Chapter Text
James hadn't planned on watching Martin's live. He'd been halfway through answering messages when a clip surfaced on his timeline. Just a few seconds long, barely enough to register.
Martin and Juhoon sat shoulder-to-shoulder during a Weverse live, laughing over something off-camera. Martin held up a lipgloss tube with doodles, his fingers pinching the corner carefully as if the sketches were somehow important.
James would've kept scrolling, then he heard his own name. His thumb stopped moving.
"...this one's kind of me," Martin was saying, tapping a round little skull-like character with his finger. "And this one is my alien friend."
Juhoon laughed. "Your alien friend?"
Martin nodded seriously. "The one with the antenna."
"And I use James as the model for one of the skulls too. The one with the star on his cheek."
The clip ended there. James stared at the frozen frame for a second before reopening the app and searching for the full live. It was ridiculous, honestly. The character wasn't anything elaborate. A round skull, tiny limbs, and dot eyes. Uneven little lines that looked like they had been drawn absentmindedly during meetings, recording sessions, or moments of boredom. And yet Martin seemed strangely proud of them.
James found himself watching far longer than he'd intended. Martin explained how he liked drawing them, how there were different versions. Different personalities and different stories. Some were based on him, some were based on the imaginary alien friend he'd apparently invented years ago. And some…. some were based on James.
Not in any obvious way and not enough that strangers would notice. But Martin knew, and somehow that seemed to matter. James caught himself smiling halfway through the live. By the time it ended, fans had already started posting screenshots and translations. Clips were spreading across social media. The skulls had become a topic. The star-cheeked one even more so.
When Martin finally came home that night, James was sprawled across the couch scrolling through reactions. The apartment door clicked open. Martin stepped inside, kicking off his shoes with a sigh.
"You're famous," James announced.
Martin glanced up. "I am always famous."
"The skull."
Martin froze, only for a second. Barely noticeable but James noticed.
"Oh."
"The one with the star."
A groan escaped Martin immediately. "You watched that?"
"It showed up on my timeline."
"You weren't supposed to watch that."
James laughed. "I don't think that's how livestreams work."
Martin muttered something under his breath and immediately retreated toward the kitchen. Which, naturally, made James want to bother him more.
The thing was, once he'd noticed the drawings, he couldn't stop noticing them. They were everywhere. In notebooks left open on tables, on sticky notes attached to lyric sheets. In the margins of schedules, even on the backs of receipts. Inside sketchbooks scattered around the apartment. Tiny skulls, tiny stars, a tiny versions of himself.
At first, it was amusing. Then it became slightly concerning. Not because Martin drew him, but because Martin drew him constantly. It was like discovering he'd been quietly haunting someone else's imagination for years.
The realization hit him completely by accident. A few weeks later, while searching for a charger, James found an old notebook shoved inside a storage box. The notebook looked ancient, a trainee-era ancient. Its cover was bent and worn from use.
Curious, James opened it. The first few pages were exactly what he'd expected. Practice schedules, song notes, dance formations, and random reminders written in messy handwriting. Then he turned another page and stopped. A familiar skull stared back at him. There wasn't a star yet. The design was rougher, messier, like it was still searching for its final form. But it was unmistakably the same character.
James blinked as he turned another page, then another, then another. The character kept appearing, growing, changing, evolving. Like Martin had been developing him little by little over the years. A different expression here, a different outfit there. Tiny adjustments, tiny improvements. Page after page. Notebook after notebook.
James became so absorbed that he barely heard the bathroom door open.
"What are you doing?"
He looked up and Martin already stood in the doorway with hair still damp from his shower. Then his gaze landed on the notebooks scattered around James. His expression immediately shifted to horror.
James held one up. "When were you planning to tell me I've apparently been living in your sketchbooks since 2024?"
Martin stopped walking. "Oh my god."
The sheer devastation on his face sent James into helpless laughter. "You've been drawing these for that long?"
Martin covered his face. "Can you stop looking through them?"
"No."
"Hyung."
"No."
"Please."
"No."
Martin groaned loudly enough to echo through the apartment as James flipped another page. Another skull, another version of himself, another tiny star.
"What is with the star, anyway?"
Martin lowered his hands. The embarrassment remained, but now he looked genuinely confused.
"What do you mean?"
"Why does my character have a star?"
Martin blinked as if the answer should've been obvious. Then he shrugged. "You used to wear those little star bandages."
James stared. "What?"
"When we were trainees." Martin reached over and took the notebook, his fingers flipped directly to the page James had been holding. "You were always getting hurt during practice."
James frowned. Most of those years existed in his memory as a blur of exhaustion. Endless rehearsals, evaluations, late-night practice rooms, too little sleep, and too much pressure. The details had faded, but apparently not for Martin.
"There was a time where you kept putting star-shaped bandages on your face," Martin continued. "You said the normal ones were boring."
James barked out a laugh. "I actually said that?"
"You absolutely said that."
"That sounds ridiculous."
"You were ridiculous."
James shook his head.
Martin pointed at the drawing. "So I gave him a star."
Simple, a matter-of-fact. Like carrying a tiny memory around for years was the most natural thing in the world.
James looked back down at the page. The sketchbook was crowded with characters. Martin's skull, the alien, random creatures, random expressions. Entire tiny worlds. But somehow the star-cheeked character always ended up near the center. Again and again, page after page, year after year.
A warmth settled somewhere beneath James's ribs. Because it wasn't really about the drawings and it wasn't even about the fact that Martin remembered something James himself had forgotten. It was the realization that none of these sketches had been created for anyone else. These were the things Martin drew when nobody was watching. The worlds he built purely because they made him happy. The private corners of his imagination. And somehow, every single time Martin created one of those little worlds, James was already there.
He glanced sideways. Martin had settled beside him at some point, sitting cross-legged on the floor. He sat close enough that their shoulders brushed, close enough that neither of them noticed anymore. Or maybe they noticed and simply didn't care.
Martin reached over, trying to reclaim the notebook. James let him take it. Mostly. Then he caught sight of another drawing. A familiar skull, bu this one wearing glasses.
He pointed immediately. "Why does this one have glasses?"
Martin reacted so fast it was almost suspicious. The notebook disappeared from view.
"No."
"Martin."
"No."
"What did I do?"
"You don't get to know."
James grinned. "Why?"
Martin buried the notebook against his chest. His ears were turning pink.
"Because it's embarrassing."
James's grin widened. Because if there was one thing he knew about Martin, any answer that embarrassing was guaranteed to be worth hearing. And now he absolutely wasn't letting it go.