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Minghao can see particularly well outside the lines of the set today—past the realistic woodwork of antique salons to the concrete of the warehouse around. One would think a near decade in front of the camera would prepare him for being dead centre of the frame today, but he can't stop his eyes from straying far out in all directions.
It's cold in the studio despite the heaters and the three layers he's wearing; March has been especially unforgiving this year. The shoot hasn't even begun and Soonyoung is being loud because it's a game of brains against Jeonghan and he sees life as an enjoyable obstacle course, but Minghao, as he is sometimes, is entirely somewhere else.
"Ah, eisa,” Jeonghan had whined to him once. “I really don’t think I was made for this.”
Five gruelling hours of practice had gotten them here, sweat all over the leather couch, stretched out thin like they were melting into it. Minghao had laughed. “I keep saying you need to eat more, hyung.”
Jeonghan had poked at his stomach with a tired hand, dropping his voice to a note pout-like. “You’re literally skinnier than me.”
But Jeonghan was wrong. Minghao was the one not made for this. In fact, there wasn’t anyone less made-for-this than Minghao, and more made-for-it than Jeonghan—for playing the camera and the people and the image, playing into their illusions and teasingly out of them. Keep them entertained and breathless and always back for more. Dead-centre, centre of attention.
“Yah, hyung.” Minghao blinks himself out of everything and sees Seungkwan looking down at him wide-eyed and on the verge of pouting. The chaos around him floods right back in. “You okay?”
One of the directors claps his hands, and Minghao can only offer a smile in response. It’s easy to slip into himself when he knows the cameras are rolling, and so Minghao shoves all his thoughts into a box and picks his concept for the day in retaliation to all the self-doubt. The game has begun.
“If we all keep our promise," he says, "we’re keeping our loyalty to each other.” He waves the pen in his hand around for effect. “And if you follow Jeonghan-hyung, you’re just here for the money.”
A "loyalty game", someone had thrown around. It was Seungkwan, Minghao's pretty sure. That's what today was. A test of who they are, where their alliances lie. It's probably not that serious, but Minghao likes to be.
“And if it’s Jeonghan you’re loyal to?”
Really, he should’ve expected this. Minghao had been the last to join the team, but he’d seen it first, he’s sure, before anyone else. Seungcheol's comment gets lost quickly enough today because they’re rolling, and because competing against Jeonghan is much more fun of a game than teasing Seungcheol. But it’s always been like this. It was sort of embarrassing in their trainee days, when Seungcheol would hover around in his trying-to-look-cool way with his cap and Jeonghan would reciprocate by staring and clinging and then being on the other side of the room, still staring.
But recently there’s been a boldness to Seungcheol that wasn’t there before—picking Jeonghan first for all their games, deaf to Seungkwan and Chan crying favouritism, still following him around like a lost puppy, but asking for attention.
Maybe it’s because they’re fucking, Minghao thinks. It’s probably because they’re fucking.
"Did they shake hands?" Jihoon asks now, when Seungcheol's turn is done, and they can see him getting up to leave Jeonghan's booth.
Minghao looks back down and shakes his head, standing up to demonstrate. "Just something like this probably," he says, bending down to brush a hand against Soonyoung's thigh. Jihoon laughs. The set has gotten warmer, with all the movement.
When Seungcheol returns, Seungkwan is stirring up a commotion about who's going to betray the team, and Minghao assumes it’s supposed to be a secret because not even Jisoo seems to know. But it’s always hard to tell with them.
Minghao had found out accidentally, really, that night at Seungcheol's place. Minghao had been the last to leave, having taken the initiative to cleanup as the most sober attendee. His knuckles were half a centimetre away from Seungcheol’s bedroom door when he’d heard it: Jeonghan’s voice breathless and swearing in ways very different to when he was losing in video games against Seokmin. He didn’t think Seungcheol would very much care that he’d cleaned up, or that he was leaving.
Now, Seungcheol is telling everyone, laughing, uncaring that everyone already suspects him of being the first deserter. "Jeonghan's being a lot more serious than you think," he says, "It's like he's filming a documentary." Seungkwan leaves for his turn, and Jihoon fills in his spot for the heckling. Minghao smiles to himself. It's so loud.
Jeonghan is always serious about his burdens, Minghao knows, and especially so about his jokes. He's known it since the day Jeonghan deceived him into thinking mussels are a form of currency and then stranded him in the shop to deal with it. He had been rightfully angry back then, young and naive as he was, but now Minghao thinks it was probably the first time he saw Jeonghan for who he really was. Why do you cheat so much? he would still come to ask many years later, but this was the Jeonghan who had knocked on the bathroom door the first week Minghao had become a trainee and talked to him in mismatched dialogue: where are you from? where were you staying till now? under the lukewarm spray of the shower.
Then, hyung, what's the word for that? What does this mean? and Jeonghan's patient smile and soothing voice saying dra-gon-fly, hard-boil-ed, us-u-a-lly.
"Jeonghan-ah," Seungcheol says now, halfway through the first round, eyes up where Jeonghan is, always. Jeonghan is looking down at them from behind the glass of his negotiation room with that smile of his, the accommodating one. "You're tired, right?"
Jeonghan nods. Minghao can imagine what their meeting turn must've looked like—Seungcheol, confident and on equal footing with Jeonghan as he always is, and Jeonghan equal parts flighty and at ease. Perhaps a little tired.
It's the usual, but years and years of watching relationships morph and reset around you will divulge even the smallest differences. Seungcheol and Jeonghan have been exactly that, recently—a little different. Sometimes it feels like you don't see them in the same space for days, and the next you do, they’re huddled close and holding hands, on a Vlive of all things.
This in-between isn't exactly what's new; it was there back when the company had decided their package deal wasn't needed anymore, and it was weird and bad because Jeonghan hates anything without smokescreens, unlike Seungcheol. If there’s one thing Minghao understands about Seungcheol over everything else, it’s that sincerity is not a weakness, doesn’t make you any less to show it. Seungcheol is afraid of a lot of things, but never of honesty.
But honesty is one thing, and the way Seungcheol has been pushing Jeonghan beyond his caged limit for everyone to see recently—that's entirely something else.
When it's Minghao's turn, he can see that Jeonghan really is tired.
"Have you already convinced the others?" he asks, and Jeonghan shrugs.
"Think for yourself, Myungho-yah. You know how they are."
So this is Jeonghan's strategy for him, to play on their common penchant for observation. It's always more questions and no answers with Jeonghan. Minghao leaves feeling a little peeled back, and he understands again, why everyone is trying so hard today. Of all the challenges they've faced together, Jeonghan is their dearest and most unbeatable one.
Before sending him off to a distant dream with only a gold ring as insurance, Minghao's mother had told him firmly: "Don't change yourself or let yourself be changed. Your loyalty is to yourself first."
Loyalty. Zhong. The same character that hung in calligraphy in his parent's bedroom.
It was learned with time, this way of living. Being an imagination of whispered rumours and the things he lets slip on camera. He would’ve probably been better off with a Youtube channel and the occasional vlog post, perhaps a podcast. Minghao wonders if that’s the problem, thinking that he owns himself, wanting to, when he wants to drown in the stage lights just as much.
And it bleeds everywhere, that sincerity, the act of it, even here, another set and forty cameras, another game Soonyoung will take an hour to understand. Minghao has spent his youth stacking these bricks, painting the canvas: wah, you’re really something else, Myungho-yah, they all say, and everything about him begins to feel insincere instead, guilty about an image of his own making.
Minghao looks down at the chaos below, and for a moment, he's sixteen again, off to the side of the practice room, watching and alone.
When he returns downstairs, Seungkwan has hatched a new plan. "We should just fight him physically," he's saying. "Tire him out."
The prospect of defeating Jeonghan has even Wonwoo jumping on the fist-fight bandwagon. "Let's just knock him in the back of the head."
In the end, they make it to the end of the first round with Jeonghan in one piece, but not their teamwork. As expected (at least by Minghao—and judging by the coerced confession, half the members), Seungcheol is on Jeonghan's side.
There's a flurry of you're ruining your image from Jihoon and a hyung, you can't do this to us from Chan, and vague shouting to accompany it from everyone else.
Minghao thinks about how he went to get his jacket from his van in the basement during a break mid-shoot and Jeonghan was there, three cars over, leaning against another van. Of course, Seungcheol was there, too, standing close and their pinkies hooked, the whisper of I'm always on your side, carrying easily through the hollow space between them. Minghao had abandoned his jacket and simply turned around. Nothing was worth walking into that landmine.
The makeup noonas are dabbing powder on their noses and handing fans around while the producers prepare for the second round. Minghao accepts his, waves it slowly, can only think: when did this become real? Was it real when the management had sat them down at twenty years-old and said to Seungcheol The fans like you and Jeonghan-ssi together. When they'd scolded Jeonghan for not doing enough, and Seungcheol for doing too much. When they didn't speak for weeks during the tour and after it, when they were finally speaking again months later, and nobody could figure out how.
By the time its Minghao's turn again, they've been on set for over five hours already. "Are you tired, hyung?" he asks as he walks in, and Jeonghan makes that face when he's trying not to let whatever it is get to him. "You didn't come to my side. Myungho."
Minghao smiles and thinks he'd feel lonely if he had to sit up here by himself. They're always all annoying and noisy, but they will not be in their twenties and annoying and noisy forever.
"It's about loyalty, hyung, that's all."
Downstairs, Jihoon had been ranting earlier— we're going to become plastic like this, all of us—and Seungcheol had cut through: Yah, Jeonghan is a member too. Of all of them, of course he would say that.
But here is Jeonghan, saying instead: "It's an entertainment show, that's all. You don't have to be so serious."
Jeonghan is loyal to himself. There can't be much more to being loyal to yourself, except knowing yourself fully. Or accepting that you can't. Minghao doesn't have that peace.
"I have my principles, hyung." And he thinks for the first time whether it's an arrogant thing to say, after so many years.
But Jeonghan only smiles and sticks a hand out. "I respect that, Myungho-yah," he says. "I admire you."
When he'd first arrived in Seoul, Minghao hadn't realised how easily he would end up breaking the promise he'd made to his mother. He was already somebody else entirely, when they hiked Cheonggyesan that cold winter morning for good luck, holding hands and holding onto their debut together. How can you have a dream as big as theirs without transforming in your entirety? His loyalty is to them as much as himself, as all of theirs to each other. This game is hilarious, now that Minghao thinks about it, fighting each other for an amount that would be worth a piece and a half of Seungcheol's favourite steak at most.
But they're no one if not entertainers, and Jeonghan is the master puppeteer, a winner again, at the end of round two.
In the final act, everyone seems to have had enough fun, except for Soonyoung who can never be placated. "I think the best ending is a funny one," he's saying.
Seokmin is similar to him in so many ways, but not like this: "Hyung, having fun is great and all, but let's keep our promises, please." Earnest to the marrow of his bone.
There was a girl Minghao liked in middle school, a pretty senior. She never saw Minghao as anything other than the scrawny kid she tutored, but he remembers there was nothing he wouldn't do for her—giving up his lunch ticket because she forgot the money, running across the building to fetch her jacket because she was cold, trekking all the way to her house to return the lip gloss she forgot at his place instead of just taking it to school or their next tutoring session. He thinks he would've tried following her to the same high school and college if he hadn't been shipped off to Seoul.
Minghao thinks this is probably where Mingyu's accusation comes from, the knowledge of what Seungcheol would do for Jeonghan: "I think the result will be affected by the leader today," he says, pointing to Seungcheol. "You'll have to decide whether to betray us or not."
Seungcheol who's always looking at Jeonghan, even when he's not looking back. Seungcheol is contemplating, Minghao can tell, and seriously at that. He wonders what makes it so difficult, why it's so different for him. Why he takes all the jabs against his character and humanity and only defends his potential betrayal by asking: "Why are you excluding Jeonghan? Isn't he a member too?"
All of them know this, they know it's a game. Why doesn't Seungcheol?
He goes up to the negotiation room, and there they are again, Jeonghan and Seungcheol, Seungcheol and Jeonghan, looking down at them, smiles on their faces, and Minghao is irrationally jealous for a fleeting moment, of whatever they are.
When he returns back down, it's all chaos, and then: "I actually took 40,000 won out," Seungcheol reveals, when he finishes writing his cheque. "So that Jeonghan gets some too, along with all of us."
Minghao should stop being surprised at this point, but it's not easy, this overwhelming awareness of them. This is one of those reasons that Seungcheol is the leader, he thinks. He never lets the scales tip.
In the end, Jeonghan gets his share, and still no one has betrayed each other.
It feels like such a perfectly simple culmination for a game seemingly with so many stakes. Now they're all splitting the money and thinking of where to spend it on group dinner, and it's so easy—easy, easy, all the time—with them.
Minghao ends up in the same car as Jeonghan on the way to the hole-in-the-wall barbeque place they love on this side of the city, who takes his favourite place on Minghao's shoulder.
"You did well, today, Myungho-yah," says Jeonghan, in that baby-talk voice of his.
Minghao smiles, offers his left earphone. "You, too, hyung. I hope the next one is somewhere outdoors."
Through the window, Seoul blurs past like a movie, nothing like the Haicheng of his childhood, but home, still. He thinks about the calligraphied character on his mother's wall and silences his phone where the group chat is blowing up even though they're headed the same way. Jeonghan is asleep by now.
"Yeah," he says to no one in particular. "Outdoors would be nice."