Tagging those who expressed interest in the finished post: @turtledove824, @thirstkanaphan (that anon response you tagged me in recently gave me some much needed motivation to wrap this up LOL), @jjjjjlllll248
Hello! Welcome to a long overdue post for which I posted a preview way back in September 2024 (I’m so sorry), about ATEEZ’s discography statistics. This started as a personal project I would occasionally work on during company time (lol), after seeing the boys live and going on a discography marathon for multiple weeks. I then proceeded to ignore this for a year while I was back in school—though any time I got a note on the preview post or a mention in relation to it, I knew I would have to finish it!
So here I present: ATEEZ’s entire discography broken down to produce various stats related to line distribution, albums, and thematic continuities. I have also linked my entire spreadsheet at the very end for anyone who wants to get a better look.
Before we dive in, I want to preface this with a couple things. First, I adore ATEEZ and their music, but have been in and out of the fandom over the years when life gets busy; and in general, I wouldn’t say I’ve been super invested in K-pop lately. So my goal for this post is mostly to present some numbers and cool trends I found, and not really to discuss or interpret these numbers in a ton of depth, since I might be missing some context to do that. Second, I am a STEM major and business minor but not a huge stats or data person. I just have experience with (and a lot of love for) spreadsheets. Finally, I started this project for the sake of having fun and making yet another pretty spreadsheet, so none of this is to be taken too seriously. If anything, I’d just like us to appreciate ATEEZ’s crazy discography and how math and data can be interesting!
With all of that out of the way, let’s get into it.
I. Data Sources and Assumptions
All album information (titles, song lengths, release dates, and album classification such as EP, full album or single album) were taken from Spotify.
Line distributions for songs were taken from various YouTube creators (which are listed at the end of this post) depending on availability. Note that there may be some inaccuracies, i.e. one member’s line could have been mistaken for another’s on occasion, or one video may count shared lines/ad-libs to the total distribution while others may not. This is not at all a criticism of these channels, errors happen and that is perfectly okay, but something to keep in mind for this breakdown. Thank you to all of these channels for making these videos for the fandom!
Some assumptions I’ve made to keep this breakdown more manageable:
OSTs and collaboration songs (e.g. with Kim Jong Kook, BE:FIRST, Eden, etc.) have been excluded. However, any remixed tracks featuring an artist are included.
Solo songs (e.g. Mingi’s mixtape) have been excluded.
Remixed tracks and language versions of songs have not been considered for line distribution.
II. Discography Statistics
All stats are accurate as of writing this post (December 18, 2025).
Album Stats
ATEEZ has released:
15 Extended Plays (EPs, “mini albums”)
11 Full Albums
12 Single Albums
Of these releases, 7 are what I will refer to as “remix releases” (containing no new songs, and only remixed songs) and 2 of them are “translation releases” (containing only different language versions of an existing song).
Song Stats
As of December 2025, ATEEZ has released 187 unique tracks: this amounts to 9 hours, 53 minutes and 46 seconds of music, and about 23 songs per year since debut. Remember that this is NOT including OSTs and collaboration songs.
On average, an ATEEZ song will run for 3 minutes and 11 seconds. I’ve sorted their songs into the following categories and calculated the percentage they take up in their overall discography:
Nothing too surprising, overall, although I will point out the number of intros, interludes, and outros. ATEEZ is one of those K-pop groups that has phenomenal track listing and transitions within their albums, which makes for a great listening experience and subtle story-telling. Transitional tracks make up 10.2% of their discography—13 of their 26 EPs and full-length albums have one or more transitional tracks, and intros are often included in remix and translation albums, something I don’t think I’ve seen done by any other group (I could be wrong though, lol).
Song Version Stats
The below table summarizes the number of versions for songs that have remixes or translations.
Ice On My Teeth has the most versions: the original track, 5 remixes, and an English version (and an instrumental track, which I am not considering).
III. Series Timelines and Release Timing
Since debut, ATEEZ has been releasing albums in series, each with its own concept, themes, and timeline within their lore (please don’t ask me anything about their lore, I really couldn’t tell you). Below is a summary of their series thus far, start/end dates, and how long each took to complete.
The consistency in completion time for Treasure, Fever, and The World is surprising (but maybe just to me, because I was out of the fandom loop during the end of Fever and start of The World): 1.3 to 1.4 years on average. Note that the Golden Hour series has yet to officially conclude, and I’ve used the release day for Part 3 for now; but going purely off of the historical stats, we are overdue for a conclusion. Though to be clear, this is not a complaint, just an observation—because an entire series comprising 3-4 album releases every 16 months is absolute insanity, and puts into perspective just how busy the boys have been.
Speaking of busy, here’s a look at the time between releases:
Remixes are usually dropped 2-5 days after the original song, and although the boys aren’t the ones stuck in the studio for these ones, it’s still quite impressive how much is lined up for a given comeback.
In terms of major releases (main installments of the aforementioned series), their fastest turnaround time was for “TREASURE EP.2: Zero to One,” released just 83 days after their debut album—which makes sense from a strategy perspective, as the goal was probably to recapture people’s attention as quickly as possible after their debut. The longest we’ve had to wait for a major release was 322 days between EP.1 and EP.2 of The World series, although HALAZIA and some Japanese music were released in the meantime.
Up until the Golden Hour series, ATEEZ has really enjoyed teasing future title tracks through song: the first instance of this being San’s line at the end of “Beginning of the End,” which turned out to be the chorus of “Answer” 3 months later. Below is a summary of song previews they’ve sneakily given us throughout the years.
My favourite has to be the last few seconds of “Outro: Long Journey,” which struck me as sounding very thematically different from the rest of the Treasure series at the time—and it turned out to be the intro to “Sector 1” almost 2 and a half years later.
Yeah. That really was one fucking Long Journey.
As for translated re-releases of songs, these can be released anywhere from 0 minutes to two and a half years after the original release—the English version of “Take Me Home” was released alongside the Korean version, while the Japanese version of “Pirate King” was released 882 days after the original.
So the next time you hear something that sounds out of place in an ATEEZ song, maybe be prepared to wait either 3 months to hear the full thing, or 3 years. Though notably, it seems like they’ve since been teasing songs this way a little less, given the last time it happened was 3 years ago, when “HALAZIA” was previewed at the end of the “Guerrilla” music video.
edit: "In Your Fantasy" was teased in "Bridge : The Edge of Reality"; that's my bad for missing it LOL. So they're still teasing music this way, but it does feel like less so than in 2018-2023
IV. Thematic Continuities
If you’ve listened to enough ATEEZ, you’ve probably noticed that in addition to teasing upcoming songs within songs, they’ve had some musical themes*, melodies, and lyrics that are repeated throughout their discography.
*A musical theme is a core, recognizable melody that forms the basis of a composition and recurs throughout the work. I’m not sure if “musical theme” is technically the right term in this context but I’m gonna roll with it (I took music theory 10 years ago and have forgotten everything).
Here are all the “continuities” that I could find in their discography: including previews/continuations and callbacks (inclusion of a past melody, lyric, theme, etc.).
Some of these are fairly obvious: the first few lines of “Treasure” (2018) can be found repeated at the end of “Precious” (2020) and the Overture version. The riff of “Say My Name” (2019) shows up at the end of “Outro: Over the Horizon” (2021). And many outros or intros feature the instrumentals of title tracks in previous releases. Here’s one I found that is a bit more subtle:
Again, they’ve shifted away from self-referencing and creating this interconnectedness in their music, ever since the end of The World series. ATINYs on r/ATEEZ have been theorizing about the GH series’ place within the overall lore, suggesting that GH is an illusion, and that The World series has never really ended, given the absence of an epilogue album (here is a great compilation post of Golden Hour theories, put together by u/SpacePirateCats if you’d like to learn more). If GH really ends up being an illusion that ATEEZ is stuck in without realizing it, its musical isolation from the rest of the discography and lack of references to previous releases would make sense.
Lore completely aside, shifting away from this “musical interconnectedness” might have allowed ATEEZ to pursue other concepts and genres, or appeal to a broader demographic of fans. It might also mean faster turnover time for album production and more flexibility for the company. Though from what I’ve gathered, KQ staff and Eden are the ones behind the storyline and seem quite passionate about it—so I doubt they’ve axed anything just for the sake of saving a couple bucks. And these are just speculations, as I don't know too much about the music industry or how album production works.
V. Line Distribution Stats
Line distribution is a hot topic for many K-pop groups, and ATEEZ is no exception. As such, I’d like to just make clear: the purpose of this section is not to compare the members to each other or discuss what is “fair” or “unfair.” My goal is just to provide numbers so we can quantify just how much the line distribution has changed over time.
I went through over 100 line distribution videos and recorded the length of lines per member, per song (“You are a crazy person” - my boyfriend, last night, in response to all of this), to ultimately calculate the following:
Seonghwa starts the most songs out of all the members, with 23 songs in which he sings the first line. He’s closely followed by Yunho with 22 songs, then Hongjoong with 21 songs. Jongho rarely starts songs, with only 5 songs in which he sings the first line.
Across ATEEZ’s entire discography, Jongho holds 21.3% of lines, and Yeosang holds 8.0%. If line time were split exactly equally among the 8 members, each would be given 12.5% of the total lines. Note also that Yeosang’s share of lines has increased by 338% since debut (more than tripled), and Wooyoung’s has increased by 178% (almost doubled).* This was calculated using the total share of lines in 2025 versus in 2018.
*In my preview post, the percent increase/decrease numbers were incorrect!
The below timeline shows how each member’s line share has increased or decreased yearly. In 2025, Hongjoong, Yunho, Yeosang, San, and Mingi all saw increases in line share compared to 2024, while the rest saw decreases.
If we graph these percentages over time, we see much variance in 2018, but convergence of the lines in recent years, representing a more equal line distribution.
Below is another way to visualize the change in line distribution over time. Magenta cells show the lower end of the range in line percentage, and green shows the higher end. 2018 shows greater variance in colour, while 2025 shows a more uniform colour distribution.
I will end this by saying that no line distribution will ever be exactly equal, and that using numbers to quantify “fairness” in something as subjective as art will only get us so far—however ironic it is, that I’m presenting numbers to you in this post. I think it’s far more important that ATEEZ and their producers are playing to each members’ strengths, and taking full advantage of the diversity in style, colour and texture of their voices. The impact of any individual member doesn’t always need to be measured quantitatively, but instead qualitatively; which is to say that one can be impactful in a song or performance even if they have fewer lines, and contribute the same impact as someone who has more lines than them.
These days, the line disparity isn’t nearly as huge as it had been—and the presence of all 8 members feels so equal to me both in their recordings and live performances, that a small difference in any two members’ lines should be trivial.
Those are my two cents.
(The last time I involved myself in discourse about line distribution, albeit way less eloquently, on Amino, I got fucking decimated. Please be nice.)
Honourable Mention: Maddox
Maddox provides narration for 7 of ATEEZ’s tracks.
I wonder how much he gets paid for those.
That’s all.
VI. Closing Out
Now that I’ve gotten my monster of a spreadsheet up to date, I’m aiming to keep it updated as ATEEZ releases more music. And if I’m able to, I may look into some other aspects of their discography that we can keep track of. What key are most of their songs in? Major or minor? Tempo? Will they bring back that interconnectedness we got to see during Treasure, Fever and The World? If anyone has other ideas, feel free to comment.
Finally, here is my spreadsheet for your viewing pleasure, where you can see the full masterlist of songs and line distribution for each.
If you’ve made it all the way to the end, thanks for reading! And if you’ve been waiting for this since I posted the preview, I hope it was worth the wait!
Line Distribution YouTube Channels
Special thanks to: HEXA6ON, random_k, Butterfly Kiss, Park Jaeyone, benstronaut, KPOP Idol Cover, kawaiikpop, k_line distribution, Kpop Editions, SSKD • Kpop, random_j, SanniLove, SS_LINE, and Shuffle Waffel for your line distribution videos!
OH MY GOD YOURE STILL HERE i just made an account again after FOUR YEARS and let me tell you. you and a few other creators on tumblr like shaped my personality. yk how middle school kids end up on wattpad and that like changes their life? yeah so you were my wattpad and i read your fics at age 13 during covid and i freaking love you dawg so thank you so so so much i will be rereading your whole masterlist youre the reason why i have friends now and irl ones at that
goodness I'm sorry I'm so late to reply to this, I had my notifications off !!!!
hello hello anon 🥹🥹💕 this is crazy to see in my inbox bc I've been away from the fanfic world for awhile, sometimes I forget ppl read my shit HAHA and that it ?? makes an impact? thank you for your kind words this is really sweet. also being deep in covid during our teen years was really freaking hard socially, I'm glad we turned out ok and really awed to hear my silly hobby here was of any help
to you and anyone else reading, I have no plans to deactivate any time soon !! my stuff will always be here until I say otherwise (but I will not be rereading any of it, respectfully LMAOOO)
USER DOIEFY IS STILL ALIVE OMG 😭😭 hope you’ve been well omg 🥹 ^^ any life updates?
fuck omg I thought I replied to this 💀💀
USER DOIEFY IS INDEED ALIVE FDJJSKAKA and I've been well !! not much recently, I'm living that sweet intern life until this September and then will finish up school, life has been good but busy so haven't done much writing or fandom stuff :'))
Hey! I really enjoyed your Ateez stats post and was so intrigued by the data you're compiling. Are you still planning to release something? I know a bunch of folks who would be interested see more about line distribution and convergence, especially now that Golden Hour Pt. 2 is out!
yes absolutely!! I had always been meaning to do more with it but life got busy recently haha
I got jumpscared by the post blowing up yesterday (it's a few months old) so I think it's only right to treat it as a sign to put everything together, will do my best 🫡
i'm so glad you enjoyed it and ty for taking the time to message!!
In the six or seven years that you’d considered Doyoung as more than just a friend, definitively describing your relationship with him had always been difficult. You were ‘lovers,’ essentially, but that sounded much too dreamy for either of your tastes; ‘significant others,’ perhaps, an all-encompassing and rather conservative term, but too harsh on the ears. ‘Girlfriend and boyfriend’ didn’t seem quite right to you, considering how private you’d kept it since the very beginning.
An entertainment agency with no fear of bankruptcy, scraping together a co-ed act despite its inherent unpopularity—the both of you involved—had made things awfully complicated.
pairing: kim doyoung x f. reader (she/her pronouns)
tags: non-canon idolverse (NCT and other groups don’t necessarily exist in this, I just took a lot of inspiration from the Korean pop industry. it feels like realistic fiction but also not really), somewhat slow burn, slice of life at times, friends to lovers, angst, fluff, it’s also at least 10% crack
word count: 6.8k preview, 40k+ full fic (fuck off, I’m not sorry)
cw: preview includes mild language, alcohol. full fic includes smoking/vaping and drugs as poor coping mechanisms, anxiety and one instance of a panic attack, suggestive content
taglist available; reply or message me! I anticipate this will be out by end of August, I only have three more chapters to write!
additional notes:
- kard is the blueprint!!! they induce so much bisexual panic in me and I love them so much, it’s probably pretty clear that I took inspiration from them and their artistry for this fic hehe.
- I have a lot of thoughts on this realistic fiction genre I’m dabbling in but will hold off on sharing them here… just know that it’s written to feel realistic but god knows what actually happens behind the scenes in K-pop; none of this is meant to be speculative or mean, I’m just having a bit of fun. if you’re someone who actually gets deep into the industry drama and how the industry works, don’t get hung up on the details. please.
prologue: in the blur of the rain
For once, you were thankful for the rain.
It was a momentary relief from the heat of Seoul summers: a gust of coldness to push aside the heavy haze of pollution, and a steady stream of water to wash away the smell of cigarette smoke always lingering around your building. Sprawled out on a lawn chair with your legs stretched out, you watched mindlessly as the rainwater spilled into and accumulated in the balcony above yours. The rhythm of the water hitting the concrete was mesmerizing. Woosh, splat. Like glass, the drops shattered into a fine mist that sprayed your bare feet. Woosh, splat. Next to you, Doyoung mumbled something about the weather. Splat, splat.
“Aren’t you cold?” he asked. He’d joined you shortly after you stepped outside, disappointed by the gloominess of the low-hanging clouds, but content to sit with you nonetheless. Pleasantries, a couple of laughs over the beers he’d brought over from your fridge, then you’d sat in silence. Until the wind picked up a great deal and begged the inevitable question.
You glanced over at him, quickly understanding what he really meant. Huddled in a hoodie with his hair damp from the shower and the circular lenses of his glasses starting to fog up, he was cold. A man of surprising patience and sympathy who was always willing to stay as long as you did, but you supposed his will was wearing thin in the rain.
“Not really,” you shrugged. “You?”
“A little,” came a rather impassive response through a stifled yawn. He stretched his arms above his head lazily, then curled back into himself. “Mostly just tired. The alcohol’s making me sleepy.”
You snorted, unimpressed. “Mina’s gonna be real unhappy when she finds her stuff missing from the fridge.”
Doyoung grunted. “She owes me money.”
“For what, drinks from McDonald’s? Don’t we all?” you joked, patting his arm in mock reassurance. “You can go inside if you want. I’ll probably stay awhile.”
“Mm, I’ll manage.”
It fell silent again. There was some hidden reminder in both his words and the rain: a constant backdrop, constant background noise that was bound to be brought up explicitly soon, as much as you wanted it to stay buried. It had been like this for a couple weeks, ever since Doyoung sat down with management and made the decision. You were all aware of his choice, certainly not thrilled by it in the slightest, but dutifully observing a countdown—only five days, presently. There would be another, after the first hit zero, but you’d already decided that you wouldn’t count the days until his return.
There were plenty of crying, heartbroken fans of his who would gladly do it for you, anyway.
As you reached into the pocket of your jacket for something, you suddenly felt a judgemental gaze following you. Doyoung watched with incredulous amusement as you pulled the vape pen from its hiding spot to take a long drag. It was a bad habit that your manager hated and Doyoung liked to make fun of, but neither of them made efforts to stop you. There were worse things you could’ve been doing.
“Oh, I see,” Doyoung laughed, reaching over to absentmindedly massage your shoulder, where he knew you always tensed up. Had the two of you been in public, that was one of the worse things you could’ve been doing: giving the people any reason to doubt the nature of your relationship. “Should’ve guessed this was why you came out here.”
“Yeah,” you admitted, then showed him the pen: newly-ordered with your last pay cheque, pale pink and sparkly. “Wanted to take the new girlie for a spin.”
Ever curious, or maybe just looking for another excuse to ridicule you, Doyoung plucked it from your hand and took a hit. “Gross,” was the final verdict along with an exaggerated face of disgust, as he handed it back to you. “I don’t know why you and Johnny do this shit willingly.”
You shrugged. “Stress.”
“You wanna talk about it?”
“About what?”
Doyoung stared at you like it was obvious, yet not impatiently—one of the many things you liked about him, especially when the industry had a mean little habit of making you feel dumb and oblivious. “What’s stressing you out?”
There it was, the onset of the conversation you’d been waiting to have. “You. What else?”
He raised a brow, grinning sarcastically. “You don’t think I can survive two years in the military and fulfill a responsibility that’s to be fulfilled by every good and able-bodied Korean son in the country?”
“Please. You can barely learn an entire choreography without bitching about back pain at least once.” You rolled your eyes and brought the vape back up to your lips.
“What about the good son part?”
You’d met his parents before: hard-working, upper-middle class folks from the suburbs who had undoubtedly wanted their kids to pursue law or medicine for sake of job security, only to get an actor and singer instead. Cackling at the promise of getting a rise out of him, you met his gaze with glee. “I think it’s really sweet that you buy your mama designer stuff all the time. But she probably wanted that money from a well-respected lawyer, not a K-pop idol who clowns around on national television for a living.”
Doyoung glared and flipped you off, but it was all in good fun. “Right back at you.” Then in a disbelieving murmur from behind his drink, “I’d be a pretty fucking hot lawyer though.”
You sighed in agreement, the notion making you feel more dreamy than you would care to admit—but for good reason other than the fact that he would make a very hot lawyer. “Oh, how life would be so much easier.”
“We probably think that because this is the only life we’ve ever known,” Doyoung smiled softly as a certain sense of contemplation settled over the balcony. You both knew it was true, and would eventually settle for some semblance of normalcy when given the opportunity. You could hardly despise your jobs, nor could you fully embrace it. Like any other employment, it was just that. Only yours seemed to define you as a person much more than any other 9 to 6 in the city would a typical person.
“Will you be okay?” he asked a little later, watching you blow lazy smoke rings. The concern was more genuine than usual, prodding at emotions you’d kept bottled up for the better half of the week. “It’s… Sunday.” You knew he was counting down the days too. “I’m going on Friday.”
“I don’t know if it’s quite registered yet. It’ll probably hit harder once you’re gone,” you said. “But I mean, two years isn’t the worst. We’re used to it.”
“We’re used to not being with each other. We’re not used to being without each other completely.”
Ah. Another conversation to be had, when he came back. Now just a bit more dejected by the mere mention, you joked, “There’s a difference?”
“There’s a difference.”
You knew the difference, of course. You could explain it in great detail if you wanted to, covering the years of history behind it and the gruelling effort you’d put into keeping a story alive. But it was a story that never made it further than Doyoung and yourself, echoing just slightly to reach Mina and Johnny in muted detail as well.
In the six or seven years that you’d considered yourselves as more than just friends, definitively describing your relationship had always been difficult. You were ‘lovers,’ essentially, but that sounded much too dreamy for either of your tastes; ‘significant other,’ perhaps, an all-encompassing and rather conservative term, but too harsh on the ears. ‘Girlfriend and boyfriend’ didn’t seem quite right to you, considering how private you’d kept it since the very beginning.
An entertainment agency with no fear of bankruptcy, scraping together a co-ed act despite its inherent unpopularity—the both of you involved—had made things awfully complicated.
But in all the ten or eleven years that you’d known each other just as people, you’d never been apart for so long. You’d never been without him as just a friend. Even the occasional modelling or acting gig on his end took no more than a few months, while your solo work only peppered your usual schedules with overnights at the studio. The fact that he was enlisting alone was possibly the saddest part, with you and Mina obviously exempted, and Johnny too by his American citizenship. From seeing him almost every day to only once or twice a year… it would be hard on you all, but on you in particular.
Sensing your low spirits, Doyoung still found it in himself to joke, “You’re gonna hate my hair.”
You groaned, refusing to imagine him with the dreaded buzz cut and green beret. “Fuck, don’t remind me. I’m not searching you up on Naver for the next two years.”
“You search me up on Naver?”
“Shut up.”
But he was unwilling to let it go that easily. “Aww, that’s cute. You know what? Between me and you…” Scooting closer with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes but hardly a waver in his voice, he whispered, “I search myself up too.”
“You’re so annoying,” you scoffed, blowing smoke in his face.
“You love that about me,” he grinned, then leaned in to kiss you.
For years, you’d always jolted away when he did it—purely out of paranoia, always worried that someone was watching. But Doyoung was unbelievably meticulous: restricting himself to the dorms, his car, and occasionally his family’s empty vacation home. Never in the company building. Never anywhere else. It wasn’t often either; for the most part, you abstained from any romantic gestures, lest you got used to it and went too far in public without even knowing it.
It became muscle memory after that, for you to startle away and for him to coax you back to him, for you to trust his judgement of your surroundings and safety. In the spur of the moment this time, he wrapped his arms around your waist and pulled you gently into his lap. You knew he already missed you from the abruptness of his affection to the way he kissed you breathless. And while you thought about how he would be stolen away from you for the second time and reminisced all the times you had to hold back from going all the way, you were infinitely grateful for the stormy skies.
Because in the blur of the rain, the world was none the wiser to who you were, or who you were to each other.
i. never grow up
You met Kim Doyoung on your first day at the company, in a dingy storage closet.
You were eighteen at the time—fresh out of high school and your old entertainment company, where you had few prospects apart from amassing crippling debt and cameos on rigged survival shows. You couldn’t quite despise the shitty management though, or the hellish programs they offered. Because at the very least, they’d help you stick your foot in the door. Finding your next destination was hardly difficult, especially when a family friend of yours distributed the company’s business cards as a side hustle.
Taeyong responded almost instantly when you asked him for help, then sent you a blurry picture of a pink card drenched in someone’s beer. Vitamin Entertainment. A quick Naver search brought up a number of decently-successful acts, mostly soloists and actors. And a recently-disbanded idol group, which was most reassuring.
“Don’t I need to audition?” you asked meekly when he called to make sure you’d gotten his message.
He was tipsy at a party, slurring and tripping over his words. “Nooooo, sweetheart. You’re hot and experienced, don’t waste your time. Either email them a link to your old YouTube channel, or I’ll do it for you.”
“I’ll do it,” you grumbled. “Speak nothing of the YouTube channel or I’ll kidnap your dog.”
“Okay, whatever you say,” Taeyong chirped, obnoxiously sing-song as always. “Well then, my dear, the bubbles are bubbling and the wine is flowing! Love ya, see you later, make sure to send that email, okay byeeeeeeee—”
The line went dead, and you reluctantly powered on your laptop to do as he’d told you.
Imagine your surprise when someone got back to you two weeks later and asked you to come in. Either Taeyong had put in a word for you and your tape was impeccable (you knew it wasn’t, you’d filmed it at 2 AM), or they were desperate.
Your expectations plummeted when Google Maps took you to a rose-tinted glass building in the scrappiest part of the neighbourhood. And they hit rock bottom when you found yourself in a lobby modelled tactlessly after a container of children’s gummy vitamins.
The floors were a checkerboard pattern of blue and aquamarine tiles, while the uneven plaster walls were painted salmon pink. The furniture strewn about the foyer were made from cheap, hard plastic, resembling sheets of gelatin and brightly-coloured candy. Caricature drawings of Vitamin artists and CEOs stared at you from their glass frames while a manager took you on a tour. Your first response within twenty minutes of arrival was to check that your contact lenses hadn’t fallen out of your eyes; there was something very vague and blurry about the place, which seemed to bleed into the atmosphere and all the people you passed by.
“New here?” a few of them would ask you in passing, be it other trainees or instructors, and you always responded with a polite nod. They’d shrug nonchalantly and welcome you with a simple, “Cool,” before moving on. You didn’t doubt that they were busy, yet they seemed to float around aimlessly, like idle characters in a video game.
It didn’t help that the trainee floor felt like a game too: a game of interpreting awkwardly-placed signs and room numbers that more often than not took you to all the wrong places. The fated storage closet was just one of them, hidden behind a mirrored door you thought would lead to an empty practice room.
“What the hell?”
Upon entering, you were met with lopsided IKEA shelves filled to their maximum capacities with cleaning supplies and cardboard boxes. It was a back room not meant to be associated with the company’s poppy, pretty exterior: drab but organic, clearly deviating from the standard blue-pink candy colour scheme. Amidst the mess sat a boy around your age, pale faced, black haired, wearing round glasses. He was perched atop an old washing machine, his focus glued insistently to a mobile game, until you unceremoniously barged in. Then he looked up like a deer caught in headlights, instinctively shoving the phone into the front pocket of his hoodie.
“Hi.”
You stared at him, confused. “Sorry, uh… this isn’t practice room B, is it?”
“This is practice room D,” he said.
You stared at him. He stared back—completely deadpan for several seconds before breaking into a toothy smile. “I’m just messing with you. B’s around the corner, on your right.”
“Thanks.”
“New here?”
Like you already had several times that day, you nodded. But unlike previous occurrences, he didn’t welcome you halfheartedly and then float away—or rightfully kick you out of his hiding spot. Instead, he noted your attire and demeanour, both of which lacked the usual jitters and nervousness of a new recruit. “But not new to the scene, are we?”
“No, not really,” you said.
“How long?” It was a touchy question amongst trainees, strangers especially. Yet from him, it hardly seemed invasive, only curious.
“Two years now.”
Intrigued, he hopped down from the washing machine. Even back then, he hovered a few inches above you, just a little lanky, still in the process of growing into himself. “Me too. Debut is a scam.”
“A scam you and I keep falling for,” you reminded him with a chuckle.
To your relief, he cracked another smile. “You’re so right,” he laughed, sticking his hand out to shake. “Kim Doyoung. Welcome to Vitamin.”
You would soon learn that Doyoung took everything with good humour. And from that alone, you knew you would become good friends.
You saw each other quite frequently after that. For the sake of their finances, the companies had lumped all their trainees together regardless of gender and experience. You tripped over yourselves in cramped dance studios and listened to strained voices together in vocal rooms. On weekends, you slept for eighteen hours at a time and debated dropping out to pursue proper higher education, only answering calls from your fellow trainees if it involved free food. And on Monday mornings, you got right back to work.
It was less busy in the wintertime, thankfully. When the foreign trainees were granted long breaks to see their families and the high schoolers took time off to study for their finals, you and Doyoung had to keep each other company. Little got done those days, as you opted to play variations of “Fuck Marry Kill” or “Never Have I Ever” over soju from a plastic soda bottle.
“Johnny, Yuta and Airi,” Doyoung prompted with a snicker and took a lazy swig, as if it were anything but an easy decision.
“Oh, c’mon,” you retorted, stealing the bottle back from him. “Kill John, obviously.”
“Good choice.”
“I’d pay money to marry Airi. And then fuck Yuta.”
“Way to immediately ruin your marriage.”
It was pure reflex to hit him hard on the head, with the closest thing you could find. “Not in that order, smartass!”
Unfazed, Doyoung only glared at you. “Just for that attitude, we’re skipping your turn.”
“What type of fucking rules— Wait—”
“Airi, the nail tech who ruined your set last month, and…” He trailed off playfully, purposely making you wait in irritation—but your impatience quickly turned into shock. “Me.”
You damn well choked on your own spit.
You’d never seen Doyoung that way, much less had any time to entertain those kinds of thoughts. Maybe some quiet recognition and acknowledgement when you first met him, which was about a year ago now: just a respectful and very private nod to how well he would do as a celebrity. He was polite when he talked, pretty when he sang, confident when he danced… but were you appreciating those qualities because you needed them yourself? Or did they really make you see him in a different light?
“I’m still marrying Airi,” you started defensively. “Killing the nail tech. She literally scammed me. And did you see that neon pink she used? Absolutely foul.”
Doyoung raised a brow. “And…?”
“If you ask me nicely, you might just get what you want.”
Silence. You stared at each other for a long moment, but ultimately both decided you’d had enough fun.
“Meh, I wouldn’t fuck you.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
It had always been easy to be so brutally honest with each other.
The incident went completely forgotten until a year later—one evening when you found yourselves in a tight circle with the other trainees, drinking beer and spinning Doyoung’s empty soju/soda bottle for shits and giggles. It was cliche, certainly. But you were all missing out on drunken college parties in the real world, and this was as good as entertainment would get.
The bottle spun and spun, making rounds but always narrowly avoiding you, picking and choosing duos to go into the notorious storage closet for the allotted seven minutes. Within half an hour, Yuta and Airi had come back disheveled, while Ten had returned with pink marks on his neck—the latter of which lost you five thousand won to Doyoung in a stupid bet. Not all pairings were so frivolous, however, with Johnny and Mark deciding to awkwardly play tic tac toe seven times on the same crumpled napkin.
By your impeccable luck and the good graces of the saints, the last spin of the bottle matched you with Doyoung.
“He’s probably just gonna fall asleep,” you grunted, then dragged him out of the room.
“You know, all of these losers have been faking it,” Doyoung said once you’d shut the door and set a timer on your phone. He sent you a knowing look. “I mean, if you’re hung up over Airi and Yuta, they probably just jogged on the spot for seven minutes. They respect each other way too much.”
“In that case, give me my money back,” you said, already making a grab for the five thousand won.
“What?” His hand immediately flew up to guard the pocket of his track pants, where he was keeping your money. “Oh no, Ten’s was probably real. You think he just punched himself in the throat for seven minutes while Kun watched?”
“Damn, okay, I didn’t know I was friends with fucking Sherlock Holmes himself.”
Doyoung cackled, slapping your shoulder hard enough to send you into the wall. “C’mon, they’ve liked each other—well, pretended to hate each other—for years now.”
Then for whatever reason, your last game of ‘Fuck Marry Kill’ suddenly crossed your mind.
“Should we do them all one better?”
He was skeptical, but perhaps more so by the logistics than the notion of actually doing it. He checked the timer. “How, by actually making out? We’ve got, like, five minutes.”
“That seems like a good amount of time.”
He paused and looked down at the timer again. You were left anticipating his reply for just a few seconds, but there was little anxiety attached to it.
“Fuck it, why not.”
He set your phone down on the nearest shelf, turned you around to face him, and suddenly his lips were on yours.
That was the very first time you flinched away. It wasn’t bad, or even that weird considering your being friends, but there was a sudden confidence behind it that made you realize two things. One: there were multiple sides to this guy, as there were with all people, and one you had never taken seriously. Two: the side of him you were missing was his attractiveness.
You parted from him to catch your breath, completely caught off guard by the way he’d tucked a finger under your chin and lifted your head up to meet him halfway (where the hell did he learn that from, K-dramas?). His hands quickly found your shoulders instead, comforting despite the way his eyes widened and he rushed to apologize. “Too much?”
“No, I just—” You laughed. “Surprised, that’s all.”
He caught onto your train of thought quickly enough, and when you didn’t protest, gently crowded you against the wall. “Didn’t think I’d have some experience after twenty years of life? I’m not a stick in the mud.”
“Straight A’s in high school, perfect attendance, vice president of the student council, after school volunteering, part-time tutoring—”
“A surprising number of girls were into that,” Doyoung retorted, then grinned proudly. “Boys too.”
“Ugh, so you peaked in high school, we get it,” you grumbled.
“Ugh, so you’re jealous, we get it.”
“Shut up.”
“Got it.”
With that said, he pressed his lips back to yours and snaked an arm around your waist—with a surprising amount of care given the spontaneity of this entire ploy in the first place. Not one to be outdone, you wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him closer. It didn’t take long for him to grab both your wrists after that, pinning them above you and fully caging you in. It was undoubtedly rushed and messy as you raced against time, the alcohol from earlier obviously playing some part too.
When the timer went off, Doyoung gently pushed off from the wall and reached for your phone. But his gaze never left yours—his eyes staying insistently dark and full of mischief even as he silenced the offensive ringtone. But eventually, he broke into laughter, at which point you realized he was messing with you again.
“That was fun,” he chirped as he fixed his hair in the reflection of a broken TV. Then jokingly, “I’d give it a 4 out of 5.”
You rolled your eyes. “Thanks Doyoung, your review helps small businesses like ours improve and get those five stars. Would you do it again?”
He swung around to look at you, surprised.
“Maybe.”
Funnily enough, “maybe” became something entirely different, as you began sneaking off with each other at every possible moment. Rarely to do something as scandalous as making out in a storage closet (although sometimes), but spending more time together nonetheless. You often forwent sleep entirely and wasted away the early hours with him, eating at random diners and burger joints, or watching the stars from an empty parking lot.
It became apparent pretty quickly: you’d been a little too studious in high school, and still tightly-wound two years after graduation. But now at twenty years of age, you felt some strange urge to develop a rebellious streak. Doyoung was no different despite always denying it, frequently taking his brother’s car out for joy rides and continuing to sneak alcohol into the practice rooms. Admittedly, he sometimes fell back into the old habitual role of goody-two-shoes, entertaining what-if scenarios and cover stories for use if the two of you ever got caught.
But you weren’t doing anything illegal, much less even wrong. Plenty of trainees spent their evenings doing much more questionable things. And no one at the company had formally banned you from dating as predebut, wannabe stars, although it was obviously frowned upon. And most importantly, neither you nor Doyoung had said anything about dating.
Surely it had crossed both your minds. On occasion, once he’d kissed you breathless and stared you down with some unfathomable emotion, you had to resist the urge to blurt out, “What are we, exactly?” It wasn’t just the present state of your relationship that mattered. It was all else that might follow.
If it was all for shits and giggles now, would it develop? With debut being the obvious goal after four years of gruelling work, what would you do if you both reached the goal and something had developed by then? Break up? Stay together secretly despite the obvious backlash that would ensue if people found out? After every sleepless night, every car ride, every midnight dinner, you caught yourself thinking about it.
Eight months later, things took an abrupt turn.
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
The bathroom door slammed shut behind you as you stormed into the common area of your dorm—now empty, with Mina out shopping and the two younger trainees you lived with having gone home for the weekend. Something about their absence and the lack of activity sharpened the rest of your senses, perpetuating the sharp sound of static that filled your phone call. The place had felt incredibly deserted for weeks, growing gloomier and quieter with every departure of an ex-trainee.
The company was down in numbers again.
“They can’t just—” you let out a muffled noise of frustration, putting Doyoung on speaker so you could continue stomping around. “I mean, why?!”
“Yuta leaving was the last straw,” Doyoung replied, just as agitated by the news. His voice cut in and out of white noise. “If he hadn’t, they could make do with debuting us as a trio and delaying you and the girls by a year or two. Or if Airi and Jiwoo were still here, the other way around—”
“But why are they in such a rush?” you spat. “What’s five years without putting out a new group? Bankruptcy?”
Doyoung didn’t respond. But you could tell it was because he was preoccupied. The sounds of city traffic and wind were prevalent on his end, as he presumably made haste toward some place. Suddenly, it went silent. A door swung open, then clanged shut. “C’mon,” he said breathlessly. “I’m downstairs.”
You grabbed only your phone and keys before stumbling out to find him. Not knowing how he’d arrived so quickly, you could only be grateful that you weren’t all alone.
Upon seeing him, you practically launched yourself from the stairs and crashed into his arms. The anger and frustration hit all at once, as you buried your head into his chest—burning hot and relentless against all reason, far too overwhelming as it pushed down on you. Then came embarrassment and overwhelming discomfort for even feeling angry in the first place. Was it selfish to be this angry? Was it selfish to feel so much hatred?
They’d served you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity on a silver platter, yet you could only think of yourself. You could only blurt out one scathing hot truth that would have sent your younger trainee self into hysterics:
“I don’t want this.”
Doyoung was calm as ever, but you could hear the strain in his voice. “I know.”
“I— It’s stupid! No one asked for this. I didn’t sacrifice four years of my life to put up with this!”
There was no reply this time. Not for a long time. When you finally resurfaced from the warm fleece of his scarf for air, he was wiping the tears from your cheeks. A physical outburst from the overload of conflicting emotions, one you had hardly noticed.
At the core of the situation was just that: conflict. You were torn between relief and apprehension, joy and anger, so incredibly relieved that your efforts hadn’t gone to waste, but so disgusted by the company’s blatant reach for attention. So eager to take the offer, but terrified that it would prove to be the wrong decision.
You, Doyoung, Mina and Johnny. It was a lineup unlike anything anyone had seen in years, unconventional in the Korean pop scene for obvious reasons. All you had to do was sign the documents. Then debut was all yours—likely alongside criticism and skepticism from everyone watching.
“I know I’m being ungrateful,” you said, barely louder than a whisper. “But I didn’t sign up to deal with ridicule and rumours the moment we’re announced. Why do we have to deal with that bullshit when the consequences are their fault?”
When it came to consolation, people failed to acknowledge the necessity of a listening ear over advice. And in that moment, you were grateful that Doyoung listened. No unsolicited comments pointing out your tendency to blow things out of proportion, no attempt to calm you with reason. It was in Doyoung’s nature to analyze, to stay logical, to stay grounded in reality at every sharp turn of the road. But he did nothing of the sort, knowing it wasn’t in yours. There was only a warm embrace to cling onto—then a simple reassurance that would’ve broken you, had it not come from someone who really meant it.
“We’ll be okay.”
He let you settle back against him. For several minutes after that, you rocked back and forth in his arms, thinking to yourself, Will we though? It had finally dawned on you, what awaited you in the coming days, months, years, even.
“What about us?” What… are we?”
He mustered a wry grimace at the question, slowly pulling apart to hold you at arm’s length. The weariness of his expression didn’t look right on the face of a 22-year-old. You wondered if you looked the same: tired and worn out years before the average person begins to wear. “Regardless of what we are now, regardless of what we become if we sign contracts, we were friends first. Right?”
You nodded, but suddenly found it difficult to look him in the eye.
“And at the end of the day—of any day, good or bad—we’ll always be friends, yeah?”
You’d seen him at his ugliest, and he’d seen you at yours: from his episodes of black-out drunkenness, to the insults you used to hurl at your parents over the phone. You’d fought on occasion too, exchanging backhanded comments and getting into full-blown arguments before reconciling later. There was nothing to hide from each other, and no one you trusted more with your secrets. No one knew both you and the industry you worked in quite like him. It went both ways.
So you nodded again.
He gave you a wry smile. “Then let’s be friends while we deal with all the other shit. If we want to be something else some other time, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” There was a long, nervous breath, as his hands found yours to steady himself. “Is that okay with you?”
Insinuating that you could be something else in the future. Insinuating that his mind had wandered in the same direction as yours, at some point in time.
“Okay,” you murmured softly, resting your head against his shoulder. “That’s okay.”
As friends, you found momentarily solace in each other, while the wind howled outside.
“The way I see it? The company doesn’t give two flying fucks.”
Johnny’s voice rang out across the room, ever loud and thunderous like the titan himself—despite a mouthful of McDonald’s fries and ice cream. A chorus of hushed and panicked voices followed immediately.
“Seo, you better shut your fucking mouth.”
“Ew, John you got spit on me!”
“Dispatch would have a field day with this one.”
“Can’t take this man anywhere, I swear,” Doyoung rolled his eyes, leaning over to snatch a chicken nugget from your tray. Just as quickly, you wrestled it out of his hand and shoved it into your mouth, your idol etiquette class be damned.
“Can’t take you anywhere either,” you scoffed, then pointed at Johnny with greased-up fingers. “As much as you need to learn how to shut the hell up when we’re in public, continue.”
He gave an indifferent shrug and kept shoveling vanilla soft serve into his mouth. Away from formal settings and the prying eyes of company seniors who expected utmost discipline, Johnny Seo was nothing short of an American frat boy pulled straight from a cliche American movie: most commonly seen in joggers and leisure wear, stumbling lazily over his words, eyes constantly half-closed like he was stoned out of his mind.
“I said, the company wouldn’t give two flying fucks if we, hypothetically, dated each other. Well, ideally they don’t want us to at all, but if it’s gonna be a dating scandal, best keep it between two people from the same agency,” he said, admittedly quieter now, but with a definitive thud of his empty sundae cup against the table as if to make a groundbreaking point.
“Yes, love, we’ve established that already, we can all read and already noticed that dating rules weren’t outlined in the contract,” Mina sighed from next to him, deadpan and feigning boredom. “Got anything more interesting to share?”
“Well obviously, I wasn’t finished talking,” Johnny huffed, but quickly continued when everyone jeered in annoyance. “Just think about the publicity. Fans love couples that make music together, they eat that shit up. So let’s say someone starts dating. Good for the company. Say nothing happens at all, for the entire length of our contracts. Also good for the company.”
“What if they break up?” Doyoung asked, skeptical. “Still good for the company?”
“Yes, because they’d say it was an amicable breakup in favour of both parties’ careers, get free publicity, get praised for being professional, and life goes on,” Johnny snorted. “We’re dealing with execs who will try to make money off anything you throw at them. They’re all capitalist pigs.”
Mina rolled her eyes. “You’re literally American.”
Johnny glared. “You have tea and crumpets for breakfast.”
“What if the couple’s gay?” you broke in before the two could start another squabble over their nationalities and British colonialism. If you were exploring hypotheticals, why not explore them all?
“I’m not gay,” Johnny said immediately.
“I never said you were,” you snapped. “I said what if.”
“Then they’ll never disclose it, the public is left to speculate, and fans make one hell of a tag on AO3. At the end of the day, nothing particularly bad for the company.”
Doyoung frowned, confused. “What’s aye-oh-three?”
“John reads gay fanfiction.”
“I don’t!”
Then the table descended into another war, and in the midst of the chaos, Doyoung ate your remaining chicken nuggets.
Still just a group of nameless, faceless kids at the corner McDonald’s, the four of you let your profanities and threats flow free. You all knew: things would change drastically in the coming weeks, and you wanted to hold onto this for just a little longer. Regardless of pending fame, regardless of possible successes or failures, it wouldn’t be every day that you ate fast food and caused mayhem in public this spontaneously. Nor insulted Johnny this freely, nor copied Mina’s British vulgarities in a near-insulting accent, nor curled up over Doyoung’s shoulders when you inevitably got tired.
How ironic it was, bringing yet another youthful, chipper idol group into the industry, when you’d sacrificed all your teenage years for this moment. While Doyoung carried you across the parking lot on his back, you thought back to when you’d put your pen to the paper and signed neatly in the little box they’d provided. It was hard to believe that it had happened only a few hours ago. Even your exit from the restaurant, barely five minutes ago, felt so far away. You were incredibly wired, overwhelmed, always overthinking.
You trekked back to the dorm by bus, Doyoung having relinquished access to his brother’s car, and your new manager not yet responsible for your every move and location, much less driving you places. You’d met him earlier in the day—a handsome, charismatic, 30-something-year-old who could easily debut himself if not for his age—hardly spoke, and quickly exchanged goodbyes. You could only hope that he would turn out about as easy-going as he looked.
It was past midnight when you arrived home: a modest building not too far from the company building, two small units split between the boys and girls. Soon after, Mina went out to the convenience store for ice cream, while Johnny went up to the roof to puff on his vape. You found yourself sprawled out on Doyoung’s bed, watching him browse internet deals on Coupang. It didn’t take long for you to make it to his side and slouch against him with your arms around his neck. It took only minutes for him to put his laptop aside and hold you properly. Barely a few moments for him to throw caution to the wind and kiss you.
Something about it felt more like a parting gesture than anything else. Like a silent and mutual agreement that this—whatever this was—would have to stop soon. Like you both acknowledged the lack of clear definition for your relationship, and that it was okay. Some part of you was envisioning everything that could go wrong from here. The other part of you fully trusted his judgement, and your own.
“Won’t be able to do this once Kibum moves in tomorrow,” he gave a breathless laugh several minutes later. But he sobered quickly enough, brushing aside a stray strand of your hair and whispering, “Probably shouldn’t, anyways.”
“Probably won’t have time,” you joked lightly. “Only four hours of free time a day? I’d rather be sleeping in those four hours, not sucking your face, thanks.”
“Not sure how we’ll survive that.”
“What, not sucking face?”
He looked at you, clearly unimpressed. “No, only getting four hours of sleep every night.”
“Maybe even less than four.”
“Double stuff me in the ass.”
“Christ, Doyoung.”
Ever true to himself, he hurried to undo his vulgarities. He smoothed your hair down again, laughing quietly and murmuring in your ear, “Joking. I think we’ll be okay.”
Then he closed the distance between your lips one last time, gently taking your face in his hands to give you a proper goodbye.
We’ll be okay.
Those words carried more weight than he even knew, following you long after you parted. It was there when you finally retired to bed, still echoing when the lights went out—lulling you to sleep where you would have been tossing and turning in any other circumstance.
We’ll be okay.
IMG_4749.MOV from Mina’s iPhone
“Observe: Kim Doyoung reading his first fanfiction on AO3. It’s, um. A Harry Potter x Draco Malfoy ABO male pregnancy mafia kidnapping AU that ____ found—”
“WHAT THE FUCK?!”
“Read it out loud!”
“What the fuck am I reading?! ‘His fifteen-inch-long co—‘ JOHN YOUNGHO SEO, YOU DERANGED SON OF A BITCH!! IS THIS WHAT YOU READ IN YOUR FREE TIME—”
“We’re so getting fired if this video gets out.”
“Oh, definitely.”
Some more tomfoolery for this fic here! (I said this was 10% crack this is what I meant)
work has been chill lately so I've taken to developing an excessively large and detailed spreadsheet that analyzes ateez's discography and line distribution from debut until present... will be posting my full summary soon because as a STEM and spreadsheet nerd I think this is super fun and interesting LOL (if you hate math get off my page (just kidding pls stay))
yes I went through ateez's entire fucking discography to record their total line time for this, shout out to the four line distribution channels I ripped shit from (HEXA6ON, random_k, k_line distribution and others doing the most for this fandom)
my favourite finding so far:
this is a trend most kpop fans know about but I'm showing graphically here. we see a lot of groups start out with line distributions that rely on one or two vocal powerhouses to carry the rest of the group (debate all you fucking want about this, I'm not getting involved in that shit I'm just saying it as it is); then the distribution becomes more "fair" as time goes on and members all get more experience.
in the graph above, there's a lot of variance in 2018, but all the lines have converged recently, indicating a more equal line distribution. the distribution was most equal in 2023 and we've diverged a little bit since then, but 2024 isn't over yet!
some other nerd shit:
hongjoong starts the most songs out of all the members, with 17 songs in which he sang the first line. he's closely followed by yunho, seonghwa, and then san.
yeosang's share of lines has increased by a net 76% since debut, while jongho's has decreased by a net 77%.
13.7% of ateez's total songs are remixes and 12.3% are a Japanese/Korean/English version of an existing song.
on average, ateez songs run for 3 minutes and 12 seconds
whenever a future song is teased in a previous song, we typically wait 3 months for the full song to be released... with the exception of "Sector 1," which was teased in "Outro: Long Journey" back in January of 2020, and wasn't released in full until almost 3 years later.
and a peak at the spreadsheet madness behind all this:
In the six or seven years that you’d considered Doyoung as more than just a friend, definitively describing your relationship with him had always been difficult. You were ‘lovers,’ essentially, but that sounded much too dreamy for either of your tastes; ‘significant others,’ perhaps, an all-encompassing and rather conservative term, but too harsh on the ears. ‘Girlfriend and boyfriend’ didn’t seem quite right to you, considering how private you’d kept it since the very beginning.
An entertainment agency with no fear of bankruptcy, scraping together a co-ed act despite its inherent unpopularity—the both of you involved—had made things awfully complicated.
pairing: kim doyoung x f. reader (she/her pronouns)
tags: non-canon idolverse (NCT and other groups don’t necessarily exist in this, I just took a lot of inspiration from the Korean pop industry. it feels like realistic fiction but also not really), somewhat slow burn, slice of life at times, friends to lovers, angst, fluff, it’s also at least 10% crack
word count: 6.8k preview, 40k+ full fic (fuck off, I’m not sorry)
cw: preview includes mild language, alcohol. full fic includes smoking/vaping and drugs as poor coping mechanisms, anxiety and one instance of a panic attack, suggestive content
taglist available; reply or message me! I anticipate this will be out by end of August, I only have three more chapters to write!
additional notes:
- kard is the blueprint!!! they induce so much bisexual panic in me and I love them so much, it’s probably pretty clear that I took inspiration from them and their artistry for this fic hehe.
- I have a lot of thoughts on this realistic fiction genre I’m dabbling in but will hold off on sharing them here… just know that it’s written to feel realistic but god knows what actually happens behind the scenes in K-pop; none of this is meant to be speculative or mean, I’m just having a bit of fun. if you’re someone who actually gets deep into the industry drama and how the industry works, don’t get hung up on the details. please.
prologue: in the blur of the rain
For once, you were thankful for the rain.
It was a momentary relief from the heat of Seoul summers: a gust of coldness to push aside the heavy haze of pollution, and a steady stream of water to wash away the smell of cigarette smoke always lingering around your building. Sprawled out on a lawn chair with your legs stretched out, you watched mindlessly as the rainwater spilled into and accumulated in the balcony above yours. The rhythm of the water hitting the concrete was mesmerizing. Woosh, splat. Like glass, the drops shattered into a fine mist that sprayed your bare feet. Woosh, splat. Next to you, Doyoung mumbled something about the weather. Splat, splat.
“Aren’t you cold?” he asked. He’d joined you shortly after you stepped outside, disappointed by the gloominess of the low-hanging clouds, but content to sit with you nonetheless. Pleasantries, a couple of laughs over the beers he’d brought over from your fridge, then you’d sat in silence. Until the wind picked up a great deal and begged the inevitable question.
You glanced over at him, quickly understanding what he really meant. Huddled in a hoodie with his hair damp from the shower and the circular lenses of his glasses starting to fog up, he was cold. A man of surprising patience and sympathy who was always willing to stay as long as you did, but you supposed his will was wearing thin in the rain.
“Not really,” you shrugged. “You?”
“A little,” came a rather impassive response through a stifled yawn. He stretched his arms above his head lazily, then curled back into himself. “Mostly just tired. The alcohol’s making me sleepy.”
You snorted, unimpressed. “Mina’s gonna be real unhappy when she finds her stuff missing from the fridge.”
Doyoung grunted. “She owes me money.”
“For what, drinks from McDonald’s? Don’t we all?” you joked, patting his arm in mock reassurance. “You can go inside if you want. I’ll probably stay awhile.”
“Mm, I’ll manage.”
It fell silent again. There was some hidden reminder in both his words and the rain: a constant backdrop, constant background noise that was bound to be brought up explicitly soon, as much as you wanted it to stay buried. It had been like this for a couple weeks, ever since Doyoung sat down with management and made the decision. You were all aware of his choice, certainly not thrilled by it in the slightest, but dutifully observing a countdown—only five days, presently. There would be another, after the first hit zero, but you’d already decided that you wouldn’t count the days until his return.
There were plenty of crying, heartbroken fans of his who would gladly do it for you, anyway.
As you reached into the pocket of your jacket for something, you suddenly felt a judgemental gaze following you. Doyoung watched with incredulous amusement as you pulled the vape pen from its hiding spot to take a long drag. It was a bad habit that your manager hated and Doyoung liked to make fun of, but neither of them made efforts to stop you. There were worse things you could’ve been doing.
“Oh, I see,” Doyoung laughed, reaching over to absentmindedly massage your shoulder, where he knew you always tensed up. Had the two of you been in public, that was one of the worse things you could’ve been doing: giving the people any reason to doubt the nature of your relationship. “Should’ve guessed this was why you came out here.”
“Yeah,” you admitted, then showed him the pen: newly-ordered with your last pay cheque, pale pink and sparkly. “Wanted to take the new girlie for a spin.”
Ever curious, or maybe just looking for another excuse to ridicule you, Doyoung plucked it from your hand and took a hit. “Gross,” was the final verdict along with an exaggerated face of disgust, as he handed it back to you. “I don’t know why you and Johnny do this shit willingly.”
You shrugged. “Stress.”
“You wanna talk about it?”
“About what?”
Doyoung stared at you like it was obvious, yet not impatiently—one of the many things you liked about him, especially when the industry had a mean little habit of making you feel dumb and oblivious. “What’s stressing you out?”
There it was, the onset of the conversation you’d been waiting to have. “You. What else?”
He raised a brow, grinning sarcastically. “You don’t think I can survive two years in the military and fulfill a responsibility that’s to be fulfilled by every good and able-bodied Korean son in the country?”
“Please. You can barely learn an entire choreography without bitching about back pain at least once.” You rolled your eyes and brought the vape back up to your lips.
“What about the good son part?”
You’d met his parents before: hard-working, upper-middle class folks from the suburbs who had undoubtedly wanted their kids to pursue law or medicine for sake of job security, only to get an actor and singer instead. Cackling at the promise of getting a rise out of him, you met his gaze with glee. “I think it’s really sweet that you buy your mama designer stuff all the time. But she probably wanted that money from a well-respected lawyer, not a K-pop idol who clowns around on national television for a living.”
Doyoung glared and flipped you off, but it was all in good fun. “Right back at you.” Then in a disbelieving murmur from behind his drink, “I’d be a pretty fucking hot lawyer though.”
You sighed in agreement, the notion making you feel more dreamy than you would care to admit—but for good reason other than the fact that he would make a very hot lawyer. “Oh, how life would be so much easier.”
“We probably think that because this is the only life we’ve ever known,” Doyoung smiled softly as a certain sense of contemplation settled over the balcony. You both knew it was true, and would eventually settle for some semblance of normalcy when given the opportunity. You could hardly despise your jobs, nor could you fully embrace it. Like any other employment, it was just that. Only yours seemed to define you as a person much more than any other 9 to 6 in the city would a typical person.
“Will you be okay?” he asked a little later, watching you blow lazy smoke rings. The concern was more genuine than usual, prodding at emotions you’d kept bottled up for the better half of the week. “It’s… Sunday.” You knew he was counting down the days too. “I’m going on Friday.”
“I don’t know if it’s quite registered yet. It’ll probably hit harder once you’re gone,” you said. “But I mean, two years isn’t the worst. We’re used to it.”
“We’re used to not being with each other. We’re not used to being without each other completely.”
Ah. Another conversation to be had, when he came back. Now just a bit more dejected by the mere mention, you joked, “There’s a difference?”
“There’s a difference.”
You knew the difference, of course. You could explain it in great detail if you wanted to, covering the years of history behind it and the gruelling effort you’d put into keeping a story alive. But it was a story that never made it further than Doyoung and yourself, echoing just slightly to reach Mina and Johnny in muted detail as well.
In the six or seven years that you’d considered yourselves as more than just friends, definitively describing your relationship had always been difficult. You were ‘lovers,’ essentially, but that sounded much too dreamy for either of your tastes; ‘significant other,’ perhaps, an all-encompassing and rather conservative term, but too harsh on the ears. ‘Girlfriend and boyfriend’ didn’t seem quite right to you, considering how private you’d kept it since the very beginning.
An entertainment agency with no fear of bankruptcy, scraping together a co-ed act despite its inherent unpopularity—the both of you involved—had made things awfully complicated.
But in all the ten or eleven years that you’d known each other just as people, you’d never been apart for so long. You’d never been without him as just a friend. Even the occasional modelling or acting gig on his end took no more than a few months, while your solo work only peppered your usual schedules with overnights at the studio. The fact that he was enlisting alone was possibly the saddest part, with you and Mina obviously exempted, and Johnny too by his American citizenship. From seeing him almost every day to only once or twice a year… it would be hard on you all, but on you in particular.
Sensing your low spirits, Doyoung still found it in himself to joke, “You’re gonna hate my hair.”
You groaned, refusing to imagine him with the dreaded buzz cut and green beret. “Fuck, don’t remind me. I’m not searching you up on Naver for the next two years.”
“You search me up on Naver?”
“Shut up.”
But he was unwilling to let it go that easily. “Aww, that’s cute. You know what? Between me and you…” Scooting closer with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes but hardly a waver in his voice, he whispered, “I search myself up too.”
“You’re so annoying,” you scoffed, blowing smoke in his face.
“You love that about me,” he grinned, then leaned in to kiss you.
For years, you’d always jolted away when he did it—purely out of paranoia, always worried that someone was watching. But Doyoung was unbelievably meticulous: restricting himself to the dorms, his car, and occasionally his family’s empty vacation home. Never in the company building. Never anywhere else. It wasn’t often either; for the most part, you abstained from any romantic gestures, lest you got used to it and went too far in public without even knowing it.
It became muscle memory after that, for you to startle away and for him to coax you back to him, for you to trust his judgement of your surroundings and safety. In the spur of the moment this time, he wrapped his arms around your waist and pulled you gently into his lap. You knew he already missed you from the abruptness of his affection to the way he kissed you breathless. And while you thought about how he would be stolen away from you for the second time and reminisced all the times you had to hold back from going all the way, you were infinitely grateful for the stormy skies.
Because in the blur of the rain, the world was none the wiser to who you were, or who you were to each other.
i. never grow up
You met Kim Doyoung on your first day at the company, in a dingy storage closet.
You were eighteen at the time—fresh out of high school and your old entertainment company, where you had few prospects apart from amassing crippling debt and cameos on rigged survival shows. You couldn’t quite despise the shitty management though, or the hellish programs they offered. Because at the very least, they’d help you stick your foot in the door. Finding your next destination was hardly difficult, especially when a family friend of yours distributed the company’s business cards as a side hustle.
Taeyong responded almost instantly when you asked him for help, then sent you a blurry picture of a pink card drenched in someone’s beer. Vitamin Entertainment. A quick Naver search brought up a number of decently-successful acts, mostly soloists and actors. And a recently-disbanded idol group, which was most reassuring.
“Don’t I need to audition?” you asked meekly when he called to make sure you’d gotten his message.
He was tipsy at a party, slurring and tripping over his words. “Nooooo, sweetheart. You’re hot and experienced, don’t waste your time. Either email them a link to your old YouTube channel, or I’ll do it for you.”
“I’ll do it,” you grumbled. “Speak nothing of the YouTube channel or I’ll kidnap your dog.”
“Okay, whatever you say,” Taeyong chirped, obnoxiously sing-song as always. “Well then, my dear, the bubbles are bubbling and the wine is flowing! Love ya, see you later, make sure to send that email, okay byeeeeeeee—”
The line went dead, and you reluctantly powered on your laptop to do as he’d told you.
Imagine your surprise when someone got back to you two weeks later and asked you to come in. Either Taeyong had put in a word for you and your tape was impeccable (you knew it wasn’t, you’d filmed it at 2 AM), or they were desperate.
Your expectations plummeted when Google Maps took you to a rose-tinted glass building in the scrappiest part of the neighbourhood. And they hit rock bottom when you found yourself in a lobby modelled tactlessly after a container of children’s gummy vitamins.
The floors were a checkerboard pattern of blue and aquamarine tiles, while the uneven plaster walls were painted salmon pink. The furniture strewn about the foyer were made from cheap, hard plastic, resembling sheets of gelatin and brightly-coloured candy. Caricature drawings of Vitamin artists and CEOs stared at you from their glass frames while a manager took you on a tour. Your first response within twenty minutes of arrival was to check that your contact lenses hadn’t fallen out of your eyes; there was something very vague and blurry about the place, which seemed to bleed into the atmosphere and all the people you passed by.
“New here?” a few of them would ask you in passing, be it other trainees or instructors, and you always responded with a polite nod. They’d shrug nonchalantly and welcome you with a simple, “Cool,” before moving on. You didn’t doubt that they were busy, yet they seemed to float around aimlessly, like idle characters in a video game.
It didn’t help that the trainee floor felt like a game too: a game of interpreting awkwardly-placed signs and room numbers that more often than not took you to all the wrong places. The fated storage closet was just one of them, hidden behind a mirrored door you thought would lead to an empty practice room.
“What the hell?”
Upon entering, you were met with lopsided IKEA shelves filled to their maximum capacities with cleaning supplies and cardboard boxes. It was a back room not meant to be associated with the company’s poppy, pretty exterior: drab but organic, clearly deviating from the standard blue-pink candy colour scheme. Amidst the mess sat a boy around your age, pale faced, black haired, wearing round glasses. He was perched atop an old washing machine, his focus glued insistently to a mobile game, until you unceremoniously barged in. Then he looked up like a deer caught in headlights, instinctively shoving the phone into the front pocket of his hoodie.
“Hi.”
You stared at him, confused. “Sorry, uh… this isn’t practice room B, is it?”
“This is practice room D,” he said.
You stared at him. He stared back—completely deadpan for several seconds before breaking into a toothy smile. “I’m just messing with you. B’s around the corner, on your right.”
“Thanks.”
“New here?”
Like you already had several times that day, you nodded. But unlike previous occurrences, he didn’t welcome you halfheartedly and then float away—or rightfully kick you out of his hiding spot. Instead, he noted your attire and demeanour, both of which lacked the usual jitters and nervousness of a new recruit. “But not new to the scene, are we?”
“No, not really,” you said.
“How long?” It was a touchy question amongst trainees, strangers especially. Yet from him, it hardly seemed invasive, only curious.
“Two years now.”
Intrigued, he hopped down from the washing machine. Even back then, he hovered a few inches above you, just a little lanky, still in the process of growing into himself. “Me too. Debut is a scam.”
“A scam you and I keep falling for,” you reminded him with a chuckle.
To your relief, he cracked another smile. “You’re so right,” he laughed, sticking his hand out to shake. “Kim Doyoung. Welcome to Vitamin.”
You would soon learn that Doyoung took everything with good humour. And from that alone, you knew you would become good friends.
You saw each other quite frequently after that. For the sake of their finances, the companies had lumped all their trainees together regardless of gender and experience. You tripped over yourselves in cramped dance studios and listened to strained voices together in vocal rooms. On weekends, you slept for eighteen hours at a time and debated dropping out to pursue proper higher education, only answering calls from your fellow trainees if it involved free food. And on Monday mornings, you got right back to work.
It was less busy in the wintertime, thankfully. When the foreign trainees were granted long breaks to see their families and the high schoolers took time off to study for their finals, you and Doyoung had to keep each other company. Little got done those days, as you opted to play variations of “Fuck Marry Kill” or “Never Have I Ever” over soju from a plastic soda bottle.
“Johnny, Yuta and Airi,” Doyoung prompted with a snicker and took a lazy swig, as if it were anything but an easy decision.
“Oh, c’mon,” you retorted, stealing the bottle back from him. “Kill John, obviously.”
“Good choice.”
“I’d pay money to marry Airi. And then fuck Yuta.”
“Way to immediately ruin your marriage.”
It was pure reflex to hit him hard on the head, with the closest thing you could find. “Not in that order, smartass!”
Unfazed, Doyoung only glared at you. “Just for that attitude, we’re skipping your turn.”
“What type of fucking rules— Wait—”
“Airi, the nail tech who ruined your set last month, and…” He trailed off playfully, purposely making you wait in irritation—but your impatience quickly turned into shock. “Me.”
You damn well choked on your own spit.
You’d never seen Doyoung that way, much less had any time to entertain those kinds of thoughts. Maybe some quiet recognition and acknowledgement when you first met him, which was about a year ago now: just a respectful and very private nod to how well he would do as a celebrity. He was polite when he talked, pretty when he sang, confident when he danced… but were you appreciating those qualities because you needed them yourself? Or did they really make you see him in a different light?
“I’m still marrying Airi,” you started defensively. “Killing the nail tech. She literally scammed me. And did you see that neon pink she used? Absolutely foul.”
Doyoung raised a brow. “And…?”
“If you ask me nicely, you might just get what you want.”
Silence. You stared at each other for a long moment, but ultimately both decided you’d had enough fun.
“Meh, I wouldn’t fuck you.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
It had always been easy to be so brutally honest with each other.
The incident went completely forgotten until a year later—one evening when you found yourselves in a tight circle with the other trainees, drinking beer and spinning Doyoung’s empty soju/soda bottle for shits and giggles. It was cliche, certainly. But you were all missing out on drunken college parties in the real world, and this was as good as entertainment would get.
The bottle spun and spun, making rounds but always narrowly avoiding you, picking and choosing duos to go into the notorious storage closet for the allotted seven minutes. Within half an hour, Yuta and Airi had come back disheveled, while Ten had returned with pink marks on his neck—the latter of which lost you five thousand won to Doyoung in a stupid bet. Not all pairings were so frivolous, however, with Johnny and Mark deciding to awkwardly play tic tac toe seven times on the same crumpled napkin.
By your impeccable luck and the good graces of the saints, the last spin of the bottle matched you with Doyoung.
“He’s probably just gonna fall asleep,” you grunted, then dragged him out of the room.
“You know, all of these losers have been faking it,” Doyoung said once you’d shut the door and set a timer on your phone. He sent you a knowing look. “I mean, if you’re hung up over Airi and Yuta, they probably just jogged on the spot for seven minutes. They respect each other way too much.”
“In that case, give me my money back,” you said, already making a grab for the five thousand won.
“What?” His hand immediately flew up to guard the pocket of his track pants, where he was keeping your money. “Oh no, Ten’s was probably real. You think he just punched himself in the throat for seven minutes while Kun watched?”
“Damn, okay, I didn’t know I was friends with fucking Sherlock Holmes himself.”
Doyoung cackled, slapping your shoulder hard enough to send you into the wall. “C’mon, they’ve liked each other—well, pretended to hate each other—for years now.”
Then for whatever reason, your last game of ‘Fuck Marry Kill’ suddenly crossed your mind.
“Should we do them all one better?”
He was skeptical, but perhaps more so by the logistics than the notion of actually doing it. He checked the timer. “How, by actually making out? We’ve got, like, five minutes.”
“That seems like a good amount of time.”
He paused and looked down at the timer again. You were left anticipating his reply for just a few seconds, but there was little anxiety attached to it.
“Fuck it, why not.”
He set your phone down on the nearest shelf, turned you around to face him, and suddenly his lips were on yours.
That was the very first time you flinched away. It wasn’t bad, or even that weird considering your being friends, but there was a sudden confidence behind it that made you realize two things. One: there were multiple sides to this guy, as there were with all people, and one you had never taken seriously. Two: the side of him you were missing was his attractiveness.
You parted from him to catch your breath, completely caught off guard by the way he’d tucked a finger under your chin and lifted your head up to meet him halfway (where the hell did he learn that from, K-dramas?). His hands quickly found your shoulders instead, comforting despite the way his eyes widened and he rushed to apologize. “Too much?”
“No, I just—” You laughed. “Surprised, that’s all.”
He caught onto your train of thought quickly enough, and when you didn’t protest, gently crowded you against the wall. “Didn’t think I’d have some experience after twenty years of life? I’m not a stick in the mud.”
“Straight A’s in high school, perfect attendance, vice president of the student council, after school volunteering, part-time tutoring—”
“A surprising number of girls were into that,” Doyoung retorted, then grinned proudly. “Boys too.”
“Ugh, so you peaked in high school, we get it,” you grumbled.
“Ugh, so you’re jealous, we get it.”
“Shut up.”
“Got it.”
With that said, he pressed his lips back to yours and snaked an arm around your waist—with a surprising amount of care given the spontaneity of this entire ploy in the first place. Not one to be outdone, you wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him closer. It didn’t take long for him to grab both your wrists after that, pinning them above you and fully caging you in. It was undoubtedly rushed and messy as you raced against time, the alcohol from earlier obviously playing some part too.
When the timer went off, Doyoung gently pushed off from the wall and reached for your phone. But his gaze never left yours—his eyes staying insistently dark and full of mischief even as he silenced the offensive ringtone. But eventually, he broke into laughter, at which point you realized he was messing with you again.
“That was fun,” he chirped as he fixed his hair in the reflection of a broken TV. Then jokingly, “I’d give it a 4 out of 5.”
You rolled your eyes. “Thanks Doyoung, your review helps small businesses like ours improve and get those five stars. Would you do it again?”
He swung around to look at you, surprised.
“Maybe.”
Funnily enough, “maybe” became something entirely different, as you began sneaking off with each other at every possible moment. Rarely to do something as scandalous as making out in a storage closet (although sometimes), but spending more time together nonetheless. You often forwent sleep entirely and wasted away the early hours with him, eating at random diners and burger joints, or watching the stars from an empty parking lot.
It became apparent pretty quickly: you’d been a little too studious in high school, and still tightly-wound two years after graduation. But now at twenty years of age, you felt some strange urge to develop a rebellious streak. Doyoung was no different despite always denying it, frequently taking his brother’s car out for joy rides and continuing to sneak alcohol into the practice rooms. Admittedly, he sometimes fell back into the old habitual role of goody-two-shoes, entertaining what-if scenarios and cover stories for use if the two of you ever got caught.
But you weren’t doing anything illegal, much less even wrong. Plenty of trainees spent their evenings doing much more questionable things. And no one at the company had formally banned you from dating as predebut, wannabe stars, although it was obviously frowned upon. And most importantly, neither you nor Doyoung had said anything about dating.
Surely it had crossed both your minds. On occasion, once he’d kissed you breathless and stared you down with some unfathomable emotion, you had to resist the urge to blurt out, “What are we, exactly?” It wasn’t just the present state of your relationship that mattered. It was all else that might follow.
If it was all for shits and giggles now, would it develop? With debut being the obvious goal after four years of gruelling work, what would you do if you both reached the goal and something had developed by then? Break up? Stay together secretly despite the obvious backlash that would ensue if people found out? After every sleepless night, every car ride, every midnight dinner, you caught yourself thinking about it.
Eight months later, things took an abrupt turn.
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
The bathroom door slammed shut behind you as you stormed into the common area of your dorm—now empty, with Mina out shopping and the two younger trainees you lived with having gone home for the weekend. Something about their absence and the lack of activity sharpened the rest of your senses, perpetuating the sharp sound of static that filled your phone call. The place had felt incredibly deserted for weeks, growing gloomier and quieter with every departure of an ex-trainee.
The company was down in numbers again.
“They can’t just—” you let out a muffled noise of frustration, putting Doyoung on speaker so you could continue stomping around. “I mean, why?!”
“Yuta leaving was the last straw,” Doyoung replied, just as agitated by the news. His voice cut in and out of white noise. “If he hadn’t, they could make do with debuting us as a trio and delaying you and the girls by a year or two. Or if Airi and Jiwoo were still here, the other way around—”
“But why are they in such a rush?” you spat. “What’s five years without putting out a new group? Bankruptcy?”
Doyoung didn’t respond. But you could tell it was because he was preoccupied. The sounds of city traffic and wind were prevalent on his end, as he presumably made haste toward some place. Suddenly, it went silent. A door swung open, then clanged shut. “C’mon,” he said breathlessly. “I’m downstairs.”
You grabbed only your phone and keys before stumbling out to find him. Not knowing how he’d arrived so quickly, you could only be grateful that you weren’t all alone.
Upon seeing him, you practically launched yourself from the stairs and crashed into his arms. The anger and frustration hit all at once, as you buried your head into his chest—burning hot and relentless against all reason, far too overwhelming as it pushed down on you. Then came embarrassment and overwhelming discomfort for even feeling angry in the first place. Was it selfish to be this angry? Was it selfish to feel so much hatred?
They’d served you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity on a silver platter, yet you could only think of yourself. You could only blurt out one scathing hot truth that would have sent your younger trainee self into hysterics:
“I don’t want this.”
Doyoung was calm as ever, but you could hear the strain in his voice. “I know.”
“I— It’s stupid! No one asked for this. I didn’t sacrifice four years of my life to put up with this!”
There was no reply this time. Not for a long time. When you finally resurfaced from the warm fleece of his scarf for air, he was wiping the tears from your cheeks. A physical outburst from the overload of conflicting emotions, one you had hardly noticed.
At the core of the situation was just that: conflict. You were torn between relief and apprehension, joy and anger, so incredibly relieved that your efforts hadn’t gone to waste, but so disgusted by the company’s blatant reach for attention. So eager to take the offer, but terrified that it would prove to be the wrong decision.
You, Doyoung, Mina and Johnny. It was a lineup unlike anything anyone had seen in years, unconventional in the Korean pop scene for obvious reasons. All you had to do was sign the documents. Then debut was all yours—likely alongside criticism and skepticism from everyone watching.
“I know I’m being ungrateful,” you said, barely louder than a whisper. “But I didn’t sign up to deal with ridicule and rumours the moment we’re announced. Why do we have to deal with that bullshit when the consequences are their fault?”
When it came to consolation, people failed to acknowledge the necessity of a listening ear over advice. And in that moment, you were grateful that Doyoung listened. No unsolicited comments pointing out your tendency to blow things out of proportion, no attempt to calm you with reason. It was in Doyoung’s nature to analyze, to stay logical, to stay grounded in reality at every sharp turn of the road. But he did nothing of the sort, knowing it wasn’t in yours. There was only a warm embrace to cling onto—then a simple reassurance that would’ve broken you, had it not come from someone who really meant it.
“We’ll be okay.”
He let you settle back against him. For several minutes after that, you rocked back and forth in his arms, thinking to yourself, Will we though? It had finally dawned on you, what awaited you in the coming days, months, years, even.
“What about us?” What… are we?”
He mustered a wry grimace at the question, slowly pulling apart to hold you at arm’s length. The weariness of his expression didn’t look right on the face of a 22-year-old. You wondered if you looked the same: tired and worn out years before the average person begins to wear. “Regardless of what we are now, regardless of what we become if we sign contracts, we were friends first. Right?”
You nodded, but suddenly found it difficult to look him in the eye.
“And at the end of the day—of any day, good or bad—we’ll always be friends, yeah?”
You’d seen him at his ugliest, and he’d seen you at yours: from his episodes of black-out drunkenness, to the insults you used to hurl at your parents over the phone. You’d fought on occasion too, exchanging backhanded comments and getting into full-blown arguments before reconciling later. There was nothing to hide from each other, and no one you trusted more with your secrets. No one knew both you and the industry you worked in quite like him. It went both ways.
So you nodded again.
He gave you a wry smile. “Then let’s be friends while we deal with all the other shit. If we want to be something else some other time, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” There was a long, nervous breath, as his hands found yours to steady himself. “Is that okay with you?”
Insinuating that you could be something else in the future. Insinuating that his mind had wandered in the same direction as yours, at some point in time.
“Okay,” you murmured softly, resting your head against his shoulder. “That’s okay.”
As friends, you found momentarily solace in each other, while the wind howled outside.
“The way I see it? The company doesn’t give two flying fucks.”
Johnny’s voice rang out across the room, ever loud and thunderous like the titan himself—despite a mouthful of McDonald’s fries and ice cream. A chorus of hushed and panicked voices followed immediately.
“Seo, you better shut your fucking mouth.”
“Ew, John you got spit on me!”
“Dispatch would have a field day with this one.”
“Can’t take this man anywhere, I swear,” Doyoung rolled his eyes, leaning over to snatch a chicken nugget from your tray. Just as quickly, you wrestled it out of his hand and shoved it into your mouth, your idol etiquette class be damned.
“Can’t take you anywhere either,” you scoffed, then pointed at Johnny with greased-up fingers. “As much as you need to learn how to shut the hell up when we’re in public, continue.”
He gave an indifferent shrug and kept shoveling vanilla soft serve into his mouth. Away from formal settings and the prying eyes of company seniors who expected utmost discipline, Johnny Seo was nothing short of an American frat boy pulled straight from a cliche American movie: most commonly seen in joggers and leisure wear, stumbling lazily over his words, eyes constantly half-closed like he was stoned out of his mind.
“I said, the company wouldn’t give two flying fucks if we, hypothetically, dated each other. Well, ideally they don’t want us to at all, but if it’s gonna be a dating scandal, best keep it between two people from the same agency,” he said, admittedly quieter now, but with a definitive thud of his empty sundae cup against the table as if to make a groundbreaking point.
“Yes, love, we’ve established that already, we can all read and already noticed that dating rules weren’t outlined in the contract,” Mina sighed from next to him, deadpan and feigning boredom. “Got anything more interesting to share?”
“Well obviously, I wasn’t finished talking,” Johnny huffed, but quickly continued when everyone jeered in annoyance. “Just think about the publicity. Fans love couples that make music together, they eat that shit up. So let’s say someone starts dating. Good for the company. Say nothing happens at all, for the entire length of our contracts. Also good for the company.”
“What if they break up?” Doyoung asked, skeptical. “Still good for the company?”
“Yes, because they’d say it was an amicable breakup in favour of both parties’ careers, get free publicity, get praised for being professional, and life goes on,” Johnny snorted. “We’re dealing with execs who will try to make money off anything you throw at them. They’re all capitalist pigs.”
Mina rolled her eyes. “You’re literally American.”
Johnny glared. “You have tea and crumpets for breakfast.”
“What if the couple’s gay?” you broke in before the two could start another squabble over their nationalities and British colonialism. If you were exploring hypotheticals, why not explore them all?
“I’m not gay,” Johnny said immediately.
“I never said you were,” you snapped. “I said what if.”
“Then they’ll never disclose it, the public is left to speculate, and fans make one hell of a tag on AO3. At the end of the day, nothing particularly bad for the company.”
Doyoung frowned, confused. “What’s aye-oh-three?”
“John reads gay fanfiction.”
“I don’t!”
Then the table descended into another war, and in the midst of the chaos, Doyoung ate your remaining chicken nuggets.
Still just a group of nameless, faceless kids at the corner McDonald’s, the four of you let your profanities and threats flow free. You all knew: things would change drastically in the coming weeks, and you wanted to hold onto this for just a little longer. Regardless of pending fame, regardless of possible successes or failures, it wouldn’t be every day that you ate fast food and caused mayhem in public this spontaneously. Nor insulted Johnny this freely, nor copied Mina’s British vulgarities in a near-insulting accent, nor curled up over Doyoung’s shoulders when you inevitably got tired.
How ironic it was, bringing yet another youthful, chipper idol group into the industry, when you’d sacrificed all your teenage years for this moment. While Doyoung carried you across the parking lot on his back, you thought back to when you’d put your pen to the paper and signed neatly in the little box they’d provided. It was hard to believe that it had happened only a few hours ago. Even your exit from the restaurant, barely five minutes ago, felt so far away. You were incredibly wired, overwhelmed, always overthinking.
You trekked back to the dorm by bus, Doyoung having relinquished access to his brother’s car, and your new manager not yet responsible for your every move and location, much less driving you places. You’d met him earlier in the day—a handsome, charismatic, 30-something-year-old who could easily debut himself if not for his age—hardly spoke, and quickly exchanged goodbyes. You could only hope that he would turn out about as easy-going as he looked.
It was past midnight when you arrived home: a modest building not too far from the company building, two small units split between the boys and girls. Soon after, Mina went out to the convenience store for ice cream, while Johnny went up to the roof to puff on his vape. You found yourself sprawled out on Doyoung’s bed, watching him browse internet deals on Coupang. It didn’t take long for you to make it to his side and slouch against him with your arms around his neck. It took only minutes for him to put his laptop aside and hold you properly. Barely a few moments for him to throw caution to the wind and kiss you.
Something about it felt more like a parting gesture than anything else. Like a silent and mutual agreement that this—whatever this was—would have to stop soon. Like you both acknowledged the lack of clear definition for your relationship, and that it was okay. Some part of you was envisioning everything that could go wrong from here. The other part of you fully trusted his judgement, and your own.
“Won’t be able to do this once Kibum moves in tomorrow,” he gave a breathless laugh several minutes later. But he sobered quickly enough, brushing aside a stray strand of your hair and whispering, “Probably shouldn’t, anyways.”
“Probably won’t have time,” you joked lightly. “Only four hours of free time a day? I’d rather be sleeping in those four hours, not sucking your face, thanks.”
“Not sure how we’ll survive that.”
“What, not sucking face?”
He looked at you, clearly unimpressed. “No, only getting four hours of sleep every night.”
“Maybe even less than four.”
“Double stuff me in the ass.”
“Christ, Doyoung.”
Ever true to himself, he hurried to undo his vulgarities. He smoothed your hair down again, laughing quietly and murmuring in your ear, “Joking. I think we’ll be okay.”
Then he closed the distance between your lips one last time, gently taking your face in his hands to give you a proper goodbye.
We’ll be okay.
Those words carried more weight than he even knew, following you long after you parted. It was there when you finally retired to bed, still echoing when the lights went out—lulling you to sleep where you would have been tossing and turning in any other circumstance.
We’ll be okay.
IMG_4749.MOV from Mina’s iPhone
“Observe: Kim Doyoung reading his first fanfiction on AO3. It’s, um. A Harry Potter x Draco Malfoy ABO male pregnancy mafia kidnapping AU that ____ found—”
“WHAT THE FUCK?!”
“Read it out loud!”
“What the fuck am I reading?! ‘His fifteen-inch-long co—‘ JOHN YOUNGHO SEO, YOU DERANGED SON OF A BITCH!! IS THIS WHAT YOU READ IN YOUR FREE TIME—”
“We’re so getting fired if this video gets out.”
“Oh, definitely.”
Some more tomfoolery for this fic here! (I said this was 10% crack this is what I meant)
if you guys don’t hear from me again, i died on a hinge date. in my absence, i grant any person (i don’t care who) permission to hack into my google drive and publish all my unfinished wips, except the one titled “O2”
if you guys don’t hear from me again, i died on a hinge date. in my absence, i grant any person (i don’t care who) permission to hack into my google drive and publish all my unfinished wips, except the one titled “O2”
In a hostile environment or in a sequence of unpleasant situations, an oasis provides pleasure.
■Pairing: vampire!Doyoung x club dancer!fem reader x vampire!Johnny
■Genres: supernatural, horror, smut, romance if you want to call it like that (it's not).
■Warnings: mature themes; explicit sexual content, drugs and alcohol involved, guns, violence, death scenes and mentions of it, and some gore scenes. MINORS PLEASE DO NOT INTERACT!
■Preview wordcount: ~2.5k words.
■Estimated wordcount for the full fic: idk I have like 19k words written so far so this gonna be a long one.
Author's note: hey every1 :) I've been working on this fic for sooo long and it's sooo long don't know when I'll finish it it's all planned out I really just gotta finish the last scenes. But I figured that if you all like this preview a bit I could post it in two parts or something like that. I know this preview won't show much, but I don't wanna spoil !!!!! cuz there will be a lot going on and I rlly like this story, and doyoung to me is like the supreme vampire so finally having him to be one in one of my stories--I'm excited. I hope I can do it justice. Anyway, you all know how it goes: if you like this, comment, ask me more about it, ask to be in a taglist, reblog, etc., etc.. I appreciate you, tysm for the love on my other fics !!!
.scene 01: words that will satisfy me
Lightning split the sky as the rain lashed the roof of the old bus, the drops seeping through the leaks, wetting the worn leather of its seats and spreading on the floor. You were lucky that public transportation was running that night and under those conditions, even more so considering that you had to be on time for your show at the casino—you couldn't afford to lose another night of work to torrential rains, even if it meant walking for forty minutes under the water from your house to the luxurious building.
The dirty streets of Seoul were already empty by the time you got off the bus, except for the old man you couldn't escape from even a single night arriving at the casino. While he wasn't inside, spending what was probably his last life savings on alcohol, drugs, and women (like most of the men you saw every night), he was living on the outskirts; under the big billboard of neon lights and on the fine and cold marble of the entrance serving as his refuge, along with a bed made of cardboard and an old, dirty mattress. Yuta kicked him out every night, especially the moment you arrived and he remembered the old man's presence due to the nasty comments he would give you, as you started up the stairs and toward the big golden doors.
Tonight was no different. Yuta left his position at the entrance as fast as he saw you coming and felt the old man open his mouth—although he didn't have a chance to say anything. As if Yuta could guess his intentions, he was in charge of throwing him in the hands of two high-security guards to the street and under that torrential rain; the homeless man's few belongings getting completely drenched, and causing the man to wail as he wandered off in search of a different place to spend the night. Only a series of what you assumed were complaints and curses came out of Yuta's mouth, in his native tongue.
Yuta lit a cigarette and didn't bother to return to his position. A quick wave of his hands was enough to have another man replace him, while he smoked under the cover of the water, resting momentarily from another night enriching his pockets in the largest casino in the city.
He opened his mouth to speak. A cold ran through your whole body at the same time that lightning struck right on the building across the street, highlighting the silhouette of the Japanese above the violent discharge. He squeezed then opened his eyes, already too irritated by all the interruption, to continue:
"Go upstairs. Dry yourself up and put on some other clothes. Doyoung wants to see you."
"But my show starts at two o'clock."
"Just do as I say."
You hurried to walk on the red carpet, passing between round tables and banquettes padded with burgundy velvet. The smell of alcohol mingled with that of fine perfumes and that of the money, scattered on each table among glasses, cards, and chips, and also kept in the pockets and wallets of the rich.
The back pocket of your black imitation of leather pants buzzed, so you reached for an old phone, its broken screen showing a message from Soyeon where she attached a picture of a ladder; the red neon lights of a "V.I.P." sign shone above it. You wondered why she was at the entrance to the third floor—an exclusive place that humans like you and Soyeon rarely frequented. So you quickly typed a message questioning what that photo meant before going downstairs.
The club was located below the casino and just above the parking lot. The stairs were marked with neon green arrows indicating floor -1 if you went down—your designated place of work. It was a very different world from the casino. While above the gold metal-edged bars gleamed in the warm light of huge chandeliers, below the place could barely be defined; cigarette smoke obscured what little vision the red lights dangling from the ceiling provided, and the confines of the club were lost in darkness, making it easy to get lost in that dive for hours.
The floor was slippery from the amount of alcohol that had already been spilled throughout the night, and you had to be careful not to trip or injure yourself on a dropped glass bottle. It was hard to move through the bodies that wouldn't stop dancing and pushing and gasping for breath as the club got more and more crowded. But still, you made it backstage and to the dressing rooms where you and the dancers were getting ready for the shows every night.
"Girl, you need me to do something for you?"
"Please," you begged while looking at the guy who shared the stage with you through the mirror. "Can you get my dress and my boots?"
Without wasting a second, you started working on your makeup. Red and black eyeshadow that accentuated your gaze, and a lipstick that was about to run out after so many nights of shared use—bloody red is what said on the side of its cover.
The boy returned shortly after with your clothes in one hand and a glass of liquor in the other. He lit a cigarette inside the small space while you changed, his eyes following your every move. Only the music coming from the club filled your ears until you opened the door ready to go out and he questioned you.
"Where are you going in such a hurry? There's still five until the show starts."
"Yeah, I know but…" you hesitated on telling him. It wasn't a secret amongst the human workers that you and Doyoung kind of had a thing—they knew you fucked from time to time, but you had no clue why he wanted to see you at that moment.
Doyoung managed everything and everyone at the club and knew your schedule like the palm of his hand. Work had always been his top priority as well, so you knew for sure he wasn't going to make you show up late on stage. Still, you didn't want to raise suspicions about anything, didn't want people to talk too much.
The boy—that was named Ten and was the second nicest person you knew as soon as you started working at the club—raised his brows at you, growing impatient, making gestures with both his hands for you to keep talking.
"Doyoung wants to see me," you finally concluded. "I don't know what he wants, but it'll be quick."
Ten only hummed and reached inside of his platforms, taking out a small blade and putting it in front of your face. His breath, which smelled like mint and whiskey, brushed your face while he talked. "Be careful." And he hid the blade inside one of your boots.
You gave him a nod along with a sympathetic smile and closed the door behind you on your way to Doyoung's office.
A long corridor connected the backstage dressing room to a mezzanine at the other end of the club. Suspended in the air from one side to the other, its tinted glass walls stretched to the roof of the club. Doyoung kept his office lit to a minimum, and the red lights outside it blocked all vision through the glass and into his office. This allowed him to have absolute control of everything that happened in his club, and to give orders without even having to get up from his chair.
You knocked on his door and looked above, at the corner of the corridor, letting the camera focus on your face. The door buzzed, indicating you were good to come inside.
Doyoung was sitting in his green velvet upholstered chair, facing the glass walls. A suit almost as pale as his skin accentuated his defined figure, even in that position. He turned to you, a welcoming smile adorning his face, and extended his left hand, the one not occupied with a glass feeding his tendencies, inviting you to get closer.
He called your name before holding your hand and bringing it to his lips. A soft kiss on your knuckles, which left them stained with a slightly thick red liquid. "I'll be brief since I don't want to delay us in our tasks, but I had to tell you this in person."
He set his glass down on his desk and moved you even closer, positioning yourself between his legs. He looked over your body with his gaze and dared to open the fine, shiny cloth robe that covered it. He caressed the curves of your hip and passed the palms of his hands over the micro tulle that covered your abdomen until he stopped below your breasts.
"You will dance on the third-floor stage tonight, along with Soyeon," he finally said, his clear eyes piercing your dark gaze. "Whatever happens there, you must tell me. Don't forget who you work for."
You swallowed dry. So Soyeon was at the entrance to the third floor because the two of you would be working there that night. Dancing for the vampires. Anxiety quickly took over your body, and you felt your hands and feet start to sweat. You were lucky Doyoung couldn't notice that temperature change, or he would have given you away.
"Won't you be there with the rest of them?"
This was not going according to your plan.
He denied it with his head. His hands began to move again, caressing your back and reaching the edge of your see-through dress. He lifted it, you felt the cold on your skin, and he squeezed both buttcheeks, awakening the lust within you.
He took a breath of air that inflated his chest, causing the emeralds that hung rimmed in gold around his neck to rise and fall. He moved you at his will until you were sitting on top of him, your sex barely covered by a thong that resembled black leather in contact with his bulge, and you had to make an enormous effort not to forget the plan and take him right then and there. Getting rid of Doyoung would be much more difficult than you had imagined.
"Don't forget who you must be loyal to."
.scene 02: this is not a threat
It is important to create eye contact with the audience when you are performing. That was never a problem at the club, with its stage right in front of Doyoung's office. And while you couldn't see him from your place, you knew that he was always watching you from above, so your gaze was directed most of the time towards his tinted windows. He helped your concentration and allowed you to focus on the dance. On the third floor stage, however, you felt quite lost; too many things happened there.
In the club, just a large group of mortals huddled under the smoke and red lights, paying little attention to what was happening onstage. In the vampires' cave, distractions were everywhere. The white lights that illuminated the stage blinded you from time to time but still allowed you to make out the scenes. Vampires sipping drinks at the bars, smoking around a game of poker, passing through heavy velvet curtains, going in and out of small cabins with humans who had a job other than yours. Some came staggering out of there, like drunk on something and wiping their lips, while others just came out arranging their clothes to resume their activities around a table or on the small dance floor.
But despite everything that was distracting, you were forced to make eye contact. You felt a presence, someone's gaze heavy on your figure, hidden in a dark corner of that exclusive area. The lights spun illuminating him for a split second, but it was long enough for his amber eyes to finally find yours. From that moment on, you felt attracted to the man as if you were magnets. You went down the stairs of the stage and walked between the chairs and tables, making some of the vampires who hadn't paid attention to you yet turn to look at you. Not for a second could you lower your gaze from his or focus on anything other than dancing for that man.
He was sitting in the middle of the round table smoking a cigarette, looking a little too relaxed for your liking. His white shirt was slightly ripped, revealing a barbed wire tattoo that stretched from clavicle to clavicle on his chest; below, on his right pectoral, a spider tattoo. Resting the weight of his body on a semi-extended arm holding a cane, looking too vampire-like under your eyes. His tattoos seemed to end on his both hands: a floral engraving on the back that contrasted with the phrase on his fingers: be afraid.
You got on that rounded table on your hands and knees, not caring about whatever game was going on between the rest of the men and the women who sat with him. You wanted to seduce him, that you knew. And he didn't seem to mind, because when a tall, blonde guy got up to protest, this man silenced him with a simple gesture of his hand. You thought it had to be a common thing amongst these vampires—they held so much power they didn't even need to use many words. So you danced the rest of your choreography for him, felt and touched your body as if your hands were his until the music ended and the lights turned on again.
Reality came down to you as if you were descending from the sky at miles per hour, and you landed on the ground in your black platforms after getting off the table. You felt incredibly out of place, yet an incessant throbbing between your legs and this man's gaze on you was sending your mind into a spiral. You had no idea what just had happened.
His deep voice cut through the air in that cave—like lightning from the storm outside the casino. A chill ran down your back for the second time that night when you heard his voice.
"No one tells Doyoung about this."
But he didn't mean it for the rest of the people seated with him—he knew they would remain silent.
dededos
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