jaemin arrives at the lee household a little before midnight, having had to knock on the door, given that in his rush, he had forgotten the keys to the apartment. jeno is the one who lets him in, raising a finger to his lips as a sign to let jaemin know that he should stay silent. 

"jisoo's sleeping and my dad's had a rough day at therapy today. he couldn't even look at her before he went into his room," jeno explains as he guides jaemin into sooyoung's room to speak more privately. jaemin pauses when he steps into sooyoung's room. 

he hadn't been in here since the day she had finally agreed to move back to america. it felt empty without her; like there was no life. there were no more pictures above the desk, no plushies on the bed, and no plants tucked into places around the room. 

"you know why i'm here, don't you," jaemin says. it's more of a statement than a question. jeno shrugs, moving to leave jaemin in the room alone. whatever he was about to find, he would need to experience it alone. 

"sooyoung told me before she left. and that you would come looking for it when she was ready to tell you," jeno says simply, closing the door behind him. jaemin sighs, looking around the room. james had said that the answer to april would be in a blue box somewhere in her room. 

jaemin searches high and low for a blue box, even going into her closet, only to leave when he realized that she had left many of her clothes here - including her serim uniform with her name engraved on the nameplate. he all about gives up, sitting on the bed and sighing, before laying down on the bed. just as he's laying down, he feels something square-shaped and uncomfortable under the pillow. jaemin sits up, reaching underneath the pillow to pull out a sleek, navy blue box. of course, jaemin had searched everywhere but the most obvious place. 

it takes him thirty minutes to finally open the box, right when his phone reads that it's midnight. taking a deep breath, jaemin finally pulls the lid off of the box, which is small enough to just barely fit in the length of his hand.

inside are three (technically, five) things: three batteries, a receipt for sixteen thousand won, and a voice recorder. he hesitates. so that's what she had asked those weird-ass things for? a voice recorder? what did this have to do with jeno's approval? or jisoo? or any of the dreamies?

there's only one way to find out, jaemin thinks, inserting the batteries into the voice recorder. he waits for it to turn on, looking through the saved files. there were five recordings in total, with the first one dated from the night after the one jaemin had bought all these things and the last one on the day before sooyoung had left for america. 

this time, he doesn't hesitate. he presses the play button.

jaemin, if you have this recorder - that you bought by the way, with the sixteen thousand won, because i'm an asshole - that means that you and i are dating. or at the very least, you like me back. i don't know if this recorder is gonna find its way to you as a confession, or as an anniversary present, or even as a break-up thing. i have no clue. but this recorder means that i like you. liked you. whichever. 

yesterday, you came to my house to help me figure out how to get jeno and mom to meet. i didn't actually think that you were gonna make good on the bet, to be honest. if i were in your shoes, i wouldn't. but you're a good guy, no matter who you fuck with. hey! i don't judge about body-counts or sex. trust me. 

anyway, that's not the point of this recording. this recording was supposed to be me officially telling you that i like you. whether future me has told you that or not. i think i liked you from the day i met you, but all the family stuff with jeno and my dad and the team and everything just...made it harder for me to process that, you know? you asked me why i changed my name to serena and why i use park instead of lee. there's a long story to that. i don't know if i'll ever tell you. but the name 'lee' and the name 'sooyoung' reminds me of a very bad person. 

i'm telling you this right now because if future-me hasn't told you yet, then she needs to. she obviously trusts you enough to give you the recorder, which means that girlfriend, you have got to get talking. okay. you sound stupid doing that. note to serena: do not do that again. 

signing off for now! park serena.

hey. it's me. i haven't recorded anything in a long time. at first, it was because i thought i was wrong about you. i thought i hated you. i thought you were the worst guy on the planet. i thought i made a mistake liking you. you didn't stay long enough to see my mother's new dress got soaked in the rain. she got a cold that day that took her a week to recover from. for normal people, it would've taken one or two days. cancer means that all of her immune systems are all fucked up, which is why she's been taking so long to recover. 

i don't know if you know this yet (i hope you don't because that means my mom's been holding on for a long, long time) but my mom's been battling cancer for a while now. we found out a couple years ago - two years, i think - but it's only gotten serious in the past couple months. she refuses to go through chemo though. she jokes that it's gonna ruin her beautiful hair and her skin but i'd be lying if i didn't think that it was because maybe, just maybe, she doesn't really have anything to hang onto anymore.

my mom's always been that type of person. people always end up loving her more than she loves them. everyone except jeno. when jeno told her to leave eleven years ago, and when he left a couple weeks ago, i think that was the first time my mom had been on the receiving end instead of the giving end. 

i love my mom. not as much as she loves jeno. and definitely not as much daddy loves her. but i love her nonetheless. i realized that when i saw you at the lake today. lake, pond, whatever you wanna call it. 

i didn't actually hate you. i don't hate you. i just hate that we have different loyalties. it makes me think that maybe...maybe this recorder might not actually find its way to you. which means that me recording this in the first place is stupid, but oh well. dinnertime. yay. more pretending jeno and i get along in front of dad. wonderful.

signing off for now, park serena.

she's gone. i think she's been gone for a long time though. but now she's physically gone. jisoo and jeno are dating. that threw me for a loop. this recording is from the night of (or i guess the morning after) the huge basketball game that jisoo organized for us.

do you remember that? i won, of course, but you definitely put up a good fight. not. i mopped the floor with your ass, just remember that when i make it to the nba, alright? i would say wnba but i like money and wnba doesn't pay jack shit. oh wait, that part was in english. my bad. actually, you know what, pretend it's like a english listening test or something.

again, not the point of this recording. i don't know why i keep getting off track. this has got to be the most unromantic recording set ever. i really fucking hope this wasn't future-me's confession plan because you will get rejected.

i feel really light right now. like there's been a huge weight lifted off of my chest. when haechan told off my dad in the car today, it kinda slapped some sense into me too. mom wouldn't want me to sit around and mope all day. she'd want me to get my head in the game. jisoo did that for us today - yesterday? 

you know, she kinda reminds me of mom. if mom was hot. oh my god worst confession tape ever. please delete that from your head i can't believe i just compared my - jesus fucking christ i'm gonna end this shitshow. 

signing off for now, lee sooyoung.

it's a couple weeks after we got back from seoul. i guess there goes my plan for confessing to you with this tape, huh? you might be wondering why jeno didn't skin you alive or why jisoo's been extra protective over me. it's because i showed them the tapes. i've been meaning to ask you out for a while anyway. you just beat me to the punch.

but yeah. now you know. the reason why i didn't want to use the name lee sooyoung, even after i asked him was because it reminded me too much of lee suho. that bastard. but i don't want to waste any of my energy on him anymore. i have already spent too much of my life crying, losing sleep over what he had done to me, and ruined so many of my relationships over a boy who didn't even bother to treat me like a human being. i refuse to be his victim anymore.

but it's hard. it's really fucking hard. when i'm not with you, jeno, jisoo, and all the dreamies, it kinda consumes me inside out. the nightmares are getting better, but they keep happening. i keep getting taken back to the day - oh god, here come the waterworks. the day...the day that he had physically abused me for the first time. 

okay. i'm back. jeno found out that day. that was the day we got into a huge fight. i had stockholm syndrome or something; suho was literally beating me and i thought that he was a good guy. ah fuck, i'm talking about him again. 

jaemin, you and all the people who i've come to love in korea, have changed the name lee sooyoung for me. it went from a name i couldn't use because it reminded me so much of the abuser i ran away from to a name that i could become proud of. i love you so much. i don't know if you've noticed that. i love you so so so much. i hope we can stay like this forever.

i just hope the nightmares go away. i feel safe when you're here or when jisoo and jeno are with me, but the second i'm alone, they come back. i feel terrible asking you to stay here, only for you to sleep on the ground because jeno would skin you alive if he found you in my bed. and i feel terrible for imposing on jeno and jisoo because dad's not in the house, and they're teenagers, which means they go at it whenever they think i can't hear them. tmi? sorry. 

but i hate to be a burden to all of you. i know i am, even if none of you guys say anything. jaemin, i know our love started in the worst possible way, but i hope you know that i love you. and i'm so thankful that you put up with me, even though i stress you out and burden you.

i gotta go. dad's home and he's drunk. again. signing off for now, lee sooyoung.

hey. it's me. sooyoung. duh. i'm going to america tomorrow. my flight is tomorrow. again, duh. sorry, i can't really think straight right now because it feels like everything's falling apart. like i'm falling apart. i thought i was better now - i faced the demon and i made it out alive. but i still get nightmares. i'm still a burden. so i'm being shipped off to america.

i know, i know, i'm not being shipped off to america. i won't find the help i need here. south korea isn't good with mental health stuff, blah blah blah. i know. 

i don't know when you're gonna get this recorder. maybe you're never going to. maybe i'm gonna be messed up forever and you're never going to find out why i fell in love with you. why i said yes. why jeno let me. why jisoo kissed my forehead when i left. why the dreamies fought so hard for us. by the way, i showed them this recorder yesterday. jisung swore he wasn't, but he was crying. i'm crying right now. 

shit. i wanted to be all mature and give you a good parting message, but i don't think i have one. you were my first love, jaemin. even if everything was weird, everything turned out to be wrong and messed up, you were my first love. and i know i'm yours. otherwise you wouldn't send me to america. you wouldn't let go of me and hide your tears. i know you, jaemin. i love you.

i've got nothing left to say. but for what it's worth, i really do hope you get this recorder. i hope i get better some day. i love you, na jaemin. signing off forever, lee sooyoung.

jaemin is asleep on sooyoung's bed, dried tears staining the pillow, when coach lee finds him the next morning. he comes into her room almost everyday, before anyone wakes up, just before he needs to leave for school. it's his anchor. his reminder that every day that he was sober, it was a day closer to the time when sooyoung would come home. his baby girl would come home and she would come home with a bright smile, instead of a disappointed look. she would be proud of him again. he leaves with the hint of his former pride on his face, getting ready for a day of meetings. 

jisoo is the next to wake up, wearing jeno's hoodie and a pair of shorts that have been in the lee apartment from their first...escapade. she smiles softly at the sight of jaemin curled into himself, clutching the recorder tightly. she presses a kiss to his forehead, making her way to the kitchen to make breakfast. none of the kids had school today, which meant that the dreamies would inevitably make their way over to the lee apartment.

jeno is the last one to wake up. he smiles, wrapping his arms around his girlfriend, who had come to see what was taking so long, as he watches jaemin. he looks peaceful in his sleep, jeno realizes. like he didn't have a care in the world. jeno wonders if that's what he looked like when he slept. peaceful.

"i know you, jaemin. i love you," the recorder whispers softly.

+++

a/n: and so the last mystery of shot clock has been solved! the mystery of the three batteries and $16. did this chapter clear things up? did it live up to the expectations. it's a long one and this beast of a chapter took a lot out of me to write. i hope you guys love it as much as i do.

six chapters left (not including the epilogue) and we say goodbye to the world of shot clock forever. i hope you guys have a great day today! kick ass and take names (or is it the other way around?). i love you :)