Chapter Text

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"you’re going to wear a dent into the floor, zo.”

zoey pauses sheepishly, her eyes landing on rumi’s affectionately weary expression; she sighs in mock exasperation, but stops pacing nevertheless. “how are you not stressing the hell out right now? it’s the bloody golden disc awards, mimi!”

mai pipes up from where she’s running through some very last-minute vocal warmups. “we are stressing, we just have better coping mechanisms than walking laps around the green room and consuming a myriad of energy drinks.”

it’s only then zoey notices the jitter to her own fingertips. she blinks, feeling the tips of her ears fizz pink, and rubs her damp palms against her pants. “shut up. i only had-”

“-more than enough,” rumi cuts her off with a fond roll of her eyes.

"girls! you're on on two minutes!"

their manager's chirp makes zoey's heart rate spike all over again the same way it had used to when -

nu-uh. not going there. she shakes off the wisps of cardamon and black pepper perfume that suddenly make their way into her lungs, burrowing themselves deep in her chest cavity.

it does that a lot. cedarwood and bergamot will forever haunt her, she knows, and she's somewhat come to terms with it - her smell loitering in auditoriums, concert halls, and even zoey's pillows late at night is a small price to pay for zoey had done to her, even if it makes her a little muzzy and sick to the stomach every time she picks the scent up.

zoey scampers after rumi and mai, fiddling with her in-ears and crushing the can in one hand, shoving it into the nearest trashcan; the black pepper recedes from her nostrils and she feels herself slip into work mode.

if her blood were to turn to electricity, she swears this is what it would feel like — the pre-show shakes are perhaps just as addicting as the energy drinks. you should cut down on the caffeine, you know, a certain pink-haired girl had used to tell her before snatching the can away from her - no, she is not thinking about that right now -

she’s about to turn around and crack a joke for rumi or mai to shove her shoulder for when she sees her.

well, she hears her first — the first note of kang mira's newest single back to me.

everyone knows it. you’d have to be living under a rock not to have heard it on the radio, or while scrolling through instagram, or just leaking out of someone’s airpods.

just that first note makes zoey’s ribcage fold into itself, entrapping her lungs and her heart and stabbing into them until she can't breathe — she can't breathe, because mira is right there and the burden of her guilt is back, crushing her shoulder blades and filling her from the inside out until that's all she is.

guilt.

it had never really left, even when zoey had muted mira’s increasingly desperate calls, even when she had made that burner account and pressed follow on nothingjustmira’s account, even when she had sat in the dark on the night of back to me’s premiere and listened to it with bile slowly creeping up her throat.

if mira knows zoey and her group are performing right after her set, she doesn’t show it — zoey mentally slaps herself for that thought. mira had moved on. mira didn't care. mira wasn’t obsessively tracking her every move, every show, every drop.

back to me being released on the 25th of april was purely a coincidence.

fuck, she looks good, is zoey’s first thought once the initial paralysis of shock wears off. her hair is nearly twice as long as zoey remembers it — it always looks shorter on social media — and it’s the exact shade of pink zoey had once told her she looked good in when they were teens. her limbs don't look lanky and awkward anymore; she’s grown into them smoothly.

her voice. fuck. zoey fights down the bile again and chokes in a breath. she’d heard back to me a million times already, but live? mira right there, maybe ten wide strides away? so close yet so far, just as she had been every minute of these past what, three years?

she’d always been just one message away. one phone call, one "sorry! got busy, how have you been?" and mira would’ve acted all mad but she still would have stayed on the phone with her all night.

but zoey hadn't sent that message, hadn't made that call.

and now, if her selfish little hopes are actually correct, mira is ten strides away, singing about how much she aches for zoey to a crowd of thousands.

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mira’s grip on the strap of her backpack tightens.

don't look back. she counts to five, her shoulders slumping when she finally hears the rumble of her parents' car pulling away from the school gates.

good. she'd thought they'd make a bigger problem out of her insisting on attending public school.

why are you being so ungrateful, mira? you could go to any private school you could ever think of. why do you persist on this dump?

someone bumps against her shoulder; she takes a step to the side, surprised, but the blonde who had stumbled into her is already reeling back, the look in her eyes somewhere halfway between apologetic and judgemental.

mira gets it, she tells herself, as she watches the blonde get pulled away and through the gates by her friend. noone expects a kang in your average public school. her brand new jeans and designer hoodies stand out harshly against the peeling walls and patchy backpacks.

they just don't have to act like she's dangerous.

she attempts to shrug off the bitterly familiar sting of rejection and steps through the gates, following the chattering wave of students into the building.

she can tell she doesn't belong the moment the doors swing shut behind her.

she can feel their looks on her - some dismissive, fleeting, mostly from the oldest children, just flicking over her brand-name clothes before going back to their phone screens or friends. the other ones, from the kids she presumes to be her peers, linger for longer - analyzing, theorizing about why on earth the kang's misfit daughter showed up here, of all elementary schools in california.

mira tilts her chin up, adjusting her backpack yet again, and studies a brightly-coloured timetable bluetacked to the wall. 3rd grade — mrs alexander, room 25. okay, easy enough, she could find room 25.

the bell rings, a shrill peal that makes her scrunch up her nose as she slips back into the crowd. room 25 is just a few classrooms down, and when she steps in, she feels the eyes of already seated classmates swing to her; she shoves down the urge to shrink inside her hoodie and scans the room for a place to sit.

most of the seats are already taken - the room is warm with the sound of youthful laughter and gossip, and mira has never felt so out of place; not even during the charity galas her parents make her attend, where she's forced to smile politely and nod along to all of the big words and speeches adults throw at her.

there's only two seats available - almost all of the two-person desks except this pair are occupied by duos giggling away, sharing jellybeans, and shooting occasional curious looks in mira's direction. the first desk has the blonde who had tumbled into mira earlier, and she's laughing nervously with two friends behind her, glancing at mira timorously once every few sentences. part of mira wants to sit with her just to freak her out, but her eyes land on the second empty seat before she can do so.

the girl flopped in it is slumped over the desk, her densely freckled cheek smushed against the wood as she doodles something mira can't make out on a torn slip of paper; she sticks her tongue out ever so slightly, brows furrowed in utmost absorption, absent-mindlessly chewing on the shell of her turtle pencil topper.

mira's legs carry her over to the turtle girl's desk, dropping her backpack beside it and slipping into the chair alongside hers. the brunette blinks up at her, and the turtle drops from her lips as they stretch into a beam, her sepia eyes lighting up with a glint that makes the tips of mira's ears fizz and tint pink.

"hi!" the turtle girl chirps. "i'm zoey. do you wanna know a secret?"

mira's mind reels, and she thanks her countless hours of media training for how steady her voice is when she responds. "mira. and.. yeah?"

zoey lights up further, and mira's surprised the corners of her mouth can stretch that far. doesn't it ache to smile that hard? if it does, zoey doesn't seem to mind - perhaps she just smiles so much that her cheeks have grown accustomed to accommodating the weight of her joy.

"okay, but you have to promise not to tell anyone," zoey widens her eyes as her voice drops to a hushed, albeit conspicuous whisper. mira watches attentively as she slowly unzips her plush turtle pencil case - she really likes turtles, mira notes - and after rummaging about in it for a moment, pulls her hand back out and uncurls it to reveal a ladybug.

"why do you have a ladybug in your pencil case??" mira questions, bewildered, while zoey just giggles and sets the bug down to scamper across the desk.

"it's pretty, isn't it? my mom says the amount of dots they have is how old they are." she tells her proudly, and mira doesn't have the heart to tell her that isn't how it works - that would probably make zoey stop smiling, and she's starting to really like zoey's smile. holding her tongue is worth it when she hears zoey titter again.

she finds she loves the sound already, despite having only heard it twice. zoey makes laughing sound so light, so easy, like it doesn't have to be rehearsed into the perfect pitch. the spoiled part of mira wants to hear it again and again.

the down-to-earth part makes her tear her eyes away from zoey's face, who's cheeks are now flushed rosy with glee, and watch the ladybug take off into the air.

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there's an odd burn behind mira's eyes.

she wants to chalk it up to the harshness of the stage lights, but she's been able to feel the shrill buzzing in her ears and the smoulder in her retina since before she'd even arrived at the stadium, before she'd known she'd be performing at the biggest award show in korea, before her career had blown up and given her everything little mira had dreamed of.

she first remembers the burn starting alongside hot tears on that one cursed evening three years back - her fingertips trembling, breaths shaky, retyping the messages at least six times each before hitting send and biting down on her lower lip until blood beaded beneath her canines.

we dont have to talk about yesterday if youre not ready yet.

she'd meant it - she'd always meant it. she'd waited. of course she'd waited, that was a "mira thing to do", as zoey had called it, to wait. patient to a fault, because the right person wouldn't make her wait.

had zoey not been the right person?

"you're on in thirty seconds."

right. show.

mira forces herself to take a breath and blinks back the burn to a steady simmer, lifting her chin. she shoves any and all lingering echoes of blue and pink smoothies, skateboards and simpler times to the back of her mind - she knows her own brain well enough to be torturously aware of how those memories will rebound to plague her the moment there's no violent bass or stage staff yells to drown them out.

"ten seconds!"

she exhales slowly. adjusts her in-ears. everything's perfect - she knows it is, no-one on her team would let anything go wrong on such a memorable night.

"you're on."

mira's body weight doesn't exactly follow her feet at first and she lurches forward, but the moment the lights hit her face it's like snapping into the flawless performer version of herself - her back straightens, hand flips her hair back over her shoulder, and she moves to the center of the stage.

hundreds - no, thousands - of people scream when she hits her first note, and it's a surreal feeling. she's done stadiums and she's done four arena tours - or more? she's lost count, they all blend into a whirl of burning behind her eyes and lesbian flags with her face on them waving amongst pink lightsticks - but this is a stage she's dreamed of performing on ever since zoey had introduced her to this award show.

fuck. she hates how zoey is still plaguing her, still haunting her every set, every release, like she's watching her and laughing. are you listening right now? are you proud of me? i made it.

the song's a blur. the blue tint to the lights makes her nauseous. why had she let the tech team choose blue? she hates blue. they should've known that.

it's over before she can even notice it had begun. she bows, takes a second, and steps off stage, leaving navy glimmers behind for bold yellow backstage.

"that was incredible!" bobby, her manager, gushes and mira feels herself smile. it doesn't feel genuine - she just hopes it looks so.

someone shoves a waterbottle into her hands. it's cold - probably straight from a fridge. good. at least they got that right. one of her hands accepts a bite of gim gui with a polite thank-you while the other unscrews the bottle; taking a sip makes the hot brand of grief behind her eyes fade for just a moment.

it comes back in full force and she chokes on her water when she hears the track onstage open into echo. this time it doesn't stick to her eyes - she feels the burn spread, clouding her vision, clogging her windpipe and making her unable to breathe - she can't breathe.

mira rounds a corner and stumbles into a bathroom; she doesn't feel herself open the door or lock the stall, she just feels the scorch settle deep in her body, pooling in the very bottom of her throat until it comes back up and empties itself into the toilet.

she gasps for air between retches and choked sobs, trying to push it back, compartmentalize it, to not let zoey ruin another thing in her life, not this, not her greatest childhood dream -

she feels herself sink to the cold tiles as the burn spills out from behind her eyes in the form of hot tears, slipping down her cheeks until the taste of mascara, salt and covet lingers on her lips.

mira isn't very sure how long she stays hidden in the stall, crumpled on the floor; if she had to estimate, probably only around eight minutes, after which the lament slowly begins to seep back into its familiar home of a heavy blanket over her ribs. she feels the tears slowly halt, leaving salty streaks on her cheeks that she dreads having to explain to her stylist.

she picks herself up - alone, as she's been doing these past three years, and flushes the toilet. the handle is cold in her palm as she swings the door open, and she pointedly avoids looking in the mirror as she splashes biting water over her face.

her makeup runs and flows down the drain, coloring the water beige with hints of ultramarine that make the nausea threaten to claw its way back up. she turns away from the sink bowl, burying her face in a towel - a snowy white, thank fuck - before slipping out the door.

mira sneaks through the corridors and makes a beeline for the green rooms; zoey and her bandmates are nowhere to be seen, and some of that familiar contempt bubbles back up in mira's chest - how dare she hide now? but then again, why is she surprised, that's all zoey's been doing for years.

hide.