#kiwon.

the coral tones are fading from his hair, leaving it a dusty pale pink in pallor, one that kiwon is delighted enough to examine in the mirror with critical interest. an oversized striped shirt hangs from his shoulders, at least two sizes too large for him, half tucked at the front into a pair of decidedly skinny jeans. if he’s going to go to all the effort of dieting, he’d like other people to see it. to notice. 

he’s tired. tired, even if they’re on a restful vacation, because even with vacations there are cameras and writers and producers and even if he is only with the boys, there is always some small part of kiwon that is pretending. no one can ever be fully, completely honest at work, after all, even if work doesn’t feel like work, even if it feels like a family and also like indentured servitude, and also like suffering, and also like flying.

yeah, kiwon is tired. 

so he wakes up a little bit too early. he finds sunwoo has already left, to trudge up the mountain alone, and he kind of wants to follow after him. but that defeats, he thinks, the purpose of solitude in the first place, so instead he heads for the front of the house, sits on the stoop and breathes in fresh air. clean, in the quiet morning. there are hours still before they are meant to be anywhere in particular, before the cameras will come, and for a moment the world is quiet. 

@idkiwon​, private studio, late evening.

sometimes the building makes san feel too closed in. msg. it’s his home, more than any other building has been. but he’s given so much of himself over to them. the majority of his memories are lost to the halls. hang like ghosts, waiting to haunt him. sometimes it feels worse. sometimes it feels like a possession, a clawing of hands and overwhelming feelings underneath his skin. something he can’t escape. just stretching and aching and losing himself. his body. his lungs. a collapse underneath emotions he’d never learned how to handle. pressures he pretends he can cope with. 

somewhere along the way, he’d started renting out a private dance studio room. a building not too far from his home. a set schedule, blocks of his own time. he has the money for it, and it’s somewhere empty. tranquil. can let his mind spill without the threat of a haunting. it can be easier to meet up with people, too. without having to explain why san needs to let his friends in to practice when there are no collaborations schedules for the nearing future.

san’s in a mood. the kind where he feels caged and overwhelmed. it’s harder than he lets on, the pressure in his company. from management, his mother. he’s been afforded so many opportunities, but it’s a mountain sloped higher. and he can to keep trekking forward. he can’t backslide. what if next time he doesn’t sell enough albums? what if he fucks up? what if he manages to push for something creatively and it’s a huge upset? what will his mother do then? and san thinks, at least milo might be happy then. but that idea feel like hot coals in his gut for reasons he won’t admit. so he sits here, simmering. it’d been why he called kiwon over.