countdown to infinity (part 2)
pairing: ot5, eventual yunjae
focus: yunho
length: chaptered
a/n: i haven't read a chaptered fic in so long that i'd forgotten how antsy it feels as a reader to wait on updates. just experienced it again recently and it made me feel the need to hurry up with this. ie. i'm so sorry for the insane delay with this chapter and i'll try to be more diligent with updates from now on.
summary: university au. yunho is a business student who wakes up one day with memories of a life that he does not live. dong bang shin ki does not exist, but it manages to disrupt his life anyway.
chapter 2
Changmin and Yunho have drawn out several ideas, from psychic powers and reincarnations to personality disorders and alternate dimensions, but it is hard not to shoot them all down when both boys are suspended half-way through disbelief. At one point, Changmin comments on how vivid his imagination must be to have created another life for himself in his mind with such meticulous detail, but they both know that Yunho is not a creative person, and so even that simple hypothesis is hard to accept.
Yunho does not have time to mull over it all for long though, because as soon as he gets home and checks his laptop, he finds it overflowing with desperate messages about the Economics midterm on Monday and ‘Yunho oppa, please call me as soon as you hear this- I think I’m going to fail!’
He spends the rest of the night on the phone, slowly going through the notes with his student, repeating the concepts and theories, over and over, until he realizes that he has memorized them all in the process as well. Excited squealing and a million ‘I love you’s echo over the line after every question done right, and eventually Yunho switches ears, the other one red and warm and partially deaf now.
“Perks of being a tutor,” Changmin grins as he retrieves a milk carton from the fridge. Yunho throws a pencil at his retreating back and smiles into the receiver.
Once midterms are over, Yunho finds himself knee-deep in term projects, meeting with his groups after classes, and working on his reports after the meetings. He takes a five minute break sometime in the middle to eat his cereal, and then he stays up until three every night to finish his readings and assignments in time for class the next day. His alarm rings at seven thirty, and he is ready to leave the apartment by eight, listening to Changmin grumble about the toothpaste lying in the shower as he shuffles across the hall rubbing his equally red-rimmed eyes.
He calls home every weekend, always prepared for the scolding he will get.
“You should call more often,” his mother huffs over the line. He balances the receiver between his shoulder and his ear as he puts on his boots. It is winter now.
“I’ll try,” he promises, criss-crossing the laces. The phone is passed onto his father who tells him to ‘just focus on your studies - I will deal with your mother’, and Yunho listens with a smile on his face as he walks to the library and thinks what a luxury it is to be able to talk to his parents at all. He thinks about the Yunho who could not, about the loneliness he felt when he was torn from his friends and his family and his members, and he immediately pushes the thought away.
The cycle repeats itself with tiresome monotony, but Yunho never once complains.
Yunho wakes up on his birthday to cancelled classes.
‘Hey birthday boy, the snow broke records for you!’ his friends text him, and he silently thanks whatever deity was in charge of the weather before turning his phone on silent, burrowing underneath his blankets, and going back to sleep.
He dreams of swimming in the echoes of silence with pitch black nothingness his only company and the taste of bitter nostalgia dancing on his tongue. Invisible wings and rushing wind hurl him into the distance. Freedom. Somewhere beyond the horizon, there are stars, sparkling. One, two, three, four. He wants to touch them. He inches towards them, closer and closer - and the closer he gets, the brighter they shine. He extends out his hand and touches something warm. Home.
Blindness envelopes him once again.
“Hyung.”
Yunho cannot bring himself to open his eyes.
“I’m leaving your present on your desk.”
“Nhmghfh,” he grunts into his pillow.
Changmin closes the door.
When he finally gets out of bed, rubbing his eyes and feeling well rested with a newfound appreciation for life, the storm has passed, and the roads are frosted with snow. The world looks beautiful in white.
Changmin is lounging in front of the television, eating cold takeout. “This song is terrible,” he comments around a mouthful of chow mein, and Yunho laughs.
“You - the other you - used to sing it all the time, you know,” Yunho tells him, receiving a disbelieving look in response. “You actually knew the choreo for this song better than most of our own.”
“…this is a girl group,” he points out indignantly.
“I think one of them had a crush on you,” Yunho grins, leaning over and helping himself to the chicken. Changmin groans, mumbling about evil hyungs from other planets and their privileged irrelevant information.
Yunho bumps his shoulder affectionately. “Thanks for the books.” He had been saving up to buy himself some practice books for the law aptitude exams, but Changmin beat him to it. And now that he is done tutoring Economics and has quit his part time job, Yunho finally has the time to start preparing.
Today though, he is content to take the day off. Just for today.
“You can make up for it by doing the laundry,” Changmin prods.
Yunho shakes his head with an easy grin. “It’s a gift. I’m not going to pay you back for it.”
Changmin harrumphs. “Anyway, do you have any big birthday plans for tonight?”
Yunho bites his lip, contemplating. He was supposed to have class until late evening, and so he had not bothered making plans. Now though, with the snow day, he technically has a long weekend, and he can spare a night out. He knows exactly what he wants to do.
Changmin glares at him in firm rejection.
“Come on, you’ll have fun!” Yunho insists.
“I’m not old enough to drink yet, remember?” and it is true. Changmin often acts wise beyond his years, sometimes more mature than Yunho himself, and so it is easy to treat him like an equal and forget how young he really is. He prepares another argument in his head, imagines Changmin’s rebuttal, and gives up. He gets up to call some other friends instead.
Yunho has never been a big fan of clubs. They are too loud, too crowded, too dark, and too hot, and when he is there, he finds it hard to think or breathe or speak. They are suffocating, stifling, and he has never lasted long there. But now - now, he thinks there is no better place to curb the feeling of forlorn emptiness that is simmering inside him and begging to be let out.
He wants to dance.
He realizes that even though he has technically never even experienced it, he misses the stage. He misses the lights and the cameras and the music and the fans and the euphoria that came with it all. He misses singing and he misses dancing and he misses - he misses them even more. Junsu, Yoochun, Jaejoong. Strangers, but in his mind they were like family, like -
He does not know if they are real, but. He misses them very much.
It sounds like bitter nostalgia when he steps in, and he drinks in the scene, heart pumping in synch with the music. Yunho automatically gravitates towards the dance floor where everything feels like freedom and all he can see is passion. He breathes, and he suddenly feels like he can fly.
He has earned this.
Yunho has not danced since freshman orientation, has not felt this engaged in the music since he was a child. He thinks he really likes dancing. He thinks he loves it. He finds he is good at it.
He indulges himself like this, with the seductive beat and its intoxicating sounds, places his hand on the small of a girl’s back and grinds into her, idly wondering how U-know Yunho would have felt if he had been caught in public like this.
He laughs - loud, open, happy - as he avoids getting cake smeared on his face and sips on the amber liquid. The lights shine on his face, blue and green and red. He thinks of fireworks - dazzling, and his hands tingle with warmth.
He is more than a little intoxicated right now.
The crowd explodes in cheers on the dance floor, circling around a boy who is popping to the music, and Yunho leans over the railing to watch. The boy is good. Amazing, in fact - embracing the music like it belongs to him, like it is running through his veins. He could be a star, Yunho muses before turning back to the birthday celebrations.
It is not until well after midnight, when he is on his way out, stumbling and giggling about nothing and everything that he catches sight of the boy from the dance floor, who lifts his head to talk to a friend, cross earrings glinting under the flashlights as he waves his hands animatedly.
Yunho stops, motionless, and his heart forgets to beat.
Junsu.
Xiah fucking Junsu.
He sways on his feet, suddenly dizzy. He is laughing, making jokes with a friend, and Yunho watches, dazed. Junsu looks happy. Even without the fame or the glamour or the fortune, Junsu does not look lifeless or hollow. He looks warm and human, like flesh and blood - real. Underneath the flashing lights, his lips part slowly to reveal a shimmering smile, and it scatters across the floor. He shines like a star.
Yunho stares, as if it will help him understand.
It does not help. He does not understand.
Junsu does not catch his eye.
Yunho’s mind feels like the aftermath of a war when he wakes, littered with confusion and rubble of what could have previously been coherent thought, but he cannot be too sure. It feels dead and empty, soundless. It is too bright outside. His eyes flutter thoughtlessly. He wants to go back to sleep and never wake up.
He cannot always have his way though, and so he turns off his alarm and shuffles out of bed with a massive headache. Alcohol was never his forte.
He maps out his schedule for the day after having some Tylenol. He has a meeting with his Audit group which will probably take all day. Tomorrow, he can finalize his Finance report for Monday, and then once his Management project is done, his schedule will clear up some room to study for LSATs.
Fuck, he thinks when he is standing in line for coffee. Junsu.
Frustration piles itself onto the fatigue, making an even bigger mess of the chaos, and he suddenly wants to kick himself. He should have introduced himself, he should have asked for a number.
But he was drunk and completely dumbfounded and definitely would have scared him off.
Maybe he could have just been honest and told him, ‘Hi, we made music together in this one dream I had and I really, really liked you there, and since I may know you way too well for a stranger, would you like to be my friend?’
He probably would have puked instead.
The barista asks him for his order.
He wants to cry.
He thinks he should have forgone those three extra-large cups of coffee when his heart pumps itself in overdrive, shooting bullets through his system. His mind speeds him through the meeting so fast he barely registers checking in before it is over with a promise of meeting again next week, and he is left to his own devices. The sun is setting. He bites his lips.
His hands shake when he pulls out his phone, and it takes three times to write out his text to Changmin: ‘Where r u? Can we talk?’
Changmin’s response comes half an hour later. ‘I’m in the chem lab. No one else is here, so you can come over if you want.’
Yunho goes over.
He ends up doing his Audit readings in the lab, or at least he tries. He is waiting until Changmin is completely done wrapping up his experiment before unleashing all his worries onto him, because he knows Changmin and he knows how important his grades are to him, and he does not want to suffer his wrath in case something goes wrong with the lab. He can wait.
It feels like an eternity before Changmin sits down in front of him, “You can talk now hyung,” and Yunho takes a deep breath before telling him about Junsu, about him being real and alive and kicking and breathing, about seeing him at the club and him not looking back.
“He’s one of the five, Changmin-ah. He’s one of us. And he’s here.”
Changmin looks at Yunho’s cheeks, flushed with energy, and he smiles at the image. “So what now, hyung?” he asks as he leans back into his chair.
Yunho raises an eyebrow in question.
“What are you going to do if your dream is real and the five of us somehow meet again?”
Yunho does not know.
He may have been a leader in another life, coordinating with management and networking with executives and giving direction to the members, but Yunho is just Yunho here. He does not know where those other members are or how they are living or what they are doing with their lives. And as the days pass, he still does not know why he even thinks of these strangers as members, why he wants to call them friends or even get to know them. He does not know what to do with the knowledge he has or what any of it means. And at the moment, he is willing to stand back and let destiny play out by itself.
He does not have to bear responsibility for everyone’s future.
But that does not mean that he cannot still care.
“Are you ready?” Yunho asks, placing a bowl of cereal in front of his dongsaeng, convinced that he has not consumed much beyond energy drinks since he started his final review, which was definitely well over a day ago. Changmin picks up the spoon and inhales the food, somehow managing to shovel it in his mouth at full speed while still keeping his eyes glued to his notes. He does not answer.
Yunho ruffles his hair and wishes him luck, pulling out his phone to text his Audit group as he heads out.
By the time he returns home, the bright yellow sun has given way to a blanket of black. Yunho barely manages to shrug out of his shirt and walk to the kitchen when Changmin arrives, spent.
“It’s psychology,” he whines, dropping his bag to the floor and collapsing onto the couch. “All the options made sense. I have no idea how I’m going to do.”
“I brought takeout,” Yunho responds, waving the paper bags in the air, and Changmin is immediately consoled.
“You were singing in the shower today,” he comments after taking a giant bite from his burger.
Yunho’s phone beeps, and he skims through the message. His group is confirming the details for tomorrow’s meeting. He has to bite back the argument that he is pretty sure he used to sing for a living, and instead mulls over the realization. “Did I distract you?”
“Yeah, kind of,” Changmin admits.
“Sorry.”
“S’okay,” he says, stealing some of Yunho’s fries. “You’re actually pretty decent.”
Yunho preens.
“But not that good.”
Yunho takes his coke in retaliation. His phone beeps again. Tomorrow’s meeting is cancelled.
Yunho and Changmin have been putting off laundry for weeks, too busy cramming to care about sleeping or eating or doing menial household chores, and it has gotten to the point that they both wake up in the morning desperate for fresh clothes to wear, only to forget about changing and getting straight to work. After reusing his underwear for the fourth day this week, Yunho decides he cannot put it off any longer.
That - and his morning is now completely free, and so he actually has time to do some chores.
He carries the basket down the stairs, barely able to see over the pile of dirty clothes, and he silently prays that he did not lose a sock or a shirt on the way. Especially not one of Changmin’s - he does not want to die.
The laundry room smells fresher than their dorm has smelled in weeks, and Yunho silently pities himself for living in a pig sty. He dumps all the clothes in the nearest washer and prays that the clothes come out intact. He pours in the detergent and pops in the coins.
One hour.
He is setting an alarm on his phone, ready to leave, when he spots him.
Junsu is dressed in a simple tank top and a pair of grey sweatpants. He is sitting cross-legged on the bench with his tongue peeking out of his lips as he frowns at the textbook in his lap and punches buttons on his calculator like it is a game console.
Yunho pauses, unsure. Fight or flight, fight or flight.
He wants to run, away from Junsu and all the things he means, like friendship and loss and hatred. As he breathes, he can feel a faint sense of nostalgia burning in his heartbeat along with pain, and he can hear the soft sound of apologies echoing in the air moulding and disappearing with beautiful countermelodies breathed into the mic. The fear makes a path down his dry mouth and clogged throat and sits heavy on his heart. This is U-Know Yunho talking. (Jung Yunho is mostly afraid of rejection.)
He wants to get away, but he never wants to part from him again.
He wants to know him.
He inhales all of his courage and sits down, silently praying that Junsu cannot hear heartbeats. He is going to wait for his laundry here. Just like Junsu is doing. This is totally normal.
Hey, he wants to say. You’re looking fairly thin. Have you been living well?
“Stats assignment?” he asks as he sets his basket down. His voice wavers a little.
Junsu starts. “Huh?” he glances at Yunho. “Yes. Yeah. It sucks,” he replies with a frown and turns to glare holes into his calculator as if that will help. Fluorescent light reflects the frustration in his eyes. Junsu had always been bad at math.
He will be damned if he lets the conversation end there. “Who’s your prof?”
Junsu turns to look at him more fully this time, teardrop eyes wide and searching. Yunho counts a beat. Two. Three. He wants to run. And then Junsu bites his lip. “I don’t remember his name,” he confesses. “But he’s the one with the limp.”
Yunho knows who it is.
Junsu sets down his calculator and pouts as he speaks, and Yunho has to swallow away his smile. “It’s not fair,” he complains. “He just taught this to us today - how does he expect us to have the assignment done by Friday?”
Yunho laughs. “He expects a lot from his students. It’s a hard class.” He leans over to browse the question sheet. “I remember doing this assignment last year. If you want, I can help you with it,” he offers.
Junsu’s face lights up, with god yes, please, thank you, and “by the way, my name is Junsu.”
(part 3 coming soon)
focus: yunho
length: chaptered
a/n: i haven't read a chaptered fic in so long that i'd forgotten how antsy it feels as a reader to wait on updates. just experienced it again recently and it made me feel the need to hurry up with this. ie. i'm so sorry for the insane delay with this chapter and i'll try to be more diligent with updates from now on.
summary: university au. yunho is a business student who wakes up one day with memories of a life that he does not live. dong bang shin ki does not exist, but it manages to disrupt his life anyway.
chapter 2
Changmin and Yunho have drawn out several ideas, from psychic powers and reincarnations to personality disorders and alternate dimensions, but it is hard not to shoot them all down when both boys are suspended half-way through disbelief. At one point, Changmin comments on how vivid his imagination must be to have created another life for himself in his mind with such meticulous detail, but they both know that Yunho is not a creative person, and so even that simple hypothesis is hard to accept.
Yunho does not have time to mull over it all for long though, because as soon as he gets home and checks his laptop, he finds it overflowing with desperate messages about the Economics midterm on Monday and ‘Yunho oppa, please call me as soon as you hear this- I think I’m going to fail!’
He spends the rest of the night on the phone, slowly going through the notes with his student, repeating the concepts and theories, over and over, until he realizes that he has memorized them all in the process as well. Excited squealing and a million ‘I love you’s echo over the line after every question done right, and eventually Yunho switches ears, the other one red and warm and partially deaf now.
“Perks of being a tutor,” Changmin grins as he retrieves a milk carton from the fridge. Yunho throws a pencil at his retreating back and smiles into the receiver.
Once midterms are over, Yunho finds himself knee-deep in term projects, meeting with his groups after classes, and working on his reports after the meetings. He takes a five minute break sometime in the middle to eat his cereal, and then he stays up until three every night to finish his readings and assignments in time for class the next day. His alarm rings at seven thirty, and he is ready to leave the apartment by eight, listening to Changmin grumble about the toothpaste lying in the shower as he shuffles across the hall rubbing his equally red-rimmed eyes.
He calls home every weekend, always prepared for the scolding he will get.
“You should call more often,” his mother huffs over the line. He balances the receiver between his shoulder and his ear as he puts on his boots. It is winter now.
“I’ll try,” he promises, criss-crossing the laces. The phone is passed onto his father who tells him to ‘just focus on your studies - I will deal with your mother’, and Yunho listens with a smile on his face as he walks to the library and thinks what a luxury it is to be able to talk to his parents at all. He thinks about the Yunho who could not, about the loneliness he felt when he was torn from his friends and his family and his members, and he immediately pushes the thought away.
The cycle repeats itself with tiresome monotony, but Yunho never once complains.
Yunho wakes up on his birthday to cancelled classes.
‘Hey birthday boy, the snow broke records for you!’ his friends text him, and he silently thanks whatever deity was in charge of the weather before turning his phone on silent, burrowing underneath his blankets, and going back to sleep.
He dreams of swimming in the echoes of silence with pitch black nothingness his only company and the taste of bitter nostalgia dancing on his tongue. Invisible wings and rushing wind hurl him into the distance. Freedom. Somewhere beyond the horizon, there are stars, sparkling. One, two, three, four. He wants to touch them. He inches towards them, closer and closer - and the closer he gets, the brighter they shine. He extends out his hand and touches something warm. Home.
Blindness envelopes him once again.
“Hyung.”
Yunho cannot bring himself to open his eyes.
“I’m leaving your present on your desk.”
“Nhmghfh,” he grunts into his pillow.
Changmin closes the door.
When he finally gets out of bed, rubbing his eyes and feeling well rested with a newfound appreciation for life, the storm has passed, and the roads are frosted with snow. The world looks beautiful in white.
Changmin is lounging in front of the television, eating cold takeout. “This song is terrible,” he comments around a mouthful of chow mein, and Yunho laughs.
“You - the other you - used to sing it all the time, you know,” Yunho tells him, receiving a disbelieving look in response. “You actually knew the choreo for this song better than most of our own.”
“…this is a girl group,” he points out indignantly.
“I think one of them had a crush on you,” Yunho grins, leaning over and helping himself to the chicken. Changmin groans, mumbling about evil hyungs from other planets and their privileged irrelevant information.
Yunho bumps his shoulder affectionately. “Thanks for the books.” He had been saving up to buy himself some practice books for the law aptitude exams, but Changmin beat him to it. And now that he is done tutoring Economics and has quit his part time job, Yunho finally has the time to start preparing.
Today though, he is content to take the day off. Just for today.
“You can make up for it by doing the laundry,” Changmin prods.
Yunho shakes his head with an easy grin. “It’s a gift. I’m not going to pay you back for it.”
Changmin harrumphs. “Anyway, do you have any big birthday plans for tonight?”
Yunho bites his lip, contemplating. He was supposed to have class until late evening, and so he had not bothered making plans. Now though, with the snow day, he technically has a long weekend, and he can spare a night out. He knows exactly what he wants to do.
Changmin glares at him in firm rejection.
“Come on, you’ll have fun!” Yunho insists.
“I’m not old enough to drink yet, remember?” and it is true. Changmin often acts wise beyond his years, sometimes more mature than Yunho himself, and so it is easy to treat him like an equal and forget how young he really is. He prepares another argument in his head, imagines Changmin’s rebuttal, and gives up. He gets up to call some other friends instead.
Yunho has never been a big fan of clubs. They are too loud, too crowded, too dark, and too hot, and when he is there, he finds it hard to think or breathe or speak. They are suffocating, stifling, and he has never lasted long there. But now - now, he thinks there is no better place to curb the feeling of forlorn emptiness that is simmering inside him and begging to be let out.
He wants to dance.
He realizes that even though he has technically never even experienced it, he misses the stage. He misses the lights and the cameras and the music and the fans and the euphoria that came with it all. He misses singing and he misses dancing and he misses - he misses them even more. Junsu, Yoochun, Jaejoong. Strangers, but in his mind they were like family, like -
He does not know if they are real, but. He misses them very much.
It sounds like bitter nostalgia when he steps in, and he drinks in the scene, heart pumping in synch with the music. Yunho automatically gravitates towards the dance floor where everything feels like freedom and all he can see is passion. He breathes, and he suddenly feels like he can fly.
He has earned this.
Yunho has not danced since freshman orientation, has not felt this engaged in the music since he was a child. He thinks he really likes dancing. He thinks he loves it. He finds he is good at it.
He indulges himself like this, with the seductive beat and its intoxicating sounds, places his hand on the small of a girl’s back and grinds into her, idly wondering how U-know Yunho would have felt if he had been caught in public like this.
He laughs - loud, open, happy - as he avoids getting cake smeared on his face and sips on the amber liquid. The lights shine on his face, blue and green and red. He thinks of fireworks - dazzling, and his hands tingle with warmth.
He is more than a little intoxicated right now.
The crowd explodes in cheers on the dance floor, circling around a boy who is popping to the music, and Yunho leans over the railing to watch. The boy is good. Amazing, in fact - embracing the music like it belongs to him, like it is running through his veins. He could be a star, Yunho muses before turning back to the birthday celebrations.
It is not until well after midnight, when he is on his way out, stumbling and giggling about nothing and everything that he catches sight of the boy from the dance floor, who lifts his head to talk to a friend, cross earrings glinting under the flashlights as he waves his hands animatedly.
Yunho stops, motionless, and his heart forgets to beat.
Junsu.
Xiah fucking Junsu.
He sways on his feet, suddenly dizzy. He is laughing, making jokes with a friend, and Yunho watches, dazed. Junsu looks happy. Even without the fame or the glamour or the fortune, Junsu does not look lifeless or hollow. He looks warm and human, like flesh and blood - real. Underneath the flashing lights, his lips part slowly to reveal a shimmering smile, and it scatters across the floor. He shines like a star.
Yunho stares, as if it will help him understand.
It does not help. He does not understand.
Junsu does not catch his eye.
Yunho’s mind feels like the aftermath of a war when he wakes, littered with confusion and rubble of what could have previously been coherent thought, but he cannot be too sure. It feels dead and empty, soundless. It is too bright outside. His eyes flutter thoughtlessly. He wants to go back to sleep and never wake up.
He cannot always have his way though, and so he turns off his alarm and shuffles out of bed with a massive headache. Alcohol was never his forte.
He maps out his schedule for the day after having some Tylenol. He has a meeting with his Audit group which will probably take all day. Tomorrow, he can finalize his Finance report for Monday, and then once his Management project is done, his schedule will clear up some room to study for LSATs.
Fuck, he thinks when he is standing in line for coffee. Junsu.
Frustration piles itself onto the fatigue, making an even bigger mess of the chaos, and he suddenly wants to kick himself. He should have introduced himself, he should have asked for a number.
But he was drunk and completely dumbfounded and definitely would have scared him off.
Maybe he could have just been honest and told him, ‘Hi, we made music together in this one dream I had and I really, really liked you there, and since I may know you way too well for a stranger, would you like to be my friend?’
He probably would have puked instead.
The barista asks him for his order.
He wants to cry.
He thinks he should have forgone those three extra-large cups of coffee when his heart pumps itself in overdrive, shooting bullets through his system. His mind speeds him through the meeting so fast he barely registers checking in before it is over with a promise of meeting again next week, and he is left to his own devices. The sun is setting. He bites his lips.
His hands shake when he pulls out his phone, and it takes three times to write out his text to Changmin: ‘Where r u? Can we talk?’
Changmin’s response comes half an hour later. ‘I’m in the chem lab. No one else is here, so you can come over if you want.’
Yunho goes over.
He ends up doing his Audit readings in the lab, or at least he tries. He is waiting until Changmin is completely done wrapping up his experiment before unleashing all his worries onto him, because he knows Changmin and he knows how important his grades are to him, and he does not want to suffer his wrath in case something goes wrong with the lab. He can wait.
It feels like an eternity before Changmin sits down in front of him, “You can talk now hyung,” and Yunho takes a deep breath before telling him about Junsu, about him being real and alive and kicking and breathing, about seeing him at the club and him not looking back.
“He’s one of the five, Changmin-ah. He’s one of us. And he’s here.”
Changmin looks at Yunho’s cheeks, flushed with energy, and he smiles at the image. “So what now, hyung?” he asks as he leans back into his chair.
Yunho raises an eyebrow in question.
“What are you going to do if your dream is real and the five of us somehow meet again?”
Yunho does not know.
He may have been a leader in another life, coordinating with management and networking with executives and giving direction to the members, but Yunho is just Yunho here. He does not know where those other members are or how they are living or what they are doing with their lives. And as the days pass, he still does not know why he even thinks of these strangers as members, why he wants to call them friends or even get to know them. He does not know what to do with the knowledge he has or what any of it means. And at the moment, he is willing to stand back and let destiny play out by itself.
He does not have to bear responsibility for everyone’s future.
But that does not mean that he cannot still care.
“Are you ready?” Yunho asks, placing a bowl of cereal in front of his dongsaeng, convinced that he has not consumed much beyond energy drinks since he started his final review, which was definitely well over a day ago. Changmin picks up the spoon and inhales the food, somehow managing to shovel it in his mouth at full speed while still keeping his eyes glued to his notes. He does not answer.
Yunho ruffles his hair and wishes him luck, pulling out his phone to text his Audit group as he heads out.
By the time he returns home, the bright yellow sun has given way to a blanket of black. Yunho barely manages to shrug out of his shirt and walk to the kitchen when Changmin arrives, spent.
“It’s psychology,” he whines, dropping his bag to the floor and collapsing onto the couch. “All the options made sense. I have no idea how I’m going to do.”
“I brought takeout,” Yunho responds, waving the paper bags in the air, and Changmin is immediately consoled.
“You were singing in the shower today,” he comments after taking a giant bite from his burger.
Yunho’s phone beeps, and he skims through the message. His group is confirming the details for tomorrow’s meeting. He has to bite back the argument that he is pretty sure he used to sing for a living, and instead mulls over the realization. “Did I distract you?”
“Yeah, kind of,” Changmin admits.
“Sorry.”
“S’okay,” he says, stealing some of Yunho’s fries. “You’re actually pretty decent.”
Yunho preens.
“But not that good.”
Yunho takes his coke in retaliation. His phone beeps again. Tomorrow’s meeting is cancelled.
Yunho and Changmin have been putting off laundry for weeks, too busy cramming to care about sleeping or eating or doing menial household chores, and it has gotten to the point that they both wake up in the morning desperate for fresh clothes to wear, only to forget about changing and getting straight to work. After reusing his underwear for the fourth day this week, Yunho decides he cannot put it off any longer.
That - and his morning is now completely free, and so he actually has time to do some chores.
He carries the basket down the stairs, barely able to see over the pile of dirty clothes, and he silently prays that he did not lose a sock or a shirt on the way. Especially not one of Changmin’s - he does not want to die.
The laundry room smells fresher than their dorm has smelled in weeks, and Yunho silently pities himself for living in a pig sty. He dumps all the clothes in the nearest washer and prays that the clothes come out intact. He pours in the detergent and pops in the coins.
One hour.
He is setting an alarm on his phone, ready to leave, when he spots him.
Junsu is dressed in a simple tank top and a pair of grey sweatpants. He is sitting cross-legged on the bench with his tongue peeking out of his lips as he frowns at the textbook in his lap and punches buttons on his calculator like it is a game console.
Yunho pauses, unsure. Fight or flight, fight or flight.
He wants to run, away from Junsu and all the things he means, like friendship and loss and hatred. As he breathes, he can feel a faint sense of nostalgia burning in his heartbeat along with pain, and he can hear the soft sound of apologies echoing in the air moulding and disappearing with beautiful countermelodies breathed into the mic. The fear makes a path down his dry mouth and clogged throat and sits heavy on his heart. This is U-Know Yunho talking. (Jung Yunho is mostly afraid of rejection.)
He wants to get away, but he never wants to part from him again.
He wants to know him.
He inhales all of his courage and sits down, silently praying that Junsu cannot hear heartbeats. He is going to wait for his laundry here. Just like Junsu is doing. This is totally normal.
Hey, he wants to say. You’re looking fairly thin. Have you been living well?
“Stats assignment?” he asks as he sets his basket down. His voice wavers a little.
Junsu starts. “Huh?” he glances at Yunho. “Yes. Yeah. It sucks,” he replies with a frown and turns to glare holes into his calculator as if that will help. Fluorescent light reflects the frustration in his eyes. Junsu had always been bad at math.
He will be damned if he lets the conversation end there. “Who’s your prof?”
Junsu turns to look at him more fully this time, teardrop eyes wide and searching. Yunho counts a beat. Two. Three. He wants to run. And then Junsu bites his lip. “I don’t remember his name,” he confesses. “But he’s the one with the limp.”
Yunho knows who it is.
Junsu sets down his calculator and pouts as he speaks, and Yunho has to swallow away his smile. “It’s not fair,” he complains. “He just taught this to us today - how does he expect us to have the assignment done by Friday?”
Yunho laughs. “He expects a lot from his students. It’s a hard class.” He leans over to browse the question sheet. “I remember doing this assignment last year. If you want, I can help you with it,” he offers.
Junsu’s face lights up, with god yes, please, thank you, and “by the way, my name is Junsu.”
(part 3 coming soon)