[FIC] What's in a name: Hangeng

Title: What's in a name: Hangeng
Characters: Hangeng
Rating: G
Wordcount: 502
Summary: He knew the feeling of being ‘less’ than others.
A/N: I wrote the first drabble (which was Leeteuk's) on the 8th of May and since then have gradually written the others as well. It is one drabble a member. There are no plotlines, this is basically my positive fangirl view on what goes on in their minds I guess, and I just really enjoyed writing these out, although it sometimes was a major battle.

- - - - -

He knew the feeling of being ‘less’ than others.

After all, he had lived through a lot of bad conditions himself. He knew what it felt like to be a nobody when you were supposed to be somebody. He knew what it was like to be completely and utterly lost, all by yourself in a foreign place where people even spoke a language you didn’t understand at all. But he had been lucky, right? There had been people who had taken his side, who had fought together with him, and he had made it through.

No one could tell him what to do anymore now. He had learned to live free, to be himself and not care about what others said or did. He was a caught bird that was finally let out into the world again. Sometimes he really wondered how his friends could still bear living the life they were living, without being crushed by all the pressure. It sure felt great for him to be able to do what he wanted to do without having a management or company boss control his every step. But there was something else as well..

Guilt.

Every time he saw them on TV, every time he read an article about them, every time his mind was flooded by memories of them, he could feel it take hold if his intestines and squeeze them until he almost physically felt pain because of it. He felt like a traitor for leaving them, and the fact that he couldn’t even call them to see if they were alright or to reassure them he was fine wasn’t really helping either. Especially not when his best friend left heartbreaking messages all over the internet.

No, he wasn’t one to shrug off the friendship he had gotten from the members and leave without a single thought about them. No matter how much he smiled when he was out in the open, no matter how much activities he did without them, they were always on his mind, somewhere in the back of his head. Especially when he stood on stage alone, he felt the absence of twelve or six others that should normally accompany him. Singing by himself was strange, yet exciting at the same time, and he didn’t know which of those two feelings should be more prominent.

Going away and leaving everyone behind had been hard, but he hadn’t been able to do anything else. Even though his character was soft, he had to push through until the end. No matter what the outcome would be, he was going to try his best to become a free man. That way, he could meet up with his dear friends again with more relaxed surroundings and they would be able to stay friends forever. That was something he certainly wasn’t going to let go of; the fourteen boys who had become something much like family to him over the years and had taken up a major place in his heart?