✧₊˚. Chapter Eight: Too Late to Notice .˚₊✧

“I should’ve said something sooner.”

It was Youngjae who noticed first.

Not because he was looking.Not because he cared enough.But because the silence had started to feel different.

Too long.Too quiet.Too empty.

He stood in the kitchen with a half-eaten toast in his hand, staring at the fridge. Something itched in the back of his mind. He didn’t know what it was at first — just that something felt wrong.

Maybe it was the way no one had complained that morning.Maybe it was the way no plates were already washed.Maybe it was the way Jihoon hadn’t yelled at anyone for being in his way.

Or maybe… maybe it was the way they had all gotten used to not seeing him.

Kyungmin.

Where was Kyungmin?

⋆˙⟡⭑⋆˖ ࣪

He walked upstairs slowly, his toast forgotten on the counter. The hallway stretched out before him like a question he had ignored for too long.

When he reached Kyungmin’s door, he paused.

He didn’t know why he felt scared.

It was just a door.

But it felt heavier than any he had ever knocked on.

He raised his hand. Hesitated.Then finally, knocked.

No answer.

He pushed it open.

The room smelled faintly like pencil lead and dust. The curtains were drawn. The bed was untouched. A hoodie lay folded on the chair. The silence inside wasn’t just quiet — it was hollow.

There was no Kyungmin.

Youngjae stared at the space, heart tightening.

He didn’t say it out loud, but he felt it in his chest:

He’s not here.

---

Meanwhile, in the practice room downtown, Dohoon scrolled through his phone as the others argued over who would take the center in the new routine.

“Why isn’t Kyungmin picking up?” he mumbled.

“Try calling again,” Hanjin said lazily.

“I already did. Nothing.”

“You think he’s still mad?” Jihoon asked. The words came out casually, too casually, like they didn’t weigh anything.

But they did.

They all knew what Shinyu had done.They saw it.They said nothing.They walked away.

And now?

Now there was just a silence they couldn’t step around anymore.

---

Back home, Shinyu sat at his desk. His phone vibrated, but he didn’t look at it. The corner of his eye caught something strange on the floor — a tiny piece of paper half-stuck under the fridge.

He bent down, picked it up.

It was a drawing.

A boy standing in front of a door marked “Family.”The boy was on the outside.Alone.Small.

The door was shut.

Shinyu stared at it.

And for the first time in years, his hand trembled.

---

At school, Kyungmin’s homeroom teacher stood by the window. Her phone buzzed. Still no reply from the family. Her worry deepened. This wasn’t just a sick day. This wasn’t just absence.

This was something else.

She remembered the way Kyungmin never smiled. How he always sat in the back, shrinking himself. How he flinched when someone raised their voice too loud.

She opened her laptop and began writing something:

“Student report: Emotional neglect suspected…”

⋆₊˚⋆˖ ࣪⭑

That night, none of the boys spoke much.

Jihoon kept staring at the hallway.Dohoon opened Kyungmin’s door — then closed it again.Hanjin said he didn’t care, but didn’t finish his food.Youngjae sat in the dark, thinking about the drawing he’d seen once on Shinyu’s desk — the one he never asked about.

And Shinyu?

He stood in his son’s room.

And for the first time in a very long time, he felt the silence not as peace……but as punishment.

He whispered to the empty air:

"Kyungmin… where are you?”

But there was no one left to answer.