#oratorio.

"Yeah, yeah. Shaking it already. You're so formal, you know that? Sheesh, uptight as fuck."

 His hands were busy typing away the last few changes in the arrangement of the latest song he was fixing, adding and subtracting some minor details for the tracks that were assigned to Jung Jinyoung meticulously. And by meticulously, he does it with care and with patience because unlike the intern that hastily did this job last week, he was someone who knew the difference between Park Jinyoung and Jung Jinyoung. Two very different vocalists from two different companies, equally talented and equally deserving to have separate folders in the files of this laptop that was handed over by the third-party management. Seemingly, over the hours of rehearsing a song together to perfect it, Donghae had gotten into a deep conversation with the younger, which was something compeletely uncharacteristic of him to do so. “Well, when you’re as old as I am, man… When you can’t really tell if what you’re doing is actually making sense, you run. You run as hard as you can until you’ve got it all figured out. It lessens the casualties of people getting hurt, you know.”

“I know I did, and I’m trying really hard to understand why I did…” Donghae feigned annoyance, crinkles appearing over his nose as he scrunched it, giving off a short gruff. Then, with a sigh, he draped his arm around the woman’s shoulder and poked her nose. They had agreed to go on a friendly date about a month ago, not too serious at all when discussed while picking out microphones that suited her best from the ones arranged in the supply closet. Since then, they had been seeing each other by mere coincidence, brushing shoulders along the halls and in some of the recording rooms. “I still have work for like, an hour…? Two or three, tops. That rookie from your company’s really rough around the edges. If you could wait until then, I promise I’ll make it worth the wait. What do you say, babe?”

For the longest time, Donghae had embossed in his head that nobody would care for him. Nobody would be searching for him, nobody would come crawling at his doorstep nor did he think he’d even be significantly a person to call for at times of distress outside the confines of a studio or within the boundaries of his work and his work’s network. So when he hears Hyeon ask this, he was stunned. Rarely did anyone confront him about his sudden disappearance from work. “It didn’t seem trivial back then,” he began as he sipped on the cup of coffee he fixed himself with, remaining in that casual tone though he knew he was in for a scolding. “Nor did it matter now that I’m back. It’s as if I wasn’t gone for a while at all, actually. Were you looking for me?”

“You know, you’d be a great person to have around the day after an emergency.”

“I didn’t get a cat.”

“When were you under me?”

“So I just watched them have sex.”