waves~ || skz Jeongin

perfect~

Nine years had passed.

A lot changed.

The huge kpop hype was long over.

Stray Kids didn't exist anymore.

I mean, of course we did still exist.

Just not as band anymore.

We were just normal people, going our separate ways, living our lives.

Naturally, every month we would have dinner together in Chan's house. You can't be a close family for years and then survive living apart for long. Chan was like sticky glue that kept us together.

He had married Younhee, his absolutely gorgeous, caring, loving girlfriend (which he had gotten already during our active time as Stray Kids), was father of three children - and a very loud dog.

He had founded his own company and still produced songs together with Jisung and Changbin, though mainly for fun.

Minho and Jisung were still a couple. Or rather, again. They had managed to rebuild their relationship after spending two and a half years separated. An evil fight over whatnot (I hadn't understood that part to this day) had made them break up back then. They were now happier than ever together though, proud dads of way too many cats and in a never-ending fight over wether they wanted to adopt a child and how and how old or a new cat or both.

Hyunjin was living his best live as a freelance artist and dancer. Sometimes he gave free dance lessons to kids who couldn't afford proper ones.

He also was in a weird on-off relationship with Felix that no one (including the two of them) entirely understood. Felix earned a little money with modeling for their own make-up brand and worked voluntary for lgbtq+ youth. They donated huge parts of their brand's profit to charity organizations.

Felix had a house and a golden retriever, Hyunjin a flat above his art studio that was stuffed with exotic plants. Somehow the two managed to live together anyways. Sometimes here, sometimes there, so you never knew where to find them.

Their relationship fluctuated from platonic best friends who would hook up with about everyone to being a closed couple holding hands and making out with each other like hormone-driven teenagers.

As I said, no one entirely got it. But they were happy, so we didn't actually question it.

Seungmin had fled the country not even a month after our disbandment.

Said he needed some distance from everything, and some time for him alone.

That apparently still applied since he has been travelling ever since. The adventure blog he started to write was by now incredibly famous.

We still kept contact all that time. Of course. His stories were always the best.

To be apart from Seungmin so far and all of a sudden had had huge impact for all of us. Though Changbin was the one most affected.

I think it was the separation that made him firstly realize how serious his feelings towards the other were.

It took him almost half a year to listen to us and pack his things to follow Seungmin.

They married in a drunken night in LA.

And told us about this by sending a blurred selfie of them with the signed document.

Though not sending us privately, no. They totally did post it on Seungmin's very famous and very public travel blog.

You can imagine the chaos that followed.

Changbin was more often back in Korea to work with Chan on songs or visit his family.

Seungmin was mostly just here over the holidays.

The two of them planned to buy a small sailing ship and sail all the way around the world. Just them. And the huge ocean.

I couldn't estimate whether this was a joke or dead serious.

You never knew with these lunatics.

As for me, well. Not that much changed. Or maybe it did.

I had taken a timeout after our disbandment and holed myself up somewhere in rural Korea, far away from everything.

In the last years of our fame I had made some wrong friends and stumbled into what the news proclaimed as drug abuse.

It wasn't really that. It were just some pills to keep me awake, keep me working, working, working. I didn't go down the addiction rabbit hole completely.

Yet deeper than one should, anyways.

I needed the break away from everything desperately.

So, exile to rural South Korea it was.

And there, in the middle of nowhere, I met Jihye. We quickly grew friends, she helped me through a lot of shit.

She had by a miracle never heard of Stray Kids before. She had no idea who I was. Which allowed me to be myself.

I fell in love with her within two months.

She needed a little longer to fall in love with me. Two months and a day, she always said.

Six years ago, she asked me to be her boyfriend (because I couldn't get myself to ask first).

Almost four years ago our beautiful daughter was born. We named her Harin after Jihye's grandmother. It meant internal beauty.

Seven months ago, I had proposed to Jihye.

Our wedding was planned for next summer.

I was fine. I was happy.

Everything was perfect.

Almost everything.

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