After "Contrast", we ran backstage as soon as the spotlights turned off. It was time for a video about our comeback and some flashbacks from the past to start playing on the larger than life screens on each side of the stage. It was time for us to catch our breaths for full ten minutes—and, boy, were we in need of that. 

Time had flown by and we were already closing in on the end of the concert. I had totally forgotten how draining having a live concert was—my body was basically screaming for help already at this point. I wanted nothing more than to crash on a couch for the whole ten minutes. 

Too bad I didn’t get to. 

I was the last one to reach backstage and was immediately met with a very odd sight. For some reason, Do was furious and had cornered a very amused-looking Tae against the wall. Bewildered, I blinked. To be honest, I had already all but forgotten the whole thing Tae did on stage. In my mind, it was such a small thing that it was practically nothing.

Turned out though, that the whole ruckus was all about that.  Do-hyun clearly hadn’t forgotten anything about it. 

“...the hell did you do that for?!” Do-hyun asked, raging on. He even grabbed Tae’s collar and pushed him roughly against the wall. 

Meanwhile Tae only chuckled, sporting an amused expression. He threw his hands in the air in a sign of surrender though. 

“Relax, it’s barely some fanservice,” he said, a full smirk playing on his lips. “As Joonie said earlier, let’s keep it interesting.”

My eyes widened and I even had my mouth hanging slightly open. What the fuck was going on here? Was Do too immersed in his stage persona or what? 

Just then, Tae’s words registered in Do’s mind and he flipped. 

“Min’s mine,” he snarled under his breath, so angry I was almost expecting him to hit Tae. “Enough with this ‘Mint’ bullshit!”

“Is he now? Then you should keep a better care of him, or I’m gonna take him from you,” Tae countered. Was he suicidal? Surely seemed like he was, or at least he was seriously lacking in the survival instinct department, at least based on the murderous look Do was giving him.

I lost my patience with both of them. “Enough.”

As if caught like a deer in the headlights, they both turned their eyes to me. Looked like neither of them had noticed my appearance in the first place. Slowly, Do let go of Tae’s collar, his fingers unclenching one by one, while Tae’s smirk melted off and was replaced with a worried frown. 

It wasn’t like I didn’t want Do-hyun to be a bit possessive; quite the contrary. The problem was, that I knew it was a mere fantasy. Do-hyun didn’t really care about me that much—he was in character. I knew from experience he’d turn a cold shoulder on me to counterbalance it for a couple of days after a concert. That was just who he was. It had happened after every damn gig, big and small. This particular one wasn’t going to be the exception, now was it? 

My chest clenched painfully as I tried to swallow back the angry tears that were right about to break free. I blinked rapidly, desperate to not let them see how much the whole thing actually affected me. 

Do opened his mouth to say something, but when Joonie and Chris came over to see where we had gotten stuck, he fled. Darting off like a bullet, he ran somewhere and I lost sight of him in seconds. The whole thing was starting to give me a severe headache, and I rubbed my temples.

“Minjae, I’m sorry…but I think you should go after him so we can continue this show,” Joonie stated softly, reminding me that we did not, in fact, have time for this. 

After a brief nod, I darted after Do. In the end, I was the only one who could get him back onstage whenever he lost his shit while lost in character. That, too, I knew from experience. There was no other option than to bury my own feelings about the whole thing deep, and try to get him hauled back on stage. This was, after all, one of the most important concerts we’d ever have to deliver. 

I found Do-hyun in one of the other backstage rooms. 

He was sitting on the couch, hanging his head low and playing with one of his rings. The staff hovered around him, worried, but he kept ignoring them. In fact, he didn’t even seem to notice them, trapped in his own little world.

Sighing, I channeled whatever I could muster together of my stage persona; this polished, shiny, confident character called Minjae. If Do-hyun was too immersed in his character, the only way to bring him back was to give the character what it wanted—me. Or rather, the stage-Minjae. Besides, I had to take some drastic measures, time was running out. There was no time to think things through. This would either work or backfire epically but I had to take my chances.