Archive of Our Own

South Korea is a country that lies on the southern half of the Korean Peninsula and is, as such, predominantly encircled by water: the East Sea, the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea. The coastline is lined with hundreds of beaches, which cycle through waves of popularity. Crowded in the summer, sparse when the heat simmers out. 

Kim Chaeyeon has always liked the beach. Whenever she’d be asked to choose between the mountains or the sea, there’d only ever been one answer for her. Just the insects alone… Then she would pull a ridiculous face, give this melodramatic shudder, and they’d stare and they’d laugh. 

But that was never really her actual answer. Not the complete one, at least. 

In reality, it was never about the mountains themselves. 

It’s the beach. It’s the way the breeze envelopes her, threading through the strands of her hair. How the granules press into the soles of her feet. Or that almost falling sensation she gets when she tries to run through it – though she never really does go down. 

But most of all, she likes the tide. That ever-changing line between the land and sea, where the tide gradually crawls up – washes away the footsteps, the shapes, any impression at all – before it retreats back into itself, into the ocean. 

There’s a peculiar sense of comfort in it. A cyclical push and pull. Inward for six hours, back out for another six. And anything that once made its imprint on the sand is lost once more.

Combing her fingers through each particle, she basks in the way they seep into the crevices of her skin. Instinctively, she feels the weight of eyes upon her – a tangible, itching sensation – a fraction of a second before she hears a voice, barely carried over the wind.

“Chaeyeon?” 

A voice she would recognise anywhere, now. She swallows the thought down, folds her arms against her torso in lieu of an audible response. 

She feels her pad closer, some formless object landing softly in the sand beside her. A woollen blanket. Not close enough to be touching, but enough that she can feel that loose thread on one of the fraying edges, reaching out in the wind. 

She’d bite her tongue, but she finds there are no words bubbling up her throat anyway. 

“Figured you wouldn’t bring something warm enough,” Yubin says, by way of greeting. “The beach is weird like this, you know? Hot as heck in the day, freezing in the evening.” 

Because Yubin has always been good at that – carving a conversational space out of a quiet one. Or maybe she’s only ever been that way with her. 

“Yeah,” Chaeyeon sniffs. Because she has had so much time to revel in the quiet, and – even if it was her fault, her move – she doesn't know if she has it in her to readjust back right now. She isn't sure if even deserves the chance to choose.

Yubin, to her credit, seems to be able to catch onto that at least. Chaeyeon knows as much because she can feel the beat of silence that presses into the space afterwards.

Of course, it only lasts a beat. Leave it to Yubin to be the one to barrel past any bumps on a winding road, between the two of them.

“Hey, ah… The others are gonna start lighting the sparklers soon. You should come join us.” 

Chaeyeon hasn’t turned around, but she can sense the heaviness of Yubin’s gaze drifting. It’s strange, though. Her voice fills to this firmness by the end of it – not tentative or malleable in the way she’s grown accustomed to. It’s mismatching: the supposedly skittish attention, the curtain of confidence in her tone. One betrays the deception of the other; she isn’t sure which is which yet. She knows which she's at fault for, though.

In any case, Chaeyeon has enough courtesy to extend an olive branch when she knows it’s desired.

“Does Sohyun-unnie need help with the camera?” 

She faces her then, fast enough to discern a small shake of the bowed head, a foot drawing aimless shapes in the sand.

“No, I–”

“Did they need help with the lighting? Aish, I swear I told them–”

“I just wanted to see if you wanted to light one with us,” Yubin cuts in, a hint of resolution seeping through. Only a hint, though. She falters right afterwards anyway. There was only so much that could change in a matter of minutes, after all. “It’s cold too. We should head back further up.” 

Chaeyeon lifts her hand, catching that loose thread between her fingers, preventing it from wildly whipping around in the sand any longer. 

“Why?” she asks. “Aren’t we only filming you four?” 

“Yeah, but… I don’t know, I thought it would be nice. We’re all lighting them, even Sohyun-unnie.” 

“Sohyun-unnie would do anything Xinyu dragged her into, to be fair,” Chaeyeon retorts, as if that were relevant. 

Yubin tuts, affronted. Maybe frustrated. “You—” A sigh. Definitely frustrated. Chaeyeon is surprised she hasn't given up yet, after everything. “I want to light one with you. With us.” 

Well, it was always going to get to a point, Chaeyeon muses. It’s not one that she’s quite ready to look too inwardly at though. And it’s not as if it’s the first time she’s been at the pointy edge of someone else’s exasperation like this, so she tells herself that it doesn’t bother her this time.

“I want to capture the sunset,” she says instead, like it makes sense. “Who knows? It could be the last one, like, ever.” 

Chaeyeon feels the other girl drilling a stare into the side of her head, confusion patent in the hesitance, and she stifles a smile. 

“You don’t even have your camera out.” Despite everything, like clockwork, Yubin indulges her.

And like clockwork, Chaeyeon turns to habit.

“I’m capturing them with my eyes.” She gestures at her own face, batting her eyelashes at the younger girl. “Best lenses I can get, don’t you think?” 

Yubin just blinks at her owlishly. The sight is enough to pull a genuine grin out of her.

“Even if this were the last sunset,” she starts. “Wouldn’t you want to, I don’t know, immortalise it? Like on camera? Sohyun-unnie’s getting the shot of us with it.” 

“Nothing’s made to be immortal,” she interjects, nodding with an air of faux-wisdom, though Yubin simply narrows her eyes further. “Besides, if I had the chance to see the last sunset, why would I spend that time watching it from behind a camera lens?”

“Chaeyeon, you’ve literally spent half this trip taking selfies,” Yubin deadpans. 

She looks up at her, tilting her head back lazily. Clockwork. “Ah, but now I’m spending this half living in the moment. So it won’t be immortal, but at least the last sunset is in my mind. I could make it last.”

“You’re—” Chaeyeon supposes she’ll never find out what exactly she is, since Yubin cuts herself off immediately afterwards. “I’m going back.” 

The younger girl dusts the sand off her slippers. 

“Aw, already?” Chaeyeon's surprised she even managed to last this long at all.

“You could come with me,” Yubin offers, one last time. 

But Chaeyeon has already turned back to the turbulent waves. She hears a withheld sigh, footsteps gradually getting quieter. For a moment, she almost thinks the other girl is gone, until she feels something hit her back with a soft thwack. 

“In case you decide to immortalise it with the rest of us,” Yubin calls out from somewhere behind her.

Twisting, Chaeyeon finds a lone sparkler in the sand. Lifting her gaze up, she only catches the silhouette of the girl’s already retreating figure.

It started in spring, when the flowers had just started to bloom once more. The trees had cycled through the colours of the seasons: the lush greens, the oranges littered with crimson, the blanket of white – back to the vibrant yellows and pinks. 

It was a new beginning. Or, whatever it is that those cliches say. That was what Chaeyeon had told herself, when she’d impulsively decided to join the broadcasting club one day. It’s what she told herself when later, one of her seniors in the club had tugged at her arm.

“Come on,” she remembers Xinyu telling her. “I want you to meet my friends!” 

Then this woman – this woman who practically towered over the entire cohort and radiated with enthusiasm and elegance – grabbed onto both of Chaeyeon’s hands dramatically, pouting at her. 

“Pleeeeaaaaaseee.” 

And despite her reservations, who was Chaeyeon to deny a pretty girl’s smile? 

“Mm, depends,” Chaeyeon drawled with a playful smirk, like she hadn’t already made up her mind. “Will Sohyun-unnie be there?” 

“Yah!” Xinyu reached out a hand to smack at her, one she only barely managed to narrowly dodge. “She’s mine!” 

“If you say so, unnie,” she chuckled.

But she had already made up her mind, and so let herself get dragged down the halls and into one of the courtyards by the taller girl, all the while feigning protest.

Much to Chaeyeon’s delight (and Xinyu’s chagrin), Sohyun was already there, studying with one of the members from her club.

It happened during one of their study breaks, when Chaeyeon had been clinging onto Sohyun’s arm teasingly, laughter rippling out at the way the older girl’s neck flushed and, consequently, how Xinyu had ever so slightly tightened her own grasp. A petal had fallen from the windswept trees, and suddenly Chaeyeon was hit with three things all at once. 

“Hey, Tone! Oof—Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to surprise you!”

The first: Hsu Nientzu. Not that that was so much of a surprise anymore; running into Nien had reached some vague level of normalcy by then. Fair enough, given her self-proclaimed title as best friend to one Zhou Xinyu, which in itself was only an addendum to the fact that she might as well have been dating one of Chaeyeon’s own close friends. 

So things were fine. They were okay now.

“Oh, hey, Chae’s here too! Been a while, huh?” 

There was, of course, that small matter of the next two blows, which just so happened to follow the first in rapid succession. Enough so that Chaeyeon didn’t even get the chance to respond before she was hit again.

“Who—Wait, Chaeyeon-unnie?”

The second being an older, and somehow even taller Lee Jiwoo. Well, compared to the last time that she had seen her, in any case. And then that final strike – the face behind the voice, which had grown huskier in the past few years – a correspondingly older Gong Yubin, flanking Jiwoo’s right as always. Well, she supposed, maybe not everything had changed.

But in spite of years of training it, Chaeyeon couldn’t keep the surprise from colouring her expression.

“Wait, you know Chaeyeon? Small world,” someone gasped. She thought it must have been Xinyu. 

Still, she had enough presence of mind to school her features a second later. 

“Ah, yeah, kind of. We went to the same school for a bit.” 

“Eh, you guys went to an arts high school?” Nien nudged at the pair.  

“Nah, um. Not that one,” Chaeyeon cut in, before either of the two had a chance to answer. “Middle school.” 

“Whoa, so you know our Chaeyeon from before her days of stardom, huh?” Xinyu slung an arm around her, and she had to resist the urge to brush off the crawling sensation rolling around her limbs.

“Something like that.” Yubin gave a little chuckle. Chaeyeon wasn’t sure what to make of it. “Though, she was always kind of a star to us, you know?”

Jiwoo, for her part, remained oddly quiet during the exchange. Yet, there was a moment where she locked eyes with Chaeyeon – pupils flicking toward one another, meeting, then passing on again – and she had to swallow down that garbled feeling in her chest that there was a looming conversation yet to pass. 

She stood at some point, just as Kotone had started asking the pair about their high school days.

“I’m getting a drink,” Chaeyeon announced. She made eye contact with Xinyu silently, but perhaps she had already pushed her a little too far that day, as she simply tightened her hold on Sohyun, practically engulfing the other girl as she rested her chin on her shoulder, sulking. 

Her eyes darted between the remaining members of their impromptu study group, and for a frozen, noiseless, harrowing instant, Yubin’s eyes met Chaeyeon’s. The younger girl’s mouth opened.

“I’ll come with you!” The force with which Chaeyeon turned to look at Nien may have almost given her whiplash, but at the very least her heart was still intact. The pink-haired girl just gave an eye-smile to assuage the bemused stare she pinned her with afterwards. “To the cafe, right?” 

“Yeah.” Chaeyeon chose not to comment on the fact that Nien hated caffeine (‘It gives me the jitters’) or how the one time they’d gone together the year prior, Nien had sworn up and down she’d never come back (‘Their salad tastes like chewed up mulch and wet grass…’ ‘Um… is snacking on those things, like, a favourite pastime of yours, or…? Also, who orders a salad at a cafe?’) because she had decided just then that she is not the type of person to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

Instead, she took the hand that the pink-haired girl offered her, ignored the curious – or perhaps amused – quirk of the brow that Xinyu sent her way, and passed by that corner of the table still engaged in conversation with Kotone. And she most certainly did not heed that burning sensation of being watched from that very corner as they walked further away.

But Chaeyeon found, however, that sometimes gift horses are made of wood – hollowed out and loaded, ready to catch by surprise at any moment. Case in point: Nien was not so much obliviously benevolent as she was uncannily perceptive.

It was relatively unassuming enough, at first.

“Strawberry latte, right?” A glance, a nod. “Thought you were swearing off caffeine this year.” 

Small talk, Chaeyeon could do. “Yeah, well, that was before I realised I had three group projects this sem.” 

“Ouch,” Nien winced. A pause – barely there at all, but Chaeyeon still knew her well enough to know that she didn’t hesitate for nothing. “Speaking of, I’m surprised you didn’t meet Yubin earlier. In class, I mean. I’m pretty sure she has one of the same lecture slots as you. You’re both in the acting department, you know?”

And there it was. It’s dressed up in a casual question, but Chaeyeon saw the way Nien’s eyes flickered over to hers, and knew there was more than natural curiosity buried beneath. Always too shrewd for her own good, though that was probably something she should have already known about Nien at this point anyway. After all, it was one of the reasons why she was so drawn to her in the first place – and one of the reasons things would have never worked out between them.

The words still left Chaeyeon’s brow twitching, though.

“Right. I think that’s my morning lecture, so.”

“Ah.” She said sagely, like that explained it all. Or maybe it hadn’t, given the way she paused once more. “Must be weird seeing people you haven’t seen in so long, huh?” 

“I guess so,” she shrugged, before she worked a smirk onto her face. “Can’t be any weirder than ordering a salad at a cafe, though.”

And somehow, despite it all, Nien was benevolent. Enough to be persuaded; enough to let a conversation go. 

“Yah! That was one time!”

(Jiwoo did actually end up talking to her around that time, only shortly after that first meeting. She’d bumped into her in the bathroom, alone. Her eyes had widened in surprise, but. Even now, Chaeyeon doesn’t know if the whole thing was by coincidence, or entirely intentional.

She did see the way her eyes rounded out from the surprise into something tender, something more unnerving. She hated the way it made unease thrum beneath her flesh.

“Are you happier now?” she asked. She sounded out of breath – voice distant, opaque, unfamiliar. Off-kilter.

A secret fourth thing had creeped up on her: a quieter strike, a final blow. Somehow, it almost hurt more than the first three altogether. A realisation. 

This was not the Lee Jiwoo she knew.

“I’m—” Chaeyeon blinked, remembering herself. Then she stitched back on a smile. “Well, Professor Jeong’s class is killing me. He even tests the extra readings… So harsh.” 

Jiwoo only shook her head. 

That had been the only time she tried to talk about it. Still, that looming feeling from before never really quite disappeared.)

She started seeing more of the pair after that – at hangouts, near the club rooms, just randomly on campus. Well, one a lot more so than the other, at least. Jiwoo apparently had endless reasons to be flitting around, never really sticking around long enough to hold a proper conversation. 

So that left Yubin. 

And with Yubin, came relearning and rewriting all the things that Chaeyeon once used to know about her, even the things she’d forgotten.

For one, Yubin was kind. And maybe she always had been; maybe Chaeyeon simply never paid enough attention to pick up on it back then. But she was certainly starting to see it now.

She initially thought that that incident with the study group was Yubin’s way of trying to corner her, the way Jiwoo had, but she was beginning to reconcile with the idea that maybe she was wrong.

“Ah, Jiwoo, you’re picking up Sohyun-unnie later, right? I’ll come with you, I think that venue’s a kind of far drive.” 

“Tone, you’re getting extra work from Professor Han? Yeesh, I heard she was scary as hell. I’ll come with you! …Nah, it’s no problem – I’ve gotta see one of my professors too. I’ve heard they were friends, actually…” 

It was bound to be Chaeyeon’s turn again, eventually. 

They were in the middle of another cramming session, with mid-semester finals closing in on them, when she stood abruptly, stretching her legs.

“I’m getting snacks.” 

They’d been there for hours, and she could see the life slowly draining from their faces. Her own legs felt numb, having spent the last hour or so staring at the amalgamation of incomplete sentences which sat in her Word doc, currently masquerading under the false identity of ‘essay draft’.  

Naturally, Yubin offered herself up. And so off they went.

It wasn’t that Chaeyeon was nervous; it had been long enough now that they’d had at least a few conversations with one another, although she’s pretty sure this must have been the first time they were alone. The idea sent something writhing around her gut.

"Rough assignment?" asked Yubin, trying to break the ice.

"Hm?"

"I, uh, saw the way you were looking at your laptop."

Chaeyeon raised a brow. "And what kind of look was I giving it?"

Yubin pursed her lips in thought, as if genuinely contemplating her answer. 

"...I don't know, but I'm pretty sure I saw you staring at your screen for a solid five minutes straight without touching your keyboard."

And Chaeyeon could break the ice, play her part too. An easy grin tugged at her lips. "So you were staring at me for five minutes?" 

Yubin scoffed, as if in disbelief, pupils darting away. 

But Chaeyeon could acknowledge when someone was making the effort, so she threw her a life buoy.

"Do you stare at all your friends, then? See what looks they're giving their computer screens?"

Yubin watched her, lagging, as if caught on Chaeyeon's words. It took a beat longer than Chaeyeon expected. 

“They all looked really tired,” Yubin said. “I think Kotone’s been working double shifts, and Jiwoo and Sohyun-unnie are both wiped from working on our album.” 

Pause.

“Wait, album?” 

Yubin’s brows furrowed, eyes meeting hers as they walked. “Yeah? We’re all in a band. Well, not all of us – Sohyun-unnie’s just been helping us out with our first album.”

It dawned on Chaeyeon then that she really didn’t know much about her new friends, despite how often she’d been seeing them lately.

“So who’s in the group?”

“Just Nien, Kotone, Jiwoo and me.”

It’s strange; it was the type of thing that Chaeyeon would have known about back then, but when she searches her mind, she can’t even recall either of them having an interest in music. She wasn’t sure if it’s because she had forgotten, or if she never had never known at all. 

There’s a sort of churning sensation at the thought – that realisation that the people she once used to know like the back of her hand have been growing without her, too. 

“It’s a bit hard,” Yubin continued mindlessly. “Balancing everything’s been pretty rough, but hey, at least we all have each other, right? And it’s been nice having Sohyun-unnie and Xinyu-unnie and everyone else’s support."

Her tone took on something wistful, and Chaeyeon was suddenly all too aware of the bags underlining her eyes, too. 

She remembered then, how Yubin used to tease her about the dark circles that bordered her eyes all those years ago. She would point and get all close to them, laughing at the way Chaeyeon would stumble back with a shriek. It wasn’t until Jiwoo pulled her aside one day that the girl abruptly stopped, and that was the last she’d heard of it. 

It was perhaps the last time Chaeyeon had ever gone out without makeup on, and the first time that she had looked into the mirror, truly looked in. And she saw a well, as she always did – saw her image reflected back onto her, but that time she finally decided to dive in, sinking deeper and deeper.

Maybe Yubin took her silence as discomfort, because she blinked repeatedly, as if shaking herself out of stupor, before pointing at the store. 

“Come on, let’s get them quickly.” 

Neither said much to each other as they browsed through the convenience store, walking in parallel lines between the aisles. But Chaeyeon faltered when they reconverged in the middle, with an incredulous look at Yubin’s basket.

“Why do you have so many different drinks?” 

Yubin tilted her head, before glancing down. “So many…? Oh, wait, these aren’t all for me,” she rushed to explain. “One for each of them!”

She picked up a grape-flavoured drink from her basket. “For Kotone. She says soft drinks make her mouth hurt, but she likes flavoured drinks like this. Oh, then this one’s Sohyun’s. She’d probably want an americano, but I think she’s had too much coffee, you know? And she always gets zero sugar versions of these drinks ‘cause it’s usually too sweet for her…” she shrugged, like having these things committed to memory was nothing particularly special.

Perhaps because it wasn’t, for her. Because Yubin was the type of person who called shotgun just to tease, but still sat in the back because she knew Jiwoo’s legs were too long. The type to chat up her professors even when she was exhausted, because she was waiting for a friend.

The type to accompany someone she hadn’t spoken to in five years – someone whose only intersection with her life consisted of tall, embarrassing-yet-charming friends and a momentary blip of shared history they only skirted around – simply because the people she cared about were tired. And hungry. And maybe working themselves to the brink of death.

She turned to Chaeyeon then, casually, like her words wouldn’t send her reeling, heartstrings unravelling on an endless spool. “You still like strawberry drinks, right? That one juice?”

So Chaeyeon jotted it down in her mind, underlined: Yubin was kind.

“Nah, I'm more of a yuzu person now.” 

Yubin nodded to herself thoughtfully, before a smirk worked its way to her face. "Hey, do you still remember what I like?"

Chaeyeon pouted, playfully averting her gaze, suddenly finding the labels on the snack packaging very interesting. "Uhh…"

"Yah! Seriously? Tsk, c'mon unnie."

The next time Chaeyeon revisited this list was during one of their hangouts at Sohyun’s place. 

Yubin had her legs propped up on top of Jiwoo’s, in the middle of a discussion with Sohyun.

“Maybe we should use the diminished fifth in this cadence?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know, it’s like we’re building all that tension for nothing,” Sohyun was saying. “And it kind of goes nowhere – like the next phrase just abruptly ends that there. They’re disconnected.”

Chaeyeon had never paid much attention to composition. The company tried to talk to her about it, once. She’d sat herself down with a notebook and her keyboard, and then stared at the pages and the notes, erasing and rewriting fragments of ideas and unfinished chord progressions until the shadows grew to envelop the room in darkness.

One of the girls had to drag her out, and she’d never been back in since. 

“Maybe that’s the point. Like you’re snowballing all that expectation, and then… poof.” A hum, a nod.

Kotone leaned in over next to her, from where she was sitting on Yubin’s left. 

“I have no idea what they’re talking about,” she whispered surreptitiously. “Do you?” 

She felt the water in her chest, felt the way her lungs ballooned and her heart shrunk as she sank.

Chaeyeon wasn’t particularly close to Kotone. Not to get it twisted, she liked her well enough. They were the same age too – it was just that the Japanese girl seemed to hang out more with Nien and their other friends and, consequently, hadn’t spoken one-on-one with her as much. 

“Oh, and what about a dominant seventh here?” 

But she was sociable – agreeable in the way she went along with the older girl’s antics, friendly enough to make space when they’d first met or show her a dance that she’d been learning just for the fun of it.

So Chaeyeon played along. “Not a fan of music theory?” 

“In the chorus?”

The brunette blew a raspberry, pulling a face. “Absolutely not. I’d rather stick my feet in hot coals then go anywhere near that shit.”

“That bad?” She chuckled, amused. “So you don’t compose at all?”

“Nah, I leave that to these nerds.”

“Yeah, it has more tension than the major seventh too. But it resolves over and over until the very end, then–” 

Yubin paused whatever she was saying, making a show of sticking her tongue out at Kotone, who only mirrored her in return. 

Sohyun seemed to finish her train of thought anyway. 

“Right. It never gets to go back to the tonic.” 

Kotone cleared her throat, continuing. “I’m just no good at that sort of thing. I don’t even know how I’m in the band, honestly. I mostly just hit the drums with whatever and hope for the best.” 

“That’s not true!” Yubin suddenly squawked, scandalised. They both turned to look at the girl, just as she lunged over toward Kotone, inadvertently whacking Jiwoo’s shoulder with her shin.

“Ow! What the—”

“You make all our beats. You lay out all the groundwork; you’re our foundation! And I know you’ve helped Nien with the basslines before!” 

“That’s nothing. You guys are the ones doing all the heavy-lifting.”

Yubin looked up at Kotone as the older girl protested, arms snaking around her waist while she tugged onto her sleeve, earnest. Chaeyeon could feel her fingers brush against her arm as the brunette fought back, pushing Yubin’s face away from her as the younger girl began trying to nuzzle into her shirt.

“Get off of me!”

“Not until you admit it! That you’re actually our goat!”

“What?”

“Goat, GOAT. Greatest Of All Time. Y’know, the English– Ah, whatever.”

Jiwoo finally schooled her features from guffawing as Yubin flailed about, instantly deadpan. “If you do not get this foot out of my face, I will literally launch you across the room.” 

Yubin only shoved her foot into the pocket of Jiwoo’s hoodie in response.

“Goatone!” Chaeyeon called out, fanning the flames.

“See, Chaeyeon gets it!” 

Sohyun had made her way over to Chaeyeon’s side with an incredulous shake of the head, in a half-hearted attempt at avoiding the fallout. She only narrowly dodged a pillow to the face.

As the all three roughhoused with each other, Chaeyeon made the note in her head: Yubin was clingy. She noticed it before, in the way that she’d hold hands or link arms with any of her friends – herself included, recently. But she supposed she hadn’t really fully registered it until now: foot slipping in-and-out of Jiwoo’s pocket, body thrown over Kotone as she tried to bite at the girl’s shoulder, even a hand that had managed to claw around Chaeyeon’s own arm. 

“She’s so clingy,” Chaeyeon repeated her thoughts absentmindedly. She was trying her best not to get dragged in, but she never really did pull away from Yubin’s grasp.

Sohyun swatted away a stray sock flung in their direction with a shrug. 

“Mhm, but she’s always been like that though. Nothing new.” 

The words sunk through Chaeyeon’s chest, rattling around in her ribcage. Because for the first time in the year that they’d known each other, she found herself disagreeing with Sohyun. 

(She found Yubin's arm – or hand, or shoulder – connected to hers more often than not, after that. She wasn't sure why. She wasn't sure what to make of it, either.)

There was one time where it was just the two of them together. The last round of assessments were coming up before finals, and both Chaeyeon and Yubin had a performance upcoming for their shared class. 

“I’m sick of this,” Yubin grumbled, rolling over and slamming headfirst into the carpet.

“We’ve only been here an hour,” Chaeyeon pointed out. “And you’ve been on your phone, like, half the time.” 

“Have nooooot,” Yubin drawled, not-so-discreetly pocketing her phone as she clambered back up, legs crossing.

Chaeyeon only raised a brow at her.

“Okay, well, they’re working on polishing the last songs now,” Yubin confessed, reaching to pull out her phone again. “I’m nervous.” 

Chaeyeon lifted her gaze from one of the practice scripts entirely, squinting at the other girl. “Why’d you choose an acting major?” 

“Um, what?” She blinked at the sudden change in topic. 

“Why acting?” Chaeyeon repeated. “You’re always talking to Sohyun-unnie about music, or humming to yourself, or writing lyrics. So why acting?” 

She blinked again, numbly. “You notice that stuff about me?”

"No," Chaeyeon said, serious as ever.

Yubin scoffed out a laugh, realising she wasn’t getting an answer. “Uh… I don’t know, I guess I just like the way it makes me feel.” 

“And what’s that?” 

“Like… like I’m seen.” Chaeyeon understood that, but it wasn’t what she was after.

“But when you’re on stage performing music, you don’t get that?” 

“I mean… when I’m acting, I’m seen, but not for me just as I am, or how they perceive me – but every other part, too. The funny parts. The quiet, brooding parts. The gentle parts. T-The selfish, all-consuming parts… Except none of it’s really me, so people can’t hold me to it. That’s what they think, anyway, but it’s all a lie because I think there’s a part of me that sits in every role I take on, y’know? I commit myself to all of them. And I think there’s a part of them that sits in me, in return.”

Chaeyeon let the words linger in the air, hanging suspended in the space between them. She thought she would have had to fight harder to wrestle the words out of her; such admissions weren't really given up so easily. It wasn't something Chaeyeon was used to. 

“I don’t think you’re selfish,” she said quietly. 

“Pft, damn,” Yubin scoffed. “I guess it really has been five years.” Before Chaeyeon could retaliate, Yubin continued. “What about you, then? Why this – why acting?” 

Feeling the air was growing too heavy, Chaeyeon rolled off the feeling. "Because this is the kind of face that's made for the screen, don't you think?" she asked, batting her eyelashes at the other girl.

Yubin made a show of cringing with a huff, taken aback by the tonal shift, but not entirely surprised.

"C'mon, seriously."

"I am serious!" protested Chaeyeon, entirely unseriously. She jutted out her hip, placing a hand on it as the other cupped her own chin, lips puckering toward the younger girl.

She got a kick out of watching Yubin squirm – despite the laughter that was clearly leaking behind her show of second-hand embarrassment – before the shorter girl eventually pushed her away. When Yubin levelled a look at her again, back straightening to watch her properly, Chaeyeon finally gave up on the Xinyu-esque posturing.

She mulled over her words for a moment, clicking her tongue after a beat too long.

“It’s what I do best,” is what she settled on.

But Yubin seemed to actually be catching on this time. “You know, I really liked you as an MC on that variety show,” she started. Chaeyeon gulped, feeling water get swallowed down too, condensing in the air. “And… your vocal colour really shone through. It was, I don’t know, it was almost like I could feel what you—”

“Acting’s what comes naturally to me,” said Chaeyeon, coughing out for air, like that would rid her throat of the lump that started to grow there.

But the water always had a way of coming back, even when the well had dried up. She felt the rain droplets – remembered what it was like to sink.

“No, seriously. I-I listen to your songs sometimes. Your OSTs too,” Yubin insisted, reasoning with her. Reasoning with herself, maybe. “I was listening to them when I was writing some of the final tracks on the album.” 

Chaeyeon decided that she would not go down easily this time.

She turned her gaze away, pulling at the hem of her shirt. 

“Nothing really lasts in this world, you know?” 

The younger girl finally wavered, narrowing her eyes at her, confusion clear. “What?” 

And Chaeyeon inhaled deeply. 

“Things change around us, all the time.” The trees, the wind. A teenager’s height, after five years – a transition into adulthood, or at least, some illusion of it. The speed at which a heart beats. The depth of a well. The reflection in its water. “We grow, we learn, the world keeps moving.”

Yubin looked at her like she was the one gasping for air, and Chaeyeon let go of her shirt, flexing her fingers instead. 

“But the screen, the camera – it lets me see the me that I was, the face that I wore then. So even if I change, for better or worse, I know there’s always that version of me that’s… somewhere out there, at least.” Her reflection sat still for once, stationary there for at least a split second. 

That’s more than Chaeyeon had ever let it stand since… well, she couldn’t really remember anymore. 

But Yubin stared at it closely, glasses on; she watched the light refract through the lenses, trying to understand what it was she was looking at.

“The fancams, the songs…” Yubin mumbled. “You don’t feel that way about those records of you?” 

Chaeyeon huffed out a chuckle, turned her attention up, away from stinging headlight eyes.

“I’ve visited a lot of places.” 

The other girl didn’t seem to have a response for that, simply burning a stare through her. Maybe she had learnt something at this point. Maybe she understood the game.

So Chaeyeon does her part. “Places I really liked and I’d revisit, then places that really… god, yeah, those weren't fun.” She shuddered, scoffed out a laugh, sucked in a breath. “But there are places I’ve visited that I just don’t even remember at all. I can talk about them, and when people say I’ve been there I know I have, but I don’t remember it. The feeling of it; what the air was like, how the water tasted – it's not there.”

She sighed, staring up at the dark corners of the practice room’s ceiling. 

“I think I like those places the least.” 

Yubin kept her eyes trained on her, then opened her mouth to speak. Chaeyeon wondered if she had been seen.

“You—”

She supposed she’d never know, as Yubin’s phone rang out then, notification echoing as it bounced around the room. The younger girl clicked her tongue, pulling it from her pocket. When she read the message, she pursed her lips, but didn’t sigh.

“I’ve gotta pick up Binnie,” she said instead, standing reluctantly. “Her mom’ll kill me if I don’t get her home on time.” She gnawed at her lip. “It’s not like we were doing much practising anyway,” 

Chaeyeon gave her a carefree shrug, watching as she packed her things.

“I don’t know what you mean; I think I’ve practised plenty.”

Yubin paused for a moment, eyes darting up to meet hers.  

The water kept rippling. Chaeyeon let a grin slip, as the other girl zipped her bag, moving toward the exit. “Bye, Chaeyeon.”

“Drive safe,” she said into the emptiness.

And there it was. Yubin was curious. But more than that, Chaeyeon found, more importantly: she was so, so easy to tease.

(The performance’s theme revolved around ‘Feelings In The Dark’. Chaeyeon wore the face of a mourning, but secretly – guiltily – relieved widow. Yubin was to assume the role of a scorned lover, who was grappling with the fact that they love a morally reprehensible character.

They both get the exact same grade, but opposite critiques: one gave up too much, too easily, too quickly; the other’s concealed turmoil remained too obscure. 

Regardless, Chaeyeon ribbed her afterwards. “Must be fate.”

“Uh huh, right.” Sceptical much. “You’re lucky though.”

“And why’s that?”

“It’s easy to feel for you – your character, I mean. You’ve got such… sad eyes.” 

She snorted. “Is that so?” 

Yubin nodded, trying to affirm her assertions. 

“Well, you’re unfair too.” She leaned in then, watched as Yubin’s eyes widened and she tripped over herself stepping back. “You’ve got the eyes of a yearner.” 

The younger girl huffed with red ears, fist loosely curled as she aimed for Chaeyeon’s shoulder.

She managed to miss completely. 

Chaeyeon had a feeling it may have been intentional, but that was neither here nor there.)

They were meant to be meeting at the park. The songs on the album had all been finished, and they were just planning out the finalisations. Yubin had texted her, asking when they could see each other. She wanted to be the first to show Chaeyeon. 

But it was ten past eight, over half an hour since the time they’d settled on, and her phone still remained patently motionless, notifications empty. 

Chaeyeon was beginning to think she’d been flaked out on. It was something she was okay with, though. The concept wasn’t exactly novel to her.

The leaves had shifted from their rosy pink hues, to the full bloom of the greens as summer began its descent upon them. She thought it was funny, that they’d decided to meet here of all places. Some joke of the universe, or God, or maybe just Gong Yubin. 

It was like some mangled, cosmic-mess-up of a game of spot the difference. Five and a half years, or now. The mayflies swarming that streetlamp? Check. The warmth of the sky’s oranges and pinks, ebbing out as they’re swallowed by the midnight blue? Also check.

A creaking, battered heart on the park swing set? Ding, ding, ding. Three for three. The only thing missing was a bottle of strawberry juice and a bottle of barley tea. But Chaeyeon was probably just feeling nostalgic. Either way, the only prize for her efforts was the chill that’d made its home on the back of her blackened phone screen. 

The semester was coming to a close, and those heartstrings were still on that spinning wheel, winding and unwinding, indecisive in their own existence. 

Chaeyeon was shaken from her thoughts when she heard footsteps digging into the ground from her right, plastic crinkling with movement, gaze burying itself into her skin. She was content not to look up, hands crawling down a red rope and tightening on the metallic cold of the swing’s chains instead. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Yubin gasped out, palms planted on her knees. “I-I didn’t think you’d still be here, and,” she gulped in another breath, “my phone died.” 

Leave it to Chaeyeon to assume the worst. Not that it mattered much anyway –  her mind had already decided to lose itself in the past, and her heart had decided to lose itself in the feeling. 

The numbness didn’t get to swallow her, pushed out when something else pressed against her fingertips. Glass, warmed by the heat of the younger girl's hands, as opposed to metal. Chaeyeon met Yubin’s trembling eyes, then accepted the peace offering for what it was.

She held the yuzu juice in her hand, but left it unopened as she waited.

“Uh,” said Yubin smartly. She scrambled, lifting the plastic bag to eye level once more. “I got a can of yuzu too, I just. I didn’t know which you wanted.” 

Chaeyeon cracked the glass bottle open, pressure fizzling out as Yubin let out a deep exhale, taking it as her sign to continue.

“Bin got herself into a fight.” 

The wheel stopped. Whatever it was that Chaeyeon was expecting, it certainly wasn’t that. She vocalised as much as she sputtered out, “What? Binnie? Our Binnie?” 

“I know, I know.” Yubin blinked, like she was still processing it herself. She planted herself onto the green swing seat on her left, fingers grasping around the rope. “I mean, I don’t think she was like, fully throwing hands or anything.” 

Chaeyeon sucked a tooth. “Is she okay?” 

“A little shaken –  you know how she is. She’s not… she’s not built for things like that.” A shuddering breath, a voice that melted in something quieter. “I'm not built for things like that. I almost punted a fifteen-year-old, straight up.” 

She hawked out an amused, dumbfounded scoff. “Uh, you can't just do things like that?” 

Yubin hummed out an agreement. “Yeah, prison’s probably not a good look for upcoming artists, huh?

Chaeyeon nodded along, slipping into it easily, screwing the cap back onto the bottle. “It’s okay though. I’d visit you in prison.”

“Ah, but visiting prison’s probably not a good look for a rising actor either, you know?”

“Probably not. But I’d still go.” 

Yubin let out a sharp exhale through her nose at the thought. “Sure you would.” 

Chaeyeon could hear something in her voice, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was yet. Amusement, maybe. Sarcasm or disbelief. Gentle, stinging agreement. Was she seen, or not seen? Schrodinger’s reflection rippled at the bottom of that well.

The other girl cleared her throat, pulling her from her thoughts. “Anyway, she had a bruise. And Auntie would kill her, then kill me for whatever reason – shoot the messenger, and all – if I let her go home like that. So I took her to Haidilao and we talked for a bit.”

“What’d she say?”

“Apparently her friend got involved in something – some of the older kids were picking on her, I think. There were no teachers around, so she tried to be the responsible one, tried to intervene. All she got was decked in the face.”

Chaeyeon winced, swirling the bottle pinched between her hands, watching the vortex that formed. “Ouch. Tch, kids are crazy these days.”

A shrug. “It’s alright though, I guess. She handled it better than I thought, she’s tougher than you’d think.” She hesitated, as if collecting her thoughts. “It’s—I don’t know, it’s weird. I hadn’t seen her in a while, and it’s kind of like, damn. She’s really growing up, you know?”

The pale, citrusy yellow spun and spun, pulp dragged into its centre, then down the bottom. 

Yubin shook herself out of it, remembering the point. “All that is to say, I’m sorry I was so late.” 

But Chaeyeon bore witness to the endearment, so doting in the way she spoke, that she was the one who had to shake her head.

“No, no, it’s okay. You’re alright,” she inhaled sharply, ignoring the pounding in her ribcage. “It’s… It’s nice that she has someone to rely on.”

“Yeah, I’m glad that she still called me, at the end of it.” Yubin laughed. “I don’t know who she’d go to with this stuff if I weren’t around – god only knows Jiwoo wouldn’t be able to handle it.” There’s no contest there, at least. “But yeah, it’s kind of nice to be someone she can rely on, too.”

Chaeyeon saw the tenderness in her eyes, brimming and bright, a candle in the dark. She was reminded suddenly of a similar look that she wore in the mirror, once, for a kid she used to know. 

It was one of those nights when Chaeyeon had been exhausted – where her limbs had grown limp and her body yearned for any respite at all – yet she hadn’t been able to let herself rest. One of those nights where that girl, Soomin, had come into her room, and the bags in her eyes told her a story she was all-too acquainted with: hours reading and remembering the messages and posts, swimming through the void like there was a bottom that could be reached.

It was nights like those where she let the younger girl crawl into her bed, and they’d hold onto each other in the darkness like it could engulf the sobs and stave off that gaping empty in their chests. 

For a brief moment, as she watched Yubin’s almost-tangible affection, she wondered if things were not too late. She wondered what it would be like to reach out – if her heartstrings would twist and bend, stretch taut and then go slack, or if they would simply snap under the pressure. One message: an attempt at an wilting, rotted olive branch, but an attempt nonetheless. She wondered if she could be accepted for what she was. 

Yubin, despite months of the game, still couldn’t pick up on much. Mastery was not granted so easily; if it were, well. Chaeyeon would be a very different person. She had her finger lingering at the edge of the KakaoTalk app, neck of the yuzu bottle pinched between her other hand, when Yubin decided to speak up again. 

“Ah, right. I have one of the songs I penned for the album.” 

Chaeyeon flickered out of her thoughts, summoned to the present. “Aw, booo. Only one? Where’s the rest?” 

“Hey, if I spoil them now, then where’s the fun in that?” Yubin gave her a wry grin. “You’ll just have to wait like everyone else.”

She scoffed, faux-offence palpable. “You’re such a tease,” she pouted. “Is it the title at least?”

Yubin mimed a zipper between her lips, closed shut, key thrown. Then extended the cable, then handed her one half of a pair of yellow earphones, small bears curiously adorning their sides.

It wasn’t until she inserted it into her right ear that Yubin pressed play. 

The song was a demo, clearly not the final product; only Yubin’s scratchy, probably sleep-deprived, voice filtered through, a piano the only accompaniment. It was also very clearly not the title. Still, Chaeyeon breathed the words in.

It spoke of comfort – the pride of watching another grow up, the pride in being there for someone. For being allowed to exist in their orbit.

Chaeyeon thought of Yubin’s fondness, so abundantly clear whenever she’d receive that personalised chime, telling her Bin had messaged. She thought of the photos that Jiwoo and Kotone would show her of the pair, a mirrored affection in the youngest girl’s eyes. 

She thought of a raven-haired girl, bubbling with energy even in the darkest of hours, arms wrapped around her waist as she talked in her ear before she would eventually – inevitably – succumb to the gnawing fatigue. She remembered a message in her DMs, unopened now for 245 days. 

“Wait, are you crying?” 

Ridiculous. She was not. Chaeyeon rubbed at her lids, wiped at what must have been the condensation of the night chill away.

“Am not,” she argued as much hoarsely, contorting her face into a grin. 

Despite it all, Yubin would never be the first in line to deny a chance at teasing. “You so are!”

“I got something in my eye.”

“You love it.”

“A speck of dust.” 

“I’m touched, really.” 

“Actually it’s a stye. Real inflamed,” she sniffed.

“Aw, come on, admit it. You like it,” Yubin nudged at her, unable to see past her smile. 

It nicked something in her chest, but it was enough to make her expression melt into something softer. “Yeah. I do like it,” Chaeyeon said vulnerably. 

Yubin stuttered for a moment, stunned at the admission. Her own face grew into a gentle smile though. “Well, guess we have to put it into the album now. It’s got the Chaeyeon stamp of approval and everything.” 

That chime went off suddenly, through the earphones directly. Yubin unplugged them, checking her phone, and her smile grew wider. 

“Heh, Binnie told Auntie that she just hit her cheek on the table, and she believed her. Ah, lying to your parents,” she chuckled under her breath. “They grow up so fast.”  

So Yubin was protective – an unnie, at heart. Chaeyeon herself was starting to forget the feeling. 

(They walked home together that night, shoulders bumping casually with each step. Chaeyeon had screwed back on the lid of the yuzu bottle, still swirling it in her hand. When they got to Chaeyeon’s apartment, Yubin held out the plastic bag again, reaching into it.

Chaeyeon was ready to protest – she didn’t want the yuzu soft drink, after all – until Yubin pulled out a strawberry juice drink, the words 'I'm real' bolded, printed out in English. A drawing of a strawberry glowed as the light reflected off the label. 

“Here,” she mumbled. “For…” She lost her nerve. “For whoever. Your mom, maybe.” 

Seen, or not seen? The scales wobbled with uncertainty. Chaeyeon watched her as she took the strawberry juice from Yubin’s hands, twisting off the cap. Followed the younger girl’s eyes trail down her throat as she took a sip. 

“Thanks, Yubin,” she said, pocketing the yuzu drink. “I’ll let you know if she likes it.”)

(Chaeyeon opened the messaging app afterwards, let 245 days tick down to zero in an instant. The caret blinked rhythmically in the message bar as she stared at the barren DM, until the exhaustion took over. There it remained, the only company to that last final message – no longer unread, but still untouched.

‘unnie, I miss you’

The reciprocal words ‘I’m sorry’, which preceded the caret, went unsent.) 

It was still technically finals week, but Chaeyeon had just wrapped up her last one, and was now free for the summer at last. She was on her way to the broadcasting room, on account of Xinyu; her senior had summoned her with a very succinct set of text messages (‘kimchaeee~~~ 🥺🥺🦌🦌’ ‘come to the clubroom when ur done 📢📢📢’ 'oh wait ur exam's probably started already' ‘hwaitinggg!!! 💕💕✨’), so she hurried her way up the stairs and down the halls. 

Pushing the door open, she was only vaguely surprised to see most of their friend group already there. They'd made a habit of crashing the clubroom at various points throughout the semester anyway. Except—

“Don't you have a practical exam right now?” Chaeyeon squinted at Kotone as she plopped down next to her, who shrugged in response. 

“Finished early.” 

“‘Cause she's our Goatone!” Nien hollered from across the room, where she had her legs sprawled across Xinyu. “I've been telling y'all she's cracked. Like, that's our nerd, woooo!!”

“Shut up,” Kotone hissed. She got a pillow thrown at her for her protests. 

“Enough with the pillows,” Sohyun groaned, as Jiwoo cackled at her side. “This isn't even our clubroom.” 

It was at this moment that Yubin walked in, peeking her head around the corner curiously.

“Great, we're all here!” Xinyu sprung up, tossing Nien’s legs off of her. The sudden movement made the Taiwanese-Vietnamese girl lose balance, and her pillow-ammunition found a new target: square into Yubin’s face. 

“Ack—You—What the hell?” 

“That was Tone!” 

“No, it wasn’t, you little—”

"Little? That's big talk, for a 160cm gremlin."

“If neither of you stop, I will fling my sock at you again…”

“Enough!” Xinyu huffed. Maybe in actual annoyance, maybe just going along with the bit – it was always hard to tell with her. “Oh my god, how have you guys gotten anything done without us?” She met Sohyun’s gaze, shaking her head in disbelief. 

“Eh, isn't that the mystery? Sheer dumb luck, maybe,” Nien shrugged.

“Dumb is right, for sure…” 

Xinyu only squealed as the pink-haired girl tried to tackle her from behind. 

“Wasn’t there something you wanted to talk about?” Chaeyeon coughed as Yubin slid beside her. 

“Ow, let—If one of you breaks something in here, it's coming out of your club's funding!” 

“Fine by me!” Nien grinned toothily, despite the headlock she was currently in.

“We don't have funding! We're not the uni’s official endorsed band – that's just my money from work!” Kotone argued.

“Hey,” Yubin mock-whispered to Chaeyeon, amidst the chaos. Her eyes still managed to glimmer, despite the dingy university lights and her windswept hair. “Come with me for a bit?” 

“Uh…” She heard a thud, followed by screaming. “Should we really be leaving them alone in here?”

“They'll live,” Yubin shrugged. A crash, then a yelp. “Err, probably.” 

Xinyu shrieked from somewhere across the room. “Chaeyeon, help me!”

“Aaaand that’s my cue. Let’s get outta here.” Chaeyeon nodded to herself, taking Yubin’s hand. The older Chinese girl just stared at her, mouth agape, as the betrayal coloured her features. Traitor, she mouthed. 

Chaeyeon made a face at her, right before they slipped out as she let out a giggle.

Yubin hummed to herself as she wrapped her arm around Chaeyeon’s, footsteps echoing in sync as they walked down the hall.

“Why do you have pillows in the clubroom, anyway?” 

Chaeyeon pondered for a moment, deciding to actually entertain the thought. “Meh, who knows what goes on in Xinyu's head? Maybe she got them to lure Nien in.” 

Yubin snorted, gaze trained to vinyl flooring. "Nah, no way. She does that all on her own. But if she really wanted to do that, she'd just need to invite you and Kotone-unnie."

It was nonsensical, and she knew it. "Me? As bait? For Nien? Hah."

Maybe the bewilderment wasn't enough for Yubin, with the way she turned to her then.

"What do you mean? She's on you, like, all the time."

Now that enough time had passed – enough instances of accidentally crashing at her dorm, or entertaining her while she plotted her schemes against their friends – Nien had finally decided to assimilate Chaeyeon into the 'inner circle' again. In other words, she would cling to her and ramble about other girls, while Chaeyeon sat there and took it. Thanks, Hsu Nientzu.

Regardless, Chaeyeon caught the flustered red of the younger girl's ears and the flitting of her restless gaze, and Chaeyeon was never one to resist a chance to tease. She tugged at her arm, stopping – a mirror to the grin tugging at her lips.

"Aw, is Gong Yubin jealous that Nien's taking all my time?"

"Yah, unnie!" Yubin whined. "Don't call me that. It sounds so formal." She pressed the edges of her mouth together, sulking.

Her smile only grew, spreading with the redness along the girl's neck.

"What do you want me to call you then? Yubin-ah?" She stepped forward, as Yubin squirmed. "Yubam? My Yubinnie?"

"Aish, seriously…" Chaeyeon revelled in the way that Yubin pushed her away slightly, avoiding her gaze.

"Heh, for real though," she stepped away, giving the younger girl space. "I don't think you have to worry about Nien. She's got her hands full—"

Yubin grabbed at her sleeve then, pulling her into one of the rooms. "I have something to show you."

Chaeyeon didn't miss the way the other girl's ears were still bright red, or the patent lack of eye contact. But because she had decided that she was feeling benevolent that day, in a very Nien-like fashion, she let go.

"What is it? Will it take long?" She took out a chair, letting Yubin sit. "Because I feel like Xinyu is gonna barge in at any moment to try and get backup."

As Chaeyeon settled down herself, she looked up, finding an outstretched arm, yellow earphones offered in hand.

"Just a few minutes."

She looked at them, then, as she took the right one into her hand. "What's with the bears?"

Yubin glanced up from her phone curiously, registering the question as she spotted the offending item.

"Oh. Jiwoo got those for herself a while back, and I told her that they were cute 'cause they kind of reminded me of her, so she just gave them to me." She chuckled fondly, staring at her phone screen. "But she's always been like that, right?"

And that she had. Even if they hadn't talked, Chaeyeon still picked up on how Jiwoo slowly started buying snacks before their study sessions, or the way she would do practically anything Yubin asked of her (with endless protests falling from her lips, but nonetheless). And there was that one time, when she wordlessly placed a yuzu drink in front of her without so much of a glance in her direction. Five and a half years, but it was one of the few things in the picture that had never changed.

Directly adjacent to that was the gap that had grown between them – that was the difference. Perhaps it was for the best, though.

Because Jiwoo was the type of person who gives and gives and gives, and Chaeyeon hated being the one that takes.

"Hm." Chaeyeon sniffed, her own eyes falling to the phone. "So, is this one the title? Do I finally have the honour of hearing it?"

Yubin hesitated. "You tell me."

She fidgeted with her fingers, rolling the wire of the earphones in one of her hands as the other hovered over the screen. But after a moment, she – inevitably, invariably, irrevocably – pressed play.

It was unobtrusive enough, in its easygoing upbeat rhythm and driving bass in the intro – a stark contrast to the song that she'd shown her in the park. Easy enough to get lost in the melodic hook of the guitar and the synths, or the punctuated major chords that sang over the pulse of the kick drum.

And then it got to the pre-chorus.

A producer, one that they'd frequently worked with, once told her that silence was music, too. That it gave room for a phrase to breathe, let the feeling sink into the space it left in its wake.

It dropped to a half-time feel, and Chaeyeon felt her world slow with it.

She felt like she was sinking, when all she had left to focus on was Jiwoo's delicate voice through the earphones' speakers.

"And you say one thing / but you'll drink to another / Citrus in my skin / when you talk underwater"

Yubin's vocals followed as echoes in the background like an afterthought.

The nausea rose in her chest, floating up with the bile. Seen or not seen. The ultimate quantum conundrum.

"A convo becomes a choreo / The right word's a game / A laugh like you don't know / How you're driving me insane"

She observed it directly, opening the box. The drums kicked back up, sending the beat in her chest ricocheting throughout the chorus.

"You see me for what I'm not / A heart can't help for what it wants"

The collapse of a wavefunction and a quantum existence all at once. A reflection, decidedly dead in the water.

Chaeyeon felt foreign in her own skin. As though her veins were slowly draining, the blood within suffocating for the lack of air. She remembered suddenly then, what it was like to swim for the first time. It was such a juvenile feeling – kicking her legs fervently, desperately trying to keep her head above the water, gasping for breath.

She'd forgotten how much harder it was, than to simply let herself sink.

As the piano trailed out into the second verse, she registered Yubin's quivering eyes, twin to her erratic contortions of her heart.

The song paused, silence settling in that space in an instant.

Yubin looked into her. "Hey, you good?"

Her arteries crawled, like they could make up for the loss.

"Yeah. Fine, I'm fine. I'm sorry."

Yubin's nerves flickered, face contorting as she traced Chaeyeon's own expression. "It's fine? A-Are you sure you're good?"

"Yep. I'm good – it's good. The song, I mean."

"Really?"

"Sorry, um." Chaeyeon cleared her throat, trying to shake herself out of it. "Yeah, that… That opening riff is really nice."

Yubin stared at her with jittery pupils, and Chaeyeon had to remember herself. "Do you mean that?"

She mustered a smile with all she had, slipping into a second skin. "I promise."

"Really? You better be serious." Yubin's eyes brightened, and Chaeyeon felt herself growing dimmer. "You shouldn't make promises you can't keep, you know."

She thought things came easier this way, wearing someone else's smile, but she couldn't stand the look in on Yubin's face.

Yubin seemed to take her silence as her sign to continue, as she spoke more about the song.

"…and I had trouble with that hook, but Sohyun-unnie asked me to just think about—"

Chaeyeon stood abruptly, the metal legs of the chair scraping against the floorboards.

"I have to go, actually."

"What? Now?" Yubin sputtered, scrambling. Chaeyeon didn't want to watch the look on her face change, and she turned for the door. "But I still have—"

"I just really have to go to the bathroom," she said into the void space in front of her.

She heard Yubin trying to gather her things. "Wh– Wait, are you okay? Are you being for real?"

I'm sorry. Two words. Two words that she must have repeated thousands of times across her life, by now. To a producer during a recording, or a director at a shoot. To a manager after a late arrival. To the heartfelt, touching, scathing, faceless voices, all coalescing into an insatiable monolith – one that says I thought that you—

To a group of girls who may know her better than she even knows herself, when she decided that she could no longer stand to know them.

It should've come easy, because this was natural to her. It's what she does best.

And it did come easy, it did.

"I'm sorry."

Chaeyeon rushed out into the hall, feeling the classroom door slam behind her, wind stolen out from her lungs. She felt something pooling in her limbs, growing heavy with each step. And she did go to the bathroom, because she wasn't a liar.

Kim Chaeyeon has never told a lie before.

She stood in that stall for a moment – only until that pooling feeling drained out, and she felt the emptiness once more. The air still thrummed in her skin, veins and arteries intact. She reconstructed the easy smile and the looseness in her shoulders, because that was enough.

It felt like it could be enough.

So she pushed the door open, let the soap lather in her skin before the rinse, the run of the water echoing. She shook her hands out, grinding the paper towel against the whorls of her fingertips, then stepped out of the room.

Down the hall on her left, she spotted Yubin walking toward her, taking in the confused furrow of her brows as they distantly made eye contact. World stop, or whatever. Or—Less so the world, more just that fragile, crystalline organ in her chest. She thought she might have heard a sound coming from that direction. The wisp of a voice, the beginning of a call. Maybe she heard it. Maybe she hadn't.

And in all her wisdom, Chaeyeon turned right, finding her way back to the clubroom.

"Oh my god, you're finally back." Xinyu perked up as she slid the door open. "Geez, I thought we'd have to send out an amber alert or something."

She flopped down on the couch next to Sohyun, clutching at the older girl's arm as she pulled her closer.

"See? Told ya they were probably just together," Nien chimed in, smug.

Kotone narrowed her eyes at the girl. "Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. Actually—Wait, where's…?"

Clinging to the fabric of Sohyun's sweatshirt, Chaeyeon snuggled further into her.

"Um… hello?? What am I to you – a sack of rice?" Xinyu waved an indignant arm at her, from where she was sitting on Sohyun's right. She used that ridiculously long arm to swat at her. "I am right here? Get off??"

"Mm mm." She shook her head defiantly, only further nestling in as Sohyun wrapped her arm around her.

It's muffled in the crook of Sohyun's arm, but she heard the older girl's voice as a rumble in her ear anyway – despite how Sohyun lowered her voice.

"Ah, just leave her be, baobei," she heard her whisper, as Sohyun patted her shoulder softly. "I'm sure she's tired."

"Hmph. Fine." Xinyu acquiesced, but crossed her arms with a scowl. She dropped the act, though, when a face showed up at the door. "Oh, there you are, Yubin."

Chaeyeon couldn't feel the heat of a stare from beneath the fabric of Sohyun's sleeve. She couldn't feel a magnetic field's pull – or the resulting electricity that danced beneath her skin – if she chose to ignore it. Because really, what power did it have over her? She never studied physics anyway.

The magnet made its way to Jiwoo's side, but let it be clear that Chaeyeon was not paying attention, so she wouldn't have known.

"We can finally talk about everything!" Xinyu continued. "Which is… wait…"

Kotone squinted at her from across the room. "The album?"

"Right!"

"You—" The Japanese girl scoffed, moving to stand. "Alright, let's just get to it. We have to film a music video for this competition – I think it's a collaboration between the music and media departments of a bunch of different universities? And if we win, we get to perform at all the unis involved. Plus the prize money's crazy."

"We're going to the beach!" Nien cut in. "We're thinking maybe Busan."

"Oh. Cool," Chaeyeon said, eloquent as ever. "But… why are we here then?" She tapped her forehead against Sohyun's shoulder as she motioned over at Xinyu.

"Uh, well…" Kotone rubbed at her nape sheepishly. "We don't exactly have the equipment to do all this on our own."

"Right, most of our club members are already helping with one of the other competing bands," Sohyun said from above her. There was a noise that sounded a lot like a boooooo! coming from Nien's direction. "You have Seo Dahyun to blame, for having the voice of an angel."

"Hey!" Nien piped up. "Jiwoo's also got the voice of an angel! Of a chorus of angels, even!!"

"To be fair, she is, like, the soul of the music department–" Jiwoo mumbled from some indefinite corner of the room.

"The point being!" Kotone jumped in again, sensing the conversation beginning to derail itself once more. "We're thinking of going on a trip to record this thing – just out of the city, at least. And we'll need the recording equipment from the broadcasting club and from the film club, soooo…"

Chaeyeon shifted to look up at Sohyun again, who only gave her a shrug. "Hey, I already agreed while you were gone."

Xinyu peered around from over Sohyun's shoulder. "So can you make it? All our other club members are rooting for the other groups…" She grumbled with a pout. "We'll probably need a few weeks to get everything in order, but we'll only need about a week to record this thing."

"Uhh…" Chaeyeon froze at the sudden offer, before untangling herself from out of Sohyun's embrace. "I-I don't know, guys. I think I might have plans over the summer, actually."

"What?!" Xinyu squawked, leaning over Sohyun to stare her down. "You said you didn't even know if you were going home for–"

"The plan's looking a little unclear, alright?" she coughed out, not wanting to meet her senior's eyes.

"Pleeaaaaaaaseee."

Chaeyeon's gaze wandered, flitting between the other girls in the group. Each one wore equally pleading, guilt-tripping expressions, hands clasped together as they looked at her sorrowfully.

"C'mon, we're not just after your equipment," Nien thought to say. "We want your company, too!"

She heard a small ow!, followed by a soft, "Yeah, that'll convince her. Way to go."

Her gaze darted past the corner of the room – not entirely dissimilar to the way it had four months ago, during some particular unassuming study session – before landing on the coarse, rigid lines of the hardwood floor. Still, she could feel the weight of their gazes too, sitting heavily on the quiet space.

"Please?" Xinyu asked again.

And ah, right. Instinct and habit were not shed so easily, either. If they were, well. Chaeyeon would be a very different person.

So naturally she agreed, to the cheers of the other girls.

("See? It did work, hah!" A suspiciously pillow-sounding thud resounded afterwards.)

Days passed. Chaeyeon had been spending the majority of her time locked in her dorm, contemplating her decisions. Her roommate had decided to go back to her hometown for the break, and she was left alone to stare at her phone, occasionally responding to the memes and stupid GIFs that Xinyu or Nien were sending her.

There were messages on a DM on KakaoTalk that had been left unread, notifications slowly stacking in numbers with each passing day. But it didn't bother Chaeyeon, really. It wasn't like it was anything she was unaccustomed to. (Eight days hardly stacked against 245, but it's not like Chaeyeon was counting, right?)

It's not as if she was a complete shut-in. She'd gone out to lunch with Xinyu at one point, ignored her blatant attempts at bringing up her… non-avoidance of a certain younger girl – because that wasn't what was happening, no matter what Xinyu's perfectly arched brow implied.

Nien invited her to go out shopping on the weekend, then proceeded to yap her ear off the entire time over Tone 'giving her the cold shoulder' or one of the shows she'd been watching. For all her extrovertisms, even Chaeyeon forgot just how loud the older Taiwanese-Vietnamese girl could get. Nevertheless, Chaeyeon couldn't brush the odd feeling of a piercing gaze when she wasn't looking.

She had a movie night with Sohyun and Xinyu, too. Even Jiwoo was there, and they were sort of delegated to the same couch as the former pair claimed the loveseat. ('An eviction', Xinyu had called it. 'You've had it too good for too long', and what have you. 'How do you even know the word for that?' Sohyun had been the one to answer for her. 'K-drama.' Chaeyeon just poked out a tongue at the both of them.) But it really was fine. Jiwoo just laughed at her bad impressions of the whatever horrifically corny dating show that Xinyu had put on, and joked along when the latter started jeering at them.

So things were fine. They were.

Her screen lit up with a message and, there, see? Kotone had just asked her to hang out. So Chaeyeon trudged through her non-mess of a dorm room, cleaned herself up enough to look presentable, and made it to the cafe they'd decided to meet at, a whole two minutes early. She may have (not) been a mess, but she'd never keep anyone waiting.

Not that it mattered much, since Kotone seemed to have beaten her to the punch. She was already sitting down at one of the window seats, fiddling with her phone when Chaeyeon walked in.

"Whatcha doing?" Chaeyeon said, peeking over her shoulder.

"Gah!" Kotone jumped in her seat, phone clattering against the table before she clumsily fumbled for it. "Dude, you cannot just do that to a girl. Almost gave me a heart attack."

She laughed, watching the pink tint the Japanese girl's cheeks.

"Were you that locked in to… whatever it was, that you were doing?"

Kotone shuffled a little further closer to the glass, grumbling. "…Maybe."

She raised a brow. "What was it, anyway? Finally talking to Nien again?"

"Not a chance in hell." The girl let out a sharp, mirthless exhale.

"Whoa, that bad?" Chaeyeon sucked in a breath. "What'd she pull now?"

"No, it's not—" Kotone played with the back of her phone case, fingertips running along the ridges. She heaved out a sigh, furrowed brows melting to something more akin to resignation. "I don't know, she's just so… Nien, sometimes."

There was something oddly wistful about the way she said it. But Chaeyeon didn't push; her cadence was telling enough.

"Yeah, I get that," she said. And she did get it. Because she, too, knew Hsu Nientzu.

But she wanted to know Kamimoto Kotone a little better. "Hear enough about it from my roommate."

That garnered a reaction from the Japanese girl, at the very least. Kotone narrowed her eyes at her, followed by a small tilt of the head. But maybe her cadence was telling enough, as Kotone just tapped against the back of her phone rhythmically, letting the topic die out.

"What were you doing then?" Chaeyeon thought to ask instead, leaning in again.

Kotone finally conceded, pulling her phone toward her chest. "I… I'm playing a rhythm game," she mumbled. "I almost PB'ed this map, too."

Chaeyeon's smile grew into a chuckle. "No way."

"Brooo, not you too," grumbled Kotone, practically face-palming the table.

"What? What—I didn't even say anything?" Chaeyeon protested between giggles, trying to avoid the way the girl swatted at her. "I just. That's so… you."

Kotone was not having it. "Don't even start." She scoffed. "You're just like Nien-unnie sometimes."

Chaeyeon knit her brows together in a sceptical crease. "I don't know about that."

"Sure you are," she insisted cogently, as if arguing a case. "You both tease and tease and tease until…" She let out another deep sigh, shoulders sagging with the effort. "Ah, whatever."

"Hey!" Chaeyeon argued, because it was all she could think to do. "I haven't teased you that much."

Kotone planted her chin against her palm. "That's true, but you…" She shook her head, more to herself than anyone else, before standing. "Eh, forget about it. Let's order."

Chaeyeon let herself get tugged into the line, peering past the people in front of them to get a look at the menu. She was pretty sure she'd seen this cafe trending on her reels before, with its sleek bar counters and its dim golden lights, and she just hoped it actually tasted halfway decent. She needed the caffeine.

When they got close to the register, Kotone tutted as Chaeyeon took out her phone.

"Nah, this one's on me. Least I could do, since you're helping us out with the band." And ah, Chaeyeon should have known.

Since she'd agreed to going on their trip, she'd been invited to a group chat that had been blowing up daily with messages, though Chaeyeon hardly said a word in it at all. They'd met up a few times to discuss the details; even Xinyu and Sohyun had crashed couple of their band practices to talk. She still hadn't gone to any yet, though.

Kotone turned ever so slightly to face her. "You're still coming, right? We decided on… not next week, but the week after."

"Yeah. Yeah, for sure."

"Cool!" She beamed at her. "Oh yeah, what are you getting?"

Chaeyeon pulled at her own finger. "An americano."

"Ah…" Kotone mused. "Yeah, I'm not big on coffee. Oh, they have milk tea too actually." Her eyes widened with an idea. "Oooh, maybe a strawberry latte, actually."

Chaeyeon twisted to look at the other girl properly. "You like strawberry flavour?"

"Uhhh, I like it sometimes…" Kotone blew a raspberry, "but I'm guess I'm kind of craving it more these days. It's Yubin's fault, really. She's been mentioning it a lot lately."

The motions came easy to her. The picking-up of a heart rate, a swallow. "She has?"

"Sure." Kotone nodded. And because she'd already hit the ground running, she didn't seem to think about how words could wind a person. "She's been mentioning you a lot too, actually."

It was casual, spoken offhandedly. Like the words really were just as they were: words. And maybe they were, to Kotone, considering how she went right on to gear up for the next punch anyway.

"She keeps saying she misses you."

Chaeyeon's brow twitched. "Yeah, that um…" Suck in a breath, expel it out. "That sounds like her." Then she did what she does best, "So how is practice going?"

With the impending trip creeping up on her, Chaeyeon wasn't able to ignore the growing stack of KakaoTalk notifications for much longer after that. Not that she was trying to set a record or anything, because there was no way she'd get there with the looming deadline, even if she wanted to. So she'd caved and responded.

gongyubamie
are u okay unnie

kimchaeyeommi
fine. just busy with family

It was succinct. Or maybe just dry. Sue her, whatever, but Chaeyeon could feel herself getting tired, too.

Their messages over the next few days proceeded much the same way; Yubin would call, or invite her, or spam her, and Chaeyeon would respond in kind, never hovering over their DM long enough to hold a conversation.

But it was fine, because Chaeyeon was keeping herself busy. Binging whatever atrociously cringe-inducing show that Xinyu had put her on, or scrolling through reels or Twitter until her mind grew numb and pale, pupils melting into her screen.

It wasn't like she was bored or anything. But it was times like these – stale and static in her ear, fogginess setting over the days – that she was possessed with some inexplicable sting in her chest; dull, thudding and restless. But she wasn't about to go on her phone again, because she knew she'd just get the urge to do something drastic like sending a message. She could've called her roommate, but she knew that she was probably actually busy with her family, and she'd never be the person to take away from that.

So she did the one thing she actually could do.

Dirty clothes were gathered into a bag for laundry day. Hoodies were finally folded, sorted into her closet. Papers from the semester finally disposed of, eraser shavings finally cleared off her desk.

She was in the middle of cleaning under her bed when the head of the vacuum bumped against something. Strange. She bent down, fishing out a dusty box, creased at its corners and unfamiliar in the way that just bordered the fuzzy edges of her memory. Opening it, Chaeyeon picked up the first folded card she saw. And– Oh.

It wasn't a card at all. That's why that was down there.

When she thinks about it now, she doesn't really know what to feel. There was a lot that Chaeyeon didn't miss about that time. Endless nights staring down the mirror, tracing her figure in the image reflected back. Practising until the vocal runs stuttered to a stop with spatters of blood and her voice grew hoarse, singing like it could drown out the futile competition between her own thoughts, erratic as they looped tirelessly. 

Still, at the very least, she could always count on the fact that she was never really alone.

A caret blinked at her in the darkness.

She looked down again at the paper in her hands. A group of girls beamed back at her, eyes bright with the glimmer of the concert lights. Her own eyes hovered over an adolescent, zealous smile. It looked so, so familiar – almost real enough to touch.

But Chaeyeon couldn't recognise the girl staring back at her.

She slid the photo back into the box, tucking it back under the bed.

The trip inevitably rolled closer. Chaeyeon had managed to get herself together long enough to pack whatever clothes, toiletries and electronics she needed, because she wasn't about to be caught slacking. But it was the night prior, that Chaeyeon found herself at Xinyu's apartment. They'd decided they'd be travelling with two cars, and she'd decided to crash at Xinyu's place to avoid the hassle of coming in the early morning.

Sohyun, apparently, shared similar sentiments. Though Chaeyeon suspected that the older girl likely would've been there anyway.

And so it went like this: Sohyun on the couch, journal in hand with her laptop on the armrest, Chaeyeon stretched out beside her, feet resting on the older girl's lap. Xinyu had already retired for the night – something about 'getting her beauty sleep' for the long drive. Any other time, Chaeyeon would've been the first to agree with her, but not tonight.

She was on her phone, scrolling through Instagram when she saw that Yubin had posted a story. It's not like she was curious, because she wasn't. But her finger twitched and there was nothing good on her feed regardless.

It was a slip of the finger, maybe. But she found herself staring into Yubin's eyes anyway.

It was a selfie – clearly haphazardly taken, if the motion blur had anything to say about it. There was a TV screen in the background, playing some dramedy that Nien had been telling her about. In one corner of the photo, the Taiwanese-Vietnamese girl was posing on the floor, head propped up against an arm, mid-laugh. Farther away, in the opposite corner, Chaeyeon could spot a hint of pink that looked suspiciously like the same shade of this ridiculous shark onesie that Kotone had shown her once.

But then, in the centre of the picture – or, slightly on the left-hand side, really – was Yubin herself. She was smiling, but not directly at the camera. She followed her line of sight above, and– Ah. Jiwoo was guffawing behind her, arm wrapped around the shorter girl. The whole thing was appropriately captioned 'movie night with some weirdos'.

Chaeyeon let her gaze linger on a crooked smile and crescent eyes. Then she sighed and let her arms and phone fall unceremoniously into her lap.

At the noise, Sohyun looked up at her from her laptop. "You should go to sleep."

Chaeyeon opened her mouth, then closed it, shaking her head. "No, it's okay. I can stay up a little longer." She squinted at the older girl then. "Why are you still up anyway?"

A deep exhale. "I just really have to finish this demo." She blinked at her tiredly. "Sorry, I'm keeping you up, aren't I?"

At that, Chaeyeon smirked. "You don't need to apologise. This might be the only time I get to spend with unnie alone." She wiggled her toes against Sohyun's sweatshirt, causing the other girl to let out an amused huff.

"Heh, right." She paused her scribbling for a second, pencil suspended mid-air as the silence hung between them. "Still, I'm surprised you came over though."

"Why?"

"I don't know." Sohyun tapped her pencil against the cover of her journal, but her eyes remained trained on Chaeyeon. She was unsure of the way it made her feel – peeled back, almost. "I guess I just thought you'd rather be elsewhere."

Chaeyeon still wasn't sure, but it felt like there was something deliberate in the way Sohyun spoke. It made her feel—not uneasy, because Sohyun could never make her feel uneasy, but she felt something buzz beneath her flesh.

She dropped her phone instead, nail tapping polyrhythmically against her case, before she pulled herself closer to the older girl. She rested her head against her shoulder.

"Why would you say that?" she asked, past a smile. "Of course I'd be here – you're my favourite unnie after all." She leaned back to look at the girl with a mock-serious expression. "Don't tell Xinyu-unnie that though. She might actually kill me for real."

And as always, Sohyun laughed it off with an embarrassed giggle. After the moment passed, she lowered her laptop screen until it was almost closed, setting it aside as she fiddled with a chain around her neck. Then she turned to look back at the younger girl.

"Hey, Chaeyeon?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think you would still like me if Xinyu weren't around?"

"Pft, what?" A genuine smile grew plastered, widening to hide the apprehension. "I don't think I'd know you if Xinyu weren't around?"

"That's not what I meant."

Chaeyeon could see it now. A silver sun – the pendant connected to the chain. She watched it swing with a shake of Sohyun's head, though the older girl never broke eye contact. It was the kind of gaze that prickled at her, the kind she couldn't tear away from.

Sohyun folded a hand over her abdomen, brushing against her arm. "As in… if there was a world where Park Sohyun had feelings for Kim Chaeyeon, would you still feel the same way?"

Chaeyeon didn't think Sohyun had the audacity. Apparently, she stood corrected. But she would never give up so easily, because that wasn't who she was.

"Aw, what? Is this you rejecting me?" Chaeyeon pouted. "So cold-hearted, unnie…"

Sohyun gave a scoff, but not the offended kind. It skewed more amused. "You play so easily, Chaeyeon. You should be careful." She leaned in then, running her hands through her hair. "What if I did fall for you one day?"

Chaeyeon stuttered back. Because really, who was she in the face of a pretty girl's smile?

"Aish, don't joke about things like that, unnie," she grumbled. "It's so cruel to break a girl's heart that way."

Sohyun hummed, pupils flickering between hers. Chaeyeon wondered if she found what she was looking for.

Then the older girl leaned back, and Chaeyeon's heart dilated.

"Yeah," said Sohyun. "It would be."

She tilted the screen back up, fingers running along her trackpad. "Oh yeah," she said, just when Chaeyeon was beginning to think it was over. "Whose car do you think you'll be riding in tomorrow?"

"What?"

"Xinyu's or Jiwoo's? Just so we can get an idea of who's going where, you know?" She shot her a blue-light smile, and Chaeyeon felt her eyes start to dry. "Yubin's been saying she's so excited 'cause she hasn't hung out with you in a while."

Something in Chaeyeon's chest refracted, ricocheting between the chambers. She looked at Sohyun's eyes; they were bright in that cold way, like how snow glitters in the sun – though she felt the warmth ebbing from her fingertips.

"Isn't there anyone else? I actually want to live past 22." She made a show of squirming uncomfortably, throwing a tantrum.

And if the cold could press past further, seeping into skin, Sohyun didn't let it show. She simply laughed the younger girl off.

The smell of coffee and the clinking of cutlery wafted through the air as Chaeyeon sat slumped against the couch, rubbing her eyes blearily. Xinyu squinted at her from over the counter as she stirred her tea.

"You kind of look…"

"Don't say it," Chaeyeon groaned. "I barely slept last night."

"Yeah. I can tell." Xinyu let out a quiet oof! as Sohyun pushed at her lightly, the other girl sipping on her coffee. "This is why I told you guys to sleep early last night."

Chaeyeon could hear the two older girls talking quietly amongst themselves, though it settled to a low drone in her ears as the heaviness of sleep still weighed on her. Normally she was better at this, but not only after an hour of sleep.

She was only knocked out of it when the doorbell echoed throughout the apartment. At the same time, a notification rang out from the counter.

Xinyu tapped at her phone, nails clicking against her screen.

"You should go get that," she said, glancing up at Chaeyeon.

She looked up at her, perplexed. "Why me?"

"Uh, 'cause I'm drinking tea?" Xinyu raised her mug at the younger girl, gesturing at it with her other hand as if to say duh. She winced as Sohyun shot her a scolding glare. "And I think it's for you."

Chaeyeon didn't have the energy to question what that meant this early in the morning. She wasn't particularly in the mood to entertain Xinyu, so she slid into her slippers and trudged her way to the hallway.

The shock crawled up her spine, electricity chasing out the vestiges of her fatigue when she opened the front door.

"Yubin?"

The younger girl looked up at her with equally wide eyes. "Oh. Hey unnie."

"Uhh." Chaeyeon leaned back slightly, shielding her face behind the door to look back at the Chinese woman in the kitchen. She pulled a quizzical face at her. Xinyu simply averted her gaze, seemingly intent on sipping her tea. Go figure. Chaeyeon did her best to comb her fingers through her hair wildly for the next two seconds, before popping her head back out the door. "Xinyu's still…"

"Oh, that's fine." Yubin waved her off. "She's got a long drive ahead of her, anyway." She seemed very put-together, far more than most people, considering it was 5:24 am.

Chaeyeon narrowed her eyes in realisation. "Hold on, where's…?"

"Nien-unnie and Kotone-unnie went for a last minute snack run. And Jiwoo dropped me off, but then said she had somewhere to be suddenly."

She narrowed her eyes further somehow. "Somewhere to be? At half-past five in the morning? Right before our trip?"

"Eh, I don't know either." Yubin shrugged. She glanced up at her again, fiddling with her sweater paws. "Um. D'ya wanna go on a walk?"

"Now?"

"Y-Yeah. If you want. I mean, I don't know when the others will be back. Knowing those two, it'll probably be a while. So," Yubin rambled.

"No, it's fine." Chaeyeon tilted her head back behind the door again, finding Xinyu looking directly at her. The older girl made a shooing motion at her, an animated hand flung in her direction. She looked insane. Knitting her brows together, she let out an incredulous scoff before turning back to the door. "Just give me a minute."

They made it to a park bench not five minutes away before they set themselves down, feeling the summer warmth beginning to set in as the sun rose. There was the call of a birdsong and, distantly, a group of ahjummas power-walking past a pond, but otherwise complete silence. A bird flew into one of trees resting above, tending to its young.

"Isn't it weird that only, like, half of all bird species are migratory? I read that online once," Chaeyeon began, staring up at the tree. She could feel Yubin twist to look at her. "They could go anywhere. Do anything. But most just spend their short lives living in the exact same place they were born."

"Are you mad at me?" Yubin interjected. "Did I do something to make you upset? Or, or–"

"No." Chaeyeon went stock-still. The wind picked up suddenly, sending her hair billowing into her face, screening her from the other girl's vision. When it settled, the smile was already back on her face. "What's there to be mad about?"

"I don't– I don't know, but I saw Kotone-unnie's story. And Nien-unnie mentioned you last night," Yubin sulked. "You promised me we'd hang out, and we haven't hung out at all." She folded an arm over herself, shoulders hunched. "I told you already, didn't I? That you shouldn't make promises you can't keep."

"I promise I'm not upset with you." Chaeyeon met her shaking gaze with that stitched grin. "Although, you did just interrupt my very important discussion about bird migration."

Maybe she'd pushed too much, toed the line too far.

"You– What?" Yubin's face scrunched up in exasperation. "You said you were visiting family, but Nien-unnie said your family's not even–"

"My mom liked the strawberry juice."

Heartstrings stretched far past their yield point, because Chaeyeon was never going to be the one that relented.

It was like taking the wind from her sails. Yubin stuttered to a stop, breathless. "What?"

Chaeyeon kept winding it out, spinning and spinning those cords in her heart like she was still in control.

"The strawberry juice you bought. I gave it to her. She said she liked it."

Yubin pinned her with a stare, one that she'd never seen before. Not in the past week, not in the past four months, not even five and a half years ago, when she'd decided to leave a piece of herself on a swing set. Chaeyeon didn't even think it were possible for the other girl to look at her that way.

"You're so–" Yubin shook her head, eyes trained to the greenery of the park in front of them as she stood. "Man, whatever, unnie."

Chains are only as strong as the weakest link. In other words, the tensile strength of an object is determined solely by a single weak point. Some strand snapped in Chaeyeon's chest and she reached out – giving way to desperation – trying to reel it back.

She grabbed at Yubin's hand. "It's not you. I mean that."

"I don't know what you mean sometimes, unnie."

And Yubin turned away.

I'm sorry. Two words. One contraction. One lie, or half-truth, or maybe the whole truth and under no circumstances anything more. A paradox in the very moment that it rested at the junction between her lips and decided it would never dare venture to go any further.

Of all the apologies that have fallen from Chaeyeon's lips – the one time she wanted it to mean something was the only time she didn’t verbalise it. And so it ended with the same fate as all those other hollow whispers, cries, obligations, that she had voiced out: unheard, in the way that they were not ever really understood. 

She was only left reeling back elongated, severed strings drifting in the wind, still stretching out to a retreating shadow.

(When Chaeyeon returned to the apartment alone, Xinyu didn't comment as the younger girl slumped over, falling into her torso. She didn't say anything at all when Sohyun walked in later, the silent question clear in her expression. She simply held onto Chaeyeon, arm wrapped loosely around her shoulder.

When the others finally arrived, snacks and apologies in tow, Xinyu didn't remark on Yubin's downturned, jittery eyes. Nor did she speak up when they decided to split into their respective cars, and Chaeyeon automatically gravitated to her side, twin to Yubin's orbit around Jiwoo. She simply patted Chaeyeon on the shoulder and gave Sohyun a small, sympathetic shake of the head when they began loading their things into the car.

She was left in the silence – both Sohyun and Chaeyeon asleep – during the drive.)

They were in the small apartment they'd managed to book for the week. Chaeyeon had tried to ask Xinyu what the plan was for filming when they'd arrived, but the older girl had shaken her head at her and promptly beelined for the smaller of the two bedrooms, slamming her face into the bedsheets.

(Earlier, they'd drawn straws for who was taking which room and who was rooming with who. "If I end up in a room with you two lovebirds, I'm going to be sick." "Aw, c'mon Tone, don't be too harsh on our unnies. Besides, what if we end up together?" A waggle of the eyebrows, a yelp from being shoved.

Chaeyeon didn't know if it was a blessing or a curse that she and Yubin had drawn different rooms. As of now, though, that churning feeling in her stomach felt like it couldn't possibly be something to be thankful for.)

Jiwoo, too, had retired into the other larger room for the moment, so the rest of them were left to unpack all their snacks and get some basic housekeeping out the way.

The remaining band members (and Sohyun) seemed preoccupied with dealing the equipment, so Chaeyeon was left to sort through and start refrigerating any of their perishables. The others were quiet for the most part, though she noted the way Nien and Kotone were shoulder-to-shoulder. Huh.

Rummaging through one of the tote bags, she wrinkled her nose. "Uh, if a ziploc bag is left unsealed overnight," she began, pinching the offending item between her fingers as she held it up, "Can you still eat the chicken sandwich inside?"

Chaeyeon's eyes drifted up from the sad mess in the plastic, and for some staticky, warm, crushing, consuming moment, they met magnets.

She was snapped away when she heard a muffled voice – maybe Kotone's – going, "Uh, no?"

"Yeah! You'll get malaria?"

The muffled voice must've said something else, and there was a distant ping! of a phone going off, but she didn't hear it. Not when her attention was caught by that wobbly, scalding part of the room saying, "Excuse me," as it retreated to her shared room with Jiwoo, not even sparing Chaeyeon a glance.

"…You know," another voice continued. "Like that thing you get when you eat undercooked chicken and get these crazy cramps and you're stuck in bed for days?"

The slam of a chipped wooden door – barely any air pushed outward at all, quiet enough that a pin drop could be louder, but it rattled in Chaeyeon's chest all the same.

She sucked in a breath, tearing her gaze away. She was good enough at paying attention to her periphery. "Why is that so specific?"

"And isn't malaria from something else?" Kotone protested.

"Nahh, I'm pretty sure it's the raw chicken disease."

When Kotone let out an incredulous guffaw, a sound that seemed to have wrestled its way out of her, Chaeyeon couldn't help the way her eyes darted over to that chipped door. Another notification rung out, ignored all the same. Her hands fiddled aimlessly with the ziploc bag, resealing her probably-expired chicken sandwich.

She felt a presence on her left, right before she heard her deep voice.

"Hey, um…" Sohyun started quietly, low enough that she wouldn't be heard over Kotone and Nien's bickering.

Chaeyeon spotted the way Nien finally picked up her phone, swiping away for a brief moment.

"This morning was kind of—"

"I'm fine, unnie." Chaeyeon faced her, the edges of her lips quirking up as her jaw quivered.

Sohyun only looked at her with that worried blue gaze. "You sure? 'Cause…"

"Yeah." Needle and thread; stitch the dimples and the smile lines to her cheeks. Wide enough to reach her eyes, just enough to look genuine. It was easy, when she had all of Sohyun's attention like this. "Everything's fine."

"…Okay." The brush of a hand, feather-light, but fingertips coarse all the same as they trailed the back of her palm. It was only then that the older girl finally broke eye contact, turning to look at the other girls, still playfully teasing one another. "Malaria's from mosquito bites. Salmonella is what you get from eating raw food."

Kotone hmphed. "See?"

"Ah, if our Park-ssaem says so, I guess I admit defeat. You're lucky you win this time, Tone chan." Nien beamed that blinding white smile, ruffling the younger girl's bangs, who only pawed at her in response. Chaeyeon had to squint, but she could just barely make out the pink rising up her cheeks.

It was almost enough to distract her from the void space emanating from that chipped wooden door.

Then Nien's phone rang out suddenly with a characteristic custom jingle, mid-cheek-pinch – one that she had heard during their hangouts, along with the complimentary chime that echoed through her dorm sometimes, enough that she'd come to recognise it. And Chaeyeon would jump at any opportunity of a distraction she had at that point.

"Wow, your phone is blowing up, unnie." The smirk came easily. "Pft, lucky you, your girl–"

The look that Nien sent her then was nothing short of scalding. It was striking in the quiet sort of way; blade not at all serrated, at least to the naked eye. But looking closer the way Chaeyeon did – the way that she could, given their history – she found that edge, sharpened to a microscopic apex.

It was the kind of look she hadn't seen on a person's face in years, and that alone was enough to send her stumbling back.

Still, as Nien untangled herself from Kotone, Chaeyeon watched the younger girl's brows press together almost imperceptibly.

"I'll take this," Nien must've said under her breath, only really loud enough for Kotone to have heard.

And as she stood and slipped away, out their front door with a click, Chaeyeon didn't miss the way Kotone's smile faltered for a fraction of a second at the sound.

Then her features flickered back, resetting, and her eyes met Chaeyeon's – the look immediately brushed off her face.

"I, uh…" Kotone balled up the fabric of her sweatshirt, then stood up. "I think I'm gonna hit the hay, too. I—Um, I didn't get much sleep last night either."

She nodded – either at Chaeyeon, or maybe just to herself – before padding toward that chipped door. Chaeyeon watched as she disappeared behind it, enveloping the kitchen and living room in silence. There was a heavy atmosphere without the white noise of their bickering, a stark contrast to the lively energy that had cushioned them only a minute prior.

She heard the clearing of a throat, and she glanced up at Sohyun, still beside her.

"Yeah…" said Sohyun with a grimace. Chaeyeon followed her line of sight, back down to the ziploc bag still in her hands. "You should probably throw that out."

The seven of them did get around to filming eventually, to varying degrees of success. Between Jiwoo and Yubin being practically attached at the hip – inseparable for no longer than all of one scene – and Kotone being unable to hold eye contact with Nien with any expression other than hurt plainly colouring her features, it was clear that the simmering tension was starting to boil over.

It had come to a head earlier that day. They were supposed to be filming a scene where Nien would stare at Kotone shyly, gently, and the latter would be sipping on her drink, too oblivious to notice. Instead, Kotone had spilled her boba all over the older girl and Sohyun's brows knit together, signalling the end of the cut with a shake of her head. Despite having no part in it herself, while monitoring the footage and sneaking a look at Sohyun's downcast expression, Chaeyeon couldn't help the guilt that washed over anyway.

The evening light had started to settle, and most of the apartment was empty as they'd decided to go out for food. At least that's what Chaeyeon thought – the larger room seemed too quiet through the walls. For her part, Chaeyeon just wanted to stay in and get rest. Maybe numb her mind a little further.

Instead, as she neared the walls of their own small shared room, she heard muffled voices through the door.

"…shouldn't be toying with her…" That one was Xinyu; it took on a softer tonality than normal – almost cautious – but she'd still recognise that voice anywhere.

"That's not what…" Defensive. But Chaeyeon couldn't place the voice yet. She should've paid more attention to the other girls when they'd announced they were going out earlier.

It didn't take much detective work to figure it out, though. Not when the words began to fall foreign on Chaeyeon's ears, and she'd been friends with Xinyu long enough to know what the older girl sounded like when she spoke Mandarin.

It began to sound like it was getting heated and Chaeyeon stepped back, feeling a sudden unease from eavesdropping, even if she could no longer understand the words. Still, in spite of the (albeit poor) soundproofing of the door and a barrier the width of centuries in linguistics and etymology, as she faced away from the door, Chaeyeon managed to blatantly catch Kotone's name amidst the arguing.

She tucked it away in her mind, not making it more than four steps before the other bedroom door opened. The very girl in question quirked a brow at her expression as she stepped out, as if summoned.

"Oh, hey Chaeyeon. You okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Chaeyeon shook her head to herself. "Sorry, Tone. Just thought you already went out."

"Yeah, I'm meeting with Sohyun-unnie later," Kotone said with a yawn. "Want to come with us? We're grabbing dinner."

Chaeyeon glanced back at her shared room, which had grown suspiciously quiet, before she looked back at Kotone. "Sure, dinner would be great."

It was one evening after another day of misshapen attempts at filming that ultimately fell flat. Darkness cloaked their room, and despite the days starting to wear her out, Chaeyeon couldn't sleep. Her throat felt too dry, too, as the heat still managed to settle into the crevices of the room, even if the temperature outside had already dropped.

So she decided to slide off the couch that she'd been delegated to, slipping past the lump on the bed which she assumed must've been the older pair of girls, and only heaved out a sigh when the door shut behind her softly.

Only to jump at the sight of Nien already in the kitchen, water boiling on the stove.

"Oh my god," Chaeyeon gasped, clutching at her chest.

"What?" Nien titled her head at her.

"Nothing, you just… You almost gave me a heart attack. I thought you were already asleep?"

"Nah, we were still watching movies up until like"—Nien glanced at the clock hanging above the TV screen, which ticked another minute closer to midnight—"half an hour ago. The rest of 'em called it a night, though."

Chaeyeon padded over to one of the cupboards, taking out a glass. "Why're you still up then?"

Nien dangled a characteristically pink packet between her fingers, by way of a response.

"At midnight?"

"Uh, yeah?" Nien grinned at her as she ripped it open, dropping the dried noodles into the boiling water. "Midnight ramen's the best kind of ramen. Duh." She looked over her shoulder to glance at her. "Want one? We have other brands too."

"No, I'm good. That's kind of–" Chaeyeon swallowed, moving instead to dispense water into her cup. "Nevermind. I mean, yeah, no thank you."

The older girl let her sidelong glance last for a beat too long, staring into her eyes, before she turned back to her ramen. "Suit yourself."

It was silent, save for the bubbling of the boiling water and the clink of Nien's chopsticks against the side of the pot. But small talk had become their song and dance by this point, so Chaeyeon should've come to expect her next move by then.

"Things have kind of sucked lately, eh?" said Nien casually. More of a statement than anything else, but Chaeyeon knew what prodding looked like when she saw it. "We're only here for a few more days, so. Hope we can get all the takes we need."

She sipped on her water. "Yeah, I feel bad for Sohyun-unnie… She's been handling all the directing on top of her internship as well."

There was the rip of plastic, some mumbling along the lines of 'Tch, I should've used scissors', and a haphazardly-cut sauce packet was emptied into the pot.

"Xinyu's been having it rough too." Nien hummed thoughtfully . "You know, it's funny. She was the one who even suggested we do this trip, actually."

"She was?" Chaeyeon thought back to the day of her final exam. She did think it was weird they were meeting in the broadcasting room back then. "Guess that tracks."

"Mhm. Thing is, the whole reason she even wanted to do all this is 'cause she just wanted us all to hang out over the break."

"Really?" The shock of it finally had Chaeyeon lifting her gaze up from her cup to look at the other girl, but she still had her back turned. "Why would she give us false pretences about something as small as that?"

"Xinyu's…" Nien cracked an egg, watching it sizzle in the pan. "Well, that's just how she is, isn't she?"

Chaeyeon didn't think so. She thought Xinyu must have been one of the most honest people she knew. But who was she to question the judgement of her best friend – someone who laid claim to years of time with the older girl, who had shared countless stories and words and experiences that Chaeyeon could never hope to know, even with all the time in the world?

"…Right."

"Still. I don't know, it's like everyone's been out of it lately, too." She didn't turn around, but Chaeyeon felt the tone shift before she heard it. "Jiwoo's been joking around a lot less, and Yubin's… Well, you're… Y'know." She flipped the egg, listening to it hiss in the oil.

Chaeyeon's brows knit together. "I'm what?"

"Hm?" Nien began to turn around, but winced to herself as the oil spattered out. When she finally faced her, she looked genuinely surprised at Chaeyeon's expression. "Uh. Well, I mean, you guys are kind of…" At the sight of her eyes narrowing further, Nien's lips pursed together. She turned off the heat on the stove entirely. "Come on. You get what I mean. Like, I tried to talk to her earlier about this idea I had with this bassline, and she was following along right until you walked in, and it was—" She heaved a sigh. "She was gone, just like that."

Chaeyeon traced the condensation of the glass with her fingertips, feeling the water seep into her skin. "So, what? It's my fault now?"

It was Nien's turn to frown. "No? Just, I'm just worried about her. I haven't seen her like this ever." Leaning back against the counter, she put the chopsticks to the side before she made eye contact again. "But it's you, too.'

A deep exhale, tone levelled to something convincing, if not appeasing. "What about me? I'm fine."

"Are you?" Chaeyeon felt the heat of Nien's stare, but her eyes remained on the bottom of her glass. "I don't know, you just… I don't know, something just feels different with you lately."

"What would you know about that?" Chaeyeon's face contorted into a scowl for only a moment, but she schooled her features out to some attempt at normality. "I'm telling you, things are fine."

Nien had the eyes of a surveillance camera; no matter how far Chaeyeon strayed, every time she glanced back, she'd meet her piercing gaze.

The worst part about a camera lens is that – if you're close enough – when you look back into it, you can see your own image reflected back onto you, all distorted in its stretches and curves. And you think, 'god, is that what I really look like to you?'

"Look. You know I don't usually press, but you've just seemed off—"

"Off?" Chaeyeon scoffed, indignant heat finally flaring up. "What, off the way that Kotone's been?"

"Wh—" Nien's features twisted, stumbling. "I don't know why you're bringing—"

Chaeyeon was tired of pulling punches. Regardless of what was happening, she would never let it affect her work. She would never be the burden.

"Suddenly it's my fault you're all a mess. As if Kotone can't look at you more than a second without falling apart," she spat. "As if you're not stringing her along so badly that even your best friend—"

"You don't get to do that anymore," Nien cut through, without so much as raising her voice. She didn't need to. "At least I still know how to talk to her. You won't even afford Yubin that much."

Anger was a funny thing. It often when hand in hand with its close relative, Frustration, together enough that they were perhaps inextricable, if not indistinguishable. It was strange – sometimes it would run molten hot through her veins, other times it was an ice-cold chill passing through her extremities.

It was one of the first emotions that Chaeyeon had learnt to control; ignore the fire, wait for it to cool; keep the ice-cold water contained, wall it back.

But even dams break if there's a problem with the foundation.

"You're such a hypocrite." Chaeyeon shook her head, setting down her glass. "Like you're the poster child for being forthright, huh?"

"Well at least I'm not still afraid!" Nien breathed in deeply, trembling, like the words had even surprised herself. "I was fine with the way things happened last year because it was just me, and it was just you."

Chaeyeon thought they would never talk about it. She thought there were rules.

"But Yubin's my friend," Nien continued. Her attention drifted towards that chipped door, resting there. "And this band means the world to me."

Chaeyeon took it back.

Nien wasn't benevolent at all. And Chaeyeon didn't know anything about her.

She picked up her glass, moving towards the sink. If she caught the confused look the older girl sent her way right before she turned her back to her, she didn't show it.

"You should sleep soon." She rinsed it under the cold water, before leaving it to dry. "I think Sohyun-unnie wanted to start filming earlier tomorrow to make up for today."

Chaeyeon felt her voice closer than before.

"I let you in again because I do care about you," she heard Nien say softly. "But I care for them too. More than anything."

She threw one last glance over her shoulder, one last look at Nien's prying, sharp eyes.

"Goodnight, Nien."

She turned the handle to the bedroom door, slipped back into the couch, face to the wall. And she finally let sleep take her, without the door opening again.

The sunlight was just beginning to filter through the curtains when Chaeyeon awoke again. First light. It had been a while since Chaeyeon had instinctively woken up so early like this, but it still happened occasionally. Maybe it was the tension, or the unfamiliar bedding, or maybe she'd already adjusted to the early wake up of the past week, but it had always been one of the harder habits to break anyway.

She twisted in position. She could hear what was presumably Xinyu and Nien, still sleeping quietly, and she buried her head beneath her pillow. But even if her mind begged her to sleep a little longer, get the rest she knew she needed, she knew she couldn't fight muscle memory.

Pulling up her blanket, Chaeyeon cloaked herself before she checked her phone. She winced despite the dimness of the light, eyes still re-adjusting. Half past four. In the first year – maybe longer – after everything ended, sometimes she'd find herself waking at 3 am for almost no reason at all. So half past four wasn't so bad, all things considered.

Resigning herself to her fate, she stole one of the hoodies draped over a chair – probably Xinyu's. Then she pocketed her phone, tiptoeing past that floorboard that she'd realised was creaky the day before, and snuck out into the living room. She pointedly ignored the kitchen, settling into the couch, folding her legs up as she tapped through her phone.

Her half-awake thoughts seemed to take her to her KakaoTalk messages, for whatever reason. Her fingers lingered over that barren DM like muscle memory.

And like muscle memory, she closed the app anyway, content to scroll on reels until someone eventually woke up.

Instagram immediately showed her her messages as she opened the app, and she squinted at the green dot on the bottom right corner of her roommate's profile picture. Weird. Probably a glitch, in all fairness. There was a reason that most people she knew had the feature turned off, herself usually included. (Other than to hide her 4 am scrolling habits, of course.) The only reason she even had it on now was because her roommate had wrestled her phone from her weeks prior, claiming to be 'testing something'.

Whatever. She navigated away from the messages tab, but made it through a grand total of four reels before her ringtone rang out through the room.

She scrambled to turn the volume down, eyes darting up to both bedroom doors. Thankfully, nobody seemed to have heard.

Padding over to the front door, she responded to the call as she slipped into her outdoor shoes.

"Seoyeon-unnie? Why are you up so… early? So late?"

The older girl's voice crackled through her phone's speakers as she planted herself on one of the steps in the stairwell. Dang, she really should've taken her airpods with her.

"You have to stop doing this to yourself."

Chaeyeon let out a lighthearted scoff. "Gee, that's a weird way to start a conversation at 4 am. What happened to hi's and hello's, or 'It's been a while – sorry I've been too busy to call my awesome roommate'?"

The other girl clicked her tongue. "You know what I mean."

"Do I? What's with you guys and assuming I'd just get it, anyway?" Chaeyeon scraped the soles of her feet against the concrete, leaning back. "Nien said the same thing actually. Figures you'd call right now, too. God, you and Nien really are two peas in a pod. Plotting against me now, are we?"

Seoyeon didn't give her the grace. Which was probably a given, considering most people aren't really in the mood at 4 am, but alas. Chaeyeon wasn't in the mood to entertain, either.

"You know what I think?"

She didn't even ask what Chaeyeon was doing up so early. Not that she had to, to be fair. She already knew; she always had.

Chaeyeon knew that tone though. Unfortunately, to reiterate, she wasn't particularly in the mood.

"Well I'm sure you're about to tell me."

Seoyeon was usually a bit more of a stickler for manners, but she seemed to let this one slide.

"I think you've gotta stop being scared."

There's a sense of dramatic irony in her word choice, Chaeyeon was sure, or some other cosmic prank. She was joking when she'd said they were conspiring against her, but now she wasn't so sure. Two peas in a pod, indeed.

Of all the people she'd met, Yoon Seoyeon was one of the few allowed to see Kim Chaeyeon for what she was. Countless sleepless nights spent comforting someone does wonders for strengthening bonds, go figure. Nevertheless, it didn't make it any easier to show her the parts she hadn't seen. You could try to let something go a thousand times, but it doesn't make the thousand-and-first time any easier.

It's all too easy to return to the familiar, anyway.

"And I think you should probably text your girlfriend back. She's been getting touchier when you're not around."

But Seoyeon didn't bite, because she knew better. And Chaeyeon should have too, by this point.

"Please. I want you to be happy, Chae. I just wish you'd let yourself have that." 

Now would have been the time to bite the bullet. But you know, instinct and habit. So Chaeyeon bit her tongue and swallowed the truth instead – it was all the same anyway, the metallic tang in her mouth. 

"Maybe you're onto something. Nien seems pretty happy when she's all over Kotone."

"Why—"

She heard an exasperated sigh over the line. Finally.

"I'm sorry I haven't called. I'm just… figuring it out too, you know?" There was silence, the ambient noise of the call static in her ears. "I hope you can figure it out. You deserve it. You shouldn't keep punishing yourself like this."

If someone says something that isn't true, but believes it with all their heart, is it still a lie?

"Goodnight, unnie."

Chaeyeon heard the characteristic noise of three descending notes, and her phone lit up again, warming her left cheek against the early morning chill. Yeesh. Not even a goodbye. How rude.

Pocketing her phone, she squinted up at the light of dawn gradually starting to peek above the other buildings. She let out a sigh of her own, turning her back to it as she trudged back to the apartment.

Gong Yubin has been friends with Lee Jiwoo for as long as she can remember, which admittedly wasn't very long.

They have known each other since second grade, and have been attached to one another for the following 12 years after. They've attended 24 concerts together, gotten each other sick 42 times, shared 108 secrets, crashed at the other girl's place once between the both of them ('Lee Jiwoo, I'm never going to drink ever again') and had countless minor arguments, but they have almost never had a serious fight.

Gong Yubin has known Kim Chaeyeon since she was fourteen.

She has known of Kim Chaeyeon a lot longer – since rumours had been floating around that a certain entertainment agency had recruited a popular ulzzang who supposedly lived near their neighbourhood, one who had apparently been a child actor in minor roles. Such rumours had somehow led a 12-year-old Gong Yubin to the SNS page of one 12-year-old Kim Chaeyeon, where she had clicked follow. (She later found out those rumours had gotten their facts mixed up. The child actor and neighbourhood part was true; the ulzzang part was regarding an older trainee with a similar name who, by some twist of fate, also ended up in the same group.) There, the account remained in her following list up until its deactivation three years later.

For all the secrets they'd shared, this was one that not even Jiwoo knew.

It was certainly not one that 20-year-old Kim Chaeyeon knew either, as she stared at the pair of best friends while they filmed a scene together. She held the microphone above the pair, just out of shot.

('Can't they just wear clip-ons?' 'Absolutely not? C'mon, we're trying to serve quality here.')

Jiwoo brushed a stray hair out of Yubin's face.

No, all 20-year-old Kim Chaeyeon could claim to know was that Gong Yubin was joint at the hip with Lee Jiwoo; that was how it always had been, and that is how it always would be.

Yubin said something out of earshot; Jiwoo doubled over in laughter.

She wondered, sometimes, what it would be like to have someone like that. The way Hsu Nientzu was to Zhou Xinyu, the way Lee Jiwoo was to Gong Yubin. If someone could dip past the water for long enough, strain themselves against instinct and open their eyes to find her beneath the surface.

Yubin whined about the cold breeze; Jiwoo draped her flannel across her shoulders.

Then again, 20 years was enough for Chaeyeon to know that there was no point in asking questions she'd never get the answers to. So she watched a hand linger, heard a laugh echo, felt warmth reserved only between two, and let herself get eclipsed by a shadow of five years – 12 years, even – of memories she could never earnestly get to know. And she swallowed it, settling with the realisation that she was right, and that this was the best she could do after all.

Yubin caught her staring as she stood on the shore, inevitably. Chaeyeon matched her gaze, too lost in her own thoughts.

And Yubin promptly dropped all the sparklers she was holding for the next scene. Right into the incoming tide.

Xinyu hummed a simple tune, hands against the wheel. Chaeyeon spared her a glance, but mostly kept her own eyes on the road ahead. She thought the situation she found herself in was a little weird. Not Xinyu jumping to buy more sparklers – that was on-brand enough. Faster than Jiwoo was a little crazy, but not completely out there.

But dragging Chaeyeon along with her, even when Yubin had already offered? What for, really? It's not like she had anything to do with it. So sue her for being a little sceptical.

She was never going to turn down the older girl though, so there she was.

The walk to the car and the past few minutes on the road hadn't been awkward, per se; Xinyu had cracked a joke, Chaeyeon parried one back. Still, it felt a little like waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And it did, eventually.

"You and I haven't really talked much, have we?" said Xinyu, making a right turn.

"What do you mean? We talk all the time."

"More like you bother me all the time."

"Hey!" Chaeyeon exclaimed. "You're the one always spamming me."

"Uh, and you spam back? That's why it works. Duh." Xinyu rolled her eyes, though an easy smile tugged at her lips. But then the light shifted across her face, and Chaeyeon felt it prick at her skin. "Can I say something?" She drummed her fingers against the wheel, not waiting for a response. "I'm gonna say something."

Chaeyeon raised a brow. "Okay??"

"I am not," Xinyu declared, in the pale glow of the dusk-lit skies, "an easy person to love."

And for once, Chaeyeon felt a veil drop. She twisted over to look at the older girl, but her eyes were still trained on the road ahead. And as it should've, really, because Chaeyeon did not want to get into an accident.

"I say things for how they are, or how I see them. And I– I'm difficult, and I hold that against people," Xinyu explained slowly. She paused, as if turning the words over in her mind. "And I fight back sometimes, even when I know I'm wrong, because that's the kind of person I am. But I don't want people to see that."

She spoke the words plainly – perhaps because it was the only way she knew. Or perhaps because it was the only way she could.

"I say I'm too honest, so that when I lie, people won't be able to tell the difference. And maybe I don't always apologise when I should. And sometimes that hurts people I care about.

"But"—Chaeyeon's gaze drifted to the rearview, and in the reflection, she could see the way Xinyu's eyes fell to the necklace near her own throat—"the people that love me, love me anyway."

Chaeyeon bit at the inside of her cheek.

"It's easy for you," she said, her own eyes flitting away. "Because you're you."

A chuckle. "It's not easy, actually." Xinyu angled the wheel as they turned down a winding road. "I regret it, sometimes. Letting them love. I think they're wrong for it."

Chaeyeon opened her mouth to protest, but the older girl didn't give her the chance.

"But we can't really choose who to love, can we? And we can't force people to choose any differently, no matter how much we may want to." Her hands stilled against the wheel as they made it back to a straight road. "I think all we can do is live as closely as we can to who we really are, and live without regrets."

There was a clearness in her eyes when the older girl glanced at her. Some distilled, unadulterated honesty in the timbre of her voice. Chaeyeon hadn't seen anything like it in so long. Undiluted vulnerability was a commodity kept close to the chest.

She forgot, every now and then, that Xinyu was older than her. She never acted like it – maybe because of the cultural difference and how easygoing she was with honorifics, or how she went along so easily with her antics, but it happened enough that the difference usually slipped her mind altogether.

Seeing her speak this way was enough of a reminder, though.

"How do you know if you'll regret it?" she asked.

A golden crescent moon caught the light with a glint as it rested on Xinyu's collarbone.

"That's the fun of it." The older girl turned to give her a knowing grin. "You don't."

(There was a minute of silence, only the gentle hum of the engine and the scrape of asphalt beneath them. A coy smile worked its way onto Xinyu's lips, and she knew that the veil was back up. Or maybe, Chaeyeon was beginning to realise, there never really was much of a veil at all.

There was a beat, then, "Aw, wait, did you just admit you love me?"

"Shut up, unnie.")

By the time they arrived back at the beach, the sun had already almost been swallowed by the horizon completely. The closest convenience store was temporarily out of business, for some reason ('So much for convenience') and there were road works happening on one of the nearby major roads, so it took them a while longer to get back. Even though it was summer, the night-time wind was slowly starting to pick up, and they wanted to hurry through a few solo shots before lighting the sparklers with the group.

They were going to start with the solo takes, but they decided to sit in the sand for the moment, eating the consolation snacks that Xinyu had bought them.

Yubin sat alone, staring out as the ocean crawled up closer to high tide. The other girls were nearby, chattering and eating amongst themselves (with Xinyu and Sohyun as a buffer, mostly), but Yubin wasn't participating in the conversation. Even Jiwoo had left her alone, talking to Sohyun and Kotone instead.

Hesitant, Chaeyeon approached, plastic bag in hand.

"Gong Yubin," she said quietly. The younger girl turned her chin to look at her, expression unreadable. Chaeyeon breathed in sharply through her nose. "You should drink something, even if you won't eat."

She pulled out a drink, gently dropping it in the sand by Yubin's side. If the other girls lowered their voices, conversations slowing behind them, Chaeyeon didn't notice.

Yubin pressed her lips together, reaching out for the bottle, but not quite grabbing it. Chaeyeon's heart thumped in her chest, tentative, wondering if it was allowed to hope – wondering if deserved even as much.

The younger girl's eyes widened as she turned the bottle over, staring at a drink she hadn't had in over five years, in a park back home. The plastic of the barley tea bottle felt soft, almost malleable, in her hands.

"Okay." Her hands hovered over it, fingertips barely making contact.

Chaeyeon gulped, the handles of the bag twisting, wrapping around her hand as they blew in the wind. She wondered if it was enough. Her eyes darted, uncertain, quivering in the dark. She bit the bullet, letting the blood out into the water.

"I think barley tea's okay."

Yubin squinted at Chaeyeon's words. There was the rustle of more plastic, and her gaze drifted up to Chaeyeon, who pulled something else out from the bag. Another beverage, fluid a distinct shade of red. The characteristic English words bolded on the label, a drawing of a certain fruit on the right.

She unscrewed the cap, continuing, "But I prefer strawberry juice, myself."

That organ in her chest thumped thunderous, traitorous, entirely out of her control. When Chaeyeon swallowed, her pupils tremored, watching the other girl with rapt attention. She still couldn't find her answer.

Right as Yubin curled her fingers around the bottle in the sand, Chaeyeon turned away, her own fist curled into a ball in her pocket. Yubin drummed her finger against the plastic, watching the tea slosh around inside. She turned to face Jiwoo; the taller girl was already looking at her, sparklers in hand.

Her best friend held two of them out to her with round eyes.

The metal of the sparkler is cold in Chaeyeon's hands as she turns it over, eyes still tracing a retreating silhouette long since out of her view. They say a sparkler burns at over 1000°C. The average normal body temperature of a human being is 37°C.

In the dim light of half moon, the wind picks up something fierce, whipping through Chaeyeon's hair wildly. Even still, she feels that maybe 1000°C could break through the ice-cold surface of the water.

They don't stay out for much longer after that. Sohyun sighs and says it's fine; they got good shots, they can just get better ones in the morning. Xinyu grumbles all the while about the sudden wind. Chaeyeon feels the heat of a stare burning into the side of her head, but she still indulges the way the Chinese girl tugs at her sleeve, begging her to wake her up on time for tomorrow.

When Nien matches their step – remorse clear in the way she avoids Chaeyeon's gaze – joining her best friend in asking the younger girl of the same, Chaeyeon nods. Because Kim Chaeyeon is many things, but vengeful is not one of them. It's clear in the look that she gives her – clear in the way that Nien is – that it's a conversation that isn't over, but Chaeyeon has enough faith that it'll turn out okay. Because Hsu Nientzu is a person who is capable of letting go.

The others go out to grab dinner, but again, Chaeyeon chooses to stay in. It's strange. Before, Chaeyeon used to be the kind of person who went out all the time, who would never turn down an invite.

She can't pinpoint when exactly that changed.

It doesn't hurt, necessarily, when Yubin doesn't stay. Not when Sohyun is practically dragging her out by the arm. Chaeyeon shoots the older girl raised brow, but Sohyun only gives her an enigmatic smile before she's pushing the other girls out the door.

So it's just Chaeyeon left in the apartment. Chaeyeon and Jiwoo.

It's really no surprise, either, when Jiwoo comes knocking on her bedroom door, asking if she wants to watch something with her while they wait. For all the things that have changed and all the time that's passed, Lee Jiwoo wanting somebody by her side is, and always has been, a constant.

So they go through the motions. Jiwoo asks her if there's anything she wants to watch, ever chivalrous; Chaeyeon tells her that whatever's fine. Jiwoo remembers that she's not really a fan of watching dating programs, because of course she does; Chaeyeon narrows her eyes and asks her how she knows that, and Jiwoo admits that she'd heard that when Chaeyeon was on a variety show a few years back. Chaeyeon teases; Jiwoo plays along.

They settle on a musical movie, though it's one they've both watched before, and Jiwoo cocoons herself in a blanket.

There's something strange about how easy it is to fall back into conversation with Jiwoo; she'd forgotten how easy it was to just be with her. Fifteen minutes in, Chaeyeon is kicking herself at not having talked to Jiwoo one-on-one sooner.

But it comes up eventually, because of course it does.

Chaeyeon's laughing about one time, when their gym teacher had scolded Jiwoo for bringing iced tea to class instead of water, and Jiwoo has this fond, rueful smile on her face when she breaks the news.

"I used to be in love with you back then, you know."

The speed with which Chaeyeon spins her head around to look at Jiwoo might very well give her whiplash; it's probably through sheer willpower that her head even remains attached to her body. "What?"

Jiwoo only chuckles. "Aw, c'mon, you can't honestly say that you had no idea, can you? I clung to you practically all the time. It felt like half the cohort knew."

Chaeyeon has no idea what kind of face she's making right now – she only feels her features scrunch up severely – but the sight of it has Jiwoo bursting out in laughter.

"I—You–What?" Chaeyeon's frown burrows so deeply into her forehead that Jiwoo's worried it might well get stuck there. "B—But what about Yubin?"

"What about Yubin?" Jiwoo raises a brow. The confusions lasts all of two seconds before Jiwoo realises what she's talking about, then it shifts to horror. "Wh—No! That's insane!"

"What do you mean 'no'?" Chaeyeon lets out an incredulous huff. "I thought—You're not in love with her?"

"No??" Now it's Jiwoo's turn to be incredulous. "No, you idiot. I have a girlfriend?"

What. "What?! Who??"

"Okay, first of all, ouch? Don't act so surprised?" Jiwoo wears an expression of faux-offence. "And second, Yamada Kaede. She's an exchange—"

WHAT. "Huh?! That dance major from Japan? How did you manage to bag her?" Jiwoo sputters, ready to defend herself, but Chaeyeon barrels right on. "I—What? Wait, hold on, I thought she was dating vocal major, Seo Dahyun. They're, like, The Duo."

"You—" Jiwoo closes her eyes, shaking her head to herself. "What is wrong with you," she deadpans.

"What do you mean?! C'mon, they had that viral video and everything—"

"She's my girlfriend? Look. See?" Jiwoo shoves her lock screen into her face, clearly affronted – a photo of a shorter, vaguely familiar girl with her head tucked in Jiwoo's torso as she hugs her. "Also, FYI, Dahyun-unnie's dating that upperclassman, Sohyun-unnie's friend—Gah! Y'know what, no. Nevermind. We are not doing this right now." Jiwoo is choosing not to fall for the ragebait today.

"Honest mistake, dude. My bad!" she says when Jiwoo lightly shoves at her.

It's ridiculous. There are genuine tears in her eyes from the laughter. It's enough to have Jiwoo laughing, too.

When they finally calm down, Chaeyeon looks at her honestly. "Seriously, my bad. It's just—I don't know. It's like you and Yubin have always been inseparable."

Jiwoo leans back, eyes to the ceiling, quiet for a beat.

"That's not true." She takes on a bit more of a sober look, and it has Chaeyeon straightening her back at the sight. "We fought seriously… once. About five years ago." Jiwoo blows a raspberry, tilting her head to make eye contact with Chaeyeon. "I told her to be honest, and she said she didn't want to be selfish anymore." When Jiwoo scoffs, Chaeyeon can tell that this time it's without mirth. "I guess neither of us got what really wanted."

She's only just beginning to try to make sense of that, piecing together fragments of memories she'd long since buried, when Jiwoo continues.

"It takes two to tango, though. And even if she broke her promise, it's not like she wasn't trying. You didn't exactly make it easier for her back then." And, oh. Even if Jiwoo hadn't practically smacked her over the head with it, Chaeyeon liked to think she would know.

She is aware enough to realise that the 'back then' part is more for her sake than anyone else's, but she chooses not to comment on it. Sometimes, she can only listen.

Jiwoo, to her credit, does hesitate before she says it. That way, at least Chaeyeon can't say it's a sucker punch.

"It's hard to be honest with someone when the other person's so bent on dodging anything real."

Now Chaeyeon knows when she's being called out when she hears it – Nien can testify. Yet somehow, she's not as upset as before. Maybe because it's Jiwoo. And she knows that thoughtful, selfless Jiwoo would never do anything to hurt the people she cares for – would go so far as to let herself get hurt over and over, and even then she wouldn't let the thought even cross her mind. She remembers what it was like to be on the receiving end of that, once.

Still, she won't go down without a fight. Or at least some show of one. "You don't get to judge me." It sounds hollow even in her own ears. "I went—I followed my dreams."

"You ran away." There's no judgement in her tone. She says it plainly – objectively – like it's fact. Chaeyeon doesn't have the stomach to think too hard about why it sounds that way to her.

Jiwoo shrugs, looking into her with those gentle eyes. "But you've gotta stop running at some point."

Chaeyeon isn't sure what to say to that. What way is there to deflect, when Jiwoo – one of the most unserious people she knows – looks at her, speaks to her, so candidly?

Jiwoo seems to be aware of that much, too. She inhales, eyes drawing back toward the TV screen.

"You were right about one thing, at least. I did—I do love my best friend. Enough to let you go. Enough to realise you're hurting her, even if she's pretending it doesn't." Her attention flickers back to Chaeyeon. "But I see the way you look at her, too."

What is Chaeyeon to say? Lee Jiwoo is no Hsu Nientzu; she could swallow her own tongue, tell her that five years is everything and that she has no idea what she's talking about. She could fight and fight like her life depended on it, because at one point, it did.

But Chaeyeon is tired, too.

"And you hide it behind your jokes and smiles," Jiwoo continues. "But you forget. I've been watching you since middle school."

"Uh, yeah, that's not creepy at all," says Chaeyeon, more out of instinct than anything else.

Jiwoo indulges her only by rolling her eyes.

"I know the way you look at other people. Then there's the way you look at her," she says, like it explains everything. Maybe it does. Are Chaeyeon's emotions really so obvious? "Stop overthinking it, doofus." She bumps her knees against Chaeyeon's. "I'm just, I'm asking you this – as her friend, but as yours, too: would it be so bad? To let someone in? Aren't you tired of running?"

A jazzy tune plays on the TV, mourning a wasted night. Chaeyeon thinks of an unanswered KakaoTalk message, or a group chat of five that she'd quietly let tick down to four. She thinks of dazzling, naive smiles that she can no longer recognise.

Jiwoo's phone goes off, lighting up her screen. Though Chaeyeon can't see who it's from – she can't even see the screen at all – she can see the way it lights up Jiwoo's face too, smile tugging at her lips, and—Oh. Chaeyeon is so silly. The look on Jiwoo's face is so patently obvious, Chaeyeon doesn't know how she'd missed it before.

The taller girl looks up at her, breaking the silence. "It isn't wrong, to have someone there." She takes on this wistful look, then, something Chaeyeon knows she wouldn't be able to understand because she knows it's not reserved for her. "It doesn't make you weak, to want someone."

The song ends with the piano alone – whimsical yet inexplicably melancholic. Chaeyeon shuffles over, and Jiwoo opens her arm. She falls into the younger girl, just the way she used to, lets her arm curl around her shoulder. Her scent is familiar, warm.

And if Chaeyeon mumbles, Maybe, into her shirt, Jiwoo doesn't let her know that she's been heard.

(When the other five girls come back, Xinyu bursts in, ready to announce their return. She's quickly silenced by Sohyun, who points to the pair asleep on the couch, credits of a movie already rolling. Nien laughs; Kotone shakes her head confused, but fond. Xinyu snaps a picture, moving it to an album ominously labelled 'blackmail'. Sohyun tugs at the blanket, wrapping it around Chaeyeon too.

Yubin stares and stares, feeling something pluck a harmonic at her heartstrings.)

Whatever gale spirit had possessed the beach apparently decides to vacate after the night; though there's still a little more than a breeze, it's manageable enough that they decide to film the rest of the sparkler scenes. Sohyun seems a little more placated, too, when she sees the view of the fading stars above.

Considering the fact that only Chaeyeon and Jiwoo seem well-rested enough, Sohyun decides that they're the only ones worthy of hearing about her vision.

"Wah, this is crazy. We can still follow the storyboard too, just alternate between the night sparkler scenes and the ones we'll film today. I think the way they juxtapose each other would really be a key point."

…Or at the very least, play audience to her musings.

Chaeyeon leans in to Jiwoo. "Any idea what she's talking about?" she whispers conspiratorially.

Jiwoo shakes her head sagely. "Not a damn clue."

"…really highlights the cyclical nature of the relationship, right? A flame goes out, reigniting to signify a new start. Isn't that cool?"

Chaeyeon nods along, grimacing to Jiwoo when Sohyun has her cheek turned to look at Xinyu, who wraps a tired arm around her.

It's Jiwoo's solo take before they officially move on to the group scenes. When they finish setting up, Xinyu asks Chaeyeon to go round up the others, since they'll probably be done with Jiwoo's take without too many issues.

So Chaeyeon is left to wander under the twilight sky. Footsteps imprinting into the sand, she looks up, figuring they can't have gone far. And she's right.

She notices the faint sheen of pink locks in the distance – lit under the stars and the scattered sunlight – before she sees Nien's face. Her hand raises, almost beginning to wave, until she catches herself, spotting brunette bangs to her left. A timid smile and fiddling, unsure hands between them is all Chaeyeon needs to pivot, swerving into hard left.

A conversation for later, indeed.

So she walks a little longer, takes her time getting lost in the space between night and day, grazing the metal in her pocket with her fingertips.

Yubin spends her time getting lost in the gentle seaward breeze.

She doesn't feel so strongly about the beach. Sand was a strange thing, though. It isn't really that interesting on the surface. Weathered, eroded grains from millennia-old rocks and marine creatures, pressing into her skin. She isn't sure if it was a comfort or not – the reminder that it all breaks down eventually – that everything is completely and utterly ephemeral in the grand scheme of time, and it all returns to the sea. She traces the tip of her sparkler idly, shapeless forms coming together.

Maybe it was a nice thing, though, that idea that everything would reconnect again one day.

Yubin hears someone clear their throat behind her, and she doesn't have to turn around to know who it is.

Chaeyeon doesn't say a word. When she holds her lit sparkler toward Yubin, the younger girl lifts her own up quizzically. The question melts, though, when Chaeyeon reaches over, lighting her firework with her own. The sparks burst, flickering between shades as each metal fragment oxidises radiantly.

The taller girl settles into the space next to Yubin. She pauses for only a moment, before she decides to rest her head on the younger girl's shoulder, watching the two sparklers burn fiercely. When Yubin shifts to accommodate, Chaeyeon feels the way she's been allowed to sink further.

(They only last a minute, maybe two, before the light dies down. It's funny, though. Both sparklers stop blazing at exactly the same time.)

They have one last day before they're being kicked out of the apartment, and Yubin is apparently choosing to spend their last sunrise outside. Chaeyeon knows as much because she is up at precisely 4:38 am, and promptly gets startled by Sohyun already on her laptop in the living room, currently sipping on cup of tea.

('Geez—Do you ever sleep?' 'Uh, yeah? I slept on the drive here, remember?' 'I was also asleep then.' 'Oh. Right.')

She has all of one glass of water before she's turning to Sohyun again. "Was there somebody else up earlier?"

"Hm?" Sohyun glances up again, registering the question. "Oh, yeah. Yubin was here, maybe twenty minutes ago. Wait, why'd you ask?"

"There's a mug here that still hasn't dried."

"Ah, right. Makes sense. Well, she left pretty soon after. She didn't say where she was going though," Sohyun tells her. Chaeyeon's already shrugging on a hoodie before the older girl even finishes speaking, an inkling of an idea already forming.

She has one foot out the door when Sohyun speaks up again. "By the way, I saw her staring at this old park a couple streets away, when we went out for a walk the other day," she says offhandedly. When Chaeyeon turns around, she finds Sohyun already staring at her, having tilted her laptop screen down. "Something about how the swing set reminds her of this place back home. I don't know, uh, just thought to mention."

The inkling swirls, rearranging to paint a picture in her mind.

"Thanks, unnie."

"Oh, and Chaeyeon?" She glances at the older girl over her shoulder. Sohyun curls her fist, waving a small punch into the air. "Hwaiting!"

It takes her some meandering – with a very skewed sense of confidence, considering she does not know this neighbourhood at all – a wrong turn, and frantically having to pull up the Maps app, but she does eventually manage to find the park. She hits the grass just as a sliver of the sun begins to peek over the horizon.

As Chaeyeon expected, she spots dark brown waves and a familiar BAPE hoodie on the green left-side seat of the swing set. When she gets closer, she can see the yellow wires threading through Yubin's hair.

The sun rises a little higher, casting a gold outline over Yubin's silhouette, and Chaeyeon forgets what air feels like in her lungs.

She stills her heart the best she can – stills the nerves frenetic beneath her skin – and reaches out, taking the right earphone between her fingers.

Yubin jumps in her skin, eyes widening by a fraction before they settle at the sight of Chaeyeon's face. The taller girl inserts the earphone into her ear canal, and isn't particularly surprised to hear the intro track to the album.

Chaeyeon doesn't sit on the red swing, though. It's too far; the wire wouldn't reach. So she settles for the ground beside Yubin instead.

And that simply won't do, will it? So Yubin slides off the seat, crossing her legs too.

Playing with the hem of her sleeves, the pair make it through a solid ten seconds of synths overlaying Nien's bass before Yubin finally clears her throat.

"There's always just something with us and the park, huh?"

Chaeyeon gives her a sidelong stare for a beat, then her lips tug into a hesitant smirk.

"I'm guessing that means you did recognise that park when you texted me that time, didn't you?"

"Of course I remembered," Yubin sulks, taking it all too serious. Her expressions shifts to something vulnerable – not regretful or sorrowful exactly, but something quieter. "How could I forget?"

And oh, how naive, how arrogant of Chaeyeon to think she was the only one capable of remembering. She should know by now, really, that she has a poor sense of depth perception. The depth of a body of water, of memory, of another person's feelings.

Even so, she is only human, and ultimately still very juvenile. And so she does only what any human can in the dark, clinging to what little they know of the blinding world: instinct.

"I don't know," says Chaeyeon – placatingly, but she means it. "It was a long time ago."

"Not for me." Yubin leans back, and the green seat pushes back with the motion. "I broke a promise."

Chaeyeon tries to cushion the memory, at least. "Wait, The Gong Yubin, not keeping her word? I'm aghast."

"Unnie," Yubin whines, but she can't hide the smile that creeps up on her.

She stretches out her legs, leaning back against the palms of her hands; the cable connecting them sways with the motion, too.

"I used to go back there a lot," she says between her thoughts. "Like if I sat in that green seat again – held the rope differently, paid the ground less attention, or anything – I could change things. Keep that promise and be honest."

Chaeyeon presses her lips together. She has made many a mistake in her life; if she were to lay them all out in a line, they might well stretch as long as the Han River. But would she change things, given the chance?

Her eyes wander back up to meet Yubin's.

"Would you change it? Knowing what you know now?"

Yubin holds her gaze. "I'm not sure."

Chaeyeon nods, even if it isn't what she's looking for. Then, "It's not too late, you know."

"For what?"

"Keeping that promise," she answers, like it's obvious. But Chaeyeon knows that she's full of hot air the moment the words leave her mouth.

Yubin is one of the most honest people she knows. Not in the outright way of Zhou Xinyu, though. Honest in the way she plainly is, and the way that Chaeyeon can see her.

"Maybe," is what Yubin says, as if she isn't aware of the way her own heart is tattooed to her own arm.

The song switches in their ears, carrying on. A melodic hook plays along an upbeat rhythm, and Chaeyeon's heart constricts a little further.

That isn't something Yubin can see, though. There's only a blankness in the older girl's eyes.

"You know," she starts, gulping in a breath. "I think this was the first song I've ever written for another person."

Chaeyeon narrows her eyes, and the half-time feel of the pre-chorus spreads between them.

"That can't be true," she pouts, eyes sceptical, though it's all still lighthearted. "You showed me the song you wrote for Binnie first."

It's Yubin's turn to squint. "How'd you—" She cuts herself off mid-sentence, as if suddenly realising her mistake. Because of all people, of course Chaeyeon would know. "It's about her, that's true. But I didn't write that for her, actually. I wrote that for me." The beat starts to pick up again, and Chaeyeon feels the rate of her own heart speed up with it. "But this song? I wrote it for…"

The piano arpeggiates in the chorus, beneath Jiwoo's vocals and Kotone's hi-hats.

And though Yubin trails off, pupils darting away, Chaeyeon can still hear her anyway – can see it with her own eyes.

Yubin's heart is a lighthouse. It swings and it swings, beacon oscillating to the thrum of her pulse in the twilight's dark corners.

"I'm sorry," is what Chaeyeon finally spills out. It does grab Yubin's attention, so Chaeyeon can't regret it too much. "I was serious back then." The arpeggios slow, trailing out. "I do like it."

Yubin looks up slowly, looks into her. "Do you mean that?"

Chaeyeon shuffles closer, close enough that their knees are touching. Enough that she can feel the younger girl's breath fanning her face before it stops suddenly as her breath hitches.

She brings her hand to Yubin's, skin grazing skin, before she hooks her pinky around Yubin's gently. So gently that the younger girl almost can't feel it at all.

Yubin feels it when Chaeyeon tugs her in, and for the first time in the eight years that she has known of Kim Chaeyeon's existence, she learns what her lips taste like.

Her eyes shut, and Yubin is close to her – so close – when she taps her thumb against hers. Chaeyeon can count every eyelash, follow the contours of her face when her expression melts as she shifts closer, can feel what it's like when Yubin gets lost in the feeling, too.

It doesn't last long, but four seconds might as well be as long as eight years. When Yubin's eyes flutter open, she finds eyes already burning into her.

Yubin's voice is hoarse – huskier than normal, and Chaeyeon has to swallow it down – when she finds her voice.

"You…"

Chaeyeon doesn't need to hear the rest, to figure out exactly what it is that Yubin thinks she is.

She already knows.

And when Chaeyeon pulls her in again closer, closer, pinkies wrapped around one another, she can already feels the water in her lungs. But breathing's overrated anyway.

That's what she decides when they meet again in the middle, and she jots one last thing down on her list.

Yubin's lips are like the ocean.