Chapter Text
it's in america when everything goes to shit.
(jisu isn't sure if there's a metaphor in there somewhere she's missing, or perhaps some dramatic irony that's beside her).
the tour had started in new york and they'd gradually been traveling west, returning to cities like washington, d.c. and houston while adding new locations like toronto and new jersey.
touring makes them all feel like superheroes and zombies interchangeably and sometimes even simultaneously, with the rowdy welcome crowds that surge when their planes touch down to the endless hours on the aforementioned planes dealing with jet lag. it's enough to make anyone off their game or easily frustrated, and they certainly all are.
jisu's not really sure how the big incident starts, but start it does and big is really the only way to describe it.
ryujin has always been the one to cross the line a bit too much so jisu can never tell what exactly she's done each time (and if it’s on purpose) but when she literally crashes into their currently-only-black haired member during the dalla dalla outro in chicago, practically body-slamming her and sending the ever-graceful chaeryeong spiraling, even the some of their fans can sense something is up.
it's probably not intentional, jisu tries to convince herself as the two girls laugh it off during a small break between songs for water and to breathe but after half a decade of knowing both girls, she can tell that neither of them took it lightly.
actually, jisu knows that it's not intentional, ryujin would never sacrifice the quality of their stage for anything but the fact that a little less than half of their team is so deeply out of sync is nothing if not worrying.
chaeryeong is clearly off for the rest of the night.
for the first time on tour yet, she gets a transition wrong enough for even jisu to notice (she’s never been able to focus on a vast number of things at a time—or really more than one—and on stage, that gets even worse so if jisu notices, you know it’s a big deal). chaeryeong’s years of practice and impressive reflexes kick in with amazing speed but jisu is still shocked when she sees the younger girl miss a count and slide left instead of right, even if she recovers quickly before yuna has the chance to step on her toes.
ryujin also quiets immensely, never getting closer than a meter away from the edge of the stage when she had spent the rest of the tour grabbing as many hands as she could, much to the dismay of their security team.
it's impressively awkward when they get backstage, their dressing room dead silent as they all file in. yuna's attempts at playing exciting music do nothing to slice the haze-like atmosphere blanketing the room.
they all begin their post-concert rituals like normal, taking turns at different stations with the ease and comfort of long-time coworkers but the air is tense and jisu almost doesn't want to go to the bathroom to take the outfit off that's practically stuck to her skin at this point. she has to though, their styling team will want to steam it or store it or do something to amend the practically commendable number of beads that manage to fly off every show.
jisu regrets leaving as soon as she returns from dropping off her costume, the energy somehow even more suffocating than before and the sight before her akin to a bomb set to explode.
yeji's leaning against a wall with an extraordinarily displeased look on her face as she stares down at what's likely an email about upcoming plans with a pair of headphones tightly adorning her head. yuna has slipped her legs inside a sweatshirt and is perched on a couch with airpods tucked in her ears. however, jisu disregards them almost entirely because there is obviously a bigger problem going on.
ryujin and chaeryeong are both in a tight corner of the room, sitting at the vanities they had earlier been using to get ready. with how long she's known chaeryeong, jisu can tell when her best friend has been pushed to her breaking point even if it may have not been obvious to anyone else. ryujin, on the other hand, has always been a relatively open book, at least to them; anyone could tell she's already far gone.
it feels almost like slow motion, as if she was watching an expensive glass vase fall to the ground from across the room — something fragile and precious teetering back and forth that jisu is too far away from to snatch before it hits the ground.
chaeryeong rises up with enough force to knock her chair over (that's one). for a second, jisu thinks that she'll walk away, that the tension will dissipate and they can all go back to pretending that everything is fine. but then ryujin abruptly stands too, their faces barely centimeters apart and it's clear that jisu has met them midway into something, the first proverbial punch was long since thrown, and that it won’t end without an explosion.
chaeryeong has yet to take off her stage makeup; apparently ryujin was in the middle of her cleansing routine, judging by the dark eyeliner paired with pale lips that makes her look somewhat cruel.
they whisper words that jisu cannot (and probably does not) want to hear. chaeryeong spits out a comment that lands with enough force, with enough emotion to knock ryujin off balance for a second (that’s two) as the older girl shifts backward.
they speak louder after that and jisu would be able to make out entire words if she could register what was happening at all.
but she doesn't, can’t. for an instant, life feels like a movie playing in front of her as she remains frozen in place, the vase already beginning its dissent, having plummeted halfway to its final destruction. ryujin pushes back — physically this time — and chaeryeong has to catch herself on the counter of the vanity (that’s three.) her wrist makes contact with a drawer and sends the entire structure shuddering into the wall behind it, making a sharp thudding sound. yuna looks up, her eyes as round as ever with shock and yeji's headphones slide off her head and onto the floor unnoticed, despite making their own noise too.
ryujin is probably the only one of them who would ever punch with her fists, although never with anyone else; she's a fighter at heart with a minuscule fuse. chaeryeong is equally prone to impatience but attacks with words, not one for violence of the physical nature. but both girls are perfectly capable of cutting deep with words, and jisu can only watch as tears start streaming down both of their faces.
or maybe those were already there, maybe they had been the entire time.
there aren't any other staff members in the room currently, they're never present when the girls decompress after a show as there’s too much to do like packing up their sets and double checking their hardware to ensure everything is ready to travel to the next location. jisu has never been more grateful for that fact because this situation is not one that could be left to public eyes, not even to their closest staff members.
ryujin shouts something — jisu's in too much of a daze to understand what it is or what it means. chaeryeong returns the favor and jisu wants to reach out but she can only make it to the center of the room before gravity takes over.
the theoretical vase breaks; jisu can do nothing but watch as it hits the floor.
"you know what? you can go fuck yourself shin ryujin," chaeryeong hisses through her teeth directly into the face of the silent blonde in front of her.
chaeryeong doesn't swear, ever. she’s too careful, too cautious. people have known who she was since she was in middle school after all. jisu’s still putting the work into unraveling the fucked up things that did to her best friend’s mind, to her fear of ever mentioning her family (including her celebrity sister ) much less her celebrity friends, in any specific way. she’s been so stringent, so diligent since she was so small that jisu’s not even sure that those things can be separated from chaeryeong’s personality as an adult. for better or for worse, she’s all too aware of what would happen with even the simplest clip were to be posted by the wrong person, how quickly an inside joke can get spun out of proportion and taken out of context.
yet, the sound of her swearing echoing throughout the silent room feels like a weight hanging on what's left of their team chemistry, a thin wire threatening to snap under the stress. if chaeryeong is willing to do this, and here in this very public show venue with random staff members just around the corner and fans that could very well still be filling out the doors, maybe it’s too far gone to be saved.
after all, chaeryeong’s glistening cheeks could only be rivaled only by the streams of tears pouring out of ryujin’s own eyes. chaeryeong’s eyeliner is drawing glittery scars across her pale skin, making her look like a character from euphoria, although significantly less glamorously. in fact, the whole situation feels like an american drama, as chaeryeong stalks forward, sharply shoving the girl out of her way with a push to the shoulder and walking towards the door.
jisu has half a mind to stop her—she certainly can’t go anywhere looking like that; it’ll only earn them questions they can’t answer. only she doesn't get far because hurting past her (a mere arm's length from her head) is a perfume bottle that shatters against the wall above the door, the shards creating a column of dust and specks that make the soft black of chaeryeong's hair shimmer like stardust in the dim light of the waiting room.
when she spins around, her shock is evident. chaeryeong's eyes look like they do when she's on stage, the fire in them lethal and severely contrasting with the halo-like colored glass that's distributed so subtly in her hair.
it looks like highlights. some of it was even reduced to dust. perhaps ryujin was stronger than even jisu thought.
chaeryeong’s anger could only be rivaled by ryujin’s confusion. she turns to focus on her own hand as if she wasn’t sure who was its owner, the puzzled expression on her face almost comical. and knowing ryujin, that might have literally been the case, making this whole comedy of errors that makes up jisu’s life all the more frustrating — ryujin probably genuinely didn’t know why she did that. it wouldn’t be the first and certainly also won’t be the last time that ryujin does something without thinking about the consequences of her choices, acting first and running her mouth at light speed afterward to clean up whatever mess she’s made.
not this time though; she’s silent now as there are no words that even she—bullshitter extraordinaire, could-talk-her-way-out-of-a-prison-sentence ryujin—could come up with to fix what she's broken this time.
in fact, the whole scene might have been laughable, the frozen stances they both take just seconds after such a tense moment if not for the pink shards of glass that cover the floor surrounding chaeryeong that will be impossible to explain to whoever is thundering down the hall, if not prompted to check on them by the barely contained argument than certainly by the loud crashing noise.
the irony doesn't end there, with ryujin's downright terrified countenance as the pitcher in the situation and chaeryeong's quickly masked expression, her practiced absence of emotion; the ever frightened and the unscareable members trading positions in the face of actual incident.
yet nothing in the situation is worth laughing about, as the scent of roses fills the air to an uncomfortable, smog-like extent.
yeji—-somewhat predictably and totally understandably, although uncharacteristically—-loses it.
when someone opens the door, she is as calm and collected as jisu has ever seen her, excusing away the shattered bottle with a joke about her clumsiness and a laugh that doesn't reach her eyes. if it was one of the girls, they might have noticed the slight tremble in her words but overall, it's the most convincing performance that the worst liar jisu knows has ever given.
that terrifies her.
jisu has never seen her so mad, actually never even seen yeji genuinely angry but when their ever-composed leader closes the door behind the venue staff member and spins around with a glare full of all the heat of the flames had that surrounded them while filming the mafia mv, she knows that things won't end well.
yeji's voice is dangerously quiet, the kind that ryujin and chaeryeong should have been, the kind of powerful almost-whisper that sends goosebumps up your spine and makes your hair stand on end as she instructs, no commands , the now-quieted pair to follow her, ryujin still angrily swiping at her face as if they didn't all already see her dripping mascara and chaeryeong still proudly wearing her euphoria-poster styling, absolutely unperturbed by the presence of her tears.
both girls return in silence after an uncomfortable period that feels like hours but could have only been minutes, with yeji still missing. ryujin slams a pair of headphones over her ears and finds the darkest corner of the room, drowning herself in clearly audible and unnecessarily angsty music while chaeryeong heads to her bag to grab a pair of airpods to practice with, in front of a mirror conveniently on the opposite side of the room after informing jisu and yuna that they'll be doing their routine after-show live stream when yeji gets back in another room down the hall.
ryujin's eyes are still puffy, her melted eyeliner dark and heavy and traced down to her chin, creating something like war paint or maybe a beard on her face. chaeryeong's cheeks are still red, covered with sparkles until yuna quickly — and individually — touches up each of their faces (thank god the youngster has picked up some makeup tricks over the years).
they both look undeniably tired but they had before too so jisu's pretty sure no amount of makeup would be able to undo that.
they proceed with their usual post-concert stream as soon as yeji collects them.
it's chilling how fast their leader switches to idol mode and slides on a seemingly careless grin as she presses the start live button. chaeryeong quickly finds a question about the incident on stage and laughs it off, giving ryujin a high-five that turns out to be the only time that she acknowledges ryujin, or anyone else, for the rest of the live. someone asks about chaeryeong's glittering hair and yeji segues impossibly smoothly into a promotion of the new haircare brand they’re ambassadors for. yuna does an almost excessive amount of aegyo and jisu ignores all english comments that ask about why chaeryeong has a bandage wrapped tightly around her wrist (the camera doesn’t allow their fans to see the rapid bruising surely appearing under the cover either).
it ends without a hitch, which leaves them all in an awkward silence yet again as yeji abandons them all for the second time of the night like motherless ducklings waiting for her to return. yuna bless her heart tries to converse with ryujin and quickly pulls the blonde into an intense word-chain game that their crew films enough of to fulfill the behind-the-scenes content quota necessary for this stop of the tour compilation video that's not going to be published for a while. chaeryeong sleeps on jisu's shoulder, or at least pretends to when the camera is turned their way, with yuna jumping in front of the lens and poking her cheek from a distance away through the perspective difference.
they are directed to a silent car, uncomfortably so until yeji tells them that they're all to report to the room that jisu is sharing with yuna as soon as they get back to the hotel.
yuna pulls a face and makes a joke but even that can't save them from the awkwardness of the situation in general. jisu really wishes the ground would swallow her alive (although, yeji’s the one really suffering, stuck in the back between the gruesome twosome).
once they get to the room, they barely have enough time to take off their shoes before yeji announces that they're going to film themselves playing a game together. it all seems a little random but it gets worse when she clarifies that chaeryeong and ryujin are going to be on a team together, more importantly, one that loses.
ryujin pulls a face at that (muttering something under her breath about it not being believable that she'd lose) but yeji glares with more ferocity than they've ever seen on stage and suddenly even jisu is scared of what she would do if ryujin pulled anything else the rest of the night.
chaeryeong and yuna plan out a ghost ladder game in advance on a separate sheet of paper so when it's each of their turns to draw on the board in front of the camera, they’ll know exactly how to make the board divide them into the two desired teams with yeji as the referee.
their leader sits off to the side, preparing something else in envelopes secretively that jisu would be more interested in if she wasn't busy preventing ryujin from bending the deck of cards that she's currently stacking and writing punishments on (the pieces of red-checkered, thin plastic already look a lot more like crescents than the flat pile that it had been when yeji handed it over).
she’s glaring with enough malice to let jisu know that the anger is mostly aimed at herself, that ryujin is imploding in the way she does when she feels like she’s let other people down. it makes jisu let out a little chuckle when she notices chaeryeong across the room doing her own version of experiencing the same emotion, clinging to yuna in complete silence as she gets lost inside her thoughts just as ryujin tries to close off the world including hers.
yeji hands the stuffed envelopes to one of their managers, sharing a short but intense discussion with the group of five of them that ended up with four of them leaving the room to do god-knows-what.
jisu has more than a million questions that she’d like to ask as they crowd around the coffee table in the hotel suite’s equivalent of a living room but she knows that’s not the priority at the moment. the remaining manager positions several cameras in front of them as yuna brings a brush and mascara wand around to do touch-ups, evidently nervous judging by her inability to sit still and the shaking of her hand.
in concept, the game is simple, a spoof of something that’s been trending after a netflix show went viral a while back. their staff had apparently been preparing this for some time and rushed it while they were on the live stream — a fact that worries jisu because why does this need so much preparation?
most of ryujin’s footage is going to get cut, jisu knows that already because her eyebrows are so far furrowed that they almost look like they’re connected and she's sworn twice. yuna is adorable, pouting about getting penalty points taken off and reminding jisu of their rookie days so much so that it’s almost like she’s forgotten the situation but then jisu is reminded that their big baby isn’t so young after all when she abandons the chance to score her favorite snack in order to knock several of chaeryeong’s pieces backward in a move that’s so out of character that jisu has to collect herself for a second so that she doesn’t point it out.
ryujin basically throws the game out of spite anyways but their staff (when they return) help speed up her loss, pulling out of the two entirely different stacks of cards that were diligently divided by their severity. chaeryeong’s punishment of a 3x speed dance is impressive to say the least and yeji has an amusingly difficult time finding an error to fail her attempt as the referee. in fact, chaeryeong is the only one really playing it seems, which jisu is grateful for because if ryujin wasn’t pouting so much, the two of them could probably manage to win even with all of the handicaps that have been handed their way.
chaeryeong ends the game with her right knee and elbow tied together. ryujin is wearing an impressive seven hats, for a reason that jisu missed while she was busy dumping a bottle of water on her head over a sink. yuna looks ridiculous with the ice bucket positioned on her head like a crown but not as much as yeji’s mummy suit made of sheets and toilet paper that chaeryeong had so diligently wrapped to perfection.
when yeji announces that jisu's team had won, ryujin’s frustration becomes now perfectly suited for the camera.
in reality, jisu had no command of the rules of or even desire to win the game in the first place so she smiles blankly into one of the lenses when a staff member hands over two envelopes, one to yuna and the other to chaeryeong.
their youngest member screams when she slides hers open and jisu is more than pleasantly surprised when she peeks at what had been pulled out, a “ticket” to a four-day-three-night resort stay in los angeles. this explains the emails that yeji had just forwarded to them about why the gap between this show and their next few would no longer be dedicated to rest time and why they were instead flying out tomorrow rather than in a few days. jisu had assumed it was for some kind of content anyways, so she hadn’t put much thought into the matter. however, the number of tickets surprises her, and it’s only when she remembers the work that was put into dividing the teams and making sure that chaeryeong and ryujin lost that she gets suspicious.
when chaeryeong pulls out a pair of old looking car keys and a map with a line drawn across the country, that’s the second time all hell breaks loose.
ryujin grits her teeth until the cameras cut, all the way through everyone else's closing messages and storms out as soon as they cut. yeji follows her, presumably to have some discussion as chaeryeong zones out on the couch staring at the map for a good fifteen minutes before getting up, wishing jisu and yuna a good night, and heading for the door in a daze.
jisu is worried and wants to check in on her but she also has to pack for their plane trip tomorrow so she’s busy for the rest of the night. she meets chaeryeong in her and their youngest manager’s suite the next morning — well, more so, she invites herself and yuna in after their manager had mentioned she ordered room service in the group chat.
ryujin and yeji beat them there, the trio all adorned with intense dark circles and reddened eyes that say everything that jisu doesn't have the guts to ask. according to a very clipped comment from ryujin, they had spent the night organizing ryujin and chaeryeong’s international insurance. ryujin already had an international driving permit from when they filmed a music video in los angeles the year before, so it was only a matter of ensuring all the paperwork was in order, apparently.
the silence is heavy, with no one really sure of what to say and to whom but soon enough, they are loading into two different vehicles with two very different energies. yeji’s comments about the trip and especially the van lost on jisu as she focuses on how unstable the thing looks.
it’s ancient — well, not really but certainly old and yeji offers no explanations as to why, where it came from, or why it was selected for this trip while she points a camera at the pair who are placing their bags in the back and gushes about how retro the thing looks and how jealous she is of their road trip plan. it’s only then that she hears the other part of the plan, that their managers won’t be traveling with the duo, but in another car and only meeting them at designated locations like hotels so that the girls get the true american road trip experience . in a way, jisu is grateful—she would rather die than be stuck with the pair for ten hours in a car, especially in this state. but this also seems like a bomb waiting to explode, and she’s not sure if this is the best or worst idea yeji has ever had.
jisu has a sudden rush of regret as chaeryeong lifts herself into the passenger seat, her look of almost fear or maybe anger unfamiliar to even jisu for a millisecond before the door closes behind her. yeji’s still pointing their behind-the-scenes cameras at them so ryujin can’t swear but the second its lens shifts to chaeryeong, jisu knows exactly how much she hates this in comparison to chaeryeong’s resignation.
the van leaves the parking lot in one piece and jisu can only hope that the people inside will manage to as well as she, yuna and yeji load into their own van headed to the airport.