Sx
A Chemistry of Glass
The workbook sat on the low glass coffee table in Yunho’s bedroom, its spine cracked and its cover warped from nervous, sweating fingers.
It was titled *Skills Training Manual for Emotional Dysregulation*, but to Yunho, it felt like an ancient text written in a language he was entirely unqualified to translate. Over the last four weeks, his life had supposedly been retrofitted with structure. There were acronyms scrawled across neon sticky notes lining the edges of his vanity mirror: *TIPP* for temperature, intense exercise, paced breathing, and paired muscle relaxation; *STOP* for stop, take a step back, observe, proceed mindfully.
Every morning, Dr. Lim’s voice echoed in his head like a gentle, stubborn metronome. *Name the emotion. Do not become the emotion. Radical acceptance.*
It sounded reasonable in the pristine, quiet warmth of a Cheongdam-dong consulting room.
In the real world, it was like trying to patch the hull of a sinking battleship with wet tissue paper.
The diagnosis had not cured him. If anything, giving the monster a name had only made Yunho hyper-aware of every single tremor in his nervous system. Instead of the anger arriving like a sudden summer thunderstorm, he now had to watch the black clouds gather in agonizing slow motion, perfectly conscious that he was about to lose his mind, yet entirely powerless to stop the descent.
Worse still was the terrifying realization that his rage had been a shield. Without the burning, righteous anger to insulate him, the world was raw, jagged, and freezing.
His emotional skin was gone, and everything stung.
A single off-pitch note during vocal practice sent him spiraling into five hours of silent, paralyzing dread, convinced the producers were privately arranging to reassign his lines. When San casually asked if he wanted him to grab an iced tea from downstairs, Yunho’s brain twisted the gesture into a lethal insult: *He thinks I’m too pathetic to get up myself. He’s babysitting me because Kang told him to.* When Hongjoong spent twenty minutes reviewing a formation with Mingi instead of checking in on him, the void opened wide and swallowed Yunho whole: *He’s exhausted of me. He regretted holding my hand in that van. They're slowly phasing me out.*
He spent his nights lying awake in the dark, his pulse roaring in his ears, his body vibrating with a restless, frantic energy that felt like static electricity trapped under his ribs. Sleep was an elusive ghost; when it came, it was fractured by violent, disjointed nightmares of endless corridors where every door locked just as he reached for the handle.
He was losing weight. His cheekbones were hollowed, the purple smudges beneath his eyes dark enough that the makeup team spent twenty minutes each morning laying down heavy color-corrector before they dared apply foundation. He felt like an exposed nerve walking through a world made of sandpaper.
The snap happened on a rainy Thursday afternoon in the dorm kitchen.
It wasn't an arena show. It wasn't an insulting harness or a stolen sweater. It was a mug.
A simple ceramic mug painted with a cartoon puppy, a gift from an overseas fan during their last European tour. Yunho had pulled it from the drying rack, intending to make hot tea to soothe the chronic migraine that had settled behind his temples for three straight days. His fingers, trembling from sheer exhaustion and low blood sugar, lost their grip.
The mug fell two feet and shattered against the granite countertop, splitting into four jagged pieces.
Yunho froze.
His breath caught in his throat, a sharp, ragged gasp. He stared at the cracked ceramic, at the cheerful painted dog split right through the eyes.
*STOP,* his mind frantically whispered. *Stop. Take a step back. Observe.*
He couldn't observe. The air in the kitchen vanished, replaced by an unbearable, crushing pressure that dropped onto his sternum like a slab of wet concrete. His heart slammed against his ribs with terrifying, erratic violence.
*I broke it,* the voice hissed, dark and venomous, echoing from the hollow caverns of his chest. *You ruin everything. You can't even hold a cup. You're clumsy, you're useless, you're an overgrown freak who destroys everything he touches.*
"Yunho-ah?"
Seonghwa walked into the kitchen, wearing gray sweatpants and reading glasses, an unread novel tucked beneath his arm. He took one look at the shattered mug on the counter and Yunho’s rigid, white-knuckled posture, and his expression softened into immediate, instinctual concern.
"Oh, did it drop?" Seonghwa said gently, taking a step toward the sink to grab the dustpan. "Don't touch it with your bare hands, you'll cut yourself. I'll get the broom."
In a healthy brain, those words would have registered as kindness.
In Yunho’s scorched, dysregulated mind, they hit like a series of sledgehammers.
*He's treating you like a toddler. He thinks you're an idiot who can't sweep up his own mess. He hates you for making noise. Look at his face. He's disgusted by you.*
"I can clean it up," Yunho choked out, his voice thin, reedy, vibrating with a terrifying edge.
"I know you can, sweetie," Seonghwa replied softly, opening the utility cabinet. "I’m just already standing right here. Let me—"
"I said I can clean it up!"
The scream ripped out of Yunho’s throat so loud, so sudden, that Seonghwa visibly jolted, dropping the plastic broom against the linoleum with a clatter.
Seonghwa stared at him, eyes wide, breath catching. "Yunho..."
Yunho dropped to his knees, grabbing blindly at the ceramic shards. He didn't care about the sharp edges. He just needed to fix it, needed to erase the evidence of his failure before they threw him out, before Seonghwa told Kang that the freak was having another episode.
"Yunho, stop! Don't touch the glass!" Seonghwa rushed forward, dropping to his knees beside him, his hands hovering frantically around Yunho’s wrists, desperate to pull him away from the sharp pieces without hurting him.
"Get away from me!" Yunho wailed.
It wasn't the cold, calculating fury of the dressing room. It was something far more horrifying. It was the sound of an animal caught in a metal bear trap, gnawing at its own bone to get free.
A sharp corner of the ceramic sliced into the flesh of his left thumb. A bright bead of crimson welled up, spilling down the side of his palm, dripping onto the white granite floor.
Yunho stared at the blood.
Something inside his skull simply snapped.
The room tilted. The hum of the refrigerator became a deafening roar. His chest seized, refusing to draw oxygen, and the agonizing void that had been lurking in his periphery for weeks rushed in to swallow him whole. He let out a breathless, strangled sob and curled into a tight ball on the kitchen floor, burying his face into his knees, his hands tearing violently into his own hair.
"Make it stop," he whispered, rocking back and forth against the cabinets. "Please. God, please, make it stop. I can't do this. I can't live like this. It hurts so bad. Please."
Footsteps pounded down the corridor. Hongjoong appeared in the doorway, his eyes darting frantically from the broken mug to Seonghwa’s pale, trembling face, and then down to the crumpled giant weeping on the tiles.
"What happened?" Hongjoong breathed, dropping down immediately on Yunho’s other side.
"He... he dropped a cup," Seonghwa said, his voice cracking, tears filling his eyes as he gently wrapped a clean dish towel around Yunho’s bleeding hand. "Hongjoong, he's hyperventilating. He won't breathe."
"Yunho-ah," Hongjoong said, his voice firm, low, desperately trying to anchor through the storm. He reached out and placed both hands firmly on Yunho’s trembling shoulders. "Yunho, look at me. Breathe with me. In for four. Come on, Yunho. You’re safe."
"I'm not!" Yunho screamed into his jeans, his entire body convulsing with violent, desperate sobs. "I'm not safe! It’s in my head, hyung! It’s in my fucking head and I can't get it out! I can't breathe, I can't think, it won't stop screaming at me! I want it to stop! Just make it stop!"
He wasn't angry at them. He wasn't arrogant. He was completely, utterly shattered.
Hongjoong pulled Yunho forward, wrapping his arms around the younger man's broad, shaking frame, holding him tight against his chest as Yunho wept with the raw, agonizing grief of someone drowning in six inches of water.
Seonghwa sat on the floor beside them, his hand resting on the back of Yunho’s neck, whispering steady words into the air that no one could hear over the sound of Yunho’s agonizing sobs.
Hongjoong met Seonghwa’s gaze over Yunho’s trembling head.
There was no judgment in Hongjoong’s eyes. Only a profound, heartbreaking terror.
The skills weren't enough. The workbook wasn't enough.
Jeong Yunho was bleeding out from the inside.
***
Two hours later, the private examination room at Seoul St. Mary's was dim, the blinds drawn shut against the relentless gray drizzle outside.
Yunho sat on the edge of the examination bed, a fresh adhesive bandage over his thumb. His skin was pale as skim milk, his eyes swollen, his hands resting limply between his knees. He looked like an empty shell left behind on a beach after a violent tide.
Hongjoong sat in the plastic chair beside him, his fingers lightly gripping the sleeve of Yunho’s oversized hoodie. He hadn't left his side for a single second.
Dr. Lim Eun-ji set down Yunho’s chart, her expression serious and deeply pensive. She looked at Yunho not with pity, but with the steady, unflinching gravity of a surgeon assessing an acute wound.
"Your nervous system is in a state of continuous excitotoxicity, Yunho-ssi," Dr. Lim said, her tone level and calm. "Your amygdala is firing constantly, flooding your bloodstream with adrenaline and cortisol. In that state, the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain that processes logic, executive function, and the DBT skills we’ve been trying to practice—literally goes offline. It is biologically impossible for you to 'think your way' out of an episode when your neurochemistry is drowning you."
Yunho kept his eyes glued to the white linoleum floor. "I tried the skills," he whispered, his voice hoarse, ruined from screaming. "I tried to breathe. I tried to do the temperature thing with cold water. But the second I looked at Seonghwa... I just wanted to die. I felt like I was being ripped apart."
"I know," she said softly. "And that is why we cannot rely solely on psychotherapy right now."
She turned to her desk and picked up a small, white plastic prescription bottle, setting it gently on the edge of the examination table between them.
Yunho’s gaze flicked to the bottle.
The label read: *Lamotrigine, 25mg.* Beside it sat another smaller bottle: *Aripiprazole, 2mg.*
A sudden, sharp spike of panic pierced through his numbness.
"Pills?" Yunho whispered, leaning back from the table as if the plastic bottles were radioactive. "No. No, I told you. I can't take psychiatric medication."
"Yunho-ah," Hongjoong said gently, squeezing his arm. "Just listen to Dr. Lim."
"No!" Yunho’s voice cracked, a flicker of the old defensive desperation flaring in his eyes. "You know what happens to people on these things! It dopes them up. It makes them slow. I am the main dancer of this group, Hongjoong! My timing has to be down to the millisecond! If I get groggy, if I gain weight, if my reflexes lag... I’m done. My career is over."
He turned back to Dr. Lim, his breath hitching, eyes wide with terror.
"They'll turn me into a zombie," he pleaded, his hands trembling violently. "I won't be able to dance. I won't be able to smile. I'll just be some hollowed-out freak sitting in the back row while everyone else does the work. I can handle it. I’ll do more therapy. I’ll do five sessions a week. I’ll memorize the whole damn workbook, I swear to God I will—"
"Yunho-ssi," Dr. Lim interrupted. Her voice wasn't loud, but the absolute, unshakable authority in it cut through his spiraling panic like a scalpel.
Yunho snapped his mouth shut, a tear spilling over his lower lid.
"Look at yourself," she said, her voice dropping into a register of profound, compassionate firmness. "You haven't slept more than three consecutive hours in a month. You are losing weight. You are breaking things, hurting your hands, and weeping on the floor because a ceramic cup broke. Are you dancing well right now?"
Yunho flinched as if struck.
"Are you smiling right now?" she pressed gently. "Are you functioning?"
He couldn't answer. The truth tasted like bile in the back of his throat.
"You have been told your entire life that taking medication for your mind is a sign of surrender," Dr. Lim said, leaning forward, resting her forearms on her desk. "That it is an admission that you are fundamentally defective, or that it is a chemical straitjacket designed to silence you. That is ignorance."
She reached out and tapped the bottle of Lamotrigine with the tip of her pen.
"This is not a sedative," she explained clearly. "This is a mood stabilizer. It works on the voltage-gated sodium channels in your central nervous system. It does not erase your personality. It does not turn off your creativity, your passion, or your talent. What it does, Yunho, is build a floor beneath your feet."
Yunho sniffled, staring at the little white cylinder. "A floor?"
"Right now, every time an emotion hits you, you fall into a bottomless abyss," Dr. Lim said. "You free-fall until you crash into rage or despair. What this medication does is catch you. It slows the velocity of the drop. It raises your baseline just enough so that when someone looks at you the wrong way, or when a schedule changes, your brain doesn't immediately interpret it as a life-or-death emergency. It gives your prefrontal cortex a three-second window to actually use the skills you are trying so hard to learn."
She picked up the second bottle.
"The Aripiprazole is an atypical antipsychotic, prescribed at a micro-dose. It acts as a dopamine and serotonin partial agonist. It is there to turn down the volume of the paranoia. The voice that tells you your members hate you, the voice that tells you Seonghwa was mocking you—it quietens the noise so you can hear reality."
She pushed both bottles closer to him.
"You are not taking them because you are weak," Dr. Lim said, her eyes boring directly into his. "You are taking them because you have been running an ultramarathon on two shattered ankles, and you are refusing to let us put on a cast. You cannot dance if your bones are dust, Yunho. Let the medicine do the heavy lifting while you heal."
The room fell into an echoing stillness.
Yunho stared at the bottles. His reflection was faintly visible in the polished black surface of the doctor's desk—haggard, terrified, stripped bare.
He turned his head slowly to look at Hongjoong.
His leader—the man he had shoved against a soundboard, the man he had screamed at, the man who had stayed awake half the night just to sit on a clinic chair while Yunho fell apart—was looking at him with eyes full of quiet, fierce devotion.
"I don't need you to be the fastest dancer in the world, Yunho," Hongjoong said, his voice thick with unshed emotion. "I don't need you to be the perfect idol. I don't give a damn about the formations, or the comebacks, or the magazine covers."
Hongjoong reached out, taking Yunho’s bandaged, trembling hand into both of his own, holding it tight against his lap.
"I need my brother to survive," Hongjoong whispered, a tear finally escaping and tracing down his cheek. "That's all I care about. We will adapt the choreography. We will push the album back. We will do whatever it takes. But you have to let them help you. Please."
Yunho’s chest hitched.
The dam broke, but this time, there was no explosive fury. There was no venom. There was only the quiet, agonizing surrender of a boy who had fought a war against his own skull for seven long years, and had finally run out of ammunition.
He leaned forward, resting his forehead against Hongjoong’s shoulder, a single, broken sob slipping from his lips. Hongjoong held him steady, his small hands a solid anchor against Yunho’s back.
"Okay," Yunho whispered into the rough denim of Hongjoong's jacket. "Okay. I'll take it."
Dr. Lim smiled softly, a flicker of profound relief crossing her features. She poured a paper cup full of cold water from the dispenser in the corner and placed it next to the medication.
She twisted open the cap of the Lamotrigine, shaking out a single, tiny, diamond-shaped white tablet.
Yunho sat up, wiping his wet eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie.
He looked at the tiny white pill sitting in the palm of Dr. Lim’s hand. It seemed impossibly small to carry so much terrifying weight. It didn't look like an enemy. It didn't look like defeat.
It looked like a sliver of chalk.
With fingers that still carried a faint, residual tremor, Yunho reached out. He picked up the tablet, placing it on the center of his tongue. It tasted faintly bitter, chalky and dry.
He picked up the paper cup, brought it to his lips, and swallowed.
The water was cold going down his throat.
The pill was gone.
There was no sudden flash of light. No magical wave of calm washed over his brain; the static behind his temples was still there, the exhaustion still weighed heavily in his limbs, and the grief over the broken ceramic mug still lingered like an ache beneath his ribs. The road ahead was long, fraught with titration schedules, blood tests, side effects, and months of grueling therapy.
He wasn't fixed.
But as he handed the empty paper cup back to Dr. Lim, Yunho looked down at his own hands. The knuckles were bruised, the thumb was bandaged, and his palms were calloused from thousands of hours on hardwood practice floors.
For the first time in his life, he didn't feel the burning need to clench them into fists.
Hongjoong stood up, wrapping an arm around Yunho’s waist, taking on half of his tall frame's weight as Yunho slid off the examination table.
"Let's go home," Hongjoong murmured. "Seonghwa made chicken porridge. And Mingi cleaned up the kitchen."
Yunho nodded slowly, letting himself lean into his leader's shoulder, letting himself be supported, step by fragile step, as they walked out into the cool, gray evening air.
He was fragile. He was made of glass.
But for tonight, the glass wasn't shattering.