STAY With Us (Ft. ATEEZ)

Chapter 5

TW: This part gets sad and contains sensitive content. SORRY IT'S LONG! Enjoy!

Oh how I wish that romantic moment could last forever. Silence haunted the room until a flash of light blinded the room. I expected one of the members to take a picture with the flash setting on, though when I looked back, they were talking to Felix since I was so in shock, I couldn't produce words or even move. No one moved when another flash of light blinded the room. I didn't know what was happening until I heard the rumble and crack of thunder and lightning.

I jumped in fright and excused myself to another room. "Wait!" Felix cried, raising his hand halfway in the air. "Come back! Was it something I said?" He asked, turning to face everyone else. "Maybe." Lee Know answered coldly.

I ran into another room and curled up in a little ball to silently cry. The lights were off in the room so I would know that I would be safe. I could hear Bang Chan ordering everyone to look for me. They looked in the kitchen, other special rooms like the gym or the art room and in the bedrooms. "I can't find her!" cried who I could guess was Hyunjin. "Where do you think she is? I'm getting kinda worried." said Felix, beginning to panic. Han and I.N agreed in Korean.

I could hear them departing the hallway because of their heavy footsteps from their long heavy black boots from their album Oddinary. "Hold on, there's one place we still haven't looked yet," Bang Chan said, entering the hallway. "What's that?" asked Seungmin. "The dance room." replied Bang Chan.

He slowly opened the dark, cold room of the dance room. He told Seungmin to get everyone else to meet them in the room. Bang Chan turned on the light to see me curled up on the floor silently crying. He walked over to me as quietly as possible, though his footsteps echoed like a still glass of water that shook to reveal a big dinosaur approaching from Jurassic Park. He patted my shoulder with his big arm as gently as possible. "Hey," he said, "What's wrong? You can tell me, I'll keep a secret." I looked at him with an annoyed look on my face. He wiped off some of the salty tears that were overflowing my face. I sighed raggedly until my heart rate went back to a stable condition. "Ok, I trust you. The truth is-" I began to say to him.

Unfortunately, this tender moment didn't last because Seungmin brought the rest of the group into the room to see what was going on. They saw what was happening and ran over to us. "Hey, Seungmin told us where she was, is she ok?" said Lee Know in Korean. Bang Chan replied with a "yes" in Korean and then looked back at me. "What were you going to say?" he asked me, switching to English. I smacked his arm away from my shoulder and turned away to coldly say "It's not important anymore. They won't care anyway." He put his hand on my shoulder in a gentle manner. "Please?" he pleaded, "They'll listen, Yuki, please believe me?" I began to shed tears again as I turned around to face him once again. Everyone else sat down in a circle facing me. They looked sad, which was something that I've never seen before.

Once everyone was seated, I took a long, but ragged breath before finally saying shyly "Ok, the truth is..I'm afraid of thunder and lightning. Please don't hate me. I know that's childish and I shouldn't be afraid of something as petty as this." They moved in closer to me. "It's not petty, we're all afraid of something, it's natural." explained Felix. He told me that he was afraid of getting fat and not being respected by other STAY's, JYP, and other K-pop groups. Bang Chan chimed in and told me that he hated himself because of all the hate mail that he gets. Han was the most surprising to me. He said that he is happy and cheerful all the time to cover up his social anxiety and revealed that he often has panic attacks.

The other few told me that they have doubts about themselves and wondered what their lives would've been like if they weren't k-pop idols. "The point is," said Hyunjin, "We all have some fear that is in us but it's completely natural and is nothing to be ashamed of." I couldn't take it anymore. I started bawling like a little kid who dropped their ice cream.

I heard rumbling again which I thought was thunder, but it was just the group standing up to come up to hug me. "There's a reason our fandom is called Stay," Bang Chan broke down separating the words between crying fits. "They're called Stay because we want them to know that being with us is a safe place for all. Since you're a special friend of ours, we treat you a little bit more than how we treat other STAY's and family." Everyone crowded around me to hug me again which then I found peace.

For the first time since I met them, they finally saw me genuinely smile for the first time.