#seungjae | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hypergiiant · 2 months

Text

001. NO BED OF ROSES.

Starring: Go Cairo.

Featuring: Park Ohyeon.

Summary: Cairo and Ohyeon grow up.

Word Count: 12k.

CW: For their whole time at HMT, Cairo and Ohyeon are subject to physical assault in the form of 'corporal punishment' by the company staff, even as young teenagers. Violence. Descriptions of bullying and allusions to school violence. Smoking. Drinking. Quick mention of an uncomfortable interaction between a minor (15) and an adult. Homophobia including use of slurs. There's a few moments of victim blaming within the narrative but I do think it's important to keep in mind that it's written from the pov of someone who is mostly a victim of the same things. This piece gets heavy in places, so please be aware of that going in to it. If you see something you think needs a warning, please lmk!

AGE THIRTEEN.

“No way am I debuting with him,” Ohyeon scoffs, as soon as the implication leaves Seungjae’s mouth. Cairo slumps down in his chair a little, puffing a sigh through his nose. “I don’t even like him.”

“That’s not a big concern of mine,” Seungjae dismisses, resting back in his swivel chair. Cairo and Ohyeon sit at the opposite side of his big oak table. Cairo’s feet hit the ground, even in the comfy chair he was sitting in, and Ohyeon’s don’t. That’s one win. “You’re thirteen. You work together for a couple weeks, I guarantee you’ll get over whatever differences you have.”

“But he’s a dick,” Ohyeon huffs.

Cairo has kind of known Ohyeon forever, but they’re strangers at the same time. They’d grown up on the same street, were classmates at the same elementary school, and had even gotten into the same middle school. But it’s not like they’d ever been friends, and Cairo can’t really blame Ohyeon for not wanting to be stuck in a duo with him for the next seven years.

He doesn’t feel good about it, but when Cairo had found out that Ohyeon had also been scouted by HMT Entertainment at school, he’d almost ditched the audition. He’d started to worry that he was being scammed. He’s never really looked at Ohyeon and considered him to be idol material. He’s short and scrawny, and it feels a little mean to bring it up, but he always came to school with greasy hair and an unwashed uniform.

Nobody at school really likes Ohyeon, and Cairo doesn’t necessarily have anything against him but he can understand why. He didn’t act like the other boys Cairo knew. And he can’t take a joke at all. One of Cairo’s friends from the basketball club had hidden Ohyeon’s lunchbox in the teacher’s desk drawer once, and instead of asking who took it, or looking around, he’d just sat back down at his desk and cried into his hands until break was over.

Ohyeon cries all the time. Even during the time they’ve been training together, the coaches have already gotten so sick of it that they start cursing whenever they see his lip wobble. Because he always has such a weird reaction to things, Cairo’s friends had kind of made a habit out of picking on him at school. It wasn’t ever that serious, they’d mess with his stuff, or corner him and ask him embarrassing questions. Cairo had never joined in, but he also hadn’t ever done anything to stop it. And he admits that he did laugh, a couple of times.

Ohyeon didn’t make things easy for himself, though. He’d still talk about childish cartoons, and giggle with the girls over idol groups. And when changing for PE, he’d make such an effort to hide himself that it would draw more attention to him than if he were to just change like everyone else, so they make fun of how skinny he is, and call him a baby, and stuff. If Ohyeon didn’t want to be picked on, he could try to behave a little more like the other boys. Cairo thinks that would probably fix most of his problems.

“Well, I don’t think that’s appropriate language for an idol, do you?” Seungjae asks. In the three months of after school lessons he’d been taking at HMT, Cairo had learned that Seungjae really doesn’t like the sound of young people cursing; he’d said that, if children represented the hope in the world, it was a shame to see them show a lack of innocence. Something about how that was to be Ohyeon and Cairo’s job. To bring hope to the nation by… being young? And singing and dancing?

“I have a question,” Cairo says, raising his hand nervously. It’s almost impossible to read Seungjae’s face as he looks over to him, but he gestures for Cairo to continue. “Um… what kind of people do you think will listen to us?”

Seungjae furrows his eyebrows. “Other children, one would presume.”

“Right, so… that’s who we’ll…” Cairo stumbles over his words, suddenly hyper aware of the fact that he doesn’t know any of the right language to use nor any of the correct contexts to use it in. “Like you’ll advertise us as a children’s group?”

Beside him, Ohyeon snickers to himself. “Did you expect to debut with a bad boy concept?”

Cairo blinks at him. “I didn’t expect to debut at all!” He blurts out, and then hurriedly turns his attention back to Seungjae, bowing though there’s really no need to at all. “Sajang-nim, I’m really, really grateful for this opportunity, but I’ve only been training for three months; I mean not even full-time… Shouldn’t my mom be here right now?”

“I’m not asking you to sign anything yet, Cairo, I’m simply moving you up a rank in the training system. There is plenty of preparation to be done before you’ll debut, and I assure you that I am not holding you to any standards that you’re incapable of meeting. For now, you’ll train full time, and that will remain the focus.”

Cairo nods, and settles back into his chair, although almost immediately another question begins to rattle on in his brain. Just as he’s about to speak up, however, Seungjae motors on, and speaks for another five minutes about living arrangements; and how on weekdays they would stay at a dorm but on weekends would return home. Cairo gleams that he’s supposed to be thankful he’s able to see his family because it’s not a luxury afforded to older trainees, but each word only gives the matter in his head more urgency.

Hesitantly, he once more raises his left hand, right one tucked politely under his elbow.

“You’re not in school, Cairo. You don’t need to raise your hand.” Seungjae says. His face rests stoic, but there’s an irritation in his eyes that Cairo’s unsure he’s seen before. Ohyeon snickers to himself again, but Cairo ignores him this time.

“Sorry. That’s kind of what my question is about, though. Are we gonna have to drop out of school?”

“We offer private lessons as part of our training system.”

“But it’s not really an offer, though, right?” Cairo presses, knowing that once more he’s crossing a line. “I can’t choose to keep going to my school?”

“I think it would be unwise to continue attending public school as children’s entertainers.” Seungjae says. “And it certainly wouldn’t be practical to travel to and from Gwangju everyday.” He tries, again, to move on, but Cairo speaks quicker than him this time.

“It’s just that I promised my mom that I’d finish school,” he says. “It was kinda my one condition to even be allowed to come train here. It’s a really big deal to her that I get good grades, and stuff.”

Seungjae sighs, tucking his hands under his chin. “I’m sure her perspective will change once she sees that you do have a future ahead of you in this industry. Mothers forgive, Cairo. This is your career we’re talking about. Isn’t that all grades, ‘and stuff,’ are for?”

For a few seconds, Cairo tries to come up with an argument, but he knows it’s a losing battle. “Yes, sir.” He says, a little more solemnly than he means.

“Honestly, boys.” Seungjae scoffs. “I’ve had trainees cry tears of joy at this kind of news. Aren’t you happy to be debuting?”

“Yes, sir!” Ohyeon says, painting a wide smile on his face, and bowing deeply in his chair. So Cairo mimics him, and begins to just accept things.

AGE FOURTEEN.

Ohyeon is alright, actually. Cairo finds himself growing fond of him, and although Ohyeon doesn’t seem to want to admit it, he seems to eventually come around to reciprocating the good will. It’s a good thing, too, because they spend the better part of the next year of their lives locked in dance studios together, or trying to outsing one another in vocal training, or sending each other silent signals in classes on how to act, how an idol should behave.

And then there’s the English lessons.

“You should already know all of this, though.” Cairo complains, wrapping his head in his hands. They’re sitting in the living room of the dorm they share with one of their managers, trying their hardest to complete the English homework they’d been assigned for the next morning- it’s 3am, and it’s safe to say they’d forgotten about it. Ohyeon had remembered in a panicked dream and shaken Cairo awake frantically.

“Why should I?” Ohyeon demands, sounding a little bit indignant, and Cairo gives him a pointed look of judgment.

“You’re the one who’s always talking about how your grandparents live in France!”

“Yeah, where they speak French, genius.” he frowns. “You’re the one with an English name.”

“My parents just think they’re fancy. It’s weird to be called Cairo in English too. It’s just a place in Egypt.”

“I’m sure the people of Cairo wouldn’t like for it to be called ‘just’ a place. You should be proud of your name.” Ohyeon tuts, shaking his head sarcastically. “What kind of child talks bad about the name his parents gave him? Their first ever gift to their first ever son?”

Cairo snorts, tossing his pen at Ohyeon. It bounces off of his head, and he laughs too. “Well, they didn’t have to give me one that makes me sound like a faggot.”

Very quickly, Ohyeon stops laughing. He offers one last weak snort and returns his focus to his textbooks. A few seconds pass, and though he’s not entirely sure what he did wrong, there’s an apology wriggling it’s way up Cairo’s throat, but fortunately Ohyeon speaks first. “Anyway, I don’t even speak any French. I mean, I know, like, ‘bonjour,’ but that’s about it. I haven’t been to France, I’ve never even left Seoul.”

“You’ve never left Seoul?” Cairo asks, bewildered by the idea of that. Ohyeon looks up from his workbook with a hesitant expression, and Cairo worries he’s said something wrong again already. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it in a bad way. But you’ve never even been to, like, Busan? Been on vacation to Jeju?”

Ohyeon blinks. “No,” he says simply. “We don’t have any money.”

Cairo shuts his mouth, ducking his head as a pang of guilt resonates through his insides. It still doesn’t really make any sense to him; how much could a day trip to Busan really cost? However, he doesn’t really feel like it’s okay to keep asking questions.

“Oh. Sorry,” Cairo says.

“Don’t be,” Ohyeon sighs, flipping his workbook over and starting on the next page. Cairo is still lagging behind; he may have seen more of the world, but apparently that meant nothing when it came to picking up on English vocabulary. “It’s not like someone took it from us. We never had it.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Cairo asks, “Or did you always wanna be an idol?”

“I always wanted to make music,” Ohyeon answers, pursing his lips as he really thinks about it. “But I guess my mom does have this fantasy that I’ll dance us out of poverty. I started with guitar, so I always imagined I’d be playing in a band, or something.”

“So like, polar opposite from making pop music for kids, right?” Cairo asks, with a knowing grin. He hadn’t been majorly excited by the idea himself, but his parents had drilled it into his head by now; You still need to work even when you don’t want to. It was more important to release records under a label like HMT, who people actually tune in for, than it was for him to think those records were any good.

“Well, I guess. But we’re the right age to do stuff like that. If we do it well, it could be a good stepping stone to being real artists when we grow up. All the American pop singers start out making kids’ stuff.”

For some reason, something about the words ‘stepping stone’ rub Cairo the wrong way. With all the talks and meetings about how their life was going to change, there was a level of permanence that Cairo had felt about the two of them. “Kind of a pessimistic way of looking at it, right? What if people still wanna hear music from us when we’re, like, old and twenty-five?”

Ohyeon laughs. “Trust me, dude. We’ll last till one of our voices breaks, then we move onto whatever their real plan is.”

“Would it be so bad if the duo was the real plan, though?” Cairo asks, feeling stupid the second he does.

Ohyeon looks at him a little weirdly. “I guess it depends on how bad our songs are.”

“Anyway, my voice has already started to break,” Cairo lies. Ohyeon turns his attention back to his workbook, snorting softly with a little quirk of his neck.

“Well, fuck.” He says, flatly. “Don’t tell them that.”

AGE FIFTEEN.

“Where did you get that?” Ohyeon asks, staring at the little cylinder between Cairo’s fingers as if it was made of solid gold.

“A guy from some group called Hysterical or something gave it to me.” Cairo says, smugly. “I can’t remember his name. Timmy, or something. Big tall dude with the ears.”

Ohyeon shrugs. “What, he just gave it to you for free?”

“Yeah, I saw him messing around with his lighter so I just went up to him and asked if he had any.” Cairo grins. When he thinks about his friends from school, who he heard all sorts of stories about nowadays, he feels kind of juvenile to be getting excited about a cigarette. Still, it felt exciting, to do wrong again. He can't remember the last time he misbehaved or did something he wasn’t supposed to do. “He said he was going to give me one because I’m cute, but not to ask him again because he knows what age I am and he’d tell our managers.”

Ohyeon scrunches his face up. “He said you were cute?” Cairo nods, and Ohyeon frowns. “In like, a ‘sunbaenim’ way, or a creepy way?”

There’s an uneasy feeling in the pit of Cairo’s stomach as he thinks back and realizes that he can’t quite tell. He shakes it off with a shrug. “Who cares? I got the cigarette. You were the one who wanted to try it, remember?”

“But he’s like, an adult, right? He’s not our age?” Ohyeon presses.

“Relax, dude,” Cairo frowns, too. “I’m not going near that guy again, anyway. You can tell from his voice he’s a fag.”

Ohyeon blinks, his face falling. “Well,” he says, “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

Cairo laughs. “Either way, I’m not trying to get felt up. Anyway, do you want the fucking cigarette or not?”

Ohyeon shuffles awkwardly, and most of the fun has drained out of the situation already, but to his credit he nods and reaches out to pluck the cylinder from Cairo’s fingers. Cairo digs the lighter he’d swiped from the convenience store out of his pocket and tosses it to him.

Ohyeon takes a nervous look around the parking lot, although nobody is out here. A bubbly girl group song blasts inside; STK had completed their performance for the day, but Music Bank was still in the swing of recording, and they had to stick around until the very end to watch someone else win a trophy. Cairo’s not sure if they can be blamed for finding increasingly pathetic ways to entertain themselves; after all, so little of being an idol was as glamorous as promised and so much of it was sitting in the back of vans or twiddling his thumbs in waiting rooms. He can understand where Ohyeon’s desires are stemming from, as he watches him raise the cigarette to his lips. There was a part of Cairo that wants it too, to disobey just to disobey, to let himself get pissed off at all of the rules and regulations. But he knows that he’s not going to accept when Ohyeon tries to pass it to him. Enabling another person is release enough.

Ohyeon inhales way too deep for his first try. It gets stuck in his throat and forces its way back out in a spectacular round of coughing. He doubles over, one hand clutching at his side, and the other waving the offending cigarette in his face.

“You think I’m trying it after that?” Cairo jumps at the excuse, taking a couple of steps backwards. Ohyeon, beginning to compose himself, frowns deeply at him as he thrusts his hand further in his face.

“No way, I tried! Don’t be a pussy.”

“C’mon, Ohyeon, just put it out-”

Almost like a scene from a television programme, the thin metal doors leading into the broadcasting station push open with a clatter, leaving Cairo and Ohyeon frozen mid-argument, heads craning around slowly to find their manager in the doorway, a look of fury in his eyes as he registers what he’s looking at.

Cairo gulps, and takes another step away from Ohyeon.

“Are you fucking stupid? Out in the open, where anybody could see you! Are you getting desperate? You wanted to cause a scandal? You wanted to make a fool out of everyone who’s worked hard to get you to places like this in the first place?”

In the corner of the dressing room, Cairo hangs his head, though he’s not the one getting in trouble.

“Nobody saw me, though.” Ohyeon counters from next to him, keeping his neck stiff. Cairo isn’t sure what his problem is, but it doesn’t shock him when the sound of their manager’s palm strikes Ohyeon’s cheek.

“Keep your eyes down.” He spits. “You know for sure that nobody saw? Huh? You don’t know by now that people will hide and wait for you to screw up?”

“I don’t get why I'm the only one being scolded.” Ohyeon says, peering up at the manager through his fringed hair even as he drops his head.

“Cairo refused, I heard it myself.”

“He’s the one who got the cigarette in the first place! He got it from Hysterical Tim, or whatever the fuck his-“

“What did you just say?” The manager interrupts. Cairo swallows, staring down at the clunky, ridiculously expensive sneakers he’s about to give back and never see again, and waits for the sound of another slap. It comes sharper and meaner than he expected, and Ohyeon yelps out in pain. “Have you gone insane? You’re smoking, you’re talking nonsense, you’re cursing - Do you think you’re successful, or something?” Another slap. “Have you forgotten every one of your teammate’s fans is desperate for him to go solo and get away from you?” Another. “Have you forgotten that we had to deal with a petition with hundreds of thousands of signatures asking us to drop you from this label?” The next slap is harder still. He must have got him right on the cheekbone, or something. Even Cairo’s ear’s ring.

Cairo closes his eyes. It’s not nice to hear, but he can’t help but wonder what Ohyeon thinks he’s doing. They’d both known that if they were seen smoking, they’d get in trouble. They’d both decided to do it anyway. And as much as it’s true that HMT shouldn’t hit them, they both very well know that they will. It’s an injustice when it’s uncalled for, but Ohyeon is purposefully talking back. Cairo wants to tell Ohyeon to shut up, to just hang his head and take the row so it can be over, but in all honesty, he’s scared to even move.

It won’t really occur to him until he’s much older, that of the entire team of adults present in the room with them, Cairo is certainly not the only person here who can help. Obviously, none of them do.

Cairo hears Ohyeon let out a sob, and shuts his eyes even tighter.

“There’s the Park Ohyeon we’re used to,” The manager says condescendingly. “Don’t ever speak like that to a member of staff again. If you want to act like a diva, then next time you get on stage, make a couple people like you.”

A few seconds tick by at the rate of hours, then Ohyeon mutters, “Yes, sir.”

“Get changed and give your clothes back to Jangmi-ssi.” The manager says, in a firm tone of voice that still carries the implication that he’s letting them get away with it, or something. They bow gingerly, and as they shuffle behind the screens to change, he retires to the sofa and loudly complains about Ohyeon’s attitude as if Ohyeon isn’t four feet away.

Ohyeon finishes changing first, and as he disappears back beyond the plastic screen, Cairo hears the bells and whistles of his stage costume clatter down on the table Jangmi, their stylist, had gotten set up at.

“Where are you going?” Comes the manager’s gruff voice. “We’re heading back as soon as Cairo’s done-“

“I need to use the bathroom.” Ohyeon interrupts, informally, the door slamming shut before the manager can react.

“That fucking kid…”

Cairo zips up his hoodie, scooping his stage clothes up from their pile on the floor and waddling out from behind the screen, the linoleum floor uncomfortably cold in only his socks. As he passes the manager, a foot kicks out in front of him, stopping him from going further.

“Did you really give him the cigarette?” The manager asks.

Cairo worries his bottom lip between his teeth. He lies and shakes his head no. He knows he’s a coward. He feels about ten centimeters tall. But he really doesn’t want to get hit.

“That fucking little rat. Don’t let him drag you down with him.”

“Yes, sir,” Cairo says, thinking he’d deserve it if he were struck down by God right now.

The manager’s foot is retracted, and Cairo goes to place his clothes among Ohyeon’s.

“Thank you for your hard work today, noona.” He says as Jangmi begins to fold his clothes up. She looks up at him and gives him a cheerful smile, eyes crinkling. “We looked really cool.”

“Thank you, Cairo.” She says, reaching over her station to give his shoulder a little shove. “You guys did great today.”

He bows politely, lingering around as she tucks his sneakers back into their box, re-wrapping them as if they’d never been worn at all. Part of him wants to go find Ohyeon, but a bigger part can’t bring himself to face him at all. Yet, sitting and waiting for him in this atmosphere was no more pleasant.

“Would you like some help putting everything away?” He asks Jangmi, and she gives him another warm grim.

“That’s okay, Cairo. You’re finished work for the day.”

“Cairo.” The manager snaps, out of nowhere. “Stop flirting and sit down somewhere. You’re pissing me off, hovering around like that.”

Cairo feels his face flush red. “I wasn’t-“

“He wasn’t flirting,” Jangmi tuts, playfully. “He’s just a gentleman.” She reaches out to pinch Cairo’s cheek between her knuckles, and he flinches away with a start. She frowns, apologetically, but doesn’t say anything more.

The door slides open again, and Cairo thinks he’s been rescued from the embarrassment until he turns around and it’s not Ohyeon standing in the frame. Instead, a stressed out intern with a phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder thrusts two trays of takeout coffee into his arms, setting back off down the corridor in a flurry of hand motions and half-sentences Cairo doesn’t understand.

Before he can even make sense of what just happened, the staff flock around him like hungry seagulls, plucking each plastic cup from it’s cardboard until only one remains.

It’s not for Cairo. The manager just expects Cairo to bring it to him.

“Is it hot?” He asks. Cairo wraps his hand around the cup and nods his head yes. “Sugar?” The manager’s eyebrows raise. There’s a sachet of sugar on top of the cup. Cairo lifts it up and shows it to him. “I take my coffee with sugar.” The manager reiterates.

Cairo smiles tightly. “Yes, sir.” He says, placing the coffee down on Jangmi’s table and popping the lid off it. He wonders, briefly, if Timmy from Hysterical has to prepare his manager’s coffee.

“So were you just being a ‘gentleman’ when you were chatting up Bouquet this morning?” The manager asks. Cairo winces.

“One of those girls was in my class at school.” He says. “I just wanted to tell her congratulations on her debut. Her song is really good.”

“Right. If she was you guys’ classmate, didn’t the other one want to say hello to her?”

“Ohyeon and I didn’t get along with the same people in school.”

“That’s no surprise, is it?” The manager scoffs. Cairo bites his tongue. “Look, don’t you start getting involved with girls, okay? My job is hard enough as it is thanks to Park Ohyeon.”

“Yes, sir.” Cairo says, ripping the sachet open and pouring the sugar in. He leaves the lid behind as he picks up the cup, trying his best to force his hand not to shake.

“How that kid got cast in the first place is a mystery. How’d they expect him to behave? No dad and his mom is a junkie. It’s just asking for trouble.”

Cairo keeps his head down, and just walks forward.

“If you’re gonna work with kids, you have to account for the fact they’ll act like kids sometimes.” Jangmi pipes up. “I think you took it too far, today. He smoked a cigarette cause he’s fifteen and the only thing you guys ever do is give him restrictions.”

“Last I checked, I signed up to work in artist management, not childcare.” The manager says. “That kid looks at me with such hate in his eyes. It felt good to smack him.”

When Cairo’s at his last footstep towards the couch, he kicks his left foot out and drives his big toe into it’s leg. “Ouch!” He yells out, a little too stiff to be anything other than performance, and bends forward on impact, tipping the coffee cup upside down and pouring it’s boiling contents straight into his manager’s lap.

He doesn’t know what possessed him to do it, just that he and Ohyeon shouldn’t be treated the way they are, and it made him mad. When the manager springs out of seat with a howl, red faced and furious, Cairo springs straight away into a flurry of bows and apologies, working himself up to tears as the gravity sets in on what he’d just done. As he begs for forgiveness, Jangmi backs him up; claims she saw the whole thing and it was indisputably an accident.

But Cairo still goes home with a black eye, and when he says goodnight to Ohyeon he gets no response. And even though nobody knows about the cellphone he keeps hidden under his mattress, he tosses the little piece of paper in his pocket in the wastebin without saving the girl from Bouquet’s number.

STK lasts another week.

AGE SEVENTEEN.

“No, honestly, it’s fine.” Cairo says into his phone. “I’ll eat here.”

There’s a swollen silence in the car; he’s not sure if the others can hear his dad’s response through it. Nobody’s really said anything at all.

“I said I'm fine.” He says, a little too curtly. From the driver’s seat, he feels Kyung cutting eyes at him. He draws his shoulders in slightly, making himself smaller, and looks out the window. “I'm just going to stay up studying with Ohyeon. His mom will drive us to the exam tomorrow. — Yeah. — Okay. — Mhm. — Yes, dad, I'll text you after. It’ll be fine, I'm actually feeling pretty confident. — I'm not just saying that. — I mean... whatever. — Yeah. — Bye. — You too.”

He hangs up his phone and drops it into his lap. It's dark enough outside that the car window may as well be a mirror, and he sees it when Kyung, one of the older trainees and the only friend Cairo had who owned a car, opens his mouth to say something. It looks like it’s going to be a question, so Cairo pulls his hood up and settles his head against the window, eyes fluttering shut. Kyung must take the hint, because the car inflates once more with silence.

“Thanks for coming to get us.” Ohyeon says, some minutes after. Cairo keeps his eyes closed. Kyung doesn’t respond straight away; as if he’s formulating the words first.

“It's okay.” He says. This time, it doesn’t sound like a question is coming. He must be curious, though - neither of them had offered any explanation for the current state they’re in; and Ohyeon’s call had been hasty. Panicked. Cairo’s eyes creak open. His finger traces over the scrape on his knee; through a hole busted out of his school slacks.

Neither of them really want to talk about it. Through the rearview mirror, Cairo can see Ohyeon in the seat behind him. A bruise is already blossoming underneath his eye. Ohyeon had grown into a face that anything could look pretty on. Cairo had painted bruises onto Ohyeon’s face before; makeup for a school play. He'd joked about how it made him look rugged and sexy. Not when it’s a real bruise. Ohyeon is a nice kid, and not for the first time, Cairo wonders what he’s gotten him into. He looks away quickly.

Kyung pulls up outside of Ohyeon’s apartment building. For a minute, nobody moves, but as Cairo goes to unbuckle his seatbelt, Kyung clears his throat uncomfortably.

“I-” Cairo starts, though Kyung cuts him off with a shake of his head.

“I can pretend to be a parent on the phone. Vouch for you guys.” He says. “If you want to call in sick tomorrow. I'll pretend I gave you both food poisoning.”

“It's the exam.” Ohyeon cuts in, unbuckling his seatbelt and sliding into the middle seat, stationed between them. He runs a hand through his hair, slumping back against the fabric seats of Kyung’s hand-me-down car. He worries his bottom lip for a second. Cairo looks at him through the mirror, sees him mentally weigh up his options. “If we don’t show up, that’s that. No university.”

“Thanks anyway.” Cairo says shortly, unbuckling his seatbelt and pulling the car door open. Ohyeon hangs back even as Cairo slams the door shut. He knows he’s being rude. Usually he’d try not to. He walks the length of the front garden outside Ohyeon’s apartment complex; and turns and rests against the doorframe. Kyung and Ohyeon discuss something in the car with serious expressions on their faces, and Cairo reaches into the school blazer he’s wearing over his hoodie and pulls out a half empty carton of cigarettes and a lighter.

By the time Ohyeon gets out of the car, Cairo’s smoked half of a cigarette. It’s plucked from his lips when Ohyeon reaches him, stubbed prematurely out beneath the boy’s shoe. “Hypocrite.” He mutters quietly, unlocking the door and pushing in.

“Your friend is gonna pick us up in the morning.” Ohyeon says as they finish the silent hike up to his floor. As soon as they enter his family’s apartment, he shrugs off his blazer, making his way to the small laundry room. Cairo follows. “My mom is... you know. She’s gone again.”

Cairo just makes a noise. It’s not that he doesn’t know what to say; it’s that he knows to say nothing. Ohyeon doesn’t like to talk about it. “That's nice of him.” he says, instead. Ohyeon hums.

“Yeah. Maybe you could thank him for it this time.” Ohyeon says, but there’s no real bite to it. Cairo just shrugs, looking back down at his fingernails. Ohyeon begins to pull off his shirt. Blood had dropped down from his burst lip, dotted it in red that’s already starting to dry a little brownish. “Give me your clothes.” He says as he tosses it, alongside his blazer, into the washing machine. He stands up to strip from his slacks, and Cairo empties his pockets before stripping down to his underwear too.

Usually, it was him doing all the talking, and Ohyeon was the quiet one. but this is just how they deal with things. Cairo shuts off and Ohyeon grasps for control.

Ohyeon sighs as he notices the hole in Cairo's pants. he sets them to one side, and Cairo feels a little stupid hanging around in his underwear, so he takes his phone from his pile of things, tucks it into his waistband, and goes to Ohyeon’s room to wait. He detours by the kitchen first, though, and snatches a bag of frozen french fries from the freezer on his way.

He stands in front of the slim, full length mirror on Ohyeon’s wall, and he’s only trying to look at the scrape on his knee, but he notices bruises developing all up his side. He hadn’t expected them to be there. They don’t hurt until he touches them, and then he can’t forget they’re there. He rifles through Ohyeon’s top drawer and pulls out a pair of fluffy, Super Mario print pyjama bottoms. At the sight of them, for the first time tonight, Cairo smiles a little, so he puts them on. They sit high above his ankles, but there’s nothing to be done about that.

Ohyeon enters the bedroom with Cairo’s pants over his arm. Cairo throws the bag of french fries to him. He isn’t great at aiming at the best of times, and he misses his shot. They land somewhere behind Ohyeon. It would have probably been funny if Cairo was in a better mood. “Your face is gonna swell up.” He says as Ohyeon bends down to pick it up.

Ohyeon holds the bag to his cheek silently, dropping the trousers onto the floor as he goes to rifle through his drawers, one-handedly searching for something. Cairo sits on the bed and takes his phone from his boxers. Kyung has texted him, ‘I’m always here.’ It promises. Cairo will reply with a message of gratitude when, no doubt, he rereads it later and feels gratitude. Right now, he simply reads it. One of his classmates has also sent him a message, telling him to kick ass tomorrow with a fist emoji and a thousand thumbs up. awful timing, nice sentiment. Cairo sends him a thumbs up in return.

“Hold this up for me.” Ohyeon says, and Cairo looks up from his phone to see the blurry list of ingredients in french fries. He takes the bag and Ohyeon, now dressed in a matching pyjama set with a button-up shirt and everything, turns around only to sit down between his legs. Cairo leans his chin on Ohyeon's shoulder- the side of his face that isn’t hurt. Ohyeon must have been looking for a sewing kit; because he’s already turned Cairo’s pants inside out, attempting to sew closed the tear. Gingerly, Cairo holds the fries up to Ohyeon’s face. Impatiently, Ohyeon leans his head into it, as if to assure Cairo it doesn’t hurt.

And they sit there. Ohyeon sews, occasionally muttering under his breath or jabbing himself in the fingertip, and Cairo holds the frozen fries until his hand goes completely numb. And neither of them say a word to each other until Ohyeon breaks the thread with his teeth.

He turns the pants back the right way around; and Cairo feels him physically deflate at the very obvious seam he’s stitched into the knee of the slacks. Cairo doesn’t know what Ohyeon expected, but even he’s not tactless enough to ask. “Shit.” Ohyeon says.

And it’s with that he crumbles, tossing the pants onto the floor and dissolving into a mess of tears. “I don't know how to do this.” He sobs, and he’s talking about sewing, but also about everything else in the world. Cairo puts the fries down and gently moves to sit beside him, wrapping his arms around him and pulling him close. He rubs his hand up and down Ohyeon’s back, fingers gently scratching the top of his nape. And he feels himself choke up, but he doesn’t let himself cry; because he doesn't do that and he’d already let Ohyeon take control and try to be strong and now it was his turn.

“But you did it.” Cairo says, in a hushed tone. “You fixed it.”

“Not properly.” Ohyeon hiccups.

And Cairo says, “It’ll do for now.”

AGE EIGHTEEN.

Cairo’s muscles are on fire; jolts of pain shooting up his legs each time his battered sneakers stomp down onto the wooden floor. Which is disproportionately often, because he’s running through the same outro to SHINee’s Sherlock for what has to be the fortieth time in the past hour.

“Stop,” The choreographer barks. The gaggle of boys gathered in the dance studio collectively groan. Cairo can’t join them in that, for a few different reasons, and so he keeps his expression stony as he stares past his instructor, into his own reflection in the mirror. It feels like he’s straining his body just to stay upright. Sweat plasters his hair to his forehead, his chest rising and falling quick and irregular. For a second, as he notices that there’s no pattern to the breaths he’s taking, he begins to panic, wondering if he’s about to pass out. He realizes that he can feel his heartbeat in his ears and he can’t remember if that’s a sign of a heart attack or a stroke or neither, and then a disembodied voice yells out ‘Again!’ again, so his body just starts to move.

He doesn’t look back to Ohyeon, though he knows he’s the one messing up. He doesn’t look at any of the other boys, either, though he knows they probably hate him right now. They’d been a well-oiled machine. Ohyeon may be the spanner, but Cairo had thrown it. He keeps his eyes on his own reflection, and looks at his angles, the placement of his feet, the distance between where he is now and where he needs to be in three seconds. All mathematics and nothing emotional or poetic.

“Stop!” Is once more called before the end of the section. The music cuts out abruptly. “Everyone take a break. Ohyeon, stay there.”

A mixture of dread and guilt settles in Cairo’s stomach, and he wishes he could say it’s unfamiliar. This was far from the first time Ohyeon had been singled out since he started training, and Cairo knows what’s coming.

As everyone collapses along the benches of the room, Cairo lingers, turning to the instructor with an apprehensive smile. “Sir, I can help Ohyeon, I think I know what the problem is-”

“Go sit down.” The instructor dismisses, barely throwing him a glance.

“But I think I can help, so-” As he’s protesting, the instructor lifts his hand, and before he realizes what he’s doing, Cairo flinches. The hand finishes its journey, fixing the flicked up edge of the collar of the instructor’s polo-shirt. He fixes Cairo with a firm look, and he knows to shut up, bowing his head and pretending like his knees don’t feel as if they’re being pulled apart as he bends to sit down on the bench.

The instructor takes a few paces forward, stopping in front of a nervous looking Ohyeon. His eyes dart around the room and eventually settle on Cairo, who wants to look away but can’t. He just hold’s Ohyeon’s stare, trying not to scare him even more by looking nervous.

“One… two…” The instructor begins to count for Ohyeon, but Ohyeon doesn’t pick up the hint. Instead, he just stands like a deer in the headlights, staring dumbly at the instructor with his lips parted.

“What?” He asks, panicked, as the instructor passes four and a look of irritation grows on his face. “I don’t know what you-”

“Hey, Kim Ohyeon, are you slow or something?” The instructor asks. Ohyeon just blinks up at him, too put on the spot to use rational thought and figure out what he was being told to do. “You’re at dance practice. I want you to fucking dance. One. Two…”

This time, Ohyeon begins to sloppily cycle through the choreography. His limbs tremble with nerves and he can’t pick a spot to train his eyes on, so his balance is thrown. It doesn’t take a full count for him to mess up, misplacing his foot. It lands clumsy and twists his ankle in a direction it shouldn’t go, and he yelps in pain.

Nobody asks if Ohyeon is okay, nor do they show any emotion at all. Cairo, along with the rest of the boys, just look on. It’s not like Ohyeon is given a moment to dwell on his ankle anyway. With a sick crack, the instructor’s palm strikes across Ohyeon’s cheek. It lands with such force that it topples him over, overtired and weak to begin with, and he crumples to the floor.

“Get up.” The instructor spits. Ohyeon stares down at the wooden floor for a few seconds, breathing deeply through his nose. He stands, staring back at the instructor with a rageful look on his boyish face, jaw jutting out. It’s ill-fitting on him, he’s as intimidating as a vengeful toddler, but it seems to piss the instructor off all the same. The count starts again, and this time Ohyeon makes it through one count, even though each time he plants a foot down Cairo can see him grimace and hear him wince. It’s a pathetic display, but he’s doing it.

The instructor starts back from one, and Ohyeon is somehow taken off guard by that, a moment’s hesitation pulls him out of time and he starts to lag behind. The instructor lets him hit one move late, but when the next goes the same way, his fist drives out and strikes Ohyeon dead in the stomach.

Beside Cairo, one of the other newer boys takes in a shaky breath of surprise. Cairo doesn’t. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before.

Ohyeon doubles over, clutching at his abdomen and groaning in pain.

“Straighten up.” The instructor barks.

“I can’t.” Ohyeon wheezes out, choking on his words. He’s winded. Cairo suddenly feels something catch in his throat, as if someone had reached down and pulled him from the thick, viscous sludge of his own blankness. The guilt crashes all at once, because he did this. He brought him here. Ohyeon has yet to look up from the floor, and the edges of his words are ragged and pushed out. “Please, I can’t.”

The instructor rolls his neck, looking towards Cairo pointedly. “You, you think you know how to help. Why don’t you tell us what’s wrong with him?”

Cairo splutters, shaking his hands no, but every pair of eyes in the room turn to look at him, and the face the instructor is making tells him that if he doesn’t speak now, he’ll be in for the exact same fate. “Uh.” He sighs a heavy sigh, one of defeat, and says, “Well, I think… um, I think that maybe he’s struggling to keep rhythm. Because there was a similar issue in-”

“See that, Ohyeon? Your friend says you have no sense of rhythm. Straighten up and do it again.”

Cairo winces at the way his words are twisted. He’d tried his best to word it gently, but he should have known what trap he was being led into. Ohyeon’s head snaps around and he glares at Cairo. There’s a wealth of emotion in there that Cairo doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to fully understand. Cairo wants to say sorry, he wants to stick up for Ohyeon, to push himself off of the bench and sock the dance instructor clean in the face. But even if his legs didn’t feel like they were made of lead, he wouldn’t be able to. He’s not even fully sure why. Maybe he just doesn’t have the balls to. He should have kept his mouth shut and taken the beating.

With a jagged wince of pain, Ohyeon stands as straight as he can manage, his bottom lip trembling as he tries to keep his composure. That same petulant look remains in his eyes, puffy, red and pathetic but not betraying his anger for a second. All of the color in his face has drained away. He looks dead on his feet.

“One…” The instructor starts.

Ohyeon doesn’t even make it to two. He has to move his body quickly, and when he does, he immediately lurches forward, hunching over and emptying his stomach out onto the shiny laminate flooring.

The smell hits Cairo’s nose straight away, churning his own stomach. He wants to look away but he can’t bring himself even to move his eyes. One of the other boys; Chiwon, he’d been here the longest out of everyone. He makes a noise that’s somewhere between a laugh and a wretch of his own.

“Fuck, Ohyeon,” he groans. “It stunk enough in here already.”

The instructor just stares on, face unreadable. For a second, Cairo begins to fear that he’s going to do something truly terrible, but he just sighs, looking back to Cairo.

“Take him back to the dorm.” He says, exasperated. The fact that he’d see this as an annoyance is as surprising as his complete lack of concern.

Ohyeon had squatted down, burying his face in his hands. Cairo approaches him slowly, doing his best not to react as the gets closer to the foul smell, leaning down and rubbing a hand along Ohyeon’s back.

“Can you stand?” He asks, quietly, only for Ohyeon to hear. Ohyeon nods. He glances at Cairo, and Cairo catches sight of his bottom lip trembling. “Don’t cry,” he all but whispers, rubbing a circle onto Ohyeon’s back. “Hold it in, trust me.”

Ohyeon pushes himself onto his knees, huffing quietly as Cairo scrambled to try and help him up in the process.

“I’m fine,” He mutters, voice warping, as he gets himself to his feet, shoving Cairo off of him. He pushes past him, wobbling out of the practice room with a painful hunch and little dignity.

As soon as the heavy door slams shut, Chiwon breaks out into a snicker. “Your boyfriend really can’t dance for shit, Cairo.”

Cairo does his best to keep his expression level and not smash Chiwon’s face in. He ignores him, following Ohyeon out into the hall.

He hears a slam down the corridor, and it’s obvious that Ohyeon has fled to the bathroom. On his way after him, Cairo stops in front of one of the forbidden vending machines, right outside the bathroom door. He’s not allowed to eat nor drink anything they carry, but the trainers aren’t really allowed to hit them, either, and so he buys a can of Coca-Cola. As it thunks loudly to the bottom of the machine, he hears a muffled scoff over the sound of running water, and laughs quietly to himself even though nothing is very funny at all.

He finds Ohyeon in the bathroom, swirling water around his mouth and spitting it back out with tears streaming down his cheeks. It’s charitable to call it a room; it’s more like a closet with a toilet and a sink in it, and a lock on the door that jams half of the times you use it and leaves you trapped and banging on the door for help.

Ohyeon turns to look at him, and frowns. “You stopped to get a drink?” He asks, scathingly, despite having declined help in the first place.

“It’s for you, dumbass.” Cairo says, stepping properly into the room.

Ohyeon scrunches his face up and turns back to the mirror. “Yeah, I’m really not thirsty.”

Cairo snorts, taking Ohyeon by the shoulder and twisting him around to face him. As delicately as he can manage, he wipes his tears away with the sleeve of his ratty old hoodie and holds the cold Coke can up to Ohyeon’s reddening cheek. “Dumbass.” He reiterates.

“Why did you suggest I replace Kyung-nim?” Ohyeon asks. “I wasn’t even that good at dancing as a kid.”

Cairo doesn’t have to think about it. “We needed a really good singer.”

Ohyeon rolls his eyes. “You have Lee Bohyung.”

Cairo laughs. “Yeah, but even he can’t make up for Chiwon and me alone.”

Ohyeon meets Cairo’s eyes as he laughs. A few beats pass before he talks again.

“Isn’t it kinda funny how wherever I follow you, I get beaten up?” Ohyeon says, offering a smile up to Cairo that doesn’t meet his eyes. His voice is small, so quiet that it doesn’t even echo off the bathroom walls.

“You keep on following, though.” Cairo says, softly rolling the Coke can against Ohyeon’s cheek, just by a few centimeters, to where it somehow felt colder on his fingertips. It’s so cold that it’s starting to hurt his hand, but he doesn’t move an inch. He’s not sure why, but he's trying to keep his voice low too, although it rumbles uncomfortably in his throat and the bass still reverbs against the cold, empty walls. He’s never known how to be gentle like Ohyeon. “You in love with me, or something?”

The words are clumsy. Run through no filter and only said in good fun. For some reason, though, there’s a weird heaviness to them. Ohyeon looks up at him for a few seconds, through his big eyes, and Cairo suddenly feels aware of him in a way that he never had. Aware of how close they were standing to each other, of how isolated they are, how easy it would be right now; for them to do something that nobody would ever find out about.

Ohyeon reaches up, and plucks the Coke can out of Cairo’s hand. He turns back around, holding the chilled metal back up to his blooming bruise, and answers Cairo through the mirror.

“I just get homesick without you.”

AGE NINETEEN.

“Yo, Cairo,” Ohyeon says, knocking his shoulder against Cairo’s. He stumbles to the side as he walks. He’s been swaying to and fro the whole way- Cairo had hoped that the crisp air of nighttime would sober him up a little, but that seems to be a losing battle. “Y’know what’s funny?”

Cairo doesn’t ask. Ohyeon’s footsteps are sloppy and a part of him wants to reach out to steady him, but he’s decided to let Ohyeon sleep in the bed he’s made. Experience has proven that when he falls, he’s going to take Cairo down with him.

“C’mon,” He huffs. Cairo turns to look at him. His cheeks are rosy from the cold. He’d refused to take a jacket and his loose fitting t-shirt offers no insulation. It’d trigger some kind of sympathy if Cairo didn’t feel so smug about the warmth of his favorite parka, which Ohyeon had spent about five minutes chiding for being boring and unfashionable. “Don’t ignore me.”

“It’d better actually be funny, then.” Cairo says.

“It’s not, like, actually funny. But, like, it’s a weird… thing.” Ohyeon talks with his hands a lot now. He’d started it kind of recently, or maybe Cairo had only just taken notice of it. It’s annoying.

“Fine, what?” Cairo says. He’s not being cold on purpose, maybe he wouldn’t have minded being called in the middle of the night to find a drunk and lost Ohyeon if he’d at least been met with an apology, but Ohyeon was yet to show any remorse at all.

“I just always thought that I would be like… I dunno. The one who did well at this.”

Cairo stops walking, his eyebrow quirking upwards. It takes a second for Ohyeon to notice - he takes another wobbly step before he twists around, a confused look on his face.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cairo asks, feeling a spike of indignation. Something pathetic lurks in the bottom of his stomach.

Ohyeon doesn’t seem to pick up on any offense, and shrugs his shoulders. “Y’know. Performing, and stuff. I guess before STK, I just assumed I’d be better at it than you. Does that make me a dick?”

Cairo reaches into the deep pocket of his parka and pulls out his carton of cigarettes. Ohyeon rolls his eyes and hugs himself, but Cairo lets him suffer in the cold as he lights up his cigarette. He takes a draw before he moves forward again, passing Ohyeon, though he soon stumbles into step.

“Yeah, kinda.” Cairo says. It sounds way more defensive than he thinks he meant it to, and he feels embarrassment creeping up the back of his neck. It’s just a stupid thing to ask, really.

“I mean…” Ohyeon trails off. “Look, I’m not saying I don’t think you’re good. You’re way better than me. It’s just that in school… no offense, but you weren’t a very good student. And I was. So I guess I just...”

“I’m still waiting for the punchline, Ohyeon.”

“Right,” Ohyeon nods in recollection, bashfully scratching at the back of his head. “Yeah, sorry, I guess it’s not very funny after all.”

“So that’s why you’re out getting wasted on a Thursday night? Cause you’re not top of the class anymore?”

“It’s just hard. Having it all dangle on a thread like this.” Ohyeon sighs.

“Yeah, it fucking sucks.” Cairo concurs bluntly, shrugging his shoulders. “But you just have to get on with it. We’re putting hard work in now cause we’ll be rich and famous later.”

“Yeah, sure,” Ohyeon says, a little curtly. He wanders out a bit too far into the road for Cairo’s liking, and Cairo breaks resolve to catch the sleeve of Ohyeon’s t-shirt between his fingers and pull him back up onto the pavement. He continues talking as if nothing had happened. “All of our coaches said training was hard, but it’d be worth it when we debuted. Now that we’ve debuted, it’s like, the rookie years are always tough, but we’ll reap the benefits later if we work hard enough. So later, when it’s time to reap them, is that when it’s gonna be fun? Will it ever be fun? Will we even last that long?”

“If you’re not having fun, maybe it’s just not for you.”

Ohyeon’s head lolls up to look at him, fixing him with a scowl. “You are so brainwashed, dude.” He says.

“I’m not,” Cairo says, pushing out a laugh to disguise the twang of offense in his tone. “I’m not being a dick, it’s just… I think you’re fatigued and burnt out, and that’s kinda normal, but if you really do hate doing all of this dancing and exercising then… I mean, that’s the job, dude.”

“But you have to realize that they’re taking things too far.” Ohyeon says, a mounting frustration in his voice that makes Cairo belatedly realize that an honest response wasn’t really the move here. “The conditions that we’re working in are not humane- like, not legal, at all-”

“Yeah. Ohyeon.” Cairo cuts in. “That’s the job. It’s not like the fact idols are overworked is the industry’s best kept secret. You were aware. Even at thirteen, dude, you knew what was coming. And I’m not telling you to suck it up or anything, I’m just telling you that you didn’t have to take the job in the first place. You passed the university entrance exam. I didn’t, most of the others aren’t even qualified to sit it. You have options that most of us don’t. Did you even actually think about whether or not this is something you want to do for the next seven years, or are you just here as a favor to me?”

Ohyeon quirks an eyebrow, laughs quietly to himself, and doesn’t answer the question. Instead, he stomps into a wobbly salute, chilly fingers trembling before his brow.

“I’ll work hard, leader-nim!”

Cairo scoffs, and just keeps walking.

AGE TWENTY.

Cairo knows that Ohyeon is crying. That’s why he’s refusing to turn around.

“It’s not that bad,” he says. His voice is too gruff; he doesn’t sound confident at all. Ohyeon sniffs, and mutters out a small and empty noise of affirmation, agreeing without pretending to agree in the slightest. It’s a pitiful interaction and neither of them feel any better for it. Cairo drops a sloppily folded t-shirt into his suitcase and gets back to packing up his dorm room. “I mean at least it’s not a shock. The writing was on the wall.”

“I just really thought it would be worth it this time.” Ohyeon says, defeated. Cairo clears his throat roughly, pulling a sweater from it’s hanger and balling it up.

“You can’t be like this in front of the others,” Cairo says, still looking anywhere but Ohyeon. “It’ll make things ten times worse. At least we’re still signed.”

Ohyeon’s sniffling halts for a second. “You’re seriously staying?”

Cairo looks over his shoulder at him, finally. His eyes are puffy and swollen, and he’s wearing the grief plainly on his face as if someone had died. “You’re seriously not?” Cairo asks, equally incredulous. “What, we’re gonna quit in solidarity?”

“Well, isn’t that the human thing to do? HMT is a fucking circus, they beat us black and blue and then tossed us to the curb because they couldn’t manage their own finances.” Ohyeon screws his face up, “They filled those boys' heads with promises they knew they couldn’t keep. Why the fuck would I stick around here?”

“It’s not gonna be HMT anymore. We just got a free ride into the biggest label in the country. And those boys spent months campaigning to kick you out,” Cairo puffs out a laugh, shaking his head. “Fuck, Ohyeon, believe me when I say you’ll regret playing martyr. For who? For Chiwon?”

Ohyeon stares at him for a few seconds, shaking his head slowly. “God,” He mutters. “You’re totally fucking brainwashed.”

“You’ve said that so many times it’s lost all meaning,” is all Cairo has to say. There’s a part of him that truly wonders if Ohyeon has it in him to be an idol. His sense of justice might just be too strong. Cairo doesn’t know what it says about him that he can accept so many things that Ohyeon can’t seem to get over. Judging by the cards they’d been dealt by life, you’d think Cairo would be the idealistic one.

“So that’s it, then, you’re gonna stay here?”

“What else is there to do? Eight years, Ohyeon. We’ve been trying to do this for eight years now. If we give up here, that’s it. We’re just done.”

Ohyeon doesn’t say anything, just sits on his bed, next to his still empty suitcase, crying in vain. Cairo continues to pack and keeps his eyes pointed anywhere else. When Ohyeon speaks, he sounds more defeated than ever. “It’s already done, isn’t it? We’ve had more disbandments than albums, now. Even if they mean it when they say they’re gonna debut us again, even if they do, what if we’re just gonna be the laughing stock of the industry forever?”

Cairo sighs. “I dunno. I don’t know, man, what if we aren’t? Isn’t it worth trying?”

Ohyeon drops his face into his palms. “I just don’t think I have it in me, anymore.” He mutters.

“We were thirteen years old when they put us together. We’ve been fighting for this since then.” Cairo sits down on his bed, finally facing Ohyeon. He rests his elbows in his knees, hands folding in the space between, and he puffs out almost a decade’s worth of pressure and stress. “I don’t wanna do this if it’s not with you.”

Ohyeon’s eyes dart down to the floor, and a sigh of his own leaves him, heavy and tired. “I’m sorry.” He says.

Cairo stands, and slams his suitcase shut. Ohyeon begins to pack, and gives up.

AGE TWENTY-ONE.

“So when you go out there, you’re gonna wanna walk to the center of the stage. Stay there for a bit, don’t sit down straight away. Let the camera get a few shots of you looking out in wonder and stuff, alright? Remember, this is your last chance at making your dreams come true or whatever, so look like you wanna be here.”

“Right,” Cairo answers, not even sure where the voice is coming from amongst the throng of stylists pulling at his hair and slapping his face with powder puffs.

“In the case of an accident, your company is liable for any damages caused to the set or your person, so do take that into consideration,”

“I thought I was just choosing a seat-”

“Okay, we’re all set, so whenever you’re ready…” The stylists scurry away just in time for Cairo to see the stage hand gesture awkwardly towards the stage, and then curl her hand into a fist in silent encouragement. He takes a deep breath, and walks out onto the set.

He’d seen the set already; everyone had, it was the only room big enough in the studio space to gather them all to brief them on today's filming. Still, he gives a clumsy display of awe as he looks out at the pyramid of chairs, muttering ‘wow’ over and over again to himself, in a manner that he’s sure will only serve to make him look like a moron. Acting had never been a strong suit of his. From his first footstep, the other contestants break out into a flurry of muttering. Amongst the chatter, he picks out all of the usual topics of conversation. Two little kids. A group named Lux, or something? Their song was kind of… I remember his deep voice, he’s kind of handsome, he was a flop. Again? Why?

He knows better than to take it personally. He’d been fitted with an earpiece and warned that producers may funnel in suggestions for his commentary after he takes his seat and watches the other contestants. And before coming to the show, he’d been sat down by his new CEO and warned that the judges would be extra harsh to him, that the other boys would seem standoffish and that he had to endure it all with a smile. It was all part of a bigger plan.

And Yang Yeowoon had leaned over his writing desk, rich and handsome and privileged, and told Cairo that ‘everyone favours the underdog.’

So Cairo reaches center stage, and above him an LED screen tags him with the words ‘PANTHEON ENTERTAINMENT,’ grand and lofty, so much of a force in this industry that association with them guaranteed a starting fanbase and a big budget debut. Guaranteed more reach than some of these boys could ever dream of. He stands there, with his big label and his childhood full of vacations and the latest toys and the coolest sneakers, with his surgeon mother and private school teacher father, and he thinks of a boy he grew up with.

A boy who was always small, who’s face looked younger than his age. A boy who’d come to school in unwashed clothes, sit alone in the cafeteria and wolf down his lunch as if it was the first meal of his life. He’d be given all of the same opportunities as Cairo but be given none of the space to develop, none of the grace to improve. They’d beat him up and call him names, and they’d let everyone else in the world do the same, day in and day out, for the duration of his career and still after it’s collapse. A boy who would be bullied from his first day of elementary school, unrelentingly, for his entire youth; until he had no choice but to erase all evidence of himself and just hide.

As Cairo steps down from the stage, and ascends the staircase, past every row of stairs until he reaches the top, where a large, decorative chair boasts the #1 rank; a show of confidence choreographed by his label, he thinks, bitterly, that in real life, nobody favours the fucking underdog.

The night he wins, Cairo goes to bed early.

He was excited of course, but he’d be lying if he said it was a surprise. He’d been told by Pantheon from the very beginning to expect that he’d be debuting in the project group. He doesn’t know how much influence they had on that exactly, but he imagines that some money had changed hands.

The rest of the winning team had gone out for a drink, and Cairo suspects that it may paint him in a bad light that he didn’t join them. But he has a stronger feeling that this might be the last chance he gets to get a full night’s rest for a while; and it already feels like months since his last one of those. He’ll find his own way to celebrate, somehow. It’s a big deal, what just happened. He knows that, and he wants desperately to be happy about it, to have reacted like his to-be groupmates, collapsing into tears of gratitude, catching one another’s eyes and laughing in wonder at what they’d just achieved. He feels robbed, slightly, of any sense of pride or accomplishment, and he can’t help but wonder if he would have been able to do this on his own. Is he guilty? Does he even care? He’s yet to figure that out.

For now, his primary concern is getting to sleep.

The exhaustion had been heavy all day; it had taken an age to film the finale; but his three performances of the night paled in comparison to the drain on his energy from standing around waiting for names to be called all night. The liveshow aired for almost four hours, and he’d been on his feet on standby for at least two and a half beforehand. The balls of his feet, his knees, his lower back; all of them ached; and he’d been tossing and turning all night, trying to find a position to lie in where something didn’t hurt. It was just Cairo’s luck, really. God had a mean streak when it came to his sleep schedule.

With a sigh of frustration, he pulls his phone from underneath his pillow. The screen almost blinds him, and it takes all of his self control not to launch it against the wall when his eyes adjust and it tells him that it’s already four in the morning.

For a few seconds, he just stares at his phone. From his lock screen, Yang Minji looks up at him, mid-sentence and blurry. It’s his favorite picture of her, although she tells him to change it every time she sees it. He supposes that he’ll have to now, because people will start paying attention to him again, and she has a lot more to lose than he does.

Minji had been the best thing about the switch to Pantheon, though Cairo had noticed her long before he had ever signed. He’d seen her at music shows plenty of times, but she’d never so much as glanced in VoX’s direction. Everyone he asked about her called her a bitch, but Cairo still liked her. He thinks she’s the first girl he’s ever just looked at and gotten nervous, at least since he grew out of being nervous to talk to any girl at all. Even now, having slept over at Slumber Party’s dorm four or five times, he still catches his palms sweating around her, and finds himself worrying about whether or not she thinks he’s cool, and when he’s going to shatter that illusion and show her what a loser he really is. He’d never felt that way about a girl before, and it isn’t the best idea to date her, because her father is Yang Yeowoon; she’s his boss's daughter- but that just makes it feel even more exciting.

As his screen dims, Cairo feels his eyelids grow heavy. For a few minutes, he finally drifts off. Behind his eyelashes, fragments of scenes begin to build in his head, Minji and the way it feels to kiss her, the straps of her dress slipping from her shoulders, acrylic nails cold on flushed skin, the ends of her hair brushing across his bare chest; and then just as it starts to get really fun, he wakes with a start as his phone begins to buzz violently in his hand.

“Hello?” Cairo answers the call without even registering the name displayed, blinking heavily and cringing at the stale taste of interrupted sleep in his mouth.

“First fucking place,” A voice responds, soft and quiet, and ill-fittingly bitter.

Cairo freezes. Just like that, he’s wide awake, composing himself only enough to ask; “Ohyeon?”

“Now how’d you… as a rapper on a singing competition…” Ohyeon’s words are interrupted with a hiccup, and it becomes strikingly clear what he’s doing up so late. “How in the hell did you manage that?”

“Have you been drinking?” Cairo deflects.

“Yeah, so what? I’m not an idol. I can do… I can do whatever the fuck I want. I don’t need to ask my leader for permission anymore, so I just do whatever I want. Do you know what I want to do?”

“What?” Cairo asks, closing his eyes.

“Fuck men. That’s what. I mean, I do do it. I fuck men, now, that’s what I do,” Cairo can tell by now, when Ohyeon is spiralling. He’s not even listening to himself, he’s just talking. He has so much resentment within him that he can’t sort it out even enough to focus on which part is making him mad.

“I know.” Is all Cairo says.

“You do?” For a second Ohyeon seems caught off-guard, but it doesn’t last for long. “So that’s why you haven’t spoken to me since I left. What, are you disgusted by me? Do you hate me now, Cairo? Since you hate faggots so much.”

“I don’t hate f-… gay people, Ohyeon.” Cairo sighs deeply. A strange feeling rests itself on his chest, pushing him into his mattress. Like a gargoyle grinning down at him, it’s clawed toes puncturing his sternum. This has always been the feeling Cairo hates most in the world. “I know I said some shitty things when I was a kid-”

“Like that you wouldn’t go near one in case they felt you up-“

“I was just repeating what I heard older boys say, okay? I’m sorry, Ohyeon. I really, really am. I’m sorry for saying those things to you, and I’m sorry for making you feel like you couldn’t tell me. But I’ve known for a long time, okay? I don’t give a fuck that you’re gay. You’re my fucking brother, man.”

Ohyeon is silent. It’s obvious that he was expecting this conversation to go another way, and that hurts Cairo; it makes him wonder just how awful he had really been. “Okay,” Ohyeon finally mutters.

“Wanna go back to what’s really bothering you?” Cairo suggests. “You called me drunk in the middle of the night to accuse me of cheating, not to come out to me, right?”

“Accuse?” Ohyeon scoffs. “Please, don’t tell me you’re going to deny it. I think I’ll go insane if you deny it.”

“You could be right here with me, Ohyeon.” Cairo reminds him. “Pantheon gave you the same chance they gave me.”

“You know what kills me, Cairo? What really, really fucking kills me?” Cairo doesn’t answer. Ohyeon waits for him, but Cairo already knows that he doesn’t want to hear it. The static on the phone crackles for a few seconds before Ohyeon decides he doesn’t need permission to tell him. “You don’t even want this. Not really. You didn’t grow up, fucking… dreaming of this day. You stumbled into the industry because it was offered to you and you had no idea who you were. And you still don’t. The only reason you’re still doing this is because it was the first thing to be readily handed to you. You just spent your whole life letting the older boys or the men in suits tell you who to be and what to do, and that’s what kills me, Cairo. It kills me that your way is the way that fucking works.”

Cairo swallows roughly. “Good to know I have the support of my oldest friend.”

“Yeah, yeah, congratulations, Cairo.” Ohyeon slurs. “It wasn’t authentic or moral, but congratulations. You won.”

The phone sings out it’s disconnected tone. Ohyeon is done.

And from the time Cairo wakes up the next morning, he struggles to find it in him to care about anything at all.

#fictional idol community #fictional idol group #kpop oc #idol oc #bts addition

14 notes · View notes