Archive of Our Own

Lately, Megan has been setting her alarm twenty five minutes earlier than she technically needs to. Her morning routine takes about thirty three minutes from bed to door. Bathroom and kitchen in between. She’s been meal prepping to keep things running smoothly. About half the time she actually manages to get the overnight oats down without choking. 

Makeup is its own roadblock. She has to cover the bags under her eyes if they’re planning on doing anything for the press or socials. Her lips are peeling again. Most mornings they are crusted with dried blood. Sophia tells everyone she uses Glossier, but she actually gets these little glass bottles shipped in from Korea every three months. Megan can’t read the label, but she knows that it works wonders when she deigns to get her hands on some. 

The extra twenty five minutes is for sitting and staring at the paint cracking over the baseboards in her room. She fights her way up from the covers and stills with both feet planted on the ground. Her apartment is new to her, but the building is older. The cracking paint is just a sign to make a call to her landlord. She doesn’t believe in cosmic signs anymore. 

She sits, and she stares, and she tries not to think about anything. Her therapist, after this long session where Megan couldn’t do anything except repeat over and over again a story about getting the wrong coffee order and sobbing in the car about it, told her to pretend her thoughts are cars on the highway. That they are all going by at whatever speed they are, and she is supposed to just watch them go. You don’t really ever see the same car on the interstate twice. She’s meant to ignore the duplicate cars, or thoughts, or whatever.

In the mornings, it’s always easier than she expects it to be. She can’t really think about anything beyond the way it feels to be sitting there holding it together. And it’s just a twenty five minute average. Sometimes it takes her thirty minutes to be up on her feet, and sometimes it’s only five, and then she’s got all this time before she leaves to open Tiktok, scroll three times, close the app determinedly, and then do it all over again. 

They are actually all getting along pretty well despite the circumstances of their work lives. They’ve been trying to do these group dinners to boost morale, or something. The idea was to rotate whose turn it is to pick the restaurant, but Dani always defaults to whatever anyone else wants and Sophia can be picky about her food sometimes. It ends up being her, Lara, and Yoonchae who have to decide where to go every time, and none of them want to take the fall for a bad meal, so they keep trying to shuffle around the responsibility subtly. 

“If you’re missing home,” Lara says on their way out of the studio in the blazing sun, “we could go to BCD again.” 

Then Yoonchae shrugs, smiles, and says, “I just ordered last night. Megan, you were talking about Mexican the other day.” 

And even if that wasn’t true, they still probably would have ended up hunting down somewhere that serves tacos al pastor, because Megan really does like those. She kind of wants to nudge Yoonchae while they’re waiting for their food and as if this was really Yoonchae’s choice disguised as Megan’s, or if this was just a faintly calculated move to avoid having to make a decision in front of everyone. 

They got seated at a six-top, so there’s an extra chair that Megan is trying not to look at. She’s sitting in between Yoonchae and Lara, knees bumping into both of theirs. Across the table, Sophia is practically vibrating in her seat. Dani is talking about not work. Someone else’s work—a music video, shot on this sleepy suburban street that made her think about the future. 

That makes Megan want to throw up, kind of, and they haven’t even gotten their appetizers yet. 

She can picture herself living in a two-story home and, like, there being a child somewhere in the house. Maybe they are just babysitting her nephew. The other half of they, the one she’s supposedly built a life with, is just this body that exists somewhere in her periphery. She can’t quite get a good look at the face. She just keeps turning and turning, and they never get any closer. 

“Okay,” Lara hisses, nudging her. “You’re zoning, girl.”

Megan knows she looks sort of creepy when she stares off into space, but so would anyone else. Yoonchae does it too, and no one really says anything about that. At least, not to her face. There are videos online, but they aren’t supposed to pay those any mind. Cars again, passing through. 

Megan is possibly sitting on the side of a highway in a metal folding chair. 

It helps a little bit to get out of the bubble of it all. 

Adela and Emily are still sort of within the bubble, but they won’t ask any questions about work, so Megan and Lara don’t have to talk about work, which means they can all just hang out at the pool without getting professional about it. 

Lara invites the three of them to her backyard, and then two guys. Megan knows them both, but she is not in the mood to hang out with boys today. She is barefaced and not prepared to laugh at every unfunny thing they say. She isn’t even prepared to laugh at the funny things. 

Still, she lets one of the guys take photos of the four of them from an aerial angle. He makes a joke about throwing her into the deep end, which gets this pity chuckle out of Adela, and then Emily tells him he needs to back up, otherwise he won’t get their hair in frame. And they’re all holding this incredibly uncomfortable v-sit kind of pose to keep their upper halves dry, so it would really be a shame to miss that. 

He isn’t wearing a swimsuit, she notices when he finally hands Lara back her phone. Neither of them are, which feels pretty LA typical. Pools are not for swimming here; they’re for lounging and crowding around at parties to urge one person to jump into so that everyone can cheer and feel drunkenly accomplished. 

She slides into the water once Emily and Lara have both promised they’re completely done taking pictures and has to bend her knees at a ninety degree angle to get her head beneath the surface. Lara’s parents keep their pool just on the cusp of being too warm to open your eyes underwater, but she manages for the sake of not bumping into anyone’s legs. She spends some time testing how long she can stay underwater in the deep end by the metric of how many times she accidentally starts thinking about something that stresses her out. 

She must come up with red eyes or something, because Emily and Lara are staring at her with twin looks of apprehensive concern, like they aren’t sure whether to ask if she’s okay or laugh at the hair sticking to her cheeks. She is really not supposed to mess with chlorine with all the bleach in her hair right now, and this is something she’s conveniently forgotten about until exactly this moment. 

“Shit,” she says wetly, “my hair is going to be green.” 

Lara gets up to stand at the edge of the pool and uses her toes to flick some water at Megan’s face. 

“New era, new aura,” she jokes weakly, and Yoonchae is one of the last people Megan wants to be thinking about on her day off, but her stomach still does this fizzing thing when the blonde’s face materializes in her mind. “You can book a touch up. No one will notice.” 

Megan cups her hand atop the water and pushes, splashing water all over Lara’s feet. Normally, this would be cause for Lara to yelp and shout at her to knock it off, but now she just stands there, looking down. Her sunglasses are shielding her expression. Megan hates to do this to her. Like, Lara wants to be less worried than she is, because of her inner peace or something, but she just loves Megan too much—her own words. 

“Can I borrow a towel?” 

Lara would probably let Megan borrow any single item in her entire house regardless of price and personal affective relevance. Still, it’s sort of a surprise when she nods quickly and says, “Yeah. Of course. Anything.” 

She keeps getting the urge to tell Yoonchae about the car-thoughts. 

Sometimes I see this sleek white Mercedes, and you’re driving it. Your hair is everywhere the wind. 

There is a not-small part of her that misses when Yoonchae wasn’t blonde. She likes the blonde—it looks cunty, and it’s done something for Yoonchae’s confidence, but she misses the memory of dark hair splayed out across her pillows, her bedsheets. Yoonchae hasn’t been over to her apartment in a while now. 

“My sister is coming to LA,” Yoonchae tells her after a meeting about upcoming press opportunities. Megan has never been able to predict what their manager is going to schedule them for. First the podcast, then the kids. Now, there’s the potential for a feature on a reality TV show as guest judges. “She hasn’t been here yet.” 

“That’s so exciting,” she says, and she means it, even though it sounds like she doesn’t. “Do you have plans yet? What are you guys gonna do? Oh, are you gonna take her to that art museum?”

Yoonchae is giving her this goofy little smile and Megan genuinely cannot help but to grin back. She wants to shake Yoonchae gently by the shoulders. She is so excited for Yoonchae to be excited. 

“I think we will go to the beach.” Yoonchae tilts her head. Her roots are starting to grow out, but she’ll probably get another touch-up before tour and Megan, well. She won’t say anything about that. “Which is your favorite? My favorite is too busy in the summer.” 

Megan is sort of an indoor cat. She doesn’t go to many beaches. But she wracks her brain for Emily’s recommendations, and blurts something that she can remember the other girl having talked about before. 

“But look it up first,” she urges. “Wait, I can do it. Here, look.” 

Yoonchae hooks her chin over Megan’s shoulder to watch her type the name of the beach into Google, which is something she maybe always would have done. But she also slings one arm over Megan’s shoulders while the page is loading, which is not.

They’re not supposed to disparage their own brand. That’s, like, public relations 101. They can’t shit on their own songs, and they can’t complain about the long days, and they sure as hell can’t roll their eyes at each other out in public like normal friends can, because there will always be a camera to catch 

“Do you think this is the most famous we’ll ever be?” 

Lara is incredibly graceful in just about every possible way, but the question makes her look sharply back at Megan, who is half a step behind her. She runs phone-first into the closed door of her own house and drops the device on the ground, cursing quietly and crouching, jewelry jangling, to pick it up. 

“In this exact moment,” Lara says dryly, in the tone she saves for their more private moments, “I’d say no.” She fumbles open her front door and steps inside. Megan can already hear Kavita talking on the phone in the other room. “I think you specifically peaked with those pink bangs.” 

She calls out to her mom, and Megan calls out too, warmed by the smile she gets from Kavita in return when she pokes her head into the foyer. Lara steps out of her heels and picks them up. 

“I’m just kidding,” she continues. “I don’t know. I try not to think about us being famous.”

They go upstairs. The door to Rhea’s room is slightly ajar. Megan can sort of remember being around when Rhea still lived here. She usually had music playing, and Lara would groan about it if she was tired enough. 

She’s doing Megan the huge favor of not saying something like we’ve had this conversation a million times before, can’t you just drop it already? 

“But if we put out an album and it totally flops, then we’re just wannabes on stage.”

They’re still on EPs, somehow. Lara dumps her heels onto the end of her bed alongside everything else she’s holding. Now, Megan’s taller by like three entire inches. 

“We were wannabes on stage before,” Lara shrugs. “At least we aren’t nobodies.” 

And Megan isn’t sure agrees with that, really, but she did choose this. She flew out to LA and dedicated everything she had to impressing a panel of stone-faced judges. It’s just that she wasn’t really aware that things would spiral outwards in this exact way. She’d thought, maybe naively, they’d be beloved by their own fans and ignored by everyone else. Instead, their entire marketing strategy is based around making their business the business of anyone who will pay attention to them for more than five seconds. 

“I don’t have a change of clothes,” she murmurs, suddenly very aware of how much skin she’s showing. “Sorry.” 

A few good things have come out of this whole contractual mess. Lara gives her a quick hug around the shoulders, going “I got you, Meg,” before pulling a bunch of clothes out of her closet for Megan to choose from. And her phone keeps buzzing with notifications from their group chat, so there’s that too. 

There are thousands of people, maybe millions, as crazy as it sounds to say, that supposedly have a big fat crush on her. This was flattering only as long as it took for creepy DMs to start showing up in her Instagram inbox, and now Megan goes around wondering why she can’t find anyone normal to date if there are all these people out there who claim that she’s this unreal goddess of a girl. 

She’s grateful for the love, she really is. It’s good to know that even when they’re heading in a more experimental direction with their musical, someone out there will still want to listen to it. 

One of her friends from outside of LA calls her five times a week in the evenings to ask how her day has gone. Their time zones don’t match up very well. He’s always an entire day ahead when he calls, sitting down for lunch as she’s prepping dinner. 

She used to watch her mom take calls on their landline by clamping the phone between her ear and her shoulder, and she tried to do that once while she was tearing the cardboard off a Factor meal. Her phone clattered onto the floor almost immediately. She’d had to overnight a new screen protector. 

“That might be a sign,” Adela hums when Megan tells her about it. “There’s something off about him.” 

Megan can get so tired of famous people and their friends. 

“There’s something off about everybody,” she groans, hearing her own voice in her ears and cringing at how childish she sounds. “And anyway, if living on different continents doesn’t stop me from picking up when he calls, I’m not sure why dropping my phone would.” 

One of the best things to happen to Megan all week is that Yoonchae asks her sort of shyly if she wants to come to the beach with her and Yoonseo. 

“I want her to meet my friends in LA,” Yoonchae explains, but her eyes slide away when she says friends, which could mean any number of things. They introduce themselves as sisters in basically every interview. Maybe she’s feeling sort of weird about that, considering she has an actual sister and most of them do not. “If you want to come.” 

And of course Megan wants to come; there is almost nothing on the planet she’d rather do, including going to a different beach on the same day with different people. She doesn’t explain her reasoning for why she can’t go, and no one, like, asks for clarification anyway. 

She spends two entire hours debating whether or not to text Yoonchae offering to drive. She drafts out the text and lets it sit for a while, trying to distract herself with half-hearted house chores. Right before she gets in the shower, she hits send and puts her phone facedown by the bathroom sink. She’d put it on her bed or something, but she can’t shake the worry that someone will break into her apartment while she’s showering and she’ll have nothing to call the cops on, and she’ll just be trapped naked inside her bathroom while she waits for the invader to take all her things or eventually break down the door and kill her. 

So, the phone goes on the counter and she gets in the shower and tries not to think about how awkward it will be if Yoonchae tells her they don’t need her (read: don’t want her) to drive.

Once, Megan almost asked Lara if she’d thought about her while they were filming something in a classroom full of children with shitty immune systems. Or, more accurately, a classroom full of children who could probably do a number on Megan’s own shitty immune system. 

Yoonchae texted her when it was all over. They asked about you. And Manon. 

Megan hadn’t really known what to do with that. It felt good to be wanted, or not so much wanted as wondered about. All press is good press, ec cetera. But she didn’t like the thought of what Yoonchae’s face might’ve looked like after a classroom full of kids with bad immune systems and cute smiles asked her where Manon was. In all honesty, it probably hadn’t changed much at all. Yoonchae would’ve gone in expecting this question, prepared to face it professionally and with as much grace as humanly possible. 

She learned much later that Yoonchae made more than one six seven joke during the thing, which sort of shook up the image in her head of this regal teacher figure with narrow-framed glasses and a blazer. As if Yoonchae would've marched in there with any sense of nobility. 

One of Megan’s favorite things about Yoonchae: how she gets on her knees for every cat they meet outside of a café or just inside the threshold of someone’s shiny new apartment. 

Yoonseo knows who she is without Megan having to introduce herself. Her face lights up when she and Yoonchae step out of Yoonchae’s apartment building to meet Megan at the curb, and she turns to her sister with a growing smile. Yoonchae elbows her in the side and that’s when Megan notices her outfit. Her mouth goes a little dry. She doesn’t see Yoonchae in dresses much these days. Not proper ones, like gala-style stuff that you’re meant to wear on a red carpet, and this isn’t that, but it’s long and flowy and Megan can’t stop staring. 

“Hi,” Yoonchae says a little stiltedly. She’s carrying a tote and one of the biggest water bottles that Megan has ever seen. 

“Hey!” She is definitely too enthusiastic as she sticks a hand out in Yoonseo’s direction. “I’m Megan.” 

Yoonseo, like her sister, has this sparkle in her eye that makes Megan feel like she is already two steps behind. 

She says, “Hi, Megan,” and for being older, she is just the tiniest bit shorter. 

“This is Yoonseo,” Yoonchae butts in hurriedly. They sound a lot alike, except Yoonseo has spent some time in Germany, and Yoonchae has been developing this LA-ish curl to some of her consonants. Sometimes, if Megan isn’t paying very much attention, she mistakes Lara and Yoonchae for one another. 

The drive is somehow more and less uncomfortable than Megan was expecting it to be. Yoonchae sits up front with her, and Yoonseo sits in the middle back seat so that she can lean forward between them. The thing is, Yoonseo is fluent in Korean and German, and is really only vaguely familiar with conversational English, so Yoonchae keeps switching back and forth between languages. 

After a while, she starts getting a little pink in the cheeks, so Megan fumbles around on the console for a second for her aux cord and shoves it into Yoonchae’s lap. 

“Wanna listen to some music?” 

Then, Yoonchae starts rambling excitedly in two languages about this new album by one of her favorite bands. She queues up a few of their most popular songs and they spend the rest of the drive with the windows down, listening to Yoonchae’s music together.

The sound of waves crashing onto the shore would be, like, the best sample of all time if Megan could figure out how to incorporate it into a really beautiful song that managed to blend perfectly the contemplative nature of staring at the sea for a long time and the simple joys of hanging out on the beach with friends.

She keeps reapplying sunscreen and Yoonchae lets her try to twist herself a full one hundred eighty degrees for a while before she offers to help, and even then, she just sprays it onto Megan’s back and lets it dry there. 

“I’m gonna have streaks,” Megan complains quietly, thinking about her new tattoo. She’s about five seconds from just putting her shirt back on when Yoonchae's hands land on her back, and it’s really hard to think about anything else but that for a while. 

As it turns out, Megan’s friends are at the same beach as them. She finds this out via Instagram, after eating a slightly gritty sandwich and the one sparkling water out of Yoonchae’s bag that wasn’t grapefruit flavored. 

She really means it when she tells Yoonchae that she loves hanging out with her and her sister, but it probably doesn’t look so good for her that she gets up to find a bathroom just before the sun begins to set and doesn’t come back until it’s mostly out of the sky because she found the aforementioned friends and sat down with them for a little bit. 

“No big deal,” Yoonchae keeps repeating as they pack up, shaking sand out of their things. Yoonseo is pretending that she can’t hear them from a few feet away. Megan apologized maybe eight times over the course of the three minutes it took for Yoonchae to decide they should all be heading home. “We went for a walk.

”Okay,” says Megan, because she doesn’t want to be arguing in front of Yoonchae’s sister after meeting her properly for the first time. “I’m still sorry.”

It feels like a really terrible note to be ending such a nice day on, but Yoonchae sends Yoonseo on ahead when they get back to her apartment building and sits quietly in Megan’s passenger seat until the entire song playing off her phone is over. 

How it happens is that Sophia does this stupidly leader-like thing of taking them each aside over the course of two days to explain to them that she’s going to be away for a bit. 

That’s how she phrases it over their lunch, like she is a walking, talking PR statement. 

“What, like, a bit or like,” Megan sets her fork down in her salad, “a bit?”

“I love this job,” Sophia says quietly, leaning in closer to make sure it carries across the table. She made sure that the hostess seated them outside, away from other people. “And you know I love you guys.” 

There is actual panic bubbling up in Megan’s stomach. She doesn’t want to make a scene, but she is sort of considering reaching over their food to grip Sophia’s shoulders and yell at her to snap out of it. 

“I don’t know what that means,” she hisses. “What are we going to do?”

“There’s gonna be a meeting, Meg,” Sophia shakes her head. She keeps looking over her shoulder at this guy who is holding his phone up in a strange way. He could just be checking his teeth for food, but Megan doesn’t want to find out from someone’s social media feed that he  is actually taking a video of them. KATSEYE members spotted arguing over private lunch. Missy would be eye-twitching levels of furious about that. “I just—I wanted to tell you before they did.” 

Megan doesn’t manage to get the rest of her salad down after that. She has too many questions burning at the back of her throat. Sophia pokes disinterestedly at her own food for a while before calling over the waiter to get the check. They make roughly the same amount of money, but Megan lets Sophia pay the whole bill and tip the guy like forty percent. She almost slips away to the bathroom before they leave, and then realizes that Sophia didn’t drive here.

She tries to offer Sophia a ride, but an Uber pulls up to the curb halfway through the sentence, and she knows that unless she tells Sophia otherwise, the older girl will cancel the Uber right there and maybe pay the driver anyway for the inconvenience, so she just tells her to go, because she wants to avoid making a scene. 

“Thank you, though,” Sophia says as she’s getting into the car, maneuvering her huge fancy purse through the door with her body. “Look, I’ll see you soon, okay? I promise, Megan.” 

Sophia only takes Uber Black cars, and Megan really, really tries not to imagine a hearse as she watches the car pull away. 

She goes to Yoonchae’s apartment after that. Lara is out for the night and Dani’s location isn’t pinging on her phone, and Megan is done pretending that Yoonchae wouldn’t have been her ideal choice anyway. 

When Yoonchae opens the door, all Megan can think about for a split second is how good summer looks on her. 

“She told you?” Yoonchae asks, hand covering a mouthful of food, stepping back to open the door wider. 

Megan blinks, wondering briefly who else is telling Yoonchae that she looks good in the summertime. Yoonchae has this little welcome mat that’s, like, flowers or vines or something right inside her door. Megan always takes her shoes off even though she forgets to do that half the time in her own apartment. 

“At lunch,” she says finally, shrinking two inches as she steps out of her boots. The black pair of house slippers that Yoonchae keeps for her specifically are waiting next to the shoe rack.  “I can’t believe it.” 

Yoonchae nods, swallows.  She isn’t doing a very good job of hiding her inner conflict between speaking her mind and speaking within company guidelines. 

“She needs a break, I think.” Her fingers flutter over Megan’s bare shoulder, then return to her side. “It’s not, like, um. The same. As before.” 

Right. Their contracts—not actually as airtight as they seem. Megan mentally reels through their upcoming commitments. There are new songs to debut, promos to shoot, and, okay, she can lean on Lara and Yoonchae can lean on Dani if she needs, but Dani will have to lean on Lara too, and maybe it will circle back around to Lara leaning on Yoonchae, and they could really benefit from having one or two more people to hold everybody up. Maybe Megan can be there for Yoonchae for once instead of watching her hop up and down in a corner whispering I’m not nervous, I’m not nervous. But probably—more likely—it will go how it’s always gone, and Yoonchae will let Megan squeeze her hands before shows and instruct her very seriously to get some sleep when it’s all over. 

“No, yeah, of course,” she gets out thickly. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, you know. I never thought any of this would be happening.” 

Yoonchae nods, silent, and they stand there for a few minutes in her entryway. Megan is trying to ride out this swell of frenetic upset that she can feel in her chest without making it too obvious that’s what she’s doing. Fuck, she’s tired. And, fuck, Yoonchae can’t seem to keep her eyes on Megan’s. They don’t really do a lot of sleepovers, but she would drop everything to pass out on the other half of Yoonchae’s modestly sized bed right now. 

“Everything will be okay,” Yoonchae murmurs. Megan tamps down a scream. “I’m glad you aren’t going on hiatus.” 

She goes for it as soon as Yoonchae is done speaking. Tipping forward, falling, really. Yoonchae opens her arms to catch her. The events are lining up like little toy soldiers in her head. Sophia gone. Yoonchae hug. 

She’s been hoping for some kind of excuse for this to happen that same way again ever since Yoonchae hugged her excitedly in the bathroom at the AMAs after their acceptance speech—Yoonchae’s fingers tangled up in the hair at the base of her skull, the other hand curling around her hipbone. Her nose in Megan’s shoulder. It wasn’t a casual kind of thing. Not to her. Maybe it was just the fever, but she can’t imagine initiating that kind of hug in front of anyone else. 

So, it goes Sophia gone, Yoonchae hug. They’re non-equalizers. She still gets a little sick thinking about it, and then a little giddy. 

The timing of it all is, like, genuinely fucked. The absolute last thing Megan wants to do is blame any of it on Sophia, who’d gotten teary when Missy was explaining the terms of her break to them. But she’s dreading doing a red carpet now—especially one with so much interaction—without Sophia. 

“I liked her dress more than mine,” Dani says quietly as they’re getting ready, because they’re doing it together in a green room with the intention of ‘showing up’ at the same time because they are a group. They are cohesive and put together and strong enough to do this as four. 

No one says what they’re all thinking: well, now you could have it if you really wanted. Megan knows that Dani would never. She isn’t entirely sure what Dani had meant by saying it, but she knows it wasn’t just about the dress. The nerves are even getting to Yoonchae. She looks like she would rather be anywhere except there as they line up to walk out, checking and double checking each others’ straps and loops and hooks. 

“Yoonchae.” Lara leans around Dani to look at her. “You good?”

She gets a double-thumbs up in return, and Yoonchae might explain to them a little bit more about whatever is going on inside her head later, but she’s silent now as Megan desperately tries to copy her collected expression. If someone cries out where’s Sophia at them as they’re posing, she might actually burst into tears. 

The fact that Lara has checked on Yoonchae before she’s turned back to look at Megan means she’s already in WWSD mode. What Would Sophia Do? When she finally does shift to face Megan, she grabs onto Lara’s hand with both of her own and squeezes. Lara takes in this exaggerated deep breath and blows it out over her face. 

“Four hours,” she says. “Max. Then we go home.” 

“What if—"

“Doesn’t matter,” Lara cuts in. “I love you. We all do. Your mom is here, and Otis.”

He’s still in the states after a tour with his band. Megan isn’t sure what to make of all that. She invited him to this a long time ago, when things were a little or a lot different. The back of Yoonchae’s head is so familiar. Megan would be able to pick it out of a whole sea of bleach blonde. 

“Yes,” she murmurs. “And Otis.”

They are running shorter rehearsals now. Six hours, on average. Megan wonders, as they warm up in silence, if two more hours would be cut off if another member disappeared. They were averaging eight before, and then ten with Manon gone, and then back down to eight when Dani’s psoas started acting up at the same time as Lara’s back and Yoonchae’s knee. 

Now, with Sophia gone, it’s six. It was six before that, too, Megan supposes. It just feels significant to be trying to fill all this time with only four bodies. They leave a shadow space for Sophia, but not Manon anymore, and Megan spends a lot of time—sometimes twenty five minutes worth, in the mornings—trying really hard not to think about that either. 

This is the closest in age that the group has ever been. There is only a four year difference between their youngest and eldest present members now. Megan watches Lara realize this while watching Dani help Yoonchae stretch out her calves. Like, this flash of panic goes across her face and she glances over her shoulder for someone who isn’t there. Then, she straightens her expression into something very serious. It makes her look Manon’s age, or older. She claps her hands twice and tells them they need to start dynamics, which is usually running in circles and singing, but the big speaker in the corner of the studio shorted out two days ago. Sohey just tells them to run a few laps and recite something quietly to themselves. 

Ahead of her, Megan can hear Yoonchae mumbling something under her breath in Korean. 

She’s just been saying the ABCs over and over again while she tries to come up with something she remembers well enough to quote it from memory that isn’t one of their songs. What’s coming to mind are these fragments of a poem. I am not imagining—

It was very large. Lara stumbles, and no one reaches out to steady her. —the way art can become. 

She saw it on her Tumblr timeline, of all places. She has a new account now. All the tags related to anything remotely Kasteye have been blocked and she doesn’t reblog anything. It’s all private; selfish. You shouldn’t look at me like that. Like one of those saints— 

She tried to introduce someone to them one time via Instagram. During a water break, she pulled up his account and flashed her screen at Dani very casually. He makes music, she said. You met him in Australia, actually. 

Dani is so polite—she asked anything I’ve heard of? And Megan started humming vaguely, which meant nothing to anyone, even her, because she was just humming this cover they did of a much more famous song. It didn’t matter anyway, because Dani wasn’t familiar with that either, and Megan had stopped trying with the photos after that. 

During a blocking rehearsal on a drizzly Friday morning, she steps outside for some air. For the past few days, the entire city has been trapped in a smoggy haze, and Megan is looking forward to the sunsets after the rain clears up the skies. 

She isn’t expecting anyone to follow her, but Dani does, and after a few beats of silence, she reaches into her pocket, produces a neon blue vape pen, and offers Megan a hit. 

“Oh,” Megan blinks. “No thanks. I’m trying to,” her hand is reaching out, “do that less.” 

She pushes weakly at Dani’s wrist instead of taking the pen. Whether it’s willpower or some kind of attention-induced trauma response, she isn’t sure.

“Fair enough,” Dani hums. She slips it back into her pocket without bringing it up to her own mouth. Megan is realizing that Dani must’ve dug it out of her dance bag specifically to bring to her outside, and she hates the implications of that. “The formations look okay.”

“I’m not, like, an addict,” Megan blurts, kicking the toe of her sneaker into the cement. 

Dani takes two quick, tiny steps closer, and then one step back. She isn’t that much shorter than Megan, but from this angle, Megan can stare right over the top of her head. 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Dani says low and fast. She’s so quick to correct herself lately. Everything she says comes with a caveat, even without any cameras nearby. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Yeah. Well, I’m fine.” 

And she thinks about storming back inside, but the rain feels nice on her sweaty skin, and Dani doesn’t make the choice to go back in either, so they just stand there for a while, and Megan gets the sense they’re both waiting on something else to say. 

Another thing Megan is supposed to be doing for her mental health besides the car thing is engaging with her hobbies on a regular basis. 

She spends a few evenings reteaching herself how to play Valorant. It’s fun until it isn’t, and she can’t quite put a finger on why it suddenly stops being entertaining and starts making her feel like she’s destined to sit at her desk doing nothing but clicking a mouse forever and ever and ever. 

Messing around on a track feels a little too close to being work. Lara doesn’t have this problem. She bleeds music. Anyone on the whole planet could look at Lara and just get the feeling that she’s an artist. But Megan isn’t really sure what to do without someone over her shoulder telling her she’s either nailing the vocal mix or completely fucking it up. She lets her laptop loop a forty eight second snippet of a beat she’s been working on until it dies. 

At least with dancing she knows when she looks bad. It’s easier to go around assuming people are always going to tell her she’s not giving enough, so that she’s pleasantly surprised when one of those videos ranking their live performances manages to slip through the confines of her tailored algorithm and puts her, like, second. Never first; she expects it, at this point. No one seems to remember that she was the highest ranked trainee during Dream. She’s the all-rounder. 

She tries to write some lyrics, too. Lara’s been doing this a lot lately, and she’s been happily open with them about it. What ends up happening is that she pens the same stupid poetic lines that have been stuck in her head for weeks now onto the pages of her notebook. I am not imagining. 

You shouldn’t look at me like that. Megan wants to make a song out of them, but she doesn’t know what it would be about, really. She doesn’t even know what the poem is about, like, finitely. There are these huge concepts she can read easily from the lines—customs, as in the title, how people go about their private rituals. A form of faith. The forms are all there pretty explicitly, but there isn’t much actually going on in the poem. There is no one reaching or falling or making their morning coffee with a head full of hangover cotton. 

Every time she reads it, she just ends up picturing this huge stone statue covered in birds, but by the time the image solidifies in her mind, all the birds have taken flight and she’s just looking at herself in a fogged-up mirror. 

She has therapy on Thursdays when it works out with their schedule, and it’s almost always a virtual session. The question of the hour today is what do you want out of all this? And Megan has about fourteen clarifying questions in response. What is ‘all this,’ for one, and what do I do if I know something that I want but I can’t have it?

Apparently, she’s repeatedly expressed a significant fear of the future in their past sessions. 

“With your lifestyle, I think it can be so important to slow down every once in a while and make sure you’re living in the moment,” her therapist says. He’s wearing these glasses that are so huge they have to be fake. “Would you agree?”

“I don’t like the moments. That’s the problem.”

“It can’t all be bad,” he urges. “Are there any silver linings?”

Megan can put her head in Yoonchae’s lap pretty much whenever she wants now. Lara can too, but Yoonchae doesn’t put her hands on Lara’s face when she does it. So, there’s that. 

This is what vertigo must feel like translated into life-action: Sophia’s hiatus is publicly announced and Megan spends the rest of the day opening Twitter on muscle memory alone before forcing herself to close it again. 

Less than a week later, they are in New York and in gold and on stage singing a new song that Megan secretly loves. There’s an open spot on the stage the whole time, and they’ve rehearsed this entire thing with only five people, but Megan is expecting another deluge of comments about how there should be two open spots. She can’t blame anyone for it. The best she can do is to open a different app, or better yet, go find Lara and talk to her instead.

Yoonchae calls her almost as soon as they’re back in their hotel rooms, and Megan is vaguely wishing she would’ve just knocked on the door instead, but she forgets all about that when Yoonchae informs her that people—online people—are loving the performance.

“No one said anything that bad yet.” Yoonchae is beaming through the phone. Megan can hear it. “I told you, right? I told you it would be good.” 

Megan had felt so sick before going on that she’d sheepishly requested a plastic bag to hold just in case. Huge, unavoidable Ford F-150 thought: I’m going to trip over the choreo and choke on the lyrics and possibly die on stage. Yoonchae had been buzzing with nerves of her own; Megan could feel her heartbeat hammering away under her palm when she placed it flat at the center of Yoonchae’s back. But clutching her own stomach, she’d repeated quietly over and over that things would be fine. They would even be good, trust me, Megan. We are going to crush. 

The irony of that phrasing had not been entirely avoidable even in Megan’s pre-show addled mind, but so what, Yoonchae had been right and that’s the important part. 

“Do you want to come down here?” Megan asks, already standing up to unlock the door. “We can look for videos. I want to hear how I sounded on that one riff.” 

“Yes,” Yoonchae replies, “okay, but I’m going to shower first. And order food.”

Megan says, “order it to my room so you don’t have to leave when it gets here,” and collapses sort of dizzily onto her bed when Yoonchae agrees and hangs up. 

“No Lara?” Yoonchae asks the second she steps into the room. She looks around, squinting like she expects Lara to be hiding behind the bed or something. 

“She’s with her family.” 

“Oh, right.’ Yoonchae nods. She sits at the end of Megan’s bed and bounces a few times, testing the mattress. “You are not with them?”

What she means is why. Megan sits down close enough that their thighs press together, and their shoulders. She can feel Yoonchae’s hipbone against her own. 

“I thought I’d give them a night.” she says. “What, you’re not excited to hang out with me?” 

Yoonchae shoves at her, but it’s really just her leaning her entire body into Megan’s. Earlier in the evening, she was painted with glittery body paint. Megan is not entirely certain that the shower has actually washed any of it off. Yoonchae is still glowing in the lamplight, she swears. 

“No fishing.” Ever since she learned about the phrase fishing for compliments, she calls them out all the time. “Did you order food?”

Megan hasn’t, and she lets Yoonchae huff at her until she pulls out her phone to scroll halfheartedly through menus online. 

“Maybe you can share mine,” Yoonchae says from somewhere above her. She’s watching Megan scroll, chin digging into the top of her head. Megan presses her cheek a little harder into Yoonchae’s chest. “I ordered a lot.” 

“But it’s your food,” she protests quietly. She’s so sleepy that her eyes are blurring a little. None of the menu items look at all appealing and honestly, she doesn’t want to get up from her comfy spot to eat. She lets her phone drop down against Yoonchae’s sternum, and the other girl huffs. 

Yoonchae doesn’t nudge at her any more to order food after Megan’s eyes slip shut and stay that way. She isn’t really sleeping, but she figures Yoonchae must think she is by the way she goes very still and settles a hand lightly at the top of her back. 

After a while, she feels Yoonchae shifting slowly, and then the little taps that come with her typing on her phone. She likes the sound of Yoonchae’s nails against the screen. She’d like them better if they were in her hair. 

Yoonchae’s phone buzzes and Megan flinches at the unexpected noise, prepared to give up the fake sleeping act, but Yoonchae just makes a shushing sound and runs her hand up and down Megan’s spine a few times. She taps at her phone and Megan hears the line connect, and then Lara’s voice hushed through the speakers. 

“I don’t believe you.” 

“You should,” Yoonchae whispers back. The reverberations run up from her chest into Megan’s skull. She’s becoming increasingly more aware of the sound of Yoonchae’s heart. 

“Show me,” Lara demands. The phone beeps again. It’s the FaceTime chime. Yoonchae’s arm shifts over Megan. “Holy shit. She was so wired before.” 

“But actually tired.” She starts moving her hand over Megan’s back again, absent-minded. “Food will be here soon.” 

“Yoonchae, don’t you dare wake her up.” 

Megan is feeling sort of like she did when she was a kid and she’d pretend to be asleep so that her mom would carry her inside from the car. She isn’t supposed to be hearing any of this. It’s like getting a tiny glimpse into Yoonchae and Lara’s minds. Greedily, she wants more. She wants Lara to probe a little deeper, for Yoonchae to make a bold confession. 

“But my food,” Yoonchae whines quietly. “I want to eat.” 

“Fuck your food, girl,” Lara says. “You can eat when you’re dead.” 

It’s so aggressively not the correct saying that Megan almost can’t contain a giggle. 

“Um, no.” Yoonchae might be shaking her head, because her hair is tickling Megan’s temple. “I will be dead.” 

They go back and forth like that long enough to start lulling Megan into a doze for real, until she feels Yoonchae’s whole body tense under hers, and she goes, “Okay, bye now,” and Lara’s indignance is cut off by the FaceTime ending sound. 

Megan is expecting hands at her shoulders, shaking her awake, albeit gently. What she gets instead is Yoonchae’s nose brushing her cheek, just briefly, and gentle words urging her to wake up for only a couple minutes. 

It’s actually not hard to feign coming back to consciousness. She really does feel sort of out of it when she pries her eyes open, and the room rocks a little when she picks her head up. Yoonchae is giving her this small private smile. 

“Rise and shine,” she chirps, and Megan is so overcome by it all that she drops her forehead back down against Yoonchae’s collarbone. Fingers jab lightly at her sides. “We have to eat now,” says Yoonchae, and she starts scooting out from under her. Megan has to fight back this crazy urge to collapse bodily on top of her to stop her from going. She thinks, I am not imagining. She thinks, this is very large, and tries to grab hold of it, the memory, and the way it feels to be inside of it. She is not thinking about saving it for later just in case something like this never happens again, but she is thinking, also, that maybe she should be.

Less than twenty-four hours later, still riding the high of the Klub Katseye performance, Megan gets rear ended at a stoplight in Pasadena. Her first instinct is to drive away when the light turns green and assess the damage later, but she can see the man behind her already getting out of his car. She puts on her hazards and thinks about calling Sophia or her mom or Yoonchae. 

“Hey—” The guy stops abruptly when he comes up to her rolled-down window. He’s a little older than her, hair coiffed and collar neatly ironed. “Woah, shit. I was not expecting that.” 

Her tongue is sticking in the back of her throat. She’s in full beat, hair curled and lips glossed, just in case. 

“Um,” she says ineloquently. 

“Here, you better take a look. It’s not that bad, but we should probably exchange insurance information anyway,” he continues. 

Megan is not entirely certain that she knows what her insurance information actually is. There’s some papers in the glovebox—she knows that. But she’ll have to get them out, and she doesn’t know which parts are the important ones, and there’s no way of telling whether this guy is just messing with her somehow. 

She gets out of the car. LA traffic speeds by on both sides, heedless of the cars stopped in the middle of the road. They could actually die doing this and Megan’s not sure anyone around them would actually stop to call emergency services. 

The damage is somehow both worse and better than she was expecting it to be. The guy’s front bumper is, like, still sort of embedded in her rear one, and she’s pretty sure neither of her taillights are going to work now. 

“I’m going to call someone.” She feels sort of dizzy. 

“The cops?” The guy’s face gets so red so fast that she steps away from him. His hand shoots out and she knows the flinch that travels through her would probably be very concerning to everyone on the internet. “Jesus, don’t get yourself hit.” 

She doesn’t call the cops. She calls her mom, because of course she does, and is wondering all the while if this whole thing would’ve been easier or harder if the guy had taken one look at her and gone Oh my god, you’re Megan from Katseye!

It happens. It is happening, the way it always has. Megan can’t stop it. 

“I’m gonna throw up,” she announces. 

“No!” Yoonchae exclaims, face contorting in genuine panic as she rolls away from Megan’s lap. 

Lara shoves her cupped hands towards Megan on what looks like sheer drinking-buddy fueled instinct. “Not on the carpet!” 

It’s possible she should have let that car pass by. She shakes her head, nudging Lara’s hands away. Yoonchae is still half-lying on the ground, looking up at her warily. Her cheeks are flushed a pretty shade of pink. 

They’re not drunk, but the six pack of cheap beer that Lara had acquired for the evening is gone, and Megan isn’t actually supposed to have had any of that regardless. She split most of her share between Lara and Yoonchae, but she might be feeling socially tipsy. Or it’s just the nerves again. She’s supposed to call Otis after the EP drops and tell him that it’s out. Like, he couldn’t google the release time himself or something. Or he just wants to hear her voice.

“No, like I’m nervous,” she clarifies. Yoonchae doesn’t immediately move back towards her, but Lara pulls her hands away slowly. “I mean, imagine no one likes it and decides they don’t want to come to our shows anymore and photos go out of us performing to empty arenas.” 

Yoonchae sighs and crawls back over to put her head down into Megan’s lap again. She’s been complaining about a headache all day and Megan isn’t sure that the beer would’ve actually helped with that. 

“I think that’s a few too many steps ahead, Meg,” Lara says. She eyes the two of them and inches closer. “What’s all this cuddling without me business?”

“You didn’t say you wanted to,” Yoonchae pipes up. She’s closed her eyes, covering half of her face with one of her hoodie sleeves. 

“But you should know I always want to,” Lara retorts, reclining delicately against the carpet so that she can tip her head back against Yoonchae’s stomach. 

They go off arguing half-heartedly, which Megan feels like she’s been listening to a lot of lately. She considers threading her fingers into Yoonchae’s hair. The roots are starting to grow out again. It isn’t as glossy as it used to be, but Megan still wants to touch it all of the time. It is, maybe, more about wanting to touch Yoonchae, and less about being jealous of her healthy hair.

“Yoonchae’s right,” she butts in randomly, because she feels more like making Yoonchae grin at her than pissing her off and making Lara laugh right now. “About whatever you guys are talking about.”

“I’m always right,” Yoonchae cheers, jabbing a finger into Lara’s side. “Megan knows.”

Sometimes Megan feels ridiculously, wildly out of place. She pushes through the clumps of people at parties and hovers by the talent chairs on set waiting to be called and scolds herself for every unfiltered thing to fly out of her mouth during interviews or fan meets. 

But the floor of Lara’s bedroom at a quarter to midnight with Yoonchae’s hair fanned out across her thighs is definitely the exact place she was supposed to be at this moment, and she’s suddenly so sure of that fact that she feels a decisive shudder run through her body. Yoonchae stops briefly to look up at her, checking in. Megan thinks, you shouldn’t look at me like that, and she isn’t sure why. It’s half a quote and half a truth. There are more important things to be worried about, like their music and Sophia’s health. She wants to text Manon and ask her where she is tonight; if she’s doing okay and if she’s seen any nice sunsets lately. 

“We should do a countdown,” Lara cries, bolting upright. “Yoonchae, where’s your phone?”

“Oh, God, please no,” Megan hears herself groaning. 

The weight lifts off of her lap and Yoonchae is standing, hunting around the room for her phone. Megan can’t help but stare. Car thought: if it were New Year’s, maybe she would try to get Yoonchae to give her a peck when the countdown was over. 

Probably, they will just go their separate ways after the countdown because it really isn’t that late, or maybe they will watch a movie and fall asleep together and Megan will have more excuses to think about putting her hands in Yoonchae’s hair. 

“One,” Lara is saying, “two, three—”

“That’s up, Lara.” Yoonchae comes back with her phone and sits criss-cross next to Megan. “You said countdown.”

“Hi, Yoonchae,” Megan says, because she doesn’t really want to listen to the impending squabble about ups and downs. 

“Hi, Megan,” parrots Yoonchae, and she scoots a little closer. So, mission accomplished. Megan is still nervous, but partly about other things now, like why she wants close to be closer; more to be most, etc. She wants Yoonchae to stand next to her in pictures with her mom, sometimes. It is something to think about, but maybe after the music. After, maybe then. 

Yoonchae’s detergent and shampoo are clouding up Megan’s senses. She’s wearing perfume too, just barely there, like she’d applied a long time ago and forgotten to touch up. Yes, after. Megan knocks her forehead against Yoonchae’s shoulder. 

“You aren’t nervous.” 

The other girl hums, tapping at her phone. She’s hunting for a countdown made by someone else like she couldn’t just pull up their profile on her Spotify. 

“I am, but it’s not that deep,” she says. “We like it, so.” 

This is contrary to everything that Grant and Sohey have been telling them for months. Wild is, as they’ve phrased it, their make it or break it era. 

Megan has always been worried about crashing and burning. The comments aren’t always easy to stomach; she can genuinely never predict what people will decide they think of them on any given day. 

Megan puts her hand out palm-up and Yoonchae, still looking down at her phone, drops her own hand into it. There are a few things missing from this moment, but Yoonchae beside her is not one of them. Megan slots their fingers together and squeezes, pressing her fingertips into the ridges of Yoonchae’s knuckles.