"Dude...you had a glow up."
"Did THE Mark Lee just call me ugly?"
_____
A book in which Mark Lee hits rewind and reconnects with his old school friends from New York, who he abandoned on his journey to become an idol.
Mark watched Haechan turn off his phone and walk towards the glass cube. It was now his turn to wait. He new it wouldn't take long for Haechan since he always seemed to just get it over and done with. Mark always wondered how Haechan couldn't care too much. That's not to say Haechan didn't give a shit about his job or underperformed, he just didn't care after he was done.
Right now Haechan was singing with a somewhat scratchy voice compared to the usual due to his slow recovery, yet Mark knew when all his lines were done, with maybe one or two retakes, Haechan was ready to go home. He was mentally done with it. He moved from one to the next. Mark just didn't understand how Haechan didn't spend the rest of the car ride to the next schedule thinking about how it could've been better, just like he was right now.
Mark kept his thoughts busy, as the car with tinted windows drove past the streets of Seoul to their next schedule, by looking at Instagram DM requests—something he did often. Many fans were replying to his story from yesterday, telling him to stay warm and make sure he didn't get sick.
He smiled happily knowing so many people cared about him, he never took it for granted even for one day. He was honestly still in awe, many many years after his debut, that he even had fans. NCT had a hard beginning before they took of soaring, and for someone like Mark, it was really hard to forget his roots. That's what kept him humble. A trait that he, and his fans, really loved.
His finger slid out of the most recent DM, mindlessly clicking on the newest one above it as Haechan said something to him about the food they were going to get on their way there. His eyes looked at the new messages, widening slowly as he sat up from his chair. He knew the fans had pictures of him when he was a child, they circulated every where around social media when people found out he was an idol. But the little anecdotal stories that came along with it was something barely anyone knew.
And when his eyes raked over the girl's profile, he finally understood why.
yooora_jung
Yoora: dude btw
Yoora: idk if you saw the gc
Yoora: wtf am i saying why would MARK LEE be looking at some random gc
Yoora: anyway Lexi sent in that graduation picture
Yoora: i gotta pull it up again man bc ur just so cute
Yoora:
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Yoora: like LMAO
Yoora: YOU
Yoora: A POET
Yoora: Markus Shakespeare
Yoora: LIKE WITH THEM BARZZZ
Yoora: uh thats a long ass ride
Yoora: PLSSSSSS
Yoora: no but lowkey i saw this and thought of that one poem you wrote for me on my bday...i think my 10th
Yoora: and I remember it so clearly man I can't believe you summed up our friendship with a metaphor of an ant and how the world is always gonna be bigger than our friendship
Yoora: LIKE AN ANT
Yoora: you're acc crazy
Yoora: my whole bday i thought you thought of me as an ant 🥲
Yoora: but then i read it again after you left bro
Yoora: and u were lowkey right like
Yoora: the world was bigger than our friendship and it was always ready to tear us away...how did u think of all this when you were 10 bruh
Yoora: not to be weird
Yoora: well ur ass aint ever gonna read it anyway 🤷♀️
Yoora: i wish we could've been bigger than the world
Yoora: ANT DOMINATION RAAAHH 🐜🐜
Yoora: lmao you get what i meannnnn
Yoora: miss u bruh
_______
Mark let out a snicker as he read the last few texts, the smile on his face growing wider as he remembered the poem.
"She finally gets it" he said, smiling that the girl who was initially upset about the poem finally understood the meaning of it being so much more than just a bunch of ants that get stepped on—which he now realised wasn't the best poem to give on a birthday.
"Get's what?" Haechan asked, looking over at Mark in the seat beside him and Mark shook his head
"Nothing" he said with a smile and Haechan narrowed his eyes but eventually dropped the subject as they reached their location. The words of Mark's managers rung through his head, warning them to not accept DM requests, and putting emphasis on Mark who seemed like the person most likely to do so. Mark bit his bottom lip as he stared at the text where she stated she missed him, and he thought 'if only she knew'.
He let out a sigh and his eyebrows furrowed at the new text message that she sent. Heart almost dropping at her words as a sense of guilt took over, and by then, the word's of his managers didn't seem to matter as much anymore.
