𝚖𝚢 𝚊𝚗𝚜𝚠𝚎𝚛 // 𝚋𝚢𝚞𝚗 𝚋𝚊𝚎𝚔𝚑𝚢𝚞𝚗✔

Chapter XIII

Present time…

Ten years of being an EXO member, ten years of memories full of happiness, sadness, struggles, doubts, leaving, and everything else, but once you found your home, none of it can destroy the friendship that twelve people have formed. These twelve people were once ordinary children who aspired to be successful performers, artists, songwriters, dancers, singers, actors, and so on… together.

The twelve trainees who once doubted themselves have now matured into twelve people who have achieved their goals. And even after three people left the group, nothing changed: we're still a family who has shared many memories that we will cherish for as long as we live. We're family, and even though we're not blood relatives, we're brothers nonetheless.

“It's not a farewell, it's just a simple see you later,” Suho said as he lifted his wine glass, his eyes turning red as he fought back tears. “EXO! We are one!”

“WE ARE ONE!” we all yelled, filled with joy, relief, and sadness, as we lifted and clinked our wine glasses in celebration of a new beginning.

We are not disbanding; instead, we are leaving the company. The company that has done nothing but leave us out whenever there is an opportunity. Kidding. So, to cut a long story short, after EXO's tenth anniversary, we discussed our previous year's plan, which had been to leave the company for as long as we could remember. This is it; we are not signing a new contract with them.

“We finally did it,” Kai exclaimed triumphantly.

“Yeah, we finally have our freedom,” Chanyeol added as he clinked his wine glass to ours once more before drinking, then repeated, “Freedom!”

We finally decided to tell our manager about it first, and he agreed as long as that's what we wanted. And then we all have a meeting with Mr. Lee, who isn't thrilled at first, but he doesn't have a choice. He's now finalizing our contract and our departure, but we agreed to attend the company's Halloween party one last time.

“Why do we have to go to this Halloween party again?” Sehun asked, clearly demonstrating his unwillingness to prepare for the said party, as he sat back down on my bed.

“Think of it as a goodbye party for us, Sehun, so get up and start getting ready,” I jokingly scolded him, he's still like a baby to us and that will never change even when we're on our way to different paths.

“Fine,” he pouted as I grabbed a pillow and threw it at him before standing up and asking, “But who am I supposed to be? What costume should I wear?”

“You're seriously thinking about that now? We had almost a month to prepare for that, what did you do?” I asked, acting surprise.

He tapped his chin and pretended to think for a moment before responding, “Well… I think I was busy shooting dramas that I thank you for supporting me and going to my shootings at that time…”

“No problem, my younger brother,” I rolled my eyes and joked, but I'm so proud of him. “But you haven't thought about your costume like you do when you have spare time—”

“Wait!” he said, raising his hand to stop me from speaking before he added, “And then we all went to different fashion shows and solo as well as group magazine photoshoots… What about the Leatherface? Or Michael Myers?”