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It's the first birthday of our Heeseung for today as an Enhypen member.
It's just I can never relate to the others in twt of buying a cake or do a fanart to post in their weverse page and this is all I can do for him.
Give him an update on the story you loved and commented for a happy ending.
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You taught me that love can be amazing and beautiful thing,
but you also taught me that love will keep you up till midnight crying softly to yourself, wondering how much more pain someone can endure
-sjf
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After another busy day filled with the tiring dance practice and vocal training for the upcoming Soribada, you and your co-members had retired from JYP building to your dorm, preparing to call it a day in the late hour of 12 am in the evening. The girls with you as you tried to sleep in the back seat of the van had been talking about the latest dating scandal between a rookie and a senior.
Apparently, the senior idol accidentally get the rookie pregnant and now the poor minor girl had to left her career after burdening all the hate in her shoulder.
Beside you, Susie shifts rather repeatedly from her seat and you sure do know why she is getting uncomfortable. She's dating someone from your seniors in JYP and you only found out when you glimpsed them facetiming one time in your dorm. Before the others could talk more, the van stopped and the door slides open, and you're all faced with your manager, whose lips are pressed into a thin line.
"Sorry", your leader, Eunbi says quickly. "It's just that we have nothing to talk about other than that---"
"I'm not sure we are not able to---", Fiora says, the second oldest, but the manager cuts her off.
"Nope. You would do better than to talk about other people's problems", he says and there's something strict and final in his voice when he turns back to the gate of your dorm, and he waved all of you to now go inside. "Sleep early. We have much to do for tommorow in your schedule"
"Thank you, manager", Susie says after a second, then was the first to go despite of her being in the back with you, and you follow her through the gate and in the steps before the porch where you stumble into the cool mightnight aid, relieved to be home now.
Your co-members immediately goes inside the house, worrying about on erasing their make up first to avoid getting any facial problems. You takes a seat on the steps, hugging your knees to your chest. It's almost entirely late now, and the yard is lighted up by the lamppost outside, the neighborhood was quiet all around you.
Sooyoung sits down beside you and adopts a similat pose. "She's stupid. Susie is stupid", she says after a minute or so. "But I also sort of get it. She cannot stop what she feels"
You turn to her, eyes widening at the idea of her knowing Susie's secret. "How did you know?"
"Everyone of us knows. The others were just good at not minding it. But still, Eunbi unnie is worried, you know?"
"Susie is careful, though", you said, because it is really the truth. Susie had her heart in the right place, but she's really careful for the sake of the group. If she were going to try for something not certain, she would be honest about it.
"But she's still stupid", Sooyoung says with a roll of her eyes as you looked outside the gate, "We can't especially date when we're all just still rookies"
You closes your eyes. It's been a long time since you allowed yourself to think of the same thing: of dating another Idol. Of dating him. The two of you, Heeseung and Y/N, spending their day offs together, somewhere hidden and quiet.
You know that the what if you'd been trying so hard to keep from imagining---the one where you are back in Bighit and he was there waiting for you everyday at the rooftop. The one where everybody would accept the two of you.
But it still hurts to know that it was never even a possibility, and sitting here in the late darkness of Seoulite night, it only makes you return at that goodbye, realizing the distance between the two of you, like you've never even met.
"What about you and Hyunjin?", Sooyoung asks with a suddenness that startles you. You give a helpless shrug and Sooyoung nods. "It would be sad for him if you do not reciprocate his feelings"
You flinches at her words. This is the whole point of you wanting to be alone for a while, of course, the inevitable rejection for Hyunjin. But still, it sends a little guilt and regret through your hear to even say it out loud.
Before the two of you, the gate opens, casting an orange light from the lamppost on the stone path, and the same guy in your topic, steps inside the yard. You and Susie both twist to look up at him, not alarm knowing you let him borrow the key, and he stands there for a long moment, his eyes distant and blank, not smiling even in your way.
Finally, he locked the gate and faced you again with a smile that's full of effort. "So much for me for taking the taxi just to see you again, Y/N", he says with a sheepish expression. "Can we please take a walk together outside? I just want to talk"
You blinked out, coming out of your thoughts and nods. "Right now?"
Hyungjin's face saddens when your eyes met his, but his words snap you like a lamp in the void. "I know what you think of me, really", he says and you had to swallow the knot in your throat before you can reply.
"And I know that I will regret it deeply"
As soon as you said it, Sooyoung quickly steps inside, leaving the two of you to sort it all out together. Watching her trot off through the screen door, you suspect that she's just eager to escape the silence coming between you and Hyunjin, something that you wish you could do as well.
Instead, you remained sitting there, staring down at the stone path where Hyunjin's shoes soon shows up in your line of vision. He takes your hand and leads you out of the gate, falling into a rhytmic walk but silent in the street.
He will not say a word since you left the gate, walking for what feels like an infinite moment and you realised this might be the longest you'd ever hear him go quiet. When you're together these days, it never mattered whether you can keep up or reply to his talk. A lot of the time, it doesn't even matter if you're mind is elsewhere.
He always knew there's someone else.
In the quiet of the night, after a completely silent fifteen minute walk together with no destination in mind, you're starting to accept that whatever you have with him might sunk. But as the minutes stretch between the two of you, you finally look over at him.
"Hyunjin", you call out, and he doesn't react. His face is pale in the glow of the nearby streetlamp and his forehead is creased. "What do you want to talk about? Why did you really go here?"
When he still doesn't respond, you wonder if he could possibly be thinking of crying in front of you or if his plan is to ignore who your heart really wants and force himself in your life.
"I know it's about us. I know that you already have an idea who I liked", you said again, pressing on and he looked up on one Billboard up in one condominium, the faces of Enhypen smiled together in their first Vogue cover.
"Like the guy in the middle?", he asks in a flat tone that doesn't even sound like him. He was referring to Heeseung in the center.
You don't know where did he find out. Your co-members didn't even know. Itzy knows but you never saw them interacted that much with Hyunjin these days. And why would he be jealous? Did you and Heeseung even became a thing?
"I know it's not fair", you says in a voice that sounds way too reasonable. "But it's not fair for him too if I left him hanging for something impossible"
"I know but what about me? What about Hwang Hyunjin?", he says, still without looking at you and his eyes were pinned on the Enhypen. "I know you met him first. You would've loved to stay at Bighit to be with him"
"How can you---"
Hyunjin shakes his head. "Secrets can't stay hidden for long. But if I became an option---without any competition---I honestly still see you going for him"
You stares at him, stung by the truth. "I actually don't know where my heart is leaning to", you admits, even though a part of you wonder if that's true.
The fact that you didn't even try to persuade him to get you---not to mention that he now knows about Heeseung---already feels like kind of a rejection. For Hyunjin.
But what if you had known him first? If there was a chance you hadn't met the ace of Bighit---and met him in JYP in the first place, would there be a possibility that you would've felt differently for him?
"Hyunjin", you says once again as he started walking away and you struggled to follow on his long stride. "I'm sorry. Maybe we shouldn't even met for tonight. We're tired and you shou---"
"I don't want to go home"
You fixed him with hard look, still keeping up with his steps. "You have a comeback stage tommorow. You need to sleep and rest. I don't want for you to pass out from----"
"Don't pretend that you care about me", he interrupted, then stops and blows out a long breath. "I thought it was already you when you I saw you throw his number for me. But guess what? I could still see you stop whenever you hear his voice from any music show"
"I thought I could move on from him", you told him, feeling your throat tightens a little and released the truth from all these months hiding it. "It turns out that I can't and I'm sorry because even now, he's all I could think about"
He remains silent, but there's something deliberately sad about it. Especially when you heard him sniff and tried to hide it. "The thing is", he says eventually. "Maybe you never really considered me. It has always been him for you, isn't it?"
This hits you like a shot--a hard, bright pain in the centet of your chest for him, because he's right---and you struggles to keep your face neutral. "Then if you already know it", you began, unable to look at him, "why are you still here, making an effort to see me?"
"To clear everything", Hyunjin says, sounding uncharacteristically sad. "This isn't a goodbye. This is just me saying that I give up and I hope you know that I still care about you"
And without letting you a chance to answer, he begins to cross the road, ignoring your desperate calls for his name. You're about to follow him but you flinches as a car pass by letting out two honks to stop you from crossing, then after it was gone, so is Hyunjin.
You stop before a convenience store, trying to see him among the late goers in stores still opened around and when you couldn't find him, ending up in front of a McDonald, you accepted that he just wasn't ready to face you any longer.
Not really having energy to return back to your dorm and was expecting your dormmates to ask where you had came from, you pulled the McDonald's door open and walked inside, a little relieve to let the delicious smell of burgers and chickens lulls you in. The lack of many customers is a welcome distraction.
You stalk off towards the leather seat looking over the same side of the street Hyunjin had disappeared to, scanning it to see if he was just hiding from some corner but that would be very childish of him, so it's not possible.
"Y/N?", says from a familiar voice behind you, and you turned around, eyes widening to find Heeseung, the very same reason you had hurted a person for tonight is there, standing and looking at you, as if he wanted to cry.
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In the months since he finally accepted that you wouldn't really call him, Heeseung had kept himself busy and distracted from his career as an Idol. It wasn't that he was trying to forget you, he was just feeling betrayed, but he wasn't going out of his way to do the same either.
In your absence to his life, the urgency of what he'd felt for you, the pull of it, nearly evaporated and it always comes back like a powerful whirlpool each time your name appeared in any news or comeback or almost everywhere. He felt nothing but the vague reluctance to admit that it was still you for him.
He was sitting there in the McDonald with his head bent, lost in his thought and was waiting for Jungwon to finish ordering his midnight snack, when someone entered the door. In all the noise, from the relentless music on his earphone and the cluttered of the workers cleaning the other tables and picking up the trays, he didn't notice you until you were right in front of him in the table before him.
When he looked up, hidden beneath his beanie and hoodie with a mask in his mouth, he was not recognizable but for you who's only wearing jacket and a big shirt and was tucked in your short, he's sure it was you. Your hair was pink and longer than the last time, and you were paler too, without the help of any make up.
And he decided right then that there was no reason to call you in such a situation where there is barely a people around. You glanced up at him when he stood, eyes widening as he turn to stare and neither the two of you said anything for what felt like a very long time.
Finally, Jungwon came back from the counter, holding up a tray with fries and burgers and sit down at their table, him looking to his hyung with a smile. "You can now go to her. I won't say a thing to anyone"
Heeseung scraped back his chair, standing up completely in a hurry, and in a blink of an eye, he was already hugging you, his hands resting on your waist, when he realized you'd never hug him back and without quite meaning to, he stepped back, moving away from you as if he'd been shocked. Or hurted.
You blinked at him a few times, then offered him a reluctant smile. "Heeseung?", you says, then remembered your manners and gestured for the seat before you, he quickly took it. "I didn't notice you there. Sorry"
His eyes were stil caught onto yours, and he opened his mouth, then closed it again, realizing how your words carries a heavy meaning. The look in your eyes says the things you made him feel. The longing and heartbreak. This, it seemed, was just what happened when you left someone hoping for nothing. And in your situation, he was the victim, the pitiful but admirable one for his love.
You glanced at his friend, to Jungwon pretending to not listen but really was obvious as his body was turned on your direction while he was eating his order.
"So how are you...", Heeseung began, then stopped to clear his throat. He reached for your hand but realized it was down there on your lap. "How are you doing these days, Y/N?"
"Uh, it was like what would you expect in our career", you said, looking around and wanting to melt from under his searching gaze.
For a moment, you seemed to remember that your jacket was still on, and you slipped it off, and placed it down your lap. Heeseung thought of the white dress that you wore in MAMA award in last december and remembered following it with his eyes the whole night, like it would make you look back at him.
"Well, how about you?", you asked, smile a little force onto him and he felt the full weight of it now. "How's life in Bighit? Did anything change from the last time I was there?"
His mind worked frantically, turning over his troubled thoughts, searching for something to say, but there was nothing other than the 'I miss you" in his head.
Any excitement over seeing you again had deflated, sharply and suddenly, and what was left was the worse kind of realization. Maybe you and him were never meant to work out since then. After all, not everything can last.
Not everything is supposed to mean something even if there was so much similarity between the two of you. Of you being aces, being in the same cirmcumstances and having the same feelings.
And the terrfying evidence was facing him now as you looked around, in the window, to Jungwon, at the waitress. Everywhere but not to him. This was the worst kind of reunion and he wasn't even sure if you see it that way.
"Y/N", he said finally, and you looked at him with a slightly panicked eyes. "What's the deal between you and that Hyunjin?"
You bite your lip, and beneath the table, he could feel your knees shaking, indicating that you're not comfortable. "Did you see us that day? After Knowing Bros?", you asked, and he nodded.
You let out a little sigh, and another silence settled over the table, between you and him, this one was worse than when you were with Hyunjin only long ago. Jungwon at the next table nearly choked on his fright and the woman from your right threw her head back to her boyfriend, and in the far corner, a group of boys is cajoling the one to the girl in the the table next to them.
Everyone seems too happy except for the two of you and the bothered boy for his Hyung.
Suddenly, you leaned forward on the table, your face full of reluctancy. "If we will talk about things, should we not turn this outside? Can we leave Jungwon for a minute?", you asked, and before he could stop himself, Heeseung stood up and go to the boy, giving him money to pay for a taxi, saying he will be gone for hours in the dorm.
When he comes back to you, you were looking at him in surprise, he eyed you right back with a smile. "I'm yours however long you wanted tonight", he said and this time, your smile is real, genuine.
"I really miss that smile of yours", you say, rising to your feet and accepted his hand, ignoring the look from Jungwon's face as he left first by the exit.
"I miss you too", Heeseung admitted as your smile only widens. "What about you?", When you didn't answer right away, his smile faded. "I guess it's Hyunjin now for you, huh?"
Once you two turned the corner outside, you waited for a few minutes to answer him. After biding your time and saw that sure enough, there was no people walking by to see you, you shocked Heeseung by pushing him on the wall and instead of reply to his queston of 'why', you grabbed the collar of his shirt and once he was down on your face, you pulled down the hoodie to hide his face before you pecked him in the lips, giving him a chance to pull away.
When he didn't respond, you back away and hs was just looking at you in disbelief. He wanted to tell you how much he miss it, too even harder than you felt, and that this might be not a good thing if someone were to catch you. But none of it seemed to matter. Instead, he just stood there, tounge-tied and faltering, unable to say anything at all.
But it didn't matter, really. After a moment, he shook his head and put a hand on your shoulder, and then to his surprise, you take that as a permission, you rose onto your tiptoes and kissed him again. His eyes widened as your lips met, the memory of you cornering him the first time slipping in the edge of his mind, and the nearness of you, made it seemed like you were never gone in the first place.
And so he closes his eyes, his hand found their way down on your waist and he kissed you right back.
By the time you pulled away from him, you and Heeseung were grinning to each other and your hand had made their way up to his cheek, to his beanie and snatch it from his head. Not that he cared, he let you wear it.
"If only you weren't in JYP and still in Bighit like then", Heeseung said, part-teasing, part serious as he pressed his forehead into yours. "There would never be a day where I can't see you"
"But then if I haven't come from there" you said, only slightly teasing, "we would have never even met"
After that, both of you couldn't find anything else to say than to smile at each other. And so instead, you both just stood, arms on each other, regarding each other silently, all around you was suddenly as quiet as the studio room had been, as comfortable as the rooftop, as dangerous in the set of Knowing bros. Because that's what happened when you were with someone who really matters:
The world molded itself to fit only the two of you and nothing more.
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In your concert tour at Japan, you cried.
There was absolutely nothing to cry about---at least not yet. You'd only just arrived when the news of Dispatch revealing Susie's dating scandal and it almost brought your concert to a cancel. You hadn't even seen her too since in the Airport, the staffs had hidden her from the questioning fans. But still, the moment your van had pulled to the hotel and found your group silent on your way up to each other room, you can't help blinking back tears.
"This is what I told you before that Susie is stupid", Sooyoung says once she entered your room, and laid beside you in your bed. "It's dangerous to date someone in our line of work"
"I'm scared Sooyoung. For Susie and I", you said, throwing her a look and she quickly understood, knowing the deal with Heeseung now.
"You two better be careful from now on", she said, fumbling on her coat and let it fall on the floor. "We musn't ruin our group than it already has with this scandal from Susie's carelessness"
"What should I do?"
"Leave him if you can", she replied, sounding exasperated, but then, she stood up and left you there worrying for your hidden relationship.
Even when the manager calls for you to eat in one of the rooms, you, however, on your bed for another minute. Your eyes still damp, wondering which one were you more scared of:
To lose your career or to lose Heeseung. Possibly it was even both.
Or maybe--just maybe---it wasn't a choice at all for him.
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In their Soop episode in Australia, Heeseung laughed.
When he saw the place where they'd soon be staying for two weeks, he couldn't help it. It was a little house on the edge of the wood, but it looked more like a cabin, or better yet a barn, with the farm animals scattered around in the yard.
"This is how you lived here if you want to see all the kangaroos", Jake said, beaming at the ostrich watching them from the other side of the fence. There was no way to tamp down his enthusiasm along Jungwon cooing on the small ducks while Niki and Sunoo were laughing over the baby sheeps.
As for Sunghoon and Jay, they were going crazy over the racoons who had stolen their sandwich that they left on the picnic table.
"There would be even no sasaengs here", Jake added, looking around on the near desert with unmistakable pride. "I wonder when would we see a snake here. They were everywhere here"
Heeseung only nodded, not understanding the humor in the snake and instead, wonder what the stars would look like out there, remembering the way you and him always ended your night in the rooftop of their dorm, away from everyone and everything.
"Must be kind of nice huh?", Jake said, laughing when the mother duck pecked Jungwon to get away from her younglings. "To be out from the City and out from any cameras for a while"
"Do you think there could be a chance I can take her in a place like this?"
Jake and Heeseung were both quiet for a moment, and then the aussie boy smiled a slow smile. "As long as you two will be careful", he said and with that, they both helped Jungwon to get away from the angry duck that chased them until they headed inside the house.
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In the traditional house of Japan with the paper door, you opened up your phone and your eyes went right to the weverse notification about the new episode of The Soop for Enhypen.
"Did you know that Australia is the driest of any continent on earth other than Antarctica?", you asked your leader, Eunbi, who was outrightly bewildered.
"Fascinating", she could only say.
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In the zoo in front of the pythons, Heeseung flipped through his phone, his eyes caught the weverse moment of Y/N and where they are in Japan.
"Did you know that Japan has more than 2 billion manga magazines and books are being sold each year?", he asked to Niki, who gave him an offended look.
"What do you think of me? Not aware of that fact of my home country?", he said.
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In line for the sushi store, you daydreamed. You were thinking of the forest, zoos, lions and kangaroos, mountains and privacy.
But really, you were thinking Bighit.
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In the fence before the ostrich to see the eggs, Heeseung's mind wandered.
He was thinking of mangas, of the isolated island and mochis and kimonos.
But really, he was thinking of JYP.
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In your way to the Sky dome, you sat quietly at the van, which faced west.
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In their way to Jake's house, Heeseung paused for a moment in the taxi, his toes pointing east.
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In bed that night, you breathed in your side of bed next to Sooyoung.
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In the swing that morning, Heeseung breathed out next to Jungwon.
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In your last day at Japan, you thought of the Bighit's ace.
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And in their last day at Australia, Heeseung was thinking of her, too.
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Just remember guys that this is still not the Finale. I just write this out of my desire to have something for Heeseung in his big day.
The Finale would be longer than this and I will connect it deeply to the title.
By the way, were you satisfied at this update?
Please comment and Enjoy!