into a true, life-long bond between you and Sungchan. Whenever Geonu or Jeongin would ask him why he suddenly changed his mind, he would simply shrug, mimicking the same silence you gave him when he spilled his entire emotional journey of sexual discovery inside that holy bathroom. You did the same, giving subtle looks of confusion or outright denying the bad blood between you and Sungchan. The two eventually suppressed their qualms about Sungchan’s drastic shift, nodding in reluctant agreeability that this had to happen eventually for the band to continue.

“Anyway, I’m pretty sure Beomgyu didn’t mean it,”

“To be fair, I brought it up first. I got what I deserved,” You whispered, careful eyes scanning through random bystanders through the small creak of the agape, wooden door in front of you. Sungchan stood up to close it, but you grabbed the hem of his sweater, begging him to stay.

“Shh, don’t say that to yourself,” He replied, humming lowly to himself. “I think this is the point where you realize you should probably just get over it all. I mean, it’s been three whole years. Shouldn’t you just get over it and be the bigger person?”

Sungchan’s words hit you like a knife that slashed and hacked at an open wound. Each pause of silence brought another ounce of pain in your chest, and you couldn’t pinpoint if those feelings were a guilty conscience or another byproduct of your massive pride. You hated it when others were right, and you hated it even more that you continued to do the wrong thing despite knowing you could just ignore Beomgyu and get on with your day. Certainly, if you had kept things at light insults three years ago, then you shouldn’t be as riled up or hurt by Beomgyu’s actions and words by now. What bothered you even more, though, was how you didn’t seem to know who made things worse. At this rate, the rivalry between the two of you had gone on for far too long. You couldn’t pinpoint a true start that fueled your spite for him. It was almost like you had always hated Beomgyu from the start, even if there was a part of you that wholeheartedly disagreed with that predicament.

“You know what, you’re right, Sung. I should stop giving him any of my attention if I want him to shut up,”

“See, it’s not that hard!”

Before you and Sungchan could shake things off with a friendly hug, your phones buzzed in unison. With a quick nod, the two of you burst out of the Law Society’s office, ignoring the wary eyes that watched each of your steps with confusion and suspicion. You declined the call and swiped right on Sungchan’s phone, popping your head near the camera to see who was on the other end of the line. To your relief, it was an excited Jeongin, carrying crescents in his eyes as he huffed on his earphones’ microphone.

“Guys!”

“What’s up, Jeongin?”

“The finals!” He screamed, loud enough for you and Sungchan to mute the phone and cover the speakers.

“What about it?”

“It’s streaming right now on YouTube!”

You gave Jeongin a look of confusion, arching your brows and poking Sungchan with your elbows. Despite only getting close to each other for a short time, both of you mastered the art of silence. You didn’t need to tell him to look up the ESC’s website to check if Jeongin was right; there was a certain telepathy that linked your brains together. There was no need for eye contact or physical gestures, it was as if thinking was all it took for Sungchan to understand what you wanted him to say or do, and vice versa. If you were to picture it, then there would be a thin, invisible wire that connected your soul to his, matched with telephone cups where you each whispered your thoughts and actions back and forth.

“Oh word?” Sungchan muttered once he reached the homepage of the ESC. The semi-finals happened too fast, and it didn’t occur to you that you missed the entire ordeal. Sungchan nodded along, shrugging his shoulders while using his height to push past the sea of students who fell victim to your band’s antics. The key to the exit was Jeongin jumping up and down at the entrance to the university’s main gate, fighting his way out of the security guards trying to calm him down.

“Come on!” Jeongin exclaimed with infectious glee, grabbing you and Sungchan by the hand and taking the two of you to the nearest train station.

“Jeongin, where are we going?” You asked. You were sure that Geonu had pinged the entire group chat about the absence of practice that day. Sungchan checked his phone and showed you Geonu’s message once the three of you slowed down and tapped your transit passes to the gates. There was indeed, no practice at the basement today out of Jeongin’s incessant pleas to cancel it. Geonu would have never imagined canceling practice over a singing competition held in Europe, but Jeongin threatened to leave the band if Geonu and the rest didn’t comply with his wishes. Considering how Jeongin was the most compliant member who never seemed to ask for much unless it had to do with Eurovision, Geonu granted the boy’s wishes.

“The watch party!”

You scrolled through Joker In’s Kakao group chat with Sungchan, only to find no mentions of a Eurovision watch party anywhere. By now, the entire band had figured that Jeongin was the impulsive type. While you had access to his hidden story of mushroom addiction, the rest were privy to Jeongin’s sudden online activity at the crack of dawn. He would send a barrage of memes and videos on the group chat only to disappear for a week. The only times he would come back was if Geonu had made a practice announcement in the chat, or if the band called him to the meeting place.

Ergo, Jeongin was not the type of person to organize an entire watch party with his sporadic communication patterns.

Once the three of you had reached the apartment, a barrage of cannabis hit your nose. Of course, Heeseung was on the side with a bong in hand, while Geonu was already absorbed into the couch, eyes red artificial bliss. Before you could take off your shoes to step inside Jeongin’s apartment, you halted your steps, blinking several times to make sure you weren’t hallucinating. Some people say that hate was just another form of obsession, and the last thing you wanted was to see Beomgyu in your dreams.

“Why is he here?

“Beomgyu is Heeseung’s roommate,” Jeongin meekly replied, keeping a small smile on his face as he kicked his shoes off to dash into the kitchen. Sungchan reluctantly followed suit, taking a bowl of potato chips and popcorn to the small, glass coffee table that was at the center of Jeongin’s rather spacious living room.

“So? Heeseung never brings him to the basement when he delivers pizza,”

“That’s because Beomgyu doesn’t work at the pizza chain,”

Instead of sitting in the empty space next to Beomgyu on the couch, you opted to take a random spot on the couch, sitting behind Geonu’s legs. Normally, he would complain about you using him as a headrest, but at this rate, he was too high to comprehend that there was something leaning into his calves.

“Whatever. Since when did you like Eurovision anyway?”

“Before you did, that’s for sure, fucking poser,”

“Oh my god, you son of a—”

Before you could stand up, Sungchan placed a firm grip on your shoulder, entrenching you within the surface of Jeongin’s soft, fur carpet. You took a mental note to ask him about his tastes in furniture. On the other side of the couch, Jeongin had hurried back from the kitchen with a few packs of seltzer that he struggled to carry, pushing one of them into Beomgyu’s lap before he could retort in violence.

“So everyone in this room is voting for Slovenia, right?” Jeongin asked with an eerily large grin.

“Yep! Number twenty-four!” Sungchan confirmed, making it his duty to make sure you didn’t lash out throughout the entire song contest. There was no use in fighting back; the hands of a varsity athlete cannot be contested with the likes of an occasional charity player.

“I’m voting Finland…” Beomgyu huffed, rolling his eyes in your direction.

“Gyu, you literally listened to nothing but Carpe Diem last night,” Heeseung retorted in languid, heavy breaths. If one could guess the lightness of his lids, it would be comparable to a bodybuilder’s daily dumbbell perched on top of his eyes.

“Shut up. I vote for whoever I want, and my money goes to Finland,” Beomgyu replied, cracking a can of cherry seltzer open with his hand. You followed suit, prompting the boy to roll his eyes once again.

“He’s voting for Finland because he wants to be oh so special like the rest of the world who’s basically riding Käärijä’s dick!”

This time, you gulped the can of seltzer down in a single sip, crushing the weak, malleable material between your fingers while raising a middle finger in Beomgyu’s direction. Instead of chugging his drink, he took a deep breath, pacing the amount of alcohol that entered and exited his throat. He knew what he was like when he was drunk, and even if the need to punch you into oblivion was there, he had to control himself—at least, for Jeongin.

“Shut the fuck up, you two! It’s starting!” You and Beomgyu immediately behaved accordingly, exchanging silent death glares while Jeongin ushered to the middle of the large, flat-screen television mounted on his wall. Even if you knew how serious Jeongin was about anything Eurovision related, you didn’t know that he could exude a level of anger that outmatched you and Beomgyu’s squabbles.

The introduction to the Eurovision Song Contest lined up with the flurry of buzzes that attacked your back pocket. Upon seeing the caller ID, your fingers automatically hovered over the red button. However, the ringing didn’t stop. No matter how many times you’ve tried to dodge each call you got, it would only come back in waves, accompanied by a barrage of text messages that caught your eye,

Dad’s in the hospital.

To be fair, all your memories with your father had been non-existent at best. The only time you’ve ever seen him was in a pristine, neatly-ironed business suit, gallivanting around the meeting rooms of the law firm or taking the same behavior with him on the dinner table, only allowing everyone else to lift their forks once he was seated. Your father’s presence had a shroud of mist around it—mostly because you couldn’t remember a time when you genuinely bonded with him. To call your father a father only suited you best when you were writing your college application essays or passing interviews for internships and research opportunities. Outside of that, you addressed him with utmost formalities, keeping his power trips unbridled by addressing him as Sir or President. He used to like being called an attorney, but after he began to realize that everyone in the firm held the same occupation, he opted for something more. As such, the news of him being in the hospital was shocking, but it was the least of your current concerns. To you, he was just your lifelong boss, slipping you into the legal world with a guaranteed, secure career filled with success and everlasting wealth. The only reason you had to visit the hospital was to discuss the potential inheritance papers that might have to be negotiated on his deathbed, not because of a familial, patriarchal bond that was never even there to begin with.

“Hold on, I have to take this call,” You said, hastily getting up while balancing yourself on the carpet. You whispered a mute sorry in Heeseung’s direction, who was suddenly sober at the sight of his bong tipping over.

Once you were in the bathroom, you locked the door and turned on the lights, keeping your eyes away from the large vanity mirror that enhanced the brightness of the entire room. Closing your eyes, you allowed a mouthful of oxygen to enter your lungs, slowly breathing it out as you dialed your brother’s phone number. It didn’t take a single ring for him to pick up.

“Hey,”

There was always something about your brother’s voice that irritated you. It wasn’t too nasally, but it wasn’t the most clear-cut pitch either. There was a certain grating quality to it that made listening to an obese chain smoker for hours on end a better feat than hearing your brother in a firm meeting or a case discussion. This was probably the reason why you could tolerate Beomgyu, because you’ve lived with people you genuinely despised for as long as you could count numbers and read the alphabet.

“Why the fuck are you calling me?” You spat, anticipating the worst. You could hear your brother’s breath hitch on the other end of the line. Of course, a situation like this would stress him out.

“You know I only reach out if it’s important, so get your ass to the fucking hospital right now. Dad’s going through a hemorrhage, and it’s the worst one we’ve seen so far.”

“Oh,”

“So hurry the fuck up. I’ll write your uni up so you can take an academic leave. Shit’s pretty serious,”

Whenever your brother classified a situation as pretty serious, it usually had to do with money. Talks of a potential merger, a big case that’s worth billions of won, or the acquisition of smaller firms that soon became a part of your family’s legal empire. Anything that had to do with money was serious to your brother, and of course, anything that had to do with money was discussed between the family, beneath the nose of your father.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what this means, right? Dad’s dying, his fucking secretary had just been named the sole trust to the firm, and the entire family’s basically going to war over this fucking fiasco.”

“What the fuck do you mean he signed over the trust to her?”

This was the only time you agreed with your brother about the nature of serious situations. The entire firm and the family were aware of the affair he had with his secretary, but you didn’t know how bad of an impact his senility would have on the future and well-being of the firm and beyond. You kept the phone latched between your shoulders and your chin, taking a seat on the toilet cover while crossing your legs.

“Just come to the hospital. One of the Choi-owned clinics in Gangnam.”

“Okay, I’m on my way.” You curtly replied. “I’ll be there in twenty,”

Family ordeals were things that Geonu forgave when it came to skipping practice, but you weren’t sure about breaking the news to Jeongin. Perhaps if you simply told him about your father’s condition, he would let it slide. After all, he was the caring sort. Anything that tugged his heartstrings would render him in a thick, melted puddle of tears. All it took was a story of an old, dying man, and you were sure that Jeongin would let you go. Taking another deep breath, you counted to three and opened the door, slowly making your way from the kitchen and into the living room. Instead of taking your seat back next to Heeseung, you stood still, placing your hands on your waist. Despite Geonu’s current state, he managed to groggily sit upright, eyes peering straight into your soul. The rest of the people in the living room followed him as an example, eyes switched from the television screen to your leveled posture.

“Guys,”

“Look who’s back from her makeout session with the prof,”

“Beomgyu, not now.” You interrupted, clearing your throat as you mentally ran through the quick story you conjured up in your head. My dad’s bleeding out, and I have to go to the hospital to make sure he’s okay. I hope you guys understand.

“What, you can’t take a joke? Jesus, I never knew little miss perfect was a softie…”

You would usually let your temper subside and give Beomgyu the benefit of the doubt, but this time, he had crossed the line. It wasn’t to say you cared about your father, but it was still a dire situation that needed to be taken seriously. For all the intelligence that Beomgyu prided himself in, he was not the type to understand basic social cues. As if remaining still wasn’t enough of a message, you let the frustration you’ve built up for years wash over you, closing your eyes as you unleashed three years of pent-up irritation and vexation escape your lips in a shrill shriek. The only thing you felt sorry for at the moment was how this was directed at Beomgyu instead of your family, but you needed to release it all before you eventually exploded. Heeseung dropped his bong and alerted himself awake, leaving his mouth agape while his eyes quickly darted past your forehead. Even Sungchan, who was privy to your bursts of anger, lit up in static shock, rendered in a frozen state that made him glued to his seat. Everyone in the room now had their eyes on you—including Jeongin’s roommate who peeked his head out of his door.

“Seriously?! My dad’s dying, and this is how you react? Look, I don’t know what the fuck I did to make you hate me this much, but this isn’t a game anymore. I’m done, and I’m out of here!”

In a flash of a second, you were out the door, letting it swing before reclining into a loud thud. The entire room was now drowned in an ocean of silence, and Beomgyu was the only one who gasped for air. He tried to stand up and chase after you, but his legs were stuck to the cotton of Jeongin’s carpet, pulling him deeper and deeper until his entire body was one with the ground. Geonu exchanged glances with Heeseung and the rest of the band, taking a nearby glass of water and gulping it down in a single sitting. Sungchan quickly climbed up to the couch and sat beside him, patting gentle circles on the boy’s back before directing his attention to the sole, uninvited guest that ruined the watch party. All Jeongin could do at the moment was take the remote from the coffee table, lowering the volume of the television until the entire apartment was laced in another wave of deathly silence. Even if the living room was packed, it felt as if he was the only one in the room, stuck between the carpet and the technicolor screen that showed the first performer of the night. Glimpses of red, black, and white dyed the entire space in ominous colors, flashing images of Edgar Allan Poe in the empty, white walls that surrounded the entire group. The only time someone spoke up was when Jeongin’s roommate passed by to turn off the lights, quickly rushing back within the safety of his room as he locked the door shut.

“You fucked up,” Heeseung started after a few rounds of unspoken guilt. “Hard…”

“It’s not like I can tell her that I’m mad at her because I don’t know? My parents always yelled at me for not being like my brother?”

No, that’s not what I wanted to say, Beomgyu thought, but it was too late to take his words back inside his mouth. Now, the initial state of shock that occupied the room was replaced with pure, unbridled resentment.

This time, he was sure he fucked up.

“Why did you keep this up for so long, anyway? It’s not like it’s that hard to say sorry or something,” Geonu retorted, slowly sobering up.

“Look, whatever. I’ll get going now, because apparently, I’m always the bad guy,”

“Gyu!”

Jeongin tried to chase after Beomgyu’s silhouette, only for Sungchan to hold him back. With two silent nods, Jeongin let go of Sungchan’s sleeve, fiddling with the hems of his sweater while watching the tall, lanky boy jog out the door. He didn’t know if he should end the watch party then and there, or if all of them should continue from where they left off. By now, the second performance had started. Flashes of green and red brightly encompassed their eyes, and they remained seated. Geonu texted the band’s group chat and pinged your user to give them updates on your father’s situation, while Heeseung swiftly took his lighter and lit the stem of his bong, deeply inhaling the glass rim in what was going to be his biggest rip to date.

What was going on outside of Jeongin’s apartment was a different story on its own. You had called one of your drivers to pick you up from the nearest train station, and now, you were zooming past highways and fast cars, reaching your destination as soon as Beomgyu had stepped out of Jeongin’s apartment building. He tried to rush past the flurry of people during rush hour that crowded the station, but the only person he could see was Sungchan, who had managed to chase him by the tail of his jacket.

“Hey,” Sungchan uttered, never letting go of Beomgyu’s jacket.

“Here to defend your girlfriend?” Beomgyu spat. Sungchan was used to this by now,

“No, but I’m here to let you know that deep down inside, I know you’re not a bad person,”

The two were now in front of a vending machine behind the station, a place where drunken white-collared men would drink their sorrows away. It also happens to be the place for a rendezvous to hide under the neon lights of the city—high school couples that secretly meet after the academy for a kiss goodbye before going home, college kids that are too drunk to scan their passes at the gate, office workers that feel the need to have a drink or two before being welcomed back home by their kids, smokers who hide their vices under the surveillance system, and people that are waiting for their online saint to whisk them off their infinite suffering. The vending machine was witness to all facets of society, including Beomgyu and Sungchan’s conversations that would have never seen the light of day. Before the two began, it was a natural ritual for any that chose the vending machine as a meeting place to treat their interlocutors with a beverage or two. Sungchan chose a sizzling can of lemon cider, tossing a couple of loose change he had jingling in his pockets and inserting it in the machine. He tossed the can in Beomgyu’s direction, who accepted it with a meek, small bow. Then, Sungchan fished for the last few coins he could find in the deep trenches of his slacks, pressing the bright, green button that displayed a tall bottle of water. It didn’t occur to him that he had a half-filled water bottle that he took with him in his tote bag for baseball practice; the movement was as automatic as the vending machine dispensing a plastic water bottle in its hooded container. Once Sungchan had the water bottle in his hands, he twisted the cap and waited for Beomgyu to snap the can open. The two clinked their beverages and consummated a few sips.

“Sure, you’re insufferable and bratty as fuck, but I know you have the heart in you to listen,” Sungchan said, after he was finished with his water bottle. Beomgyu took the can back to the side of his arms, holding it tightly to make sure its fizzy contents didn’t spill out into the streets.

“She’s been going through a lot, so you should probably cut all of this and apologize if you still want to go to our shows,”

Beomgyu slowly nodded, taking the can of lemon cider up to his lips once again. For a big city like Seoul, his bright, neon yellow can stood out from the masses of commuters that passed the duo to get to their destination. Sungchan kept his water bottle under his arm, tapping on the plastic cap twice to make sure that he sealed it properly. With a satisfied hum, he cleared his throat and eyed the boy who couldn’t take his can off his lips.

“I know you’ve been sneaking out in your really shitty disguise, but for my sake, hers, and yours, you should talk it out and hopefully fix whatever you got going on,” He continued. His fingers found themselves at the edges of his pocket again, and an exasperated sigh escaped his lips upon failing to feel through a small, rectangular carton that eased all of his woes with a single huff of smoke. What he found instead was a small, cheap plastic lighter that he didn’t remember purchasing. Granted, he probably stole it off Heeseung’s collection or took it with him when he helped Geonu light his joint. Whatever the case, he found no use for it now.

“If not, I’m gonna have to ban you from ever showing up again,”

Beomgyu finally took the can off his lips, wiping his mouth with the thick decor of his jacket’s sleeve. Considering the weather, he should’ve probably opted for a lighter cardigan that didn’t graze his lips with leather. Nonetheless, he ignored all feelings of discomfort. He should be used to it by now.

“Whatever,”

“It’s not whatever, and I’m sure you know that too,”

Beomgyu watched Sungchan’s tall, lanky frame stand upright from his slouched posture, waving his transit card in his face as he started to walk towards the station. He didn’t know if Sungchan was going to go back to his place or if he would pay a visit to the hospital. The only way he would find out is if he bumped into him in the white, putrid halls of a place he’d been avoiding since he left home to attend university.

Beomgyu had always hated hospitals. For as long as he could remember, the smell of antiseptic and rubbing alcohol would always overwhelm his nose, rendering him in a trance-like state that made everything around him a blurry haze of fragmented memories. He could try to recollect the countless hours he’s spent waiting for his father to get off his shift, but all he could gather was the car ride home, sitting silently beside his brother while the driver played an old rockabilly tune from his time. His father wasn’t even in the car with them, and he was probably doing another late shift in the operations room with his mother on standby. When Seungchol was old enough to shadow their father’s sessions, he would be on these car rides alone, carrying the same, putrid odor that reminded him of a distant family that never had dinner together once. When Beomgyu would get home from the hospital, he made it a habit to call his maids or helpers to set up a dinner table with him, each member of the cleaning team acting as his father, his mother, and eventually, his brother. This was the only way he could sleep at night, because the scent of antiseptic would be replaced with dish soap, cleaning tools, and remnants of flower-scented detergent. If the cooks were available, they would also join Beomgyu at the large, family dining table of the Choi household acting as external relatives that he would only see in family functions.

Now that he was back at the hospital, the memories of a lonesome dinner came flooding back to him in tidal waves. First, his father’s tall silhouette would come into full view, for he was never the type of person to turn his head towards his second son. Then, he could see his mother’s side profile, eyebrows knitted in a constant frown as she would scan through each clipboard and envelope with a mixture of confusion and exhaustion. When he was in high school, his brother had already begun shadowing for one of the several hospitals that were under the Choi name. He would initially tag along, but opted to stay home once he realized that this wasn’t a game of doctors that he would play with his brother in one of the many playrooms they were granted as children. Seungchol had patients to attend to, and he was a mere nuisance to the inner workings of his family’s craft.

This was also the point where he figured he would try his hand at the humanities, shifting from an interest in stock brokers and the financial sector to settling for the legal field. In earnest, he never found an affinity for anything political. The newspaper was one of many things that made it so difficult for Beomgyu to remember his parents’ faces, since they would spend their mornings jeering at the headlines in disgust before rushing out to work. Seungchol started doing the same once he was old enough to understand the weary woes of the world outside of their wealthy life, and at that point, Beomgyu had already resented the news enough to block it off his phone and other devices.

If his lifelong grudge had taught him one thing, it was tenacity. It was a trait his parents exhibited when they went from performing surgeries to managing hospitals, and it was the same trait that Seungchol inherited when he began his own medical career. For Beomgyu, tenacity meant suffering through a lot of the things he disliked—whether it was politics, the news, or medicine. To him, tenacity came in subtle ripples. At first, it was the several scandals that he would hear about at the academy regarding big pharmaceutical companies patenting life-saving medication and selling it at a higher markup. He didn’t even know what a markup meant, but he did know that it was something he could use to destroy his family once and for all. When he entered university and applied for the law program, he used his tenacity to climb to the top, even when the humanities weren’t the strongest set of subjects in his CSAT exam. He didn’t understand how money worked, and he certainly couldn’t care less about the politicians he would see campaigning on the streets during election season. The only thing that mattered to him ever since he was a child was to do whatever it takes to get his family back in a single piece—even if it meant destroying the legacy and generational prestige that the Chois had built for themselves since the Occupation period.

Places like the hospital were what made Beomgyu’s tenacity disappear into thin air, replacing it with irresolute shakiness. It didn’t occur to him that a single whiff of the hospital’s chemicals immediately turned him into mush—a walking, wandering blob that’s place was always behind his parents or his brother. Here, he didn’t feel human at all. He felt like a visual display—a name tag that bore his family name in shame. It was for this reason that Beomgyu refused to call an ambulance or take himself to the hospital no matter how hurt he was. Every episode of alcohol poisoning would always end in several over-the-counter drugs that would end up in the toilet with the remnants of bile that trickled up to his mouth, coughing up every stint of regret that failed to leave his system. No matter how drunk he would get, he would always berate Heeseung for threatening to dial 119, constantly reassuring him that he could cure whatever he could on his own.

Now, he was back in the very place that he spent his entire life avoiding, hiding behind the metal railings of a hospital bed once his eyes caught a familiar, white coat sported by the outline of someone he hasn’t seen in years.

Apparently, years of playing doctors with Seungchol worked against him, and now, he was faced to face with someone he had the displeasure of calling his brother.

“Hyung,” The word used to come out naturally, but now, it felt too foreign to him. At this rate, he was more comfortable calling his own brother “Doctor Choi” than by any other name that he used to call him. He tapped his tongue twice inside his mouth to feel its insides squirm, then, he restfully let his eyes sit at the crown of Seungchol’s jet-black head, watching the luster of his healthy hair shine under the bright, fluorescent lights of the hospital that always managed to invoke a certain nausea within him.

“Beomgyu-yah,” Seungchol replied, his voice barely a weak whisper. “It’s been a while,”

“Are you in charge of him?” Beomgyu asked, jutting his chin towards the emergency room. Seungchol looked back and shrugged his shoulders, resting the clipboard on the hilt of his belt as he longingly stared at his younger brother.

“Who?”

“Him,” Beomgyu asked again, pointing to the patient’s profile on his clipboard. Seungchol adjusted the thick, rectangular frames that slid down his nose, squinting his eyes at the tiny fragments of characters that he could barely read. Beomgyu didn’t know that his older brother’s eyes had degraded past his early problems with astigmatism.

“Ah, you mean Kim & Lee LLC’s current head?” Seungchol asked.

“Yeah,”

“Yes, I’m in charge of him. My department assigned me to him since our family sort of owes them in some ways,”

Beomgyu didn’t question the Choi’s relations with yours. None of that concerned him in the slightest, and he was aware of the magnetism that many rich families often exhibited—birds of a feather flock together, especially when feathers were made of gold.

“How’s school?” He asked. He began walking towards the emergency room and stood outside of the door, peeking his head inside the tinted windows while he vigorously tapped his pen on his clipboard. Beomgyu kept his hands in his pockets and followed suit, peering at whatever he could read in Seungchol’s report.

“Alright,”

“I’ve heard his daughter’s faring better than you at school,”

Speak of the devil, and she shall arrive.

By now, a single sliver of your presence was hard for Beomgyu to miss. If tenacity was one thing he had, then perseverance was the other. Throughout the three years he had known you, he’s learned one, giant lesson: to persevere. No matter how much he dreaded the preparations for the bar exam, no matter how worn he was over countless hours of dedicating himself to reading pages upon pages of ancient Roman law, a part of him embraced the sheer hard work that he dedicated to each and every aspect of his academic career.

Then again, none of that mattered when he was always second best when it came to you. Even if the number of hours both of you had put into a project or an essay was the same, he would always fall short of a mark or two, forever trailing behind your shadow the same way he had always trailed behind the success of his ancestors, then his parents, and now, his brother.

“This is why I’ve always hated you, hyung,”

“I know, I know,”

That was another thing that Beomgyu noticed about the people that managed to do better than him in every facet of his life. From stories he would hear from his mother, the Choi ancestry was filled with quiet, blasé doctors whose first and only priority was to tend to each patient that required assistance. The same trait was replicated tenfold in the way his parents would berate him; both of them would shrug their heads in blatant displays of disappointment instead of yelling at him. He was sure he was never hit as a child, but the string of pain that came from the sheer looks of despondency was imprinted on his shattered ego, forever sinking their sharp fragments into the throes of his heart. When his brother reached the age of twenty, he had mastered the same, cold look that his parents would often give him, doing the same whenever Beomgyu interrupted him at the hospital.

How did it all come to this?

Beomgyu wished he knew the answer to a question he had been pondering since he was old enough to think for himself.

“So you’re not even gonna say sorry? Apologize? Admit that what you and our entire family’s put me through is wrong?”

“Beomgyu, that’s just how it’s always been. I don’t really know what to say other than how lucky you should be right now,”

Luck. Being born a Choi meant a lifetime of financial security and a plethora of career options knocking at the foot of his door, and yet, Beomgyu couldn’t see how this luck was worth the feelings of inferiority that plagued him to no end.

“How the fuck am I lucky, Hyung? How the fuck am I lucky?! Because from what I know, I’ve been the one that just so happened to be born with the inability to do math and science!”

Seungchol slid the pen he was tapping inside his breast pocket. He placed the clipboard on one of the empty, leather chairs that lined the entrance to the emergency room, adjusting the rims of his glasses in the process.

“All my life, I’ve studied so hard, went to the academy, and never complained about it—hell, I sucked it all up and gave up on getting friends, having fun, and basically being the best example of what mom and dad wanted. But no! Apparently Seungchol-hyung is always better! That law girl is always better! Inseong from fifth grade is always better! Everyone is always better than me! If they wanted someone better, then they probably shouldn’t have asked for another son!”

The only thing that Beomgyu could hear was his own voice bouncing back and forth between the walls of the vast hospital. Seungchol stood in silence, taking his glasses off and wiping the lens with the hems of his white coat—a pure semblance of their father.

“Beomgyu-yah,” He whispered with a lower voice. “Just know that I did all this because I wanted you to be free. I care about you, you know?”

He waved his younger brother goodbye, pushing the large doors to the emergency room where people dressed in blue scrubs awaited his command. Beomgyu tried to chase after him, but he stopped in his tracks. All his life, he was always behind his father, his mother, and his brother. Now, he was behind you. Through the small creaks of the door, he traced your sulking silhouette, seeing himself in the way you bowed down to your own brother, who stood upright with a phone and several envelopes in his hand. Maybe if he let his pride aside a long, long time ago, then he would’ve come to the conclusion that the two of you weren’t so different after all.

“This is Kim & Lee LLC’s associate speaking, and we would like to file an academic leave as soon as possible.”

Throughout knowing you, he had seen you cry for the first time, mimicking the exact same sorrows and anguish that plagued him since he was a child. There was nothing to be done, so he left the hospital, never turning back once.

III. VENUS PLAYS WITH MARS IN A GAME OF CHANCE

Nearly three months had passed, and you didn’t show up since. The band was aware of your periods of being a recluse, but none of them anticipated how bad it was until you stopped responding to their texts and calls altogether. The meeting place felt like a barren wasteland in your absence, and none of them could start practicing without you chanting the counts before every song. Heeseung would come by with a slice of pizza from time to time, and it has become a ritual for them to leave you a slice even when you’re gone. It didn’t matter to them that the offering would turn into mold in a few days—what mattered was how the last slice or two was always going to be meant for you, almost as if you’d come back in the crappy basement to devour your slice and complain about how it’s practically inedible.

The band wasn’t the only group of people that felt your absence, though. Beomgyu never realized how important you were in the law society until you gave him a passive-aggressive email that relinquish all your responsibilities as president to him. While a part of him felt happiness at the thought of finally taking over, there was an inkling of guilt within him that felt too unqualified to assume your role. Yes, he’s often lamented to Heeseung that he would’ve been a better president than you, and he even told his parents in a bitter argument that he was doing more as one of the vice presidents than you actually were as president, he had to admit that your absence caused an impending upheaval that practically caused the law society to implode. At first, it started with self-fulfilling prophecies stated by the other executives that were anxious about Beomgyu’s ascension as the de-facto president. Some said he wasn’t suited for the role based on academic performance alone, and others have already made predictions about his eventual impeachment from the board of executives. Your rivalry with Beomgyu was a well-known gag in the law society, but now, it didn’t feel like an inside joke anymore. In your absence, nobody knew what to do—and Beomgyu began to realize that perhaps he didn’t have it in him to be an effective leader and a prolific communicator.

In some ways, Beomgyu finally realized why you were so effective in a group setting. For one, your ability to make compromises with the rest of the team elevated your status and competence from a newbie to a reliable figure. The same could be said for your band. From what he’s heard from Heeseung, Geonu only recruited you because of your background in jazz. He never considered your dynamics with the group or if you were a difficult person to work with, and he chalked it up to luck that you were good at mitigating all sides of the argument whenever he and Sungchan would bicker. Your effectiveness as a team player was further highlighted in the dashing performances that you and your band would deliver as Joker In. Despite all the arguments and horror stories he’d hear from Heeseung, the Joker In he saw on stage didn’t evoke a single ounce of disagreement or discord. Once the four of you were on stage, it was as if you were a single unit with the rest of the band, seamlessly playing melodies as a natural instinct more so than hours of relentless practice and infighting.

Rhythm is the pillar of music and poetry, he once heard you utter in your conversations with the band. Though he initially disagreed and tried to back up Sungchan’s lamentations of playing a bigger role in the group, your absence has instantly highlighted why you were a stable foundation in everything that you were involved in. Sure, you weren’t the flashiest of both the law society and Joker In, but your absence placed a large dent in the operations of both. Even if you were a quiet figure in the law society, often staying on the sidelines to approve or reject event proposals while everyone was fighting for credit, everyone would always look to you as a final figure of approval. Once you either accepted or rejected an event and started dispatching the organization committee to plan and make these events come to fruition, all elements of disjuncture ceased to exist. It was the same with Joker In. Sure, you were often in the background trying to maintain stability while Geonu and Sungchan played the lead in each performance, but he was willing to admit that the band’s sound was nothing without your invisible hand guiding each melody and verse into perfection.

In a way that the band and the law society needed you, Beomgyu realized—albeit with denial and extreme hesitance—that he needed you as well. Without your presence, he couldn’t care less about his academic performance. Nothing mattered when the certainty of him being at the top was secured. The astonishing irony behind all this was that, in some ways, he did ask for this. He did ask to become number one in everything, and yet he failed to realize that perhaps being number one in itself was never something he could ever be.

The reason he got this far was because of his intense rivalry with his brother. For as long as he could remember, he was always vying for attention from his parents—practically pleading to be seen as anything but his brother’s shadow. Then, it was the several rivals he’d encountered in school once his brother was off to university. They were no match against your unyielding nature, but he would be lying to himself if they didn’t push him to further heights.

Competition was something that he was always surrounded with, and with you gone, he didn’t know where to start. Nothing mattered to him anymore, and he hated that feeling more than hating you.

For someone that prided himself in intelligence, he certainly fell short of common sense. Throughout all his years of trying to chase after your success and your achievements, he wasn’t ready for the loneliness and emptiness that would overtake him once he reached the top. Maybe that was why you decided to play in a band, even if doing so would result in parental disapproval. Sure, he didn’t know your life story, but that was at least what stopped him from starting his own band in high school.

What the fuck are you thinking, you bastard. Starting a band? In high school? This is why your brother was always better, Beomgyu-yah.

“Shut up, Dad,” He whispered, remembering all of the GPS trackers laced on his phone and the strict curfew he had to maintain in his teenage years. Even if he knew nothing about you, it was perhaps the freedom and carelessness you had in you that made him envious of everything you had. To him, you were the epitome of a life he could’ve lived had he not been born into his so-called family—a breath of fresh air that tempted him with the fruits of liberation and rebellion.

In some ways, he loathed you because he idolized you. He wanted to be you in any shape or form. That was, of course, until he rested his eyes on each news headline that managed to damage your reputation bit by bit.

KIM & LEE LLC’S GOLDEN HEIRESS DEMOTED AND DISOWNED FROM THE FAMILY TRADE: HER SECRETS ARE REVEALED

The news came out roughly three months ago, right after he caught a glimpse of your brother making a call to the university’s board of directors. A part of him wished that you would fight back the same way you did whenever Beomgyu would cuss you out or make your life a living hell—because to him, you were always a fighter.

He was aware that hospitals could change a person from the moment they entered into its sanitized walls, but he wanted to believe that you weren’t privy to its wicked curse. Above all the families that wept and got their morale weakened by an undesired diagnosis, an incurable disease, or an exorbitant bill that took a lifetime to pay back, he was sure you were immune to it all, keeping a headstrong demeanor in any situation.

But all rich children were doomed the moment they were born, and you were just like him, a victim of circumstance.

All he could do now was to continue dialing your phone number, even if the reply he got was the same, automated, female voice that told him your digital existence was erased from its archives.

I’m sorry, but your call cannot be completed at this time. Please try again later.

What if he gave you a chance? What if he got to know you instead of letting his bitterness get the best of him? Could things have been different between the two of you? Or would the rivalry persist in a different, more amiable form? Flashes of images were reflected in the large, bathroom mirror that he constantly gazed at, and in these times of automated mundanity between attending classes and fulfilling his new duties as the de facto president of the law society, all he could see was your smiling silhouette imprinted on the chair that he occupied, telling him again and again that he didn’t belong there.

He contemplated visiting your father, but the nurse at the reception would always get back to him about your absence. You hadn’t visited him since the day your family withdrew you from university, and now, he didn’t know where you were. The band refused to talk to him altogether, and Heeseung hadn’t been to the basement since he quit his job at the pizza place. Sungchan’s whereabouts were also unknown, and whenever he would bump into Geonu in the hallways, he was met with firm resistance.

“Don’t talk to me unless you’ve figured out a way to fix this entire mess.” The lead singer’s voice looped in his head.

Beomgyu didn’t believe in a lot of things, but now, he believed in one thing and one thing only: Pillars and foundations of a building can be broken, but they can also be repaired. If you were what kept everything from falling apart, then maybe it was his fate to be the carpenter that rebuilt all the things that he had managed to destroy. Donning the same, neon red hair dye and scuffed combat boots, he decided to live out his life as the boy who simply wanted to see his favorite band play one, final show in the place where he knew he could be himself, free of the shackles that bound him in a life of academic rigor, a lack of identity, and an endless battle of finally finding who he truly was.

“So you weren’t joking about Dad giving the trust to his secretary instead of us, his goddamn kids…” You remember saying to your brother when you saw your father laying unconscious in the hospital bed. To you, your father was a figure of utmost respect and order, someone who didn’t suit the strings and tubes of IV drips and an oxygen mask. He was an innovator, a natural leader that was always meant to stay seated right in the middle of everything—whether it was the dining table or the main meeting room of Kim & Lee LLC. It was your first time seeing him outside of his usual pristine, tidy suit, and you didn’t know what to feel about the sudden change in appearance. Sure, he has aged, but even in old age, you had at least expected him to live and fight for his life for ten more years, still donning a black, expensive suit with utmost pride.

“Isn’t this ridiculous?” Your brother replied, crossing his arms. The one thing that separated you from your brother was how difficult his expression was to read. Even in the face of adversary and doubt, he always managed to carry with him an aura of unyielding demonstration, refusing to display his woes on his sleeve.

“Yeah, I guess,”

“You know, I never wanted to consider you as a part of the family,”

“I know,”

“But this is a crucial time for all of us, and—”

“So what? Are you gonna create a fucking coalition of sorts within the family and try to sue Dad? The current owner and founder of the firm?”

It didn’t even scathe you one bit that your brother had, for the first time, openly shown his disdain towards you. It was always evident in the way he would avoid you around the house, never uttering a single word to you unless it had something to do with your academic achievements or the future of the firm. When your father announced that his solid line of succession had been broken by your existence, your brother moved out to America, only coming back when news broke that your father’s health was waning. It had always been that way since the two of you were children; the two of you were only siblings by family name and nothing more.

“If it’s several against one, old man, I’m sure we’ll win,” He coldly stated, flipping through several documents that outlined the future of the firm. There were many things you hated about your family, and your brother was the best example of why that was the case. Even if you refused to believe it, the opportunistic trait that carried your family’s name for generations was a genetic plight that even you couldn’t escape.

“Don’t you even have a shred of humanity within you? That’s our Dad, and he’s dying!”

“You didn’t look like you cared enough to arrive at the hospital on time,”

I was spending time with my friends! The only people who cared about me! You kept your mouth closed, demonstrating a pensiveness that only the law society and Beomgyu have seen you perfected. As always, your brother’s lips were pressed in a firm, thin line, eyes never acknowledging your existence. To him, the papers were more important than whatever was in front of him.

“You didn’t look like you cared enough to even be there,” You retorted, mimicking the same nonchalance that soon became your family’s trademark.

“My point exactly,” He hummed. “You know how terrible he was to us when we were children, right?”

“That doesn’t excuse ousting him from his position, though,”

“If his so-called leadership and stubbornness is what’s bringing the firm down, then I think it’s about time he left his post,”

“And you’re telling me that you’re the better alternative?”

It was one thing to admit that your brother was right, but it was another to acknowledge him as the next best option in the line of succession. Despite your father’s rather tumultuous decisions that came as a result of senility and burgeoning egoism, he was a natural at micromanagement. Even in his old age, he still commanded an air of elitism that only leaders had. Your brother, on the other hand, lacked such charisma. For all his smarts and his efforts, he simply didn’t have it in him to wield the same charm and authority that your father did in his younger years. Even if he was a spitting image of him, there was no denying that the resemblance was only in the skin. For what your father had in terms of innate control and governance, your brother fell short of such defining qualities. While you had made a name for yourself as a promising air, he was forever tainted in the tabloids as your father’s shadow, forever chasing behind the outline of his pointed shoulders.

“Well, I mean—”

“Shut the fuck up,” You spat. “I got better grades than you when you were a kid. I was first place in everything, and you were second at best. I attend the best school in the country, and, as always, you got rejected, opting for inferior schools. I’m already getting offers to attend law school in Ivy League institutions, while you had to beg your professors for a recommendation letter to even try to get into Columbia or Yale. You had your first internship at our company? Motherfucker, I worked at Morgan & Stanley Korea when I was nineteen. You think you’re the only alternative? You think you’re the next best option? Grow the fuck up and sit down. You’re just lucky to be where you are right now because you’re Daddy’s first.”

Now, three months later, you wished you could say more—not to your brother, but to your unconscious father lying down on his eventual deathbed. You wanted to cuss him out; you wanted to tell him how horrible he was; you wanted to plug his life support off then and there; you wanted to maul him into pieces; you wanted to slap him the same way he did when you would do every little thing to disappoint him; you wanted to take all his money and run away; you wanted him to experience the same pain and suffering of being a bastard child that should have never been born in the first place.

But, by doing so, you were admitting defeat. You were succumbing to an ideal scenario of revenge that would leave you unsatisfied even when your father would die on the spot. As much as it tempted you to destroy him when he was chained by his disease, you were in the game long enough to know that there was a better life out there waiting for you—a life of a true winner. You’ve wasted your entire existence on being the perfect heiress, but now, it was time for change. Now that you were disowned, you were free, and in your eyes, this was a victory in disguise.

And luck would have it that your pleas for freedom would be answered in a single phone call that sealed the deal.

“We just got a deal from DooRooDooRoo, they got back to us about the record deal,” Geonu had called you a month later, when you were spending every single day under the comforts of your duvet. Back then, you couldn’t even tell that a month had passed, because everything had remained frozen in time. Each passing sunrise and sunset meant nothing to you when seeing your father’s bedridden image would always feel like yesterday. In a sense, time had been completely difficult to track, and you opted for stopping your clocks altogether, tearing off the calendar in your apartment, and replacing it with its original white walls. You didn’t think that the newfound sparseness of your apartment would worsen the lagging of time that hazed your entire being, but it didn’t matter to you. You were out of school, and you didn’t have a schedule to follow anymore. Why place a calendar on the wall when all the dates are merged into one?

“What do you mean record deal?” You replied, keeping the phone on speaker to hear his voice. “Geon, we’re a cover band, I doubt they’d even want to sign us because we didn’t send them an original demo,”

Truthfully, the only thing that made the time pass was when you were in front of the electric drum kit in your room, replaying the same songs that once brought you joy in the basement that you managed to call your sanctuary. You contemplated leaving your apartment to visit it once in a while, but there was something in you that didn’t allow you to face Geonu, Sungchan, and Jeongin. What were you going to say to them? They already knew everything the moment the tabloids embarked on a journey of defamation, bearing their voracious fangs on another opportunity—a good story that would destroy the stronghold of your family’s empire. All they needed to know were in the headlines of each news article that was displayed on their television screens and their phones. If Geonu was right about signing a record deal with one of Korea’s biggest indie labels, then it would be bad press to have a fallen heiress as its core member.

“I sent them the track you worked on,” He stated an amalgamation of static breaching your ears. He was definitely in the basement—most likely alone. The day you disappeared, Sungchan had also gone missing, turning off all his devices and blocking off any form of contact. The same could be said for Jeongin, sans the drastic effort to cut all ties with everyone else. You could still get a hold of him, but it would be in inconsistent lapses of time where he would either sound groggy or overtly happy—nothing in between, and especially nothing like his usual self when he was active in the band. Word had reached your ears from his roommate that Jeongin was admitted to the psychiatric ward a few weeks ago, the culprit being psychosis and his sudden relapse into the same, old habits that marred him in his younger years.

Ironically, the news you would get from the people that you usually surrounded yourself with when you were a student didn’t come from themselves, but rather, from Beomgyu. Even if you didn’t answer his incessant calls, he would always leave you a voice note every day, detailing his new life as the president of the law society, the current status of your bandmates, and even little tidbits of his life. Without fail, he would always send these in at around six in the evening, making that hour the only way you could tell time. Before you knew it, you kept your watch active, setting an alarm with your smart home monitor to alert you whenever the hour was coming. Then, you would hide under your covers, pressing your cheeks on the cool, glass surface of your phone to hear his voice. Sometimes, you would close your eyes, watching fleeting images of a life that could’ve stayed intact had your father not succumbed to old age. Beomgyu had the voice of a narrator, and each description and detail he provided painted a picture of fragmented memories that felt distant yet so far away.

“What?” You screeched. You didn’t know how to talk to Geonu, and it was a shame that someone you played music with every day suddenly felt like a total stranger. You were too used to Beomgyu’s soothing voice giving you a glimpse of the outside world, that it didn’t occur to you that the current phone call you were having wasn’t a product of one of Beomgyu’s scheduled voice messages.

“The track that was in our drafts like, before you went MIA,”

“You mean Carpe Diem? That’s just something I wrote when I was bored, though,”

There were too many sessions in the basement that led to unfinished songs and fragmented drafts, but there was one, concrete product out of all the practices you’ve had as Joker In that never left your head. You couldn’t pinpoint the exact date of writing and actively composing the song, but it was certainly around your sixth or seventh night as Joker In when you began to voice more of your creative inputs into the musical journey that Geonu commanded.

It was perhaps around the summer season when Jeongin had just replaced Felix as the new bassist of the band. You were sitting on a draft that you had carried with you since high school with your covert experimentations with the adolescent underground music scene. The song was obviously incomplete, but you had the drum track narrowed down to perfection after years of working on it and rearranging some of the fills and sections, experimenting with complex time signatures while retaining a certain sense of replayability that many radio-friendly songs had. At first, it was just a side project that you conjured up after Beomgyu had challenged you to write a song. It may have counted as cheating to repurpose a draft that you made before meeting him, but so long as you changed and updated the song, then it could’ve counted as a new song. By then, you were still on shaky terms with Sungchan, so you opted to ask Geonu to play both the rhythm and lead sections of the guitar. Felix had happily worked on the bass when he was still in Korea, changing a few things here and there to suit his rather intricate playing style. You had worked with Geonu for a few weekends to complete the lyrical bits of the song, but each draft left you in an uninspired mess. Being eloquent in your essays and your courses certainly didn’t translate well into poetry, and even Geonu’s longtime experience with writing lyrics couldn’t quell the dissatisfaction you had with the piece.

That was until you decided to write your frustrations about Beomgyu, matching up each word, rhyme, and cadence with the tune that you believed you had perfected. You showed Geonu the first draft, solidifying your efforts with his nod of approval. He worked on rearranging a few words to fit the bridge and the chorus, and then, the song was suddenly scrapped. You didn’t know if it was because the band got busy with a surge of live shows and activities, or if you just didn’t want to work on the song any longer. All you knew was that by the time you decided to let go of the song, Beomgyu had replaced your brother and the rest of your family as enemy number one, making the song a daily reminder of him and his deplorable antics.

“Well, Sungchan completed his bits and covered Jeongin’s bass parts. I sang through it with some of the lyrics I came up with when I was listening to the initial track,”

“Wait… you got a hold of Sungchan?”

Sungchan's whereabouts were kept under wraps since the day you left the hospital and your university for good. At first, you tried to call him, but his number was non-existent on the third ring. Text messages led to nowhere, and his account on Kakao had been defunct when you checked the band’s group chat. The only remnant of his identity was left in Beomgyu’s daily voice messages to you, where he speculated that he might have gone back home somewhere in Seoul.

“I saw someone who might have looked like Sungchan at the station near Mapo-gu today, but I could be wrong. These days, high schoolers are basically giants now, and it’s pretty hard to tell, but I’m still searching for him nonetheless. Did you know? He chased after me when I tried to go to the hospital to see you. We had a long conversation by the vending machine, and then, he just disappeared like that. I think I owe him a lot, really, and if it weren’t for him, then I doubt I’d have the conscience to make things right. Once again, I’m sorry for being a coward that could only apologize through these stupid voice messages. You deserve so much more than that, and even if you don’t wanna see me, the least I could do is try to make amends. You can forget about me after that, but I just wanted you to know that I never hated you—really. I did say that a lot, and Heeseung might disagree, but I don’t think I hated you. I think it was a bit of the opposite.”

You could vividly picture the outlines of Beomgyu and Sungchan by the vending machine near Jeongin’s apartment, sharing a drink or two as they talked about the sudden turn of events. Without Geonu, who often brought out the best and the worst in him, Sungchan was the diplomatic type who disliked conflict. You were aware of him giving warnings here and there to Beomgyu whenever you would storm off from a heated argument with him, but you didn’t know that he would go to such lengths to make things right—and now, the only trace you had of who you could finally call your best friend was in the images that Beomgyu would leave in his voice notes and an unknown text message that read I got rejected.

“It’s a long story, but he signed the deal. You’re the only one that needs to sign it—of course, if you want to. I mean, I know how much your career and all that matters to you, so it’s no pressure. If you want, I can—”

“I’m signing it,”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I’m signing it,” You repeated without preamble. Back then, music was just a hobby for you—a way to escape the fast-paced, yet unchanging life of perfecting your image as the ideal candidate to lead your former family’s firm. In your younger years, the thought of pursuing music full-time and escaping the legal field to attend a music college in the heart of Seoul had plagued you, but you let the only thing you’ve known your entire life take over. Now that the foundations of your identity were shackled, you believed it was high time for you to rebuild everything you had lost in the process, facing forward to a newfound pursuit instead of constantly staying in the present.

“Damn…” You could hear Geonu slowly sniffle in the distance as if he were right next to you. The empty walls of your bedroom had suddenly transformed into the decrepit, unpainted cement that lined the basement. The scent of rotting, molding pizza and lukewarm beer wafted your nose, bringing you back to the sanctuary that you would now call your one, true home.

“What?”

“I just… You know… it’s been a while since we’ve last seen you, and I just didn’t expect you to sign the deal…”

Now, you could tell that Geonu was crying—something he never did in front of anyone unless he was drunk enough to let his tear ducts do the job. You took the phone away from your cheek, taking your comforter to dab a few splotches of wet tears that slowly trickled down your face.

“Well, a lot can happen in three months. I’m not in school anymore, I’ve been disowned, and I’m out of the line of succession. I’ve been given an apartment and some hush money to do whatever the fuck I want, and my so-called family has nothing to do with me anymore. I’m free to choose whatever I wanna do, and I think I’d like to tour with you guys for the rest of my life. I never thought I’d be saying this, but fuck, man. I need you guys.”

“I could say the same for you, asshole. Now quit moping around and get your ass in the studio. We’ll be recording and perfecting our debut album until we can all get a house in Europe and live with fast cars, big houses, and a nice life on the hillside.”

“Sounds like a cult or something,”

“Joker In is basically a cult, and we’re nothing without our founding member, so hurry up and get your ass to the studio. Now.” Before you ended the call, you could hear Geonu’s wide smile welcoming you back to the studio. You ended the call and tossed your phone on your bed, taking your bag of weary drum sticks with you. The map that led to the basement was entrenched in your head, and for the first time, you kicked your sneakers back onto the soles of your feet, jingling the keys to your apartment between your fingers as you heard the click that confirmed the safety of your house. You didn’t even check to see if the door was fully locked. None of that mattered when you were finally coming home.

Sungchan had told you personally that Geonu rejected him in the most “Geonu” way possible. A few days after the band’s reunion in the basement, he had invited you for coffee in one of the cafes near campus. At first, you wanted to change the location of your meeting. After all, being seen as a dropout was the last thing you wanted in your gradual return to life. However, the curiosity within you didn’t seem to die down when you breathed in the air of young adulthood and fast-paced trains. The cafe had always been there since you were a first year, and yet it had only occurred to you now to visit it and see what it had to offer.

It was a quick, heartfelt conversation between slices of apple crumble and hot cups of warm, camomile tea. He didn’t even give you a greeting; he just sat you down and told you that Geonu didn’t like him back.

“He said it was to keep the band intact, but I’m sure that’s just his way of telling me that he still wanted me in his life—you know? Even if he didn’t like me that way,”

You would’ve expected an underlying tension in the room during your first few practice sessions with the band, but the moment you entered the basement, everything was left as it was. The rotting boxes of pizza continued to collect mold and mildew, dyeing everything in a murky shade of green. All of the instruments collected dust—a remnant of a time when everything was actively used. Curled ends of guitar strings were strewn on the floor, uncleaned and unscathed since the moment everyone decided to take a break from the basement’s security. The only thing that struck you as a testament to time was how clean the abandoned house looked, perhaps due to a lack of usage. Conversations persisted the way they usually did, and before you knew it, everything was back to normal. Jeongin looked thinner than usual, but he had the same, bright aura of joy and the same passion for Eurovision that he did as before. Sungchan and Geonu continued to bicker in the same manner that they always did, letting the elephant in the room stay dormant. There was no awkward tension or uncomfortable silence that engulfed the entire band, and before you knew it, Joker In was coming closer and closer to perfecting their debut album.

Today was a different story. There was an announcement by Geonu that practice would commence as usual, and it was granted that there would be a couple of sleepovers in the basement since the deadline to pitch your demo to the label was coming to a close. Being one of the more punctual bandmates out of the rest, you decided to show up an hour earlier, carrying several backpacks filled with toiletries, instant food, and a comforter that held you in your worst breaks.

“Guys?” You called, only to hear your voice bounce back to you.

It was normal to hold pranks in the studio, but hide and seek wasn’t the band’s forte. Even if Geonu used his height to his advantage and crept behind small cracks of furniture and large amplifiers, you would always manage to find his mop of hair sticking out in the distance. Sungchan’s footsteps were too loud to ignore, and Jeongin was terrible at keeping his laughter at bay. None of those remnants of your bandmates was present in the studio, and all you could do was heave a sigh at the fact that they might be late.

Then, there was an eerie feeling that began to consume you. No matter how many times you’ve run up and down the entire house to see if anyone was there, you were left with an empty feeling of solitude, even if you were sure that you weren’t the only one in the building. There was an unshakable presence that made it too difficult for you to ignore, and after ceaselessly checking the same hiding spots again and again, you decided to halt your search altogether and give up. Heeseung often joked about the basement’s ideal location as a horror movie set, so maybe he was right about a few lost souls from the war that lurked in the corners of the basement.

“You know, this place could have been a burial ground or something, right?” You remembered him saying amidst a flurry of smoke from his bong. Perhaps he was right, and it was about time that you coined yourself a believer of the paranormal. Dropping out of school and throwing away your potential degree was the last thing you imagined, so if the unpredictable managed to stir your life in a completely different direction, then maybe ghosts did exist. Right?

“Hey…” A voice that only existed within your phone’s voice messages popped up behind your ears. You managed to let out a shrill shriek, quickly turning around to see a man with bright, red hair. His black nails were chipped to the edges, and his dark, grey jeans were distressed to reveal his protruding knees. The scuff marks on his combat boots were accentuated by the dull luster of leather that shone in the sunlight that seeped into the basement.

“Oh, hi there,” You replied, clearing your throat as you collected yourself. It didn’t occur to you that three months could change anyone this drastically, but seeing your former rival in an outfit that didn’t suit him eased all of the apprehension that was built up in your system.

“I know I’m the last person you want to see right now,” Beomgyu whispered. You weren’t used to seeing him so solemn, and you certainly couldn’t shake the dissonance in the calmness that he exuded. Even if you hadn’t seen Beomgyu in a while, you always associated him with a ball of anger that threatened to explode at any second, and now, the only thing that resembled his fiery passion was the bright, poorly dyed red dye that stained his head.

“Well, not really. You’re up there, don’t get me wrong, but you’re definitely below my half-brother, my father, and basically every single person in my family.” You said with a small, awkward smile.

“Oh, well, that’s good to know, I guess?” Beomgyu asked. He expected you to question his disguise or his presence, but perhaps you weren’t as dense as he thought. Maybe you knew who he was right from the start, even in your drunken state when you decided to send him home from a gig that felt like ancient history.

“Did your brother tell you what happened?”

“No, but your face was all over the internet for a while. Some tabloids saying Kim & Lee LLC’s star daughter had been removed from the line of succession after it’s been exposed that you were in the underground music scene,”

“Jesus…” You couldn’t help but laugh. “Out of all the reasons that they could’ve chosen, they chose that,”

“Yeah…” His voice was barely a whisper now, and he stuffed his hands in his jean pockets, the same way he did when he nervously walked home with you from the bus stop. “I also heard that your band got signed.”

“Through Heeseung?”

“No, through Sungchan actually,”

“Wow, I never expected him to talk to you like that,”

“I know, right?”

The light in Beomgyu’s eyes had disappeared, mellowing him out into a completely different person. Now that you had the chance to think about it, his newfound rebellious look suited him more when he would incessantly curse at you and call you by all of the profanities that the Korean language had to offer. The clean-cut, professional air of arrogance that he carried was reserved for the silent meekness that Beomgyu now exuded.

“So, why are you here?” You asked.

“The boys told me you were coming,”

“Ah…”

You checked the group chat and saw a flurry of texts from the rest of your bandmates detailing their tardiness. Geonu never went to the music shop since he would usually borrow instruments and equipment from his vast network of student musicians, and Sungchan was never the type to be late over a visit to the record store. Jeongin was a bad liar, and it was evident in his texting patterns that he tried his best to cover everything up with a rather believable excuse of waking up late from a nap.

“They set us up, didn’t they?” You scoffed. Beomgyu slowly nodded—the confirmation that you needed to finally piece everything together.

“I mean, three-ish years of basically wanting to kill each other needs to come to an end at some point, right? And it’s not like I’m graduating since I’ve already dropped out of uni…”

Beomgyu continued to fidget with the edges of his pockets, whistling a low, barely audible tune as he lightly kicked the can of empty beer that landed on the sole of his combat boots. When the can rolled over to your feet, you returned it to him with a stronger kick, initiating a simple game of soccer that allowed Beomgyu to display his years of practice in the varsity team.

“I quit the Law Society, and I also quit the debates team.” Beomgyu interrupted, keeping the can to himself instead of kicking it back to you. He began to do a few tricks and keepy-ups, stopping at the fifth pass to kick the can back to you.

“Oh,”

“I’m off student clubs for a while, and I’m just focused on getting my degree,”

“What happened to the Choi Beomgyu who wanted to be the best at everything?” You retorted with a grin, turning the can into an impromptu volleyball.

“You get to a certain point where none of that even matters anymore, really.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah…”

Now, the can was on the ground. You kicked it into a nearby corner and used your bag as a seat, taking your comforter out to wrap yourself around its soft surface. Beomgyu hesitated before joining you on the floor, maintaining a sense of empty space between the two of you. Your eyes traced the thin, sheer curtains that flowed back and forth with the gust of wind that cooled the basement, tracing its trajectory until your eyes landed on Beomgyu’s lonesome outline.

“Wanna… you know? Talk about it?” You asked, wrapping the comforter tighter around your shoulders.

“I think we should talk about you first,” He replied with a smile that used to be reserved for everyone else apart from you.

“Right… Well, I’ve been disowned! Yay!”

“You’re a full-time musician now, though,”

“Another yay!”

The basement had always been a place where you would escape Beomgyu for the simple reason that people like him brought you back to the familial infighting that plagued your childhood. It was a place reserved for music and music only, not a place to recall the copious amounts of studying and perfectionism that you allowed yourself to suffer through in your three-year rivalry with him. You would’ve never imagined that one day, you would be able to share this place with someone like him, but something about having him sit a couple of spaces next to you as you caught up with him felt right, rendering the intensity and tension that you associated with him into an evaporating mist.

“Man, you’re actually funny,” He said behind a light chuckle.

“And you’re actually pretty nice behind all your stupid dick jokes,” You retorted with the same, gentle sentiment. You took a can of lemon seltzer out of your bag and tossed it in his direction. He caught it mid-air and gave you an even brighter smile, glassy eyes scanning through the can with awe and nostalgia as he opened it and took its nectarine contents between his lips.

“Anyway, what about you? What’s going on?” You asked, taking a water bottle out and twisting the cap open.

“I think I’m gonna stick to being a lawyer, but I’m definitely staying out of the family drama,” Beomgyu replied. The can of lemon seltzer was now on the ground.

“I thought big pharma and the medical industry didn’t have as much fun as we do in the private sector,”

“After I kind of got over my brother being cut out for the job more than I did, I just felt the need to stop being bitter. I mean, it’s whatever. I don’t really care anymore about my parents telling me that I’m basically a disgrace to the Choi name. I overcomplicated my entire life by focusing on that the moment I started breathing, and I think it’s about damn time I act like a fucking lawyer and defend myself from them instead of constantly looking to them for approval.”

“That’s not a very Choi Beomgyu thing to say,” You laughed, rolling the water bottle until it knocked over his can of lemon seltzer. Its contents began pouring out into the wooden floorboards, and you knew Geonu was going to scold you about it later.

“Well, the Choi Beomgyu now is not the same as the Choi Beomgyu three months ago,” He replied with a smile, as if to tell you that he’d stick around to help you clean up the mess once everyone else arrived.

“I still don’t get why you hated me so much though,”

If Beomgyu were to apologize to you at the hospital or right after the Eurovision watch party, you weren’t sure if you had it in you to forgive him. This wasn’t out of the bitterness and pent-up grudges that you managed to hold onto for so long, but rather, it was more so out of your own pride. You were sure that you would take his apology as is and never speak to him again out of a failure to admit that you, too, had crossed the line when you brought out the same traumas surrounding his own family and his brother.

Three months of silence was all it took for you to admit that a three-year rivalry felt like a childish game. In essence, the two of you were one and the same, both marred by the heavy expectations of generational wealth and status. Even if there were slight differences in your respective stories, perhaps the intense hostility that characterized the two of you came from the same place—one that made it rather difficult to see each other as equals or separate people. You didn’t know if Beomgyu felt the same, but the peak of your aggression with him certainly came from a hidden, inner dilemma that came from seeing yourself in Beomgyu’s glassy, beady eyes.

“I actually came down here to explain all that, to be honest—then again, I already feel like I did it pretty well when I talked about my brother and whatnot.”

“Some sort of innate, deep-seated inferiority complex since you were always compared to everyone around you?” You retorted and whistled, prompting Beomgyu to muster a dejected nod in your direction.

“Yeah, that.”

You know, I had the same thing with my own brother too. Crazy, right? You thought but kept those words to yourself. Words weren’t needed between the two of you anymore; you knew him long enough to understand that he could probably guess what was on your mind.

“Can I be honest?” You interrupted, taking your comforter and tossing it between his lap. You shuffled closer until the space between the two of you ceased to exist. Beomgyu reluctantly nodded again and took your blanket in his palms, feeling through its seams as he stared at the setting sun.

“I thought you already were,”

“Well, I mean, really honest.”

“Shoot,”

“I actually knew you were sneaking into our gigs.”

A part of Beomgyu wanted to get up and run out of the basement, but another part of him knew that he should’ve trusted his gut from the start. Though he was aware of socially dense, book-smart academics, he was sure you weren’t of the sort. From managing the law society with impeccable leadership down to being a core member of a band, he knew deep down that adept communication and management skills came with social awareness. Nonetheless, he took the confession with ease, admiring the events at the night bus with a newfound perspective.

“I played dumb because I didn’t wanna ruin things for you, you know? Music is something that brings people together, and I can understand that in some ways, being in this basement was a safe space for you—some sort of escape from all the bullshit that your parents put you through,” You explained, heaving a sigh as you kicked the now empty can of lemon seltzer towards the same corner where the crushed, dented beer can had landed.

“And at first, I thought you weren’t so bad. I mean, you actively came to our shows even if, for whatever reason, you hated me at school. I think my thing about the entire ordeal is how I can’t wrap my head around you being so mean to me.”

He always knew you were honest, but he didn’t think you would be honest in such a raw, authentic way—especially with him.

“Like I’ve said, the Beomgyu three months ago is a different Beomgyu. I didn’t really know how to process the grudges I’d held against my parents since I was kid, so I guess I took it out on the people I’ve been compared to,” He replied, after a few seconds of silent pondering.

“Is that really it?” You asked, repeating his pensiveness with your own rendition of a long, drawn-out pause.

“Yeah, that’s it, I guess,”

“Are you sure?”

“What are you trying to say?”

You grabbed your comforter and tossed it into his face, running behind the drum kit in anticipation of an attack. Instead of seeing your comforter fly across the studio, however, Beomgyu remained still, slowly taking off the cotton blanket and neatly folding it into a pile beside your backpack.

“That you were obsessed with me,” You finally joked. The sun had completely set, and there were no signs of your bandmates coming into the basement anytime soon. Heaving a sigh of relief, you took a seat on the stool that saw the best of your musical abilities, grabbing a thin, 7A drum stick that was worn down in an amalgamation of splinters and cracks. You twirled each stick around your fingers, humming a light, jazzy beat on your head before hitting the ride cymbal and placing your feet on the hi-hat pedal.

“You’re not entirely wrong,” Beomgyu retorted, taking a seat on one of the amplifiers as he watched you perform a small solo that reminded him of the bossa nova records that would often leak out of his maid’s earphones. “I did find you pretty cute, I just wished you didn’t show your cards as a teacher’s pet in our first classes together,”

“Little boy couldn’t handle being bested by a girl?”

“No, more like little boy couldn’t handle being bested by a nepo baby,”

The crash cymbals rang in Beomgyu’s ears, but he didn’t step away from the noise. After hearing your band’s studio sessions on several online music streaming platforms for so long, he couldn’t resist the opportunity of watching you play live in such close proximity. To him, you were surely a one-of-a-kind musician, one that managed to turn senseless beats and fills into a melodic journey.

“Not anymore!” You yelled, tapping your sticks to the side of the snare drum while kicking the bass drum’s pedal to accentuate each rhythmic interval with timed, yet deeply dispersed vibrations.

“Ex-nepo baby,” Beomgyu corrected. He wanted to pick the acoustic guitar beside one of the larger amplifiers in the basement, but he resisted the temptation to play alongside you.

“That’s more like it,” You said with a smile, halting your drum solo and slipping your sticks back into a small, slender bag. Pushing your weight off your stool, you leaned backward until you could reach the hilt of the acoustic guitar, gently handing it over to Beomgyu as you readjusted the towel that lined the entire snare drum. He took it and admired the woodwork, recalling the chords that he had taught himself when he was a teenager that had the ability to dream.

“So, what do you wanna do?” He asked, bitterly scrunching his nose as the dissonance of untuned strings reverberated in his ears. You tilted your head to the side, but Beomgyu took his palm up in the air to stop you from getting up from your stool again.

Thom Yorke was right, everyone can play the guitar.

“Can you sing?” You asked, leaning your chin onto your palm while keeping your elbows leveled onto the cotton surface of the towel on top of the snare drum.

“Sorta?” Beomgyu replied with a shrug.

“Can you set up the mic on your own?”

“I think so?”

“Great, show me what you’ve got. I’m sure being a big fan also means belting out notes like Geonu, right?” Once Beomgyu was confident enough about the tuning of the guitar, he started to strum the chords that lined each stanza to the song you wrote. Instead of playing along, you deepened your trance and kept your eyes on his slouched figure, watching a man that could’ve been a musician with you in a different world. The basement had always been a sanctuary for the two of you, and now, free of all the ills of wealth and familial obligations, you openly shared your secure liberation with him, watching him play a song that was written for him.

EPILOGUE: CARPE DIEM

Wе'll play our love against your hate

Don't you count on us to let you win today

Today

Through the corners of your eyes, you could see Beomgyu in his so-called disguise: bright, long, red hair sprayed on with less than perfect agility and accuracy, torn sleeves that revealed his stick-and-poke tattoos across his arms and chest, ripped jeans to match his long legs, and a pair of combat boots that made his walk turn into awkward waddles between the dance floor and the bar. God forbid you found him attractive in the daylight, but the nighttime brought out a different beast in him. He wasn’t the snobbish, prideful boy that you would bicker with during your law modules; he wasn’t the sharp-tongued asshole you wanted to fight in the middle of the hallways; he wasn’t the man that made you feel less than a woman whenever he unluckily graced you with his presence; he was just Choi Beomgyu—a lost boy under the dark, neon lights of the disco ball of fate that spun the two of you together in a distorted, complicated mosaic of trials and tribulations.

You wouldn’t dare admit it, but you found him rather attractive from the start. That was the reason why you wanted to catch his attention when you first met him in your first-year orientation. Back then, he had sleek, black hair, trimmed to perfection to explicitly embody his status with a single look. While you presented yourself as the exact opposite of who he used to look like, there was no harm in trying, right?

Who knew that your lack of courage to speak to him and befriend him from the start would spur a three—almost four-year—rivalry of academic battles and hurt? You certainly didn’t predict it, but perhaps fate worked in wonderful ways, as he was now doing two-steps to a song that you wrote, composed, and poured all your heart into.

A song about Choi Beomgyu.

We danced and played until the sun came

Writing a story using our names

About a generation not afraid to seize the day

Geonu’s voice was the perfect touch to the lyrical prose and intricacies you communicated through the song. It was sweet, yet packed a pang of pain in each syllable—something that you always applauded him for. What made his performance better was how it made Beomgyu’s wasted presence look like an angel—as if Geonu’s voice was the spell you needed to finally see the man as a divine, untouchable being in your eyes. The test lights of all different colors glowed like a halo on the crown of Beomgyu’s head, and with the last cymbal to end the song, you immediately got up and dove to the crowd, throwing your drum sticks behind as your lips grazed the man you’ve hated for the past three years.

Beomgyu couldn’t tell if he was too drunk or if he’s waited for this moment since he saw you on the edge of the row at an introductory elective he chose to fill his schedule, but he took your arms in his in one, fell swoop, catching you in your fall with the sturdiness of his grip. In an instant, all of the feelings he had for you blended into a single word: love.

Who knew that hate was not the opposite of love? He certainly didn’t. In a sense, he should’ve listened to Heeseung from the start and swallowed his stubborn pride—then again, he also knew that life didn’t work that way. At this moment, he thanked his unyielding nature for allowing him to be with you for three, long years. Even if there was an incessant voice within him that complained about the prospects of being with you earlier had he not been so difficult, there was an equal part of happiness within him that was completely satisfied with the way things were. Chance worked in wonderful, albeit unpredictable ways, and maybe if he didn’t hate you so much, he wouldn’t even know of your existence from the start.

The crowd around the two of you cheered as they watched you engulf Beomgyu in another, languid embrace. Their voices were mere whispers filtered with the booming sound of Geonu’s speech in the microphone and Sungchan’s own guitar solos; all you could see was Beomgyu’s angelic face between your soft, sweaty palms. The rush of adrenaline that usually came with playing shows was now replaced with the gentle hums that echoed across the cages of your chest, aching with a pulsating pain that threatened to implode inside of you.

“You’re such a loser,” Beomgyu whispered, taking the back of your hands in his as he caressed the surface of your knuckles with his thumb. You could feel his rapid pulse quicken by the amount of alcohol he consumed, but that didn’t matter. You didn’t need to be inebriated to feel a certain way.

“Shut up,” You retorted, touching the tip of your nose on his before climbing back up to the stage to finish the song one and for all.

With the band together, arm in arm, the four of you gave the crowd the last bow you’ll ever give them. Salty tears were shed, roaring claps and cries for an encore were heard in the distance, and the only person in your eyes was Beomgyu, who was sober enough to stand still and spill his drink in your face. In return, you blew him a kiss and threw a single drum stick in his direction, watching him effortlessly catch it and twirl it between his fingers. As the chants for an encore grew louder, you stared at each of your sweat-ridden bandmates—all of them nodding at the last request.

“Alright, assholes,” Geonu began, taking the mic stand apart and throwing it to the side. “You asked for it, so we’ll give you one more performance. One more, yeah?”

Sungchan didn’t even need to play the first chord to the song; Jeongin didn’t need to pluck the strings to his bass; you didn’t need to go back to your drum kit to strike the first beat; Geonu didn’t need a microphone to signal the first note of the song. Everyone knew what the next performance was going to be, and they crowded around the stage, forming a circle with Beomgyu at the center.

This one’s for you, prick. You mouthed with a wide, ear-to-ear grin on your face. You took a can of lukewarm beer and pierced it right in the middle with your teeth, watching the crowd gaud you to finish it all in one go. Then, you crushed the empty can in your fingers and threw it to the side, rushing back to your band as they all sat on the edge of the stage.

“You guys know the words to this one, right?” Geonu shouted. The crowd roared with approval and kept their feet still in anticipation despite the hazy inebriation that turned their vision into a mere collection of blurred movements. The alcohol had rushed past your bloodstream and circulated in your head, forming a telescope that pointed to Beomgyu as your one and only North Star.

Look me straight into the eyes,

When I truthfully lie to you

For a graduation gig, this was perhaps one of the best gifts you could ever ask for. No amount of material desire could replicate the sense of community felt within the tiny, decrepit basement that your band has called home. Now that you’ve thought about it, this basement didn’t seem to belong to your band anymore. It belonged to everyone in the room. Those who wanted to escape a life of mundanity and academic pressures, those who wanted to forget about the time they fucked up their jobs, those who wanted to remember their youths with rose-colored lenses and shagadelic sad boy music, and those who just wanted a place where they could be themselves. The basement was a home—no, a sanctuary—that welcomed everyone with open arms—even the likes of Choi Beomgyu.

Dreams are of your taste,

Mornings smell like you

You took control of the chorus and screamed to your heart’s content. Everyone’s voices blended into a harmonious blend of heartfelt solidarity. There were people making out in the corner of the bathroom, those that were too drunk to stand and yet muttered the lyrics in the best way they could, and the strongest soldiers of your long setlist remaining still, arm in arm with each other as they continued to sing the lyrics with you and your band. Beomgyu was still in the middle, eyes glued to your swaying figure as you slowly descended from the stage again with a microphone in your hand.

The compass fails to listen to me,

My lost soul’s wandering,

And searching for the path that leads to you

Geonu, Sungchan, and Jeongin descended the stage too and started interacting with the crowd. You could see Heeseung in the distance waving at you with two joints between his fingers and a girl clad in a bright green apron in his other arm. He gave you a thumbs up and bowed before going to the bar, and you returned his gesture with a fervent scream of gratitude. You then took Beomgyu’s head and ruffled his hair, letting the residue of his red dye stain your palms.

“So that’s what the song meant,” Beomgyu whispered right next to your ears, watching your panting figure gulp down an entire bottle of water in one go. He took the microphone from your hands and sang the last verse to the of his best abilities, letting his mind scavenge through all the times he’s secretly listened to your band’s discography on Soundcloud. There was no use in pretending he didn’t know any of the words when he’s spent every waking moment listening to Joker In on his commute to and from campus.

“Yeah, kind of funny, right?” You replied, tossing the empty bottle to a nearby trash can. Beomgyu tossed the microphone back to Geonu, who was now being nursed back to health by Sungchan. You gave the two a nod and took Beomgyu’s hand to leave the confines of the basement.

Now that the two of you were outside, you breathed in the fresh scent of grass and greeneries that surrounded the abandoned house. The night sky in hues of navy evoked divine iridescence with the hymns of the crickets and fireflies that sparked the outskirts of town into a bright, starlit grove of secrecy. You took another can of beer that you hid inside the pockets of your overalls and crushed it open, offering a sip to Beomgyu once you were finished taking a large gulp. He refused, leaning his tall frame on the unpainted walls of the house. The noise from the basement echoed into the vast, empty skies. Everyone’s voice seemed to repeat the chorus of the song in muffled hums, and you joined their choir with a quiet rendition of your own, humming the song that brought you to Beomgyu in a gentle lullaby.

The compass fails to listen to me,

My lost soul’s wandering

And searching for the path that leads to

You stared at Beomgyu before finishing the last line of the verse, twirling the cool can of beer between your fingers. It was impossible to hate him under the moonlight.

“Do you still think I’m that sexy stranger that you almost took home with you from the bus stop?” He asked, craning his neck to look at you with his glassy eyes.

“Dipshit, we went over this a long time ago. Did you really think I was that stupid?” You replied, returning the rhetoric while fishing for a pack of cigarettes in your pockets. Beomgyu scratched his head and cleared his throat, averting his gaze to meet the destroyed leather of his combat boots.

“Well, you’re still kind of dense…”

“A face like yours is difficult to hide, you know? Even with your dumb excuse of a disguise.”

A light chuckle escaped your lips. Beomgyu always wondered what you’d sound like if you laughed with him instead of laughing without him. Perhaps it was the remnants of alcohol that remained in his bloodstream, or perhaps it was the irresistible, honey-like tone in your voice that made him want to hear you laugh again.

“Can we start over again?” Beomgyu interrupted. This time, he positioned himself at an angle that made him face you regardless of where his neck was aching to go. You gave him a small smile, followed by a middle finger as you let the fizz of beer emulsify within the confines of your mouth.

“Seriously? I thought seeing your dumbass play guitar in the studio was already enough?” You replied, letting the embers from your lighter reflect its yellow flames in Beomgyu’s marble-like eyes.

You were not one to waste a cigarette, but a single puff engulfed you in a woozy feeling of nausea and turbulence. As you stubbed the light out of the long, white stick on the dying grass around it, you turned your attention back on Beomgyu—the most patient he’s been since the two of you first met. Everything with Beomgyu felt long and drawn out, but this time, you didn’t mind. The night was long, and you wanted all the time in the world to start over, even if it meant confessing some of your deepest, dirtiest thoughts to him.

Carpe diem. Seize the day.

And so, you did. Beomgyu’s cheeks felt like satin feathers ruffling and tickling each of your fingertips, electrifying you with a gentleness that lulled you closer to him. There was nothing to be afraid of from the start, and even if it took you three years to overcome that unbridled, irrational fear that is Choi Beomgyu, you were nonetheless glad that it was all over. Another day was about to come, and who knows? Maybe Beomgyu wouldn’t be an enemy anymore.

—CREDITS: @writingmochi @gyvhao @chocorenchin @michipan @hsgwrld (hi meg !! also tagging you on this because this is a eurovision fic lMAOO this is vivian on her txt blog btw !!)

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