Hyun-ki had a song inside his head. He could feel it bleeding through his fingers; he was going to loose it — he need paper, his recording studio, his piano. Already he had some lyrics scribbled down across his palm and his wrist. It was a compilation of his last nightmares and of the ringing image of Chae Yi sitting on her shit couch with the cats roving around her, like she was the queen of something. The queen of uselessness, maybe.
He revved his motorbike up the last few blocks, sliding into E&P's studio at a neat 45 mph. He circled once around the lot to slow down; he liked the hot spiking feeling of the engine bouncing up into his hands, the vibrations that shuddered into his leather gloves, with only his fingers bare to catch the actual heat of the metal. He turned from the bike to go inside, working out chord progressions and a chorus line behind his eyes. He was barely looking around, and so he heard them before he saw them.
"Yo, hyung!"
It was his three bandmates. They were sprawled around one of the stunted concrete walls that had been put up for obscene reasons but never taken down; the wind was in their hair and their lazy careless eyes. It was all an act: Hyun-ki saw this instantly. Why the hell were they laying around out here, when they should have been inside, working?
"Hey," he said, stretching out the word, so he wouldn't seem so instantly irritated. "What's going on?"
Jung-hwa stood up first. "You should know," he said bitterly. "It's your fault. I knew it would end like this."
"Is this about the album?" Hyun-ki said. "I thought we had it worked out by now. You agreed to use my concept album —to use my songs. Has that changed?"
"The concept album doesn't mean shit now," Jung-hwa said. "Nothing does."
The wind blew widely through the parking lot; they all looked absurdly fictional with their bright, fake hair and their too-big pastel jackets and printed skinny-jeans. It was a lot of vibrant paint splashed against cement, Hyun-ki thought; they looked like art, like a perfect still from a music viedo. But there was something unnatural in the air, something like the thickening of the second city around them and their thin, plastic lives. Or maybe it was just the feeling of his family and his horrible father, cracking into their lives like weeds through sidewalk. Hyun-ki had a desperate feeling that he knew already what was wrong. But no —that couldn't be it. It couldn't.
Hyun-ki walked over to them, so he could make proper eye-contact. Jung-hwa was tense and angry and ready for a fight, the blood-lust in his sharp face only just softened by his wavy carmarel hair. That was fake coloring, of course. The hair should have been black.
Park-yun had his guitar cradled on his lap and his fingers were distantly picking out something that sounded like 10cm. But he was looking away and into the sky; he would not meet Hyun-ki's eyes. Neither would Sung-jin. Their maknae was silent, his legs curled into his chest and his dark-red hair dripping down into his face. Fake color, again. Hyun-ki could not even picture him without his hair dyed in some wild color, without the paradigm of makeup slipped over his face. The worst part was the silence; Sung-jin was not made for silence. The quiet was like a scream, like Chae Yi ripping apart Second Seoul in his head with a sort of primitive wail.
"Hyungs?" Hyun-ki said, his voice cracking in the empty parking lot.
"So you don't know," Jung-hwa said. "Of course. Little chaebol's son in his golden kingdom —heaven forbid he knows what's happening down on earth."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Well, you know what they say about the one percent. Your head's in the clouds because you're standing on the shoulders of everyone else. But you should know about this, at least. Because it's your fault."
"Then tell me, you asshole!"Hyun-ki lunged forward; he had Jung-hwa shirt in his fist in a moment, their faces inches apart and flushed red.
"Wait —!" Park-yun said, standing up. "Hey, let's just —just stay calm. Please."
"We're past calm," Jung-hwa snarled. "You wanna know what happened? Ask your brother. Your shit chaebol brother. The darling little sociopath of the So conglometarte."
"Jung-hwa, for heaven's sake" —and Park-yun was pulling them apart, standing between them.
"This won't help," he said. "We need to figure out what to do. Where to go. We need to plan."
"Oh, there's no we. There hasn't been a we for a long, long time." Jung-hwa was cracking his knuckles, slowly and deliberately and almost pathetically. "He's doesn't need to figure out where to go. He can just go home to daddy, can't he?"
"Park-yun?" Hyun-ki said. "What's going on — is it what I think it is?"
Park-yun looked over at Sung-jin, who seemed oblivious to the terror falling around him. And Park-yun gave a quick, short nod, confirming all of Hyun-ki's worst fears in an instant.
"This is your fault!" Jung-hwa shouted. "This was always just a little rich-boy hobby for you, wasn't it? You were the only thing that got us the funding, that gave E&P Entertainment anything like a fighting change. Just you and your stupid money. You could have stopped this."
"That's not true, you asshole. Stop saying lies. I'll beat you bloody on the pavement if you don't stop lying —"
Jung-hwa held up his hands in mock defeat. "What can I say?" he sneered. "The psychotic behavior must run in the family. Like father, like son. Like brother to brother."
"You piece of shit —"
"But time's up, chaebol. You're out of D4Y."
Hyun-ki might have killed him then. But Sung-jin stood up very carefully, as if he was china and might break under the strain of living.
"That's the thing," he said. "There is no more D4Y."
"I guessed as much," Hyun-ki said, addressing the words to the scrabbled gray at his feet. He did not want to look at Sung-jin's hopeless, dead eyes, or the drawn lines of panic on his face. He did not want to think that Jung-hwa might be right; that two of the other boys were orphans, and that D4Y and the E&P dorms were literally their lives. That Jung-hwa and Sung-jin truly had nowhere else to go.
"Your father cut all his funding to E&P Entertainment," Park-yun said. He was almost whispering, as if the truth was suddenly an embarrassing, nasty thing. "He was the majority shareholder. Once he left, the other major investors dropped out, one by one. Almost as if —"
"Almost like someone wanted them to leave," Jung-hwa said, his voice full of terrible meaning. Hyun-ki looked at him quickly, and then away. There was pity between them, but not enough to put them on good terms. Not enough for Hyun-ki to forget the things Jung-hwa had said, just moments before.
"And so E&P is no more. D4Y is gone, I guess, at least on a corporate sense." Park-yun sighed, and ran his hands back through his black hair. He went over to Sung-jin, and put his arm around the maknae's shoulders. "And so right now, we're all pretty screwed."
"You two can go home," Jung-hwa said levelly, angrily. "Sung-jin and I are screwed. I think that's what you meant to say."
"Please, let's not fight —"
"No," Hyun-ki said. "You're an asshole, Jung, but you're not all wrong. This is my family's fault. It's not my fault —I'm not stupid enough to think that, and I won't take the blame for this shit. But I do know who to blame."
"Hyungnim," Park-yun said. "It doesn't matter —"
"Oh, yes it does. We all know it matters. Because who do you think signed the paper that ended us? My sociopath shit brother, of course."
He looked at Jung-hwa; now they were on equal grounds. Something dark and raw passed between them, and Hyun-ki knew that the other boy understood, that in this, at least, they were allies. "It's my brother's fault," he said. "He needs to pay for what he's done."
"How in the hell is that going to help?" Park-yun snapped. "We need a strategy plan, not the beginnings of a revenge melodrama."
"You make the plans," Hyun-ki said. "Can the boys stay at your house? Just for tonight? I have money, but I can't get at it immediately."
Park-yun hesitated. Hyun-ki suddenly wondered about his home-life; about the things Park-yun might keep secret and repressed inside his head, about the sins he might brush off to ascend into the glitz of entertainment.
"For tonight," he said, cautiously. "But, there's some things you need to know, first."
"Just tell them. I trust you, whatever it is."
"Where are you going?"
Hyun-ki was already striding back toward his motorbike, the anger and the suddenness of it all pulsing along his body like electricity. He yanked on his helmet and the leather gloves. He was not his brother. He would not be so easily dethroned.
"Isn't it obvious?" he heard Jung-hwa yell, just as he was gunning out of the parkinglot. The wind was hot and mad against his face; the uncoupling inside him was giving way to visions of the city, but not now, not now, not now. For once he would stay in control.
The psychotic behavior must run in the family. Like father, like son. Like brother to brother.
But I am not my brother.
---
a/n: So sorry, I don't think my writing's coming out that well tonight. The last chapter was pretty bad too, looking back at it. Better trash than nothing, I guess?
Please vote and comment if you liked what you read. It does mean the world to me!
No songs for this chapter (I was just listening to Park Hyo Shin). And ugh I'm too lazy to find a gif tonight, sorry. Just close your eyes and imagine some attractive Korean boy.
*kirk out*