Fanfiction [MASHIKYU]

5 - 8

Junkyu

This morning, I was exhausted waking up early to go to rehearsal for SBS Gayo Daejeon because of my late night out with Mashiho. But as soon as I hear the fans scream when it's our turn to perform, I'm fully energised. We perform all of Loud along with snippets from another few songs of ours, and although the longer performance is physically draining, my mental state is buzzing the whole time. At the end the crowd roars louder than I've ever heard a crowd roar for us before, and I'm flying. I imagine what it would be like to hear them roar for a title track I helped make, as has been in discussion lately, and the thought is so exhilarating I can hardly take it.

Back in our green room, Hyunsuk calls us all over to gather around in a little huddle. Since there are so many other groups sharing this space we have to do this if we want to hear each other.

"Well done, everyone," he says, making sure to look at each of us in turn. "That was a great performance. Did you hear those cheers?"

"I've never heard them get that loud," Junghwan says with an enormous smile.

"Things really are different now," Jihoon says, beaming from ear to ear. "We're... we're the sensation we dreamed of."

Hyunsuk's eyes are getting teary, and I know if he starts crying then we're all going to cry. I fight the lump in my throat. "Thank you for a great year, Treasure," he says. We're not doing anything for New Year's, so this is our last performance of the year. "Thank you for pushing through when it was hard. Thank you for all finding your way to thrive. Thank you for reading fanfiction and making us go viral."

Everyone laughs at that last one, and my cheeks go hot. I glance at Mashiho, on the other side of the huddle, and he winks at me with the biggest smile ever.

"And next year's going to be even better, right?" Jihoon looks around at us, and we all nod.

"Congratulations to all of us. I can't wait to see what happens next. I'm so..." It's then that a tear slips out of Hyunsuk's eye, and he only just manages to get out the rest of his sentence before he starts fully crying, and he stares straight at me when he says it; "I'm so proud of all of you."

Yedam starts crying. Then Junghwan starts crying. And now we're all sobbing and holding onto each other like we might disappear. I can hear the makeup artists groaning about how they're going to have to redo our makeup before the ending stage with all the artists here.

After we all manage to break away and the makeup artists are ushering us over to them, I give Hyunsuk one last hug, just me to him.

"I don't know what I'd do without you," I mumble into his shoulder.

He holds me tightly and wordlessly, then breaks away and reaches up to pat me on the head, which is a little awkward because he's significantly shorter than me, but who cares.

A couple of hours later, it's time for all of the attending artists to gather on stage for the finale where we all sing a Christmas song. I stand in between Junghwan and Haruto, putting my arms around them and swaying excessively and slightly out of time with the music, which makes Junghwan giggle so much he can barely sing, and Haruto just shakes his head at me. The crowd goes wild at the end, and I spot an enormous poster with mine and Mashiho's names and about a gazillion hearts on it. 

I'm shocked when I realise there's a massive curtain dropping down, not just a blackout, and feel a little scared because we're at the front and I've never had a curtain drop down in front of me before, and it feels like it's going to drop directly on me, but thankfully it does not. 

After it drops, the groups all go around congratulating each other and exchanging formalities, which the staff actually allow us some time to do. About five minutes in, I'm talking with a group of boys from YG Treasure Box when I spot Hyunsuk and Yedam out of the corner of my eye, chatting animatedly with two girl group members that I don't know, but who look very pretty and very interested in Hyunsuk and Yedam. Hyunsuk looks positively giddy, and I remember what he said about how he hated being a straight K-pop idol. Didn't he say something about how the agency would be on his ass so quick if he started chatting up random girl group members that he wouldn't have time to pull any of his smooth pick up lines? I chuckle to myself, hoping he's getting to pull some of those now. At that moment, he makes eye contact with me from all the way across the stage, and gives me a very excited look and a subtle thumbs up. Yedam looks in my direction too and gives me an equally ecstatic expression, and I feel so happy looking at the pair of them I might combust.

"Hey." Doyoung comes up behind me, and I feel a little guilty when I realise I totally zoned out of that conversation with the other guys when I was watching Hyunsuk and Yedam flirt with those girls. They've moved away from me now. "Just letting you know that you all will be coming to my dorm tonight so I can play you overly dramatic Christmas carols on the piano," he says.

A few weeks after our comeback, Doyoung got a huge surprise when a grand piano was delivered to his dorm, a present from Mashiho and I to say thank you for all his help with Curse. Our dorms and the agency are scattered with keyboards, but nothing like this. He was so excited that the moment I saw him at the agency that same morning, he sprinted up to me faster than I've ever seen him move and threw himself onto me, both arms and legs wrapped around my body, nearly bowling me over.

"Junkyu, what the hell? Thank you thank you thank you thank you oh my God I love you so much!" he had squealed right in my ear.

"Sounds good," I tell him now. "What's the point of Christmas carols if they're not overly dramatic and being played on a grand piano by the one and only Kim Doyoung?" Doyoung beams, then catches sight of Yedam and Hyunsuk and is about to bound over to spread the news when I hold him by the elbow. "Don't. They're getting in."

He looks at me in confusion, then back at them and snorts. "Oh my God, they really are."

On the car ride back to the other dorm, I'm sitting with Hyunsuk in the backseat and mention the girls.

"Oh, right, yeah," he says, smiling and blushing profusely. "We just talked. That's all."

"Sure, you just talked, but she couldn't take her eyes off you," I say in a sing-song voice.

He slaps me on the leg. "Shush. No dating scandals for me, thanks."

"Maybe you won't date her, but surely you can flirt with her at every show we go to now. Maybe slide into her DMs, too."

Hyunsuk laughs, then tells me that her name is Jessica and that she's Korean-American and that her group Starlight debuted at a similar time to us but was very very small and only became popular enough this year to attend these kinds of things. Also she has a dog called Pebbles who is so small she may as well be a cat.

"Sounds like you got all the important information, then," I say when he mentions the dog. "And Yedam was pulling the smooth pickup lines too, I suppose?"

"Of course, of course," he says. "I'm glad. He um..." Hyunsuk lowers his voice. "He told me, that night I stayed at his dorm, about Asahi. He said you were the only other person who knew. But he's moving on from that now, which is really good."

I nod in agreement. "He can now be your chatting up random girl group members partner."

Hyunsuk slaps me again, and then we've arrived at the dorm. We spend the night listening to Doyoung's overly dramatic Christmas carols and stay up very late talking and laughing together despite all of us being exhausted. We're too tired to go back to our dorm at the end, so we take up all the room there is. I'm worried I'll get split from Mashiho, but we end up squeezing into Yoshi's top bunk and falling asleep cuddling, as always. All is well.