So you think you know it all
how to start, how to end
Chen/Naeun
Romance | Angst, PG ~ 510 words
# 1: Beginning
→ I've decided to try out this 30 day challenge thingi lmao.
Beginnings are overrated, he decides.
He doesn’t remember how it all starts. All he knows is he does kind of like her even before he realizes he kind of wants to be a singer. Jongdae can tell her apart from the rest of the girls during her debut stage (during his training days still), and he finds her charming, appealing, etc etc -quite different. Son Naeun is entirely just that.
She stands out, even with barely one to two lines for the entire song, because where she is put during the choreography she simply stands out, in a good way of course and he doesn’t completely understand why. His eyes immediately follow her every movement, be it from the television, from his laptop or from when he actually tries attending the music shows live.
They talk during each other’s breaks, call each other during die-worthy situations about growing up and dealing with new people, and if it isn’t applicable, a text message of you-tired-already is raised for the other to answer. They aren’t required to answer that, really. If ever it is left as so, the other assumes that they are indeed too restless to reply.
Sometimes at night they wait on each other for whoever will fall asleep first, through the phone because they cannot go out in public and be a normal couple, that is if they are a couple to begin with.
Because to Jongdae -Chen, Chen, she has to get used to that name now - they haven’t even started. He hasn’t gone through traditionally asking her if she wants to be his, if he will be hers -that sort of thing. He hasn’t told her he loves Naeun, nor does she gets her hopes up that he will.
They meet each other secretly once in a while a couple of months before he debuts. She congratulates him with a smile, and he sighs high and irritated because he is going to be stuck promoting in China. She says it’s fine, and he says that it isn’t. Naeun thinks Jongdae will miss her, while Jongdae wonders how ever are they going to be together (how will he ever start admitting to her that he likes her so much it hurts to leave) this way.
Both assumptions are true, yet neither one finds courage to ask or confess.
So no matter how much they want to be together, they can’t. Because they aren’t sure anymore, no one ever is honestly. He hasn’t told Naeun he loves her, even when he does, and she doesn’t expect Jongdae to do so. There is no start, and thus there can’t be an end. He stops calling her, stops hanging out with her -almost suspends everything else they used to do and live a different life so far away from her.
Jongdae stays away, acts and forgets. Naeun feels hurt but she doesn’t voice it, still calm and shy and quiet. Jongdae is never hers, nor she ever is his. No start, no end, but the in between memories scar both infinitely.
The Leader
Seungho/Soyeon
General | Friendship, PG ~ 425 words
# 2: Accusation
Stop crying.
“A leader.”
Shut the fuck up, Seungho. You know nothing. “What about a leader?” She looks up weakly. “Huh? What about being leader?”
“A leader...” he sighs deep, before looking out of the window. He can’t just look at her straight in the eye, because if he does she isn’t going to stop crying either. If that persists, he will lose his cool, lose all the credibility he has as MBLAQ’s resident good boy leader, as a guy naturally, and as her best friend for eight years.
“A leader has to know how to separate fact from fiction, how to keep all heads of the group under cool weather, and how to not go over the top.”
She scuffs, biting her lips as she picks up the last sheet of her second roll of tissue paper from the table. The boy crosses his arms and stares at her grumpily (sadly inside) and he doesn’t know what to do with her anymore.
“I know I’m at fault. It was... too much,” she counters, drying her eyes. “It was too much for me, for the girls, for Hwayoung. Please... stop accusing me like I commited murder. We love Hwayoung... and you know that.”
Seungho finally settles down next to her, an epitome of a weeping willow crawls to him. She leans to his chest, pours out all of the hollows and woes of being T-ara’s current leader, and doesn’t stop until he wraps his arms around his beloved friend, his fingers stroking back her hair.
“I wasn’t accusing you,” he then says. “It’s just that... I’m worried. About T-ara. About you girls.”
Soyeon looks at him like a lost child, her eyes as heavy as the world, her soul almost as dull as winter white. “I feel that it’s all my fault now, that everything happened because I wasn’t there to stop it. I should’ve done something to ease the problem but I made it worse. I love Hwayoung most definitely and the girls, and we can’t... I can’t -”
“A leader...” he mutters again, Soyeon sobbing as hard as earlier that morning in her apartment, in which she immediately had him over right after the conference about one of the girls’ elimination.
“A leader doesn’t always have to be strong. A leader can make mistakes. That leader is the best kind because they aren’t afraid to risk what they can in order for what they think will be best for the group.”
She thinks deep, and Seungho grips her shoulder closer.
Stop crying already.
Always
Myungsoo/Suzy
Romance | Fluff, G ~ 270 words
# 3: Restless
He traced the tiny creases on her fingers, went about it for quite some time without really inteding to fall in love with them. How trivial, he mused but weren’t all little things begin as so? He smiled quietly before the young girl stirred from her sleep, opening her eyes with a cringe at the white flourscent lighting by the ceiling.
“Hey,” he called.
“You again,” she muttered, surprising him. Immediately pulling back his hand and shoving it down in his pocket, he averted his gaze in surprise, gulping also in return.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, closing her eyes and pulling the covers up, hearing the metal of the hospital bed clink. The tube by her hand was still attached, and it continued to serve its purpose as she seemed quite better this morning than she was yesterday.
“I always come,” he defended. “Because you’re still sick, you idiot.”
He was sitting by her toes, before Suzy grabbed his arm with all the energy she had, made him lay beside her, and she leaned on him like he was her pillow. She fell asleep once more, Myungsoo pretending and liking the idea that she actually meant needing and missing him so much, so he let her stay like this (for while he allowed her to just this time), and again slowly took out her fingers and intertwines his around them, slowly but later on tightly. She didn’t move one bit, and it was nicer that she was definitely asleep.
“Always right beside you,” all the way he slept too, which he happened to wear a special smile.
Stranger
Lay/Lizzy
Romance | Fluff, G ~ 519 words
# 4: Snowflake
Backpack slung over her shoulder and hair messily pony-tailed, she hopped around in desperate attempt to get out of the cold, wearing only one of her ballet shoes, the other probably lost somewhere in the heaps of white snow around them.
Snow. In his province back in China, he hardly saw them brushing by his doorstep. That, or he was always away down to Hong Kong and Beijing and even to Taiwan where winter was another fairytale season. While feeling the first breath of it now, Seoul became one of his favorite places in the whole world.
“Excuse me, but... er... can you help me look for my other shoe?” she approached him, still dumbfounded. “I didn’t expect snow to cave in this fast. I’m going to be late for ballet class. Ah, the instructor will kill me... I might not debut and ugh, this really is starting to be a pain!”
He smiled and nodded, hardly understanding what she just said also due to the way she spoke, which he recognized to be from down Busan. Before he knew it, he was searching it with her, pushing away the whiteness then until locating the pink soggy pair.
Excited, she bowed her head in thanks. “Thank you, sir.”
“You’re welcome,” he answered, but with her eyes widening at his reply.
“Omo, you’re not from Seoul too?” Recognizing that he had an accent, and out of curiosity, she wondered out loud.
“I’m from China but I came here to study.”
“Oh,” she said a tone lower, which he proved that he wasn’t what she was expecting. She attached her shoe on her other free foot, slowly bowing at him again for the time they wasted on each other and moved ahead, not anymore bothering to run as she seemed to have been rushing earlier.
He called a tiny ‘hey’, following her from behind. As she turned, his heart seemed to stop beating, like it lost its normal pace or something. She reminded him of a snowflake. He took off his scarf, wrapped it around her despite the evident blush from both parties and he chuckled slightly to ease the awkward moment.
“Zhang Yixing,” he introduced. “I’ll walk you to the studio since I have the whole day off. You know, just in case you lose your shoe again.”
A more relaxed smile came from her. “I’m Park Sooyoung. Thanks for the scarf.”
“Thank you for agreeing.”
“Agreeing to what?”
“Agreeing to go on a date with me tomorrow,” he answered, taking wider steps in front that she was left behind, still gaping in surprise.
He waved for her attention. “You’re coming, right?”
Her hands feebly touched the warmth of the fabric from his scarf, the smell of country-like perfume on it -such a wonderful winter gift from a stranger. The handsome boy seemed to be waiting for her to say something contradicting instead. Her shoes were a definitely wet, and her limbs were a little tired, but she ran to him quickly still. What an odd feeling he gives her, she thought.
“You’re a weird stranger. But I like that.”
Who do you love?
Baekhyun/IU
Angst, PG ~ 580 words
# 5: Haze
→ Setting in Korea-China Song Festival
It hurts her so much, yet she can never openly admit and tell the whole world of it. How could she ever complain, become the nuisance and annoying little sister of Korea? Making a scene here and trying to act cool with almost a rundown of the famous artists from both China and Korea is simply unethical, not to mention not very IU-ish indeed. Business is business, he often will tell her that but sometimes she knows it extends to more than just that, especially when it’s someone else other than her.
“Oh Jieun-sshi!”
She bows her head, only because she is a senior, and she is an unnie. “Taeyeon-sunbaenim! It’s so good to see you here too!”
“We had to come too, you know,” she whispers, and they both giggle at some inside joke this time, before tiredly the older lady waves goodbye. Fans are clouding up the airport after their talk, and she knows it’s because the unnie is very popular.
So popular that he can’t stop talking of them either. On dates, on text messages - it has became too obsessive. She tells him off with this once in a while, as he continues to rub in his inner fan side.
“Ah, but Jieunnie is jealous?” Jieunnie, that sick sweet nickname, is never her favorite name.
“Of course I’m jealous,” she instantly replies, jokingly implying the truth.
He chuckles and kisses her forehead. “She doesn’t have to, because Baekhyun will always be Jieun’s. It’s a written rule, the law of the universe! It’s like a nursery rhyme. Baekhyun is all hers.”
And that is why she doesn’t like to question further. Because of what he says, she will believe in him, and at first she thinks it’s because she loves him too much and then one time even saying that it’s because he really means it.
At the end of the concert, all of the artists go up stage, Nicole by her side talking about the reason for her getting highlights, or contact lenses or whatever it is that her dear unnie has just to chat about. Her attention is never given whole-heartedly to her though, because her eyes are following his every move from behind, as he laughs and kids with the fellow members. She is amused and somehow smiles because of this. Later it fades, as he goes talk to Taeyeon, his favorite SNSD member, his favorite noona, and his favorite senior.
He whispers close, her fingers on stand-by his shoulder, and IU recognizes the twinkle in Baekhyun’s eyes. “I wanted to sing and be on the same stage with her.” She exactly remembers these words from him before his debut even and puts that in account.
His hands are slowly by her back, getting hold of the noona’s waist, as she continues to giggle, exchanging whispers and comments (and perhaps kisses too? She can’t tell that much). Cameras cannot capture such a small portion of the moment, because the other members are there to cover, but in her view, in IU’s perspective, everything is crystal clear.
To keep professionalism up, she doesn’t show her tears on stage, not until they head for the backstage. IU shows the best respect for her of course, because she is also worth idoling and Baekhyun knows (abuses) that.
He doesn’t approach Jieunnie that night, while she watches in the corner as he flirts more. Business is business, love is love - so why can’t she tell black and white apart?
Chen/Naeun
Romance | Angst, PG ~ 510 words
# 1: Beginning
→ I've decided to try out this 30 day challenge thingi lmao.
Beginnings are overrated, he decides.
He doesn’t remember how it all starts. All he knows is he does kind of like her even before he realizes he kind of wants to be a singer. Jongdae can tell her apart from the rest of the girls during her debut stage (during his training days still), and he finds her charming, appealing, etc etc -quite different. Son Naeun is entirely just that.
She stands out, even with barely one to two lines for the entire song, because where she is put during the choreography she simply stands out, in a good way of course and he doesn’t completely understand why. His eyes immediately follow her every movement, be it from the television, from his laptop or from when he actually tries attending the music shows live.
They talk during each other’s breaks, call each other during die-worthy situations about growing up and dealing with new people, and if it isn’t applicable, a text message of you-tired-already is raised for the other to answer. They aren’t required to answer that, really. If ever it is left as so, the other assumes that they are indeed too restless to reply.
Sometimes at night they wait on each other for whoever will fall asleep first, through the phone because they cannot go out in public and be a normal couple, that is if they are a couple to begin with.
Because to Jongdae -Chen, Chen, she has to get used to that name now - they haven’t even started. He hasn’t gone through traditionally asking her if she wants to be his, if he will be hers -that sort of thing. He hasn’t told her he loves Naeun, nor does she gets her hopes up that he will.
They meet each other secretly once in a while a couple of months before he debuts. She congratulates him with a smile, and he sighs high and irritated because he is going to be stuck promoting in China. She says it’s fine, and he says that it isn’t. Naeun thinks Jongdae will miss her, while Jongdae wonders how ever are they going to be together (how will he ever start admitting to her that he likes her so much it hurts to leave) this way.
Both assumptions are true, yet neither one finds courage to ask or confess.
So no matter how much they want to be together, they can’t. Because they aren’t sure anymore, no one ever is honestly. He hasn’t told Naeun he loves her, even when he does, and she doesn’t expect Jongdae to do so. There is no start, and thus there can’t be an end. He stops calling her, stops hanging out with her -almost suspends everything else they used to do and live a different life so far away from her.
Jongdae stays away, acts and forgets. Naeun feels hurt but she doesn’t voice it, still calm and shy and quiet. Jongdae is never hers, nor she ever is his. No start, no end, but the in between memories scar both infinitely.
The Leader
Seungho/Soyeon
General | Friendship, PG ~ 425 words
# 2: Accusation
Stop crying.
“A leader.”
Shut the fuck up, Seungho. You know nothing. “What about a leader?” She looks up weakly. “Huh? What about being leader?”
“A leader...” he sighs deep, before looking out of the window. He can’t just look at her straight in the eye, because if he does she isn’t going to stop crying either. If that persists, he will lose his cool, lose all the credibility he has as MBLAQ’s resident good boy leader, as a guy naturally, and as her best friend for eight years.
“A leader has to know how to separate fact from fiction, how to keep all heads of the group under cool weather, and how to not go over the top.”
She scuffs, biting her lips as she picks up the last sheet of her second roll of tissue paper from the table. The boy crosses his arms and stares at her grumpily (sadly inside) and he doesn’t know what to do with her anymore.
“I know I’m at fault. It was... too much,” she counters, drying her eyes. “It was too much for me, for the girls, for Hwayoung. Please... stop accusing me like I commited murder. We love Hwayoung... and you know that.”
Seungho finally settles down next to her, an epitome of a weeping willow crawls to him. She leans to his chest, pours out all of the hollows and woes of being T-ara’s current leader, and doesn’t stop until he wraps his arms around his beloved friend, his fingers stroking back her hair.
“I wasn’t accusing you,” he then says. “It’s just that... I’m worried. About T-ara. About you girls.”
Soyeon looks at him like a lost child, her eyes as heavy as the world, her soul almost as dull as winter white. “I feel that it’s all my fault now, that everything happened because I wasn’t there to stop it. I should’ve done something to ease the problem but I made it worse. I love Hwayoung most definitely and the girls, and we can’t... I can’t -”
“A leader...” he mutters again, Soyeon sobbing as hard as earlier that morning in her apartment, in which she immediately had him over right after the conference about one of the girls’ elimination.
“A leader doesn’t always have to be strong. A leader can make mistakes. That leader is the best kind because they aren’t afraid to risk what they can in order for what they think will be best for the group.”
She thinks deep, and Seungho grips her shoulder closer.
Stop crying already.
Always
Myungsoo/Suzy
Romance | Fluff, G ~ 270 words
# 3: Restless
He traced the tiny creases on her fingers, went about it for quite some time without really inteding to fall in love with them. How trivial, he mused but weren’t all little things begin as so? He smiled quietly before the young girl stirred from her sleep, opening her eyes with a cringe at the white flourscent lighting by the ceiling.
“Hey,” he called.
“You again,” she muttered, surprising him. Immediately pulling back his hand and shoving it down in his pocket, he averted his gaze in surprise, gulping also in return.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, closing her eyes and pulling the covers up, hearing the metal of the hospital bed clink. The tube by her hand was still attached, and it continued to serve its purpose as she seemed quite better this morning than she was yesterday.
“I always come,” he defended. “Because you’re still sick, you idiot.”
He was sitting by her toes, before Suzy grabbed his arm with all the energy she had, made him lay beside her, and she leaned on him like he was her pillow. She fell asleep once more, Myungsoo pretending and liking the idea that she actually meant needing and missing him so much, so he let her stay like this (for while he allowed her to just this time), and again slowly took out her fingers and intertwines his around them, slowly but later on tightly. She didn’t move one bit, and it was nicer that she was definitely asleep.
“Always right beside you,” all the way he slept too, which he happened to wear a special smile.
Stranger
Lay/Lizzy
Romance | Fluff, G ~ 519 words
# 4: Snowflake
Backpack slung over her shoulder and hair messily pony-tailed, she hopped around in desperate attempt to get out of the cold, wearing only one of her ballet shoes, the other probably lost somewhere in the heaps of white snow around them.
Snow. In his province back in China, he hardly saw them brushing by his doorstep. That, or he was always away down to Hong Kong and Beijing and even to Taiwan where winter was another fairytale season. While feeling the first breath of it now, Seoul became one of his favorite places in the whole world.
“Excuse me, but... er... can you help me look for my other shoe?” she approached him, still dumbfounded. “I didn’t expect snow to cave in this fast. I’m going to be late for ballet class. Ah, the instructor will kill me... I might not debut and ugh, this really is starting to be a pain!”
He smiled and nodded, hardly understanding what she just said also due to the way she spoke, which he recognized to be from down Busan. Before he knew it, he was searching it with her, pushing away the whiteness then until locating the pink soggy pair.
Excited, she bowed her head in thanks. “Thank you, sir.”
“You’re welcome,” he answered, but with her eyes widening at his reply.
“Omo, you’re not from Seoul too?” Recognizing that he had an accent, and out of curiosity, she wondered out loud.
“I’m from China but I came here to study.”
“Oh,” she said a tone lower, which he proved that he wasn’t what she was expecting. She attached her shoe on her other free foot, slowly bowing at him again for the time they wasted on each other and moved ahead, not anymore bothering to run as she seemed to have been rushing earlier.
He called a tiny ‘hey’, following her from behind. As she turned, his heart seemed to stop beating, like it lost its normal pace or something. She reminded him of a snowflake. He took off his scarf, wrapped it around her despite the evident blush from both parties and he chuckled slightly to ease the awkward moment.
“Zhang Yixing,” he introduced. “I’ll walk you to the studio since I have the whole day off. You know, just in case you lose your shoe again.”
A more relaxed smile came from her. “I’m Park Sooyoung. Thanks for the scarf.”
“Thank you for agreeing.”
“Agreeing to what?”
“Agreeing to go on a date with me tomorrow,” he answered, taking wider steps in front that she was left behind, still gaping in surprise.
He waved for her attention. “You’re coming, right?”
Her hands feebly touched the warmth of the fabric from his scarf, the smell of country-like perfume on it -such a wonderful winter gift from a stranger. The handsome boy seemed to be waiting for her to say something contradicting instead. Her shoes were a definitely wet, and her limbs were a little tired, but she ran to him quickly still. What an odd feeling he gives her, she thought.
“You’re a weird stranger. But I like that.”
Who do you love?
Baekhyun/IU
Angst, PG ~ 580 words
# 5: Haze
→ Setting in Korea-China Song Festival
It hurts her so much, yet she can never openly admit and tell the whole world of it. How could she ever complain, become the nuisance and annoying little sister of Korea? Making a scene here and trying to act cool with almost a rundown of the famous artists from both China and Korea is simply unethical, not to mention not very IU-ish indeed. Business is business, he often will tell her that but sometimes she knows it extends to more than just that, especially when it’s someone else other than her.
“Oh Jieun-sshi!”
She bows her head, only because she is a senior, and she is an unnie. “Taeyeon-sunbaenim! It’s so good to see you here too!”
“We had to come too, you know,” she whispers, and they both giggle at some inside joke this time, before tiredly the older lady waves goodbye. Fans are clouding up the airport after their talk, and she knows it’s because the unnie is very popular.
So popular that he can’t stop talking of them either. On dates, on text messages - it has became too obsessive. She tells him off with this once in a while, as he continues to rub in his inner fan side.
“Ah, but Jieunnie is jealous?” Jieunnie, that sick sweet nickname, is never her favorite name.
“Of course I’m jealous,” she instantly replies, jokingly implying the truth.
He chuckles and kisses her forehead. “She doesn’t have to, because Baekhyun will always be Jieun’s. It’s a written rule, the law of the universe! It’s like a nursery rhyme. Baekhyun is all hers.”
And that is why she doesn’t like to question further. Because of what he says, she will believe in him, and at first she thinks it’s because she loves him too much and then one time even saying that it’s because he really means it.
At the end of the concert, all of the artists go up stage, Nicole by her side talking about the reason for her getting highlights, or contact lenses or whatever it is that her dear unnie has just to chat about. Her attention is never given whole-heartedly to her though, because her eyes are following his every move from behind, as he laughs and kids with the fellow members. She is amused and somehow smiles because of this. Later it fades, as he goes talk to Taeyeon, his favorite SNSD member, his favorite noona, and his favorite senior.
He whispers close, her fingers on stand-by his shoulder, and IU recognizes the twinkle in Baekhyun’s eyes. “I wanted to sing and be on the same stage with her.” She exactly remembers these words from him before his debut even and puts that in account.
His hands are slowly by her back, getting hold of the noona’s waist, as she continues to giggle, exchanging whispers and comments (and perhaps kisses too? She can’t tell that much). Cameras cannot capture such a small portion of the moment, because the other members are there to cover, but in her view, in IU’s perspective, everything is crystal clear.
To keep professionalism up, she doesn’t show her tears on stage, not until they head for the backstage. IU shows the best respect for her of course, because she is also worth idoling and Baekhyun knows (abuses) that.
He doesn’t approach Jieunnie that night, while she watches in the corner as he flirts more. Business is business, love is love - so why can’t she tell black and white apart?