Eight

"Jeongwoo? Choi Jeongwoo?" The man who had previously asked us to wait in the room came to find me. We were at a major media house. We had been asked to come in for a photoshoot for one of their popular entertainment magazines. We had already finished our group photoshoot and they had begun the individual shoot with our leader Mingyu while the rest of us were asked to wait in the adjacent room after getting our outfits and make-up fixed. They had said that they would call us in one by one.

"Yes. Coming." I turned to Jaehyeon and handed my phone over to him. "Hold on to this for me, won't you?"

"Go and come." He took it from me.

I followed the man into the studio. Yeojun had just finished. As I entered, he was leaving. "Good work."

"Hyung, best luck." He patted my shoulder.

They were waiting for me.

I gave them my best smile and bowed. "I am Choi Jeongwoo. I look forward to working with you!"

"As are we." The man wearing black-framed rectangular glasses with his jacket thrown over his shoulders smiled at me from behind the camera. The other people in the room followed his lead.

They had already done our group photoshoot and knew us but I still wanted to introduce myself. They were typically dealing with a lot of Idols, actors and other celebrities regularly. It did not hurt to leave a good impression, especially considering that our very image rested in their hands.

"Jeongwoo-ssi, a prop." A young woman handed me a book as I neared the set. "Use it as you see fit."

"Yes. Thank you." I accepted it.

Mm. A turtle neck top, a formal jacket and a book. I felt confident enough to pull this off.

The whole photoshoot of mine lasted 10 minutes. We tried a lot of different things and at the end of it all, I felt as though I had fared decently well. I thanked the staff members and left, just as Jaehyeon came in with the man from earlier. "My phone?"

"Room. Go." He gave me a smile that I couldn't quite read into. Um… suggestive? Teasing? I wasn't sure. Either way, I proceeded to the room we had been asked to wait in. Hanseol too was left after Jaehyeon so I might as well rest my legs when I had the chance to.

I entered the room and halted.

That mop of smooth and yet slightly unruly black hair and that blue and black costume… There was no way I wouldn't recognise that broad back I had leaned against so many times before.

"Hyung."

So, that's what that unreadable expression from earlier was about.

"You're back." Changmin turned to face me with a smile, his deep black eyes finding me immediately. "Good work." He pulled me into a bear hug.

"Ah. But why are you here, Hyung?" I returned his hug, honestly and pleasantly surprised at having run into him here.

"I heard from Manager-nim that S.T.A.Y was also here. 04:00 am had been called in for a performance recording. They're going to use it on the show that we are going on later as guests." He explained. "We just finished recording so I thought that I should come by and see how my Hoobae are doing."

"Yeah. We all know that you came looking for Jeongwoo Hyung." Yeojun rolled his eyes. "Thank you for remembering us."

Sarcasm. Ignored.

"So, everyone else is here too?" I asked. "How did Baekjae Sunbae's audition for that drama go? Come to think of it now, I had completely forgotten to follow up on that. So, did he get it?"

"You see me after so long and the first thing you have to ask me is about that Baekjae?" He pouted. "I'm offended, Jeongwoo-ya."

Oh, please. "Did he get it?"

"He didn't."

"No?" All my excitement faded instantly. Baekjae Sunbae had seemed so confident about it the other day too.

"He did." He sighed.

"What?" I frowned.

"Jeongwoo, Baekjae got the lead role. It was pretty much set in stone since he even decided to audition for it. He-"

I ran a soft, yet impactful, punch right into his stomach, making him double over in laughter. "Sorry. Sorry."

"I actually thought that he didn't get it. That was mean." I held out my hand. "Phone."

"Yup." He took my phone out of his pocket and placed it in my hand. "Sorry." I had figured that Jaehyeon would have handed it to Changmin.

"Mm. I'll congratulate him later." I nodded and went to sit on one of the two free chairs nearby. Changmin took the other one.

"How did the photoshoot go?"

"It went well. The one in charge was very particular about the details." I replied. "It was good, nevertheless." I struck a pose, pretending to be reading a book intently, then sat back and smiled. "I looked cool, didn't I?"

"Mm. Cool." He nodded as though he was humouring me with that agreement. "Turtle neck looks good on you." He pulled on my collar a bit but I pulled back to get away.

"I feel so too." I fixed my clothes. "Even Hanseol approved."

"It's better than a shirt or anything just passably formal." Hanseol shrugged, having been listening to our conversation.

"That, I agree with." Changmin said.

"Ah… but this is the first time that I'm actually seeing your in your outfit for Maelstrom in person." I gave him a good lookover when he happily obliged. "I've seen you plenty onscreen but this really is an amazing outfit." The design was typical of what you would expect Princes to wear. Yet, it was dark because they had only used one dark shade of blue- somewhere between navy and royal blue- other than black. The black hair further added to the vibe that it gave out. It was dark but not a negative kind of dark. It was more… mysterious. It was almost daring you to try and get to know more about them. "This is for your title track 'Pacemaker', right?"

"Yup."

"How did Coffee react?"

He grinned, then imitated the fans who loved them. "Aah! Minsu Oppa! Changmin Oppa! So hot!"

I shook my head. "Really?"

"I took centre quite a lot. They couldn't take their eyes off of me." He smirked and sat back.

"That beats the purpose of having seven members though."

"What? I need to stand out for a certain someone to take notice of me. There are others in the band that he is interested in and enquires about."

That's your excuse? "It is true that Baekjae Sunbae attracts eyes a lot more than you do."

"Ya, Jeongwoo-ya. You're supposed to take my side there." He narrowed his eyes at me.

"I'm not going to lie. Baekjae Sunbae just has this way of carrying himself. It's also probably because he's an actor. His face is more familiar than his voice."

"Is that so? Maybe I should try acting too." He rubbed his chin.

"Please, don't. You're terrible at acting and the both of us know that."

He chuckled. "True that."

We had had to do a small skit back when we were trainees. That had been proof enough.

"Mm. I heard that you're going to Singapore next week." Changmin looked at me. "How long will you be gone?"

"A week minimum." I replied. "The concert's just 2 days. We have stage practice and we are planning on shooting a travel journal so there are a lot of places to visit."

"So, you'll be busy." He made a sad face.

"It is funny enough that the longest that we have gotten to sit down and talk like this is at another media house and not at our own agency." I realised that just then too.

"We should hang out sometime, outside of work." He nodded. "It's been so long."

"Time is never on our side though." I reminded him. "We'll do what we can for now but… I think S.T.A.Y will be traveling a lot more for now on."

"I'm genuinely happy that you're getting popular but when I think about how you won't be at the agency to welcome us when we get back from our tours like you did this time… Ah. That's a little sad."

"This time was a chance meeting though." We weren't there to specifically welcome them back. "They're almost always chance meetings."

"Chance meetings work perfectly fine too." He said. "Even if we don't meet, I at least know that you are somewhere nearby."

I… did understand what he meant. We saw so less of each other already. With S.T.A.Y starting to travel like this too… "We'll figure it out as we go along." That was an unpleasant reality check.

His phone vibrated just then. He checked it, groaned and stood up. "The timing couldn't have been worse."

"You have to leave?"

"Yeah. We're leaving. Meeting with the team for our next album." He put his phone away.

There were moments like this occasionally when I wished that we had debuted in the same group. "Don't go."

"What?" He stopped short, surprised.

I smiled, feeling a little sad suddenly. I wasn't the kind to usually say something like that but… I blame his letter. "Don't go, Hyung."

He knit his brows together and then threw himself onto me for a hug. "Ah, Jeongwoo-ya! My cute little Jeongwoo-ya!" He rubbed his cheek against my head.

Ugh. I take that back.

"We need him alive, Sunbae." Hanseol chuckled.

"Jeongwoo Hyung would never say that to us." Mingyu clicked his tongue.

"Why would he? We're always together." Yeojun shrugged. "Even if we go separate ways in between, we know that we're all coming right back to each other."

In Changmin's case though, there was no telling when we would meet like this again.

"Hyung." I tapped his back. "You should go."

"But you just told me not to." He let go anyway.

"I changed my mind." It was not like he could stay anyway. "Go."

"So mean." He turned to leave. "I'll see you later then. You're doing great, S.T.A.Y. Keep up the good work."

And just like that, he was gone again.

"This Hyung…"

"It's so heart-breaking to watch you two." Hanseol scoffed.

"Hyung-ah." Yeojun came, sat next to me and hugged my arm, leaning his head against my shoulder. "Don't go~"

"Hah?" I raised an eyebrow at him.

"No! Hyung!" He snuggled up and cried dramatically. "Don't go! Don't leave me and go!"

It wasn't just S.T.A.Y who were laughing at that scene. The other staff members who were also in the room began laughing. I tried to push him away when he got closer but I wasn't really putting up a fight against him.

Changmin and I were once so close that we even slept together. It was only expected that I would feel the gaping distance between us all the more when he does something like write a letter to me because we could not quite talk to each other otherwise.

I had to admit though- S.T.A.Y was pretty much the same for me. The five of us were always together and even with someone who can often be as stand-offish as Hanseol, I shared a bond that could have only been nurtured by living together for 3 years. In a sense, I had gotten used to being away from Changmin and being with S.T.A.Y. It was to a point where I felt a little down without Changmin but I couldn't even think of a few days without my members around me.

'Don't go.'

If it came down to it, I would say that to anyone in S.T.A.Y too.