The 9th Member

Chapter 11 'Start of a New Era'

When I was a trainee someone once told me there are two things are I would find the hardest, one the elimination of a member of a survival show, done that and survived it, two a member leaving after debut. Since I got through the elimination of two of our members, I thought a member leaving would be a little easier. Damn, I was wrong.

Promotions for our Cle' 3 Album 'Lavantar' was coming up fast and let me tell you, this was the first time I think a promotion or new album may break someone in the band. Over the last few weeks, I had noticed tensions in the dorm had been rising and arguments were starting to happen more frequently.

The latest group of people that seemed to be fighting was the members of 3 RACHA and Woojin. I don't know what's going on between the four of them, but there have been multiple times where random times had I had to get between the four of them and break up random arguments that broke out, for what seemed likely no reason. It was really starting to affect the environment in the dorm and everyone had begun treading lightly around the four members, not wanting to start another fight.

I had tried to speak to Chan about sorting this usually issue out as we couldn't continue into promotion time. It would severely affect our performances and fans would begin to notice. However, nothing had been done.

Quite frankly I was getting sick and tired of it all. It sucked I was one of the younger members because I would've dealt with this already if I was the eldest.

Currently, I was sitting with Hyunjin and Minho in our dorm bedroom, watching a movie of Minho's laptop. It was an English animated film called 'flushed away' as the boys wanted to work on their English. It was also a chance for me to get back in touch with my English roots and just enjoy a movie for a minute whilst we had a chance to breathe.

"Did you know the actor playing Roddie is actually Australian like Channie-hyung and Felix?" I commented.

"Really, he doesn't sound it," Minho raised his eyebrows.

I nodded. "The power of acting. His name's Hugh Jackman and he's from Australia."

I rested my head on Hyunjin's shoulder as the movie continued. This was the third time in the last weeks or so the three of us had sat together and watch a movie or drama of some sort and strangely, it was kind of nice to just sit back a relax considering everything that was going on around the dorm recently.

Just as a new scene started a knock come from the door, prompting me to lean over and pause the movie to see Woojin poke his head into the room. "Can you three come out to the living room please?"

We all nodded before rolling from our spaces and making our way out to the living room where we saw the rest of the members crowded on the couch, looking just as confused as I now felt.

"What's going on?" I asked, looking around.

"I need to talk to everyone. Can you sit down?" the eldest asked.

I nodded. Sliding in next to Felix and Jeongin. I leant against the Australian as silence fell over the house. What the hell was going on?

"Okay, so we all know the environment around here hasn't been the most pleasant recently with arguments breaking out between a few of the members and I and I acknowledge that. There is no easy way for me to say this so I'm just going to come out and say it. I have been struggling with things in my personal life and because of that, I am making the decision to leave Stray Kids and JYP entertainment to give myself time to sort through all of these issues."

I unknowingly held my breath as this announcement was made. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Our eldest member had made the decision to suddenly pull away from the group. Even worse, he was one of our main singers. Without him, there were several vocal gaps in our songs not to mention our choreography has always been designed to be a ten. How were we going to fix that?