“When did she find the time to do these?” Hyunwoo asked, holding Wonjung’s stocking, having long since found and opened his, carefully hanging his stocking off the corner post of his bed when it was empty.
“How did she know what everyone would like in them?” Minjun added to the question.
“I think I caught her making yours, Changho,” Wonjung commented. “I came in early for a lesson once and I remember seeing her hide something the color of your stocking.”
“What did you get in yours?” FX asked Hyunwoo, one of the few members who hadn’t been on the trip who had opened his by himself before everyone else discovered theirs.
“Beauty things, masks, soap, a headband to keep my hair back, and a little candy,” Hyunwoo told them with a smile. “Oh, and a book in English. She wrote that it was one she loved reading as a kid and thought I might like it.”
“Did anyone get her something for Christmas?” Kitae asked the room, as the question occurred to him. Everyone paused, feeling a slight pang of guilt.
“It’s not like we knew she was going to make us something,” FX pointed out. “Or that she was going to take us on a trip.”
“We should do something nice for her,” Kitae suggested.
“Ok, any suggestions?” Seunghoon put out for the room.
“Honestly,” Changho sighed. “Studying as hard as possible so she keeps her job. Cheol may be ok with risking her job at KXO left and right, but I’d like her to keep her job and keep working with us.”
“That’s a little unfair,” Wonjung objected. “I may agree he never should have gone after her but he’s been careful for the most part and I think the last thing he wants is for her to stop working at the company.”
“It doesn’t have to be what he wants,” Changho threw his hands up. “It’s what is going to happen if they think she is crossing lines. Dating Cheol, taking trips...and if they feel like she is over all the time without seeing results in our work...it will raise questions anyway.”
“I’m sorry,” A soft voice said from the doorway of the living room startling all of them. “I didn’t think I had been stepping over the line so much. And I’m sorry I’ve been letting my obligations slip.”
“I didn’t mean--” Changho’s explanation died on his lips when she shook her head and held up her hand, asking him to stop without a word.
“You didn’t say anything wrong,” She assured him with a smile. “Can someone tell me where my things have ended up, please?”
“I put them in the laundry, but it’s done,” Seunghoon jumped in to tell her. “Did you need something?”
“Can you just bring all of it for me,” She requested. “Just stuff the clean things in my bag and bring it here. I would appreciate it.”
“O-okay,” Seunghoon stuttered before getting up to do as she asked. No one said anything as she crossed the room, still slightly unsteady on her bare feet, got into the closet and started pulling her things out. Seunghoon brought her suitcase over, leaving it near where she leaned by the door as she slipped her shoes on her sockless feet.
“You aren’t just going to go out like that, are you?” Minjun asked as she fumblingly zipped up her coat. “You haven’t even called a taxi to take you home.”
“I’ll find one,” She replied. “Please pass me one of the medicine boxes, I should take it with me.”
FX, who was closest to her, grabbed a box and passed it to her and watched her pocket it.
“Tell Cheol I don’t want him coming over to check on me,” She told them with her back to the room, hand on the door handle. “If he comes I won’t answer the door, so don’t bother. I’ll see you all back at the office when I can.”
She turned the handle and walked out the door, moving with a worrying lethargy as she stepped out and closed the door behind her. A few members got up to stand at the window and watch her walk away. Changho let out a frustrated groan, tossing on his shoes and coat to go after her. Someone had to make sure she got a taxi home, at least. He caught up with her when she was half a block away and leaning against a garden wall as she paused to catch her breath. Seeing her look this unwell, he understood why Cheol had been so worried about her going home alone. But, still, staying with them was probably a risk not worth taking.
“Hey, let me help,” He said, coming up to take the bag from her and offering her his arm to help her walk.
“I’m not going back,” She shook her head, refusing to take his arm, assuming he was there to bring her back to the dorm.
“I know,” He said simply. “Let me help you find a cab, okay?”
“Okay,” She agreed, letting him take some of her weight as they walked the short way to the main street where taxi’s could most easily be hailed. It only took a few minutes for one to come and pull over for them.
“Do you need help getting home or are you okay the rest of the way?” He checked as he got her into the back seat with her small suitcase on the seat on the other side.
“I’ll be fine, you can go back,” She demurred. “I really am sorry for letting you down. I’ll do better when I get back.”
“You didn’t--” He started to explain again, but she stopped him, taking his hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze before motioning for him to close the door and go. He did, standing and watching as the taxi pulled away. He was pretty sure he had just done the right thing, letting her go home, but he was also pretty sure he had messed things up a bit. Cheol was going to be mad at him, and not just for letting her go.
Chapter 13
The next week passed with barely a word from Claire to any of them. Their manager passed along updates from her, saying she was recovering well and expected to be back at the start of the next week. He also passed on small assignments for the members she was working with to prepare them for meeting with her when she got back. Cheol threw himself into work when he was barely able to get more than one line messages once every few days, mostly telling him she was fine but needed some space.
Changho had expected Cheol to be angry with him for helping her go home and for what she had overheard, but after the momentary panic he had felt upon waking up to find her gone, he had mostly just gone quiet and kept to himself outside of their work and practice. Not that it meant he was alone much as he spent his spare hours working with Jaejin and Changho producing new music, exhausting them with the time he now wanted to spend on that to avoid having to think about other things. He didn’t sleep well, but regularly spent the couple of hours he was home before going to sleep in the gym downstairs working out to hopefully make himself tired enough to just fall asleep. Even though this mostly felt like a return to normal for most of the members, they missed having Claire around.
When she returned from her sick leave, still looking a little more tired and more pale than she had before, things didn’t go back to how they had been. She asked Kitae, Minjun, Wonjung, Changho, and Hyunwoo for more of their time if possible, meeting with each of them most days even when they could only spare a half an hour for her. She didn’t come back to meeting them at the dorms, putting in longer hours in the small practice room she used at the office and making sure that she took her lunch over one of their group practice periods, choosing to eat by herself at the cafeteria or having something small while she worked.
She was friendly when she worked with each of the members but was noticeably more distant, even so. When they asked her how she was or what she had been doing outside of work, she would give them brief and polite replies before changing the subject back to something about studying or their schedule. She still prepared reward activities for all of them, but didn’t come along anymore, deliberately planning them in such a way that she couldn’t participate even if they had wanted her to come.
Cheol barely laid eyes on her even in the halls as she made great efforts to avoid running into him. He had tried once dropping by to talk to her but was met with her refusing to make eye contact with him and only asking him to leave. When he didn’t she gathered up
her things, leaving herself for an hour to work in a nearby cafe. He would have tried to stop her if it wouldn’t have drawn too much attention from passers-by. That evening he got a text from her asking him not to come to talk to her again while she was at KXO, to please understand that she didn’t need him bringing attention to her there.
FX, Seunghoon, and Jaejin didn’t find her much more willing to socialize with them than she was with Cheol. While she didn’t outright ask them to leave, she never made conversation easy, leaving them mostly sitting in tense silence. FX finally did ask her after the third time he came by and was met with the same thing, why she was treating them all like strangers.
“Please remember we were never supposed to be friends,” She told him looking down at the papers she had on the table in front of her. “I’m just trying to get back to where we were all supposed to be in the first place, even if it hurts for a little while. It’s for the best.”
Not having an answer to that, he nodded, ignoring the teardrop he saw drip onto the papers, and left the room. That evening he told some of the others what she had said to him, still not sure what he should have said to that.
“She’s kind of alone over here now, isn’t she?” Jaejin wondered aloud, pausing in his eating when FX finished relating the story.
“What do you mean?” Kitae asked him.
“Well she used to spend most of her time with us,” Jaejin shrugged, stirring the food in his bowl. “I mean she is still spending most of her time on us just not with us. She’s at KXO before we get there and I don’t think she leaves before most of us have gone home. It doesn’t really leave time to have many friends even if she made some before she started this job.”
“I guess,” FX conceded.
“Why wasn’t she supposed to be our friend?” The statement had bothered Kitae.
“Probably for this reason exactly,” FX admitted. “She wasn’t supposed to be someone we would miss if she got replaced.”
“Why is that a good thing, though?” Kitae pressed. “I want her to care and I want her to be disappointed if I don’t do well. And I miss practicing talking with her about things other than work and our exercises. I learn a lot when she talks to me.”
“Me too,” Changho said from his seat at the end of the table. “I know I’m the one who said we weren’t being careful about lines when it comes to her being here, but this isn’t what I meant.”
“Okay so we agree,” Jaejin stated. “Now what?”
“We go talk to her?” Kitae suggested with a fair amount of uncertainty.
“Okay and say what?” FX probed. “For example, I don’t think she is talking to Cheol either and I’m pretty sure it’s killing him. Do we say something about that?”
“Let’s start with how much it was helpful to just be able to talk to her about anything in English, since I think it bothered her most feeling like she was letting it interfere with her job,” Changho stated. “Then we work on convincing her that she can still see Cheol and all of us outside of work and it’s good for all of us...within reason.”
“When are we going to talk to her?” FX asked. “If we bring this up at KXO I’m pretty sure she is just going to walk away.”
“Guess we need to go by her place,” Jaejin concluded. “Anyone know where that is?”
“Yeah,” Cheol confirmed as he came into the room. “I do.”
“Right,” FX said dumbly.
“I’ll tell you, but it’s probably best if you don’t bring me up,” He told them, sounding numb. “I don’t know what we are at this point and it’s something we should sort out on our own when she is ready to talk to me again. I’m sorry for messing this all up for everyone.”
“You didn’t,” Changho tried to reassure him.
“I did,” Cheol admitted freely. “And while I’m not sure I deserve all this for my stupidity, I have a lot to make up for and I don’t even know how to start. Respecting her asking for space from me is the best place as far as I can see. Here.”
Cheol took a piece of paper and wrote down her address and the code to the front door of her building, handing it to FX, before walking back out of the room without another word.
***
It was late the next day when FX, Kitae and Changho found themselves standing outside of Claire’s door. They nervously steeled themselves before FX let a breath out and gave a firm knock on the door. A moment later, Claire opened the door dressed in her pyjamas and holding her phone in one hand. She gave the boys a surprised blink before telling whoever was on the other end of the phone that she would have to call them back later and hanging up. Stepping back, she let them into the small apartment.
“Can I ask what has brought you here?” She asked, stopping to stand near the foot of her bed.
“We miss you,” Kitae blurted out, looking slightly uncomfortable.
“You miss me?” She repeated back to them, blinking. “Most of you see me pretty often these days--”
“No,” Changho interrupted her. “You teach us but we don’t get the teacher we used to have.”
“I’m doing my best to teach you without overstepping again,” She said tightly, her voice wavering slightly as she did. “I’m giving you what I can.”
“We want what we had before,” FX explained. “Being our friend helped make you a good teacher. Maybe it wasn’t what they hired you for but not having you around means we aren’t talking in English and that was as helpful as the lessons you’ve been giving people.”
“You don’t have to have me there to speak in English,” She pointed out defensively.
“Maybe not, but you made it fun,” FX countered. “When it’s fun we do it without thinking about it.”
“Alright, well, maybe I can find a compromise,” She proposed coolly. “Once or twice a week I could be available for lunch if someone wants to join me.”
“That’s not--” Changho gave an exasperated sigh. “That’s not enough. Just come back. Be our friend.”
“I’m sorry if I’m disappointing you,” She clenched her jaw and closed her eyes tightly. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Why don’t you want to be our friend anymore?” Kitae asked, realizing that the question was manipulative but he wanted to needle her to get past the facade she was putting up. It worked, perhaps a little better than he intended. She looked at him with wide eyes and a hurt expression before she started rapidly blinking, trying to stop the tears that were welling up in her eyes.
“It’s not that,” She insisted, feeling defeated. “What am I supposed to do? How do I know where the line is anymore? When am I your teacher and when am I your friend? And that is leaving out the complete mess that is whatever I’m doing or not doing with Cheol… Whether we are together or not, I still don’t know what I’m supposed to be to all of you. I’m giving you everything I have and I’m not asking you anything, can’t that just be enough?”
She gave up trying to hold it together after the last sentence, letting herself slump against the foot of the bed and letting the tears fall. FX knelt down on one side of her and wrapped his arms around her to pull her into a supportive hug.
“I guess that’s the problem,” FX said as he tried to comfort her. “Friendship isn’t supposed to be one sided, yeah?”
“Come back and just be yourself,” Changho encouraged, kneeling in front of her.
“I don’t know if I can,” Claire sniffled, rubbing at her eyes. “If I come back I don’t know that I won’t just keep doing stupid things like the trip. I don’t know what I was thinking, it could have caused so much trouble. When I’m with him and with all of you, I forget the consequences so easily. I’m so sorry.”
“Fun as that was,” FX pointed out. “I don’t think we’ll have time to do something like that again before the tour.”
“Yeah, we can make all new mistakes,” She said with mock hopefulness.
“We can, it will be great,” Kitae added with a grin. She gave him a look and gave a scoffing laugh a
s she tried to wipe away her tears. Changho got up and grabbed the box of tissues from the nightstand and handed it to her.
“Will you come back?” Changho prompted, giving her knee a supportive pat.
“Okay,” She agreed.
“Yay!” Kitae threw himself into a hug that encompassed both FX and Claire in a tight squeeze. “Tomorrow?”
“I’ll come by tomorrow evening,” She confirmed, giving his arm a squeeze back.
“Good,” FX said, pulling himself back slightly without letting her go completely. “Now that you’ll answer me...How have you been?”
“Lonely,” She gave a watery laugh.
“Yeah, well we can fix that,” He promised. “You wanna hang out for an hour now?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” She sighed. “But it’s late and I’m tired.”
“Yeah, that’s okay,” Changho gave her a reassuring nod. “But tomorrow?”
“I’ll come by tomorrow,” She promised, giving him her pinky to make an official pinky promise with him.
“Okay,”Kitae said as he and FX helped her stand up again. They said their good-byes and the boys headed home. Claire, though she was determined to keep her promise, still had an uneasy feeling, knowing that the hardest part still needed to be dealt with.
***
Claire arrived at the dorm a little after 8 the next day. She gave herself a moment to gather herself together before knocking on the door, unsure of who would be there waiting on the other side. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to see Cheol there or not. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see him at all, just that it would be easier if she could make amends for her behavior with one group at a time. The members deserved to know that she wasn’t only there for him, that all of them were important to her and not just because they were his bandmates and friends.
The door swung open to show Jaejin’s shining face. He let out an exclamation and threw himself into her to give her an enthusiastic hug. He let go of her after a moment, letting her actually step into the house and be greeted by Wonjung and Seunghoon, who seemed to have been waiting for her arrival. They took turns giving her hugs and telling her that they were glad she had come by. FX came out from somewhere when he heard others greeting her, having been busy with something, but still anticipating her arrival.
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