the night we met
exo 10th member au
somi speaking to the fans for the first time after leaving SM
take me back to the night we met
WARNINGS: emotional. this is set on their first concert of exo planet #6
masterlist 🌻 requests are open feedback is always important to me!
Somi waved one last time toward the fans gathered near the left side of the stage as she harmonized the final lines of “Paradise” alongside Suho. Just a few weeks ago, she could barely sleep thinking about this moment: EXO back on stage again, together.
For years, she had imagined their return during quiet nights alone in hotel rooms and practice studios, wondering what it would feel like to finally stand beside her members again after enlistments, distance, and uncertainty. But reality never looked quite like the version she built in her head.
Lay had long returned to China, his presence now existing more in memories than in schedules. Then came the situation with CBX, Baekhyun, Chen and Xiumin separating themselves from the company after months of conflict and legal disputes. And two weeks ago, just when she thought things couldn’t possibly become more unstable, Somi discovered that the manager she had trusted for years had been stealing from her.
The news had broken only two days ago. But, for the past week, she had carried the unbearable weight of a decision she never imagined herself making, Leaving SM as a solo artist while remaining part of EXO.
At first, the guilt consumed her. How could she make a choice like that right before the tour they had waited years for? How could she bring more uncertainty to a group already held together by sheer love and persistence?
But the members never let her carry it alone. Every single one of them stood beside her without hesitation, telling her the same thing over and over until she finally started believing it herself.
“We’re with you no matter what.” they said multiple times.
Still, she hated how everything unfolded. Hated the headlines, hated the pity in people’s voices, hated how something so personal became public before she even had time to process it herself and hated how people reduced years of hard work to discussions about her romantic life.
So she avoided the subject whenever she could. But tonight, standing under the fading stadium lights as the final notes echoed through the venue, she realized there was no avoiding it anymore.
The lights dimmed slowly around them while the members gathered at the center of the stage for the ending ment. Instinctively, they settled into their rehearsed positions. Somi in the middle with Kai, D.O. and Chanyeol to her left and Suho and Sehun to her right.
“EXO-L!” Kai called out, making the fans scream back. “Are you still with us?”
“YES!” the fans screamed back loud enough to shake the venue.
Kai laughed breathlessly, placing a hand over his chest. “Wow… you guys are seriously loud!”
“Only now you noticed?” Chanyeol cut in, earning another wave of cheers.
Kai pointed accusingly toward the crowd.
“No, but today feels different! I think everyone missed us too much.”
“We missed them too much!” Sehun muttered beside him.
“We did!” Kai answered immediately, without embarrassment. “We were suffering.”
The fans screamed louder at that.
“Honestly,” Chanyeol said, stepping forward slightly. “we were all really nervous before today.”
“Speak for yourself.” Sehun said.
“You were nervous too.” Chanyeol pointed at his member.
“I was calm.” Sehun shrugged.
“You checked your mic pack six times, oppa.” Somi mumbled.
“That’s professionalism.”
D.O. quietly shook his head, smiling to himself while the members continued bickering. Suho finally lifted his microphone with the kind of fond exasperation only he could manage after over a decade leading them.
“It’s our first concert after such a long time.” he said softly, the crowd immediately calming to listen. “And seeing all of you here again… really.” he paused briefly, looking around the stadium. “It reminded me why we endured all those years apart.”
The crowd answered with another emotional roar.
Somi was already tearing up again. She understood that she needed to finally discuss the difficult, unaddressed matter.
“Oh, no.” Kai sighed dramatically. “She started.”
“I’m not crying!” Somi protested while very visibly crying.
“You literally are.” Chanyeol laughed.
Somi smiled automatically at the familiar chaos unfolding around her, though her fingers tightened slightly around the microphone resting in her hands.
“We practiced really hard for this tour.” D.O. added calmly once the noise settled a bit. “We wanted to show a good stage after making everyone wait for so long.”
“And did we do well?” Chanyeol shouted immediately, turning his mic to the crowd. The fans screamed so loudly that even the idols flinched slightly. “Okay, okay. Good answer.” he laughed.
Kai suddenly turned toward Somi, nudging her shoulder lightly.
“Somi worked the hardest, though.”
The crowd instantly cheered louder at her name. She blinked, caught off guard.
“Why are you dragging me into this?”
“Because it’s true!” Kai said simply.
“Yeah, he’s right!” Suho agreed. “She was always the first one in the practice room.”
“And the last one to leave!” D.O. continued.
Somi shook her head immediately, already embarrassed.
“Stop. Don’t do this.”
“No, seriously.” Chanyeol insisted. “There were days where we’d leave and she’d still be there practicing alone.”
“She’d send us videos at like three in the morning.” Sehun added, smiling faintly. “Like some ghost. ‘Hun-ah, look at what I imagined for Love Shot’” he mimicked her.
The fans laughed softly. Somi looked down briefly, trying to hide the way her throat tightened.
“It’s because she missed us too.” Kai said dramatically, suddenly hugging her from the side.
“I hate you.” she muttered instantly against his chest, making the audience laugh again.
“No, you don’t.”
Unfortunately, he was right. Suho glanced at her then. A small look, gentle, careful. The kind that silently asked if she was okay. Somi inhaled slowly before forcing another smile onto her face.
The arena was still glowing silver. Thousands of EXO-Ls watching them with so much love it almost hurt. Then Chanyeol suddenly pointed toward her microphone.
Immediately, the crowd started screaming again.
“SOMI! SOMI! SOMI!”
Kai grinned beside her.
“Looks like it’s your turn.” he said out of the mic, making her immediately elbow him lightly in the ribs.
Kai let out an offended gasp anyway, dramatically clutching his side while the fans laughed at the interaction without fully knowing what had been said. Somi smiled softly before lowering her eyes for a brief moment.
“First,” she stared quietly, voice slightly shaking. “I would like to thank everyone for your patience and for respecting my time in silence. I truly needed the time to process everything, to face all the emotions that came at once… and, more than anything, to prepare myself to stand on stage again with my members for the EXhOrizon concerts because I really missed you guys.”
The arena erupted instantly. She laughed weakly through it, shaking her head a little as if overwhelmed by the noise.
“No, really.” she continued once it settled slightly. “I think… I missed this more than I realized.”
Her voice wavered at the end of the sentence. Beside her, Suho subtly shifted closer.
Somi inhaled carefully before continuing.
“A lot happened while we were apart.” she smiled faintly while glancing at her members. “And honestly, there were moments I wondered if this day would feel different. However, I’m going to take a bit longer than I normally would for this, because I think there are some matters we need to discuss.” Somi announced, smiling in a flat line.
The members went quiet beside her.
“As you might know, I’m not part of SM Entertainment as an artist anymore.” Somi said that for the first time out loud, and reality hit her. The crowd immediately reacted, thousands of disappointed whines and worried screams echoing through the venue at once. “I know, I know. Calm down.” she said quickly, lifting a hand with a small nervous laugh.
Chanyeol looked at her from the side, eyes already glassy.
Somi glanced down briefly before continuing.
“To be honest…” she cleared her throat. “This wasn’t something I ever imagined happening.” her fingers tightened slightly around her golden microphone. “I spent almost eighteen years of my life there. I grew up there. I learned everything there.”
Her voice softened more.
“And, if I had to go through everything just to be standing on this stage again, with my members, I would.”
Suho lowered his head slightly beside her, listening carefully.
“But,” she hissed, visibly searching for the right words. “sometimes life forces you to make decisions you never prepared yourself for.”
The stadium remained completely silent now. Even the members weren’t moving.
“I found out recently that someone I trusted for a very long time was hurting me financially behind my back.” she smiled faintly again, but this time it looked tired. “And after a lot of discussions, meetings, crying,” the crowd laughed softly through the tension “and talking with the people I love, I decided leaving as a solo artist was the best thing for me.”
Her throat tightened immediately after saying it.
“I need everyone here to understand something very clearly. Leaving the company does not mean I’m leaving EXO.”
The reaction was instant. The stadium exploded with screaming and crying with fans jumping in place while silver lightsticks shook violently across the venue. Beside her, even though all of them already knew about it, Chanyeol physically exhaled in relief like he had been holding his breath the entire speech.
Kai wiped under his eyes again.
Sehun smiled openly this time.
And Suho looked at her with an expression so full of quiet pride it almost made her break.
“I would never make a choice that could harm this group lightly.” Somi continued once the noise lowered enough. “Never.”
Her eyes moved toward the members beside her one by one.
“Guys,” she said, looking at her members now. Kai immediately started crying harder. “I turned into the woman I am today because of you. You really raised me so well and I’m really thankful for this. I’ll always be that 15-years-old girl, who was too scared of anything, always hiding behind your backs to not answer any questions.”
“Oh, my god.” Sehun muttered, laughing helplessly while having flashbacks of their early debut days.
“All these years, I waited to stand on stage together with you again just so I could have this feeling of being the ‘maknae’. Just having fun and being genuinely happy.” she looked at Suho, who sobbed. “Oh, oppa. Stop it. You’re going to make me cry even harder.”
“We’re all crying!” Kai sobbed dramatically, making the fans laugh and cry at the same time.
Somi laughed weakly through her tears, quickly wiping under her eyes before taking another shaky breath.
“No, because seriously.” she continued, voice trembling slightly now. “There were so many moments during the enlistment period where I was terrified.”
The stadium quieted again immediately.
“I kept thinking…” she swallowed hard. “‘What if people move on from us?’” several fans instantly yelled back in protest. “No, listen!” she laughed softly through tears. “I know now, okay? But back then, I was really scared.”
Beside her, Chanyeol lowered his head briefly, already emotional again.
“So I worked really hard.” Somi smiled faintly. “Maybe too hard sometimes.”
“You won a grammy.” D.O. said quietly beside her for the first time in a while.
The honesty in his voice made the crowd react immediately.
Somi glanced at him with a small laugh.
“I remember calling Suho oppa in the middle of the night once because I dreamed EXO disbanded.”
The crowd collectively whined again.
“Oh my god, don’t remind me.” Suho said, laughing through tears while covering his face briefly. “She was crying so hard I thought something terrible had happened.”
“It was terrible to me!” Somi explained herself, laughing while some tears kept falling. “I think that a part of me spent those years trying to keep EXO alive as much as I could while the members were away because this group saved me too and for that I’ll always be really, really thankful.”
There was this heavy and emotional silence.
“I think there’s something we never said out loud.” Suho suddenly said, making Somi and the other members look at him. He looks at the crowd, then back at the members, then finally at her. “When we started enlisting, we all had the same worry. Not about ourselves, but about the group. We wondered what would happen to the group while we were gone… if things would slow down, if people would forget us, if we would come back and have to start over.” he exhales softly, his gaze shifting back to Somi. “But at some point, we stopped worrying because we had Somi.”
The words are simple, but they hit Somi in ways she didn’t expect. The turned her back at the fans, trying to hide how much she was crying, while she sobbed.
“We knew that no matter where we were, no matter how far, EXO wouldn’t disappear because Somi was here.” he sighed. “She didn’t just stay, but she carried us. And because of that we never felt EXO was incomplete.”
The whole stadium seemed to be crying by now. Kai let out another broken sound somewhere behind them, while Chanyeol looked down, nodding his head slightly and Sehun’s expression tightened just a little.
D.O got closer to Somi, caressing her shoulders, trying to calm her down.
Suho continued, softer now.
“Somi-ah,” he called her. She looked at her leader. “you’ll forever be EXO’s backbone.”
Somi shook her head as she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Suho tightly. The crowd erupted again immediately, crying louder as the leader instinctively held her against him, one hand moving carefully to the back of her head while the other rubbed slowly against her back.
Somi buried her face against his shoulder, laughing weakly between sobs.
“You’re really trying to ruin my makeup right now.” she complained.
“You were already crying before me.” he argued softly.
That made the members laugh through tears.
“Why is this so sad?” Kai whined dramatically, making the fans and his members laugh.
The fans’ screams slowly softened again into emotional sniffles and scattered calls of:
“WE LOVE YOU!”
“EXO FOREVER!”
“DON’T CRY!”
Somi finally pulled back from Suho after a few seconds, though she still kept one hand clutching his sleeve like she needed grounding. Her eyes were completely red now.
“This is so embarrassing.” she laughed weakly while wiping under them.
The crowd laughed again through tears.
Kai suddenly stepped forward dramatically, opening his arms.
“Come here. Group hug.”
“Oh my god.” Sehun sighed.
But none of them refused. They never really did when it came to each other. Somi lowered her head for a second, laughing shakily as more tears slipped down.
“We really went through a lot, huh?” she whispered.
Kai made another broken sound immediately.
“Don’t start again, Choi Somi.”
That made everyone laugh. Even the fans.
Somi wiped under her eyes one more time before finally looking back toward the crowd.
“I don’t know exactly what the future will look like from now on.” she admitted honestly. “But I think, as long as we keep finding our way back to each other like this,” she glanced at the members beside her. “we’ll be okay.”
