12. small flowers crack concrete
Sungyeol leaves for Japan to film a drama. He doesn’t come back.
This is how they cope.
i recommend listening to this while reading
“Come on guys,” the manager says, sounding just as tired as they feel. “We’re leaving in ten minutes.”
Myungsoo tips the cup of ramyun further back, downing the rest of the soup. At the corner of his eyes he can see Sungjong already at the entranceway, stepping into his shoes.
“Radio show then the practice room, right?” Woohyun asks.
Sunggyu nods.
“I wonder why it’s always Sungyeol who’s gone when we’re preparing for a comeback.”
Myungsoo starts. Right, Sungyeol isn’t here. He left sometime last night and this morning, which is why Hyoan isn’t here either.
“Hyoan-hyung is going to make sure he’ll practice. We’ve done it before.”
“Boys,” their manager says, walking back into the living room. “Let’s go.”
They all exit together, all still moving sleepily except for Myungsoo who has to catch up to Jungryul. “Hyung,” he says, “when’s Sungyeol supposed to be back?”
“In about four days.”
Myungsoo nods. Five days is decent; it’s all right.
In the van, he sends Sungyeol a text. While Myungsoo slips his phone into his pocket, he accidentally elbows Hoya in the thigh. In the commotion, he misses the UNSENT marker that appears next to the message.
They spend most of their time in the practice room - lunch and dinners are spend on the hardwood flooring and Myungsoo doesn’t mind it. The mindless activitiy of memorizing choreography has long become more calming than anything else. It’s easy just to let his body move to the beat because after hundreds of hours, his mind can shut off and everything is just muscle memory.
In the midst of dancing for the third hour in a row, Myungsoo can see two managers slip into the room as he looks straight at the wall of mirrors. Even from this distance, their expressions are dark. Myungsoo fixes his eyes onto his own reflection and pushes himself harder.
Sungyeol hasn’t replied his text, but that’s not unusual. It doesn’t stop him from thinking about it, and him, though.
By the time the music stops, all his muscles are aching. “You did well,” Dongmin says, pointing his chin at Myungsoo’s direction before nodding in approval. His shirt feels like it’s glued to his skin.
When he looks back at the managers, their expressions are neutral but there’s something in the way they’re standing, in the way they’re looking at all six of them, that sends a chill down Myungsoo’s spine.
“Have you been in touch with Sungyeol?” Dongwoo asks him, while they wait their turn for the shower. Woohyun always takes the longest.
“He hasn’t been replying. He’s probably really busy. I think they’re trying to get him to film his parts of the next three episodes already.”
Dongwoo nods thoughtfully. “You should know, right? Since you’ve done this before.”
Myungsoo nods. He hardly remembers his time filming in Japan because everything blurs by so quickly. He only really slept on the plane back to Seoul.
“Okay,” Dongwoo says, breathing out.
“Why?”
“Huh?”
“Why do you ask?”
The shower door opens, and Woohyun walks out with a towel around his head and steam billows out with him. Dongwoo dissolves into a fit of giggles, collapsing against his side. Myungsoo wishes he had his camera with him.
Woohyun shakes his head at them.
It’s like a thread unravelling. When it starts it’s subtle and unalarming: the managers’ stares, impenetrable but at the same time, uneasy. Dongwoo’s questions. Then it picks up speed, and at some point, when too much has been unravelled, it’s impossible to put it back to how it was before. No matter how hard you try, the string can never be wound back tightly enough.
At practice one day, Dongmin steps out and all four of their managers lock the door behind them. They’re asked to sit down. Myungsoo pulls his knees towards himself, chest heaving. It’s been an intense practice today and all of them can feel their comeback looming over their heads like a smog. You’d think it gets easier each time they do it, but there’s always that lingering fear that you won’t sell enough, you won’t win enough awards for it to matter, that people will finally see you as nothing but a group of boys with patchwork dreams.
“Unlock your phones and hand them to us, please,” Jungryul says as the rest of the managers come around to collect them. None of them protest but then again, all of them are a little breathless.
“Hyung, what is this about?” Sunggyu asks warily as the managers go through their phones. They have an unofficial dating ban but that’s unenforced. Woohyun doesn’t even look worried.
“Has anyone had contact with Sungyeol since he’s left?”
Myungsoo tenses.
“What happened?” Sunggyu says sharply, before Myungsoo can even open his mouth.
The managers are silent and they seem to have the most interest in the phone with the black casing. Myungsoo’s. “What is it?” Myungsoo asks, his voice shrill as it echoes around the room and bounces off the mirrors.
“You haven’t been texting Sungyeol?”
It takes Myungsoo a minute before he can reply, because his mouth is so dry. “He didn’t reply.”
Jungryul’s lips are set in a hard line. “That’s because he never received it.”
The thread has unravelled.
Hyoan arrives back at the dorm the next day, his face sheet as he chucks his luggage in the corner, face sheet white and then the managers are gone. All six of them have their phones on their laps.
“They’ve already contacted the Japanese police,” Dongwoo says quietly.
Sungjong swears before flopping down on the floor and Sunggyu looks up. “You’re in on this?”
“I overheard the managers talking about it. I knew something went missing but I thought it was a bag, or a passport...I didn’t think it was Sungyeol himself.”
“If it’s a kidnapping-” Woohyun starts but Myungsoo cuts him off.
“How can someone kidnap an idol?” The disbelief is thick in his voice and it sounds far away, even to his ears.
“There are tons of ways: sleeping pills, a van out the back,” Hoya says and Myungsoo’s stomach flips. “But Sungyeol has got to be smarter than that. Sungyeol, and Hyoan-hyung.”
Sunggyo brings his palms to his temple and starts massaging. Dongwoo sighs.
“The managers don’t think he’s been kidnapped because it’s impossible. Hyoan-hyung was with him every waking moment and when he wasn’t, there were cameras were on him.”
That’s all Dongwoo needs to say, because then it dawns on all six of them as they sit cross-legged in the living room, like they did a lifetime ago as trainees. It’s not too different from what they would have experienced back then or expected, and then everything makes sense in the most senseless way possible: Sungyeol ran away.
Woollim holds a press conference and this time, Infinite are the ones who sit down in suits at the side and stare somberly at the flashing cameras while Jungyeop and the rest of the managers face the cameras and speak.
“This is the first and last time we’re going to adress this issue, but one of the members, Lee Sungyeol, has run away. This is a severe breach of contract and, if needed, will go to court. Since he ran away while filming in Japan, the Japanese police have been notified and will work concurrently with our Korean counterparts. As a group, Infinite are still promoting and their comeback has not been compromised.” Jungyeop puts the mike down.
Question time starts up, and these are the ones Myungsoo remembers:
“Are you sure he has run away? What if there is foul play involved?”
“Based on our own investigations and sheer logistics, he couldn’t have been kidnapped or worse. He is an idol and he was in Japan to film a drama.” Myungsoo hears: We hope he has run away.
“Will you be adding another member to the group?”
“No.” Myungsoo hears: Not yet.
“Will Lee Sungyeol be added to the group once he comes back?”
“That will be another press conference.” Myungsoo hears: If he comes back.
It ends in half and hour, and Jungyeop ends with this: “Lee Sungyeol, if you’re listening to this, please come back. Something can and will be worked out. Your parents are worried about you. Your company is worried about you. We’re all worried about you but most of all, Infinite needs you back.”
It’s through sheer willpower that none of them actually cry until the photographers leave and they’re ushered into the van, ducking the onslaught of fansites and press photographers waiting for them outside the hall.
No one can get through to Sungyeol’s phone, so everyone assumes he’s dumped it until the police actually confirm the fact they can’t get a GPS trail because it’s been turned off for the past week.
It doesn’t stop Myungsoo from trying to get through though, even though it drives him slightly more insane when he hears the dead dial tone and Sungjong forcibly peels it from his grip and fusses with it.
“There,” he says, eyes hard but face paler than usual. “Now you can have it back.”
“What did you do?” Myungsoo scrolls through his contacts list and finds that Sungyeol’s name has been deleted. He looks up to the firm resolve in Sungjong’s eyes. “Too bad I have it memorized,” he answers quietly, and just like that, Sungjong’s facade slips and to Myungsoo, it feels like everything and everyone is crumbling around him, slowly but surely.
The managers and Jungyeop go through Sungyeol’s room before the police come over to poke around for their reports, but all this happens when they’re rehearsing for their comeback. Because even though everything has changed, nothing really has. They still practice for hours on end. Sunggyu still points out their mistakes. Myungsoo still feels tired.
So it’s no surprise when one day they arrive back at the dorm and Jungryul tells them to decide among themselves who will move into Sungyeol’s room. “It’s a waste of space if it’s empty,” he says but everyone else knows what he’s saying instead: “It’s not a shrine.”
The room is empty; Sungyeol’s stuff has been packed into boxes and given back to his family.
“We’re doing this the normal way, yeah?”
Everyone just nods.
Myungsoo contemplates his choices. Scissors, he loses. Paper, he loses. Stone, he loses. There’s not much point but he picks scissors anyway and he wins the first round. He wins the next with paper, too and then it’s him and Hoya.
“I don’t want the room,” he says colourlessly.
Hoya shrugs, but his eyes are soft. “Me neither.”
“I’m going to throw paper,” Myungsoo says.
He does. Hoya throws stone.
When Myungsoo falls asleep on Sungyeol’s bed, the sheets are his own sheets and the pillow smells like detergent and when he looks out the window, it’s the same view as he sees back in his old room.
Myungsoo wakes up to the sun streaming into his room and a wet pillow.
Myungsoo has lived through the day right before Sungyeol leaves so many times during dance practice that whenever he dances now, he thinks about the same inconsequential sequence of events. Sungyeol packing his bag with his door cracked open, Sungyeol rushing for last minute things, Sungyeol acting perfectly normal. Myungsoo has gone through everything else the other members have done on that day but nothing is different. No one disagreed with Sungyeol, Sungyeol doesn’t treat anyone coldly, and Sungyeol certainly does not spare any hints that he will never be back.
And this is when Myungsoo would feel more rage than the despair and loss surrounding him, because there was no note, no goodbye hug, nothing.
Sungyeol’s drama ratings actually pick up. The controversy reels in viewers like no other and even though he’s only in for the first two episodes, the scriptwriters manage to work out his real life disappearance into the plot. It helps that it’s a family drama to begin with.
There are also talks to replace Sungyeol with another member from the group, but all of them decline it when the managers propose this idea, some with more force than others. They even suggest replacing Sungyeol with Daeyeol, but Woollim steps in to decline firmly but politely.
He’s still getting used to the events surrounding his brother, they say, and he’s a rookie idol. He needs time to settle into promotions with the group before filming an overseas drama.
Infinite’s sales pick up as well - all their albums are moving, even their debut one. News reporters hint that this comeback could be their biggest and most successful.
And it’s needless to say that they’ve never done better. (Professionally, that is)
They have a gag order not to mention Sungyeol at all, and reporters know better than to even mention the word ‘disappearance’ or his name. It works well enough for all of them, even though it’s been almost three weeks and it’s been three weeks of feeling acutely aware of breathing, because it hurts. It physically hurts to breathe because he thinks of Sungyeol in a ditch or Sungyeol looking at a disposable telephone, debating whether to call back or not or Sungyeol speaking in broken English, staying in one of those cheap motels Myungsoo took photos of in Vegas.
By the time their comeback comes around, the pain dulls into a nagging discomfort but it’s still there, pressing down against and deep within his chest. He sees the way the other members sing and dance and function and he knows they must feel the same way, think the same thoughts, and hate and miss Sungyeol as much as he does.
Their comeback wins in its first week. While Sunggyu makes the customary thank you speech, a thought flashes past Myungsoo’s mind: all this is only possible because Sungyeol left. Disappeared. Sungyeol is still doing his part for the group, just in the most terrible way possible.
He starts crying on stage, trophy clenched in his hands and knuckles bone white. He doesn’t know how it’s possible to hate and love someone so much, and how he’d trade every single thing just for Sungyeol to return.
The music shows can have every single award back. The fans can take back all their money. They’d move back to Manwadong and stare at the mouldy walls and eat rice with seaweed if it just means Sungyeol will come back. Myungsoo thinks he'd even trade the whole of Infinite for Sungyeol's return but stops himself there, because if he does, then he's no different from Sungyeol.
All six of them watch the finale of Sungyeol’s drama together. It’s a family drama, so it has to end happily, a tearful reunion and tied up with a silk bow. Sungyeol’s character sends back a note, detailing his reasons and his apologies and on screen, his mother breaks down. His father clutches the letter to his chest. The screen fades to black, and life goes on.
Myungsoo is numbed by the ending but when he looks around, everyone else is in tears. He touches his cheek, and unsurprisingly, it’s damp. He reaches for Sungjong and presses his face into his back.
Sungjong’s back is shaking.
Sungyeol never sends back a letter. Sungyeol never sends them anything and Myungsoo thinks Sungyeol expects all the awards and trophies to stand in place for him. One day, Myungsoo decides to line all the ones they have in the dorm on the floor and measure them.
Dongwoo peeks past his door. “What are you doing?”
Myungsoo looks up, the tape measure in his hand. “All our trophies measure close to 3.5 meters. That’s almost two Sungyeols.”
It’s the first time since he can remember that he’s said Sungyeol’s name aloud and from Dongwoo’s reaction, the first time he’s heard it as well. Myungsoo sighs. “I miss him, hyung. I miss Sungyeol.”
Dongwoo nods and walks over to give him a hug. It's a comfortable silence. After helping him take all the trophies back out and arranging them on the shelf, Dongwoo leaves to his own room. Myungsoo is left staring at the shelf, and he shakes his head and goes back to the room. Some days, he hates Sungyeol more than others.
There’s no silk ribbon to this story, no clean ending. The six members of Infinite have a radio show tomorrow.
This is how they cope.
i recommend listening to this while reading
“Come on guys,” the manager says, sounding just as tired as they feel. “We’re leaving in ten minutes.”
Myungsoo tips the cup of ramyun further back, downing the rest of the soup. At the corner of his eyes he can see Sungjong already at the entranceway, stepping into his shoes.
“Radio show then the practice room, right?” Woohyun asks.
Sunggyu nods.
“I wonder why it’s always Sungyeol who’s gone when we’re preparing for a comeback.”
Myungsoo starts. Right, Sungyeol isn’t here. He left sometime last night and this morning, which is why Hyoan isn’t here either.
“Hyoan-hyung is going to make sure he’ll practice. We’ve done it before.”
“Boys,” their manager says, walking back into the living room. “Let’s go.”
They all exit together, all still moving sleepily except for Myungsoo who has to catch up to Jungryul. “Hyung,” he says, “when’s Sungyeol supposed to be back?”
“In about four days.”
Myungsoo nods. Five days is decent; it’s all right.
In the van, he sends Sungyeol a text. While Myungsoo slips his phone into his pocket, he accidentally elbows Hoya in the thigh. In the commotion, he misses the UNSENT marker that appears next to the message.
They spend most of their time in the practice room - lunch and dinners are spend on the hardwood flooring and Myungsoo doesn’t mind it. The mindless activitiy of memorizing choreography has long become more calming than anything else. It’s easy just to let his body move to the beat because after hundreds of hours, his mind can shut off and everything is just muscle memory.
In the midst of dancing for the third hour in a row, Myungsoo can see two managers slip into the room as he looks straight at the wall of mirrors. Even from this distance, their expressions are dark. Myungsoo fixes his eyes onto his own reflection and pushes himself harder.
Sungyeol hasn’t replied his text, but that’s not unusual. It doesn’t stop him from thinking about it, and him, though.
By the time the music stops, all his muscles are aching. “You did well,” Dongmin says, pointing his chin at Myungsoo’s direction before nodding in approval. His shirt feels like it’s glued to his skin.
When he looks back at the managers, their expressions are neutral but there’s something in the way they’re standing, in the way they’re looking at all six of them, that sends a chill down Myungsoo’s spine.
“Have you been in touch with Sungyeol?” Dongwoo asks him, while they wait their turn for the shower. Woohyun always takes the longest.
“He hasn’t been replying. He’s probably really busy. I think they’re trying to get him to film his parts of the next three episodes already.”
Dongwoo nods thoughtfully. “You should know, right? Since you’ve done this before.”
Myungsoo nods. He hardly remembers his time filming in Japan because everything blurs by so quickly. He only really slept on the plane back to Seoul.
“Okay,” Dongwoo says, breathing out.
“Why?”
“Huh?”
“Why do you ask?”
The shower door opens, and Woohyun walks out with a towel around his head and steam billows out with him. Dongwoo dissolves into a fit of giggles, collapsing against his side. Myungsoo wishes he had his camera with him.
Woohyun shakes his head at them.
It’s like a thread unravelling. When it starts it’s subtle and unalarming: the managers’ stares, impenetrable but at the same time, uneasy. Dongwoo’s questions. Then it picks up speed, and at some point, when too much has been unravelled, it’s impossible to put it back to how it was before. No matter how hard you try, the string can never be wound back tightly enough.
At practice one day, Dongmin steps out and all four of their managers lock the door behind them. They’re asked to sit down. Myungsoo pulls his knees towards himself, chest heaving. It’s been an intense practice today and all of them can feel their comeback looming over their heads like a smog. You’d think it gets easier each time they do it, but there’s always that lingering fear that you won’t sell enough, you won’t win enough awards for it to matter, that people will finally see you as nothing but a group of boys with patchwork dreams.
“Unlock your phones and hand them to us, please,” Jungryul says as the rest of the managers come around to collect them. None of them protest but then again, all of them are a little breathless.
“Hyung, what is this about?” Sunggyu asks warily as the managers go through their phones. They have an unofficial dating ban but that’s unenforced. Woohyun doesn’t even look worried.
“Has anyone had contact with Sungyeol since he’s left?”
Myungsoo tenses.
“What happened?” Sunggyu says sharply, before Myungsoo can even open his mouth.
The managers are silent and they seem to have the most interest in the phone with the black casing. Myungsoo’s. “What is it?” Myungsoo asks, his voice shrill as it echoes around the room and bounces off the mirrors.
“You haven’t been texting Sungyeol?”
It takes Myungsoo a minute before he can reply, because his mouth is so dry. “He didn’t reply.”
Jungryul’s lips are set in a hard line. “That’s because he never received it.”
The thread has unravelled.
Hyoan arrives back at the dorm the next day, his face sheet as he chucks his luggage in the corner, face sheet white and then the managers are gone. All six of them have their phones on their laps.
“They’ve already contacted the Japanese police,” Dongwoo says quietly.
Sungjong swears before flopping down on the floor and Sunggyu looks up. “You’re in on this?”
“I overheard the managers talking about it. I knew something went missing but I thought it was a bag, or a passport...I didn’t think it was Sungyeol himself.”
“If it’s a kidnapping-” Woohyun starts but Myungsoo cuts him off.
“How can someone kidnap an idol?” The disbelief is thick in his voice and it sounds far away, even to his ears.
“There are tons of ways: sleeping pills, a van out the back,” Hoya says and Myungsoo’s stomach flips. “But Sungyeol has got to be smarter than that. Sungyeol, and Hyoan-hyung.”
Sunggyo brings his palms to his temple and starts massaging. Dongwoo sighs.
“The managers don’t think he’s been kidnapped because it’s impossible. Hyoan-hyung was with him every waking moment and when he wasn’t, there were cameras were on him.”
That’s all Dongwoo needs to say, because then it dawns on all six of them as they sit cross-legged in the living room, like they did a lifetime ago as trainees. It’s not too different from what they would have experienced back then or expected, and then everything makes sense in the most senseless way possible: Sungyeol ran away.
Woollim holds a press conference and this time, Infinite are the ones who sit down in suits at the side and stare somberly at the flashing cameras while Jungyeop and the rest of the managers face the cameras and speak.
“This is the first and last time we’re going to adress this issue, but one of the members, Lee Sungyeol, has run away. This is a severe breach of contract and, if needed, will go to court. Since he ran away while filming in Japan, the Japanese police have been notified and will work concurrently with our Korean counterparts. As a group, Infinite are still promoting and their comeback has not been compromised.” Jungyeop puts the mike down.
Question time starts up, and these are the ones Myungsoo remembers:
“Are you sure he has run away? What if there is foul play involved?”
“Based on our own investigations and sheer logistics, he couldn’t have been kidnapped or worse. He is an idol and he was in Japan to film a drama.” Myungsoo hears: We hope he has run away.
“Will you be adding another member to the group?”
“No.” Myungsoo hears: Not yet.
“Will Lee Sungyeol be added to the group once he comes back?”
“That will be another press conference.” Myungsoo hears: If he comes back.
It ends in half and hour, and Jungyeop ends with this: “Lee Sungyeol, if you’re listening to this, please come back. Something can and will be worked out. Your parents are worried about you. Your company is worried about you. We’re all worried about you but most of all, Infinite needs you back.”
It’s through sheer willpower that none of them actually cry until the photographers leave and they’re ushered into the van, ducking the onslaught of fansites and press photographers waiting for them outside the hall.
No one can get through to Sungyeol’s phone, so everyone assumes he’s dumped it until the police actually confirm the fact they can’t get a GPS trail because it’s been turned off for the past week.
It doesn’t stop Myungsoo from trying to get through though, even though it drives him slightly more insane when he hears the dead dial tone and Sungjong forcibly peels it from his grip and fusses with it.
“There,” he says, eyes hard but face paler than usual. “Now you can have it back.”
“What did you do?” Myungsoo scrolls through his contacts list and finds that Sungyeol’s name has been deleted. He looks up to the firm resolve in Sungjong’s eyes. “Too bad I have it memorized,” he answers quietly, and just like that, Sungjong’s facade slips and to Myungsoo, it feels like everything and everyone is crumbling around him, slowly but surely.
The managers and Jungyeop go through Sungyeol’s room before the police come over to poke around for their reports, but all this happens when they’re rehearsing for their comeback. Because even though everything has changed, nothing really has. They still practice for hours on end. Sunggyu still points out their mistakes. Myungsoo still feels tired.
So it’s no surprise when one day they arrive back at the dorm and Jungryul tells them to decide among themselves who will move into Sungyeol’s room. “It’s a waste of space if it’s empty,” he says but everyone else knows what he’s saying instead: “It’s not a shrine.”
The room is empty; Sungyeol’s stuff has been packed into boxes and given back to his family.
“We’re doing this the normal way, yeah?”
Everyone just nods.
Myungsoo contemplates his choices. Scissors, he loses. Paper, he loses. Stone, he loses. There’s not much point but he picks scissors anyway and he wins the first round. He wins the next with paper, too and then it’s him and Hoya.
“I don’t want the room,” he says colourlessly.
Hoya shrugs, but his eyes are soft. “Me neither.”
“I’m going to throw paper,” Myungsoo says.
He does. Hoya throws stone.
When Myungsoo falls asleep on Sungyeol’s bed, the sheets are his own sheets and the pillow smells like detergent and when he looks out the window, it’s the same view as he sees back in his old room.
Myungsoo wakes up to the sun streaming into his room and a wet pillow.
Myungsoo has lived through the day right before Sungyeol leaves so many times during dance practice that whenever he dances now, he thinks about the same inconsequential sequence of events. Sungyeol packing his bag with his door cracked open, Sungyeol rushing for last minute things, Sungyeol acting perfectly normal. Myungsoo has gone through everything else the other members have done on that day but nothing is different. No one disagreed with Sungyeol, Sungyeol doesn’t treat anyone coldly, and Sungyeol certainly does not spare any hints that he will never be back.
And this is when Myungsoo would feel more rage than the despair and loss surrounding him, because there was no note, no goodbye hug, nothing.
Sungyeol’s drama ratings actually pick up. The controversy reels in viewers like no other and even though he’s only in for the first two episodes, the scriptwriters manage to work out his real life disappearance into the plot. It helps that it’s a family drama to begin with.
There are also talks to replace Sungyeol with another member from the group, but all of them decline it when the managers propose this idea, some with more force than others. They even suggest replacing Sungyeol with Daeyeol, but Woollim steps in to decline firmly but politely.
He’s still getting used to the events surrounding his brother, they say, and he’s a rookie idol. He needs time to settle into promotions with the group before filming an overseas drama.
Infinite’s sales pick up as well - all their albums are moving, even their debut one. News reporters hint that this comeback could be their biggest and most successful.
And it’s needless to say that they’ve never done better. (Professionally, that is)
They have a gag order not to mention Sungyeol at all, and reporters know better than to even mention the word ‘disappearance’ or his name. It works well enough for all of them, even though it’s been almost three weeks and it’s been three weeks of feeling acutely aware of breathing, because it hurts. It physically hurts to breathe because he thinks of Sungyeol in a ditch or Sungyeol looking at a disposable telephone, debating whether to call back or not or Sungyeol speaking in broken English, staying in one of those cheap motels Myungsoo took photos of in Vegas.
By the time their comeback comes around, the pain dulls into a nagging discomfort but it’s still there, pressing down against and deep within his chest. He sees the way the other members sing and dance and function and he knows they must feel the same way, think the same thoughts, and hate and miss Sungyeol as much as he does.
Their comeback wins in its first week. While Sunggyu makes the customary thank you speech, a thought flashes past Myungsoo’s mind: all this is only possible because Sungyeol left. Disappeared. Sungyeol is still doing his part for the group, just in the most terrible way possible.
He starts crying on stage, trophy clenched in his hands and knuckles bone white. He doesn’t know how it’s possible to hate and love someone so much, and how he’d trade every single thing just for Sungyeol to return.
The music shows can have every single award back. The fans can take back all their money. They’d move back to Manwadong and stare at the mouldy walls and eat rice with seaweed if it just means Sungyeol will come back. Myungsoo thinks he'd even trade the whole of Infinite for Sungyeol's return but stops himself there, because if he does, then he's no different from Sungyeol.
All six of them watch the finale of Sungyeol’s drama together. It’s a family drama, so it has to end happily, a tearful reunion and tied up with a silk bow. Sungyeol’s character sends back a note, detailing his reasons and his apologies and on screen, his mother breaks down. His father clutches the letter to his chest. The screen fades to black, and life goes on.
Myungsoo is numbed by the ending but when he looks around, everyone else is in tears. He touches his cheek, and unsurprisingly, it’s damp. He reaches for Sungjong and presses his face into his back.
Sungjong’s back is shaking.
Sungyeol never sends back a letter. Sungyeol never sends them anything and Myungsoo thinks Sungyeol expects all the awards and trophies to stand in place for him. One day, Myungsoo decides to line all the ones they have in the dorm on the floor and measure them.
Dongwoo peeks past his door. “What are you doing?”
Myungsoo looks up, the tape measure in his hand. “All our trophies measure close to 3.5 meters. That’s almost two Sungyeols.”
It’s the first time since he can remember that he’s said Sungyeol’s name aloud and from Dongwoo’s reaction, the first time he’s heard it as well. Myungsoo sighs. “I miss him, hyung. I miss Sungyeol.”
Dongwoo nods and walks over to give him a hug. It's a comfortable silence. After helping him take all the trophies back out and arranging them on the shelf, Dongwoo leaves to his own room. Myungsoo is left staring at the shelf, and he shakes his head and goes back to the room. Some days, he hates Sungyeol more than others.
There’s no silk ribbon to this story, no clean ending. The six members of Infinite have a radio show tomorrow.