Seven

We had found a private corner table for ourselves. This restaurant regularly got trainees and Idols from DayBreak dropping by and so were used to our need for privacy and was good at ensuring it. It wasn't that noisy either. It was the perfect place to do a Live.

"Is it recording yet?" Jaehyeon asked and looked into the mobile I had placed precariously in front of us to film. He had his round-framed glasses on as well. He tended not to wear it much but the lighting in the place was a little weak and so, he had to use it.

"Not yet." I told him. "You good?"

"Yeah. I'm ready." He threw an arm over the back of my chair and sat back.

"Are we early?"

"It's been 5 minutes since we placed the order. It will be another 5 minutes till they bring us the food. We should start now if we have enough people online."

"Okay, then. I'll start now." I began our live video and sat back. "There we go. We're on."

"Oh. That's a good number." Jaehyeon smiled on seeing the number of people online. It had jumped to around 25,000 immediately. "Let's start."

"Yup." I nodded and the both of us turned to the phone.

"Always." I said first and Jaehyeon extended a hand to the phone. "Yours." Then we bowed and spoke together. "We're S.T.A.Y!" When we sat up again, Jaehyeon went back to leaning against his chair with an arm over mine. "Well, it's just the two of us though- Jeongwoo and YoonJae."

We had actually titled our live 'YoonJae, Jeongwoo and Chicken'. It was pretty self-explanatory.

"Yup. Just us." I spoke. "It's so good to see you all. The last time, it was Jun who did a Live, right? Ah. Our Maknae was so happy with the response. We've been waiting to see you all since then."

Messages were flooding in. A lot of them were greeting us, many were asking where we were and many others were just sending emojis and typing out our names or 'Oppa'. The response was really good.

"Ah. Where are we?" Jaehyeon read a few comments and looked around. "It's a small joint that we frequent. That's all I can tell you."

We were mostly just reading comments and responding to them. "Oh, yes. The food is really good here." I nodded. "But the ambience is even better. It's quiet and has a limited but moving crowd."

"We've already placed our order." Jaehyeon said, "What is it? Well, you'll see when it gets here."

"If you want, you can grab your own food and join us as we eat. Let's eat together!" I offered up enthusiastically.

Oh. Right. Time.

"Ah, we have international True with us too." Jaehyeon thought for a moment. "If it's not time for a proper meal then… snacks maybe? Ah. If it's in the middle of the night, you should be sleeping." He chuckled.

A little bit of silence fell as we read the comments. A lot of them were asking us to speak in English.

"English… uh…" I looked at Jaehyeon. "Hyung."

"English, huh?" He paused for a moment and then spoke in English slowly, placing a hand on my head. "You see, Jeongwoo… This boy… very shy. My English is… not great but Jeongwoo… Mm." He frowned and shook his head. "Jeongwoo will not… speak to you today. We are still… learning."

I was impressed with how he managed to speak in English without any hesitation but I was more unimpressed with how he demeaned me. Although I showed the apprehension on my face, I could not say anything to counter it. He wasn't wrong.

I turned back to the phone, brushed Jaehyeon's hand off and spoke in Korean. "You will have to wait a little longer before you can hear me speaking in English. Sorry. I have to catch up on my foreign languages." I knew very little Chinese and I knew Japanese at a conversational level. While I could follow English without an issue, I wasn't too confident about being able to speak properly. I was only comfortable with Korean.

I could at least say 'Sorry, International True' in English though. Should I?

"Jeongwoo says… you should wait for him." Jaehyeon translated and then switched to Korean again. "He's a slow learner."

… Maybe I shouldn't say it.

"Hm? Oh, yes. We had put it in the title, hadn't we?" Jaehyeon looked at me. "We shouldn't have. There's no suspense."

"Right. We're having chicken." I chuckled. So much for trying to keep our order a secret! We had already announced it.

"So many of you True were insisting that I buy this guy chicken that I just couldn't ignore it anymore." Jaehyeon said, patting my hand this time. "He was already pestering me about it but if you were also going to take his side then I pretty much had no choice left but to give in."

What was I? A kid?

I read another comment in passing and decided to respond to that. "I did. A few days ago. I think it was last week, actually. All five of us had gone out for dinner and I had paid for our Maknae's meal then. He ate quite a lot, mind you. It was as good as paying for three people."

"He definitely made the most of it." Jaehyeon laughed. "By the end of it, Jeongwoo was literally begging for him to stop."

"I wasn't." I gave him a dirty glare.

He gave in. "Okay. Okay. He did not do that. He was thinking it though."

Unbelievable.

I looked back at True. Please, read the sincerity in my eyes. "I was not."

"Cute." Jaehyeon said, watching me.

I pushed his face away. "What are you all laughing for? I'm the one who is being bullied here." The comments section was filled with emojis.

Just then, the waitress who had taken our order brought out our food. Seeing that we needed to make some space for the food on the table, I attempted to move the phone back a little while Jaehyeon took our food from her so that she did not need to come into the frame. In doing so, I ended up dropping the phone on its back, showing True the ceiling.

Jaehyeon laughed and waited, holding a bowl as I hurried to pick up the phone and place it properly.

This was definitely not my day…

"I dropped you. I'm sorry." This was embarrassing. "Sorry, True. My bad."

"MinQ is supposed to be the clumsy one. I'm starting to doubt that now." Jaehyeon said as he placed the food on the table one by one.

I looked away first, then scooted away a bit. "I should probably go take a walk and come."

"Stay." He caught my arm and did not let go. When I turned to protest, he pushed a piece of fried chicken into my mouth using chopsticks.

I lost.

I sat down and chewed. "Ooh. This is good."

"I know, right?" Jaehyeon smiled and began serving the rice. I helped by arranging the dishes for convenience and picked up my chopsticks. He looked at the phone and picked up the bowl of rice in one hand, chopsticks in the other. "Let's eat!"

Jaehyeon was quite the talker when it came to live broadcasts like these. I was not shy or overly quiet either so I did my fair share of talking too. The entire live lasted 40 minutes or so. By the time we had ended it, we had finished most of our food. The moment the phone had been locked though, Jaehyeon turned to me and raised an eyebrow. "You were totally the center of attention today."

"Attention? I messed up." I pouted.

"It's fine. They found you adorable." He patted my head. "You were adorable."

"This is going to go on every video about me on YouTube." I rested my head on the table. "Ah… Why…?"

"It's okay. It's okay." He rubbed my back. "Finish eating first. We need to go back soon."

I sat up, took a breath and picked up my chopsticks again. What was done was done. There was no point in moping over it or getting embarrassed. Even though I had actually dropped the phone in between the live, Jaehyeon was right. This was the kind of content that the fans loved. With how perfect they claimed that we were onstage or on onscreen, it was when we messed up like this that they thought of us as normal flustered human beings much like themselves.

If only they knew how hard our hearts would beat whenever we put ourselves before them!

My phone pinged, notifying me of a message. At first, I had thought that I would ignore it but then, on second thought, I checked it anyway.

The ID said just 'Hyung'.

Yoo Changmin.

I opened the message only to find one word- 'Cute'.

"Agh. What is with you Hyungs?" I kicked out a bit, making Jaehyeon stop on his way to picking up some kimchi with his chopsticks.

"What? Does that include me?"

"In particular." I showed him the phone.

He read the message and laughed. "I told you. You were pretty adorable throughout."

"That's not the image I want though…" Not that I particularly minded but… wouldn't it have been better to appear cool like Hanseol appeared to be? Cool and slightly intimidating. But then again, that wasn't something that I could quite pull off. "Ah. Forget it." I placed the phone down on the table and began typing out a response to Changmin's message with one hand, continuing to eat with the other.

'Hyung, you watched?'

I got a response immediately. 'The whole thing.'

Just great. 'Aren't you busy?'

'In the van. On the way to DayBreak HQ.'

Oh. 'Went far?'

'About 2 hours away. Shooting for our monthly episodes.'

'You should have tried to sleep then.' Why watch the Live?

'Worth not sleeping.' That was followed by a devil emoji.

"I see that you both are properly talking again." Jaehyeon commented.

"Ah. It's better than Hyung sneaking another letter in." I chuckled.

"I'm jealous."

"What?" I looked at him.

"You're ignoring me. I'm sitting right here." He poked the last piece of chicken on his plate.

"I'm tempted to ignore you just because you said that." I gave him a poker face.

"Okay. Fine." He shook his head and ate that last piece. "Mm. It looks like our K-Soul is coming up with a solo track."

"Hanseol? You mean the song that he's been working on lately?"

"Yeah. Not sure if he's planning to actually make a mixtape out of it though. We'll just have to wait and see."

"I was actually thinking about it the other day. I had run into Baekjae Sunbae and he had told me that Hyeonwoo Sunbae and Beomseok Sunbae were both working on solo tracks. If not immediately, at least a couple more months later, it would be great if we could release a single or one of us could releases solo tracks. We will be having a proper comeback only next year, right? We can't go on like this. We need to keep providing from our end."

"That's right." He nodded. "We'll try talking to the others and Manager-nim about this. In the meantime, why don't we cover some song?"

"Just you and I, Hyung? Which song?" I asked with interest.

He shrugged. "We can pick a song later but are you up for it or not?"

"I don't mind at all." I agreed, finishing up my meal too.

"Let's do that then." He said and asked for the bill, taking out his card from his wallet to pay.

"Thanks for today, Hyung. It was fun, despite everything else." I admitted as we left the restaurant and looked around. It was pretty late in the night so there wasn't much of a crowd. DayBreak was close by and Manager Kim had said that he would drop us to the dorm so we went straight there to find him.

He was at his desk. We informed him and waited for a while so that he could finish up what he was doing. While the main purpose was to wait for Manager Kim, I was also a little hopeful that we might meet 04:00 am who were on their way.

In the end though, Manager Kim got free and took us home by van before we could meet 04:00 am.