Chapter Warning: Gaslighting and Emotional Abuse. See the AO3 version for more detailed notes on this.
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"Long enough..."
The mirrored screen of Hyojin's phone glinted ominously as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, stepping away from the door frame as her fingers played absently with the device in her hands. It didn't really look like she had been using it—he got the impression that it was out more for dramatic effect than anything else—but the fact that she could have entered the room and listened in, without any one of them noticing her, made Donghyuck's stomach clench unpleasantly.
"I'm not going to be able to convince you to just walk away, am I?" As he spoke, Donghyuck could feel at least one body stepping up behind him, like they might be able to protect him from Hyojin's answer, but he ignored them and took a decisive step towards her. The resolute set of her jaw had already answered his question well enough, and he knew that his time was up. This was happening right now, whether he liked it or not.
Hyojin didn't even bother to offer him a verbal response, turning on her heel and stalking from the lab without a second glance. He sighed, taking another step towards the door, and then turned back to see that Jeno and Renjun now flanked him on either side. Jeno looked ready to rip Hyojin's head clean off, hands clenched into tight fists at his sides, while the icy expression gracing Renjun's face promised that no one would ever find the body. Mark wasn't far behind them, concern and anger clouding his features, but Donghyuck forced himself not to focus on any of that at the moment.
"I need to go talk to her," he announced to the room softly, his voice easily carrying over the uneasy silence. He hoped that it wouldn't betray the nervousness he could feel building in his gut, as his mind cycled impossibly quickly through all the ways this impending confrontation could go horribly, miserably wrong for all of them. Renjun opened his mouth to say something, fury glinting dangerously in his eyes, but Donghyuck cut him off before he could speak. "I'll be fine. Don't worry about me."
"It's not you that I'm worried about," Renjun spat out, brows knitting together as he frowned at the newly vacated entryway. "Well it is , obviously, but not just you." He tore his eyes away from the door and glanced up at Donghyuck, squarely meeting his eye. "Say the word, and I'll make her regret her entire existence."
"And I'll help!" Jeno agreed, sounding so enthusiastic that it temporarily distracted him from what was waiting out in the hall.
"I—" Choking out a startled laugh, caught completely off guard by his friends' offer, he almost forgot what he'd started to say. It took him a second to recover, Renjun's lips curling up into a proud smirk as he watched on, but then Donghyuck shook his head. "I love you both for that, I really do, but I think I'll pass this time."
"You sure?" It was Jisung who spoke this time, which seemed to catch everyone off guard. He didn't look half as angry as Renjun or as intimidating as Jeno, which wasn't a surprise given the stark contrasts between the three of them, but his eyes darted back and forth between Donghyuck's face and the door to the classroom as he spoke.
"I'm sure." Donghyuck reached out to ruffle Jisung's hair affectionately, then dropped his hand resolutely back to his side. He forced an easy smile onto his lips, despite the ill-ease still churning his stomach sickeningly, and made eye contact with each of the seven boys present, one by one. "I'll be back in a few minutes, don't you worry. This hopefully won't take long."
"We'll be right here, waiting for you."
Donghyuck was already walking away as Mark spoke, and he forced himself not to look back. If anyone could convince him to stay, it was Mark, so he stoically ignored the urge to turn tail and hide behind his friends, crossing the short distance to the open door and stepping out into the hallway.
Hyojin was waiting for him, arms crossed over her chest as she leaned against the wall, tapping her fingernails impatiently against the exposed skin of her forearms. She actually had the gall to look mildly surprised when he emerged, one brow quirking a little as she gave him a brief once-over, but she didn't speak. Instead, she simply turned and continued to walk away, leaving Donghyuck to follow after her like a fool.
Three classrooms down, she paused, peering in through the glass pane in the door as though checking that it was empty. It must have been—which shouldn't be a surprise, given that it was lunchtime and the majority of the student body were either holed up in the cafeteria or outside on the sports fields—because she elbowed it open quickly and stepped inside.
Donghyuck followed, hovering awkwardly by the door as she paced over to the wall of windows on the opposite side of the room. He briefly considered taking a seat, eyeing a desk in the second row that looked almost identical to the one he'd just vacated in the lab down the hall, but decided against it. If this went south, the most primitive part of his brain didn't want to give her any opportunity to block his escape route.
"So..." he began, disappointing himself with how weak and fearful his voice sounded to his own ears. He knew that Hyojin would have detected the same weakness he had—and he fully expected her to exploit it ruthlessly too—but he couldn't help it. He was a successful recording artist, one who had performed to crowds of thousands all over the world, but, right now in this room, facing down a teenage girl on a power trip, he was utterly defenceless.
"So," she echoed. It wasn't a question, so he stayed silent until she deigned to turn and face him. Her silhouette was backlit by the sunlight streaming in through the large windows behind her, casting an imposing shadow onto the floor between them, but Donghyuck forced himself not to give the dark, looming shape a second glance as she advanced on him. "How dare you?"
"I—what?"
"You heard me!" Her eyes sparked dangerously as she took yet another step towards him. "How dare you? How dare you humiliate me like this? I have been your best friend since middle school. I've put up with so much shit from you over the years, and this is how you repay me? By abandoning me for your shiny new boyfriends, just because they were suddenly more exciting?"
"I—" A thousand responses, retorts and excuses spiralled through Donghyuck's mind like a cyclone, each one filled with more vitriol than the last, but they all died on his tongue as he finally registered the look on Hyojin's face. She looked devastated, he realised, even as her cheeks flushed from her exertions and her lips pressed together tightly like she was fighting back more venomous words. "I didn't..."
"Save it," she snapped, almost screaming now as she stepped right up into his personal space. Her knuckles were white and strained around the phone she still clutched in one hand, and her whole body trembled with barely restrained fury as she stared at him. "You know what you did. You know exactly what you did, and I hate you for it. Do you hear me, Lee Donghyuck? I hate you!"
Her free hand lifted into the air, so fast that he almost missed the movement, and he instinctually flinched away from a strike that never came. As quickly as she had moved, Hyojin froze, eyes widening as she stared in horror at her own fingers. It was as though she hadn't made the conscious decision to move, he thought, her actions shocking her as much as they had shocked Donghyuck.
"I—Fuck, I'm sorry." Her hand dropped heavily to her side and she sank down onto the nearest desk with a dull thud, as her knees gave out under her. "I didn't mean to...I would never."
"It's okay." Despite his fight or flight response telling him to stay standing, Donghyuck pulled a chair out from under the desk behind him and folded himself into it. Back on Hyojin's eye level again, he watched her carefully as she buried her face into her hands and began to sob loudly.
Her shoulders shook with each pained sounding breath, and he had the urge to reach over and place a hand on her arm in comfort, but he restrained himself. This was, after all, the same girl who had just screamed in his face and then raised her hand against him. He didn't believe that she would have intentionally hurt him, but there was definitely a lot of rage and anger inside her that was looking for an excuse to break forth.
Anger that was directly squarely in his direction.
"What exactly is going on here, Hyojin-ah?" he asked after a few minutes, once her tears appeared to have subsided enough for her to speak. "You say you hate me for what I did, but I genuinely don't know what it is that I've done. Maybe if we talk about it, we can clear things up between us?"
This was a huge risk, he knew. This girl had, from everything he'd been told, known the other Donghyuck as well as just about anyone, before all of this happened to them. What he had gleaned so far hadn't exactly endeared him to this reality's Lee Donghyuck, so it was entirely possible that the boy had done something truly awful to Yang Hyojin, something to make her hate him this much.
If that was true, and he prayed to any and all available deities that it was not, he was risking exposing all of their demons in one fell swoop, but he didn't see that he had a choice. He might be posing as Lee Donghyuck to most of this town, walking in his shoes and living his life, but he had no idea who the boy behind the veneer truly was. Whoever Hyojin had known, whoever he had once been, he needed to know the truth—for better or for worse.
"How could you not know?" Hyojin's words came out wet and broken, as she lifted her head to peer at him in confusion. "Did you think I wouldn't notice that you abandoned me this year, after everything we went through last summer? Did you think that you could move on, leaving me in the past, and your secrets would stay buried?"
"I—" He started to speak, to ask what secrets she was referring to, but Hyojin was clearly not finished. She bulldozed on, sniffling loudly as another tear broke free from her damp lashes and landed in her lap.
"I thought that was it, you know?" she said mournfully. "I knew you were scared of people finding out, of the rest of the world knowing the truth, so I thought you'd just pushed me away out of fear. I was hurt, of course I was. I just wanted you to man up and tell me the truth to my face, but then today..."
She broke off, fixing him with a look that was so lost that Donghyuck instinctually leant back into his chair to escape its gravitational pull. "I heard you," she continued. "I heard you talking to your friends just now, and I realised that's not it. It was never about that at all." She dropped her gaze to the floor, staring down at her toes to avoid meeting his eye. "It was because of me."
"You?" Donghyuck had a sneaking suspicion he knew exactly what secret the other Donghyuck had been battling with—and, sadly, exactly why he would have wanted to keep it buried—but he was confused by the last part of Hyojin's heartfelt speech.
"It's the only thing that makes sense." Nodding, as though agreeing with her own assessment of the situation, she explained. "I thought you didn't want anyone knowing, and I respected that. Even after you found out I knew, I thought we would be okay. I was still your best friend, even if you started pushing me away after that. Ignoring my calls, getting drunk more often than you were sober; I told myself that you were just lashing out to protect yourself, but I knew we'd work it out in time, like we always do.
"Imagine, then, how stupid I felt when I heard you talking about it with your new friends today, without a care in the world. 'I haven't really tried to hide it from anyone in this room,' " she intoned bitterly, echoing his own words back at him. His heart dropped into his stomach and he grimaced, even as she completely ignored him. "If you really don't care anymore, maybe I should just tell the whole school your little secret. Maybe I should just stand up at lunch tomorrow and announce—"
"That I'm gay," Donghyuck finished for her, even though he really didn't need to. Suddenly, everything made so much more sense to him, including exactly how much he'd fucked up when it came to the distraught girl in front of him. No wonder she was so angry, he thought to himself sadly. He'd completely blindsided her, no matter how ignorant he'd been about the whole thing.
"You know," she said quietly, meeting his eye squarely for the first time since they'd sat down, "I think that's the first time you've ever said those words out loud." She glanced towards the closed classroom door, appearing to reassess her statement, and then added, "At least, to me. You always refused to acknowledge it, afraid it would ruin your precious reputation if anyone overheard you, but I guess it's different with them ."
"Hyojin-ah..." Donghyuck could only imagine how hurt she must be right now, especially since she had no idea that things were astronomically different when it came to the seven boys waiting patiently for him three doors down. "I—"
"Maybe I should," she mused, an edge of determination and chaotic resolve returning to her tone as she spoke. "Maybe I should just show everyone the real you. If they knew the truth, there wouldn't be any secrets between us anymore. We could go back to how things were, before last summer. I could get my best friend back."
"What do you mean, 'show' them?" Donghyuck glanced down at the phone Hyojin still cradled in her lap. Panic rose up in his chest, and he struggled to tamp it down enough to continue. "Did you film us earlier?"
The selfish part of him didn't care that much about the other Donghyuck's secret, he realised with a sucker punch of guilt to his gut. There would inevitably be some backlash from a revelation of that magnitude, for sure, but his NCT family back home all knew he was gay—had known it ever since he was old enough to ask for advice from his older members—and he'd never had to hide it from those he cared about.
That mindset had translated over to this reality with him, even as he knew he needed to respect the boundaries of the boy he'd replaced, and it wasn't him that had put these emotional walls up between himself and Hyojin—between him and the rest of the world. He had his own secrets to hide, his own burdens to bear, and he knew that she would have unintentionally captured some of that if she'd filmed them. Perhaps even all of it.
And this Donghyuck, right here and now, could not risk that getting out.
"Well—" Hyojin glanced down at the phone in her lap, realising his eyes were on it and no longer on her. She frowned, and Donghyuck could almost see the cogs turning inside her head as she figured out what she was going to say. She could easily lie about it and he would be none the wiser, he knew. She held all the power in this scenario, held it right there in her hands, and he'd have no way to prove it without forcibly taking the device from her.
"Did you?!"
"Why do you care? I don't need it either way. If I wanted them to, people would believe me regardless. Video evidence or not, I could ruin your entire life in a single afternoon. Let you see what it feels like for a chance, to have someone betray you like you're nothing!"
"Would you?" His voice cracked painfully as he spoke and her head snapped up, cheeks blotchy and puffy from all the tears she'd shed. "Would you really do that?"
He saw the exact moment she made her choice, shoulders slumping as she shook her head. "No." She sighed and lifted the phone from her lap, holding it out for him to take. He waved it away, the truth of her words unmistakable in her eyes. "I didn't film anything. I wouldn't. Despite everything that's happened between us, I could never do that to you."
As she began to weep softly again, Donghyuck couldn't help but feel incredibly sorry for Yang Hyojin, despite everything. Sorry for both her and for the boy who had so obviously hurt her more than words could express, in a past he mercifully hadn't had to suffer through. He could see her actions now for what they were, a desperate, futile attempt to claw back control in a friendship that had been doomed to fall apart, and he wished that he could do more to fix things between them.
"Why?"
"Why, what?" She sounded baffled by his question, but he had to know.
"He—I don't deserve that kind of loyalty. Not after how I've treated you." He spoke slowly, picking his words carefully. He couldn't know the whole truth of why the other Donghyuck had done what he'd done, but he knew enough to know that she had protected his secret, even after he'd seemingly abandoned her for what—to her, at least—would have seemed like a whole new group of friends. "Why haven't you walked away?"
"You know why." She examined his face thoughtfully for a moment, then glanced towards the doorway again. "But then again, maybe you don't. I thought that was a joke at first, a cruel prank you were playing on the two freshm..." She paused, biting her lip as she caught Donghyuck's gaze again. "It would have been just like you to screw with their emotions like that."
"Like what?" He didn't really want to ask, but he suspected she needed to say it aloud. It was obvious she already knew the truth anyway. He wouldn't begrudge her the chance to talk it through now, if that's what she needed. He—both versions of himself—owed her at least that much.
"Oh God, you really don't know!" She sucked in an awed, shuddering breath, closing her eyes as if to centre herself, and then words started to flow like a torrent from her lips. "I can't believe I'm saying this to your face, but then I guess it's not really you, is it? You—I mean, my you knew before I did. I never had to tell him. He just used it against me, over and over, because it was easy and he knew I couldn't...I wouldn't..."
Donghyuck almost wanted to stop her in her tracks, sensing that she was about to start crying again, but she was too fast for him. It was as though, now she knew that she wasn't speaking to the Lee Donghyuck she knew—just to someone who looked an awful lot like him—she couldn't hold it back.
"I'm in love with you," she told him bluntly. At that, her sudden burst of bravado deflated like a leaky helium balloon, like getting those five words out had cost her a lot more than just oxygen, but she soldiered on. "Well, not with you, but...yeah, with you, I guess. Another you."
Donghyuck's eyes widened in surprise, not in a million years expecting that—although perhaps, in hindsight, he should have—but she ignored him and dropped her gaze to her lap again. "I've been in love with you since before I knew what that word meant. And I never wanted you to know, because I knew you didn't feel the same way about me.
"I don't know how you found out, and I probably never will. Perhaps you always knew; perhaps you didn't. It doesn't matter. I was hopelessly in love with someone who would never— could never love me back. I know that now, but I was so lost on you that I let you..." She broke off and Donghyuck didn't think he'd ever felt such fear before in his life.
"What did I do?" She didn't answer for a long moment, the silence stretching agonisingly between them, and he leant forward. Hesitantly, he placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, heart plunging further towards the floor as she leant into his touch like she couldn't stop herself. "Hyojin, what did I do to you?"
"You used me." He gasped in horror even as she continued, her tone regaining a hint of the fire from earlier. "You knew exactly how I felt, and you didn't care. You only cared about how you could use it to manipulate me. Your loyal sycophant under the guise of friendship, always following a half step behind you, never questioning anything you did or said." Another fat tear rolled down one cheek, and Hyojin angrily swiped it away with a shaking hand. "And I let you do it. Because I loved you. Even after everything, I still—I still love him, Hyuck-ah."
"I'm so sorry." Slowly, giving her ample opportunity to stop him if she wished, Donghyuck stood from his seat and moved closer. "Hyojin-ah, I am so sorry for everything. I can't take it back, because I'm not...I'm not him, but I—"
She looked up at him as he moved, the last of her wholly understandable anger fading under his cautious gaze, and then Yang Hyojin pushed up off her desk to allow him to wrap her into a tight hug. She buried her face into his shirt, hiding under the lapel of his jacket, before going completely still.
He could still feel her heartbeat against his sternum, hammering out a rhythm not dissimilar to his own, but she otherwise did not move a muscle as they stood in companionable silence. For a few fleeting moments, left only to his tumultuous thoughts, he simply let her cling to him. It was the least he could do.
"I just couldn't let go," she muttered into his collarbone after a while, shifting so that she could tilt her head back to look up at him. "I'm sorry. I know I should have—"
"You don't have anything to apologise for," Donghyuck told her firmly, shaking his head as he sensed her starting to protest. He kept his eyes firmly fixed on the view outside the classroom, the glass slightly warping the buildings and greenery beyond as it glinted in the sunlight, because he wanted to give her the privacy and respect she deserved. "None of this is your fault. I may not have been responsible for most of it, and I can't fathom why anyone would behave like that, but I let you down too."
"You didn't kno—"
"It doesn't matter that I didn't know," he insisted, finally stepping back out of their embrace so he could look her in the eyes again. "I was naive and selfish to assume that I could just step into someone else's life without consequences. I was so wrapped up in myself, and in my own situation, that I didn't stop to think about the impact on those around me."
"You didn't know," Hyojin repeated, with more power behind her words this time. "Hell, you didn't even know I existed. You couldn't possibly have known what he was like, and I can see now that you're absolutely nothing like him." She flicked a stray strand of long, black hair over her shoulder, a small, tentative smile creeping onto her lips as she stared up at him. "You know, if he was here right now, he'd be so jealous of you."
"He would?"
"Sickeningly," Hyojin agreed, nodding as her smile grew that little bit wider. "You're everything he's not, and he would hate that about you almost as much as he envied you for it."
"He really sounds awful." Donghyuck hoped she wouldn't take that the wrong way, given everything they'd just discussed.
He knew all too well what it was like to be hopelessly in love with someone who didn't see him the same way, even if Mark was considerably less of a scumbag than the other Donghyuck was shaping up to be. He knew just how impossible it would have been for her to escape those feelings once they had solidified, even if she had fallen for someone who didn't deserve an iota of her devotion—or friendship, loyalty and everything else that came with it.
"I see that now too," she admitted, sounding embarrassed. "I almost convinced myself it was normal. Even after I found out he was gay, I never gave up hope, because he wanted it that way. Because it made me easier to manipulate. It was a toxic relationship all around, no matter what I tried to convince myself. If you hadn't shown up—" She hesitated again, thinking for a long moment. "I guess what I'm saying is, I'm glad I can see the truth for what it is, finally. I know I went about this all wrong, but I'm really glad we had this talk."
"Me too." Donghyuck spoke the truth, even as he recalled how uneasy he'd been less than a half-hour ago. It was hard to believe that so much had changed between the pair of them in such a short space of time. Hyojin seemed to have found some semblance of peace over her situation, and he had gained some invaluable insight into the other Donghyuck—distasteful and vile as he found the boy, the more he learned about him.
"Um. Donghyuck?"
"Yeah?"
"About the other thing?" And there it was. He knew that he couldn't ignore it, now that she knew, but this was different from when his mom or his brothers had found out. Yang Hyojin was an entirely unknown entity, an unexpected addition to his steadily expanding circle of confidantes, and he wasn't sure yet what that might mean for everyone else caught in orbit around them.
"Hyojin-ah, I know I can't force you to keep it a secret," he told her. "But it's—"
"I won't say anything." She interrupted him quickly, placing the hand still clutching her phone over her heart. "I promise. I still don't understand all of what's going on—I arrived halfway through your conversation, and there were a lot of names I didn't know—but I know it's not my story to tell. Just...is he gone forever?"
The look on her face clearly told Donghyuck that she hadn't yet decided if that was a good thing or not, the conflict and indecision explicit in her eyes despite the column of shadow she was currently cast in. He couldn't blame her, honestly, knowing what he knew about the boy in question.
"I don't know," he told her truthfully. "I'm hoping that, when I find a way to get back to where I came from, he'll do the same, but I still have absolutely no idea how any of this works." Her face fell and he couldn't help the sharp pang that twisted his insides at the sight. "I'm sorry, Hyojin. I wish that I did."
"It's okay." She smiled at him again and, if this time it was slightly dimmer than the last, he didn't mention it. "Do you think that you could maybe tell me what you do know, sometime? You don't have to, obviously, but I'd like to try to help, if I can."
"Of course." Again, it was the least he could do. She already knew too much to backtrack, so it wouldn't hurt to give her all the facts, now that she was in the know. It was her friend who had been forcibly removed from existence, after all, and she seemed genuine in her eagerness to help. For all he knew, an outside perspective might be useful. "Perhaps you could come to my home one day soon, and I'll explain everything."
"Will your friends be there?"
"Only if you want them to be." He wasn't sure whether she would want to meet them, based on the fact that, mere minutes ago, she believed them to have stolen her best friend from her, but he wasn't going to hide them away. It was her choice. He resolved to always make it her choice, because Donghyuck was not in the business of manipulating friends, regardless of their feelings for or about him.
"I think I'd like to meet them," she said thoughtfully. Tilting her head slightly, she stared at the back wall of the classroom like she could somehow see straight through it and into the other lab they had been in. She smiled. "They're a good influence on you."
"They are." He agreed wholeheartedly with that statement. They were his family, and the best people he knew in any reality. "They really are."
"Or maybe it's you who's the good influence." She didn't meet his eye, but there was something insightful in her expression as she traced the edge of one of the wall posters with her gaze. "I heard what you said to them earlier, and I've seen what they're like with you." She reached out blindly to one side, patting the elbow closest to her. "You're a good friend, Hyuck. I'd be lucky to have someone like you in my life."
"You do." He stepped around the desk between them and stopped directly in front of her. Holding out a hand, he turned on the most winning smile in his arsenal. "Hi. I'm Lee Donghyuck, but my friends sometimes call me Haechan. It's nice to finally meet you."
The blinding grin he received in return made his own smile grow, until it strained his cheeks, but he wasn't letting it fade for the world. Hyojin took his hand and shook it neatly, before pulling him into another tight hug. Cheek pressed tightly to his chest, her voice was low enough that he had to strain to hear it, but the words were unmistakable. "Thank you!"