Eighteen

"We'll share a cab." Changmin said when we left the place all covered up again. "Your dorm comes before mine anyway. It'll be easier."

I agreed, then smiled to myself. "If we were normal people who went drinking- as in, not Idols with schedules like ours and not living in dorms- you could have come and stayed over at my place since it's closer."

"You want me to?" He asked as he stepped towards the road to hail a cab. I couldn't help but smile while watching him.

"It's nice to have Hyung taking care of everything."

He chuckled, managed to flag down a cab and looked at me as the driver brought it to a slow stop. "Do you want me to, Jeongwoo? Stay over, I mean."

"It's not like you can even if I want you to." I said bitterly and got into the cab when he opened the door. He got in after me and shut the door. After giving the driver directions, I turned to him again. "You have places to be tomorrow morning as do I, Hyung."

"It would have been really nice if we were in the same dorm. I could have been your roommate."

"I would have gotten tired of your face by now." I stated blankly.

"Nah. You can never get tired of my face." He smirked.

"Narcissist." I rolled my eyes.

He laughed a little and then sat back, an arm over the backrest of the seat. He crossed his long legs and briefly glanced outside the window. His body was turned towards me though. The passing streetlights lit up his handsome features in intervals.

Maybe it was just me projecting my own emotions but he looked just as sad about the evening coming to an end as I felt.

"True and Coffee would just love our story, wouldn't they?"

"This heart-warming friendship?" He asked. "Yup. They would love it."

"…And why does that matter to us?"

"What?" He looked at me in confusion.

"Why does their approval matter to us so much? Does everything we do need to have something to do with them?" I shrugged.

"No, it doesn't." He stared at me in contemplation for a bit. "…Are you drunk?"

I shook my head. Maybe a little. "Did that sound so weird?"

"No…" He sighed. "I know what you mean. At this point, everything about us has to be our selling point, right?"

"I don't want you to be my selling point."

"I, for one, would not mind being associated with you at all." He shrugged. "It'll be good if they know. If they buy into our love for each other, we might just be able to interact more, even if it may be in the name of work."

I understood that but I guess what I was trying to say was- "I don't want you to become work."

He seemed stunned by that. "Jeongwoo…"

"I understand the collaboration. That's work. And that's fine. I want to work with you but I don't want our relationship to become work as well. Like… I'm close to you because I like you. I don't want to be close to you because True and Coffee like that I like you."

"So… you're saying that you don't want them to know?" He asked, trying to make sense out of what I was saying.

"No." It was really funny. What Jaehyeon and I had on camera was pretty much the same and I did not mind it at all but to think that Changmin and I could become like that, regardless of how close we were, just did not sit too well with me. "I'm just thinking out loud. I too feel that it will be better for us if they knew. I was just… thinking."

His features softened as he looked at me and took off his cap. "How much did it affect you that I not only went ahead but got distant too?" I could see it on his face- guilt.

"You're making me weak, coming back for me like this."

"I'm… really sorry, Jeongwoo." He sat up properly and moved in closer, resting his elbows on his knees and tilting his head to the side as he looked at me with a guilt-ridden smile on his face. "Forgive this Hyung, won't you?"

We have had this conversation too many times before. I had not wanted to keep bringing it up. We had gotten past all that.

"I'm not angry anymore." I pushed his face away. "I'm just saying that it's making me weak. And if you mess up this time, I'm not taking you back as my Hyung. You'll just be Minsu of 04:00 am to me."

"But Minsu of 04:00 am also adores you."

"I don't care." I do.

"…Are you sure that you're not drunk? You had said that you couldn't hold your liquor well." He removed my hand from his face and held it so that I could not push him away again.

"I am not drunk." I was just low-key praying that this cab ride would not end.

"Aw. Come here." He said and pulled me into a hug. "Lee Changmin, Minsu of 04:00 am and your Hyung all care about you, okay?"

See? Weak.

"Hyung."

"Hm?"

"We're in a cab." I reminded him.

"Mm. I know." He did not let go immediately though. "We'll make this collaboration work for us. I promise." Then, he pulled away. "Feel better now?"

I felt miserable. I loved S.T.A.Y. But I loved Changmin too.

Would it be really mean of me to admit that I wished Changmin and I had debuted together?

We reached my dorm not too long after that. We had engaged in small talk till then. When the cab pulled up on the side of the road, I ended up on the side of the moving Friday night traffic. Changmin got out first and held the door open for me. Once I was out, I turned to him.

"Thank you for tonight, Hyung. This means a lot to me."

"To me too." He nodded and gave me another hug, one hand still on the open door as the other wrapped around my shoulders and his chin rested on my right shoulder. "Good night."

"Mm." I patted his head. "Good night. I'll see you later."

He smiled and got back in the cab. As I stood there watching the cab drive away, I thought of what I had said earlier- 'You're making me weak, coming back for me like this'.

I had never really been one to hide my emotions but I had never been the kind of person to openly say it either. People who were important to me always knew that they were important to me even if I did not openly say so. Off-late though, and with Changmin in particular, I had begun speaking my mind.

I felt that there were two possible reasons for that- the first being my occupation. Being an Idol, I had gotten trained and used to saying how much True and my members really meant to me. I was not lying but I was saying things out loud that I usually would not have said. That just sort of became a habit after a while.

The second reason was Changmin himself. Having realised that I too was partly responsible for what had happened to us, for having let work drive us apart, I also recognised the importance of saying things when they actually mattered. I had thought about that a few weeks prior as well. The 'don't go' that I had told him at the media house that we had so unexpectedly met at? I should have told him that almost 5 years ago. And although we laugh about that letter that he had written to me and sent through fan mail, it had really hit me hard. In fact, the letter was the biggest hit of them all.

So, in essence, there was Changmin on the one hand who was actively emotionally wrecking me and then there was my occupation on the other that was gradually changing me. While the former was just me being vulnerable, I had mixed feelings about the latter.

"Jeongwoo, you're back." Jaehyeon said from the couch when I opened the door and stepped in. Yeojun had his head on Jaehyeon's lap and Mingyu was on the couch watching T.V. That in itself was a rare sight. I couldn't help but chuckle at what I was seeing.

"What is this?"

"We were waiting for you." Mingyu said and motioned towards Jaehyeon. "He was so jobless without you around to bug that he had come and established himself in our room."

"Seriously, Hyung?" I laughed.

"What? It's the first time that you have left us all to go out with someone else unofficially." Jaehyeon shrugged. "It was lonely to think about."

"What's with this melodrama?" Yeojun scoffed. "What are you? An old married couple."

"Yeojun." I looked at him disapprovingly.

Jaehyeon chuckled. "We missed you."

…I stand corrected. Reason number three- These people.

"Where's Hanseol?"

"In his room. I had first gone to trouble him but he was working on something so I went to these two."

"You sound like such a needy old man." I shook my head and proceeded in towards our room. "I'm not staying up, Hyung."

"We shouldn't either." He nodded and patted Yeojun's head, urging him to get up and climbing to his feet himself. "Let's go to bed. We have to leave by 05:00 am tomorrow."

Soon after, everyone said good night and returned to their own rooms. I just stood at the foot of my bed looking at it in contemplation though. Jaehyeon, obviously, noticed this.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm… in a dilemma." I stated.

"What is it?" He got serious.

I smiled, tired. "I want to take a bath but I'm too tired. We have to leave early tomorrow and so, if I don't bathe now, I'll have to bathe then. That means waking up earlier than I would have had to otherwise. What do I do?"

"You-" He pursed his lips. "You scared me for a moment there. I thought Changmin Sunbae had asked you something and you had to choose between him and S.T.A.Y."

I laughed. "Why would that even be a matter of choice?"

He shrugged. "Just sleep, if you're tired. Bathe in the morning."

"But I don't want to wake up that early." I whined.

"Then have a bath now. I'll wait up for you, if that's any motivation." He offered.

"But I'm too tired…" I whined again and dropped face-down onto my bed. "I don't even have it in me to change into night clothes."

"Why are you even asking me then, you idiot?" He laughed and threw a pillow at me.

"How mean… I was having a genuine dilemma." I pouted and hugged his pillow.

"'Was'?"

"I'm already in bed." My decision had been made.

He sighed, came over and pulled the pillow out of my arms against my protest and took it with him as he went back to his own bed. "Are you really not changing though?"

"I should change, shouldn't I?" I nodded and forced myself to get up. By the time that I had used the bathroom and quickly changed into night clothes, Jaehyeon was already in bed. I switched off the lights and returned to my bed. I settled in but just stared at the ceiling instead of closing my eyes. There was something I had to say.

"Hyung."

"Hm?" I heard the response.

"Changmin Hyung and I are planning to collaborate."

"You are? That will be nice. Good for you. You'll get to work with him again and spend some time with him."

"Mm." I nodded. "It'll be good, right?"

"What? Are you worried about something?"

"No. It's just that I'm a little nervous. It's been so long since I last made a song with him. I'm excited but also a little anxious."

"Isn't that natural?"

It is, isn't it?

"Mm." I turned on my side and closed my eyes, smiling to myself. "Good night, Hyung."

"Good night, Jeongwoo."