#idmona

hanbyul pays cherry bomb a visit during their comeback, but it’s really a lame excuse to see @idmona​. 

what is it about mona that calls hanbyul. she’s a siren singing a song that lures him, an unsuspecting sailor, to her domain. a pretty lore (even if tragedy is in its wake). almost something on the cusp of romantic. but there it is. that dreaded word: almost. it’s what they are.

mona and hanbyul.

an almost.

a beat short of complete. (so incomplete, but he refuses to cite what they are as less than whole even if things are complicated.)

close to whole but still so far away. too far away.

nothing good comes easy. hanbyul’s learned that the hard way. experienced his fair share of heartache through the most painful dos and don’ts. but sometimes (a lot of the times), he doesn’t listen to his head, but his heart. he’s driven by it—a romantic with a heart on his sleeve, pronounced and beating for the world to see. for the world to gauge (out).

he can get hurt again; he knows this. he can put his entire self on the line and come out as nothing. but is he complete—is he all there? (does ellie still hold some unattainable part of him even if he can’t back as much as wants to.) now isn’t he time to mull over the past. nothing when he’s deep backstage of cherry bomb’s comeback showcase, a pass hanging around his neck. as safe as it is, being sophia’s cousin, it doesn’t wash away the nerves gnawing at the back of his head. doesn’t calm the tremour in his pulse. doesn’t do much of anything because he can insist he sent the congratulations wreath to cherry bomb, he can insist he is there to cheer sophia on, but hanbyul knows better.

he’s there to wish mona well. to see her. to file away her smile for a rainy day because it’s symbolic as the rainbow breaking through the grey.

but that has to wait. has to be put on hold. first, he goes to sophia and tells her how amazing she was. that everyone did great, and he enjoyed the songs, the performances—everything. perhaps the compliments can come across empty, as an halfhearted script written and thrown to many for the sake of idol politics. to give the illusion everyone gets along swimmingly. that there aren’t sharp rocks poking through stale ocean waters.

msg building practice room, late march 2019 @idmona,

When Danny joined MSG, he was barely fourteen. Chubby-cheeked and wide-eyed. The years might have melted away his baby fat and experience might have dulled his innocence, but it was still hard for many at the company to see him more than just a little boy. It bothered Danny sometimes. Most of the time. He didn’t want to be a kid forever. Maybe it was subconscious, then, all the trouble he’d gotten himself into. Belated teenage rebellion; a child acting out in an attempt to be seen as grown up. Maybe. Maybe he was just an idiot. All things considered, that seemed the more likely option. 

One person Danny didn’t mind seeing him as a kid was Mona. It was comforting, in a way. Especially now that he’d screwed up so colossally. He liked knowing that at least one person he admired could see past his recent mistakes to the person he’d always been. Obnoxious, loud, but ultimately a good kid. At least, that was how Danny hoped Mona still saw him. 

“Ah, noona,” Danny whined. He lay, prone, on the floor of the practice room, limbs splayed haphazardly around him. He’d collapsed that way after running through some of the new Black on Black choreography he still had to learn. A lot was riding on this next comeback, for him personally as much as for the group as a whole. Danny had a lot to prove. Too bad he couldn’t seem to get the moves exactly right. “Why can’t I get it? I’ve tried a thousand times.”

He was prone to exaggeration when it came to Mona. What else was to be expected of a little brother. Despite being the oldest in his family — always looking after his sisters and brother, taking care of them — Danny fell easily into the younger sibling role when it came to Mona. She was close to debut when they met. Older, wiser, cooler, but still a trainee. Someone Danny could look up to but wouldn’t feel weird bugging. Little had changed between them in the intervening years. 

Danny pulled his arms and legs in and pushed himself off the ground. He didn’t get up entirely. Instead, he sat, crossed his legs and pulled off his hoodie. His hair was a ruffled mess, but he did nothing to fix it.