Archive of Our Own

Minghao wakes up in the wrong room.

He doesn’t think much of it at first. In some ways, he’s learned to find a twisted sense of comfort in waking up in unfamiliar rooms; when he first moved to Seoul as a trainee, the various dorms and dorm rearrangements throughout the years, and the constant traveling on tours. Minghao has long learned to find a sense of home that is much more mobile and permeable than most.

When he wakes up in an unfamiliar room, still groggy and eyes sleep-crusted, Minghao simply stretches his arms over his head, luxuriates in the dim warmth of the sun blazing through the tinted window curtains, and maps out his plan for the rest of the day. Minghao faintly recalls the window being on his right side rather than his left, but the thought passes smoothly as he focuses.

Meditation. Breakfast. A light walk outside. Rehearsal. Rehearsal. Rehearsal. The members need to discuss some changes to their blocking for tomorrow’s performance. His mind wanders back to his unfinished conversation with Mingyu last night, right after their plane touched down in Osaka. He flinches.

Meditation first. Work next.

Minghao opens his eyes. That’s when he realizes: something is wrong.

Pledis shelled out money to give them all solo rooms for their first tour back on stage. For all the time they’ve spent cooped up in their apartments, shuffling to and fro from schedules, Minghao had felt a loosening in his chest that replaces the typical fatigue when he had stepped onto the plane, and then into the hotel when they had landed. He had been looking forward to having his own hotel room, for more than just solo relaxation—up until the conversation went all wrong. And then he returned to his room alone.

But this is not his hotel room.

Minghao rubs his eyes and peers around the room. The suite is much nicer than the room Pledis booked for the group and far more extravagant than they would need for their two night stay, with a delicate crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling and a lavish peek-a-boo bathroom that was definitely not there before.

The window was definitely on his right side last night.

On the pull-out couch tucked to the side of the room, Minghao can see his belongings set out neatly: laptop, two bags, slippers. They had arrived late enough in the evening that Minghao remembers he decided he would unpack after he woke up, only having enough energy to bring out his toiletries and pajamas.

He swallows back the budding panic. His suitcase is there too—but it’s now tucked into another corner of the room. A glance down shows that he’s still wearing his silk pajamas that he had adorned last night. That, at least, has not changed.

But everything else has. This, Minghao realizes with a shaky breath, is not the room that he fell asleep in last night.

The first thing he does is to escape into the hallway.

Minghao maps out the layout of the floor. Last night, they drew lots for their rooms—Wonwoo to his right, Jeonghan to his left. The managers took the rooms closest to the elevators, as always, and the other staff are split between their floor and the one below.

The hallway is sleek and subtly lavish, with ornate trims on the walls and crawling plants that liven up the space. It’s a stark contrast to the conventional beige walls, beige carpeting that he’s used to, that he saw last night—but the panic drives him to the nearest room on his right. Minghao raps on the door, breathing out as steadily as possible.

“Wonwoo-hyung?” he calls out. He knocks on the door again. “Wonwoo-hyung, are you there?”

Minghao waits. Silence.

Trying to remain calm, Minghao moves to the left instead. He repeats the process; knocks and calls out Jeonghan’s name, and waits. He waits, with each second dragging into another notch of panic that presses itself into his skin. His palms are clammy by the time he reaches the end of the hallway and curses himself for not looking for his phone. Minghao has no idea what time it is—maybe the members have left for the breakfast bar, or left for rehearsal and somehow forgotten him. They had been tired after their flight, him even more so with how last night had ended, surely the hallway just looks different now.

The platitudes end sharply and abruptly when he knocks on another door, the one he had been both avoiding and hoping for with a sharp desperation. Mingyu’s room. He hears the turn of the lock. Thank god, Minghao thinks. The relief hits him so sharply, he nearly buckles from the weight of it. It’s not until the doorknob begins to turn that he realizes just how hard his heart is pounding. The door swings open as Minghao’s heart leaps in his throat—

A stranger stands in the doorway. A look of confusion is etched onto their face, unfamiliar and strange. They say something, and it takes a second for Minghao to realize it was in English.

His heart plummets bitterly through his stomach.

There’s a cold feeling in his fingers, a terrifying numbness that spreads through his veins. Minghao thinks he manages an apology, but blood pounds in his ears and he’s not sure if he’s really said anything at all. Faintly, he registers the baffled expression on the stranger’s face where his Mingyu should be standing instead. At the same time, he’s not sure if he registers anything at all.

Except he’s certain now. Something is very, very wrong.

He doesn’t know when he’s made his way back to his—but not his—hotel room, except he’s suddenly acutely aware that he’s holding his phone in trembling hands.

It’s still the same phone. The same iPhone model, the same case, the same nick on the bottom corner of his screen when he had dropped it during dance practice two months ago and had been too busy to get it replaced since. His lock screen hasn’t changed from the expanse of the emerald sea meeting sky, the kiss of the sun slipping below the horizon. Minghao had taken it last year during one of their schedules. He loves the photo; it always evokes memories of the little burst of flavour of nectarine, the hint of sea salt on Mingyu’s skin, the sweet flush on his neck from the sun.

Yesterday, he wondered if he should change it to something less sentimental.

It’s a lifejacket now. With shaking fingers, Minghao punches in his passcode and lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding when the phone unlocks. By instinct, he opens up KakaoTalk.

And then freezes.

It’s as if someone has deleted all of his contacts and chats. The conversations he’s had with his members, the group chats for work, they’re all gone. Every single one of them. He scans over the remaining chats, eyes catching onto the words museum and names he doesn’t recognize, and feels suddenly, incredibly scared.

He opens up WeChat next. Dread settles in the pit of his stomach, thick like tar.

Gone. Minghao can see his thumb shaking as he scrolls down through the list of conversations, his eyes hurriedly scanning through the names for anything familiar. The friends he’s made in the other Chinese idols in the industry, the friends back home, the other Chinese artists he’s brushed elbows with. None of them are there. He sees 爸妈, 经理, 李夏瑜, 许辰璇, an unending list of names he doesn’t recognize, each one adding to the sickly tar that churns his stomach with growing horror.

Minghao’s nearly reached the bottom of his chat history when his eyes catch onto a familiar name: 文俊辉. Jun. He breathes out—of relief at first, and then of confusion. According to the time stamp, the last time he exchanged a text with Jun was 2017. His breath stutters. That should be impossible—and yet—

He stares down at the screen. 哥，我想你, sent on July 4, 2017. Nothing else. No response from Jun. The conversation before that had been normal, plans to meet up for dinner at the old restaurant in Incheon they used to venture out to as trainees on special days. Minghao had nearly forgotten about it—the restaurant had closed down shortly after they debuted. He furrows his brows. Nothing makes sense.

The call goes to an automatic message in Mandarin. This number is not in service. He tries again, and then a third time for good measure. The message doesn’t change and no one answers the phone.

Minghao swallows. There’s a knot of nervousness in his chest now, strangely brittle and tense. With one last dimming hope, he opens up the phonebook.

Through the years of working in an industry that’s premised entirely on networking, Minghao had accrued a sizable phonebook. Years of meeting producers, stylists, various administrative team members at Pledis and then at HYBE, other idols that he exchanged numbers with, the members—here, too, they don’t exist. Gone. Every single one is gone.

He closes his eyes. His mind races—it could be a prank. Perhaps this is an exceptionally cruel hidden camera prank, and any moment now, the members are going to jump out and make him laugh until he cries, and he’ll yell at them for pulling this off a little too perfectly and scaring his heart. Later, after the cameras are off and Minghao’s in the safety of the members’ company, he’ll tell them how much it scared him and how he never wants them to do this ever again. They would understand, if he told them so. They’ve been together for too long for them to not understand him.

Except he waits, and then waits again. Minghao opens his eyes. Nothing has changed—no one appears and tells him it’s a joke, his phonebook remains half-shorn, and Minghao is just as fucking lost and alone as he has been since he’s woken up and—

Minghao freezes. His thumb stills over the corner of the screen he had been scrolling down; there is one name he recognizes—one name he knows as intimately as his own. Kwon Soonyoung. Relief crashes over him like a tsunami wave. He doesn’t know when Hoshi-hyung had changed his contact name in his phone, but it must have been when he did something with the rest of his phone book. Either it’s a prank or it’s Hoshi’s weird ineptitude with technology, Minghao hardly cares at this moment, too weighed by the balm of relief at seeing something familiar at last.

He exhales, feeling the tension seep from his shoulders. Hoshi-hyung.

Hoshi-hyung can explain.

He doesn’t understand how he’s in Seoul and not in Japan, like he had been the previous night.

Minghao checks his phone again. He drums his fingers on the table, staring hard at the numbers until it ticks from 14:23 to 14:24 and the door to the café remains stubbornly shut. Hoshi-hyung had said he’d meet him at this café ten minutes ago.

He’s never been here before, but he remembers Mingyu mentioning once before that Hoshi sometimes meets up with Chungha and Hayoung at smaller, lesser known cafés away from prying, nosy eyes. It’s certainly out of the way. His taxi ride had taken nearly 40 minutes but Minghao was anxious enough that it felt more like two hours.

Minghao had always hated that he needed to ask for permission from the managers and staff whenever he wanted to leave the hotel. This time, no one stopped him from leaving and Minghao wasn’t sure if he liked that any better.

It didn’t help that Hoshi-hyung had been acting strange when he had called too. He plays it over in his head; the tone of astonishment, like he couldn’t believe Minghao had called, words soaked in wary and suspicion. When Minghao insisted that Soonyoung drop the joke already, Soonyoung had hung up.

Panic spurred him on and he called again, then again until Hoshi picked up for a second time. “Please,” Minghao blurted out. That had caught Soonyoung’s attention, but the purse of Hoshi-hyung’s lips was evident in his tone when he had reluctantly agreed to meet up with Minghao, before texting him an address on KakaoTalk. Minghao noticed the emptiness of their chat history—which was weird because Soonyoung is one of the members he talks the most with both for work and personally—but he consoles himself that it must be part of the prank. Whatever prank they’re pulling.

Though, he wonders if Soonyoung has been taking acting lessons in secret. The phone conversation was enough to convince him that Soonyoung could excel in an acting role. Then again, Soonyoung has always been one for theatrics.

The song of the miniature wind chime that hangs above the door snatches him out of his thoughts. His heart stills when he looks up to see Hoshi slipping in through the door, his hair longer than it had been yesterday and curling around his ears. But his presence is a relief, the one lone sight of familiarity in the midst of an odd, horrible day, and Minghao’s instinctive smile is sincere.

He looks straight at Minghao.

And the look on his face sends chills up Minghao’s spine. Minghao’s smile falters, weakens, until it drops from his face entirely. His heart leaps into his throat and stays there, suffocating and oppressive.

And that’s when Minghao knows for certain that something is truly, irrevocably wrong.

This is not a prank.

“You’re not Hoshi-hyung,” Minghao says, his voice cracking on the name. He swallows around his heart. “Who are you?”

The man wearing Soonyoung’s face looks guarded. “What?” The words come out forcefully, more of an attack than a question. He hovers at the edge of the table, one hand clasped onto the strap of his bag. He doesn’t sit down and Minghao doesn’t invite him. “Seriously, Minghao? The first time we’re talking to each other in four years, God knows when you even came back to Seoul, and you dragged me out here for some— dumb joke or something?”

“You’re not Hoshi-hyung,” insists Minghao. He can feel his hands shaking and he balls them into fists, hiding them under the table. His mind traces over those words: four years. That’s impossible. He had sat next to Soonyoung on their flight to Osaka and shared a bag of corn soup chips.

Soonyoung stabs him with a look of utter disgust. He can feel his stomach plummet to the floor—this is not his Soonyoung-hyung. In all their years together, he cannot imagine Soonyoung ever looking at him like that. Not even in their grumpiest moments, hours into reworking and reworking a choreography.

Yet here he is.

“I knew I shouldn’t have come,” mutters Soonyoung, his lip curled into a sneer. He gives Minghao a long, hard look that Minghao can’t read—doesn’t want to read. “It’s been four years. You still resent me, don’t you?” Soonyoung’s knuckles are white where they grip his bag. Then, a hurt look crosses his face, nearly too fast for Minghao to notice if he hadn’t spent more than half of his life with this face. “Weren’t you the one who once told me I needed to learn when to let go?”

When Minghao doesn’t respond, his face shifts into something that seems more mournful and without knowing why, Minghao feels a deep prickle of pain in his heart. Soonyoung lets out a forceful sigh and shakes his head, angling his body away from Minghao. He takes a step towards the door.

Minghao’s hand shoots out and clasps around Soonyoung’s wrist before he can think about it. His chest spikes with fear at losing his only sense of familiarity—as intangible as this Soonyoung seems. “Something’s wrong,” he blurts out. Panic squeezes at him in a cold vice. “I’m— I don’t know—” his words get smothered in his chest by a crashing wave of anxiety. Soonyoung turns around, a mixture of alarm and wariness in his eyes. Minghao takes a deep breath. “I woke up and— something isn’t right.”

Maybe it’s the tremor in his voice, the syllables choking out of him painfully that makes Soonyoung fully stop. The hardened edges of his face soften. Not in understanding, but perhaps concern. “Minghao?” Soonyoung says.

That’s another thing too. Soonyoung calls him Myungho, Myungho-yah, sometimes Eissa when they’re in front of the cameras but less so now that they’re edging into their seventh year as Seventeen. There are occasions when he says Minghao—writes it out in Hangul, has made efforts to learn how to say it in Minghao’s mother tongue, the same way they all learned how to say Junfei in Cantonese—but never with the strange clinical precision he pronounces his name now. None of the fondness or familiarity.

Minghao swallows. “Hoshi-hyung—”

“Who is Hoshi?” he cuts in, “You’ve been calling me that since I walked in. Who’s Hoshi?”

More than anything than he has encountered today, it’s the utterly blank look on Soonyoung’s face that terrifies Minghao the most when he forms the name on his lips, Ho and Shi, the syllables steeped in disfamiliarity, as if it’s a foreign word to Soonyoung himself. Of all the members, there is no one who wears his stage name as a badge of pride more than Hoshi-hyung. Minghao has never imagined a world where Soonyoung isn’t Hoshi, and it feels more like an incision than he ever wanted to know.

He feels like crying. He feels like screaming. Nothing makes sense and he feels so horribly, awfully alone. This strange and unknown Soonyoung stares at him with confusion. Minghao’s distress must be evident because the suspicion and anger melts from his face and into concern. “Hey,” he says, voice pitched low like one would while approaching a stray cat found abandoned in an alleyway. Soonyoung eyes Minghao with caution. “You okay? What’s going on?”

Minghao shakes his head. “What’s your name?”

Soonyoung gives him an incredulous look. “Is this a game?”

“Please,” Minghao says, hysteria bubbling in his words. “Please— just— please tell me your name.”

Soonyoung stares at him for a long moment. Whatever he sees on Minghao’s face, though, must be enough to make him relent. “Kwon Soonyoung,” he says slowly.

“What’s the date?”

“September 3,” Soonyoung says, “2022. Did you hit your head?”

Same date, same year then. Minghao doesn’t understand. But then another thought dawns him suddenly, one that sends a bone-chilling shiver down his spine. “What do you do for a living? What do I do for a living?”

“Minghao, what—”

The words tear themselves out from his throat. “Soonyoung-ssi, please. I need to—” Minghao swallows. “I need to know.”

Soonyoung bites his bottom lip and locks eyes with him. An inscrutable expression flashes across his face and he hesitates for a second before he answers Minghao. “Marketing coordinator at a small publishing house in Seoul.” He pauses and then gives Minghao a pointed look. “I don’t know what you do. We broke up four years ago, remember?”

What?

His answer sends Minghao reeling in shock with a sharp intake of breath. Break up— it can’t be. He doesn’t understand. Nor can he imagine Soonyoung as anyone but a celebrity, performing his heart on stage. Everything feels so wrong.

Minghao breathes out shakily. He needs to ask more questions and he’s terrified of the answers. Soonyoung seems to believe him—whatever this is—for now though and that he fumbles for courage. “Do you know Seventeen?” Soonyoung shakes his head blankly. “Pledis?”

“Nu’est,” Soonyoung answers promptly.

Minghao expects to feel some sort of relief, but instead a coursing horror sweeps through his veins. Seventeen doesn’t exist in this world, even while everything else does. It should be impossible. Minghao feels like he’s living out a nightmare.

He feels a sickening sense of urgency tickle his throat and he barrels onwards, his mind grasping onto the first person he can think of. “Mingyu—do you know a Kim Mingyu?” Soonyoung shakes his head slowly and Minghao thinks he could be sick. His stomach rolls with nausea and horror. “Choi Seungcheol?” he tries again, but Soonyoung shakes his head again. “Yoon Jeonghan. Hong Joshua? Jisoo?” All no’s. “Woozi— Lee Jihoon?”

“Sounds familiar?” Soonyoung says tentatively. “Woozi, I mean. Not the other name.”

Minghao tastes bile at the back of his throat. “What about Jeon Wonwoo?”

Another inscrutable expression crosses Soonyoung’s features. “Yes, I know— how do you know Wonwoo?” Soonyoung asks, suspicion colouring his words. “I swear to god, if this is some sick joke—”

He doesn’t have time to feel relieved that Wonwoo apparently still exists in this world. “Wen Junhui?” Minghao presses on, desperation clawing at him for answers. Anything.

All at once, Soonyoung freezes and his face twists into something ugly, something Minghao doesn’t recognize and never wants to see again. His eyes turn glassy and he stares at Minghao in chilling, frigid silence. He looks stricken. A second passes, and then it drags into three and then four.

Minghao forgets to breathe. Later, the expression on Soonyoung’s face will come to haunt him again, over and over again, in his dreams when he sleeps at night.

It takes a moment for Minghao to place the expression he sees on Soonyoung’s familiar features. Grief.

“Minghao,” Soonyoung begins, his voice wobbling. He sounds very, very scared. “Minghao, Jun isn’t with us anymore, remember?” The world tilts on its axis and suddenly, Minghao’s vision blurs. “He passed away four years ago.”

Minghao shakes his head. He closes his eyes, disoriented. His heart slams into his throat and he feels like he’s choking on it, nauseous and horrified all at once.

“Did you really forget?” he hears Soonyoung’s voice come from the darkness. The rough edges of his voice have completely dissipated now, but the unsteadiness is only a stark reminder of this nightmare world Minghao has somehow woken up in. Now, too, he hears the fear in Soonyoung’s voice.

He opens his eyes. Soonyoung’s face swims in and out of view, worry evident in his eyes. The room pulses violently.

“Minghao?”

None of this should be real. He should be on stage with his members right now, all twelve of them, at the Kyocera Dome Osaka where Chan would be patiently working one-on-one with members on blocking, Jun would be practicing his lines over and over again, and Soonyoung would be consulting with Hyerim-ssaem on the stage direction of tonight’s performances. Jihoon would be watching silently over the vocal unit’s practice, Jeonghan would be teasing Seokminie to keep the nerves away, and Seungkwan would be nagging them to focus. Joshua would egg Seokmin to get Jeonghan back and joke with Seungcheol between practice stages. Wonwoo and Hansol would be watching videos on their phone, quiet but comforting, while Mingyu—

Mingyu would be with him. A ground presence. Minghao always gravitates back towards Mingyu in the end.

For too many years of his youth, Minghao has always considered himself as someone who occupied a third space. Neither here in Korea, there in China—just a space that he had to configure to be his own. It meant empty wine bottles filled with flowers, acrylic paints and music, the touch of a hand against his own, a new set of parents who said “we will be your family in Korea”. It meant none of that, but the reassurance of 12 souls by his side at the end of this day.

But Minghao is alone. In this world, there seems to be no space for him at all. He’s drifting apart at sea, in this strange new universe he awoke in, and the only face he recognizes is not one of his own. There’s nothing here. He’s alone.

Jun’s dead.

All of a sudden, his skin feels too taut, too small for his body. The café’s walls are suffocating him. Minghao takes a moment and tries to focus on the thrum of his beating heart and the dissonant murmur of Soonyoung’s voice, hazy and faded against the blood rushing in his ears. He can’t seem to breathe properly. An agonizing pain ripples through his chest, coiling through him and slithering through each organ and vein like a poisoned snake and Minghao gasps as he clutches himself.

“Minghao?” Soonyoung’s saying now, looking alarmed. He inches forward and rests a hand on Minghao’s shoulder. “Minghao, are you—”

It’s overwhelming. It’s too much. The lights of the café feel suddenly too bright and blinding, the touch of Soonyoung’s hand leaves a painful sear, and Minghao can feel the walls collapsing around him. He needs to get out, he needs to—

Minghao rips out of his chair and tears out of the café. Everything hurts, physically, like an arrow piercing into him and the only thing he can think of to do is to leave, get himself out of there. His throat closes up. It hurts, it all hurts.

A startled noise rips from Soonyoung’s throat. “Minghao—!”

He runs.

Somehow, Minghao finds himself in a park he doesn’t recognize. His heartbeat is louder than any of the Seoul traffic, deafening and echoing in his skull.

He twirls around, looking for signs of familiarity, but he’s in an area of Seoul that he rarely visits—and since they debuted, he hasn’t had much time to explore beyond their managers' cars, schedule locations, and restaurants. The park is mostly empty at this time, save for a few dog walkers and a pair of friends out on a walk with their strollers. No one pays Minghao any attention.

Minghao only stops to catch his breath, his forehead beaded with sweat. But as he stops, he becomes abruptly aware of his phone buzzing in his hand, the vibration startling him out another breath as he glances down. He has no memory of grabbing it in his haste.

He’s not sure if he feels glad that he did.

On his screen, Minghao can see Soonyoung’s name flash across his notification bar as a KakaoTalk message. There’s a bitter taste in his mouth as he sees his name. It should say 17’s Hoshi-hyung, the name he listed him under since he arrived in Korea in 2014. Not Kwon Soonyoung. It’s his real name, but it’s wrong.

Everything’s wrong.

His bones feel as if they weigh a thousand tons, grating against one another painfully as he forces himself to keep walking, and Minghao wants nothing but to sink down into the ground, through the earth, submerging himself until he’s no longer standing in this strange, discordant world. He closes his eyes, opens them again. He’s still here.

There’s a bench with a view of the park just a few paces away from him. It takes all of his energy to drag himself towards it, collapsing onto it as if his marionette’s strings have been snipped.

Minghao desperately ransacks his brain for answers. He retraces his steps from yesterday: they had filmed an episode of Going Seventeen during the day and boarded their flight to Osaka for their Dome Tour in the evening. They arrived at their hotel just shortly after 9 p.m., held a quick debrief for their rehearsal plans for the next day, before most members dispersed into their own rooms to finally have some time for themselves. He had followed Mingyu into his room, then left alone in the end.

He grips the edge of the bench and shakes his head.

Aside from that, Minghao had gone to bed with his typical routine while on tour, if only for the comfort of normalcy—pull his hair back with his Kermit the Frog headband, oil cleanse, foaming cleanse, toner, BHA, serum, eye cream, lotion, sleeping pack. He managed a few pages of 秋瑾 and then relented to scrolling idly through his phone. And then when he woke up, he woke up wrong.

In his hand, his phone vibrates again. By habit, Minghao checks the notification automatically, and pauses when he realizes it’s from the Email app. The phone only displays part of the subject. His heart skips a beat and before he can think on it too hard, he taps open the email.

Subject: Follow-up to tomorrow’s appointment
Dear Mr. Xu,

We are once again pleased to invite you to the Void Gallery at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MCCA) to evaluate the solo exhibition, Ways of Painting, by Korean contemporary artist Xeva. Although the artist has requested to remain anonymous, the Gallery will provide a representative that will connect with you on the acquisition of his artwork for Beijing Museum of Contemporary Art.

We look forward to meeting with you and learning from your curatorial expertise. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to the curatorial team at the MCCA at [email protected].

He stares unblinkingly at his phone, the words in the email not quite sinking in. The email is entirely in Korean, but Minghao’s proud of his fluency now. There isn’t a single word used that he doesn’t understand. Yet, none of the sentences feel as if they make sense.

Soonyoung had told him that he didn’t know what Minghao did. Soonyoung himself is working some quaint little office job, sitting at a desk in front of a monitor, an image so wrong and unbefitting that it makes him want to laugh hysterically as much it makes him want to sob. If Soonyoung wasn’t on stage, performing his heart out, where would Minghao be?

Apparently in a museum as an art curator. Minghao reads over the email again in shock. He almost wants to laugh.

There’s a question that the members ask one another sometimes, ”where do you think you’d be if you weren’t here?”. Minghao sometimes would say, doing what I love still and finding who Xu Minghao, without The8, is.

Now that he’s here, where The8 had never once existed before, all he feels is...

Alone.

It’s easier to focus on others, rather than himself.

Minghao draws in a deep breath and exhales. Inhales and then exhales again. His hands still shake as he types in the first name: Kwon Soonyoung.

Even coming to the understanding that this Soonyoung is different, the unsettling cognitive dissonance when the search doesn’t immediately draw up results of Hoshi sends a chill down his spine. His eyes skim past the array of SNS profiles that crop up under Kwon Soonyoung. None of them are Soonyoung.

He’s just about to navigate away when he comes across a YouTube video with the title “20130718 권순영 축제.” Minghao taps on it, wincing when his phone speakers blare with the eruptive sound of a vaguely familiar Kpop song. He pushes down the volume and watches the blurry, shaky recording of a young Kwon Soonyoung dancing at what looks like a high school talent show.

The familiar sight of Soonyoung dancing on stage should be comforting. His chest prickles with a phantom longing for his own home, for his own Soonyoung instead.

A sudden thought hits him: Soonyoung had clearly been a dancer when he was younger. For as long as Minghao has known him, Soonyoung has always relentlessly pursued his own dreams even at the sacrifice of himself. If he had been a dancer, Minghao can’t imagine him settling for an office career now.

Why isn’t he dancing?

The rest of the search turns up with nothing. Minghao finds some humour in the situation; at least even here in this strange universe, Soonyoung still doesn’t know how to use SNS.

He tries to look up the rest of the members next. Some of them are easier to find than the others.

Seungcheol seems to be a regular university student. His Twitter account is filled with screenshots and clips from his gaming, interspersed between rants about homework and boring lectures.

Jeonghan only appears to have an Instagram page, but it’s set on private. Minghao tries digging around to see if he can find more information on him, but draws nothing up.

He types Hong Joshua in Hangul at first, but finds nothing until he switches to writing his name in English. There’s a Facebook and Instagram profile, and a profile on an American university page with Greek letters. Minghao returns to the SNS profiles. It looks like Joshua never left the United States, he realizes with a pang.

Wonwoo only has an Instagram page. It’s exactly as Minghao would expect from him: a lot of black and white photos of landscapes and the cityscape in Seoul. Occasionally, the photos feature a sliver of an arm or the curve of someone’s head, never in focus enough to be central to the photo. Minghao wonders if it’s the same person in each photo.

He doesn’t find anything for Lee Jihoon at first, but belatedly recalls that Soonyoung thought Woozi sounded familiar. Minghao hesitates for a second before he types the name in and is shocked when he finds dozens of pages and an Instagram account under the name. He’s still a producer here. Not an idol, but still making music. Thank god, Minghao thinks, staring down at the screen. His eyes sting. Thank god he’s still doing what he loves.

His heart aches when he finds Seokmin on Superstar K 2016. There’s a video of him performing on the season finale and Minghao sits and forces himself to watch, drinking in the honeyed vocals that he’s grown up with—that he loves so dearly. It’s painful to watch, as much as it grounds him. Seokmin won the contest and is now a soloist. He’s glad, too, to see this Seokmin still sings.

Minghao hesitates before he types in Seungkwan’s name instead. He can’t look at Mingyu yet.

He smiles when he finds out that Seungkwan’s still an idol. There’s a dozen variety clips of him that pop up. Minghao watches each and every single one of them. Even here, he hasn’t changed—still witty and acerbic in the most charming ways possible. His idol group, SCENE, consists of only six members and Seungkwan shines the most out of all. But seeing him promote with strangers—too little people, unfamiliar faces—leaves Minghao feeling as if a knife has been wedged between his ribs and he exits out.

Like Jeonghan, Minghao finds a private Instagram account under the name Chwe Hansol Vernon with an icon of a cat. Vernon has no other internet presence, but his younger sister still films short vlogs on YouTube. He watches a few of them with a faint sort of nostalgia. Some of them feature Vernon in them, and those he lingers over.

He discovers that Chan is a dance teacher in this universe. His website is professional and well-branded, and he almost laughs at the overly serious headshot of Chan that’s featured on the About Mepage of his site, if not for the fact that seeing his face—even in this format—is enough to send another whirl of sorrow through him. Minghao has always thought that Chan would be a great teacher. Just like his dad.

There’s only two people left for him to look for now, and Minghao has to steady himself with another deep breath. His heart thrums in his ears, loud and unsteady, as his mind runs through every possibility of what he might find as he slowly types in Mingyu’s name, a train of anxious thoughts that he can’t quite repress.

Minghao has a terrible fear that Mingyu doesn’t exist in this universe. He doesn’t know how to handle that Mingyu could exist, but not with Minghao in his life.

Kim Mingyu. He breathes out and presses the search button.

At first, Minghao doesn’t find anything. A list of names and profiles come up, none of them his Mingyu, but he searches through every single one with a nervous fervour. An astringent fear clutches around his heart—now that he’s looking, Minghao’s more afraid of not finding Mingyu than he is of what he’ll find.

But then he scrolls to the next page of the search results—and there he is. An Instagram profile, k_mingyu97, catches his eye. Minghao’s hand trembles a little, hesitating over the link before he draws his chest up and exhales slowly. He clicks on it.

Photographs of scenery, nature, food line the page, row after row, interspersed occasionally with a selca or an outfit check. Minghao pores over each photo with a captive sense of focus, his eyes drinking in every detail and hint of the life lived by Mingyu that he sees. There’s the restaurant Mingyu had taken him to last year in Hongdae, a café that they had visited together after Vernon had boasted about it, the jazz club that Wonwoo recommended to them. Other things, he doesn’t recognize at all. The friends that Mingyu took a photo with just last week, seemingly at a bar, nor the thick watch adorned on his wrist in some of his selfies.

But the man in those photos, the man taking those photos—those are all Mingyu. Minghao can sense it, even through the two-dimensional page of his Instagram. Even if it’s not really him, Minghao can see where his interests, his hobbies, his essence have remained the same.

It feels like their lives have brushed against one another, in some sick, twisted way. As if the faint vestiges of where Minghao can see himself still fitting in—still existing in the haunts of Mingyu’s Instagram. It’s almost enough to delude himself into thinking that maybe he can still have Mingyu here.

You don’t have Mingyu back home either, an insidious voice whispers at the back of his mind, Not in the way you’d like to have him.

His breath catches in his chest and Minghao closes his eyes.

The cruel realization settles in quickly enough; Minghao doesn’t live in Seoul in this life, nor does he seem to have roots here. He thinks back to the hotel room, or to how somehow Soonyoung-hyung and him dated—and broke up, only to have never spoken in four years.

Perhaps spurred on by the grief compounded on him, he draws in another breath and opens his eyes. He allows himself to linger over the Instagram page one last time before he turns back to his browser app. Minghao types in the final name.

Wen Junhui. First in Chinese, and then in Korean. As a last ditch effort, he writes out the pinyin.

All the results turn out the same: nothing. Minghao sits on the park bench, the sun long sunken below the horizon, and stares at his phone. As far as the internet is concerned, Wen Junhui no longer exists.

It’s at this that he finally allows himself to cry.

Night has fully blanketed Seoul when Minghao finally pulls himself off of the park bench. He walks around aimlessly, hardly registering the busy streets, the rumble of cars and the crowd of people as they head to dinner. His mind swims in a haze of grim thoughts, each more panicked than the last. Minghao needs to get home. His skin feels taut and oppressive, pressing down and squeezing him until Minghao fears he’s going to burst. This isn’t his home. He feels disconnected from his own body. He wonders if this is even his own body.

Someone collides into his shoulder. Minghao barely processes their apology, too wrapped up in his own head, and only offers them a belated nod of acknowledgement. His feet trudge on, his mind continues to swirl in his own thoughts.

Minghao presses his hands against the sides of his heads, as if it will stop the throbbing pain of his thoughts, as if he could mentally will everything to go back to normal. He doesn’t even realize he’s shut his eyes until another person on the sidewalk bumps into him.

“Why do people suddenly stop walking on the sidewalk,” he hears the voice of a young man complain, and the hushed response of his friend before their voices fade away too.

Minghao opens his eyes again. He forces himself to walk onwards again, this time circling back towards the direction of his hotel. Maybe his hotel room will have some answers, he thinks. Mostly, he just feels numb.

He doesn’t get very far until a familiar voice stops him.

“Hey!” Minghao freezes. That voice. His heart stops beating for a second, and then it leaps straight into his throat. “Hey— please wait—”

Minghao whirls around before his mind fully processes the words, as if there’s an invisible force coursing through him, a string holding him up. He forgets to breathe as he spins, his heart pounding at double-speed, beating so hard he swears it nearly hurts. It doesn’t matter.

He knows that voice. More than anyone else’s except his own, intimately and intrinsically, imprinted on his heart and tattooed there like lyrics. Minghao knows that voice.

Minghao turns around. His heartbeat drowns out the noise of the traffic around him, all the other people walking around him fades away. All he can see is the person standing before him.

“Mingyu,” he breathes out, a hush of a whisper, reverence and relief compounded in a single name. He draws in a breath, airs filling his lung again as he remembers to breathe. “Mingyu,” he says again—and then he careens forward, his body moving on its own, and barrels himself into Mingyu’s arms.

He’s here. Mingyu’s here. Minghao can feel his eyes sting at the edges with unshed tears, the sharpness of relief stabs into him so profoundly that it’s all he can feel as he breathes in the familiar scent of the person who knows him most. In that moment, he forgets that the last conversation they had ended up on empty words and silences. It feels miniscule and granular, trifling against the tsunami wave of loneliness from today. All he can feel is solace.

Thank god. Mingyu is here.

The past eight hours have felt like a dream that he could never wake up from. Just feeling Mingyu here, to breathe the same air as him, Minghao feels the tension start to leave his shoulders. Even if he’s stuck in this nightmare, at least he’s not alone anymore. They’ll figure it out together. They always do, when it’s the two of them.

A strong, comforting hand tentatively moves across Minghao’s shoulder blades. The touch is familiar, one that Minghao has become acquainted with over the years. Now, more than ever, he feels his breath hitch in response. Minghao trembles. “I was so—” scared, alone, more alien than I’d ever felt since the first year I moved to Seoul and had to redefine home.

“Um...” There’s a sudden clearing of the throat and Minghao feels the sweep of cold air as Mingyu pulls away. “Are you...okay?”

Minghao bolts up and opens his eyes. The sounds of traffic roll back into his focus, a horn cutting in through the sudden chill of horror that trickles down his spine. Mingyu is still standing there, a concerned expression decorated on his face. His face. There’s the eyes that Minghao knows, the slope of his nose, the curve of the lips that’s worried down in confusion, and Minghao can’t see his cute little canines like this, but he saw them earlier when Mingyu smiled at him.

He’s looking at Minghao but it’s with none of the warmth that Minghao has long drunk in without fully realizing, as if Minghao is not his member, his friend, his more-than-friend, the person that he has long called his soulmate, an incommunicable bond that anchors Minghao to his sense of home, but as a—

Stranger.

Right above his eyebrow is a scar that Minghao has never seen before. It’s an old scar, something likely sustained in childhood. He knows Mingyu’s face, has cupped his face in his hands an infinite amount of times, has pressed his lips over his brow, his cheeks, his nose, his lips.

Mingyu does not have that scar. That, at least, Minghao is certain.

The not-Mingyu smiles at Minghao, a little awkward at the edges, like he’s unsure whether Minghao is going to hug him again. “You dropped this earlier,” he says, and stretches out an arm to hand over Minghao’s wallet. It must have fallen out of his pocket when he bumped into someone earlier.

For a second, Minghao can only stare at his hand. His stomach flips in unmitigated horror. A small chill runs down his spine.

This is not his Mingyu.

“Um.” Not-Mingyu clears his throat and Minghao’s gaze teeters back up to catch sight of a faltering smile. “Is...everything alright?” It’s only then that Minghao realizes that Mingyu is using formal speech with him. His heart sinks. “How do you know my name?” he continues obliviously, “Have we met before?”

His words hit him like a punch to the face. There’s a knot in his throat that tightens like a noose. He wants to say something, take Mingyu by the shoulders and shake him. It’s me, he wants to scream, it’s me, your Myungho, your Minghao, yours, but he can’t—as if his vocal chords have been twisted and his stomach pulled up to his throat. The word dies in his chest, somewhere near where his heart, too, splinters.

There’s nothing to say to this Mingyu. Minghao stares wordlessly at him, who only smiles at him kindly but with confusion filtering through the edges of his face. The sight of his tiny canines makes his heart ache. Everything is wrong.

Mingyu tilts his head. “Oh no, maybe you don’t speak Korean—?” He stammers for a second, scratching the spot above his ear, as he finds the words in English. Just like back home, Mingyu speaks with confidence as soon as he starts, even as the words clumsily drop from his mouth. It hurts Minghao to see it, the similarities this Mingyu shares with his own. His heart cracks further, and he shakes his head, a desperate plea that he doesn’t know how to even make.

Mingyu misunderstands. “Oh, not English?” he says in Korean, looking puzzled. “Maybe Mandar—”

“Ya, Kim Mingyu!” The sudden shout interrupts Mingyu, and he turns to look at the source of a voice. It’s a guy that Minghao doesn’t recognize, but he’s wearing a Konkuk University hoodie and is staring impatiently at Mingyu. He must be Mingyu’s friend from school—a thought that uncomfortably churns in his stomach.

Mingyu turns back to Minghao with an apologetic smile. “Ah,” he says, and pulls Minghao’s hand towards him. He jumps at the touch, but Mingyu is quick—he merely slides Minghao’s wallet back into his hand, closing his fingers around the leather before he lets go of his hand.

More for Minghao to mourn—the brief warmth of his touch.

He turns to go, but then pauses, hesitation written all over his face. “Um—I hope you’re okay. And I’m sorry if we met before and I forgot. I’m sorry I have to—” he looks back at his friend, who’s now tapping his foot in hyperbolic impatience, and smiles at Minghao. “Take care.”

There’s nothing more to say.

Minghao watches as Mingyu joins his friend, laughing when his friend slaps him on the arm, as they head in the opposite direction from Minghao. He watches until they both disappear between the crowd, and feels the strange emptiness in his heart grow bigger.

Minghao doesn’t know how he manages to return to his hotel room, but he does.

He doesn’t know how long he just stands there. He stands there and stares at his room, at his familiar belongings in an unfamiliar place. His room feels emptier than usual.

There’s a long moment where Minghao wonders whether he should just go to sleep. He had woken up in this world, it’s possible that he could wake up in his own home again the next morning. Maybe this could even be all a really bad dream, brought on by the stress of touring again after over a year through a pandemic.

Mingyu’s face flashes through his mind. The words, Have we met before?, play over and over like a death knell. The smile on Mingyu’s face, not warm but with an impassive politeness. He doesn’t want to see that face aimed at him again. Minghao doesn’t know if he can take it.

And Jun—

Minghao can’t bring himself to think about Jun. Not like this. Not here.

He feels hollow inside. There’s a chasm inside of him and Minghao barely drags himself back onto the bed before he lets it all go as he chokes on a sob, squeezing his eyes shut as the stone in his heart, in his throat becomes a spluttering cry that wracks his body with tremors. His heart caves within himself as he cries, wrenched out of him in painful, short sobs. He cries until his eyelids grows heavy with grief. Minghao doesn’t know when he falls asleep, fitful and ill at ease, except for the fact that he hopes— wishes with a terrible desperation that wrings his heart— that he’ll wake up in a familiar world again.

Minghao wakes up. Nothing has changed.

Everything is still wrong.

Minghao wakes up and his limbs are light and heavy all at once, untethered to this plane but weighed by the crashing realization that he needs to find a way out. He needs to get out of here. No matter what it takes.

He starts off simple: he searches the hotel room. There’s not a lot outside of his belongings, aside from a flap of paper given to him from the hotel that contains an extra hotel keycard, the WiFi, and the date of his check-in and check-out. Apparently, Minghao had checked into the hotel the same night he had landed in Osaka in his reality. He finds a flight ticket that corresponds with his check-out date. The room is booked for one full month.

Minghao doesn’t know whether his work is expected to take a month or whether the Minghao of this world had allotted some vacation time for himself. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t plan to stay long enough to find out.

His belongings don’t offer much more clues about himself—he dresses the same, he’s the same age, he still carries a sketchbook in his suitcase and he notes with distant fascination that his art is much better here, more refined and more learned. He even has the same watch that Mingyu had bought him for Christmas last year. Minghao doesn’t know how he got the watch here. When he strokes his finger along the leather strap, where M&M is no longer engraved, his stomach churns with an unnamed emotion, too similar to grief.

According to his emails, Minghao surmises what he had suspected yesterday: he’s apparently an art curator on a business trip to evaluate artwork for the museum he works at in Beijing. It would explain the luxurious hotel room he’s staying in. He had received another follow-up email in response to the one he saw yesterday. Minghao ignores it.

It’s not until he’s finished rifling through all of his belongings, dread settling once more in the pit of his stomach at how little answers he’s uncovered in doing so, that he finally checks the KakaoTalk messages he had been ignoring.

Soonyoung had sent him seven messages over the course of yesterday. His head feels like a jumbled mess as he clicks them open, trepidation over reading the words of someone he should know but doesn’t.

Kwon Soonyoung
where did you go?
minghao?
are you okay?
what’s going on minghao
listen u don’t need to tell me anything. we didn’t...on good terms. but u didn’t seem okay
did you hit your head? i can take you to the hospital

And then the final message, sent at 8:12 P.M.:

Kwon Soonyoung
do you really not remember jun?

Minghao takes in a lungful of air. When he exhales, his breath is shaky and unstable. Still, even now, Minghao feels like he hasn’t had a chance to breathe properly. He doesn’t know if he wants to understand what happened with Jun. Another part of him feels obligated.

He used to tell Jun that life would be a lot lonelier without him in it. In rare moments of tenderness, swapping out his nagging admonishments (“you should meditate with me” and “have you tried those breathing exercises yet” and “stop it with your pranks”), and Jun would always laugh at him, call him a sentimental fool and pretend to pass out or something childish, all before offering him a snack—seemingly pulled out of nowhere each time—or hooking an arm around his neck to drag him out for hotpot again.

In this world, his last conversation was in 2017. Four years ago. Four years ago, when he and Soonyoung had apparently dated and broken up. He hasn’t talked to Soonyoung in four years.

Minghao has lived a life longer with the members than he has without them. He can’t imagine the life he lives here. He doesn’t have anyone.

He breathes out. Even if they’re not his Soonyoung nor his Jun, they’re still a version of them. Soonyoung might be able to help him, or at least give him more answers, even if they appeared to once had burned their bridges with one another.

More than anything, in some way, Minghao wants to honour them too. The Soonyoung and Jun of this world.

Minghao picks up his phone.

Seeing Soonyoung for a second time is not any less awkward. If anything—it’s even more so, with a lingering sense of uncertainty that surrounds them. This time, he’s at Soonyoung’s apartment in Hongdae.

It’s a tiny little place, smaller than even their first dorm when all thirteen of them lived together in predebut, but Minghao can see the markings of home that could only be possible in a home well-loved. There’s an extra pair of house slippers at the door, ones that Soonyoung hesitated before allowing Minghao to wear, a dog-eared book left on the dining table next to a ring stain left behind by a mug of coffee. A photograph sits on a shelf filled with plants just outside of the kitchen, right next to a bright yellow clock, presumably of Soonyoung. Minghao can faintly make out another figure next to Soonyoung, but he’s too far to discern their features clearly.

Soonyoung even had to put away some of the dishes drying in the sink to find an extra cup for Minghao to use, and offered him some of the miso salmon rice he had cooked for lunch. Apparently, this Soonyoung knows how to cook.

But the most jarring realization comes in two parts: first, there is no tiger paraphernalia as far Minghao could see; and second, a massive wire cage takes up a quarter of the living room, right next to the couch, and the squeaky sound of a running wheel fills the small apartment.

“That’s Huchu,” Soonyoung explains after he catches Minghao’s gaze, sounding a little embarrassed. He pushes a mug with steam wafting from it towards Minghao. “We couldn’t decide whether to adopt a dog or a cat, and somehow ended up with a hedgehog instead. You still like green tea the most, right?”

He takes the mug into his hands with a quiet nod. “Thanks.”

Minghao tries not to stare at Soonyoung in fascination. Up close and in his home, it’s easier to catch all the ways this Soonyoung is not his own Soonyoung. He thinks he even sees it in his gait. This Soonyoung doesn’t move with the same subtle confidence that his Soonyoung does; it’s always been something Minghao had admired, the way Soonyoung moved as if there’s nothing he knew and loved better than his own body and the beauty he could create from it. It’s hard not to wonder about the difference between them.

Soonyoung allows him a sip before he has to cut in, as impatient here as he is back home. “What’s going on?” he says, leaning forward in his chair a little. “Seriously, do you— do you need me to take you to the hospital?”

“No I’m—” Minghao trips over his next word. He’s not fine, and he’s never been one to tell lies either. Lying never came easily to him, and from the look on Soonyoung’s face, he gets it too. Instead, Minghao sighs and presses back against the ache in his chest. “I don’t know where to start,” he admits.

Soonyoung looks pensive. It’s a remarkably similar expression to when the performance unit meets to discuss choreography and Soonyoung listens to their feedback before considering how he can incorporate all of their suggestions together. He always spoke of dance as a collective act of love. Minghao learned from that, among other lessons he thinks he’s learned from Soonyoung, whether Soonyoung ever realized it or not.

In spite of his quick temper and impatience, Soonyoung always knew how to listen best. Seeing the same expression here leaves an unexpected pang of nostalgia digging its fishhooks into his heart.

But perhaps it’s also why Minghao opens up—because he knows Soonyoung will listen carefully and try to understand him. And so he does. He tells Soonyoung everything: waking up in an unfamiliar room, to his confusion at finding none of his members in the hotel or on his phone, to meeting Soonyoung and the subsequent shock when he realized that this isn’t his Soonyoung. He tells him about seeing Mingyu, but doesn’t elaborate on the pain that still twines its way around his heart. Minghao tells him about moving to Korea to be an idol, the hardships they’ve had to endure together, but the strength of the bonds forged between all of them.

“It’s like I’ve never been just one soul,” Minghao explains to Soonyoung. He thinks about how they’re all strangers to Soonyoung, and the emptiness he feels from that. “but thirteen— all inside here.” He points at his heart.

He watches Soonyoung’s face throughout his explanation. Disbelief morphs into incredulity, and then shifts into amazement and awe, and lastly, sorrow.

The two of them sit in contemplative silence when Minghao finishes speaking. He tries not to fidget with his hands as he waits for Soonyoung to process his words, electing instead to sip at his tea, perfectly steeped to Minghao’s liking.

The sound of throat clearing draws his gaze back up. Soonyoung bites down on his bottom lip before he casts a hesitant glance at Minghao. “In your world— did we—?”

For a second, confusion filters through his thoughts. Did they what— oh. He feels himself blush. “No,” he shakes his head, “we were never— like that.”

Soonyoung nods, more thoughtful than surprised. “You said that Wonwoo is in— the group too?” He looks a little bewildered by that. “What about me and him? Do you know?”

Now that sends a shock through Minghao. “I don’t think so,” he admits, watching Soonyoung’s face, “I don’t think Wonwoo’s...” he trails off, unsure of what to say.

Back home, Soonyoung had an on-and-off relationship with a dancer hyung that flourished when they were between comebacks and wilted during them. He had known about Soonyoung from one of their late-night wine chats back when he still lived on the same floor as him, and because Soonyoung had asked him about Mingyu once last year. But Wonwoo had been in a long-term relationship with a female stylist for years. They had only broken up last year at the start of the pandemic.

That draws a reaction from Soonyoung. “Oh,” he says quietly. Minghao isn’t sure what to make of the expression on his face. Soonyoung doesn’t linger, though, and he locks eyes with Minghao. “We need to get you home, somehow.”

He looks determined, the same kind of determination when Soonyoung told him he was going to create his own solo album, whether Pledis allowed him or not. Minghao feels relief wash over him. “You believe me?” Tears rise to his eyes but Minghao blinks them back. He’s never liked crying in front of others. “You’ll really try to help me?”

Minghao doesn’t know if this is kindness from Soonyoung, or whether it’s simply naivety. Even to himself, the story sounds outlandish. Perhaps however the Minghao of this world had ended things with Soonyoung horribly enough that he’d rather believe that Minghao would come to him for help only if he came from a different universe. Minghao doesn’t know, but he’s grateful—painfully and sharply—all the same.

"I made a promise to you, many, many years ago. I said I'd be there for you." Soonyoung smiles, a little wobbly at the edges but more like the Soonyoung that Minghao knows than he'd seen of him yet. His teeth, still tiny and charming as they had been before his Hoshi-hyung got them done, peek out between his lips. Minghao thinks of the child that Soonyoung used to be, barely legal and holding their unit made of two foreigners and a teenager together with his soft but steady hands. "I don't let go of promises, do I?"

Soonyoung does his best to help him.

In the ensuing days, Minghao pores over dozens of websites on astrophysics and scours the internet in both Chinese and Korean for information on parallel worlds. Soonyoung even watches Kimi no Na Wa, something so painfully Soonyoung to do that Minghao can’t help but smile even though it leads them nowhere.

There’s not a lot of information for them to use. Minghao supposes it makes sense. This is an improbable reality after all, but it’s one that Minghao is somehow living, and each day that passes without any revelations or changes—or waking up in the right place again—sinks another stone in his stomach.

He eventually ends up sending an email to inform the museum that he’s dealing with a family emergency. It buys him time and sympathy. Minghao had only done so in case there’s a Minghao who needs to return back to this home, too.

After the first week and a half of nothing, Soonyoung approaches him with a sheepish expression. “I was wondering if you’d be okay if we told someone about this?” he asks Minghao carefully, “I think maybe he’d be better with helping us.” Minghao hesitates at first but eventually relents. He has nothing to lose after all.

When Wonwoo joins them the next day, a wary expression at meeting Minghao for the first time, he suddenly understands why Soonyoung had asked his question about Wonwoo last week. He’s understandably more cautious around Minghao, less inclined to believe his story about travelling words, but for whatever reason he helps him nonetheless.

Soonyoung never tells him anything more, not how he and this Wonwoo met or when, and only says, “This is Wonwoo.” It turns out they live together—the photograph he had seen earlier was with Wonwoo, the book on the table was Wonwoo’s—and Minghao can see the quiet ways they take care of each other that speak louder than it does back at home. He wonders a little if he’s just been missing the signs this whole time. It’s not easy—and definitely not recommended—to be with your own group member after all.

Minghao would know.

Soonyoung also tells him about Jun.

“We met in university,” he says to Minghao that week. “You and Jun were international students, though Jun attended high school here as well.”

He’s over at Soonyoung and Wonwoo’s apartment, a fact that he still hasn’t yet grown accustomed to, but Wonwoo had excused himself moments ago to head to the E-Mart nearby to pick up ingredients for dinner. Minghao suspects he’s giving them space.

“I met you through Jun actually,” Soonyoung continues. He’s flipping idly through a book that Wonwoo borrowed from the library, something about plane-hopping, as if his hands can’t quite stay still. The book is in dense enough Korean that Minghao still can’t quite parse through it easily. “Jun and I were in the dance club together.”

Soonyoung recounts how they both became close through Jun and started dating in the first year of university. He doesn’t go into details of their relationship and Minghao doesn’t press. His voice is measured as he speaks, with a mechanical inflection. It’s unnerving, just a bit, but Minghao thinks he understands why when he sees the slight tremor in Soonyoung’s hand where it rests upon a page. In a way, it also feels surreal. Minghao feels like he’s hearing a story told about someone he doesn’t know—not him. Him in another universe.

“Every year, we had a dance showcase. Dance teams from all different universities in the country would participate. It was my first one back from the military.” Soonyoung’s voice trembles a little and Minghao resists the urge to reach out to him, touch the back of his hand like he would have without hesitation back home. He’s not sure if he can here. “You were going to drive us both to Busan and cheer us on at the showcase.” Soonyoung closes his eyes here and Minghao feels a great, swollen burst of dread in the pit of his stomach. “But you had a big interview for an internship the following week. I made you stay in Seoul. It felt more important.”

A foreboding feeling rises up into his lungs. Minghao tries to breathe out but his breath gets caught inside of him. It feels like there’s not enough air for him to take in.

Soonyoung’s eyes are still closed. His hands ball into fists, white at the knuckles. “I drove us there instead.” He pauses, grief scribbled all over his face.

All Minghao can do is stare at him with helplessness, his own body tensing up with the knowledge of what Soonyoung is going to say next. Minghao’s heart feels heavy, like there is an impossible weight pressing down hard enough on his chest that he’s scared it’s going to cave in.

Soonyoung presses on. The dread continues to build. “I drove us down. I remember I woke up that morning and thought it was such a beautiful day. Not much fine dust. You made me french toast and I complained it was too heavy for a dance day.”

His voice is shaking now, and Minghao has to look away. He can feel heat burning behind his eyes and he grits his teeth.

“There was a drunk driver on the highway.” Soonyoung presses his hands over his face. When he breathes, it sounds wet. “And— and we never— we never made it there. Only one of us made it back.”

His words echo like a gunshot, and the silence that follows it is haunting. Minghao’s stomach plummets to the floor. His chest feels hollow, his skin tingling with the painful burn of grief as he works over Soonyoung’s words. Minghao can imagine how it unfolded, the blistering fear and agonizing pain, and he shudders, a crashing sense of horror rolling down his spine.

In front of him, Soonyoung heaves difficult breaths, trying to get his shaking under control. His shoulders shake as he exhales slowly, slowly until the trembling subsides. He used to think his mind was too crowded with thoughts before—it’s partly why he took up meditation. To help regain autonomy over his own mind. Now, Minghao’s mind feels blank.

He doesn’t feel like he belongs to himself, and the crest of grief only adds to that. It’s not his Jun, it’s not his Soonyoung—it’s not even him, Minghao, and yet he mourns deeply, vividly all the same.

And then, a startling realization: “You blamed yourself,” Minghao says slowly, carefully. In front of him, Soonyoung freezes, and a beat passes. His hands peel away from his face and he looks up at Minghao. Soonyoung nods.

“And you blamed yourself,” Soonyoung whispers. His eyes are rimmed with red.

“This is why you don’t dance anymore.” Minghao’s mouth tastes like ash.

Soonyoung smiles. It’s a sad smile, wilted in a way that Minghao hates to see. “I can’t. My leg.” He doesn’t say anything else and he doesn’t have to. Minghao gets it.

Minghao remembers the first time he met this Soonyoung, how he said he hadn't talked to Soonyoung in four years. His heart aches with another layer of mourning: the grief had eroded away his relationship with Soonyoung. He thinks about how lonely that Minghao must’ve been, and how deeply pained this Soonyoung must be.

Responsibility has always been Soonyoung’s driving force, as much as it is his enemy; both the devil that works him the hardest and the devil that pushes him too far. Minghao has an idea of how responsibility has shaped him here too.

And above all, Minghao breaks pathetically for Jun. He sits there in the mournful silence of Soonyoung’s home, with a splintered soul and broken heart, and grieves for the loss that he had never known, yet is haunted by nonetheless.

They don’t manage to do any more research that day. Wonwoo comes home soon after and politely but firmly kicks Minghao out. He’s not being mean, and Minghao can tell by how Wonwoo sneaks a worried glance at Soonyoung and touches him lightly on his thigh. If anything, it makes Minghao feel relieved. Soonyoung has Wonwoo here still.

But he also feels alone. Minghao returns to his hotel room with an empty heart.

More than ever, he needs to return home.

Two weeks pass by. And then three.

Frustration grows as Minghao gets nowhere. He tries a few suggestions from Soonyoung, Wonwoo, and the internet, and feels progressively more silly as he does so. At Wonwoo’s suggestion, he goes to see a fortune teller in Hongdae who speaks Mandarin, but his advice was to only “let the tides sweep you along until you land on shore again.”

In the second week, Minghao picks up the habit of looking up the members on social media each day.

Jeonghan and Vernon never open up their accounts to the public, but he watches Sofia’s vlogs and takes minor comfort in the ones that feature Vernon. He watches the gaming clips that Seungcheol posts on Twitter and listens carefully to each of Woozi’s new tracks, somehow sounding not like his work with Seventeen at all but also distinctly familiar all the same.

He listens to Seungkwan and to Seokmin’s music, even adds them all to a playlist for when the ache in his chest sharpens into hurt, and he misses them so much he thinks he will burst. Minghao does the same with Chan, except he saves some of his videos on YouTube onto a playlist to replay, over and over again. He hopes he gets to dance with Chan again.

Joshua talks about planning his first trip to Korea since he was a child in the comments of his recent Instagram post, and Minghao wonders if he’ll be here long enough to run into him. He doesn’t know if he wants that or if it’d just frustrate him further.

The worst days are the days when he looks for Mingyu. It’s painful, much more painful when he visits his SNS profiles and remembers all the ways Minghao doesn’t exist in this world. On some days when Minghao can’t help it, he returns to the intersection where he had run into Mingyu the first day he woke up in this world. Sometimes he stays there. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, but Mingyu never shows up.

But the scariest part is that Minghao starts to get used to a routine. He wakes up in the morning, staunchly refuses to check his emails, and settles himself into a corner of his hotel room to meditate. He’s never able to clear his head the way he taught himself back home, but it’s one of the few remnants that still feel like him and so he clings to it. Downstairs is a Paris Baguette. Although he’s never been the type to eat much pastries, he knows Mingyu is and perhaps he wants to make himself hurt in the memory a little. So each morning, Minghao goes downstairs to buy a scone that he knows Mingyu would’ve ordered as he checks through SNS once again.

One day, he changes his routine to sit in a local cafe across the street instead and catches sight of SCENE performing on some local variety show that he’s not familiar with. He watches the whole performance, though he’s seen Seungkwan’s fancam of the same choreography on M!Countdown the night before, and wonders whether he’s ever met Jihoon or Seokmin in this universe. He wonders if he’d be seeing Soonyoung up there too on the screen, if not for the accident four years ago.

On some evenings, sometimes on weekends, he heads out to meet Soonyoung. Wonwoo joins them more often than not, but he hasn’t yet lost some of the cautiousness he feels around Minghao like he still doesn’t fully believe that he’s hopping universes. Minghao can’t blame him, but he misses the easy camaraderie he struck up with Wonwoo throughout the pandemic, when they began living together and had gotten to know each other better.

It’s still different with Soonyoung too. They don’t drink wine at night here and talk about their dreams. They don’t talk about much other than Minghao and Jun, the past and the present where Minghao doesn’t actually belong.

Still, it’s in spending more time with Soonyoung and Wonwoo that he realizes how many of Wonwoo’s photos feature Soonyoung in some way. Dates they go on together, the back of him turned to the camera, the curve of his arm or bend of his wrist just resting at the edge of the frame of the photo. Wonwoo snaps photos of Soonyoung recklessly, with a sort of carefreeness that Minghao marvels at, even if he doesn’t post them publicly. They don’t feel like the Wonwoo and Soonyoung he knows, and he thinks they only accept him because he’s not the Minghao they know. Either way, oftentimes it’s their presence that tempers his frustrations.

A part of him thinks it’s helping, too, in healing the grief they had never been able to share with one another. Minghao knows it’s not the same—he didn’t experience the events four years ago like Soonyoung did. But Soonyoung shares stories of the three of them back then, even if he doesn’t mention him and Minghao dating, and even shows him some of the photos he still has saved on his phone. It’s not easy, but it’s nice to see the moments with Jun that sparked the most joy in them both.

As time goes on, Minghao doesn’t forget. Yet, he continues on.

And in moments of quiet, Minghao returns back to the last conversation that he had with Mingyu.

The flight from Gimpo Airport to Osaka takes just under two hours. Flights to Japan always feel negligible—it’s nothing compared to the long-haul flights for their US tours where the flight feels endless and they always disembark feeling like their spines have been folded into their organs from how long they sit; there’s not even enough time for Minghao to order a bowl of Shin Ramyeon Black away from the teasing eyes of his members.

They arrived at Kansai International Airport at 9 P.M. and checked into their hotel just a little after 10:00 P.M. The lack of practice with flying with over a year spent in the pandemic leaves them all feeling a little wrung out and exhausted.

Still, when Minghao receives a text from Mingyu to come to his hotel room, he breathes out some of the tension in his shoulders from the flight and changes into his favourite silk pajamas for the short journey down the hall.

Minghao slides closer to Mingyu when he opens the door. He holds Mingyu’s face in his hands, his fingers grazing against the edge of his jaw, settling on his pulse point. The steady thrum under the pad of his finger reminds him that they’re both still here. It’s all Minghao needs.

Tentatively, Mingyu reaches up and returns the touch. His eyes ease shut. He lets the door shut behind them.

It’s easy to fall into place with Mingyu. His hands are warm when they come up to fold around Minghao’s waist, and his lips are soft even if they are a bit chapped. Minghao knows how to fit himself against the hard planes of Mingyu’s body, and the shiver that runs down his spine when Mingyu bucks into his touch is familiar, his heart flipping with what he only knows how to name as intimacy.

Minghao’s heart races as the kisses tingle against his lips. Time slows down in these moments; in a hotel room, in the dorms, once even in Mingyu’s childhood bedroom. All traces of the world melt away. Kissing Mingyu is the closest Minghao gets to meditation when he’s here; the rare quietude from a man who makes him feel too much.

And when Mingyu rewards him later that night with moans, hands gripping bedsheets as his hips buck to meet Minghao’s own, he holds himself in Mingyu’s warmth. He makes Mingyu come first this time, spilling messily over Minghao’s deft hands, a choked cry leaving Mingyu’s lips and his expression scrunched in climax.

He returns the favour. Minghao’s mind is a pleasured hum of sensation as Mingyu takes him into his mouth. It doesn’t take long before he comes, his hand in Mingyu’s hair and his mind filled with nothing but Mingyu’s name.

They clean themselves up quickly. Mingyu always goes first, traipsing into the washroom to fetch a warm, damp towel. Even with his eyes closed, Minghao can picture it readily—the glow on Mingyu’s cheeks, the clumsy way he’ll knock into the doorframe, the gentle way he slips the duvet over Minghao’s body after he helps clean them both.

Mingyu bumps his nose gently against Minghao’s before he nuzzles into the crook of his neck. Their sweat is cooling and Minghao knows it’s almost time for one of their manager-hyungs to check in on each member before they turn in for the night. In his mind, he goes through the routine.

Kiss him again. Put your heart away from your sleeve. Dress yourself. Leave. Return to your routine and sleep well for your meditation in the morning. A quick walk before breakfast. Rehearsal. Rehearsal. Rehearsa—

“This bed is pretty big for one person,” Mingyu murmurs against his skin. At his words, Minghao’s heart stills in his chest but Mingyu doesn’t seem to notice yet. The unasked question is audible, though, and starkly striking to Minghao in the quiet of Mingyu’s hotel room.

Minghao wets his lips. “Ah?”

“It’s late anyway.” Mingyu traces his fingers over Minghao’s back. “Sometimes Seungkwan falls asleep in Vernonie’s room.”

Minghao lets the image take hold in his mind; he stays through the night, the warmth lingering in the scant spaces between their bodies on this unfamiliar bed. Minghao doesn’t always mind unfamiliarity. It was beckoning in the unfamiliar that led him to Seoul in the first place, and where he found this third space he would learn to call his home.

With Mingyu, he thinks the word home takes shape too. It’s a shape he’s never been able to draw out in his sketchbook, or paint with the oils and acrylics he’s accrued over the years.

That’s what frightens him the most. That’s why he’s been so, so careful up until now. As a person, Minghao has always found comfort in boundaries and distinctions. He spent years trying to define who Minghao, Myungho, and The8 is and he thinks he understands that better now. He meditates and organizes his thoughts, finds the outlines of him as Minghao, him as Myungho, him as The8.

But with Mingyu, those lines blur and blend together, as if a droplet of water has turned the edges of the paint strokes murky and blemished. He tries to find artistry in that, the poetics of it all, but mostly— Minghao feels uncertain. It feels like he ends up in bed as Minghao, but he has to step into The8’s shoes in the morning. In those times, it’s always hardest to keep those factions of himself separate.

The unavoidable question of Minghao and Mingyu being like this is that it puts the whole team in jeopardy. Not just to the potential scandal that could erupt, but the splintering of the group if there was ever a fall-out between him and Mingyu.

At first, it threatens the genetic make-up of himself that allows himself to understand who he is. Mingyu destabilizes him. And he’s terrified of losing sight of himself.

Mingyu picks up on the uneasiness rolling off of Minghao. He can feel it when Mingyu stiffens a little. “Hao?”

Minghao keeps his eyes trained on the ceiling, unseeing in the dark. “Mm?” He feigns nonchalance.

But Mingyu has known him too long to fall for that. The warm span of breath on his neck disappears as Mingyu puts some space between them in the bed. “You don’t want to.” His words are punctuated as a statement, not a question.

Minghao hesitates.

“That’s fine,” Mingyu says, but there’s an edge to his tone that makes Minghao stiffen in turn.

There has only been one other time when either one of them brought this question up, in the first month they started learning from each other in a way that was new, as exciting as it was frightening. Minghao had carefully avoided it since, and Mingyu had understood it. They know the risks and Mingyu knows Minghao.

The conversation had never been finished.

“Mingyu...” Minghao begins, unsure of what to say. He’s read so many poems, none of them give him the words when he needs them.

Mingyu laughs. “What? I don’t fit into one of your neat boxes?”

Minghao flinches. “Mingyu.” He opens his mouth— maybe to apologize, or maybe to explain himself. He wants to be understood, even if he hasn’t finished understanding himself yet.

But Mingyu cuts in. “Don’t,” he says abruptly, not looking at Minghao as he sits up in the bed. The duvet shifts and falls around him, displaced from where it had been tucked around Minghao’s own body. The hotel room is cool.

Minghao worries at his bottom lip as he watches Mingyu’s back in the darkness. He sits up too, careful and slow. “I’m sorry,” he says anyway, because he wants to say it.

There’s a pause, a silence that bubbles around them. Mingyu laughs again, brash in the night air. He turns, suddenly, to face Minghao on the bed. “Are you?”

Minghao bristles. “What—”

“Do you even care?” Mingyu says, his voice tight with restrained emotions. “You’re always so— in your head, trying to pick out every thought and emotion and to give them reason. Not everything needs a language. You can’t meditate yourself out of this, Myungho-yah.”

“If not everything needs a language, then why do you insist on defining us?” Minghao snaps back. “Isn’t it fine to just be like this? Why do you have to push for more?”

“I just want us to have a name, so you can’t keep running—”

“You make it sound so easy,” Minghao interrupts, his teeth clenched. There’s too much emotion in his voice. He takes a deep breath. Anger rolls through his stomach in a discomfiting lurch.

He thought Mingyu understood him. He thought Mingyu would respect how he needs to live, how he needs to protect himself when their jobs already demand so many sacrifices.

“That’s the point,” Mingyu says insidiously. “None of this is easy. None of us chose the easy route. Isn’t it worth it anyway?” He stares at Minghao, so much more idealistic than Minghao can let himself dare. There’s a silent challenge in his eyes, starkly visible even through the sheen of moonlight peeking through the hotel curtains.

Minghao doesn’t rise to the challenge. He can’t. Not when it asks of sacrifices from himself.

“Just go back to your room,” Mingyu says at last, his words dropped in the otherwise silent room. Now, he sounds resigned. “We have work tomorrow. Jaehyung-hyung will make rounds soon. Just go.”

The air between them is heavy with a grief that Minghao can’t name, not in that moment. There’s a conversation overdue between them. But sometimes, it’s easier not to speak. He leaves that night and returns to his hotel room, the last time he’ll see that hotel room for one month. Lovemaking is easy. Love itself is harder.

The next day, he wakes up wrong.

It’s his fourth week in the wrong place when things come to a head.

“You know,” Soonyoung says abruptly on Tuesday evening. His back is turned to him and Wonwoo from where he’s fussing over something simmering on the stove. Minghao gets lost for a moment as he studies the shape of Soonyoung’s back, so much smaller than he remembers.

Apparently, it’s his turn to cook dinner. He and Wonwoo take turns in between nights of ordering takeout, something that Minghao still hasn’t gotten used to yet. Whatever he’s making, though, smells delectable.

Soonyoung continues after a distracted pause. “I was thinking—it’s funny, you’re not the Minghao I knew, right?” He takes a sip of the broth and then rummages in the cupboard above him to find a bottle of fish sauce. Minghao’s endlessly fascinated by him. “I guess I don’t know the Minghao here anymore either,” Soonyoung muses, “But somehow, you still feel like him too. Is that weird?”

“I’m not him though,” Minghao says automatically. He looks down at the laptop he borrowed from Wonwoo, opened up to the same page about parallel worlds that he had been reading over and over for the past couple of weeks.

Soonyoung makes a small noise that he can’t quite parse out through the bubbling of broth. It must mean something to Wonwoo, though, because he looks up and stares at Minghao, almost in warning.

Silently protective here too, Minghao thinks with faint amusement.

“I know that,” Soonyoung says, sounding a little embarrassed. Oops. “I just mean— even still, I think sometimes there are multiple versions of ourselves. I don’t mean that in the literal sense, like me and then the Soonyoung you know, but within ourselves too. We’re still us though, aren’t we?” He pauses. “But with parallel universes or whatever. I think that’s us too.”

Wonwoo laughs, a deep chuckle that Minghao would think was condescending if not for the warmth in his voice. “What does that even mean?”

Soonyoung turns around and locks eyes with Wonwoo. The pout on his face is so terribly Hoshi that Minghao can’t help but laugh a little too. Maybe Soonyoung isn’t wrong. They are different people, but they’re the same person too.

“I just think I could recognize you in any universe, Jeon Wonwoo,” Soonyoung says, “Just like how Minghao found us, I think I would want to find you too. You’re you, aren’t you? The you here, and elsewhere too. Even if we get shaped differently.”

Wonwoo laughs again, a fondness steeped so deeply in the sound that Minghao’s gut clenches. “You’re corny,” he teases Soonyoung. Then, his smile softens, his nose scrunches up sweetly, and he tilts his head a little. “But I think so too. You would find me, you stubborn brat. But I’d find you too.”

It’s a vow.

In his time existing in this world, Minghao has never seen Wonwoo or Soonyoung touch each other more than they would back home. A quick hand on the crook of the elbow, a comforting pat on the thigh, a brush of fingers that don’t linger but don’t leave in haste either. He sees how Soonyoung comes home with snacks and ice cream sometimes, only for Wonwoo to smile when he opens up the freezer and finds them. He sees how Wonwoo carefully takes pictures of Soonyoung as he carefully cradles Huchu the hedgehog in his palms, a loving documentation of their lives together.

When he first met them here, Minghao thought they couldn’t be further than the Wonwoo and Soonyoung he knows back home. Still kind, still passionate—but more carefree in a way that none of them can fully afford to be.

Maybe it’s weird, but he thinks he can see what Soonyoung meant earlier. The more he looks at them here, the more he can see his Wonwoo and Soonyoung being the same.

Minghao has spent so much of his life dedicated to carefully disentangling where The8 ends and where Minghao begins. He’s spent so long wondering where Mingyu could fit in when he had to exist as both—two separate entities, it felt like, in too small of a body.

It’s not the first time he’s wondered about this, but perhaps it’s the first time he lets himself sit with the possibility: is it enough to simply just be?

Sitting in front of him in this strange new world, Wonwoo gets out of his chair and walks up to Soonyoung. He doesn’t hug him or do any gesture as large as that. Instead, he silently leans forward and waits for Soonyoung to blow gently on a spoonful of broth he ladles up as soon as Wonwoo approaches him. He takes a sip. “Ah,” says Wonwoo, smacking his lips. Then, in English with an exaggeratedly deep voice, he adds: “Tasty.”

Soonyoung laughs and slaps at Wonwoo’s shoulder. “What’s that?” he giggles, shoving at Wonwoo a little. “Say it again.”

Somehow, Soonyoung and Wonwoo found themselves in this universe. They found each other in his own universe.

Minghao thinks about how he’s spent all this time looking for Mingyu, and then a way to find his way home to Mingyu. He thinks about the warmth in his stomach, the flutter of excitement, the terrifying destabilization of emotions when he’s around Mingyu. He feels them all the same, without distinction and boundaries placed on them.

Is it enough to simply just be? To be The8, Minghao, himself—all at once?

Maybe it is enough.

On September 3, 2022, Minghao wakes up in an unfamiliar room.

He doesn’t think much of it at first. No matter how many times he falls asleep in the overly luxurious hotel room, held on the credit card of an employer he doesn’t know, Minghao never wakes up feeling at home. Even with all the years he’s gotten used to living in from dorm room to dorm room, hotel to hotel room, as an idol—the sense of wrongness permeates through each morning.

When he wakes up in an unfamiliar room, Minghao doesn’t luxuriate.

Like every morning, Minghao maps out his plan for the day. Meditate, breakfast downstairs, find all the ghosts of his friends lingering in the spaces of the internet, on TV, on billboards and screens. Search for answers that he fears will never come.

Minghao opens his eyes. The warmth of the summer sun pounds through the window on his right instead of the left.

That’s when he realizes, with a shaky breath, that he’s home. He’s home again, in the same hotel room he fell asleep in Osaka—with his suitcase heaved upon the dresser so that it wouldn’t get dirty on the ground, his silk robe thrown messily over the couch in the corner of his room after he returned from Mingyu’s room. With the ghosts of kisses past still tingling against his lips.

He heaves upwards with a start. His heart starts to flutter, his stomach clenching uneasily, as he whips his head to study the room. It’s the hotel room he fell asleep in a month ago. His hands scrabble for his phone, nearly dropping it in his haste to pick it up. The date—September 3, 2022—stares back at him. There are a number of WeChat messages from his group chats sent during the night and he shakily thumbs open the app to find Renjun complaining about overpriced Chinese food in Seoul.

Minghao’s throat feels as if it’s swelling up. His heart throbs. He’s home. Somehow he’s home.

Jun.

With a terrified urgency, he navigates through the app— and breathes out with a trembling breath when Jun’s name is third on his list of recent messages. He taps it open. 你在哪里？你掉近厕所里了吗？ 我们要登机了. It was sent yesterday evening, shortly before they had to board the plane at Gimpo.

Relief washes over him, so profound that it’s alarming. Minghao’s heartbeat pounds heavy in his ears. Jun is still here. He’s still here.

Minghao’s home.

He looks at the time. It’s still early, only 8 AM and much earlier than any of the members would be awake except for maybe Shua-hyung. They have breakfast in the morning, and then rehearsal for most of the day. Tomorrow is the first day of their Dome Tour.

Minghao’s home.

For a moment, Minghao wonders if it had all been a terrible dream. A long nightmare that held him in stasis. Minghao digs his fingernails into the meat of his palm, closes his eyes and opens them again. He inhales in through his nose, and then exhales noisily through his mouth. He counts out five things he can see: his well-worn suitcase, his cellphone, the corner of his book left in his unpacked suitcase, his handbag that’s propped on top of the table, the hotel slippers he took from Mingyu’s room by accident. He walks around the room and touches them all. He stills, listens to the faint sound of an elevator ding and a murmur somewhere in the hotel.

Somehow, he’s still here.

If it isn’t some elaborate lucid dream, Minghao feels a strange pang in his stomach. He wonders whether the Wonwoo and the Soonyoung in the other world will notice. He wonders if another Minghao will return to his own home, with the memories of the month he had spent, just like Minghao had. Time seems to have reset, but yet Minghao is still here.

He remembers. And with a start, Minghao bolts out of his room. Trying to remain calm, he paces down the hallway, past Jeonghan’s room, past Seungkwan’s, and then past Seungcheol’s until he reaches the end of the hallway. His palms are clammy by the time he reaches the door, but he doesn’t have the focus in his mind to worry about that. There’s only one thing he can think of doing right now.

Minghao knocks on the door. His heart squeezes tightly as he waits thirty seconds pass by, then one minute, desperation bleeding into panic as silence greets him on the other end. Minghao moves to knock again— except he hears the turn of the lock. The door swings open and Minghao’s heart nearly bursts out of his chest.

Mingyu opens the door. His hair is unruly and mussed with sleep, his lids heavy from grogginess. Minghao had woken him up with his knock, and the eyebags underneath Mingyu’s eyes show it. There’s a frown on his face that doesn’t quite go away when he sees Minghao at the door, but there’s something else too—hope, maybe. Or maybe it’s Minghao’s own optimism.

This is the Mingyu that Minghao last spoke to before he woke up in the wrong place. It’s Mingyu, still Mingyu, and that’s what matters. Just looking at him makes Minghao’s heart leap into his throat.

He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes. When Minghao opens them again, Mingyu is still there.

“Can I come in?” Minghao asks, and swallows when his voice comes out shaky. “I want to— I want to finish our conversation.”

Mingyu looks surprised, but slowly, he nods. “Yes.”

He lets him in.