Chapter 37

Still astray-ay-ay

I didn't talk during the drive, and Jeongin didn't either, looking out the window. It was only a short trip, though, and I parked the car along the curb five minutes later.

Jeongin looked up, the smooth glass of his face fragmented and frowning. "Where did you take us?"

I pulled the key out of the ignition, slipping into my pocket with a smile. "There's only one way to find out."

I was out of the car in a second, my energy revived; Jeongin was slower, and I was waiting for him by the time he got out of the car, blinking in the bright light of the sun peeking out through the clouds. I watched as he took in the sandbark, slides, and swing set making up the tiny, shabby playground we'd stumbled upon.

"You took me to ... a kid's park?" he asked, frown deepening.

My smile widened. "Yeah," I said, like a little kid.

He blinked. "Why?"

"Three reasons. One, I needed a place to pull over and this was the first thing I saw. Two, privacy—who's going to be looking for I.N of Stray Kids at a kiddie playground? And three—the most important..." I grabbed his hand, tugging him into the sandbark. "Swings!"

Jeongin's expression looked mildly concerned for my sanity, but at least I could still see him. At least his eyes were starting to crinkle again into half moons, and that shadowed look on his face was starting to wear away at the edges.

I led him over to the swings, jumping on one. "When was the last time you went on one of these?"

"I can't remember," Jeongin said, staring up wistfully at the swing set.

I laughed. "You look like Romeo. Come on, get on!"

"I don't know who that is," he said, but he got on the swing all the same.

I started to pick up a rhythm, and soon we were both whooshing through the air, both our bodies far too big for the little seats. The metal was hot from the sun and the chains bit into my palms, but I didn't care, because swings are fucking fun and it's a crime that society doesn't allow adults to be on them anymore. I could tell Jeongin thought so, too, because every time the swings went back and I caught his face, it looked a little bit more free.

Across the street, the tall, empty building I'd pulled up across from opened, and a middle-aged couple walked out, staring at us in surprise. I probably would've stared too—two grown adults laughing their heads off on some tiny kiddie playground in the middle of nowhere. But I was too far away to make out the whites of their eyes, which meant they were far enough away I could ignore them, so I turned back to Jeongin and grinned wider.

"See what I mean?" I shouted at him too loudly, the wind whipping around the ears and my hair.

He smiled back at me, holding the swing chains so tightly his knuckles were white. "Swings!"

"Jeongin," I said, the words pushing past my lips. "Let go!"

He blinked. "What?"

I let go on the swing chains, spreading my arms out before me, and let go, pushing myself higher. "Yeji, are you crazy? You could fall!" Jeongin shouted, holding the chains tighter.

I just laughed, feeling invincible. "Do it!"

He watched me for a second longer, brows furrowed, then hesitantly let go, the whiteness fading from his hands. The next time I looked over, I caught him smiling, stretching out his hands to let the wind whistle through them. I grinned. 

Emotions are funky in the way that we sense them, experience them. Sometimes emotion is something you can taste. Bittersweetness? It's in the name. Fear is that dryness in your mouth like brittle wood, making it hard to swallow. Anger you can hear, in sharpened silences, clipped words; Jealousy is something you can smell, tangy and metallic like blood, thick and heavy in your nose. But freedom...

Freedom is only something that can be felt, with every inch of your body, every scrap of your soul. And I'm not exactly sure how to describe it, but that feeling you get when you're ten feet off the ground and the only thing that can touch you is the wind, when you spread your arms and the air rushes against your fingertips and makes the hairs on your arm stand up, when you let go of the chains—that feeling might not be freedom, but to me it's pretty damn close.

-

After a few minutes, Jeongin slowed down, dragging his feet on the tanbark, and I followed suit. We were both breathless and pink-cheeked, his jacket blown open by the wind, my hair sticking out in every which way.

"It's been a while since I've gotten to do that," he said, turning to me, looping his elbows to rest around the chains.

I slowed to a full stop, almost losing one of my shoes. "Do what?"

He shrugged one shoulder, though his lips were still curved. "Gotten to act however I wanted in public and not have to care." He looked out over our impressive view of a few buildings and an abandoned courtyard. "I'm not even wearing a mask."

I half-smiled, some of the euphoria from the swings fading. "No cameras here."

His brows pinched, though it didn't erase the happiness still shimmering over his face. "Nah. There's always cameras."

I paused, looking over at him. We'd both come to a stop now, though we were still sitting on our respective swings.

I could still feel the air whistling against my cheeks, the breathless motion that felt like flying. But it hadn't yet blocked out the sound of the music stopping, Jeongin's sharp voice against Chan's too-gentle one. I pushed my tongue into the inside of my cheek, biting back the guilt rising in my throat.

Jeongin let go of the bars, leaning forward the pick at the ground with his shoe. "I always wanted to be an idol, you know."

I hadn't known. I thought of Chan, that day in his room, telling me some of the members hadn't wanted this life. Minho never wanted the pressure of working under a company; Hyunjin only ever wanted to be recognized, not thrown under the spotlight and trapped there. "Even when you were young?"

"Even when I was young." He kicked a pebble. "I'm lucky to have Channie-hyung and the other members to be there for me; I wouldn't be here without them. But sometimes it's just ... suffocating." He shrugged again, half-shoulder. "Stuff like this helps."

Letting go, if only for a little while, and just ... breathing. Running to a playground and getting on the swings. I understood that—understood the need to be able to do that.

And coming from Jeongin, who felt like he constantly had to push himself without getting a break so people wouldn't judge him because of his age, who hated being seen as fragile and dependent ... I wondered if he'd ever do something like this with the members. If one day he'd manage to tell them that they couldn't see him as a little brother forever—that there's a line between caring for and coddling.

"When I was little," I said, letting my voice carry over the tanbark, "I used to beg my mother to take us to the park so I could get on the swings. I never felt sad when I was there, because how can anyone touch you when you're flying higher than the clouds?"

Jeongin snorted, though it wasn't mocking. He tilted his head back, gazing up at said clouds. "When you were little. When you were little, Yeji-noona, I was in diapers."

I laughed. "What's the age difference between us again? Four years?"

"Five," he corrected.

I smiled at him. "Feels like nothing."

"Yeah," he said softly, still gazing up at the sky.

I pushed my feet, swinging sideways so I could bump his swing gently. Jeongin blinked, surprised, turning to look at me at last. "And you still call me noona."

His surprise morphed into a smile, and he chuckled. "Yeah, I guess I do." His face changed, sadness coloring his features. "It's going to be weird when you're gone."

I swallowed sharply, the taste of unripe blackberries coating my tongue—mostly bitter, somewhat sweet. "What, because you'll have no one to call noona?"

"Well, yeah, but..." he trailed off, and when his eyes caught mine again, they had a spark of fierceness. "It's—we're different with you, because of you. You've seen it, right? How they are?"

I blinked. "What do you mean?"

"How you bring us together." My brows knitted together even more. Jeongin opened his mouth, then paused, noticing my confused expression. Slowly, as if he was considering each word, he said, "Usually, if we have a free day, we spend it alone. Yongbokie-hyung looks at TikToks for a while, Minho-hyung watches a movie, I rest in my room. But once you came, and we didn't want you to feel like we were ignoring you, we spent more time as a group—playing games or watching TV or eating together. It's better, I think. I like it. But it's not just that—you've ... influenced us in other ways. I'm not sure how to explain it to you if you haven't noticed it, Yeji-noona, but I'll try." 

As he chewed over his words, I thought of all the times the members had emerged from their rooms when I'd come over, offering to play card games at the table or cook together. It had never occurred to me that I could've been the reason behind that. But if that was true ... I'd thought my actions had been dividing the members, breaking open a rift between Jeongin and Chan. But according to Jeongin, I had also been bringing them together, and that lifted the weight on my shoulders, if only by a fraction.

"Some of the members have ... they are insecure sometimes," Jeongin said, breaking me from my thoughts. "About themselves, and their work, and their accomplishments."

Seungmin, missed phone calls to his father and rigid expectations spilling salt onto his cheeks, whispering to me on the floor of the kitchen how he wondered if anything he could amount to would be good enough.

Chan, in a quiet room long after the stars had risen, showing to me the words that had been drawn on the walls of the inside of his head, words that he'd never been able to show anyone else.

"These insecurities aren't something we can fix. We try anyway—we're all constantly supporting each other. It is like breathing, to us. But I could tell Jisung-hyung or Seungmin-hyung a hundred times that they should be more proud of themselves, and it would be like talking to air, because they already expect that support from me. We're family. We're part of the group. And that shouldn't make my words and opinions matter any less to them, but about this, it does.

"Deep down, some of the members are always hurt when people call them untalented, or bad, or unworthy of everything we've done. We know not to listen to everybody, and we know some people are bound to dislike us, but to them, that hate and judgment still cuts deep."

Hyunjin telling me of the countless people who'd looked at him and automatically assumed his beauty was the only reason he'd accomplished anything. So many people he'd started to wonder if they were right.

Jisung, overrun by his own panic that he would stand in that crowd full of people and fans looking up to him and not be enough. His hands shaking as he covered his face, too unsure of himself to walk, to move, to breathe.

"But then you came."

Jeongin's breath blew out into the air as he exhaled, slightly visible against the chilling air. "And you were an outsider. Distant—not exactly a stranger, because of Changbinnie-hyung, but ... you weren't part of our group. But there you were, living with us and seeing every single piece of us—every flaw and crack and imperfection. You were close enough to see it all.

"And you accepted us anyway. From the second we met you, you held no judgment, no expectations, no scorn. An outsider who treated us as if we were your own without a single bit of hesitation. 

"And that ... that meant a lot to them. To all of us."

Felix's tears soaking into my shirt, his arms wrapped around me—the first person he'd ever told about who he really was. Arms that had been braced for hatred, judgment, even disgust, because why would he expect me to understand? But I did, and I had, and it had meant more to him than anything else, that I could offer him solace in a secret he struggled to understand himself.

Minho with his quiet glances, his way of loving that comes in bits and pieces. An early morning in the kitchen, where he'd told me he was set to lead Stray Kids—the tiny wall behind his eyes then, waiting for me to frown and say he wasn't a good leader. Wasn't caring enough, or warm enough, or kind enough. The same wall that shattered when I told him I could think of no one better.

"So yes, Yeji, you've changed them. The members ... we've never met someone like you. Someone who started out as a near-stranger, but grew closer with us, chose to stay and help us and support us when you were under no obligation to. It gives us hope, again."

Hope. The kind that was fragile and raw in Changbin's eyes when I saw him for the first time in years at the airport in Seoul, in his voice when I told him to hold on, I was coming. That I was there, and I would be there, for as long as he needed.

Hope. The same hope that glimmers in Jeongin's eyes now, his face brimming with it, hope that coats every word he tells me about his family, the members he'd watched become more confident and sure as I grew closer with them. A kind of peace he'd never been able to give them, but had always wished for them to find.

I parted my lips, my throat dry and chalky. "Hope?"

"In ourselves." Jeongin half-smiled at me, his face older than the ground under our feet, and I wondered how I had ever thought of him as the simple little maknae.

Just like Chan, Jeongin cared for the members; just like Minho, he watched out for them to the best of his ability. Because caring for someone didn't always mean you were their elder—and because Chan needed to be taken care of sometimes too.

There was an unwelcome hotness in the backs of my eyes as Jeongin looked at me across the swings, and finished, "You say you're not a STAY, Yeji. But I've only ever seen STAY make us believe in ourselves like you do."

I laughed, brokenly, and swiped my palms across my cheeks. "Maybe I am a STAY, then. I did snoop around in Seungmin's drawers this morning trying to see his perfume."

Jeongin blinked "Huh?"

"Nothing," I said, and laughed again. "Nothing at all."