Work Text:
The wooden practice room floor shakes as the seven members of Dreamcatcher jump up and down, matching the beat of the final chorus of ‘REASON’. Bora’s voice drowns underneath the studio version playing from the speakers at almost full volume, as the main dancer spins around and sings her part into an imaginary microphone. Yoohyeon jumps along with the others, seeing Minji sing her line on her peripheral vision. The leader throws her head back to belt out the notes, and a smile takes over Yoohyeon’s face due to the leader’s contagious energy. Yoohyeon joins in with the others for the final sing-along, adding in an extra head bang near the end of the song, which ends up causing her some light dizziness.
Gahyun and Yubin go all in for their final lines, and the seven of them erupt into cheers as the song ends. All of them are a little out of breath; Yoohyeon breathes in and out slowly a couple of times in an attempt to calm down the heaving of her chest. Near the other side of the room, Siyeon is leaning her hands on her knees, attempting to recover from the almost 4 straight minutes of running and jumping around the space.
The three other people in the room clap. Their manager has an enthusiastic smile on his face, and the concert director and their usual choreographer look pleased with their performance as well.
There is approximately a month left until the first show of their upcoming tour. The practice they just finished was a rather routine one; in the span of a little over two hours, they had performed each of the songs on the setlist in order. ‘Black or White’ and ‘BOCA’ had caused some slight confusion among the seven of them, as it has been a while since they had last performed the songs on stage, but otherwise the practice had gone smoothly.
The seven of them line up in front of the staff, and their concert director and choreographer give them some quick feedback. Yoohyeon’s ears heat up at the praise she deserves, and she ducks her head in embarrassment before bowing slightly in a gesture of appreciation. She is slightly puzzled by how she remains unable to accept compliments with confidence even after years of being praised working in the industry. She had assumed that she would eventually get used to it, but so far words of acclaim still make her a little shy.
Everyone in the room agrees on there being no major issues with the setlist. They discuss the small details of older choreographies that are going to need some polishing leading up to the tour, before the concert director thanks everyone for their efforts, and suggests ending the practice session for the day. Their manager is quick to lift one of his fingers in an indication of an upcoming reminder.
“Ah, before I forget, weren’t we supposed to take a look at the heart rate curves today?” He asks, reaching for the laptop on the chair besides him, and clicking something open.
“Yes, right! That slipped my mind completely”, their concert director says, smiling at him with an apologetic look on her face. “Good thing you remembered.”
Right, Yoohyeon had also completely forgotten about the heart rate belt she is currently wearing. Before the practice, they had thought of monitoring their pulses throughout to gather data on their conditioning and to optimize their breaks during the concert. Their choreographer, especially, had been curious to see how physically demanding their choreographies are and how they compare against each other. Yoohyeon must admit that she is curious, too; they had discussed their hypothesis together with the members beforehand, and their thoughts had all been rather similar. Yoohyeon is intrigued to see how their predictions hold up against the heart rate data.
Their manager has opened a window displaying all of their heart rates recorded from the duration of the practice, and the timestamps for each of the songs performed are noted on the right side of the screen. Everyone squeezes around the screen to take a look. Yoohyeon ends up peering at the laptop from behind Gahyun and Handong’s shoulders.
Off to the side Minji is bent in an unnatural manner, slightly leaning on Siyeon to get a better look at the screen, and the sight instantly generates a smile on Yoohyeon’s face. She is rather certain that everybody in the room finds the leader endearing; how could someone not, when Minji is practically sunshine personified? Yoohyeon remembers thinking, in the early years of her career, that she would be guaranteed success in whatever she would set out to do, if only she had an ounce of Minji-unnie’s charisma. Since then, she has learnt to appreciate her own charms, yet she is no less immune to the leader’s dazzling aura.
Analytical chatter fills the room, as the staff start discussing the heart rate graphs with Minji, Siyeon, and Yubin following the assessment attentively. Bora stands behind them, clearly curious and listening in as well, but Yoohyeon notices that the main dancer is simultaneously somewhat preoccupied, fiddling with one of Siyeon’s back pockets. At this point in their acquaintance, Yoohyeon has learnt to not question Bora’s wandering hands, so she focuses on the data, while off-handedly following Gahyun and Handong’s conversation surrounding their pulses.
It is rather cool to see how their heart rate curves display a similar overall shape. All of the graphs start from a relatively low base level from before they had begun dancing, and quickly rise to near 150 in the ‘OOTD’ – ‘Black or White’ – ‘YOU AND I’ – ‘DEMIAN’ –sequence. Yoohyeon guesses the high point in all of the curves, right before the graphs return near the base lines, is ‘SCREAM’, after which they had taken a twenty minute break for a little rest and gossip. Some of the highest points are reached near the end. Yoohyeon assumes that ‘BOCA’ and ‘BONVOYAGE’ are to blame for the high frequency of their heartbeats at that time.
The results align surprisingly well with Yoohyeon’s initial hypothesis. The choreographies they find physically demanding and have complained to each other about throughout the years — namely the final 30 seconds of ‘SCREAM’ and the entirety of ‘BOCA’, with ‘Odd Eye’ getting an honorable mention had they added it to the setlist — are the ones that seem to affect their heart rates the most.
Suddenly, the opening Yoohyeon has been studying the screen through is blocked by the back of Bora’s head. She is about to complain, when the main dancer points at something on the screen.
“Whose graph is that?” Bora asks. There is some uncertainty in the woman’s tone, which instantly draws Yoohyeon’s attention.
“That one? Yoohyeon’s”, their manager says, lightly tapping the curve with his finger.
“Why does it have so much fluctuation—”, Bora’s inquiry is immediately understood by everyone as their manager double clicks on the graph, and the curve is instantly displayed on the full screen.
Everyone gathered around the laptop intuitively leans in closer for a better view of the collected data. Especially now that the graph is stretched across the full screen, it is evident that the curve is littered with sudden peaks ranging from around 140 to almost 180 beats per minute at maximum. As far as Yoohyeon had seen, similar peaks had not been featured on the other members’ graphs. She frowns at the data. What the hell?
“Look, there’s one that was recorded already before we even started dancing. That’s what caught my attention”, Bora says, pointing at the first local maximum point. There is an undertone of worry in her voice, which unsettles Yoohyeon.
“I— Is that bad?” Yoohyeon asks, attempting to keep her tone casual, but failing, if the concerned gaze Yubin sends her way is anything to go by. A small silence falls over the group, as they study the graph in front of them with their eyes. Bora’s eyes quickly flick between the provided timestamps and the curve produced by Yoohyeon’s heartbeat.
“A high pulse during ‘Black or White’ and ‘YOU AND I’ makes sense, but ‘Fairytale’? And there’s a clear peak during ‘Shatter’ as well, when the rest of our pulses were much lower”, Bora’s observation is accompanied by a frown.
“I doubt that it’s anything to worry about, there might’ve been some sort of a problem with the data collection or the monitor itself. Unless you feel unwell?” Their manager says, turning to assess the look on Yoohyeon’s face.
Yoohyeon scrunches her eyebrows together. She thinks back to the practice. Nothing had felt particularly out of the ordinary. Some brief moments of dizziness pop up in her head, but she suspects that they had been entirely related to low blood sugar, something she typically struggles with when it comes to morning practices. She shakes her head. “No, I feel fine.”
Her voice must come out slightly shaky again, since her members regard her with various looks of confusion and worry.
Minji leans forward to make eye contact with her from where she is standing on the other side of Gahyun and Siyeon. Her voice is gentle, when she asks: “Are you sure?”
Yoohyeon nods, attempting to look certain despite the unease that has settled in her bones due to the concerned atmosphere of the room. Bora, standing next to Minji, is now fiddling with her fingers.
“Maybe we should see if it’s still happening. Or take some more measurements somehow. Cause if it’s something like arrhythmia—”, Bora starts, her voice laced with hesitance, before getting interrupted by the loud protests of the other members.
“Ah, unnie—”, Gahyun's voice comes out as a whine.
“Unnie, why would you say that?” Siyeon scolds, her eyes wide.
“Lets not jump into hypotheticals”, Yubin says, sending a stern look at Bora's way. “That’s just going to cause everybody anxiety.”
Bora is clearly about to say something more, but their manager speaks before any of them get a chance: “If you want reassurance, we can take a look at current data or I can go get the blood pressure monitor. Still, I highly doubt that this is anything to be concerned about.”
He looks around the room, receiving some nods from the members. The concert director clears her throat, informing them that she has to leave for a meeting. She thanks the seven of them for the day’s practice, and wishes Yoohyeon well before gathering her stuff, and leaving the room. Their choreographer echoes a similar sentiment, telling them that she should also leave, unless they still need her around. They thank her for the practice in unison, and give her small waves of goodbye, before they are left standing silently around the laptop. Yoohyeon’s heart rate data stares up at her from where it remains on full display at the screen.
Their manager looks at them with expectation in his eyes. “Do you want to look at the current pulse, or are we done here?”
He looks directly at Yoohyeon, clearly anticipating an answer. Yoohyeon’s own eyes flick between her members.
“If you’re feeling uncertain, we could take a look at the current data”, Handong says addressing Yoohyeon, her voice low, and laced with care.
Yoohyeon nods, and watches the cursor flit around the screen as their manager opens up a new window.
“Ah, but I don’t think it’s gonna work. I bet the rate is high right now, since you’re making me nervous”, Yoohyeon realizes, a frown taking over her face.
Their manager stands up from where he had been operating the laptop. “I can go get the blood pressure monitor, if you want.”
He is met with another contemplating silence.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’”, he says, and heads out of the room towards wherever the company keeps a sphygmomanometer lying around.
Bora moves to examine the laptop, where Yoohyeon’s current pulse is now displayed. “Hm, you were right. It is pretty high right now”, she says.
Yoohyeon’s eyes are fixed on Bora and the laptop, but she feels movement at her side. She turns to see Minji looking at her with empathetic eyes. The leader reaches for Yoohyeon’s hand in a comforting gesture and swipes her thumb over Yoohyeon’s knuckles. Minji opens her mouth to say something, likely in order to provide some sort of a reassurance that there is nothing wrong with Yoohyeon’s heart, but she is cut off by Bora’s screech.
“It’s rising higher!” the main dancer announces, eyes wide. The speed at which Siyeon moves to peer at the laptop screen over her shoulder would be comical under any other circumstance.
“Oh, she’s right. It’s almost 160 now”, Siyeon says, and this time her voice is coated in worry as well. The announcement draws concerned sounds out of Gahyun and Handong. Yubin remains quiet, clearly attempting to assess the situation from a rational point of view.
“Ah, what is this!?” Yoohyeon exclaims feeling unshed tears burn somewhere at the back of her eyes. She wills herself to calm down, not wanting to embarrass herself over something this likely to be nothing. She averts her eyes, and her desperation for reassurance must be evident in the gesture, as Minji’s hand quickly lands between Yoohyeon’s shoulder blades, the leader’s eyes searching for hers.
“Hey, shh, it’s okay. Do you still feel fine? Cause unless you feel ill, it’s probably just the monitor malfunctioning or something. Maybe it’s not on the way it should be?” The leader’s words are accompanied by a small rubbing motion. Yoohyeon feels Minji’s fingers slightly catch at the edge of her heart rate belt as the leader moves her hand downwards. Siyeon and Bora are still frowning at the laptop screen displaying her (alleged) current pulse of 162 beats per minute.
“No, yeah, unnie, I feel fine, still”, Yoohyeon’s words come out slightly muffled. Aside from the distress the sudden scene has caused her, and the fact that it has definitely quickened her heartbeat a little, she does feel fine. She breathes deeply, and feels Minji’s hand, still resting on her back, move in unison with her lungs. A familiar buzz runs through her body at the leader’s proximity; Yoohyeon thinks it must be one of Minji’s many hidden superpowers, how her mere presence is enough to pleasantly quiet down the world for a moment.
“We might just be mistaken, too. The peak just now can be explained by anxiety, and it’s not like the practice couldn’t have been intense enough to lift the pulse like that. We were all jumping around at some points, right?”, Yubin reasons, looking between Yoohyeon and the laptop screen. Bora shoots an incredulous look at her.
“And what about the peak before we even started?” The dancer asks with furrowed brows. “Frankly, I think the monitor malfunctioning makes a lot more sense.”
Before Yubin can respond, their manager is stepping back into the room, carrying a modern looking sphygmomanometer, still in its original package, in his hands. Minji gives Yoohyeon a final pat on the back before extracting herself from the taller woman’s side in order to move one of the room’s many chairs next to the small, lonely table at the back of the room. She motions for Yoohyeon to move closer and gestures towards the chair. Yoohyeon feels like she has been standing rooted to the ground for the past half an hour, and she almost trips over her own feet as she walks towards Minji.
Their manager places the package on the table and starts opening it. It takes a moment; the cardboard box protecting the monitor seems to be rather stubborn, and some force is needed to get the machine out. Yoohyeon thinks they are lucky the monitor seems functional even after being manhandled to that extent, and she sees a similar sentiment reflected on some of her members’ faces. Their manager finds the instructions included within the package, and starts reading through them, squinting.
“Sit down upright with your back supported, feet on the ground, and arm supported at heart level, then relax”, he reads from the instructions, “Oh, good thing we had this new monitor at the company, a regular blood pressure monitor is apparently of no use in detecting arrhythmia, but this one can measure in intervals.”
Yoohyeon, who has been sitting on the chair for the past minutes, assumes the correct position, but finds it difficult to relax with the way her members are looking down at her from a semi-circle formation around the chair. Each time the word “arrhythmia” is repeated, a wave of anxiety washes over her, and the worried looks on the members’ faces are not helping in the slightest. Yoohyeon bursts into nervous giggles as their manager starts sliding the cuff of the monitor up her arm. She receives some quizzical looks from the members, Siyeon regarding her with scrunched-up eyebrows, while Gahyun tilts her head in a questioning manner.
“How am I expected to relax when all of you are looking at me like that?” Yoohyeon asks, her question coming out as more of a whine than intended. One of her legs is bouncing up and down, matching the footsteps of the anxiety jogging around in her stomach. She can hear the nervous quiver in her own voice, and she is sure that if the others looked any less anxious at the moment, a blush of embarrassment would be coloring her cheeks.
Understanding takes over Minji’s eyes, and the leader is quick to start ushering the members out of the room. “Let’s give Yoohyeon some space. I don’t think we’re helping”, she says, as she guides them towards the door. Yoohyeon watches them walk out, some sending her small waves before stepping out into the hallway. Minji turns around at the door, clearly planning on giving her some final words of reassurance, but their manager interrupts her.
“Ah, Minji, wait! I think it’d be better if you handle this instead. I’m not really sure how the machine works”, he says, walking towards Minji and the door. A puzzled look crosses the leader’s features for a moment, but she is quick to nod in agreement. Yoohyeon notices the way that their manager lowers his voice as he adds: “I think she’d be more comfortable with you than with me.”
Minji blinks a few times before nodding once more and walking back towards Yoohyeon. She aims a small, comforting smile at Yoohyeon when their eyes meet. Their manager closes the door behind him as he steps into the hallway, leaving Yoohyeon and Minji to their own devices in the practice room.
Minji reaches for the cuff attached to the digital display block. Yoohyeon watches as the leader’s elegant hands rip open the velcro before Minji gently guides Yoohyeon’s hand through the cuff. For some reason, the leader’s tenderness in fixing the cuff around Yoohyeon’s arm is doing nothing to calm her nerves and the heart that she can now feel racing in her chest. Minji secures the cuff around Yoohyeon’s arm by attaching the velcro back in place. Her empathetic eyes study Yoohyeon’s face, silently asking if the tightness feels appropriate. Yoohyeon gives her an absentminded nod in response, her mind busying itself by wondering how Minji is able to look so flawless even after hours of practice, and with flyaway strands of hair framing her face.
Minji leans over her to take a peek at the laptop which is still displaying Yoohyeon’s heart rate from the belt, and a small frown colors her features again. Yoohyeon is pretty sure that the leader presses a button on the display block to turn it on, but her own thoughts distract her from following Minji’s actions closely.
It makes no sense. Why can Yoohyeon still feel her pulse fast against the cuff fastened on her arm, when Minji is being so gentle with her and the leader’s presence usually makes for a great source of comfort? Yoohyeon feels, well, not necessarily relaxed, but significantly less stressed than before, when witnessing the concern of her members. She has been sitting down for minutes now, and the anxious thoughts formerly swirling in her head have been reduced to faraway improbabilities. Yet, her heart rate remains elevated.
Minji is still hovering over Yoohyeon, her eyes flitting between all of the apparatus, and the instruction manual in her hand. Yoohyeon thinks, briefly, that Minji filling her entire field of vision is really not helping lower her pulse; attempting to figure out what is keeping her heart rate up feels nearly impossible, when her thoughts are constantly getting sidetracked by subtle details like the way Minji’s front teeth bite lightly into her lower lip as she examines the manual. Yoohyeon’s initial sentiment of Minji’s proximity not helping is disproven almost immediately after, as the continuation of the thought is what prompts her to finally connect the dots.
Kim Minji. The common denominator. The leader of Dreamcatcher, and the human sunshine, who, apparently, has the power to lift Yoohyeon’s heart rate above 170 beats per minute.
Yoohyeon thinks back to the initial graph depicting her pulse over the approximately two-hour practice session. She considers the timestamps Bora had pointed out in concern, and thinks back to the moments corresponding to the data. The behavior of Yoohyeon’s heart rate had appeared as irrational on the laptop screen, sending the seven of them into a panicked state, but from this newfound perspective the correlation is obvious. It baffles Yoohyeon, how it had previously managed to go unnoticed by her. Perhaps she had been too preoccupied attempting to identify any unfamiliar sensations in her body to properly consider the possible effects of ordinary occurrences.
When Bora had pointed out the first spike in Yoohyeon’s pulse, from before the start of their practice, Yoohyeon had racked her brain trying to think back to anything that deviated from the usual routine. Had she felt strange in any manner? Had she consumed caffeine prior to practice? Maybe she had been surprised or scared in some way? Or maybe she had been running around trying to escape from one of Bora’s many aggressive displays of love? Yet nothing out of the ordinary had come to mind.
Now that she has her hypothesis of what to look for, however, it is easy to find a probable cause for the peak in her heart rate data.
Only a couple of minutes before the start of practice, amidst the typical preparatory hustle, Minji had wrapped her arms around Yoohyeon’s waist and rested her head on the younger woman’s shoulder, lightly brushing her nose against the crook of Yoohyeon’s neck. Yoohyeon now remembers the pleasant tickle that had traveled down her spine at the contact, remembers giving the leader a look of faux-scandal and receiving a genuine smile in response. The joyful smile, and the sensation of Minji’s arms squeezing her waist had left Yoohyeon in a momentary daze, the practice room quieting around them for a small while. Now that Yoohyeon thinks back to the moment, she can almost hear the rush of blood in her ears, can almost feel the heartbeat quickening in her chest with Minji’s fingers trailing faintly across her abdomen as the leader had pulled away from the casual hug.
The other peaks suddenly make great sense, too. A moment of distraction during ‘Black or White’ when Yoohyeon had missed a step, busy admiring the lines of Minji’s silhouette as the leader effortlessly performed the choreography. The blush that had risen on her cheeks at the intense eye contact initiated by Minji during ‘Fairytale, as they sung their subsequent lines, during which they liked to display their shared fondness in the form of high-fives or some similar sort of tomfoolery. The way Yoohyeon had felt the sudden need to gulp during their break, when Minji had appeared at her side, running her long fingers through her own hair in a charming manner, and telling Yoohyeon that she had done well, before giving the younger woman’s ass an encouraging pat and leaving to prepare for the second half of practice.
The list goes on. The tips of Minji’s fingers grazing Yoohyeon’s jaw during their shared part in ‘Shatter’. Minji’s special smile and the amused tilt of her head aimed at Yoohyeon whenever they moved past one another in ‘BONVOYAGE’. The fierce look of concentration on Minji’s face as Yoohyeon glanced at the leader amidst their performance of ‘BOCA’. And ‘You and I’, of course.
Yoohyeon has always assumed that the manner in which her heart threatens to jump out of her chest whenever they finish performing ‘You and I’ is a direct result of the difficult choreography. The dance is physically demanding, and involves a decent amount of vertical motion, so it makes perfect sense — especially at the end of the song when the adrenaline from the performance begins to wear off — for Yoohyeon to be gasping for air, her heartbeat loud in her ears. Now that she thinks about it, however, she must admit that Minji’s hand around her throat may have something to do with it, too.
It is this train of thought that makes Yoohyeon painfully aware of how close to her Minji is still standing in this empty practice room. Her heart rate must peak again as a result of this sudden awareness, since Minji looks down at her from where she has been leaning forwards continuing to examine the monitors. It is either the realization of how near their bodies are to one another or the dumb, flushed look on Yoohyeon’s face that must prompt Minji to take a step back.
Minji opens her mouth, clearly about to apologize for invading Yoohyeon’s personal space or something along those lines, when the movement on her face suddenly stops with the intensity of a car running into a brick wall. The leader examines the rosy undertone of Yoohyeon’s face, her eyebrows scrunching up almost imperceptibly as she searches the younger woman’s dazed expression. Minji’s eyes then flit towards the apparatus, briefly, before returning to Yoohyeon’s features, and Yoohyeon knows, immediately, that she is no longer the only person in the room to have made the connection between Minji’s proximity and her own heart rate.
Yoohyeon thinks back to when the seven of them had switched over from the collected data to looking at Yoohyeon’s real time pulse and found it slightly elevated. She remembers how Minji had grabbed her hand, aiming to provide comfort, and the monitored heart rate had instantly risen high enough to alert both Bora and Siyeon. They had all missed it, busy worrying and jumping to conclusions, but a clear correlation can be drawn between the gesture and the following observation. Yoohyeon looks at Minji, and the contemplation on the older woman’s face is all she needs to know that the stream of the leader’s consciousness is on a similar path. In fact, Yoohyeon suspects that the older woman is currently analyzing the exact same moment.
Yoohyeon’s hands get clammy, and an anxious tightness makes itself present around her neck and chest as she watches Minji process the available evidence. She knows that Minji is kind, and empathetic, and patient — has known that since she first met the older woman — yet there seems to be a lot of room for misinterpretation here. Having her heart rate rise significantly whenever Minji gets close or looks at her in a certain way is one thing; something that could likely be explained, something Minji would probably find amusing and take in stride as a compliment. But to be foolish about it, worrying the members and ending up alone in a room with Minji trying to take care of her feels like another thing entirely.
Yoohyeon feels Minji’s eyes studying her intently as she nervously plays with her hands, trying to think of something to say, some explanation to give. She glances up from her hands, suddenly shy to meet the leader’s gaze, and tries to keep from restlessly shifting on her seat to the best of her ability. Minji is watching her with slightly narrowed eyes and a subtle tilt to her head. Yoohyeon’s throat works around a swallow, and an entertained smile tugs at the corners of Minji’s lips.
”Do I make you nervous, Yoohyeon-ah?”
Despite the unrestrained amusement in her tone, Minji’s voice comes out silky smooth. Yoohyeon suddenly finds herself with a substantial interest in the irregular wooden patterns of the practice room floor. If she had been blushing before, her cheeks must be flaming by now, and she hopes that the strands of hair falling down on her face are working to make it a little less obvious.
Yoohyeon is not sure why she is feeling so bashful when Minji is clearly just teasing her, knowing — from years of empirical evidence gathered as a collective effort of the members — that Yoohyeon usually responds nicely. Maybe that is, precisely, what is causing Yoohyeon to squirm under Minji’s scrutiny; the leader knows exactly which strings to pull to draw reactions out of her — all of the members do — and witnessing Yoohyeon’s flustered state is clearly entertaining the older woman.
”Ah, unnie, I swear I didn’t realize it was like that”, Yoohyeon mutters, drawing small circles onto the floor with the tips of her shoes. She glimpses up at Minji, and the amusement on the leader’s features softens into fondness, probably in response to the unease displayed in Yoohyeon’s expression.
”It’s okay”, Minji’s intonation reflects the look on her face as she steps closer to Yoohyeon. Her hand reaches for Yoohyeon’s shoulder, stroking it gently in a reassuring manner before moving downwards towards the cuff on Yoohyeon’s arm.
”Though, if it really is me elevating your heart rate, we’re not gonna need this, hm?” Minji asks, referring to the sphygmomanometer, and the tiny hum at the end of the question prompts Yoohyeon to nod faintly. Minji’s fingers undo the velcro and slide the cuff down Yoohyeon’s arm, somehow even more delicately than before.
Yoohyeon is left dazed for a moment as Minji stands above her, a hint of amusement back in the leader’s expression. The younger woman searches for words, or a gesture, perhaps, but she struggles to identify what it is she wants to convey. A part of her yearns to explain, yet she does not quite grasp the implications of the behavior of her heart herself. It is starting to dawn on her that the buzz she feels around Minji, the way her body and her mind react to the leader’s proximity, are not necessarily sensations felt by everyone else as well. Which is exactly why the other part — the part that is somewhat unnerved by this realization — is telling her to make up an excuse and forget about this entire ordeal altogether.
Minji saves her from her pathetic attempts at resolving this mental turmoil by patting her lightly on the cheek and smiling at her with those crescent moon eyes that always tug at her heartstrings.
”You better go tell the others you’re alright. I bet they’re worried sick, still”, the leader reminds. Yoohyeon blinks a couple of times, rapidly, before getting up with the kind of intensity that makes her dizzy after almost half an hour of sitting down. She hears Minji’s muffled giggle as she stands still, waiting for the curtain resembling the night sky to lift from above her usual field of vision.
The moment Yoohyeon opens the practice room door she is swarmed by the five women filing in from the hallway.
”Yoohyeon-ah!” Bora screeches, tackling her into a hug, drowning out Yubin’s more quiet ”You okay?” and Gahyun’s ”Told you she was going to be fine.”
Together they walk further into the room, where Minji has closed down the lid of the laptop and is placing the blood pressure monitor back into its package.
”What did the machine say? Did everything look alright, unnie?” Siyeon’s words are aimed at Minji.
Minji turns towards them from where she had previously been facing the package, attempting to fit the cuff in neatly. She smiles, wholeheartedly, at the six of them. ”Huh? Yeah, I think Hyeonie’s belt just wasn’t on properly. Too low, or something, maybe.”
All of them look relieved at Minji’s assessment. Yoohyeon would have half a heart to accuse the others of lacking trust in her word, if she were not busy thanking any existing higher power for Minji’s decision to keep the embarrassing details to herself. Yoohyeon knows she would have heard about this at least weekly for the rest of her days, had the whole truth come to — well, all of theirs, but especially — Bora or Gahyun’s attention.
”Mmh, is that the official diagnosis, Doctor Kim?” Bora’s tone is sultry in that exaggerated manner that makes Yoohyeon let out high-pitched screams in protest whenever the main dancer uses the style of speech to tease her. This time the tone is, luckily, not aimed at her, since Minji is the one at the receiving end of the question.
The leader simply rolls her eyes. She pauses, absentminded, before seemingly remembering that Bora’s teasing remark had taken on the shape of a question. ”Hm, I guess so. Official diagnosis: just down bad. ”
Gahyun is the first one to burst out laughing. ”Unnie, that is not how you use that expression!”
Siyeon doubles over in laughter, and a wide grin spreads on Handong’s face. Bora looks confused for a moment, but a familiar noise of amusement escapes her once Handong leans closer to whisper something in her ear. In her peripheral vision, Yoohyeon sees Yubin nodding along to Gahyun’s comment.
”Yeah, I believe you mean ’on badly’ or ’too far down’”, the rapper adds, receiving some nods from the others.
Minji stares at the six of them, opening her eyes wide and tilting her head in apparent confusion. She utters a tiny ”oh?” before turning back to close the packaging of the blood pressure monitor and scooping it up in her arms. She then spins on her heels to turn back towards the six of them, fixing them with a small but blinding smile.
”Should we go home?”
Minji briefly catches Yoohyeon’s eye as the seven of them walk out of the room, and a conspiratorial look, accompanied by a wink, crosses the leader’s face for a split second. For the first time that day Yoohyeon does not need a monitor to tell her that her heart just skipped a beat.
She cannot help but suspect that the double meaning behind Minji’s seemingly carelessly chosen expression had not been much of an accident.