Work Text:
하나
His eyes are a little blurry underneath the bright stage lights, leaving the kind of black spots on his vision he’d normally get from staring straight into the sun. The denim of his jacket was too thin for the air-conditioned greenroom, and it’s too thick now that there’s about a dozen heated lamps pointed in their exact direction. Yudai scuffles somewhere behind him and Taki’s sat on the edge of the stage tying his shoelaces.
Euijoo’s tired. A little more worn out than he’d usually be at a 1PM rehearsal. Having a concert in Tokyo gives them the home advantage; no flight to catch the day before, no hotel to check into, no suitcases to unpack. Just a wakeup call in the morning and a van that drives them to the venue a couple of hours before the show starts. They’ve slept in their own beds last night and they will do the same after tonight’s concert.
And yet.
Euijoo rubs his eyes in the hopes that it’ll transfer his fatigue to the tips of his fingers, instead of sitting uselessly in his head and fogging up his brain. It’d be easier if he had some sort of excuse – like having slept poorly or the schedule being busy lately – for why he can’t quite get his body to do what it needs to.
A staff member coughs and motions for him to start the greetings. His pinkies link together automatically as if by muscle memory, and he sees the other members do the same in his peripherals.
“One, two,” he counts them off. “We link!”
Yuma on his left is already halfway into his bow and most of the staff surrounding the stage look up at them in anticipation of his welcoming remarks. Euijoo opens his mouth to say the standard few sentences, and out comes—
Nothing.
His inhale gets caught in his throat. His lips are parted around words that don’t form. His mind freezes over with sickening speed. Someone coughs next to him, and Euijoo tries to dig into the wet folds of his brain for the greetings. Korean comes up, words he’s been hearing from idol groups on TV all the time. There’s a Mandarin sentence somewhere deep in the back of his mind. The cadence of Maki’s English comes to him. Japanese doesn’t.
The brain is a muscle, right? If it is, would that mean that the brain’s susceptible to the concept of muscle memory? Maybe it is. But his tongue and lips contain muscles, too, and all they’re useful for is making him gape like a fish stranded on land.
“We are &Team, thank you for having us again today. We will work hard to make it an amazing concert, please take care of us well!”
Fuma. A strong voice that resonates through the empty arena and an equally strong hand that presses into the small of his back, jump-starting his muscles into a bow. His pinkies are still linked and he digs the rest of his nails into the palm of his hand. Three semi-circles in the skin, and the black vinyl of the stage that is approximately half a meter closer to his face from this position.
“Euijoo,” Fuma says under his breath as he pulls him upright with a hand on his shoulder. “Song’s starting. Let’s go.”
Euijoo blinks against nothing and shakes his head to try and clear the foggy feeling up there. It’s fine. Rehearsals are always stressful. Concerts are stressful. Just because this is their job doesn’t mean they don’t struggle. Euijoo especially, talking and leading a group in his third language. It’s fine if he forgets it sometimes.
Rehearsal goes fine. The lyrics and choreography is ingrained into his memory from the years and years of intense practice. Even if they stumble on stage, it will be fine. It might end up in a funny moments compilation somewhere on sns, but that will be the most of it. If he has a voice crack again, the fans’ laughs will resonate through the arena. If he forgets a word, the members will laugh, and it will be fine.
Euijoo drags himself back to their greenroom after rehearsal, where the catering team has set up three tables full of hot, steaming meals, snacks, and enough beverages to fill a small pool with. Half of the members are already there with a plate or two stacked on their arm.
A manager pulls Euijoo aside before he can grab himself a water. It’s one of the newest members of their staff, and he looks at Euijoo with his brows drawn together as if in disappointment.
“There’s only a few hours left until the concert, Euijoo,” he says, grip on his arm a little too tight to be comfortable. “I would suggest you spend your time efficiently instead of stuffing yourself with food. Perhaps a little refresher on your Japanese lessons would do you good. You wouldn’t want to go mute in front of your fans now, would you?”
Euijoo shakes his head. No, he doesn’t want to go mute in front of the fans. He doesn’t want to go mute in front of anybody, but he racks his brain for an appropriate response, and comes up blank.
The manager lets his arm go, and Euijoo’s rooted to the floor for a few seconds. His phone burns in his back pocket. He sits down on one of the couches in the far corner of the room, and his fingers easily find the bright red icon of his Japanese language app.
He lost his five-month streak a few days ago, and the app’s mascot pulls a sad face when Euijoo opens a new lesson. There’s a popup – as there always is – that asks him if Euijoo wants to include Kanji or not. Usually he clicks yes. The characters are complicated, and not even Nicholas knows how to properly read or pronounce all of them. But Euijoo’s the leader, and he’s privileged to work and live in a foreign country, and so he must work hard to prove his worth. Work hard on his singing. Work hard on his dancing. Work hard on his Japanese.
Usually, he clicks yes. Today, he looks at the vocabulary on the screen, and the back of his throat burns as if he’s swallowed hot wax. Euijoo clicks no.
に
They’re in Seoul, and Yuma has invited everyone over for movie night. The only problem? He lives with Maki and Fuma, and between the three of them, they have maybe one bag of chips and half a bottle of soda that will go bad in a day or two. And so they’d drawn straws to decide who’d have to run a snack errand, and Euijoo’s been unlucky since the day he was born. Obviously he’d gotten the shortest straw, but Yudai had felt bad for him, and so here they are at the nearest convenience store near their dorms.
It’s a little ways past midnight, and the place is practically deserted. Yudai’s busying himself with the wine section, and Euijoo’s got a basket full of chips and nuts and sweets. A text comes in in their group-chat of Taki asking them to bring the specific saltine crackers that have a 2+1 deal this week. Euijoo piles them on top of all the other food.
Yudai’s still debating between two brands of wine when Euijoo reaches him again. He holds up both bottles for consideration. A sparkling rosé and a white, with pretty labels with pictures of vineyards and golden embossed letters.
“Which one’s better?” Yudai asks. Euijoo’s arm is straining with the weight of the shopping basket.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I haven’t tried either of them.”
Yudai hums, looks between the bottles for a second, and then picks the rosé. Into the basket it goes, as if it isn’t digging into the crook of Euijoo’s elbow already. But Yudai’s been a little under the weather lately, and Euijoo is fine with carrying the heavy stuff. They make their way over to the cashier, and as Murphy’s law would dictate, find themselves in line behind the only other people that have decided to brave the cold for a snack run.
“Are you not much of a wine drinker?” Yudai asks. “Those are pretty popular brands in Korea, I figured you would’ve tried them at some point.”
Euijoo shrugs and moves the basket to his other arm. “I mean, hyung, I wasn’t even allowed to drink here by the time I left for Japan.”
It’s meant to be a light-hearted comment or something closer to a joke, but it falls flat somewhere in between where it leaves his mouth and reaches Yudai’s ears. The couple in front of them finishes paying, and Euijoo walks up to the counter to put the basket down heavily. The cashier looks less than enthusiastic at having his watching-videos-on-the-job-time reduced by this many people in a row, and he sighs at the pile of food. He stares up at Euijoo, and then at Yudai, and then back at Euijoo, and Euijoo thinks he might have recognised them.
“Do you— uhh. A bag? Need?” the cashier asks in broken English, and Euijoo frowns.
“Yes, please,” he responds, letting the Korean roll of his tongue easily. The guy raises an eyebrow at him, and then starts packing the chips and food into a plastic bag. Once he scans the bottle of wine, he sighs again, and looks between the two of them.
“You have ID?” he asks him specifically, once again in English, and Euijoo feels something ugly bubble up in the cavity of his chest. He hands over his card, and watches with something akin to satisfaction as the guy’s face changes from frowning, to realising, to embarrassment.
“Ah, you are Korean!” he says in Korean this time, a light blush on his cheeks underneath the pale light of the convenience store. “I’m sorry, I really thought you were Japanese.”
“It’s okay,” Euijoo mumbles, getting increasingly uncomfortable with the whole situation, and snatches the bag of food off the counter as soon as Yudai’s payment goes through. The cashier sends them a sheepish smile and wishes them a good night, and Euijoo doesn’t have it in him to reply.
The walk back to the apartment can’t be more than five minutes, but it’s plenty of time for Euijoo to start stewing in the spiral of his own thoughts. Yudai’s graceful enough to not comment on it, but he has to hold him back from crossing a red light more than once, and Euijoo feels frustrated.
Who cares if the guy thought he was Japanese? Any person would make that mistake, given they were speaking Japanese. There’s nothing insulting or wrong about being mistaken for a Japanese person. The guy acknowledged his mistake. It’s fine. Euijoo’s been living in Japan for years now; shouldn’t this be seen as a compliment instead? Taki gets mistaken for being Korean all the time, and his reaction to that is to laugh and take it in stride.
Euijoo tries to laugh. Euijoo also tries to ignore the wetness gathering on his lower lashes. It’s fine.
They make it back home in silence, which is blissful in the face of the chaos that greets them in the living room. Someone’s installed a beamer, and there’s pillows and blankets all over the floor in some poor excuse of a pillow fort. Harua’s yelling movie titles at the top of his lungs, and Maki’s dug out a crate of beer from somewhere, and Euijoo kind of wants to go home.
“There you guys are!” Yuma says, and ushers them onto the couch to kick off movie night.
Euijoo lets his body run on autopilot the way he usually does when there’s a few impulses too many and not enough space to calm down. Someone starts the movie, someone else puts the chips in bowls and hands them out, and Euijoo tries to see if he can become one with the furniture.
The couch dips next to him, and his legs are pulled into Nicholas’ lap. Euijoo’s not stupid enough to deprive himself of this comfort when it’s offered, and so he leans his head on the other man’s shoulder. The fact that it hides his teary eyes from view has nothing to do with it.
three
It’s their fifth flight in two weeks, and Euijoo’s exhausted in every way possible. Physically. Mentally. Spiritually, if he believed in that. Astrologically, even. The planets must have been fucking him over lately, because he feels shitty from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to bed.
A 3AM flight doesn’t help, obviously. But they’re abroad, and their flight had been changed to a small local airport last-minute, and so they’re greeted by the pleasant absence of paparazzi and fans when the van pulls up to the kiss-and-ride.
“Alright, guys, here’s everyone’s passports. We couldn’t arrange any sort of premium check-in this time, so we’ll just– you know. Stand in line like normal people and check in one by one.” Their manager’s in the passenger seat, handing the stack of passports to Harua and Yuma in the front row, and he looks like he’d rather be anywhere than here, on babysitting duty in the dead of the night. At least that’s a sentiment Euijoo can share.
Nine passports in a pile. Seven of them red. One green, and one blue. Euijoo’s got his passport long before the others have finished checking the name on the inside, and the almost rubber-like texture of the little blue booklet feels stiff underneath his hands.
The airport is mostly empty when they walk in. There’s only about ten people in the queue for their check-in desk, and half of it consists of two families with young children who seem overly excited to be flying to Japan at such a godawful time. Euijoo drags his heavy feet towards the back of the queue, just behind Fuma and Yudai, who are quietly conversing about a brunch place they’re planning to go to.
Euijoo’s long lost his appetite. And the excitement of flying. And the excitement for just about anything else.
A gentle nudge against his back – must be Nicholas, if the thick metal of the rings against his spine is anything to go by – and Euijoo realises the queue has moved and it’s his turn for check-in. He drags himself over to the desk, and puts on a friendly smile as he greets the staff.
“Good morning, sir,” she says as he hands over his passport. “What will be your destination today?”
“Tokyo,” he answers, and she nods. Euijoo watches her type away on her computer with bleary eyes, and wonders what she can see on there. Wonders if she reads his name and knows him, or if he’s just one of millions of names she sees and forgets the moment he walks off.
“Sir?” she says, and Euijoo looks back up from where he was pulling at a hangnail. “How long are you planning to stay in Japan for? I don’t see a return flight here.”
Euijoo gapes for a second and immediately feels stupid. Feels small, and naïve, and dumb, because this is the stuff that’s usually arranged well in advance by the company, so they can just walk straight to the lounge and not worry about anything else.
“Oh, uh— I live there. In Japan.”
“Do you have a residence card I can see?”
And then Euijoo has to start digging through his bag for his wallet, and he sees the others wait near the entrance to the security check, and the lady’s looking at him expectantly, and Euijoo just feels stupid.
He manages to locate his wallet, and pulls out the card from where it’s stuck in between his Korean health insurance and ID card. He hands it over to the woman, and then it’s more typing, and more looking at the screen, and more awkward waiting. Eventually, she nods and starts printing out his boarding pass, and Euijoo hopes the ground opens up and plummets him straight down into hell.
“All good, sir. Your gate with be…” she starts droning in that recognisably robotic way of someone who follows a script a thousand times a day, and Euijoo lets himself zone out. He gracefully accepts his passport and boarding pass and residence card and the shame that creeps up the back of his neck, even though the woman is impassive at best and bored at worst and probably doesn’t give a flying fuck about his resident status.
He mutters out a “thank you” because he’s not an asshole, and walks over the rest of the members. They look just as tired, and just as fed up with their frequent flights, and Euijoo feels terrible for making them wait.
“Sorry,” he says when he reaches them, and gets a few tired grunts in response. They start making their way towards the security check like zombies in the walking dead, and Euijoo feels Nicholas brush against his shoulder.
“Visa issues?” he asks, and Euijoo shakes his head.
“She just wanted to see my residence card,” he says, and Nicholas hums. Of course he hums. He’s been in the same situation more times than either of them can count. At least Euijoo has no issues when they fly to Korea; Nicholas is on a visa for both.
“Well,” Nicholas chuckles, though it lacks actual humour. “At least we have each other in case they send us to the immigration office again.”
Euijoo looks at the carpeted floors of the airport and tries to come up with a word to describe how he feels about that. He comes up empty.
넷
Euijoo stares at Nicholas from across the waiting room of some sort of talk show they’ve been invited to. Or rather, a show the company sent the two of them on, because the brass thinks about profit above anything else, and no one else but them would garner the amount of media attention and fan-edits and online discourse that they get. Half their fandom believes they’re dating, anyways, so what better way to fuel the rumours than to have them do a staring contest or confess something stupid to each other?
Euijoo stares, and counts in his head how many days it’s been since they last had sex. It’s twenty-five – not counting the hurried fumbling they did in the shower of some foreign hotel about a week ago – and Euijoo wonders if it’s making Nicholas as irritable as he feels. If someone were to pierce his skin with a needle, he’s pretty sure they’d find the layers of his body thrumming and pulsing with pent-up frustration that has nowhere else to go.
They haven’t been busy for all twenty-five days, of course. But something uneasy has been building up deep in his gut, lately, and Euijoo can barely look at himself in the mirror without thinking that he’s looking at someone he doesn’t know. Sharing the bed – or his body – with Nicholas in such a state is nothing if not unthinkable.
Nicholas calls his name in the way only he can – making it sound like E-joo, instead of the Wi-joo his parents intended 24 years ago – and it brings a smile to his lips despite everything that’s been plaguing him as of late. Even when they’re whisked away towards the studio, Euijoo is glad he has Nicholas besides him.
Shooting starts, and they’ve put Euijoo on the far end of the table. He half listens to the hosts as they introduce today’s guests and half wonders if he should try his luck in Hollywood and start auditioning somewhere, because the way he fake smiles at all the right times and makes a little comment here and there could probably pay his mortgages if he tried.
Nicholas’ hand finds his shaking knee underneath the table easily, and gives it a squeeze to jump-start the muscles into calming down. Well, that’s one person who sees through his little act, then. But Nicholas has seen him through everything, and so he kind of doesn’t count.
The lady on the other end of the table makes a joke and because everyone laughs, so does Euijoo. Never mind that he didn’t actually hear what was being joked about— the woman has a very thick accent and speaks Japanese with the speed of a rapper, and so Euijoo’s brain is about a sentence or two behind on its translations.
They get asked questions about the latest album, and the recently announced tour, and Euijoo – being the leader that he was chosen to be – answers them easily. It’s all rehearsed lines and varieties of things he says every comeback. Yes, we are very excited to show the fans a new side of us. Yes, we hope many people will come see the concert, because we’ve prepared hard for it. Yes, we are always busy with upcoming albums. No, I can’t give you any spoilers on the setlist yet.
Inevitably, the topics of Korea and Taiwan are brought up, because there is little that Japanese TV loves more than to make a spectacle out of all that is foreign. Euijoo can just about see Nicholas reach into the mental drawers of memories in his brain and pick one to tell a fun story about. He chooses one about a night market incident during his childhood, this time. Obviously Euijoo’s heard it before.
He doesn’t mean to space out. Nicholas deserves every bit of attention he can spare. But somewhere in between the words about the Taiwanese aunties and uncles, the scent of freshly cooked meals on the street, and the sound of laughter of a ten-year-old Nicholas that echoes over the green of the mountains and the vastness of the sea, Euijoo’s mind gets caught in the deathly spiral of questions without answers and thoughts without endings.
“And what about you, Euijoo?”
It’s funny that these are the words that make him come back to himself. What about him? What about his childhood? What about his relationship to his birth country? What about his memories, his roots, his—
“My childhood wasn’t nearly as exciting as Nicholas’, I’m afraid,” he says, and the table erupts in gentle laughter. This is what he’s good at. Self-deprecation for the sake of coming off as humorous. They’ll laugh at him anyways, if he fucks up his Japanese again, so he might as well beat them to the punch. If he tries, he can almost envision the exact type of online compilations people will make of him. Euijoo forgetting the word for tree. Euijoo using a wrong expression to mimic the sound of water splashing. Euijoo almost saying a bad word because a fan wrote it on their banner.
“I was really big into fencing,” Euijoo starts, and the table watches him intently as he recalls a story about one of his most important competitions. Nicholas’ hand is warm and heavy on his knee, grounding his body even if his mind is far, far away.
五
Euijoo likes the concept of “the last straw,” because it implies that there is a limit even to bad things. It doesn’t matter if a singular straw is practically weightless and unnoticeable. It also doesn’t matter if one person can handle three straws and another can handle a few thousand; at some point, the camel will break its back underneath the weight of all the straws.
For Euijoo, the final straw comes in the form of something so stupidly small it could’ve been funny, if it was anything other than the final straw.
They’re back in Japan after three weeks of promotions and schedules in Korea, and he’d gone straight to his room to plop down onto his bed and call his mother. He’s been leaving her with empty promises of calling for a bit too long now, and this is their first free evening in weeks.
“Euijoo-yah! It’s so nice to hear your voice,” comes his mother’s enthusiastic greeting from the other end of the phone, and Euijoo lets himself sag deeper into the pillows. It’s nice to be able to speak his native language. It’s nice to be able to ask her how Mr. Kim from the flower shop down the street is doing. It’s nice when his mother tells him about a new Japanese-Korean fusion recipe she’s tried.
“Have you been eating well?” she asks eventually.
“Yes.”
“And sleeping well?”
“Yes.”
“And doing well?”
Euijoo hums. “Sure.”
“You dare lie to your own mother like that?”
“Mom,” he sighs. “You know I’m always busy.” He rolls over to his other side and tucks his phone halfway beneath the pillow so he doesn’t have to hold it to his ear.
“Yes, baby, I know,” she says, and her voice sounds softer, now. Tired. “Can’t you ask that boy of yours to take you somewhere fun?”
“He’s busy too.”
“That didn’t stop either of you from fooling around in my living room that one time, did it?”
Euijoo inhales so fast it makes his throat hurt, and he coughs dryly. He figures his mother is probably wearing her signature grin on the other end of the phone by now. He’s glad she can’t see the blush rising on his cheeks.
She continues as if nothing happened, and Euijoo’s content to just listen to the familiar soft timbre of her voice. She tells him what his sister’s been up to, and a trip that they’re planning with the three of them, and that his father is considering adopting a cat.
His phone vibrates with an incoming notification, and he pulls it out to read it. It’s a system message, letting him know that his battery is on 5%, and he sighs deeply. His suitcase is still unpacked in the corner of his room, and he swings his legs over the edge of the bed heavily as he keeps the call on speaker. The pouch with his cables and chargers is right on top of his clothes, and he pulls the tangled mess of cords out with a little more force than necessary.
“… and then one of the cult ladies came up to me, and I said “Sorry, I don’t speak Korean,” and then she just continued in English! Isn’t it crazy how…” comes his mother’s words, almost like a podcast playing in the background. Euijoo untangles the cables and pulls out his white phone charger, and rolls back on his bed to plug it into the socket next to the nightstand.
“… so I said my son is an idol, and I swear the guy thought I was joking! Even when I showed him a picture of you, he thought that…”
The charger’s not going in. Euijoo’s reaching too far and a muscle in his shoulder protests fiercely. He turns it 180 degrees, and then again, and then a third time, and it still isn’t going in.
“Euijoo, darling? Everything alright over there?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m just trying to charge my phone,” he grunts, and his mother hums and launches straight into another story.
Euijoo prides himself on being a calm and collected person. It’s why he was chosen as the leader, and it’s why people think he’s got his shit together all the time. But the charger misses the socket for a fourth time, and the enamel of his molars squeaks as he grinds his teeth together in sheer frustration.
“What the fuck,” he mutters underneath his breath, and he takes a good look at the socket. And then at the charging block. And the beautiful round prongs of his Korean adapter stare back at him, instead of the flat ones that Japan uses. His jaw clicks. He knows exactly where his Japanese charger is, then. On his desk, next to the lamp, in their Korean dormitory.
“… I was thinking, maybe we can plan a family dinner together one time. Ask the Wangs if they ever want to meet up when they’re in Korea. And then we can—” his mother’s voice distorts, the call cuts off, and then his phone dies.
There’s a nice little moment where the dorm goes quiet and his ears have not yet gotten used to the silence. His phone in one hand. The wrong charger in the other. Euijoo in a foreign country and the sum of all the inconveniences as of late. His blood starts boiling.
The charger finds its unfortunate fate on the floor as he chucks it down and stomps out of the room with barely repressed anger. He wants to scream. He wants to tear every hair out of his scalp and every tooth out of his mouth.
The TV is on in the living room, playing the ear-grating sounds of a Japanese reality show. Euijoo wants to get out of here. But opening the door would mean having to step outside and see the Japanese signage and walk on streets he didn’t grew up on and be exposed to smells he wasn’t familiar with six years ago.
He yanks open the fridge and the sound of the door banging against the wall echoes in the kitchen. The quiet conversation that was going on behind him stops. Euijoo hadn’t seen anyone. Euijoo’s seething and seeing red. The water bottle crinkles in his grip.
“Hey, hyung!” Probably Harua. Harua, who is in his home country, and probably didn’t forget his charger, and probably hasn’t been stewing in a dangerous mix of homesickness and longing and nostalgia for the past weeks. Months.
“Did you say hi to your mom from us?” Harua asks, and Euijoo feels something primal snap deep in his gut. He needs to be alone, and scream, and claw at the layers of his skin until he is no longer someone who never belongs anywhere.
He barely manages to keep in the growl that threatens to escape his throat as he stomps past the two people in the living room, back to the relative safety of his room. The door slams shut behind him. And finally, his knees give out.
∞
The floorboards rattle from the force of the door swinging into its frame. Nicholas blinks against the noise and finds Harua’s gaze, mirroring his own surprise with eyebrows pulled up to his hairline and his phone hanging limply in his frozen hand.
“What the fuck was that?” Harua asks. “Did I say something?”
“I don’t think you did, man,” Nicholas says, and gets up slowly from the couch. He’s never seen Euijoo like this.
“Is hyung mad at me?”
“I’m sure he isn’t,” he says, and gives Harua’s shoulder a squeeze. “Let me just go talk to him, okay?”
Harua nods, and Nicholas shoots him a smile that is hopefully reassuring. Euijoo’s room is the first one down the hall, and Nicholas takes a deep breath before knocking on the door.
“Euijoo? You good?”
No answer comes at first, and he knocks another time.
“Leave me alone,” comes Euijoo’s voice, but it doesn’t sound quite right. It’s muffled. It’s choked. Nicholas frowns.
“Are you okay?”
“Leave me alone.”
Euijoo’s not a solitary person. He wouldn’t be seeking out Nicholas’ presence and touch all the time if he was. Euijoo has also not once not given him permission to enter his room. Nicholas weighs the options in his mind for a second, and decides he’ll take his chances of being yelled at instead of walking back to the living room and acting like nothing is wrong.
He cracks open the door gently. He’s not sure what he’s expecting. Euijoo looked angry in the kitchen just now, and so he braces himself against a possible lashing.
What he can’t brace himself for is the sight of Euijoo in a sad little heap on the floor, with his knees pulled to his chest and his face in his hands. There’s a discarded charger right next to him, and the rug is askew. His sobs are so loud and deep that they shake his whole frame. Nicholas closes the door behind him quickly as to not worry Harua with what is happening, and crouches down a few feet away.
“Euijoo? What’s wrong?” he asks.
Euijoo looks up, and Nicholas’ heart tugs painfully at the sight of his red, blotchy face. It’s not the first time he’s seen him cry; Euijoo is, in essence, a deeply emotional person, and he’s never made it through a single Disney movie without tearing up. But those are tears of hearing a beautiful soundtrack, or seeing a character die on screen. And these are tears of something else.
“I, uh— I forgot my charger,” Euijoo sobs, gagging with the intensity of it. Nicholas shuffles closer to him.
“Your charger? But it’s right—” he starts, motioning towards the white cable on the floor, but then the realisation hits. It’s one of the Korean ones.
Nicholas looks at Euijoo – who’s gone back to sobbing in his hands – and at the cable, and then Euijoo again. It’s like a light bulb flickers on in an otherwise dark room. The rehearsals a few months ago. Euijoo’s subdued mood during movie night. The airport mishap. Their appearance at the talk show. And now this— the wrong charger.
“Euijoo,” he says, waiting for the younger to look back up at him before he opens his arms. “Come here.”
Euijoo’s face crumples horribly as he scrambles towards him, flinging himself into Nicholas’ waiting arms with so much force he almost knocks them both over. Nicholas catches himself with one hand on the floor behind him, and tucks Euijoo against his chest with the other.
“Shhhh,” he whispers, feeling the wetness of Euijoo’s cheeks and snot dripping against his neck. He doesn’t pay it any mind; just rubs his back in slow, circular motions, and waits for Euijoo’s cries to die down. It takes minutes for the hiccups to stop. Long, agonising minutes before Euijoo pulls back from the hug and looks at Nicholas with red eyes.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” Nicholas asks, gently brushing Euijoo’s sweaty bangs off of his forehead. “It’s not just the charger, is it?”
Euijoo shakes his head, tightening the grip he has on the bottom of Nicholas’ shirt. “No, it’s not.”
“Somethings been bothering you for a while now, hasn’t it? I can see it in your eyes," Nicholas whispers, lightly tapping the tip of Euijoo’s nose. Euijoo chuckles softly at the touch, but it's a sad little sound.
"It's just– I don't know how you do it, sometimes."
"Do what?"
"This. All of this,” Euijoo mumbles through a hiccup, looking down at his lap. “Living abroad. Speaking a foreign language. Acting as if it doesn't bother you that we'll never really fit in here."
Nicholas frowns, and guides Euijoo’s eyes back to his own with a hand underneath his chin.
“Where’s all of this coming from suddenly?”
Euijoo sighs and takes one of Nicholas’ hands in both of his own, playing with the rings there. He twists them around, and then drags his fingers up his arm and over the scar there, before going back to his rings. Nicholas can tell he’s looking for the right words.
“I just— I don’t really know where I belong anymore.”
“Belong?” Nicholas echoes. “Are you homesick?”
Euijoo huffs as if he’s frustrated, wiping away the last few stray tears before going back to playing with Nicholas’ rings. Their knees knock together from where they’re sitting cross-legged, and Nicholas is pretty sure his ass is going numb from the hardwood flooring beneath them, but he lets Euijoo tug and twist the chunky ring on his index finger until the thoughts in his head get sorted out.
“I don’t really know what home is anymore.”
Euijoo sighs again, and looks back up at Nicholas with a tired look on his face. He lets Nicholas’ hand drop in his lap, and wrings his own hands together anxiously. Nicholas stays quiet.
“I don’t know how to explain it. I mean— it’s Korea, isn’t it? Seoul’s my home. It’s where I grew up. It’s where I lived most my life. It’s the birthplace in my passport. And I miss it all the time— miss my family there, and the few friends I still have there. The streets that I know and have walked through countless of times.
“But it’s like— I don’t know. Lately, when we go back to Seoul, it’s like the version of me that lived there doesn’t exist anymore. The streets are the same, but I feel different? I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“It does,” Nicholas says softly, and grabs both of Euijoo’s hands. “It really does.”
“Someone recently asked me for recommendations for nice places to visit while in Seoul, and I realised I had no idea. I don’t know what the hot places are anymore. Or I recommend someone a place I remember from when I was in high school, only for them to tell me it closed down.”
Euijoo takes a deep breath, and Nicholas runs his thumbs up and down the backs of his hands.
“And Japan— I don’t think it’s ever going to feel like home. I don’t have childhood memories here. I don’t know all the correct customs or understand the inside jokes or niche references on TV. When we did the cover at the encore, it just felt like a cover to me. All the others— you know, it was probably a song they grew up with. It just doesn’t feel the same to me.”
Nicholas squeezes his hands. Euijoo’s nose is still red from all the crying. He looks years younger like this.
“You forget that we’re in the same boat here, Juju,” he says. It’s the wrong thing to say, because the frown between Euijoo’s brows reappears almost instantly.
“Right. Sorry, this is so stupid— I’m being selfish. Sorry.”
“Hey, hey, I didn’t say that,” Nicholas scolds softly. “You couldn’t be selfish even if you tried. I’m just letting you know that you’re not alone in this, okay? You can talk to me about this.”
Euijoo mumbles something underneath his breath and pulls his hands away to run a finger over the seam of his jeans. There’s a loose thread there. He doesn’t pull it.
“What is it?” Nicholas asks.
“Do you— are you proud of Taiwan? And being Taiwanese?”
“Yes, I am.” An easy answer. And then, after a second: “Are you proud to be Korean?”
The stuffy air in the room sits between them for a beat as Euijoo cracks his knuckles and goes back to picking at his pants.
“I think I am,” he says. “I feel proud, I guess, when I get to tell people about Korea. When they played the anthem at the baseball game I pitched and everyone stood up, it made me feel proud.”
Nicholas hums in response, though it’s clear there’s something else Euijoo wants to say.
“But…?” he prompts, and Euijoo inhales a little too forcefully.
“Lately I’ve been thinking about enlistment. And how the idea makes me feel.”
“And how does it make you feel?”
“Uneasy, I guess. Not because of the training itself, but more like— who would I be proving myself to? Would I have to show loyalty and patriotism to a country I haven't actually been living in since I was 20? Surrounded by guys whose whole lives are based in Korea? I don’t know if I can do that. I really don’t, Nichol.”
The tears are back again, and Nicholas doesn’t want to see them fall this time. He wipes them away from Euijoo’s lower lash-line before they have a chance to separate, and keeps his face securely in his hands.
“We don’t have to think about that yet, Juju. That’s years from now on.”
“But—”
“I mean it, Euijoo. Who knows what’s going to happen in the next five years?” Nicholas asks, digging his thumbs in the softness of Euijoo’s cheeks. “And, you know. If push comes to shove, we can always just get married and get you Taiwanese citizenship so you won’t have to go.”
Euijoo pouts. Nicholas thinks he’s beautiful.
“I’m serious, Nichol.”
“So am I.”
Nicholas kisses the pout off Euijoo’s lips easily. His breathing’s gone back to normal. The tears have subdued. His skin is no longer red and blotchy. Nicholas loves him more than anything.
“Listen to me, baby,” he starts, pressing their foreheads together and keeping both hands on Euijoo’s jaw.
“The thing about living abroad is that eventually, you’re going to become too foreign to ever go back to being the person you were before you left. That’s not a bad thing, okay? It just means you’ve gained new experiences and perspectives, and that you’re seeing Korea in a new light.”
He kisses Euijoo again, just because he can.
“I miss Taiwan all the time. And still, when we come back, it doesn’t always feel quite right. Taipei goes on with or without me. I’ve missed so much of my friends and family’s lives. I don’t know all the latest news. And that’s okay, you know? Living abroad is complicated like that. We’re never going to be Japanese. Even if we speak the language correctly, and we get all the right citizenships, it’s not going to be the same.
“Home is not— it doesn’t have to be one place. It can be multiple places. It can be different cities at the same time, and sometimes, it’s none at all. It doesn’t even have to be a place to begin with, and you know why?”
Euijoo chuckles tiredly like he already knows where this is going. “Well?”
“Because home is a feeling.”
“Nicholas, please—” Euijoo starts, and Nicholas cuts him off with a nip on his nose. He laughs at Euijoo’s pouty face.
“I’m serious! Home can just be the feeling of safety. Of a warm bed, or a nice homecooked meal.”
“You can’t even cook.”
Nicholas grins triumphantly. “See? So you do think home is a feeling. And you feel it with me.”
“I didn’t say—”
Nicholas kisses Euijoo again. And again. And again, until Euijoo starts laughing against his mouth. Nicholas presses his fingers into his sides a little deeper, just to hear him laugh even louder.
“There you go,” he says, pressing the words directly against Euijoo’s lips. “You feel better?”
Euijoo’s eyes are soft and fond when he nods.
“I love you,” Nicholas whispers, leaving a kiss on the corner of his mouth.
“I love you too, Yixiang,” comes the answer. “As long as I’m with you, I think I could feel at home wherever life decides to take us next.”