#and I thought that was like culminating into some sort of messy crying session or something

[technicallyaminecraftsimp]

Yknow, I think it shows a lot about my improved mental state that yesterday instead of having some sort of stress-induced breakdown, I had. a nap. And now I feel so much better

[fmdjoosungarchive]

location: gold star building and element’s dorm/daisuke’s apartment studio

date: mayish 2020 and some days in later 2019

word count: 1288, not including altered lyrics

tldr; verification for @dawonfmd’s candy. partial lyrics, composition, & production. obviously lots of mentions of dawon, quite a bit of mentions about daisuke as well. beware a mention of dieting, an allusion towards ~fornication~, & some reference towards sung’s bad relationship with sexuality n communication, but only if u squint. continuing the trend of ‘sung dislikes throwing beats on every song but gold star does it for him anyway’

company camaraderie, ‘or something’.

that was the only reasoning sung got on why he was producing this song for one of the company’s idols. --don’t get him wrong, sung had been thoroughly enjoying the backseat role he’d been taking lately in writing and producing for others’ releases, and loved that gold star took the songs he’d sent them seriously. this one was a bit sudden, though.

nonetheless, he’d agreed, after a good chunk of listens to the finalized demo. he listened to it, even as he opened the grandiose door to the gold star building, earbuds blocking out the bustle passing by him, fingers wrapped snugly around a notebook tucked against his chest, hair messy enough he was glad barely anyone followed him around like they did for more well-known idols.

he paused, a little over halfway through the song, before opening the door to the studio he’d been directed into.

and there, it made sense.

at least, it made sense for a second. of course gold star had kept this schedule from him, when dawon was the person he’d be producing for. there was no animosity between them, but it had been a long while since they’d been able to chat easily as friends. years.

the thought cracked pretty quickly. gold star’s employees didn’t know anything about his relationship -or lackthereof- with dawon. there was no way they could have sneakily planned it out. this was just... fate.

sung hadn’t intended for the song to be written with dawon in mind, but looking back, he could see how gold star thought of it as the right fit.

lyrics came first. sort of.

gold star had him on a diet for a music release, though he couldn’t remember which one. sung had never been fond of dieting, as he ate healthily and exercised well, but some part of him had trouble standing up for himself with the company when it came to his looks. leftover worry from his trainee days, he would guess.

some day of his dieting, he’d awoken from a dream with a craving for sweets, and in his dreamlike state of mind, wrote down a list of food that sounded good to him right then.

turns out, sung had written in his lyrical notebook, as he found out a few days later, coming across the barely legible and overlapping words. he’d laughed about it, at the time, and left the page for his future self’s amusement.

however, they came back, eventually.

sung found himself in the studio, a few months later, trying to write for himself. and like with many of his songs, he was slowly coming to realize the composition would better suit a vocalist. ideas hadn’t been coming to him as easily because of it, and as soon as he’d scrapped the idea of it being for his own releases, everything opened up.

it could become brighter, lighter, less of the punch that was currently expected of him. he wanted it to feel like soda pop, a sonic expression of carbonation. it could lose stringency, and leave room for the vocal talent to shine through. it could build upon the vocalist, and work with their melody to lift them up.

if it was up to sung, he’d have chosen a main vocalist for the composition, which, he did end up getting. just not who he could have guessed.

he greeted dawon and the other producer working with him warmly. they chatted shortly, small talk, while sung ignored the pit in his stomach sinking deeper by the minute. when the topic shifted to the situation at hand, discussing expectations, the concept of the song, what he and the other producer wanted, what dawon wanted, sung could feel his cogs turning another notch, helping him slip into ‘producer mode’.

however, it was only when dawon was in position, the two separated by the glass between them, that sung truly felt like he was in the proper element. dawon was a good person, and despite his upset, sung was going to do his best to make dawon’s solo debut worth it.

as the first run of the backtrack started, filling the room around him and the space of the headphones around dawon’s ears, thoughts flit. he’d noticed it as soon as he’d received the finalized demo. it was more simple than when he’d sent it, and had a line of beat across it that he hadn’t added himself. both were things sung had come to get used to, especially with gold star’s songwriters. the latter, he supposed, went with the vibe and sound gold star wanted out of current releases, especially for newer groups. sung wasn’t entirely convinced it made compositions more trendy, however, he hadn’t seen the figures. maybe it did. the former... sung understood, especially in this instance. his demo that he sent off to gold star had daisuke featuring as his vocalist. therein, the productional stylings were tailored towards daisuke, and the way he experienced the song, especially around the bridge, which he’d written as the place to lift.

in hindsight, he could see the humor in having daisuke perform the demo for him when the song was only ever finished because of him. it was around when he’d finished the basis of the bridge’s melody that he came back to the lyrics. unintentionally, at first.

sung was feeling insecure. a general day of insecurity that festered itself and infiltrated all different areas of his life. and that day, he felt insecure about daisuke, too. even knowing it was silly of him, sung still felt fear that he wasn’t enough, and that daisuke would see he wasn’t giving enough to their relationship, to him, and wouldn’t want him any longer.

and so, while his boyfriend was out on schedules, and sung was at home, stewing, he picked up his pen and notebook, and wrote down his feelings. amongst them, was:

alone in a dark box i crack little by little painful thoughts do you know what it means to lose flavor?

his heart had felt the slightest bit lighter, after getting out his feelings in some way. it was enough that he could move about the house, getting things done, and that when daisuke came home, sung could ask for reassurance without balling up and crying.

--and it was a heart-stopping reassurance.

when in the middle of the night he managed to unstick himself from daisuke’s body, the lyrics he ended up writing around those few lines he’d liked best took a completely different meaning. he wrote them separately, on his dreamstate ramblings page, and connected through taste. the taste of their love, of himself, of what he desired to give daisuke every waking hour.

the lyrics altered again when he came back around to the composition he’d left unfinished, as he realized the carbonation fit his sweet treats like a glove. the composition changed too, though more as he found himself adding onto this culminating song’s scape to better fit the vision he had in his head.

it was a vision that dawon fit perfectly into. the thought hadn’t occurred to him in the entire process of creating the song, but it really was a great match. he spent their entire recording session thinking of how he might alter the final production to add back in those building sounds that would lift up the currently-somewhat-dull sounds ringing through his ears.

he’d felt hopeful enough in where this project was going that when he greeted dawon after the recording, he’d hugged him. it’d been many years since they’d hugged, he was pretty sure, though he shoved those anxious thoughts away in favor of the sparks of happiness shooting through him. maybe... maybe he could try harder, to get closer to dawon again. maybe, he’d ask for his thoughts as he mixed the track. ...maybe.