After a few weeks, Soobin had seen his little routine changing. As usual, Yeonjun would greet him in the morning and two times out of five, Soobin would quietly reply. But when those two times became four, Yeonjun began to eat at his table, not really saying anything other than, ‘Eat well’ and ‘See you tomorrow!’. Soobin had tried to shoo him away a few times but seeing that Yeonjun kept on coming back every day, he dropped it and let him do whatever he wanted. A few times, other people would come to sit beside Yeonjun but he would kindly tell them that he would like to eat alone with Soobin. Every time, it made Soobin feel thankful toward Yeonjun, he would have hated it if other people came to eat with them. The only people he tolerated were Beomgyu, Taehyun and HueningKai. Soobin didn’t know the latter but he knew he was Yeonjun’s best friend so he let him sit with them. When Beomgyu wasn’t there, it was pretty silent except for Yeonjun and Taehyun’s bickering. It made Soobin smile a few times, the way they insulted each other for trivial things such as the shape of Yeonjun’s lips or the size of Taehyun’s eyes. HueningKai would always laugh and roll his eyes at them, pretty used to the show by now.

After a few months, Soobin had come very accustomated to seeing Yeonjun and his friends everywhere he went. So, one day, when Yeonjun greeted him in the morning but didn’t show up at lunch, he asked Taehyun.

“Taehyun-ah, isn’t Yeonjun coming?” he quietly asked.

He wasn’t worried or anything, he just found it strange.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him this morning. Have you?”

“Yeah, he greeted me as usual,” Soobin replied, turning to HueningKai.

“I can’t help you, I haven’t seen him either. It’s strange that he came to see you but not us.”

“Not that strange if you ask me,” Taehyun murmured, making Soobin confused.

“But if he’s not here it means that he’s busy. Either in the practice room or in the library,” HueningKai said, brushing Taehyun off.

“But if he doesn’t come at lunch now… will he even eat?” Soobin asked, getting a little bit worried.

Taehyun and HueningKai looked at each other but didn’t reply.

“Guys. Will he eat?” Soobin asked again.

“We… we don’t know,” Taehyun replied. “It depends.”

“What do you mean?”

“He means that if Yeonjun feels like eating, he will. If he doesn’t, he won’t. And we can’t make him change his mind,” HueningKai answered.

Soobin groaned. How could the always cheerful and smiley Yeonjun starve himself? What could lead him to such an extreme behaviour?

Just thinking about Yeonjun not eating drove Soobin mad. Yeonjun, who loved eating so much his eyes would sparkle just talking about food. Yeonjun, who would always eat whatever was left by Taehyun or Beomgyu because he couldn’t bear seeing food go to waste. Yeonjun, who was the biggest eater Soobin had seen in his entire life – and that meant something, Soobin did eat a lot.

Soobin quickly finished his meal and left, not replying to the guys when they asked him where he was going.

The first place to search was the library. Soobin really hoped Yeonjun would be there, asleep. It had already happened to Beomgyu a few times and him and Yeonjun were practically out of the same mould. After a good thirty minutes of searching the sections Yeonjun would usually be found in – as surprising as it can be, Yeonjun loved reading about architecture and geography – Soobin resigned himself to go to the dance building. Luckily, it wasn’t too far from the library but Soobin dreaded going there. The worst he could find there was Yeonjun, passed out on the floor. Out of every dance major, Yeonjun was the most perfectionist of them all. Taehyun had once let slip out that in high school, Yeonjun had been out practicing the same move until he passed out and was brought to the ER, diagnosed with exhaustion and undernutrition. When Soobin had first heard this story, he hadn’t quite believed it. It was hard for Soobin to imagine Yeonjun as something else than cheerful and energetic. Now that he found himself in a similar situation, looking for Yeonjun and praying for him to be alright, he found it even harder to imagine. Maybe it was because he was dreading what he would find. Or maybe because he didn’t wanna see Yeonjun hurting.

Pushing all these thoughts aside, Soobin rushed to the dance building, peeking through every practice room door, searching for Yeonjun. After twenty minutes of an empty search, Soobin decided to check the toilets before asking Taehyun or Kai for help. He went back to the first floor and began checking every toilet, asking if someone was in there. As he came to the fifth and last floor, he entered the toilets and before he could even ask if someone was in there, he heard sniffling. Someone was apparently crying. Soobin pushed every door open before finding the only locked one. He knocked on the door and heard a gasp.

“Yeonjun hyung?” he softly asked.

“Soo-Soobin?” Yeonjun asked back.

He sounded like he had cried for hours, his voice hoarse and his nose clogged. Soobin’s heart filled up with worry but he stayed calm.

“Hyung, can I come in?”

He waited for a few seconds. When he heard the lock turn, he pushed the door open, careful not to hurt Yeonjun and slid inside before locking the door behind him.

“Hyung, what’s wrong?” Soobin asked, concern lacing his voice.

Yeonjun looked up, his eyes filled with tears. His eyes and nose were red and his cheeks still wet. There were dozens of crumpled tissues on the floor and Yeonjun was sitting on the toilet’s closed lid, his knees to his chest.

“I can’t do it. There’s this move I have to master but I just can’t and I almost hurt my ankle doing it but I can’t hurt myself because if I do they’ll kick me out of the team and I won’t be able to perform at the showcase and it’s in a few months now and I really want to perform and –”

“Hyung, calm down,” said Soobin, cutting Yeonjun’s rambling.

Soobin crouched, getting to eye level with Yeonjun.

“You’ll be alright. Your ankle is just fine and you won’t be kicked out of the team. You’ll master this move in no time and will perform flawlessly at the showcase. I know you will. But do you know what’s the most important thing for everything to go well?” Soobin asked and Yeonjun shook his head. “Eating. You need to eat and hydrate yourself so your body can keep up with you. And I mean a real meal, not instant noodles. Something substantial. Meat and vegetables and water to hydrate yourself, not whatever soda you get your hand on. I want you to take care of yourself like you take care of Taehyun and Kai.”

Soobin knew he sounded like a nagging mom but he couldn’t help it. Only now was he becoming aware of how worried he really had been for Yeonjun and not because he was Choi Yeonjun but because he was Yeonjun, the guy who, out of nowhere, started noticing him, talking to him, seeing him. And Soobin had never felt so good having someone else looking at him, someone who wasn’t Beomgyu or a family member. Because Soobin hated having attention on him but he would give everything he had for Yeonjun to look at him like he always did: intently. He felt safe when Yeonjun looked at him, he felt heard when Yeonjun listened to him and he never felt left out when someone else talked with Yeonjun. Yeonjun would always glance at him, letting him know that he hadn’t forgotten him, that he knew he was there and was thankful Soobin was waiting for him.

That’s how much his life had changed. It had gotten Yeonjun disappearing from his sight for him to realise how important, how central Yeonjun had become in his every day life. And maybe, maybe to realise something a bit deeper…

“Soobin-ah, I’m sorry,” Yeonjun began, fresh tears rolling down his cheeks. “I’m just so stressed lately, I didn’t feel like eating at all. I tried drinking water too but it was hard to swallow so I just gave up,” Yeonjun explained.

Soobin took Yeonjun between his arms and gently patted his hair.

“Don’t apologise to me but to yourself. If you ever feel like everything is a bit too much, go to someone you trust and talk it out. It can be a friend or a family member, anyone. Don’t bottle it up. What you’re feeling is valid and you deserve to be cared for, okay? Don’t ever doubt that.”

Yeonjun nodded and Soobin tightened his embrace. He finally felt Yeonjun relaxing and, soon enough, he understood he had fallen asleep. Chuckling to himself, he picked him up and brought him back to the closest practice room. It was luckily empty and the lights were off. Soobin decided to not turn them on and carefully made his way to the couch on the other side of the room. He delicately laid Yeonjun down and covered him with his own coat.

When Yeonjun woke up one hour later, he found a dosirak and a bottle of water next to him with a little note which read: ‘you better finish everything or you’ll hear from me! also, you can keep the coat, the weather is very cold nowadays.’

Yeonjun smiled to himself and immediately opened the box, devoured everything in a few minutes before walking back to the dorms, draping the oversized coat tightly around himself.

 

“So, Soobin hyung found you, comforted you and then took care of you?” Taehyun asked from the couch he was cuddling on with HueningKai. “That’s quite an achievement.” He said, impressed.

“His words made me cry a bit, he really called me out about not taking care of myself. I felt a bit ashamed but I needed it. I’m glad he was there and not you with your stupid doe eyes,” Yeonjun replied, sticking his tongue out.

As a reply, Taehyun elegantly gave him the finger.

“Will you stop bickering for one ing second, for ’s sake?” HueningKai exclaimed, exasperated. “Jun, the next time you feel like going missing, please at least tell us where you are so we don’t worry too much.”

“That’s not really the concept of going missing…” Yeonjun muttered but HueningKai groaned and that made him retreat to his bedroom.

 

“So, do you feel like you got closer?” Beomgyu asked Soobin when he was done telling him what had happened.

“I don’t know… I mean, I guess but that’s not what matters for me. The fact that he let everything become too much without telling anyone is the most important thing. That’s not healthy. I get that he may not want to bother anyone but when he feels like he can’t do it by himself, he needs to reach out at some point, don’t you think so?” Soobin asked. He was still confused about the whole situation and needed to have Beomgyu’s opinion on the matter.

“Hm… I don’t know how to explain this to you,” Beomgyu began. “You remember when we were in high school and I decided to major in photography?” Soobin nodded. “I wanted my portfolio to be quite unique to be sure I would get picked. I was very frustrated and for a while I didn’t let anyone come close to me, not even you. I wasn’t speaking to anyone because I wanted to do it by myself. It’s not that I didn’t want to bother – that was the last thing on my mind – I thought that if someone else helped me, then it would show that I’m lacking in a way, that I don’t have what it takes to major in photography. When I finally found a good enough idea, everything came back to the way it was. Seeing how much of a perfectionist Yeonjun is, he won’t reach out until he gets that move right. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless you showed him that reaching out to someone isn’t a sign of weakness.”

“I didn’t exactly tell him that but I hope he did get the message. But at the moment, the most important thing was to get him to eat. I know how much he likes eating and seeing him skipping lunch… it was weird.”’

“Wasn’t it weird because he wasn’t there, next to you, as always?” Beomgyu teasingly asked.

“If you don’t stop being a teasing little , you’ll never know if that’s right,” Soobin said, getting up and walking to the bathroom, ready to take a shower and to think about everything once again.