“When I came out of the dorm and got back to the house, they were really worried about me, ’cause I lost a lot of weight, because I was stressed to debut,” he says. “Yeah, that was really so sad, when I think about that.” He remembers his response was to comfort them: “[Like,] ‘I’m fine, what is the problem?’ I debuted, I succeeded, so this is the start. ‘Guys, I’m really good,’” he adds, laughing. They cooked for him, and eventually, their worries eased as the pre-debut stress eased.
“I think that was an important experience for me,” Evan says. “That developed me a lot; that’s why I became like this. It’s really meaningful for me. I don’t regret it at all,” he adds. “I don’t think about it too much.”
Family is on his mind on Death of Me, too, specifically on the song “Going Home,” a kind of emo-rock track about wanting to see his parents while in the midst of a busy schedule. Most of the songs on Death of Me were written in the past few months, but “Going Home,” the album’s closer, was written before he left ENHYPEN. He mentioned it as early as February of this year, at a fan signing. “As I’m unable to visit home much, there was a time I could only briefly see my parents before returning to the dorms, and so on the way back to the dorms, I started tearing up,” he says. “‘I really want to go home,’ I realized. It’s a story of promising, ‘I’ll return after great success,’ to my family.”
Evan’s six years in ENHYPEN took him around the globe as the group released album after album, won major awards in Asia, and embarked on several world tours, including a standout performance at Coachella in 2025. And then the announcement came on March 10, 2026: Heeseung would be leaving ENHYPEN “after extensive deliberation” to pursue a solo career under Belift Lab, while ENHYPEN would continue on as six, not seven.
Fans of the group, called ENGENES, were devastated. They couldn’t help but speculate why, coming up with reasons that ranged from plausible to absurd. “It’s as if Harry Styles left One Direction,” Oscar-nominated actor and noted K-pop fan Chase Infiniti told Teen Vogue in the aftermath.
Evan remembers trying to make the day of the announcement, a Tuesday, feel as normal as possible in his actual real life. He tried not to overthink. He ate “healthy, delicious” food. He kept an eye on the situation, while also trying to feel at peace with his decision. “If you view it from one lens, I guess I did a variety of activities in order to ease my apprehensive and worried heart: I ate, practiced my vocals, worked out, watched a movie,” he says. “I tried to spend the day working on myself.”
In the month after, Evan says, he basically lived only in the studio, practicing and preparing until his throat hurt, and writing “an incredible number of songs.”