She left about an hour later with a careless wave that encompassed both of them, the argument apparently completely resolved in whatever internal account she kept. When the door clicked shut behind her, the air in the music room seemed to adjust back into its usual calm.
Jaemin tinkered on the piano, soft arpeggios that ran the length of the piano and stayed in the higher octaves; not composition, just something to keep his hands busy as the atmosphere settled.
Being around Nakyung made him miss the twins; their vibrant energy, constantly egging each other on to no good, occasionally having a tiff, but ultimately he knew neither of them would hesitate to take a bullet for the other. Or for him.
He murmured, without particularly planning to, "Parts of what she said were… not quite true, but she did make sure I didn't skip meals. I wouldn't have remembered to if she hadn't."
Do-hyun didn't look up from his book, but gave a small sigh. "That sounds like her."
"She told me—" He hesitated, considering how to say it.
Because Nakyung had caught him in the corridor one of the days before, after lunch, while Do-hyun had stopped to speak to Ji-young about something in the entrance hall. She had fallen into step beside him without preamble, hands in her pockets.
"I knew he'd come out," she had said conversationally, as if continuing a discussion they had already been having. "The moment I heard the noise at the inner gate. I knew he'd come."
Jaemin had glanced at her. "You mean Do-hyun?"
"Yeah." She had shrugged. "He always does, when it really matters. He's not good at a lot of things, and he can be an idiot sometimes… but when you really need him, he shows up no matter what." She had stared straight ahead, not meeting Jaemin's gaze. "I've been furious with him about plenty of stuff, but not about that. Never about that."
She had not looked at him, and she had not waited for a response, peeling off towards the stairs at the next corridor junction without breaking stride, leaving Jaemin behind in the quiet hallway with the feeling of having been given something packaged casually, but precious.
Now, in the wake of her leaving the music room, he fumbled with the memory, finally saying, "She said you could be trusted to show up when it truly matters."
Do-hyun was quiet for a long time, and when Jaemin glanced up at him, he was no longer looking down at his book, but staring out the window, at the mountain dark beginning to gather beyond the glass. "I don't know about that," he murmured, almost to himself.
His profile in the fading light was the same as his father's in the photographs—the clean jawline, the straight nose, the stillness that in Han-sol's photographs had looked like concealment, but in Do-hyun looked like the habit of a man who had learned to keep his deepest feelings to himself.
"Watching you both makes me wonder what you were like when you were young," Jaemin mused. When Do-hyun turned toward him with faint surprise, he continued, "Because I've only ever known you as the imperious Concertmaster Kang… and today I watched you argue about a chair for twenty minutes." He paused, smiling at the memory. "That's a version of you that I haven't seen until now."
Something softened in Do-hyun's face; not quite a smile, but the suggestion of one, somewhere underneath. "That version," he said, "was also primarily fighting over chairs with that brat. Among other things."
He paused then, his expression shifting into something younger, something hesitant, before saying, "I can show you some of it, if you'd like."
Jaemin turned toward him, and smiled.
"I'd like that very much."
…
Do-hyun's room was further back in the west wing than Jaemin had expected, tucked at the end of a corridor the rest of the house didn't seem to lead to naturally; the kind of room that required knowing where it was. As Do-hyun pushed open the door and reached around for the light, the room came slowly into being in warm, low light.
It was smaller than Jaemin had expected: a single bed, neatly made by the house staff, a modest desk with its wooden surface worn smooth from use, a shelf of books… and on the wall, a small constellation of photographs that drew Jaemin forward.
Kang Han-sol appeared in several, younger than in many of the portraits Jaemin had seen, crouching down to correct a young Do-hyun's hold on a violin bow with both hands, all his attention in his fingers. In another, his arm was around Ji-young's shoulders and she was laughing at something, her face half-turned away from the camera. A very small Nakyung—four, perhaps five—sat in the centre of what appeared to be a mess of wrapping paper, looking deeply satisfied with herself.
And Do-hyun in each of them, serious-faced, caught mid-laugh, or concentrating on something just out of frame, at various stages of becoming the man currently standing a few feet behind Jaemin.
"You look like him," Jaemin said quietly, without turning around. "Even then."
"So I've been told."
"Does it bother you?"
Do-hyun paused before answering, "It used to. Less, now."
Jaemin returned to the photograph of Do-hyun and his father, Han-sol's hands, careful and precise, guiding those of the small boy who was trying his best to hold still.
"You seemed close," he commented.
"He was a good teacher," Do-hyun said, his gaze following Jaemin's to the picture. "It never felt like he was correcting you, more like just… showing you something interesting."
Jaemin turned from the photograph and settled into the desk chair, drawing one knee up. "What was he like at home?"
"Quiet. Careful. He laughed easily but he didn't talk much, at least not about himself. As a kid, I never really thought about it. You never really think about your parents having lives apart from being your parents. It was only till later that I understood it was something else."
"His journal."
"Yup. And the suppressants. Years' worth of them." He stared down at the ground. "I sat on the floor of his study for a long time after that. I don't know how long."
Jaemin stayed silent. His relationship with his own father had been fraught for so long, he knew he didn't understand what that would have felt like.
"I was angry at first," Do-hyun continued. "Not at him, exactly, but at the fact that he had carried it alone, for so long, and none of us had known. That he had been… That the person I thought I knew had an entire side to him that I had never seen, never even suspected.
"My mother, too. I hated her for a while, for keeping it from us, even if she had promised him to, all those years ago. But all she did was what he needed her to do.
"And then I was angry at myself for being angry. Because what right did I have? He did what he had to do. The world didn't give him any other option."
Jaemin looked at him—the careful evenness of his voice, the way he held himself on the edge of the bed, not quite tense, but not quite relaxed either. "How did Nakyung take it?"
Do-hyun's expression shifted slightly, a faint hint of guilt. "She was only thirteen then, not yet presented. I think she got the gist that he hadn't really been who we thought he was, but she didn't understand it then, and there was no one really that she could ask. So she just didn't talk about it. She was angry too, difficult…"
He fell quiet, then said, "I wasn't really there for her and my mother the way I should have been. I used studies and work as excuses to stay away… But she came through it. She's better at grief than I am, I think. She goes toward it instead of away.
"Come to think of it, I actually haven't been back in this room much since that time. Early on, it felt too familiar, too much like he was still around. Like I might hear him call for me at any second. So I just used one of the other rooms. More convenient. And then it just became a habit, and I never thought about it… until tonight."
Jaemin watched him take in the room, scanning the ceiling and the walls; a space that was at once familiar yet strange, something you recognized but had put too much time and distance in between.
"Nakyung told me about Minseo, a little," he said.
"She did?" Do-hyun looked at him, slightly startled, then looked away. "Yeah, I guess she would've. You don't have to worry though, that's long over."
"What happened?" Nakyung had already told him that part too, but he felt like it was something he needed to know from Do-hyun's own perspective.
Do-hyun stared blankly ahead, remembering. "She… Minseo, she got tired. I wore her out. She wanted to know everything, and I just… couldn't. There was too much I wasn't ready to deal with, and when she tried to get me to open up, I just… shut down. She needed a partner who was able to share everything with her, and I… I just couldn't show up for her in that way." He grimaced. "And Nakyung lost someone else she needed in her life."
Jaemin was quiet for a moment. Then: "You did the same thing to me."
Do-hyun's chin dropped low. "I know."
"I mean not just here. Before that. After the concert. You rushed off, said you'd call, and then just… disappeared. The orchestra had to shut down, and you weren't there."
Do-hyun's head fell lower, his face falling into one hand to cover his eyes. "I know," he whispered. "I'm sorry."
"I went to your house to look for you. I couldn't get in, but I could smell you. I didn't know if you were there and couldn't bear to see me, or if you weren't there at all." Jaemin paused. "Where were you?"
"I…" Do-hyun's throat worked as he swallowed hard. "I drove to Yangpyeong to look for my mother and Nakyung, that night. The house was already empty when I arrived, and I panicked. Neither of them were answering. I almost got mobbed by the reporters around the house. It wasn't until the next day that they made contact and told me they were already on their way here."
Jaemin didn't look away. "And then?"
"And then I went back to Seoul. I knew I needed to come get you. But everything…" He raised his head, not meeting Jaemin's eyes, but Jaemin saw the anguish in his face. "I didn't know what to do. All I could think of was that I hadn't been able to protect them, or you. Not a single one." He swallowed again, but his voice cracked when he said, "How was I supposed to let you see me like that?"
Jaemin didn't know how to answer. He searched for the right words to say, but before he could find them, Do-hyun had composed himself enough to continue.
"I saw you the next time, the night we left. I saw your suitcase. I thought maybe you had decided to leave, maybe go back to your family in Suncheon after everything that had happened." He inhaled shakily. "And I didn't want you to go, but I couldn't trust myself to be what you needed… I didn't know until it was almost too late that you were going to him."
Jaemin stared at him, his heart aching. "But I wasn't going home," he whispered. "And I wasn't going to him because I wanted to; I was going because he told me that if I didn't, he would release everything he had on your family, and it would completely ruin you."
Do-hyun's eyes closed briefly. When he opened them, Jaemin saw both pain, resolve, and the weight of all he was carrying without expecting help.
"I wouldn't have let him take you," he said at last, "no matter what. I couldn't let you go back to him like that. Not after knowing what he's done to you. I—" He stopped, then said, very quietly, "If you had, I think that would have been it for me."
Jaemin absorbed this as he gazed out the window. The mountain dark had fully settled, the sky a deep, even blue. The lamp threw its small warm circle over the room.
Then he rose from the desk chair and moved to the other end of the bed across from Do-hyun. He was aware of the alpha's eyes following him, unsure of what he was about to do, but he just settled back against the headboard, drawing his knees up to his chest.
After a moment, he said quietly, "I'm sorry. For thinking that the decision about protecting your safety, and your family's, was mine to make. I don't know what I could have done different… but I'm sorry that I pushed you to that."
Do-hyun shook his head. "You wouldn't have done it if I had just been there. You were just trying to do the best you could with whatever you had."
"So were you," Jaemin said. "In the car."
Do-hyun sighed deep, then leaned back against the headboard on his own side of the bed. For a while they were silent together, the lamp illuminating everything in its warm glow: the both of them on the bed, the walls of the childhood room with all its memories, and the weight of the unfinished things between them, no longer quite as heavy as they had been.