Invisible People

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/12002151.

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandom: | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Relationship: Jeon Jungkook/Kim Taehyung | V
Character: Park Jimin, Kim Namjoon, Min Yoongi, Kim Seokjin, Jung Hoseok,
Hwarang Cast Ensemble
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Ballet
Stats: Published: 2017-09-05 Words: 22792

Invisible People
by mindheist

Summary

The most important things are the hardest of all to see.

Notes

ballet au, also kinda holiday au bc i jingle all the mcfucking way

warnings: mentions of past infidelity and subjective realities

See the end of the work for more notes

Passion is slight, with hair as dark as rural sky and a voice like slow rain in the winter. “Shouldn’t
you be sleeping?” is the first thing he says. The answer is, by the way, yes, but Taehyung is
pointedly not doing that, and likely won’t be doing that for a while considering his heart rate has
just skyrocketed through the roof at the sight of an uninvited stranger in his home.

“How the fuck—?”

“You needed me, so here I am,” he says. “Though usually people don’t start with me.”

“I—wait,” Taehyung says. When he sits up, chip crumbs tumble off his pajamas and onto the floor.
“How did you get in here?”

“Fair question. I am Passion, by the way. If you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t, and you still haven’t told me how you got in here.” Taehyung pauses, and decides it
sounds too mean. “Nice to meet you, uhm, Passion. Is that your actual name?”
“No. We’ll worry about that later. And as for how I got in here, well,” says Passion, “I’ve always
been here. You just usually can’t see me.”

“Oh.” Taehyung frowns. “So you’re like a ghost?”

Taehyung decides he’s taking this too well for this Passion to be a ghost. He doesn’t look
particularly threatening; though, granted, he also doesn’t look particularly passionate. Sitting with
his arms spread over the back of Taehyung’s couch with one foot propped on the coffee table and
the other crossed over his knee, Passion is the picture of lackadaisical calm.

“Kind of. Not really. It’s also not that important.” Passion, too, seems to realize that he doesn’t like
the way his words are sounding, and adds, “This is what I mean when people don’t usually start
with me.”

“Meaning there’s more of you?”

“Six of us,” says Passion, picking a chip out of the crumpled bag on the couch, crunching it
between his teeth deliberately. “You’ll meet them in due time. You summoned us.”

Taehyung racks his brains in an attempt to recall if he’s participated in anything involving
pentagrams or virgin blood and comes up empty.

“Try not to think too hard. Like I said, it’ll make sense when you meet more of us. They explain a
lot better than I can.”

“So,” says Taehyung, “you are Passion. You’re always here, but I can’t see you. You’re not a
ghost.” Passion nods along to all of this, and waits as Taehyung works himself through a frown.
“Are you real?”

“Wouldn’t you say so?”

Taehyung attributes the encounter to stress, though he’s not sure if it’s something he should ignore
if he’s having stress-induced hallucinatory episodes.

“Sounds like you’re like the Black Swan movie, except for real,” says Jihan as Taehyung warms
his feet up the next day. It’s a cold, sleety morning, before first snow but with enough ice for it to
already be miserable walking outside for too long. “Don’t go ripping any hangnails up to your
knuckle.”

“Ew, hyung, no,” Taehyung complains. Jihan chuckles where he sits across from Taehyung,
sewing elastics into the seams of his ballet slippers. “Don’t scare me like that, it felt really real.”

“Are you sure you’ve been getting enough sleep?” Jihan says. “You should’ve rested better for
rehearsal today, you’ve been working too hard.”

“I know, I know.” Jihan doesn’t speak up even as Taehyung falls silent, flipping the hem of his
slipper inside out to survey his handiwork. “I got into bed but I couldn’t sleep, so I got back up and
turned the TV on. It’s easier to fall asleep on the couch with white noise.”

“Still not sleeping in bed, huh?”

“I will,” Taehyung says, forcefully, moreso than he intends to. Jihan only answers with a flicker of
a gaze, nothing more than mere acknowledgement that he’s still listening. “I just. I’ll get new
covers, and I’ll move it up against another wall. But after we wrap up the Nutcracker.” At least
until after we wrap up the Nutcracker.

“Do you think we’ll get any new faces this time around?” Jihan breaks the the excess thread
between his teeth and pins his needle back in his pincushion. “We always seem to get an army of
them for Nutcracker productions.”

“Isn’t he new?”

Jihan looks up in the direction Taehyung jerks his chin at, pulling a length of thread from the spool
as he searches. Taehyung had only just seen him now, sitting on the floor and rolling his ankles
before warm-up class. He sits alone, the other dancers in the company brushing past without
looking in his direction.

“Huh.” Jihan crosses his legs. “I guess he is.”

“As if there weren’t only one and a half roles for guys in the Nutcracker already, thanks a lot,
punk,” Taehyung mutters. Jihan laughs.

“Maybe he’ll just be a toy soldier. Or a mouse? Although,” there’s a crisp snap as Jihan pulls his
slipper snug onto his foot, “he’s got a face to be the sugar plum cavalier if he’s good enough.”

Whatever. It doesn’t matter hugely to Taehyung who the new guy is slated to dance, as long as he
doesn’t barrel through the corps de ballet as if he’s the next principal. Taehyung’s met and bid
goodbye to a number of them, danseurs and ballerinas alike, with how long he has worked in this
company. He had moved steadily through the apprentice ranks, then through the corps, before
toeing the edges of something like a demi-soloist. It’s a nice pedestal to stand on, but sometimes
Taehyung enjoys the anonymity of the corps.

The schedules for today have Taehyung lined up for warm-up class now, stage rehearsal for
Chunhyangjeon for two hours after lunch, then studio rehearsal for the upcoming Nutcracker for
some four hours until the evening. The day is packed, back to back, and Taehyung is thankful for
it. He can’t have time to think, recently, choosing to stay at the barre until his muscles want to give
out.

“Jeon Jeongguk,” says Hyungsik when he joins Taehyung at the barre by the mirror. He looks up
from where he’d been studying his feet.

“What?”

“The new kid. I heard you and Jihan talking about him, so I went and snooped around.”

“Hyung.”

“He’s younger than you, you know?” Hyungsik says. “Seems like he’s trying to join the company.
Wants to start out in the corps. Transferred here from another company. I guess he didn’t like it
there.”

“Has he ever been in shows?”

“Probably only as corps, so you won’t find his name anywhere,” Hyungsik says, sinking into a
grand plié. “I talked to him outside, actually. He’s eager, if a bit shy. It’ll be nice to have another
guy around.”

“You’re right.”
“Hey, you’re already the Nutcracker Prince,” Hyungsik says, sensing the hesitation in Taehyung’s
voice. “Don’t worry about it. He’s not going to boot you out of a role you just got last week.”

As usual, Taehyung’s hyungs are right. Most of them have danced in this company for even longer
than he has, and they know with even quicker an eye when a new danseur or ballerina will be a
pain in the ass. Hyungsik says he won’t be. Jihan shrugs, over coffee, which is usually an indicator
not to motherfucking talk to him until he’s had his afternoon caffeine fix. Yoonwoo hasn’t seen this
Jeon Jeongguk yet.

“Be nice to him,” is what a stranger says, when Taehyung’s sitting in a dressing room shrugging
out of his sweaty tights into his spare pair, gearing up for the grueling rehearsal with his
Nutcracker partner for the rest of the afternoon and evening. He jumps so hard he knocks his shin
into a chair.

“Fuck,” he hisses.

“I’m sorry, did I scare you?”

“Take a wild guess. And who are you?”

“Oh,” says the stranger. “Am I not the first this time?”

Taehyung takes gulping breaths. “Which one are you?”

“Time,” says the stranger. “But who came before me?”

“Passion,” says Taehyung, doing a little butt shimmy to get his tights on the rest of the way. “Or
something. He said he usually isn’t the first one.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that.”

“Uh, so,” Taehyung says. “I’m going to go now.”

“You need me,” says Time.

The face Taehyung makes is less than friendly, mainly because he can hear somebody coming, and
he wants to get out of here before they can ask any questions about the stranger in the dressing
room.

“I don’t know who you are,” Taehyung says. “I think I can confidently say that I don’t need you.”
Or anybody. But he can say that less confidently.

“Everyone needs me,” Time says, matter-of-factly, without an ounce of reluctance—or conceit. He
doesn’t seem to be proud of this. “Everyone needs me, whether they like it or not. Whether they let
themselves need me or not. First there is me. Then there is passion, and—”

Taehyung raises his eyebrows. “And?”

“You’ll see.” For the first time since he made his presence known, Time steps out of the shadowed
costume racks. Taehyung is surprised by his size—how on Earth did he fit into that corner, all that
height and breadth—but he is more surprised that he doesn’t feel afraid. Time wears a long black
coat fastened up to his throat, double breasted with golden buttons. “I’m here to help.”

“You’re already being very unhelpful, because someone is coming and you’re going to get me in
serious trouble if they think I let you in.”
“They can’t see me.”

“What?” Taehyung hisses. “Can you just—?”

The door opens and Taehyung comes face to face with Jeongguk, who makes an unthinking noise
of surprise before saying, “Sorry,” and sidestepping him.

He stares as Jeongguk meanders through the dressing room, searching for his bag.

“See?”

“Why can’t he see you?” Taehyung says, staring after Jeongguk, who trails down to a vacant
corner of the changing room and finally finds his belongings as the rest of the finished class comes
trickling in.

“Would you say that you can see time?”

“Well,” Taehyung says, “only the effects of it.”

“The effects of me, thank you, I am not an it,” Time corrects pointedly.

“Then why can I?”

“Why can you see me, you mean? Some people can. The people who need to be reminded of us
can. You’ll understand. I promise.”

So, as far as Taehyung understands, he is probably crazy.

The appearance of Passion, and now Time, brings his grand total of mental breakdowns up to two.
He’d like to think he’d been doing pretty well after The Incident but it looks like that is not the
case, and it’s back to the couch with a bag of honey butter chips and a bottle of Coke that he
shouldn’t be eating in the evenings. He’s on guard, like he thinks Passion will just show up again
with his feet propped on the scuffed coffee table and give Taehyung the same cryptic lecture about
needing him or being real and after some nine hours of practice today, Taehyung would Really
Rather Not.

The TV fades in as it turns on, and the living room is filled with the sounds of Taehyung opening a
fresh bag of chips as he curls up under a thick fleece blanket. For a moment, he lets himself think.
It’s a dangerous thing to, at the end of the day, after he has changed out of his slippers and tights
and compression shorts. There is something so odd about the way the night lends itself to thinking.

Passion. Time. Things that no one can see, that not even Taehyung can see, except now. He bites
down on a chip, enjoys the dry crumble on his tongue. There are four more of them, if Taehyung
recalls correctly, and he had asked them to be here. Or so Passion says.

Passion, Taehyung is not so sure about needing. There isn’t a single danseur in the company that
isn’t passionate about what he does. Ballet companies have no room for half-asses, especially not
in a company as prestigious as the one Taehyung has the privilege of being a part of.

But Time, in his gold-buttoned, black-woolen glory. Time, perhaps, he needs.

Taehyung has some two days of peace. The next person to come up to him unannounced,
thankfully, is real.

“Kim Taehyung?”

Jeongguk’s hands close around the barre where Taehyung is alone, straightening up from his
stretch. For a moment, his face is in shadow, backlit by the high windows of the studio, but then
his expression slides into view as Taehyung stands.

“Yeah,” says Taehyung. “That’s me. You’re Jeon Jeongguk, right?”

“Yes,” says Jeongguk, smiling. His expression is nervous, like he’d practiced this conversation in a
mirror to himself already. Which, if he had, no judgment. Taehyung’s done it before. The thought
endears him. “You’re the principal danseur, right?”

“I wouldn’t give myself such a high title, but for the Nutcracker, yeah,” says Taehyung. “That’s
me. Nutcracker Prince and Hans-Peter.”

“The director, uhm,” says Jeongguk, “he tasked me with being your understudy.”

“Oh.” Taehyung brings both his feet to the floor now at this. “Really? For my part?”

“Yeah, and I was hoping it was okay if I rehearsed with you,” Jeongguk says, words tripping over
each other in his rush to get them all out. Also relatable. “I’d really like to get an idea of this part,
and how you dance, and what this company is looking for—I’m new here, and they said I was
good enough for the corps, but not—uh, that I should—”

“Not good enough, huh,” Taehyung says, lifting his foot back up to rest his ankle on the barre.
“Yeah, I’ve definitely heard that one.”

“I’m not trying to steal your part,” Jeongguk says. The words sound as if he’d been worrying them
around in his mouth all day, like running your tongue over the space of a missing tooth. “That’s not
my intention.”

“Thank you,” says Taehyung. “Though I wouldn’t fault you for trying, anyway.”

“Uhm.” Jeongguk shifts his feet. He’s wearing deep blue leg warmers that sag a bit around his
ankles. “So is that a yes?”

“Oh, to practice with me?” Taehyung says. “Sure. You’d be the first understudy to do so.”

“Great!” Jeongguk lights up visibly. “But I have schedules already, actually to practice with the
corps, so—it means I’d have to stay behind. That we’d have to stay late, that is. If that’s okay.”

Taehyung blinks at him. This stranger, essentially, is asking Taehyung to stay more hours at the
company building than his standard eight or nine that he puts in every day to begin with, and his
first honest answer is I think the fuck not you trickass bitch, but his second answer is one that Time
would be proud of. Be nice to him, was that it?

“Of course,” says Taehyung. “I’d be glad to teach you.”

He is not glad to teach Jeongguk.

“What the fuck? You’re going to teach him your part? Isn’t the director or, I don’t know, an
instructor paid to do that?”
Hyungsik pauses in his tirade to eat half his bento rice in one mouthful. “And you believed him
when he said he wasn’t trying to steal your part? I mean, it’s not like they could switch you out
now or anything, but Taehyung. Come on.”

“I’m just being nice,” Taehyung says blandly. “It’s the right thing to do.” He decides that it’s a
good idea to withhold the fact that the physical embodiment of Time himself advised him as such.
“I remember being a new danseur at this company. He’s serious about this craft, hyung, you
shouldn’t fault anyone for that.”

“Just because he’s cute,” Hyungsik sighs. “Things are so easy when you are.”

“You’re cute, I guess,” Taehyung says, laughing, and Hyungsik puts a hand to his heart with an
exaggerated gasp of surprise.

“I wish you’d take care of yourself better, is all,” Hyungsik says. “Though I guess if he wants to
stay after schedules at the studio to rehearse with you, at least I know you wouldn’t be home alone
on the couch eating chips.”

“Fuck off,” Taehyung says. “Jihan told you about the chips, didn’t he?”

“I’m not worried about the chips, just about you in general.” Hyungsik vacuums the rest of his rice
into his mouth. “Ever since, you know. If it means you’ll be keeping someone else company, even
if that entails teaching another danseur, I can worry less.”

“I’m fine,” says Taehyung. “Hyung, seriously. You guys need to focus on Chunhyangjeon and
Don Quixote, please worry about your shows. I’m fine.”

“Okay,” Hyungsik says. “Sounds fake, but okay.”

Taehyung is in the Skydome Studio eating a mango sandwich when the door opens, and he doesn’t
look up. He’s about to make some comment about not being late, decides to hold his tongue, and
then realizes that it’s not Jeongguk who comes to stand beside him in the mirror.

“Oh,” he says. “It’s you again.”

“You sound delighted to see me,” says Time. He unravels the scarf from around his mouth so that
his words aren’t muffled and pulls off his black leather gloves to store in his pocket.

“Does Time get cold?”

“Why wouldn’t I feel the cold?” He sits down cross-legged beside Taehyung, and nods at his
sandwich. “Dinner?”

Taehyung shrugs one shoulder, unwrapping his sandwich further. “You want some?”

“I’m okay.”

“So Time gets cold, but doesn’t eat.”

“There are other things that I eat,” says Time. “You guys call it eating away at. But I promised you
understanding about this all, didn’t I?”

Taehyung swallows his mouthful of too-sweet, syrupy mango. “You’re here to tell me about,” he
gestures vaguely, “this?”
Time laces his fingers together in his lap. He wears a gold watch with neither numbers nor hands;
there is nothing inside the small, lunar timepiece on his wrist. “Taehyung,” he says, and it’s the
first time any names have been exchanged, “how long has it been since The Incident?”

The air stiffens like ice like Taehyung’s lungs, and he can almost feel the expression on his face
shutter closed. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m the only one that can talk about it,” says Time. “I am the first one you will talk to about it,
honestly, earnestly, and the first one that will understand without question.”

Taehyung stares at him, this man with the gold-buttoned coat and a watch that doesn’t tell time.
Something in him is constant and unyielding.

“Eight months.”

“And in these eight months, have you let yourself feel?”

“What?” Taehyung says. “Look, I don’t know what you think you know, but I don’t want to talk
about how I feel. Or felt, about what happened. I need to focus on my work here.”

Time regards him with an unbroken, unruffled calm.

“Did you ever give yourself time?”

For the first time, Taehyung thinks he understands. He doesn’t immediately want to, but trickling
realization begins at the top of his head, as if someone had cracked an egg on his skull.

“I—yeah, sure. I didn’t think about it. I put all of myself into this company, and all my time went to
dance, and it made things easier.”

“All things need time, Taehyung.” Time smiles, and it is not as sad as Taehyung would imagine it.
“All manner of beautiful, terrible things need time. Nothing happens overnight. Not pain, nor
happiness. Not sickness or recovery. Won’t you let me help you?”

The door opens again, tentatively now, and Jeongguk’s face lights up when he sees Taehyung
sitting on the floor alone, armed with a mango sandwich.

“How?” whispers Taehyung, even as Jeongguk strides across the gleaming hardwood floor. As
Time had promised, Jeongguk seems not to be able to see him, nor does he register that Taehyung
must actively be talking to something invisible.

“Start with him.” Time says. “Let time start with him.”

“Thank you,” says Jeongguk, sitting down where Time had been moments before. He’s nothing but
a disappearing shadow now, closing the door behind him as he wraps his scarf around his face
again. “For doing this. You work really hard every day, everyone says so, it means so much that
you’d stay behind to help me.”

“It’s—” Taehyung blinks, focusing on Jeongguk’s face now, really taking him in properly for the
first time. He seems young, naively eager, with a trademark streak of self-doubt and perfectionism
that is common in ballet companies. A slanted scar sits on his cheek like a battle wound and
Taehyung catches himself staring. “It’s no big deal.”

“The director said that it would be good for the both of us, actually,” says Jeongguk, throwing
himself full force into stretching. “That you teach me the part. She says it’ll help you learn it better
to teach it to someone else.”

“Glad to know she thinks I’m not learning it very well,” Taehyung says dryly.

“Oh, no—she meant—no, you’re really good, that’s not what I was trying to say at all.”

“I know, I know.” Taehyung lets himself chuckle. “I’m just messing with you. Do you want to start
from the top, then, act two scene one? I’ve only learned the choreography all the way through a
few times, been working on cleaning up scene one first.”

“Yeah, let’s start there.” Jeongguk waits for Taehyung to readjust his slippers and leg warmers
over his heel tights, more conservative than Jeongguk’s compression shorts that leave essentially
nothing to the imagination. “No music first, then with.”

Taehyung stands, arranging his limbs in écarté. “I start without music too,” he says. “Okay. Now
watch.”

And he dances.

There are some things that are immediately obvious about people just watching the way they move
across the dance floor. In the first hour of watching Jeongguk the danseur, Taehyung knows things
about him that Jeongguk might never put into words even in front of the people he holds closest to
his heart: he is a controlled perfectionist, he is an idealist. There is a deep-seated insecurity in the
way he starts and lands his jumps.

“Struggling a little on the series of jetés, just a little,” Taehyung says, as Jeongguk pants, hands on
his waist, face shining with sweat. “You’re falling short on every other one, as in, you’re
alternating your jeté lengths long-short-long-short.”

“Show me again?”

“You’re doing it right, you know, you could just afford to bring your legs up higher for longer,”
Taehyung says.

“I’m just trying to learn from the best,” Jeongguk says, so automatically that it doesn’t sound like a
brownnosing compliment. He misses the dubious look that Taehyung gives him, but Taehyung
takes one long breath before leaping into the first jeté.

He sees Jeongguk at the center of his arc around the room, out of the corner of his eye. There’s a
wrinkle between his eyebrows, and Taehyung is already preparing some to give him kind of advice
where perfection can keep you from success and attention to detail makes you overlook the things
that may be most important, when he sees someone standing beside Jeongguk and nearly buckles
on his last jump.

“Well, keep going,” Taehyung hears when he slows down, breath coming hard and fast. “You’re
supposed to be teaching, aren’t you?”

It’s Passion, and this time he has a shopping bag full of string fairy lights and multicolored LED
bulbs.

“What are you doing here?”

“Checking in on you, obviously.” Passion nods approvingly, looking from Taehyung to Jeongguk,
who—isn’t frozen, exactly, not as though time has stopped. But he is watching this conversation
silently, just as closely as he studies Taehyung’s every step and move. “Not unconventional, but
not what I expected, either. You’re doing well. Is he new?”

“Thank you,” says Taehyung, figuring that he might as well not ask the questions and instead
answer them instead. “Yeah, he’s new at the company.”

“Jeongguk, right?”

“Jeon Jeongguk,” says Taehyung. “He’s quite good, really. Hard on himself.”

“As all of you are.”

“I can’t argue with that.” Taehyung shuffles his feet. “I, uh. I met Time.”

This seems to pique Passion’s interest. “Did you? What did he say?”

“Do you all not talk to each other?”

“None of us have a chance to speak to Time that often,” Passion says, plastic bag rustling when he
shrugs. “He’s a busy man. Not that I’m not, but he’s Time. But more importantly—what did he
say?”

“To start with him,” Taehyung says, jerking his head towards Jeongguk. He looks at Taehyung
wordlessly. “That time starts with him.”

Passion looks Jeongguk up and down before saying, “It doesn’t look like anything starts with him
except trouble.”

“That’s not the most reassuring thing I’ve heard this week, thanks.”

“You should trust Time. He knows better than most of us do. Especially more than I do, as much
as I hate to admit it.”

“Because time will always tell and passion dies after the heat of the moment passes?”

“Well, I’m not dead, homeskillet, let’s get it right,” Passion says. “But, for the purpose of your
understanding, yes. You’re right, actually.”

“Passion doesn’t always die, though. Otherwise none of us would still be here in this company.”

“You’re not wrong. But passion died months before Seojun did what he did to you.”

Taehyung recoils at the sound of his name. “Don’t,” he hisses, and hates how weak his voice
sounds. “Don’t talk about him, in front of me, ever.”

“It’s been months, Taehyung,” Passion says, and there’s a fierce glint in his eyes that Time doesn’t
have. “And Time kept telling us, again and again, a little longer. Wait a little longer. He’s not
ready to m—”

Passion shuts his mouth. He doesn’t seem all that happy to do it, then he takes a deep breath. “It
helps,” he finally says.

“Not really your place to decide what helps me or not, is it?”

“No. But it is my place to tell you to be kinder to yourself.”

“I—”

“I’ve got Christmas lights to hang. Let’s talk again when you’re ready.”

The soles of Passion’s shoes slap on the studio floor as he walks out. He doesn’t slam the door, but
the sound of the door closing makes Taehyung jump, and he realizes Jeongguk is staring at him.

“Are you okay?”

“I—yeah, I’m okay.” Taehyung blinks at him, watching Jeongguk’s face slide back into focus, and
his expression is concerned. “Did I fall or something?”

“You finished your jetés,” Jeongguk gestures uncomfortably. “Spaced out for a second, looked at
me like you just remembered I’m here, and here we are.”

“Sorry, I don’t know what happened,” Taehyung says, similarly shaken. The studio feels a little
colder, as if someone had opened the door and let all the winter air in. “Did someone—did you see
anyone just now?”

Jeongguk looks alarmed.

“No?”

“Okay, I just—never mind.”

“Is this company haunted?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Bummer,” Jeongguk says. “Because that would be so cool.”

“He’s a good dancer.”

“Good enough to make you uncomfortable?”

Taehyung opens his eyes to stare up at the ceiling of his apartment. The curtains are wide open,
and the dotted lights of the city filter in softly now, but the sun will be an unkind clash of cymbals
in his face in the morning. “I’m not sure if I’m a fan of this shrink-and-patient conversation right
now,” he says, turning his head to see Time sitting next to his TV in a dining room chair.

“You left the restaurant really late, and alone,” Time says with a sigh. “I had to make sure you got
home.”

“I always get back home, with my phone and my wallet, no less. You should have more faith in
me.”

“You’re not exactly on our nice list when it comes to having faith.”

Taehyung frowns, a little tipsy, so his pout is more exaggerated than he would like. “You still
haven’t told me what I’ve done wrong.”

“You haven’t don’t anything wrong. Do you think this is a punishment?”

“I wouldn’t call it a fun time, having you and Passion and the promise of four others invade my life
unannounced. To each their own, though.”

Time watches Taehyung roll the cylinder pillow under the soles of his tired feet, up and down
against the side of the couch’s suede armrest. “When was the last time you thought about Seojun?”

Taehyung frowns. He doesn’t want to answer this question. “This morning,” his mouth says, and
he wants to yank his own tongue out. Time looks victorious.

“And when was the last time you talked to someone about it?”

“You’re shrinking me.”

“I could ask Passion to come around.”

“Still, you’re shrinking me.”

Time waits. Taehyung figures, along the way, that Time’s patience is truly not one that can be
beaten. Time can simultaneously wait forever, yet move on indiscriminately, without so much as a
blink in your direction.

Taehyung clears his throat and settles his head back into the pillow, rolling his feet again. “I
haven’t talked about him to anyone since the night it ended. Last person to hear anything about it
was Jihan.”

“Which was how long ago?”

“You asked me this already.”

“How long?”

Taehyung sighs. “Eight months.”

“You’ve been sleeping out here on a couch for eight months? Impressive.”

“Have not.”

“There’s a layer of dust on your bedspread.”

“Leave me alone.”

Time falls silent.

“It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it,” says Taehyung. “I want to, but I don’t think I’ll hear
what I want to hear in reply. Hell, I don’t even know myself what I want to hear in reply. What
makes this kind of hurt better? It’s not words. It’s—”

Taehyung opens his eyes when he feels that trademark prickling sensation along his spine that
people get when they realize they’re alone. The dining room chair is empty. He’s left to his own
devices, coming off the edge of alcohol on his couch.

The clock ticks. It sings a merry song only Taehyung can hear.

“Sorry,” is the first thing Jeongguk says, bursting through the door. Taehyung brings his leg down
in a clean arc where he had been stretching it against the wall, working out a grumble in his
hamstring after one too many big jumps today. Mina, who plays Clara, had apologized over and
over for insisting they practice their pas de deux in the second act for so long.

“What for?”

“I was in physio,” Jeongguk says. “My ankle’s giving me a hard time.”

“Oh, are you okay?”

“It’s not injured,” he says, setting his bag down. His hoodie looks big enough to swim in, and
Jeongguk is hardly small-framed, unlike some of the other danseurs in the company. “Just catching
in the front a bit, so I feel a sting when I plié.”

“You should be careful. You’re the one that has to dance in my place when I can’t, what will we do
if you go down?”

“I know, I know.” Jeongguk looks chastised, not that Taehyung was really trying to. “I’ve been
practicing a lot for the Russian dance, it feels like there are more leaps in that single minute than in
any other role I’ve done.”

“Take it easy.” Taehyung holds his arms out and takes a breath. “Have you tried the pas de deux I
mentioned yesterday?”

“Yeah—I sped through it really quickly with the director once or twice. Not enough to get it
down.”

They’ve fallen into a routine of sorts. Taehyung appreciates this, having something he can expect
every day. Jeongguk comes in, usually late, usually sweaty and tired. Today he’s in heel tights,
dressed shoulder to toe in black with a too-big hoodie to Taehyung’s comparably less-dressed
leotard and leggings. The pianist has gone home for the evening and they play recorded music off
their phones. First they dance side by side. Then, well.

Taehyung’s not technically used to being this close to anybody since Seojun, and he’d be lying if
he said it didn’t unsettle him in the first week. Close, even, is pushing it—he just stands, leaning
against the side of the piano, calling out corrections and adjustments as Jeongguk dances alone
until he seems to be satisfied with himself.

“You really are better than you give yourself credit for.”

Jeongguk is cocking his head back and forth to get the kinks out as they wind down for the
evening and laughs. They’re perhaps the only ones left in the changing rooms, and Jeongguk steps
into a pair of soccer pants as Taehyung pulls on jeans, denim stiff with winter chill. “Thank you,”
he says. “You’re the first principal dancer ever to say that to me.”

“I’m not the principal dancer.”

“For the Nutcracker, you are.”

Taehyung chews his lip. It’s no secret that the relationships between principals and their
understudies are often strained. He finds that he doesn’t want it to be that way with Jeongguk.
Evenings filled with his infectious laughter are, Taehyung grudgingly admits, preferable to sitting
on his couch alone with another rerun of Oldboy and a bag of chips, even if that means staying late
at the company.

“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”

“You must have a hard time as an understudy.”

“You could tell?”

“I could guess,” says Taehyung. “I’ll admit that I wasn’t sure about you at first, but thank you. If I
had to have an understudy, I’m glad it was you. Someone who seems to care as much about his
roles as I do. Someone who doesn’t hate me because I am the principal.”

“Of course!” Jeongguk straightens, hefting his bag over his shoulder with a frown. “It’s frustrating,
but I’d rather be frustrated now than be under-rehearsed and panicky if worst comes to worst and I
have to get on that stage instead. It makes sense.”

Taehyung zips his jacket until the zipper meets the scarf bundled around his neck. That’s not
exactly what he meant, but it doesn’t feel like a topic Taehyung wants to untangle right this
moment. “You want to go get dinner?”

“It’s almost midnight.”

“I know. I haven’t had dinner. You want to come with?”

Jeongguk hesitates. Then, “Why not,” he says, bouncing his bag on his shoulder and opening the
door out into the hallway. The carpets muffle their footsteps, the hallway dim and sleepy. The
silhouettes of their shadows flicker across the framed photos of their company. “Where to?”

“The later, the unhealthier. The better.”

“Unhealthy? Unhealthy is my forte. Let’s go.”

“You have a place in mind?”

Not exactly. Jeongguk just seems to be really keen on getting fried chicken and beer, unhealthy at
its best. They sit together, surrounded by the drunken shouting of hwesiks on a cold winter evening
and Taehyung looks up and out the window of the bar seating to see a man across the street
holding, this time, a bundle of white-blue snowflake string lights. He waits at the curb for the
crosswalk light to turn green.

Then a bus roars past, and he vanishes.

Some days, out of self-spite, Taehyung will take some time for himself to get dinner alone before
coming back to rehearse for the evening and into the night with Jeongguk.

There is a lot of merit to eating alone—no one judges him for what he wants to eat, what he orders,
how long he takes. He doesn’t have to share anything either, though that’s admittedly a setback
when he doesn’t like what he orders but feels to bad to leave all that food on his plate. It takes
some getting used to. Thankfully there are little hole-in-the-wall ramen places now for people who
are aggressively single, and he ducks inside one and into steamy warmth.

“Feel free to seat yourself,” a waitress tells him, so he does. The menu is laminated and shiny, set
out right in front of his single chair.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Taehyung looks up, then around, not recognizing the voice. He puts his menu down and leans back
over the partition, set up like the ramen cubicles in Japan. The man seated beside him turns and
smiles.

“Oh,” he says. He’s starting to get accustomed to this. “Thanks for announcing yourself more
gracefully than the others.”

“Sorry about Passion. Time has a flair for dramatics, so he can’t be helped. I am Joy.”

“Joy?”

“Happiness was too many syllables.”

“Fair enough.” Taehyung notices his bowl of ramen, circles of reddish oil like lily pads on the
surface of his broth. “They can see you?”

“They?”

“The restaurant staff.”

“People can see me more often than the others.”

“Because more people need you?”

“Everyone needs all of us. But people look for Joy more often than most other things, like Passion
or Time.”

Taehyung looks back at his menu and pens in his order, slipping it to the waitress when she passes
is table. “I’ll say,” he mumbles, mostly to himself.

“You’ve never really needed me at all, Taehyung,” says Joy. He rests his chin on the heel of his
palm, ramen going untouched. His face is friendly, though thin with sharp angles, and something
about his aura is more approachable. “Not enough for me to appear like this in front of you. What’s
wrong?”

“I’m sure you already know all the details of that.”

“I do. But this isn’t about what I know, right? It’s about helping you.”

“So what?”

“Talking about it. I know you’ve been taciturn at best with the two that came before me. How do
you think we know what joy feels like?”

“I don’t know.”

“We know what joy is because we know what sadness is. Not letting yourself feel one thing means
you’ll never get the full picture of the other. You know?”

Somewhat. “Talking about it doesn’t make me happy.”

“It’s not supposed to. It’s only one step of it. You don’t throw flour in a pan and expect a cake to
materialize. But you’re not going to end up with a cake if you don’t throw flour in a pan at all.”

“You like cooking, huh?”

“Actually, Time is the cook out of the six of us, but you hang out with him long enough and he
rubs off on you. Like he does on most things.”

Taehyung snorts.

“Here, I’ll ask you some questions. Easier to get started that way, I think. And I won’t be all
cryptic about it like Passion is.”

“Thank you.”

“When was the last time you were happy—and it doesn’t have to be perfect happiness. When was
the last time, or what was the last thing, that touched you enough to make you smile? And don’t
say ‘this is a dumb answer, but’ because I don’t believe in things being dumb if they make
someone happy.”

And because he sounds so earnest, Taehyung thinks for real. He thinks and thinks.

“Two nights ago.”

“Ooh, what happened then?”

Taehyung nearly says, “it was so stupid, but,” and just barely catches himself. It was—stupid,
anyway, in its simplicity, stupid how it’s enough to make him happy.

Maybe this is why people call things little joys.

“I went out to dinner really late with someone from my company.” Taehyung hooks the toes of his
shoes over a rung on his bar stool. “We got chicken wings and beer. I hate beer. He said he’d drink
it all for me. He said, ‘the ocean is made of beer.’ We didn’t have enough money left over after
that to get desserts for the both of us and we thought it was a good idea to try splitting a melting
mochi.” He pauses. “Saying that out loud sounds so lame.”

“Why is it lame?”

“Nothing exciting even happened. We just got dinner.”

“It sounds like you were happy, so why does it matter?”

“Seojun would have said it was lame.”

Joy’s eyebrows disappear under his bangs. He lifts his chin from his hand. “Is that how he would
talk to you?”

Taehyung is already regretting letting it slip. A flood of thoughts hammers at the back of his throat.
Was I not good enough? Am I boring? What could I have done differently? Why? What if?

“You really still hold on to how he would think even though he’s made it very clear he didn’t and
doesn’t care, huh?”

“How is it that two people who were together can end up with one person who cares so much and
one person who doesn’t care at all?” Taehyung asks.

“That’s not something I have jurisdiction to answer.”

“Then who is? One of the others?”

“Yes.”

“Then, what of joy,” asks Taehyung, desperation that he hates creeping into his voice. “What of
feeling happy? How do you do it? What can you say about that?”

“I think the happiness that you create out of sadness makes that sadness worth it because it has
made others smile,” says Joy. “To get through that sadness is a cruelty in and of itself. But to know
you have made an irrevocable difference, no matter how small, well. I think that is where sadness
ends, and happiness begins.”

“You think I’m capable of that?”

“Capable?” Joy asks, puzzled. “Aren’t you doing exactly that already?”

“What—no? How?”

“That understudy. Jeongguk, am I right? What do you think he feels around you?”

Jeongguk is happy when he’s around Taehyung?

It does not sound as ludicrous as Taehyung thinks it would, because the more he thinks about it,
the more he realizes that he, too, is happy for the ends of the days despite how exhausted he
already is from rehearsal. It’s their own version of honey-I’m-home, but it’s almost always sorry-
I’m-late or thanks-for-waiting-for-me. Instead of loosening ties it’s tightening shoes and, Taehyung
should really give Jeongguk more credit, because he makes him laugh.

Some part of Taehyung is so scared to lose him, and another part of him is so scared to trust him. If
he knew—if he knew about what Taehyung’s life is really like when he’s not dancing, what would
he think? Wouldn’t he run?

Such as now. When was the last time Taehyung actually closed the blinds? He’s been relying on
the slats of sunlight during sunrise to wake him. The city light filters into the living room in thin,
green-blue slivers, scattering across the carpet. One slants across the length of his face, lighting up
the tips of Taehyung’s eyelashes silver. His half-finished bottle of Coke lies just out of reach, and
gather as he might Taehyung cannot find the energy in him anywhere to even lift a finger.

What time is it?

Time, conveniently, does not show up and announce it. Good lot of use he is.

A terrifying, all-consuming apathy settles deep in his bones. It’s not sad, not bitter. Not a petulant
apathy. No, it’s an apathy that makes the bare ceiling fascinating. An apathy that feels like
watching the world go black and white in his vision, a world viewed in greyscale. An apathy that
makes him feel entirely invisible in his place in time.

“It’s people like you that remind me why I keep doing what I do.”

Taehyung’s eyes fly open. His couch his empty, his dining room chairs vacant, yet he’d heard the
words loud and clear. Yet they had been in Jeongguk’s voice, and Jeongguk was real, not like
Time, or Passion, or Hope.

“Jeongguk?”
He instantly feels stupid for asking, and also instantly stupid for making any noise if there really
was anything to be worried about.

“Time?”

There is no answer. Outside, the distant roar of traffic surges on. Taehyung stands, on jelly legs,
and turns on the lights before collapsing in his couch again. By the door, his packed duffel reminds
him that there’s nothing to be afraid of.

Taehyung sits there for all of ten more minutes.

It’s a pretty bad idea, considering that it’s still snowing, it’s late, and that it’s the weekend and his
phone is weighed down with texts from Jihan and Hyungsik asking if he wants to come out, if he’s
okay, and if he’s sleeping he should try the bed, seriously, it’s too cold on the couch during the
winter. Taehyung zips his ballet shoes into his duffel and his parka up to his throat before turning
off the lights and braving the cold.

i’ll be at the company. wanted to practice late today. stop by if you want to, just thought i should let you know if
you were interested in coming.

The Sending… bar hasn’t finished loading before Taehyung sleeps his phone and shoves it back
into his pocket. Jeongguk will probably see it and call him crazy for practicing this late on a
Saturday, but on the off chance he’s also beating it on the couch with nothing to do except stare at
the ceiling and feel like grey matter, then Taehyung would much rather spend the time in his
company.

At this point, trekking down the icy sidewalk towards the subway station, he expects Passion or
Hope to appear and quip about his frankly questionable decision making, but neither do. Taehyung
snuggles his face into the knit of his scarf, far down enough that only his eyes are exposed.

And, as he expects, the company is empty, mostly dark as well, when he arrives. His keys are loud
and echo in the empty studios, but the warmth of the heater still drifts down the hallways enough
so that he won’t need to worry about getting too cold.

The world stays grey. He stretches. Taehyung scrolls aimlessly through the playlist of music for his
parts, looking for something that plays during one of his solos, and his finger lands on a movement
that is particularly strenuous, and decides—yes. He wants something that’ll ground him.

Taehyung straightens, gets into position, and lets the notes carry him. He’s well-practiced for this
part, but he can see the imperfections in the mirror. He can’t find it in him to correct them, and
feels, again, stupid for being here alone practicing when even the instructors have gone home.

And this is what it all is, isn’t it? This intense, haunting feeling of inadequacy, of never truly
knowing what to do, or expect, or who to trust. Eight months ago Seojun had looked him in the
face and said sorry, but there isn’t anything about you that I love, and Taehyung had taken a good
hard look at himself and thought that maybe he was right.

Maybe he is replaceable and forgettable. Someone that no one would miss.

Taehyung’s life, now, is wracked by two polar ends of a spectrum. That all-consuming feeling of
being unnecessary and unwanted, but the confirmation that he is the best male danseur in the
company because here he is, the principal danger to their biggest, most lucrative holiday
production. The only production that makes a net profit and not a loss each year. And in the middle
of it all is someone just as amazing, who feels just as inadequate, just as wracked with self-doubt,
dancing in Taehyung’s shadow. Being told you’re good, but not good enough. Good enough to be
presented and just bad enough to stay a secret.

The company is quiet and gloomy, more lonely more than it is scary. He continues to dance by
himself, staring at the line of his body in the mirror without really registering any of his
movements. His phone sits facedown by the stereo and he is too afraid to check it and see
Jeongguk’s question of what the hell he’s doing at this hour.

The door cracks open. “Taehyung?”

He jumps, startling. “Yeah?”

“You said you were practicing?” The door swings wide to Jeongguk wrapped up in a parka and a
scarf, beanie snowy and damp. He smells like barbecue. At this time of night, Taehyung hasn’t
realized the snow had started to fall again. “I wasn’t doing anything, so here I am.”

Taehyung looks Jeongguk up and down. He doesn’t even have his bag with him. “I didn’t think
you’d come.”

“Er—do you want me to go?”

“Do you even have your shoes?”

“Uhm, no, but there are tons of pairs here in the company and I didn’t think it would be a
problem.” Jeongguk looks increasingly uncomfortable, shrinking like a kicked puppy. “Sorry, I
didn’t realize you were serious about practicing—it’s Saturday, I thought you just wanted to hang
out and you wanted to meet up here.”

“I—” Questions tie Taehyung’s tongue in knots. Why did you so obviously leave whatever you
were doing to come to the company? Why do you care so much? Are you sure you even want this?
“Are you happy around me?”

Jeongguk’s head snaps up. “Huh?”

“Did you really want to just hang out with me?”

“What—yes? Of course I did, Taehyung, you sound so surprised. We have fun during rehearsals
after hours and we always go out and eat like absolute shit together, I thought—I don’t know, I
thought you enjoyed my company. I certainly enjoy yours. Time spent with you feels like no time
at all.”

“I enjoy your company,” Taehyung says, so emphatically that he shakes all over. His body seems
like it wants to cry but can’t. He brings his hands up but his fingers are trembling so he wrings
them, then covers his face. Preemptive tear shield. “I enjoy it so much, I asked you to come out
here on a Saturday night, and I was scared you’d think I was weird or a workaholic but I didn’t
know how else I could ask to see you and—”

Taehyung’s words balk, trapped under in his throat, when he feels Jeongguk hug him. He’s warm,
cold on his nose where it meets Taehyung’s shoulder, and he really does smell like KBBQ, like
he’d just left dinner. But the knit of his scarf has the scent of him under the bulgogi and
samgyupsal and it quiets the uncontrollable shaking in Taehyung’s bones.

“You can’t cry, I’m a huge crybaby and I’ll start crying if you do,” Jeongguk says. He holds
Taehyung tight. “Here I am. You wanted to see me, right? Here I am. You make me happy. Of
course I would come.”
“Thank you.”

“It’s not something you need to thank me for.”

His throat feels too full to say more, and Taehyung does tear up a little, but he doesn’t let himself
cry. Jeongguk didn’t sound like he was kidding about being a copycat crier. Taehyung makes to
bury his face in Jeongguk’s shoulder, but a tall, dark figure standing behind Jeongguk’s back
makes his breath hitch in his throat.

Time smiles faintly.

“Why are you—?”

“My name is Kim Seokjin,” he says. “I’m proud, Taehyung.”

After that, Time does not appear in his life again. Or, Seokjin, that is.

“He said goodbye already, huh?” Passion yawns so hard his jaw cracks. Taehyung has stopped
asking him why he appears when he does, without rhyme nor reason. This morning he’d walked
into the bathroom to brush his teeth to see Passion sitting in the empty tub like he himself didn’t
know how he got there. “I’m surprised. He usually sticks around for longer.”

“Is that what happens when you guys tell me your names? It’s goodbye?”

“More or less.”

“So what’s yours?”

“Damn, telling me to get the fuck out, I see,” says Passion, and Taehyung cannot help the laugh
that bubbles from his mouth.

“No, no, come on! I was kidding. Well, mostly, I’m curious.”

“About?”

“Why you guys have real names and why revealing them is goodbye.”

“I don’t know exactly why, either, to tell you the truth,” Passion says. “But I do know we say
goodbye when we believe you no longer need to reminded of us.”

“Oh.” Taehyung spits and rinses. The sound of it is a little sad, though he doesn’t know if he’s
imagining it or if Passion has the capacity to sound wistful. “I don’t need time anymore?”

“He seems to think so.”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re late,” Passion says flatly, tapping the clock on the stained wet bathroom counter
reading an ominous eight-nineteen AM. Taehyung yelps, slapping facial cleanser on. He can skip
breakfast.

Jeongguk isn’t weird about anything that happened after that snowy night in the empty ballet
company, holding Taehyung until he stopped shaking. They didn’t get any practice done, but they
did get ramen at a convenience store—rather, Taehyung got ramen, and Jeongguk, stuffed full with
grilled meat, opted to get a cold Ramune from the fridge.

“It’s below zero outside.”

“Now my insides and my outsides can be twinsies,” Jeongguk had said, popping the marble seal
and rattling the glass ball inside the bottleneck. “Ramen and ramune. It cures anything.”

He hadn’t gone on to ask what had bothered Taehyung so much that he needed to practice on a
cold Saturday evening and broke down the second Jeongguk walked in. Maybe Jeongguk comes
from a company of maladjusted danseurs and ballerinas and stress-related behavior like that is the
norm.

“Maybe it’s Maybelline.”

“Are you going to provide any help or are you just here to be a nuisance today?” Taehyung says,
drinking the watery coffee from the cafe downstairs. The yogurt parfait is too cold for his liking
but it’s sweet, and that’s good enough for him. Joy makes a mock noise of hurt.

“I was going to introduce you,” he says, “but it looks like you’d rather be sprung on surprised.”

“Introduce me?” Taehyung looks up, curious. This would be the first time he sees any of them
together, in one place, at one time. “To another one of you?”

“Yeah. I feel like you guys will get along well—he’s great, if not a walking personification of a
roast ses—”

“You guys call this coffee? I feel like I’m drinking mop water.”

“Tea is just leaf water.”

This new guy, inky-haired and wearing a bomber jacket with a Hawaiian sunset printed into the
fabric, drops into the seat beside Joy across the table from Taehyung. He gives him an eyeroll and
bites into an apple. “Wow. You don’t say? It’s almost like things are the products of the
components they’re made of. Ketchup is just a tomato smoothie. Grass is just Earth fur. Love is
just a neurochemical con job.”

Taehyung sees why he needs introduction.

“Meet Hope,” says Joy dryly. “Hope, Taehyung.”

“Taehyung, Kim Taehyung,” Hope says, wiping his apple-damp fingers on the seat of his pants
and reaching over the table to shake his hand. His palm is tiny against Taehyung’s. “Ah, the one
with the asshole ex-boyfriend, right?” He crunches into his apple again. “Doozy of a mess we got
here.”

“You don’t say,” says Taehyung.

“Hey now. Your face isn’t made to look so sad. You spent last night crying, didn’t you? Fat lot of
help Passion was this morning, I’m sure. He’s shit at helping people through crying sessions. One
of his many gifts is telling you lots of helpful stuff at completely the wrong time with completely
the wrong tone of voice.”

“Uh,” Taehyung says, not sure if he should tell Hope he’s sucking just as bad.
“Anyway, I’ll let you two talk,” Joy says. “I’ll take a rain check on this breakfast.”

“What? Aw, hyung. I was just getting started.”

“Be nice to him.”

Joy disappears out of the cafe, zipping his jacket up to his chin. Taehyung looks back at Hope.

“You’re Hope, then, huh?”

“I actually wasn’t supposed to be. He was going to be Hope. I was going to be Joy. In the end we
felt like, from the way the looked at the world, it simply made more sense for us to be what we are
now.”

“How are you Hope?” Taehyung asks. He doesn’t mean to sound as dubious as he comes off.

Hope sets his decimated apple core down on the table delicately. He doesn’t answer Taehyung’s
question, a habit he picked up from Passion, Taehyung is sure. “After Seojun left, you let yourself
believe you’ll never love another person again, didn’t you?”

As many time as Taehyung’s been through this schtick with these people—these mysterious,
inexplicable invisible people—he can’t seem to get used to hearing that name aloud, flinching at
the sound of it. He doesn’t, however, hiss at Hope to shut the fuck up, and is grimly proud of
himself for it.

“Can you blame me for thinking that way?”

“Not really, no.”

“Would you blame me for thinking that no one would ever love me, either?”

“No, Taehyung. I don’t.”

“Then why do you—why are all of you so hell bent on changing that?”

“Why,” says Hope, “then, are you so hell bent on staying miserable?”

“I—”

“We come into your life, people like Time, Passion, Joy. Hope. We do it because we know there is
so much more for you. That you are so infinitely more than what that used dollar-store condom
said about the worth of your character.”

Taehyung sputters. “Used dollar-st—”

“Because I believe in the beautiful days ahead, no matter how bleak the skies are now,” says Hope,
holding his hands open and closing them when Taehyung lays one down between them. It feels a
little silly, just because Hope’s hands are so much smaller than his, but it feels a lot like comfort.
Taehyung finds that he trusts him. “Because I have hope for you. That’s all I have.”

“Thank you.”

“I can’t tell you what to forget, or what to remember. I know that’s something no one can do except
you, and the last of us. He can help you. But I won’t tell you to stop remembering the things that
have hurt so you deep that it has changed the makeup of your soul. But I can, and I will tell you, to
believe in the days ahead. And Passion, and Joy, and Time.”
“And Hope,” says Taehyung.

“And me.”

“Beautiful days, you say?”

Hope follows the line of Taehyung’s gaze, looking over his shoulder, to see Jeongguk hovering
over the fruit bar, serving himself one apple, hesitating, then pocketing two more. He sighs, turning
back to face Taehyung.

“I mean, I guess,” he says, trademark eyeroll back in his voice. Taehyung watches him grab a cup
of coffee, too, and almost looks like he’s about to leave when he spots Taehyung and his face
lights up like the holly garlands that line the hallways of the company. “I can’t believe he’s the
sixth person, but whatever gives you hope, I guess, is what matters.”

“Huh? What do you mean, sixth person?”

But Hope doesn’t seem to have heard, standing up and leaving as Jeongguk sits down. “You’re
eating alone,” he says. It doesn’t sound like a question.

“I usually do.”

“Me too. Let’s change that.”

Taehyung chuckles. “Not like you really gave me a choice, right?”

“Oh—uh, if you want me to go, I’ll—”

“Stop it,” Taehyung says, grabbing Jeongguk’s hand and relishing in the tingle of touching his
skin. “Stay.”

So Jeongguk does. He stays.

After that night at the studio, Jeongguk takes it as an open check to ask Taehyung to go out on the
nights they don’t have shows.

With the year winding to a close, and the Chunhyangjeon and Don Quixote runs wrapping up with
moderate success, most of their days and evenings now are consumed with Nutcracker rehearsals.
Taehyung is starting to feel that particular strain and exhaustion that compounds with the effect of
nerves as opening night draws closer, but it doesn’t drown him like he had expected it to. The
nights with Jeongguk, however long, keep his face above the water.

“Is this a date?” Taehyung teases, sweat still a little damp when they leave the company one oddly
clear evening. There are a mere three weeks to go until opening night, but Mina’s tendons are
going, and Taehyung doesn’t want to push her more than she’s already pushing herself to grind
through the discomfort.

“Do you want it to be?” Jeongguk says, tucking the ends of his scarf into the neck of his parka.

“I,” says Taehyung. His breath comes out in clouds when he breathes. “I—I don’t know?”

“If you don’t want it to be, then it isn’t.”

Things are weirdly simple like this with Jeongguk. He doesn’t ask Taehyung why he wants things a
certain way—extra spice, less soup base in his ramen. Fries drenched in so much ketchup they’re
soggy. Double-sewn bands in his ballet shoes. More often than not, he shrugs, smiles, and even
says, “Me too,” and Taehyung feels his heart skip and stumble for the first time in months.

“What are we going to eat tonight?”

“Hmm,” says Jeongguk. His scarf is bundled up to his face, nose rose-pink with the cold.
Taehyung fights the urge to reach over and grab it, or do something similarly absurd, like kiss it. “I
chose the last two times, you pick this time.”

“Oh, uh,” says Taehyung. “Seafood?”

“I love seafood, but you’re going to have to be more specific than that.”

“Sushi.”

“Sushi it is.”

Taehyung knows a place—it’s done up all nice and authentic, with the low-hanging curtains and
the pillows on the floors. Even this late, business is in full swing, and they have to wait for a table
to open up before they can be seated.

“I didn’t realize you liked sushi,” says Jeongguk, setting his shoes by his duffel in the corner of
their little room. The door slides open and a waitress sets down a pot of tea for them before
nodding and letting them read their menus. “After that stint with the beer and chicken, and that
time you detailed every burger you have ever eaten and rated on your own custom Kinsey scale, I
wouldn’t expect sushi to be on your eats list.”

“I am a man with a spectrum of refined tastes,” Taehyung sniffs. Jeongguk laughs.

“Do you want sake? Wait, just kidding, I forgot you don’t like to drink.”

“Oh wait, I want umeshu! This place has umeshu.”

“Plum wine? I’ve never tried that.”

“It is the best,” Taehyung says. “The only alcohol I like.”

“You came here before, right?” Jeongguk turns his menu over to read through the selection of
sushi rolls. “You tried umeshu then?”

“Uhm, yeah,” Taehyung says, scratching the back of his neck. Yeah, it had been with Seojun,
Jihan, and Hyungsik. Yoonwoo had come later in the night, too. He remembers being carried
home, long before things had soured enough for The Incident to happen. “Yeah, I’ve been here.
With some people in the company.”

“I’m envious,” Jeongguk says, checking off the box for a red dragon roll. “You seem so close to
the people in the company. I wish I had friends like that.”

“You have me!”

Jeongguk glances up, surprised, at Taehyung’s insistence. “Thank you,” he says, quieter. “For
wanting to be around me so much.”

It’s Taehyung’s turn to be puzzled at this seemingly misplaced gratitude. “Why is this something
you need to thank me for?”
“What did you want, by the way?”

“Oh, uhm—the spicy hamachi roll.”

Jeongguk ticks that box neatly, then rings the call bell. “I just say thank you because I didn’t expect
you to even like me, never mind want to be my—my friend,” he says. “I never dreamed of sitting
with you late nights eating those godforsaken dried mangoes you like or arguing with you about
stupid things like whether water is actually wet or if the sensation of water—you know what I
mean? I never had that in my old company. We all were nice to each other, but I know the principal
danseur hated me. I think he felt threatened by me, I don’t even know why. He was an amazing
dancer.”

“Oh,” says Taehyung, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I really hope I don’t sound like I’m humble bragging.” Jeongguk pours himself some tea, refills
Taehyung’s cup even though it barely needs it. “I guess I’ll admit that I expected you to hate me
too. So when I say thank you, I mean, well. Thank you for treating me so genuinely.”

“It was this kind of genuine vulnerability that even got him into this mess, homeskillet,” comes
Passion’s voice. Taehyung starts, then closes his eyes with thinly veiled exasperation.

“Hi, can you not ruin my date, thanks?”

“Aw shit, this is a date?” Passion sits up from where he’s lounging on the floor by their table, one
foot propped on bent knee. “Oh, Joy and Hope are going to lose their fucking marbles when I tell
them.”

“Please don’t,” Taehyung groans. “I think I actually like him, don’t make me look like a fool in
front of him.”

“You know full well that these encounters don’t look like anything to outsiders except as a few
moments of spacing out. Relax.”

“You’re here to tell me to stop being so naive and genuine with everyone, I take it?”

“Quite the opposite. Listening to this schmuck was killing me, yes, but he seems to be one of the
few people that sees this in you. And sees it as something to thank you for.” Passion crams a half-
eaten unagi roll into his mouth and says around the wad in his cheek, “I was wrong about him.”

“Er—do you know him?”

But then Passion is gone, leaving Taehyung blinking dumbly at Jeongguk.

“Spaced out again?” he asks. “I get this feeling you see ghosts.”

“I—no?”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding.”

“By the way, about your thanks. I’m glad. I haven’t done anything remarkable or amazing, but I’m
happy it means so much to you.”

Jeongguk’s smile is shy. Their umeshu arrives with their rolls, then, and Taehyung’s stomach
growls in his belly. Eating gives his mouth something to do. The plum wine warms him from the
inside out, spreading from the pit of his stomach outwards towards his fingers. It’s welcome
warmth on these nights when wool and fleece doesn’t suffice.

“I was close with the last principal danseur in the past, actually.”

“Oh?” Jeongguk raises his eyebrows. “And not anymore?”

“No. Well, we dated. And we had a bad breakup.”

“Oh,” and Jeongguk’s voice sobers. He looks crestfallen. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be! Really. He left the company right before it happened, so I’m lucky—I don’t have to see
him at all.” Taehyung crams a cut of his roll with a dab too much wasabi on it into his mouth.
Fuck. Why is he talking about this? The umeshu always gets him soft and loose-lipped. He needs
to stop drinking. Instead, he grabs his glass and downs another mouthful.

Dinner passes by without any more drop-ins, and Taehyung stays coherent enough to make the
good decision not to bring Seojun up again. Jeongguk digs up stories from college to tell him
about, specifically about having to go skinny dipping in the school fountain because of a lost bet,
and Taehyung laughs so hard he feels a grain of rice go down the wrong pipe, so they spend
another ten minutes waiting for him to hack it up before leaving.

“You’re drunk,” Jeongguk says when Taehyung stumbles down the three stairs to the sidewalk
outside the sushi restaurant. His hand shoots out to steady himself on the sleeve of Jeongguk’s
parka. The material crinkles under his nails. “Be careful.”

“I swear I’m only body-drunk.”

Jeongguk scoffs, the breath billowing from his lips in a plume of vapor. “And what does that
mean?”

“Body-drunk is when you get clumsy but you’re not drunk enough to start crying or confessing any
dirty secrets,” Taehyung says. “That’s brain-drunk.”

“I take that the window between the two isn’t that big.”

“It is too! And I can force myself to have my shit together, it’s just easier not to have it. Together,
that is.”

“Okay, okay,” Jeongguk says, a laugh in his voice. They walk slower than usual anyway, in
comfortable silence. The subway station is farther away than Taehyung would like, but the wine
has him so warm the skin of his cheeks feels tingly in the nipping chill.

Then, “Can I hold your hand?”

Jeongguk slows even more, turning to glance at Taehyung before he extracts his hand from his
pocket.

“Your hands are warm,” Taehyung says, sandwiching Jeongguk’s knuckles in his palms. Jeongguk
grunts behind his scarf.

“And yours are freezing. I thought you said wine warms you up.”

“My hands are always freezing.”

Jeongguk jiggles Taehyung’s hand in his until their fingers fit together and interlace. Taehyung
stares at him, and if he’s blushing, it’s hidden under the ruddiness of his cheeks. The silence is less
comfortable now, and a little more shy, but it’s not bad.

It makes a warm feeling bloom in the cage of Taehyung’s ribs.

“This is me,” he says reluctantly when they get to his subway station. The stairs are wet with slush
and ice. “Thank you for coming out with me. I’ll see you at the company tomorrow?”

“I’ll see you,” Jeongguk says, coming around to face Taehyung in front of the staircase. It’s late
enough that there is no one trekking up or down on them. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yes,” Taehyung says. Whispers, really.

“Can I kiss you?”

Taehyung searches Jeongguk’s face. He’s really blushing now, color creeping over the bridge of
his nose and towards his hairline. When it takes Taehyung several heartbeats too long to respond,
he drops Taehyung’s hands and starts turning away. “Sorry, I’m sorry I made you uncomfortab—”

“Wait,” Taehyung says, reaching for Jeongguk’s face to turn him back. “Jeongguk—”

It’s not choreographed that well. Not many things in either of their lives have that sort of luxury.
Taehyung gets a bit of scarf in this kiss, and Jeongguk hiccups when their mouths meet, but it’s no
less real. It’s no less warm. Jeongguk kisses him back when it registers in his brain—it takes a
moment, and Taehyung can’t blame him—and gathers Taehyung against his chest by the waist. He
tastes like wine.

They break apart when Taehyung starts getting lightheaded, and Jeongguk presses their foreheads
together.

“Be careful going to the company in the morning,” Taehyung whispers against Jeongguk’s mouth.

“Uh,” Jeongguk says, and Taehyung can practically hear his brain flatlining in his skull, “yeah.
You too.”

The subway is almost empty in comparison to how crowded it is in the usual rush hours. Initially
Taehyung stands, holding onto a handlebar, but decides he’s not sober enough to play this
balancing act without people packed like sardines to keep him in place. He takes a seat alone
across from someone who crosses his legs.

“Going home drunk and alone again,” he says, and Taehyung looks up. “But smiling. That’s what I
like to see.”

“Joy?”

“Hoseok,” he says, standing up as the subway slows at the next station. “Jung Hoseok. Be careful
on your way home.”

Mina feels well enough this morning to run through the entire ballet from beginning to end in the
Skydome Studio, and Taehyung would be lying if he said he wasn’t exhausted by noon.

Jeongguk is in and out for the duration of it, popping out to rehearse with the corps for the parts of
the toy soldiers and the Russian Dance trepak. He can’t quite meet Taehyung’s eyes, smiling shy
and tender if they look at each other for too long.
“He is so lovesick, it’s contagious. There’s a tickle in my throat. When I walked by him I felt the
sudden urge to send someone flowers. Holiday ones, like poinsettias.”

“Leave him alone.”

“I detect ‘leave my crush alone I promise he’s hotter in real life’ tones in your voice,” Hope says.
He’s eating a pomegranate this morning, picking the seeds out from the pith like he’s mining for
ore.

“Okay, what are you here for. Last time you lectured me over breakfast. Can we do this at least at
lunch?”

“Oh, I don’t have a long-winded lecture for you this time,” says Hope, crunching pomegranate
seeds in his teeth. “Just a protip. Things always get worse before they get better. I’m not sure if it’s
some unspoken law of the universe, but it always seems to work that way. But when they do, don’t
lose sight of the things that matter.” He throws up a peace sign, framing the corner of his eye.
“Like me.”

“Thank you for that absolutely unhelpful tip.”

But it isn’t until Hope takes his leave and Taehyung returns to his feet that he really hears what
Hope must have been trying to say—no, it was not so much a tip as it was an omen, and he feels
unsettled for the rest of the morning. It shows when he eats, too, Hyungsik nudging Taehyung’s leg
under the table with his foot to get his attention.

“I asked you a question.”

“Huh? Sorry, I didn’t hear.”

Hyungsik sighs. “I said, are you doing okay recently? Chunhyangjeon finally wrapped up, I feel
like I haven’t had a chance to talk to you since then. You have some color in your face these days.”

“I—oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m great.”

“Great?”

“Better than I was.”

“I see you hanging around that Jeongguk guy a lot,” says Hyungsik carefully. He glances at
Taehyung, then spears his cherry tomato with his fork slowly enough that the juice runs down the
skin. “What’s he like?”

“He’s fine. He’s a good dancer.”

“He must be, as an understudy and all.”

“He’s good, understudy or not,” Taehyung says. He’s surprised by the ferocity in his voice, and
Hyungsik too looks taken aback. “He’s—he’s nice. To be around, you know. He’s really genuine.
We’ve been eating dinner after our rehearsals together, actually,” he adds, when Hyungsik looks
skeptical.

“I know. I saw you guys leaving together a couple of nights ago.”

“Oh.”

“Are you guys…” Hyungsik shifts uncomfortably when Taehyung looks up at him and raises his
eyebrows. “An item?”

“Are you going to tell me that it’s a bad idea? Because of what happened last time?”

“You can’t blame me for worrying, can you?”

“I suppose not. The answer is no, by the way. I don’t think so. I’m not sure.” The corner of
Taehyung’s napkin is translucent with olive oil where he’d spilled some dressing on it. “But I want
to hope that things will be better this time around.”

Taehyung wants to hope. It is at once terrifying and exhilarating, to put trust into a moving target
outside of himself. When he’s alone, rational thought rules and makes sense of his past and sets
hard lines for his future—but then he will spend an evening with Jeongguk, and find that all his
plans seem silly. Don’t trust. Don’t love. Don’t believe in what they say.

“A date?” Jeongguk’s look of surprise is unmistakeable under the red-gold Christmas lights outside
the lobby of their ballet company. The snow that had been falling all morning has finally stopped,
but the breeze is as talkative as ever, whistling through the bells tied with tinsel on the street
lamps. Clouds turn the sky a steely grey.

“Weekend tomorrow. We still have to be up early, but not as early,” Taehyung says.

“We’re calling it a date this time?”

Taehyung smiles despite himself. “Yeah, it’s a date.”

“When? Where?”

“You choose. We can meet up late afternoon? How about five?”

“I wish we had a whole day,” Jeongguk says, and Taehyung feels his chest warm like candlelight.
“I’ll text you. Uhm,” he takes Taehyung’s hands in his, and his are mittened and woolly against
Taehyung’s, who had misplaced his gloves months before. “Thank you.”

He presses a kiss to Taehyung’s mouth so fast it’s more of a nose-bump than a kiss. But before
Taehyung can lean into it and kiss him in earnest, Jeongguk has dropped his hands, sputtered
something about needing to take a shower, and taken off headlong down the damp sidewalks. The
fringes of his scarf stream out behind him and Taehyung blinks dumbly before he laughs to
himself.

It’s like being in love for the first time, with all its stupid, clumsy moments. And as stupid and
clumsy as it is, Taehyung prefers this to picking up the pieces of himself and hating every moment
of it. Taehyung will take Jeongguk lighting the way, holding his hands out for all those broken
pieces.

The subway station is quiet at these wintery off-hours, though the train itself is still snug with
passengers. Taehyung sits down beside a man with a blue woolen scarf as thick as midnight
bundled up to his nose, seat vacant when a round-faced cherub hops off her mother’s lap for the
next stop. He’s peeling oranges, gathering a pile of rinds in the plastic bag on his lap, and he nods
along to a song in his headphones that Taehyung can just barely catch the tinniest hints of. The
subway car smells of citrus, yet no one else seems to notice.

“Passion said he caught you in your apartment,” the man says suddenly. His words are muffled.
Taehyung takes a moment to realize that he’s being spoken to.

“Oh—wait, yes? Which one are you?”

“Memory,” the man says, shifting one headphone away from his ear and pulling his scarf down to
his chin. “It’s lovely to finally meet you.”

“Er, you too,” says Taehyung. Memory is so well-spoken and handsome that he feels like he
should hold out his hand to shake, but he decides against it in the last second. “What is it that you
have to say to me?”

“I’m usually the last one that people meet. The first is Time, though I understand Passion decided
this particular instance was a job for him to open.”

“He did. Gave me a real fright.”

“Yeah, he’s not great with introductions. But it would seem only right for me to be the last one,
would you agree?”

“I guess.”

“And why is that, do you think?”

“Because,” Taehyung racks his brains. Who has he met already? With the way they’ve talked
about each other, it sounds like there is some rhyme and reason to the order they appear in. Time,
usually. Then Passion, Joy, and Hope. Then Memory. “Because we need time before we can
confront something.”

“You’re right.”

“And we need Passion, Joy, and Hope to find meaning in our futures?”

“You’re good at this. Yes.”

“And so, you must be last,” Taehyung says, “because we never forget anything, even if we want
to.”

“Kind of.” Memory offers a slice of orange, and Taehyung shakes his head. “Because the point of
our painful memories isn’t to forget them. Nor is it to allow them to stand at the helm of our lives,
steering every decision we make and rewriting the way we see the world. There are some things
that we can never forget. The way that Seojun hurt you is one of them. But they just become a part
of us, one that we don’t think about anymore. They become something that we no longer allow to
touch us.”

“Separated by too much time to mean anything anymore.”

“Exactly,” says Memory.

“Have you told him what happened?”

“No. How do you even just bring something like that up?”

“Honestly.”

“What?”
“You bring it up honestly,” says Memory, like it should be as easy and boring as discussing the
stock market. “What is it that you would want to tell him?”

Taehyung looks down at his hand. They’re pink with cold, and he laces his fingers together,
squeezes, until the blood rushes out of his fingertips and leaves the underside of his nails pale
white. “That I like him,” he murmurs. “That I like him, but I might be slow. And I might be scared.
But I want things to work.”

“Scared of?”

“Scared that he’ll one day decide I’m not good enough.”

“And why would you think that?”

“Because that’s what happened with Seojun,” Taehyung says. It feels like a confession to say it out
loud. Admittedly, it is the first time Taehyung’s allowed himself to think about it so explicitly
since the night it happened. He’s surprised to find it doesn’t hurt as much as used to. “Because how
do you forget something like that? How do you forget walking into your own apartment, a place
you call home, a place you shared everything with someone, to the visual confirmation that you
aren’t enough?”

“You don’t.”

“I—” Taehyung looks Memory in the face, and he regards him evenly in return. “I don’t?”

“You don’t forget. Like we said, right? You just stop letting your past dictate your future. And if
Jeongguk is who we think he is, he won’t expect you to forget, either. He won’t decide that you
aren’t enough. I’m sure you’ve noticed this, but you’re already more than he could ask for.”

“He’s.” Taehyung wrings his hands some more. “He’s Jeongguk.” He doesn’t know how to better
explain it in words, though they’ve never quite failed him before.

“This is me,” says Memory, rising to his feet. “Have a good date tonight, Taehyung.” A cool voice
announces the station, and he bags his orange peels. One lands on the floor of the subway car, and
this, no one notices either.

Taehyung sits in his bathroom with his feet in a tub of water, soaking with a fizzing tablet of
jasmine and sea salt. Dancer’s feet, and all, they need a little extra love. The ballerinas must have it
worlds worse than he, being en pointe for up to some nine hours a day, so Taehyung stays grateful.

“Are you going to tell him about Seojun tonight?”

“I guess so,” Taehyung says, flexing his toes in the soapy water. A sting tickles at his left heel, and
Taehyung makes a mental note to visit physio first thing tomorrow. “I should be honest with him,
if I’m going to be serious about him.”

“Ah, so you do plan to be serious about him,” Passion says.

“I’m sitting in my bathroom with actual product in my hair and soaking my feet with a jasmine
tablet,” Taehyung says with irritation. “For shits and giggles.”

“I’m happy for you,” Passion says, without any of the bite that had been in Taehyung’s voice. For a
moment, he fears that Passion will stand up from the edge of his bathtub—the same one that
Taehyung had sat on for too many nights, hating the tears on his face—and open a sentence with
My name is. He can’t say why he’s so afraid to say goodbye to them.

“Thanks,” says Taehyung, soft this time. “Thanks for believing in me.”

Passion rubs the waxy surface of a holly leaf, berries holiday lipstick red. He said he’d ended up
with an extra spring when helping line a shelter full of boughs of holly and mistletoe. “That’s what
I do.”

“I haven’t been on a date in months. I’m not sure I actually know how to act on one.”

“I’ll tell everyone to keep their noses out of your business, if that helps.”

“Oh. Really?”

“We don’t want to distract you. But lose the floral print tie on top of the floral print shirt, the colors
clash.”

Taehyung gives Passion’s perpetually black-clad self a scrutinizing once over. “I’m not sure you’re
really one to give color advice.”

“Suit yourself. Knowing Jeongguk, he’ll think it’s cute.”

But fashion terrorism isn’t on Taehyung’s agenda for the night, so he decides to go with a dark blue
tie. It feels too formal. The other options rest on the other end of the spectrum with leotards,
sweats, and warmups, because Taehyung simply does not spend enough time outside the company
to have a wide selection of semi-fancy clothes to choose from, and he's not about to go to dinner in
his banana-print leotard, so tie and floral print dress shirt it is.

“Did you wait long?” he asks, when he gets to the restaurant Jeongguk had texted him the name of
earlier. It’s a rustic place, dim but not so dim that he needs a flashlight to read the menu. The
warmth wraps around him with the scent of bread and soup and he sits down with a shiver.

“Nope. I actually worried I’d be late. I, uh, got off at the wrong stop because I got distracted
texting.” Jeongguk worries the cuff of his shirtsleeve—he’d gone tie-less, though Taehyung would
be hard-pressed to match any tie to the purple color of his dress shirt. It flatters the lines of
Jeongguk’s shoulders and makes his hair look even darker than it already is. “You look amazing.”

“Thank you,” Taehyung says. “You clean up well yourself.”

“I almost started doing my whole face for a performance. It’s the only cleaning up I’ve done in—
well, forever,” Jeongguk says. “But you must be starving, because I know I am.”

They make small talk until their food arrives. Jeongguk’s family. He has a brother. His dog.
Taehyung’s dog, and house in the countryside. Taehyung tries to avoid talking about routines and
technique outside of the company, because as much as he loves it, he can’t expect Jeongguk’s
ballet brain to be as similarly switched on as his all day. Work is work. It isn’t until Taehyung’s
plate of steak is placed down before him that he really allows himself to be honest, like Memory
had advised.

“What brought you to the company?”

Taehyung partially already knows the answer. Still, it’s a better segue than to just bring up his
baggage without preamble.
“I saw that there was an opening for a danseur.” Jeongguk twirls his fork round and round in his
pasta carbonara, watching the noodles tangle in the tines of his fork. “And the company I’d been
dancing at before had already made it obvious that I wasn’t going to be a principal anytime soon.”

“Really?”

“Five years of shows as an understudy really starts to get to you.”

“Five?” Taehyung gapes.

“Just as an understudy. I’d been there for more than eight. It was the company I transitioned to
after the one in which I learned ballet.”

“I see.”

“Why?”

“I—well, I knew about the opening for a principal. We always have more dancers around the
holiday season, but from the first day I saw you, I knew you would be filling that opening.”

“The danseur who left? Your ex, right?”

Taehyung’s heart is beating thunderously in his temples, and he finds he is afraid to say any more.
Jeongguk’s face is open, a little bewildered, perhaps, but so painfully vulnerable. “Yeah, he was
my ex.”

“I’m sorry.” Jeongguk says, sobering.

“And I just mean that,” Taehyung presses on before Jeongguk can get the wrong idea, “This time, I
wanted to say that I’m glad it was you who ended up filling that vacancy.” I’m glad it was you who
came along and filled a hole I didn’t think could be filled. “I’m happy you ended up in our
company. You should stay. There’ll be room for you.”

“How very unlike a principal to say that to his understudy,” Jeongguk jokes.

“You’re good. I don’t think you’ll be an understudy for long.”

“Thank you for thinking so.” Jeongguk sets his fork down with a tink. “But is there something else
you wanted to tell me?”

“Huh?”

“About the one who left.”

“Oh,” Taehyung says. “Was there?”

“Sorry for assuming. I thought you had more to say.”

“No—you’re right. There was.” There’s a knot in the pit of Taehyung’s throat when he swallows,
tighter than ever. “He, uhm. He did some pretty terrible things on his way out. Not to the company,
I mean, to me.”

“You said you guys had a bad breakup, right? What did he do?” Jeongguk asks. Even with his face
half in shadow, the deep valleys around his eyes dark under the dim lamps, his presence is soft and
comforting.
“He cheated,” Taehyung says. He heaves a sigh. “I had to find out about it by walking in on it. He
didn’t seem so show any remorse when I did. He didn’t even say sorry for it. It’s been difficult to
put trust in others since then, but,” he chews his lip here. “But I want things to work for us. I really
want to believe in this. I wanted to tell you truthfully, so you’ll understand if I’m a little slow on the
uptake, or if I ever seem to be afraid of taking your hand or taking initiative. It’s definitely no fault
of yours.”

“I see.”

“I’m sorry,” Taehyung says, sitting back. He and Jeongguk had been leaning towards each other
across the table, and he worries at the fabric napkin he has spread over his lap. “I’m sorry. I didn’t
want to make tonight all serious and awkward, but it didn’t seem right for me to go any farther into
this without—”

“Taehyung.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m happy you told me.” He props his his chin his hand. “I’m happy you trust me enough to tell
me.”

And, quite like a steel anvil has been lifted off Taehyung’s shoulders, the rest of the night is easy.
Jeongguk makes some dry, witty comment about a plate of food that passes by them looking like
little turds, and Taehyung laughs so hard he almost spews soda out of his nose (they’d passed up
wine this time—just isn’t worth it to be hungover at practice this close to an opening night).

It is snowing again when they walk outside. Taehyung looks up at the deep, eternal black of the
night sky, dotted with flurries of snow, as Jeongguk wraps his scarves up tight around his neck. He
looks down in question when he feels a beanie being pulled over his hair, mittened hand smoothing
his sideburns down against his cheeks.

“You’re going to get a head cold,” Jeongguk says, ensuring that it sits right on Taehyung’s hair.
“No hat, no mittens. You can’t get sick so close to opening night. It sucks.”

There is a couple walking down the sidewalk over Jeongguk’s shoulder, backs to them. Taehyung
only catches a glimpse of them before they disappear into a cafe together, but for a moment thinks
he recognizes them. One with hair as dark as rural sky, with his arm around the waist of someone
carrying a plastic bag full of clementines.

“Jeongguk.”

“Yeah?”

“I have something else to tell you.”

“Oh?” Jeongguk sweeps Taehyung’s bangs out of his eyes, finally satisfied with his handiwork. He
holds his hand out, and Taehyung takes it. “Let’s hear it.”

“I see invisible people.”

Without missing a beat, Jeongguk replies, “I know.”

Taehyung sputters, breath mushrooming in clouds around his face. “Y-you do? How?”

“Because you saw me.”

“I don’t follow.”

“You stayed behind hours and hours at the studio to teach me. You told me I was a good dancer,
without a but. ‘You’re good, but too focused on perfection. You’re good, but I can still see you
when you dance. I want to see the character you play. Not you.’ You saw me, an understudy. The
most invisible person of all.”

It hurts in Taehyung’s chest to hear Jeongguk say this all so frankly.

“Of course I see you,” he says.

“Who else did you mean?” Jeongguk asks, peering into Taehyung’s face, and he shakes his head.

“Never mind you.”

“Mean,” Jeongguk pouts, sticking his lower lip out.

This part of the night was not part of the game plan. If it had been, Taehyung would have cleared
away the six or so empty chips bags on the coffee table from the Mesozoic era, folded the blankets
on the couch into some semblance of order, or put his shoes on the actual shoe rack by the door
because Jeongguk eats wooden floor the second they walk in.

“Sorry, sorry,” Taehyung says, locking the front door behind them as Jeongguk peels himself off
the hardwood. “Yeah, it’s kind of a nightmare in here.”

“Not one for cleaning, huh?” Jeongguk says. He yanks his shoes off where he sits, and Taehyung
has to take a moment to stand back and reconcile the image of someone else in his apartment for
the first time in months. It almost feels too small for two voices. “That’s ok. I’m probably worse.
At least your place is new enough to take this kind of treatment.”

“Why, do you live in a matchbox?”

“Something like that. The other week we all got a notice from the landlord to use the heater
sparingly because it kept short-circuiting the electricity in the entire building.”

“Oh, Christ. How are you supposed to live in the winter without the heat on?”

“Lucky for me I’m at the company the whole day. Sucks for my roommate.”

“How’s he holding up?”

“He says he hugs his Macbook charger to sleep,” Jeongguk says, and Taehyung laughs.

“You can hit the on button for the heater. Thermostat’s by the kitchen.” Taehyung gathers up the
chip bags in an armful, deposits them in the trash in a storm of crinkling plastic, and begins ripping
the blankets up from between the couch cushions. “I’ll try to clean this disaster up.”

“Let me help!”

“No, I can—”

Taehyung’s nose meets Jeongguk’s cheek when he turns to protest, handfuls of fleece clutched in
his hands where Jeongguk is trying to tug them out of his grasp. This close, he can smell
Jeongguk’s hairspray and the milky scent of Jeongguk’s skin.

“I can do it,” Taehyung says, breathless. He tries stepping away, but Jeongguk pulls at the blanket
until Taehyung is pressed against him again.

“Okay,” he says.

No cleaning actually gets done. Jeongguk leans in and kisses Taehyung, this time without scarves
in the way, and this time in the safe, rumbling warmth of Taehyung’s apartment. It’s a long slow
slide into mindlessness with only the sounds of their mouths meeting to punctuate the silence.

“You sleep out here?” Jeongguk asks. He’s sitting down now, in Taehyung’s nest of pillows and
blankets. “Do you not have a bed?”

“No, I have one.” Taehyung wraps his arms around Jeongguk’s neck, settling down onto
Jeongguk’s lap. “It’s just, uhm. Dusty.”

“Because you don’t sleep in it.”

“I guess not.” He leans in, so that his words are spoken against Jeongguk’s lips. “But the couch is
nice enough.”

Jeongguk kisses differently from Seojun. Taehyung doesn’t want to make this comparison, but it
comes so naturally that he finds it would be fruitless to push it away. No, Jeongguk kisses him for
the sake of kissing. Slow and unbothered. A little clumsy, and a little shy. He blushes when
Taehyung pulls away and tries to look at anything else but Taehyung’s face, but meets his gaze
when Taehyung puts a hand to his cheek.

“I don’t want you to go.”

“I didn’t say I had to,” Jeongguk says.

“Then, stay?” Taehyung asks, running his hand down the plane of Jeongguk’s chest, fingers
catching in the gaps between buttons. Jeongguk shivers.

“If that’s what you want, then yes.”

If Taehyung is unaccustomed to seeing someone else in his apartment, he is exponentially

unprepared for the way Jeongguk sits back and lets him undo the buttons of his shirt, and the way
Jeongguk puts his hands to the waistband of Taehyung’s pants and undoes the button and zipper.

“Is this okay?” Jeongguk asks, when Taehyung’s hands still on his chest, thumbs hooked into the
collar where he had been ready to push it off of Jeongguk’s shoulders.

“Yeah. Keep going.”

But Jeongguk doesn’t push it. Even when he gets Taehyung’s pants off, sitting in Jeongguk’s lap in
only his briefs and his shirt, they go back to kissing. With only one layer of thin fabric between
them, Taehyung can feel the heat of Jeongguk’s skin bleed through onto his. He rocks against him.
The space between his legs is hot and already beginning to ache.

“Do you want to?” Jeongguk asks. Taehyung slots his hands down to press up against the heat
between Jeongguk’s legs, too, enjoying the full-body shudder that runs through Jeongguk’s
muscles when he does. “I—”

“Can we?” Taehyung says. “Right here. I want you.”

“I don’t—I don’t have anything,” Jeongguk says, looking crestfallen. “I didn’t think—”
“Shh. That’s fine, considering I have plenty,” Taehyung says, kissing Jeongguk’s nose and
clambering off of his lap. Okay, this is partly the truth. There should be a box of open condoms
somewhere in his bedroom, along with a ton of lube, but Taehyung isn’t sure where he’d put it after
Seojun had moved out. It could be in the dregs of his closet and he would be none the wiser.

He eventually finds it under his bathroom sink next to the four or so boxes of toothpaste, two
bottles of half-used lube in the box of condoms.

“I found them!” he says, victorious.

Having sex on the couch has never been artful. Taehyung doesn’t expect it to suddenly be any
better now, but it’s not embarrassing either. When he slips, Jeongguk grabs him around his waist,
and Taehyung has to fight down laughter as Jeongguk tries to figure out how to arrange their limbs
so that Taehyung’s calves don’t cramp in the position which they’re straddling his thighs.

“Give me the lube?” Jeongguk asks. He leans into Taehyung and reaches for the bottle, fingers
falling short where it stands on the coffee table. It’s sticky, and Taehyung feels half-bad for getting
a dollop on Jeongguk’s belly instead of his fingers, but he doesn’t have time to think that hard
about it. He shimmies his underwear off and has to clutch hard at Jeongguk’s shoulders at the
sensation of fingers against him. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Taehyung says, breath coming hard and fast. Jeongguk works his fingers slowly,
humming when Taehyung whimpers, then holding his hand still for Taehyung to fuck himself
slightly on Jeongguk’s fingers.

“You’re way better at this than me,” Jeongguk says, face hot when Taehyung undoes the
fastenings of Jeongguk’s pants and pulls them down to his knees. His cock is hard and wet with
pre-come already, lying against his stomach. He whines when Taehyung takes it in his hand, tacky
with lube, pumping it a few times with just enough friction for Jeongguk’s breath to hitch in his
throat. “Ah, don’t tease.”

“Hmm,” Taehyung says, letting Jeongguk’s cock go and enjoying the soft slap it makes against his
belly. “Okay, let me help you.”

Jeongguk actually tears open the condom wrapper with his hands, and not his teeth. It’s little
details like this that Taehyung loves even in moments like this. His hips jump when he rolls it on,
sensitive to the touch, and Jeongguk moans again when Taehyung squeezes lube onto him and
jerks him through the condom some more to spread it down the shaft.

“I said don’t tease!”

“Impatient,” Taehyung says. He presses into Jeongguk and lines the head of Jeongguk’s cock up
against his entrance, holding steady as he sinks down upon it. Whimpers slip out between his lips
as Jeongguk guides him down, down, until Taehyung is seated upon his lap and shivering at the
sensation of being so full. “Ah, Jeongguk.”

“Y-yeah.”

“I’m going to move.”

“Please,” Jeongguk rasps.

So Taehyung does, rocking against him. Jeongguk pulls him down for more kisses, mouth needy
and searching. He sucks Taehyung’s tongue into his mouth. His hands are tight on Taehyung’s
hips, not enough to bruise. Taehyung thinks it might be too much to ask for that just yet, so he
doesn’t.

He can feel Jeongguk’s orgasm coming first, if the raggedness of Jeongguk’s breath says anything.
His breaths come out hot against the skin of Taehyung’s neck and his body tightens as his hips
stutter to a stop. “Fuck,” he says, chest heaving, slick with sweat. “You didn’t—”

“Ah!”

Jeongguk strokes him off fast, hand slipping with the pre-come that leaked down the length of
Taehyung’s cock. He’s still inside Taehyung, who makes no effort to stop himself from rocking
back onto it some more. The overstimulation makes the entirety of Jeongguk’s body shiver.
“Come,” Jeongguk finishes. Taehyung braces a hand against his shoulder and comes, hard, onto
Jeongguk’s skin.

“There.” Jeongguk allows his head to drop back against the couch. “Fuck. Taehyung—ah, wait—”

Taehyung eases himself off gently, and giggles when he presses close for another kiss. “Good?”

“Good,” Jeongguk says, hands shaking against Taehyung’s chin when he reaches up to hold
Taehyung’s face steady for a kiss.

“Do you wanna take a shower?”

“I want to lie down, but I don’t know how well two people are going to fit on a couch.”

“Oh. Uhm, I can—”

“You said you bed was really dusty. Let’s just get the sheets washed.”

“But—”

“I’m really good at laundry,” Jeongguk says.

He doesn’t really leave any room for Taehyung to argue. Taehyung watches him stand up, jelly-
legged but resolute, and has to blink in confusion when Jeongguk asks him where he keeps his
laundry basket.

“Uh, in the bathroom?”

Jeongguk is one hundred percent serious about laundering Taehyung’s entire bed. He goes into his
room to help, only to get Jeongguk sneezing at the dust motes that have flown up into the air when
he peeled the sheets back from the covers.

“You weren’t kidding,” he says, eyes watery.

“Why would I kid about the sorry state of my bed?”

What a weird way to end date night, with the both of them stuffing his sheets into the washing
machines downstairs, wearing Taehyung’s warmups and sweats. Weird, but good.

“Is there something wrong with your bed that you don’t sleep in it?”

“Not exactly with the bed,” Taehyung says. As the water begins to run, he measures out detergent
in a cup and pours it into the pull-out drawer. “Remember I told you that I walked in on my ex
cheating on me?”
“Mhmm?”

“Well, if you put two and two together.”

A beat of horrified silence settles between them. “No. Did he?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty hard to scrub the image out of your mind, of your boyfriend fucking someone
else in the bed you guys share,” Taehyung says, slamming the detergent drawer shut with more
force than he’d wanted. “I haven’t slept in it for a while. The couch is easier to fall asleep and wake
up in.”

“Is it okay if I want to share it with you?”

“Yeah,” Taehyung says, and squeaks in surprise when Jeongguk’s arms wrap around his waist.
The ground vanishes from beneath his feet when he’s lifted up, and Jeongguk sets him atop the
washing machine. “Hey!”

“I’ve always wanted to try this,” Jeongguk muses, standing between Taehyung’s legs. “But I think I
just made you even taller than me than you already are, so some ragrets.”

Taehyung can’t say why tears come to his eyes—he’s hardly sad, and his heart didn’t feel too full
just now, but the sight of Jeongguk with him, the idea of Jeongguk in his bed, is suddenly too much
to bear.

“Hey, what—?”

“Nothing,” Taehyung says, feeling silly for these tears, but knowing Jeongguk won’t laugh at him.
“I think I love you.”

Someone does laugh, and it’s not Jeongguk. He wears a bright orange bomber jacket, leaning
against the doorway to the laundry room. A pair of sunglasses rests on his head. Tonight, he’s
eating a handful of cherries.

“Hope?”

“Thought I’d drop in one last time before opening night.” He gives Taehyung a once-over. "Nice
sex glow."

"Fuck you."

"Nah. I think he's got that covered."

Taehyung snorts, despite himself. “Last time, huh?”

“Why, gonna miss me?”

“Like hell I will.”

“Wow. Thought we had something.”

“I do have question,” says Taehyung. Hope grunts.

“Okay, shoot.”

"I can see you guys."

"Uh-huh."

"But you're invisible."

"Quite."

“Am I crazy?”

“You know, I find that the people who are never actually ask that question.”

Taehyung snorts. “Thanks, dude.”

“A real doozy of a guy you got there, Taehyung,” says Hope, nodding at Jeongguk. “Passion was
right about him, I guess. Hold onto him, got it?”

“Got it.”

“My name is Park Jimin.” He gives a wink and two-finger salute. “Break a leg next weekend.”

Opening night hurtles towards them, and in the rush of stage setup, rehearsal, more rehearsal,
fittings, and dress rehearsal, the days pass them by in mere heartbeats. Still, in the time between
heartbeats, Taehyung and Jeongguk find time to steal kisses in the dressing room before classes
end, or late at night during their after-hours rehearsals—the last of them this time around, for who
knows where Jeongguk will be assigned for the next, post-holiday shows.

“Are you nervous for tomorrow night?”

Right now, they lie together in Taehyung’s bed, freshly laundered from the week before. Taehyung
would be lying if he said it felt completely perfect to be in his bed again, but Jeongguk’s body
beside his is a welcome weight. He presses kisses to the back of Taehyung’s neck.

“Always a little nervous. Never goes away, even with time.”

“I know I am.”

“You’ll do amazing. And god forbid you need to take my place, you’ll do amazing then, too.”

Jeongguk doesn’t answer him right away. Then, “I love you.”

Taehyung’s eyes fly open.

“I love you,” Jeongguk repeats, as if to taste the words on his tongue properly this time. “Even if
you’re not ready to love me back yet. I just want you to know that I do.”

“Jeongguk—” Taehyung tosses in the circle of his arms. “Jeongguk, I’m not—unready.”

“I know,” Jeongguk says, eyes at half-mast as he looks down at Taehyung’s mouth. “I love you,
even if it means you need extra patience here and there. No matter what has happened in the past, I
love you regardless.”

And, suddenly, it dawns on Taehyung exactly which invisible person Jeongguk is.
The day of opening night is icy with snowstorms. Danseurs and ballerinas alike hunch over
themselves as they hurry under the overhangs of the building to get out of the sleet and ice.
Taehyung himself nearly slips on a patch of ice on the staircase leading up to the theater doors.

“Can someone lend me a safety pin?” shouts a sugar plum fairy, hurrying down the hallway of
dressing rooms, skirt bouncing with her movement. Taehyung dodges out of her way and opens the
door to the men’s dressing room. A flurry of activity greets him, and he drops his duffel bag to find
a corner to himself and step into his costume.

“Starting to wish right around now that male principals get their own private rooms,” he says when
Jihan accidentally elbows him later, trying to squeeze into his toy soldier costume. Gold glitter
rains down on the floor.

“I wouldn’t.” Jihan helps with the toggles at the front of Taehyung’s nutcracker suitjacket, wiry
with gold thread. “The nerves would drive me out of my mind if I had to be alone. Are you
nervous?”

“I won’t be once I get onstage, but right now? I really want to die.”

“Don’t die. Break a leg,” Jihan says, tossing Taehyung’s pair of tights to him. “You’ll do great,
you’ve been practicing this show like mad. Okay—stage director wants to talk to the toy soldiers
one last time about some of the props, so I’ll see you later?”

“See you later.”

Taehyung goes through the motions of putting on his makeup. The makeup artist comes by to fix
up some details, clucking at his work on his eyeliner, and then—then, it’s showtime. The
nutcracker prince does not show up until the latter half of act I, scene i, so there’s a fair bit of
waiting backstage that Taehyung has to do. He stays behind, adjusting a finicky bow in the ties of
his suit, then the faux hair of his Nutcracker headdress.

The gentle roar of an opening night audience starting to trickle in filters through the space under
the door. Taehyung hoists the headdress up in his arms and makes his way out of the dressing
room. He barely has a foot into the hallway when he promptly runs into someone.

“Oh!”

“Jeongguk?”

“Sorry, I just wanted to come find you and say good luck.” Jeongguk is done up in a toy soldier
costume identical to Jihan’s. Two comically round spots of bright red blush are dusted onto the
apples of his cheeks, and his lips are powdered white except for a spot of lipstick in the center of
his mouth. Outside the harsh glare of stage lights, he looks ridiculous. He balances his helmet on
his hip.

“Thank you,” Taehyung says. The nutcracker head gets caught between them even though
Taehyung makes the effort to hold it out of the way when he leans in, and presses a careful kiss to
Jeongguk’s cheek. “I’ll see you after the show. Let’s go out for dinner.”

“I’d like that,” Jeongguk says.

The show begins without any hiccups—unlike two years ago, when the moving stage that had the
giant Christmas tree got jammed between scene changes, and the stage crew was in a state of high
panic for one straight minute until they got it working again. Taehyung stands in the dark wings to
the left side of the stage in a gaggle of mice and a few toy soldiers.
“I’m proud of you.”

Taehyung turns to see Passion standing beside him, face illuminated a wintry indigo by the stage
lights. He slides Taehyung a glance. A festive pop of red sweater peeks out from under his
omnipresent black jacket today.

“Yeah?”

“Proud of how far you’ve come.”

“I have a lot of thanks I owe you guys, even though you all could work on the introduction thing a
little more.”

Passion chuckles. “You did it all yourself, Taehyung. Perhaps we have shown you reasons to
remember us, but you have gotten here because you wanted it.”

“I should give credit where it’s due.”

“We can’t save everyone,” says Passion. “Happens all the time. What we have to do is know that
we tried.”

Taehyung looks back at him, and this time, Passion meets his eyes.

“Nutcracker, you’re up in two!”

Passion is gone, replaced by a toy soldier who’s offering to help Taehyung get his headdress on. So
he slips it over his face, gets assistance in clipping it down so it doesn’t budge, checks his shoes
one last time, and leaps onstage.

Opening night is a success.

A relief comes over Taehyung’s bones when he leads Mina up to center stage during cast
goodbyes, bowing low and deep to thunderous applause. Once opening night comes and goes, the
rest of the shows until closing night are easy, repetitive at worst. Taehyung is flagged down
between the stage and the dressing room by his brother and sister, who thrust a holiday bouquet
each into his arms. The obligatory pictures are taken—with a crew of toy soldiers, and a scattering
of sugar plum fairies, and with Mina, of course, even though Taehyung can feel the sweat trickling
down his spine after a full show of dancing.

“Are you busy later?”

“Going out to dinner,” Taehyung says. He dabs at the lingering sweat at his hairline that remains
even after he’s changed into his own clothes. After the high of adrenaline, he feels exhausted, and
the weight of his duffel is heavier than it usually is on his shoulder.

“No,” whines Eunjin. “We wanted to go out with you!”

“Rain check?” Taehyung asks, sheepish.

“I bet it’s a date, Eunjinnie,” Jongkyu says, rolling his eyes. “Let’s not bother him.”

“Taehyung?”

Jeongguk appears at Taehyung’s shoulder, looking to his siblings with owlish curiosity. He’s
wiped his makeup off too, though the center of his lips is still slightly stained by the rouge.

“Oh, Jeonggukie. These are my brother and sister. Guys, Jeongguk. He’s one of the danseurs for
the Russian trepak.”

“Jeonggukie, huh,” Jongkyu says pointedly. He mouths at Taehyung, date.

“Bye,” Taehyung says, even as Jeongguk blushes. “I’ll be home for Christmas, I’ll see you guys
then.”

“Someone says he’s here to meet you,” Jeongguk says, jabbing his thumb behind his shoulder.
“Afterwards, we can go?”

“Okay!”

“I’ll wait for you here.”

There are still people milling through the dressing room hallway, half-undone, giving hugs, taking
photos. Taehyung has to dodge a posse of kids who played the Stahlbaum children, who stiffen at
the sight of him, and he laughs as he steps aside to let them pass.

He rounds the corner, and—

“Taehyung.”

What?

“Seojun?”

No.

No, no, no.

“What do you want?” Taehyung says. The questions comes out brusque and gravelly in a voice that
he can hardly recognize. “Why are you here?”

“I came to see your opening night,” Seojun says. His hair is cropped shorter than Taehyung last
saw it. “I heard you were the principal this holiday. I’m really proud of you. You danced amazing.”

“Thanks.” Taehyung grits his teeth. “Anything else?”

“I wanted to apologize,” says Seojun. God, Taehyung fucking hates this. His voice sounds the
same, too, the same one that had gripped at his nightmares for weeks after The Incident. No, fuck
that. He’s tired of referring to what happened with a single name, a little easy package to digest.
After Taehyung had walked in on him having sex with someone else in their bed. “I’m sorry for
what I did. I know it’s too little, too late. But I have to say it anyway.”

“And it’s so easy for you, isn’t it?” Taehyung laughs a cold, barking laugh. “You come here, say
sorry, and it’s easy for you to go on your way, feeling good that you’ve absolved yourself of this
guilt. While I have to live with the pain of what happened, while I have to watch people I care
about put together the bits of me you destroyed. You’re sorry, is that it?”

“What is it you want me to say?”

There are some things that we can never forget. But they just become a part of us, one that we
don’t think about anymore. They become something that we no longer allow to touch us. Separated
by too much time to mean anything anymore.

“I don’t want you to say anything,” Taehyung says, clenching his fingers around the strap of his
duffel. “It doesn’t matter what you say today. Or tomorrow, or years from now. What matters is
what you did, and how that changed the way I look at everything, treat everyone. Is that something
you can fix with sorry? How can you answer to that?”

“I—”

“But you know? I don’t want to be an bitter, scared person anymore,” Taehyung says. This is
where the shaking starts, the same kind of uncontrollable shivering that wracks his body from the
night Jeongguk had walked into the dance studio when Taehyung had least expected him to. “And
the person I love doesn’t deserve to feel the lingering control that this kind of pain inflicts on
someone. So you can take your apology and leave, and let me forget about you in peace.”

“I’m sorry,” is all Seojun says, after a moment of silence. “There’s nothing else I can really say.”

“Then don’t,” Taehyung says. “Goodbye. Don’t come back.”

Taehyung whirls just as the tears start to blur his vision. At first he walks. Then he stumbles over
his own feet trying to speed up and get as far away as he can, and he hears Jeongguk’s voice high
with surprise and worry.

“Taehyung?”

“I’m sorry, I—” He doesn’t slow down, and the sight of Jeongguk’s face makes the tears fall in
earnest. “I can’t, I’m sorry.”

“Taehyung, what—hey! Taehyung! What’s wrong?”

“I have to go,” Taehyung says, taking the stairwell down to the lobby. Jeongguk’s voice echoes
around the narrow space and off the high ceiling as he runs after him. His boot slap loudly against
the linoleum stairs.

“I’m coming with you,” Jeongguk says. “What’s wrong, Taehyung? Who was that? Was that—oh
god, was that—?”

“Why did he come back?” Taehyung shouts, coming to a stop on a landing and turning around to
look at Jeongguk, who balks where he is on the staircase. “Why? When I thought I could be
happy? When I have you? When I thought I had everything?” Just when the invisible people all
believed in me?

“Taehyung,” Jeongguk says, in a voice like he’s talking to a frightened, wounded animal. “It’s
okay. It’ll be okay. Don’t cry, please.”

“I’m sorry,” Taehyung says. He shakes his head. None of his words make sense to him right now,
and he turns to run down the stairs again.

“Taehyung, please—”

The lobby is emptying out now that most of the audience has filtered, slowly, through the doors of
the entrance. The air dances with clouds of breaths, and Taehyung swipes at his eyes as he dodges
a family with a little girl in a red coat and takes the stairs two at a time.

“Wait, Taehyung!” Jeongguk’s voice is close behind, and Taehyung senses the people near him
turn around to see who is causing all the ruckus. “Taehyung, the stairs are covered in—”

Fuck. Of course. The third step down, the same one Taehyung had slipped on this afternoon upon
his arrival. His shoe catches on an icy patch, the word turns on its side, and the next thing
Taehyung hears is the thud of his body meeting the pavement.

His duffel lands with a rustle beside him, and out of the corner of his eye he can see the pale white
of his shoes spill out onto the cement.

“I can’t,” he says hazily, head throbbing when a dark silhouette appears in his face. “Jeonggukie?”

“Taehyung, oh my God, Taehyung—” There’s a glisten in Jeongguk’s eyes as he puts a hand to

Taehyung’s face. Something warm and sticky is collecting on his temple. “Don’t move.”

“Jeonggukie, I’m sorry.”

“Stop it!”

Taehyung thinks he sees someone standing behind Jeongguk, who is kneeled at his side. He’s tall,
with a dark blue scarf and a pair of headphones around his neck, and he crouches down alongside
Jeongguk to put a hand on Taehyung’s thigh.

“He’ll be okay,” says Memory, and Jeongguk startles just as hard as Taehyung first had at the sight
of Passion on his couch. “Don’t worry, Jeongguk.”

“Who are—?”

“I am nobody,” says Memory. “And I would say, ‘just like you,’ but it looks like, now, you are no
longer an invisible person.”

The verdict is a sprained knee and “you’re lucky you got away without a concussion.”

“I don’t know if I really want a talking-to right now about what I could have done, like ‘take the
stairs slower.’”

“I won’t tell you that because I know you are not an idiot, so I will therefore speak to you
accordingly.” Memory perches on the edge of the couch and watches Taehyung ice the swelling
around his knee, a towel spread on the cushion to catch the condensation. He wouldn’t have cared
in the past, what with a nest of blankets to protect the suede, but Taehyung has actually been
sleeping in his bed (with Jeongguk) recently. It feels a little weird to be sitting out here, and not,
well, lying down in there.

Taehyung is wordless, hissing when he even just brushes the bruising on his leg. The flesh around
his right knee is so swollen that Taehyung doesn’t even appear to have a kneecap, obscured under
puffy, bruised skin that’s hot and tender to the touch. His leg brace is slung over the backrest of the
couch.

“Jeongguk is worried sick about you.”

“I acted so strangely last night, I wouldn’t blame him if he was afraid to talk to me.” Taehyung
scoots backwards to free up a cushion. “You can sit, you know.”

“I’m fine. I’m not going to sit on a couch you had sex with him on.”
“Wow,” Taehyung says, dryly. “I didn’t realize that was such a tick for you.”

Memory props his chin in his hand, elbow resting on his knee. “I’m sorry you can’t perform for
this holiday season. I watched you work really hard for it. How long is your treatment supposed to
last?”

“Several weeks. It’ll take about two months for full strength and functionality to return. It sucks
real bad.” Taehyung shifts his ice pack. “At least Jeongguk can perform tonight. I’m glad it was
him who was my understudy. He’ll dance beautifully.”

“That he will.”

“Is that what you meant, that he’s not an invisible person anymore?”

“Partially,” says Memory.

“What’s the other part?”

“That called him the person you love to the person who hurt you so much,” says Memory.

“Oh,” Taehyung says. He has to pause and think about what he had said, but it seems like he had.
“I guess I did.”

“And I know you’re regretting how you acted last night, or at least, you might be thinking you
could have acted differently. But you’ve confronted the memory of your pain. You acknowledge it,
and you move forward anyway. Things get better from here. They always do.”

“So that’s what Hope meant? I mean, Jimin? That things will get worse before they get better.”

“Probably. He’s got a firecracker mouth but I’ve learned to trust him when he says these things.”

“That seems to be a recurring theme with all of you.”

“Does it? Interesting.” Memory puts his hands on his knees, stands up, and hops onto the floor, in a
gesture that is uncharacteristically childlike for how regal he usually is. “Well, I best be going. I’ve
enjoyed our time together more than you know, Taehyungie. My name is—”

“Wait,” Taehyung says. “I want to remember this. I want to remember you guys.”

Memory’s frown is puzzled. “Don’t worry. How could you forget? Even if we fade from your
thoughts we are always around you.”

“How? How can you be, if you guys won’t come back?”

“Passion,” Memory says, taking Taehyung’s hands in his own. “Time, Joy, Hope. Memory. These
are the things we live for. We invisible people that make the greatest heroes or the darkest villains.
These are the things that we have when we feel like we have nothing left. They aren’t much, but
they keep us going.” Memory thinks for a moment. “And Jeongguk.”

“Can you tell me what he is?”

“The answer to that is obvious, Taehyung.”

“I want to remember this,” Taehyung repeats, but this time, it sounds like a goodbye.

“You will,” says Memory, and his smile is as dimpled as it had been on the first day, spring-fresh
over a bag of orange rinds. “Take care, Taehyungie. My name is Kim Namjoon.”

Jeongguk visits him immediately after the show, smelling of flowers and makeup remover.

“How are you feeling?” he asks. His mittened hands are wrapped around a box of takeout.
Taehyung tilts his head back and forth, a universal sign for could be worse, could be better as he
leans on the armrests of his crutches. “Can I come in?”

He sets down the box of food on the kitchen counter along with a bag of cans—two of them, one of
Coke, one of beer. Taehyung clumsily makes his way around him back into the living room, where
Jeongguk turns to look at him. His eyes are searching.

“How was tonight’s show?”

“Good, good,” Jeongguk says. “You should sit down.”

“It’s a process,” Taehyung says. It’s a good thing he’s a ballet dancer, for the amount of hopping
around on one foot would be brutal for anyone else. He sinks down onto the sofa, holding onto his
injured leg and swinging it up onto the cushions.

“Mina says I was holding her too tight around her bodice during the lifts, but otherwise it was a
smooth run,” Jeongguk says. He takes a seat on the coffee table. There’s only one bag of chips on
it now, clipped neatly shut with a binder clip. “Do you want dinner?”

“You should eat.”

“I got enough for us both.” Jeongguk licks his lips, chapped with winter cold. “I wanted to—after
you went to the hospital last night, I didn’t have a chance to talk to you again.”

“Did you wait all night?”

“Eunjin came out to tell me you were fine, that I should go home and get some rest if I was going
to fill in today,” Jeongguk says. “So I did, but I didn’t get much sleep anyway.”

“I’m sorry. Not only for how weird I acted last night but the way I treated you. Yelling at you on
the stairs, not listening, and stuff. You can tell me you told me so.” Taehyung picks at a thread in
the Velcro fastenings of his leg brace.

“Taehyung.”

“Yeah.”

“Can I say something?”

“Yes.”

“When I told you, I love you, even if you aren’t ready,” says Jeongguk, “I meant it. I don’t know
who that man was, beyond the fact his name is Seojun, and he hurt you in ways that I’ll never
understand. But I do know I mean something to you—and if that something is slow to come to the
surface, then that’s okay.”

Taehyung stares long and hard at Jeongguk, who has his eyes on his lap. Then he stands, and
Taehyung feels his eyes flutter when he leans in to press a kiss to his forehead. “I’ll see you soon,”
he whispers.
The door clicks shut quietly behind him when he leaves.

Just around now, Taehyung expect someone to appear beside him, with a little quip, or a dry
comment. You should have stopped him, or something. No one does. They’ve come and gone:
Time, Joy, Hope, Memory. Seokjin, Hoseok, Jimin, Namjoon. They all must have believed he no
longer needed any of them to arrive where he is now, except—

Passion.

Passion, with his slow, tired voice, and his ever-growing collection of Christmas lights. He has not
yet left, which means, there is one last decision Taehyung must make before he does.

Taehyung has spent many an evening sitting on this blue suede couch thinking. Thinking until his
eyes hurt and his brain was tired. Now he sits, thinking, wondering what he’s missing, and then,
the answer is clear as Christmas day.

On Christmas Eve, Taehyung bundles up in a long jacket and scarves and decides to hail a taxi.
Wet stairs down into a subway station is a recipe for disaster with his current state of health, even
thouh he’s started to get the hang of using crutches in the past several days.

“Skylark Ballet Company, please,” he says, shimmying into the backseat of the taxicab. The
cellophane wrap around his bouquet of flower crinkles where they rest against the metal frames of
his crutches.

“Going to see the Nutcracker tonight?”

“I am.”

The taxi driver looks up into his rearview mirror. “Know someone in the cast?”

“I do,” Taehyung says, softly.

Yes, Taehyung does. He knows someone in that cast, someone who leaps onstage in a streak of red
and gold, wearing a headdress both comical and timeless. His style of his movements is little
different from Taehyung’s, but every step is in sync with what Taehyung knows. Someone who
was invisible.

Someone he loves.

“Taehyung?” Jeongguk asks, when the show concludes, and Taehyung lets himself backstage. He
nearly trips over his own feet when he sees him standing in the hallway branching off from the
dressing rooms, where it is less overrun with people changing back into their clothes. There was an
impromptu round of applause for Taehyung when he first got in, sugar plum fairies, mice, toy
soldiers and Stahlbaums alike hanging out of their dressing rooms to clap for him like he’d just
returned from war.

“Jeonggukie,” Taehyung says, turning to him on his crutches. “I came to see you tonight.” He
holds out the flowers, a little soft from being held in his lap all evening.

Jeongguk accepts them, looking from the blooms to Taehyung. “Thank you,” he says. “I wouldn’t
have been able to do it without you.”

“Perhaps I taught you the steps, but you were the one who kept the show going,” Taehyung says.
“Jeongguk, I—I know what I want. These past months dancing this show with you taught me how
to smile again. Even if some things still hurt, it doesn’t mean the time with you meant anything
less, or that my happiness with you isn’t real.”

“Taehyung?”

“I’m ready. I’ve been ready for longer than I knew, I—I love you.”

Man, it’s not often that Taehyung will get applause and an encore in one night without having even
gotten onstage. The clank of his crutches meeting the floor is jarring when Jeongguk reaches for
him, and he throws his arms around Jeongguk’s neck. This time, the applause is couple with
shouting and whooping, and a couple of wolf-whistles from Jihan.

“Okay, you might have to help pick my crutches up again,” Taehyung murmurs into Jeongguk’s
ear. The laugh that vibrates through Jeongguk’s body warms Taehyung down to his toes.

“I’ll carry you.”

The Nutcracker performs as well as their company can hope for during the seasonal run, up until
New Years’ Eve. The show that day is on matinee schedule. Jeongguk is stomping the snow from
his boots at Taehyung’s front doormat by late afternoon. The plan was to go out to dinner and then
hit the aquarium, but they’re both lying to themselves. The shower alone ends up being an hour.

They go through the motions of waiting for the new year to come, curled up in bed watching
Krampus until it’s nearly midnight. Jeongguk sucks at staying awake—two minutes after the hour,
which they spent entirely on making out, he’s already starting to drift off.

“Why are you falling asleep on me,” Taehyung complains.

“I’ve been awake since seven AM, babe,” Jeongguk says.

Taehyung nudges Jeongguk with his good leg. “You’re no fun.”

“I’ll wake you up with a blowjob in the morning.”

“Ooh,” says Taehyung. “New Years’ Day BJ? I can’t say no to that.”

“Mmm. Good, right?”

Taehyung falls silent. The pain of his knee has lessened enough that he can sleep on his side now,
and he studies the angles of Jeongguk’s face.

“Hey, are you asleep?”

“Mm.” There’s a pillow crease in Jeongguk’s cheek. “Yeah.”

“I’m hungry.”

The silence Jeongguk gives him is withering, and Taehyung thinks he might have just fallen asleep
until Jeongguk cracks one eye open. “Now? But everything nearby is closed at this hour. Unless
you want me to get you something from the convenience store?”

“No, no. We have food in the kitchen. You want any?”

Jeongguk sits up, hair already starting to muss, a wild storm atop his head. “Well, okay. I guess I
wouldn’t mind some ramen. God, I shouldn’t be eating right now, whatever. Here, wait, don’t
bother with that.”

“Huh?”

Taehyung looks up to Jeongguk tugging the knee brace out of his hands, his face impossibly soft.
“Arm up, hold on tight.” The skin around Jeongguk’s shoulders is warm when Taehyung wraps his
arms around Jeongguk’s neck, making a noise of surprise when he’s hoisted out of bed.

“I could get used to this.”

Taehyung tucks his legs in as Jeongguk walks out feet first so as to not jostle his injury on the
doorframe. “Nice to be the one carried, for once?”

“Only by you.”

“I’d say I’m pretty good at it. You want me to hold you by the waist off your balcony one day and
sing the Lion King opening, you just let me know.”

Taehyung feels a full-belly laugh settle over his ribs as Jeongguk sets him down on the couch. His
eyes glitter, too, with laughter, and he drops a quick kiss on the crown of Taehyung’s head.

“I’ll cook something. What do you have?”

“I want Nongshim udon!”

“I’m going to make spicy Samyang, sure you don’t want that?” Jeongguk singsongs as he snags a
shirt off the back of a dining chair, sticking his arms through it as he kicks up a bustle in the
kitchen. Taehyung unapologetically admires his ass from here in his low-slung flannel pajamas.

“I’ll ask for that when I want to die.”

“Shame,” says a familiar voice, and Taehyung has finally learned not to startle. “Those are pretty
good, you know.”

“Oh, hey. It’s you. Long time no see.”

Passion sits beside him on the couch eating a roll of kimbap like a burrito, plastic wrap crinkled
around his fist like spiderwebs. He waves it in Jeongguk’s direction as he sets water on the burner
to boil. “You trust him in there?”

“He’s a much better cook than I am, to be honest.”

“That’s not saying much.”

“I suppose you’re right, huh?”

Crunches fill the space between them as Passion chews on a mouthful of radish and not enough
skirt steak. The both of them watch Jeongguk tear open a packet of ramen, though to his eyes it
must only be Taehyung who fondly looks upon him.

“It’s good to see you here again, Taehyung.”

He turns to him. “Yeah?”

“Good to see you here because you’re waiting for someone who matters to you, good to see you
here because you are happy.” Passion takes another animalistic bite of his kimbap roll and
Taehyung swallows the urge to make a dirty joke about the merits of phallic foods. “You ever
figure out what he is?”

Taehyung nods. Passion raises his eyebrows, picking a bit of spinach out of his teeth.

“Not bad at all. You’re a sharp one.”

“Do you like your noodles soggier or firmer?” asks Jeongguk from the stove. “Or al dente, as they
say it.”

“Soggier!” Taehyung calls.

“Well, I gotta get going. It was a pleasure meeting you, Taehyung. Don’t make me come back.”

Taehyung makes to stand up for a moment, then realizes it’s a bad idea, and sinks back into the
cushions. “Thank you—for everything. Thank you. You’re the last one.”

“Am I? Interesting. People don’t usually end with me.”

“People don’t usually start with you, though, either.”

“Touche.” Passion crinkles the plastic wrap up in his fist. “Until someday, punk.”

“Goodbye, Passion.”

“My name is Min Yoongi. Fuck some shit up for me out there.”

“You mean break a leg?”

“Haven’t you bascially achieved that?”

Taehyung laughs, and when he blinks his eyes open again, Yoongi is gone. He finds that he’ll miss
him.

“Here you go,” says Jeongguk, setting down a steaming bowl of udon on the coffee table in front
of the couch. “It’s super hot, be careful.”

Their chopsticks clink in a silence punctuated with the sound of shameless noodle-slurping, and for
Jeongguk, some obligatory sniffling as the heat of the spice packet sets in. Taehyung gives his nose
a cursory wipe and chuckles when he makes a grunt of displeasure, turning his face away to do it
himself.

“Someone’s rhinitis is too severe to be eating literal pain.”

“Tasty pain,” Jeongguk says.

“Jeongguk.”

“Mm,” he manages around a mouthful of fire ramen.

Taehyung leans closer. “Love,” he murmurs, softly enough that it Jeongguk could miss it if he
tried. He doesn’t, however, choking on his noodles, then inhaling, and plunging himself straight
into Hell as Taehyung dabs at his streaming eyes with a tissue and tries not to cry with laughter.
 “You can’t just say that when I’m eating,” Jeongguk says, eyes as red as the sauce of his noodles as
he blows his nose. God, yeah. Taehyung loves him, spicy-food-induced runny nose and all. “Why
all of a sudden?”

Taehyung simply cuddles close, cradling his bowl of Nongshim upon his belly as Jeongguk fights
the blush off his face and reaches for his ramen again. It’s not sudden at all, not when Yoongi had
first materialized on this same couch what felt like a lifetime ago, or when Namjoon had first
spoken to him over a pile of oranges, nails citron-yellow, or when Hoseok had appeared over a
bowl of katsudon.

Time is not so sudden. Somewhere, a man smiles, a man in a black coat with a watch that has no
numbers.

End Notes

• men (usually) do not dance en pointe in ballet for a number of reasons, which rly is too
bad
• that being said jeongguk has a+ ballet thighs
• and taehyung has a+ ballet fingers
• (something else to check out?)
• anyway happy birthday noran and nikkumeul please stop growing up, it ain’t right

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