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Sojung is just nineteen when they tell her she can’t sing anymore.
“Vocal nodules,” the doctor says, pushing his spectacles further up his nose and peering down at his notes. He barely even looks at her. “Be careful not to strain your throat for the next six months or so.”
Sojung stares at him uncomprehendingly. “Six months,” she croaks. “I can’t sing for six months?”
“It could be more than that.” His pen taps against his notes. “And you shouldn’t be talking at all for the next five days.”
“Are you sure?” she tries. Her hands are trembling faintly. “What if I just sing a little from time to time, or—or what if I just didn’t sing vocally intensive songs, as long as I don’t strain my voice it’s—”
“No.” This—finally—gets the doctor to look up at her. His voice is sharp. “You’d risk permanent damage. You wouldn’t want that with a career like yours, would you?”
A career. Sojung isn’t sure whether she even can call it that anymore.
Starship doesn’t let her go on the spot like Sojung thought they would.
“You just need rest,” their vocal trainer says kindly. She pats Sojung’s shoulder. “You’ve been over-exerting yourself. Your body needs to heal.”
Sojung doesn’t want to rest. Being a trainee is an endless struggle of grasping for more time, trying to learn everything you can and hoping the other trainees don’t get better before you do, trying to do all of it before you age past the socially acceptable cutoff for debut. At nineteen, she doesn’t have time to rest.
They might not have let her go then and there, but when the time comes for this batch of trainees to debut and Sojung’s voice still isn’t what it used to be, she doesn’t think anyone would think twice before removing her from the debut lineup, vocal nodules or otherwise. Replace her with someone else who can actually sing, probably.
As it stands, among the current pool of trainees there are many girls her age—and younger—who can actually sing. Sojung would debut them all if she could, even the ones who can’t sing, but she’s old enough to know it doesn’t work like that.
Six months. Six vocal evaluations failed before she can even try.
Given that she’s forbidden to speak, Sojung resorts to carrying around a whiteboard around the building for the rest of the week for communication’s sake. She’s been given the week off following her diagnosis, but some part of her recoils at the idea of staying cooped up in the trainee dorms with nothing to do, no one for company except her own festering anxiety.
Right now she’s cross-legged on the practice room floor, staring into space as Miyeon-ssaem teaches some of the younger kids a new routine. It isn’t their turn for dance practice yet, and Sojung certainly can’t join the others for vocal lessons, so here she is, morosely waiting for their turn with Miyeon-ssaem.
Someone sits down beside her. Sojung glances up, then frowns. She grabs her whiteboard and marker.
Why aren’t you at vocal practice with the rest?
“Had an acting lesson that clashed.” Jiyeon shrugs. “Figured I’d find you here.”
Jiyeon is the only one so far who hasn’t asked why she’s refused to take the week off. At nineteen in this late a stage of their trainee period, Sojung knows they share a lot of the same apprehensions, including hating feeling like they’re not doing the most they can, like they’re running out of time whiling away the days before the debut lineup is finalised.
She knows what Jiyeon’s schedule is like. Dance and vocal practice, acting lessons, Chinese classes, early mornings, late nights, coffees with quadruple the amount of caffeine. She’d be the last person to fault Sojung for working without rest.
Jiyeon is doodling something on her whiteboard. Sojung’s eyebrows push together, trying to see what she’s up to.
Jiyeon’s hand shifts away as she caps the marker. It’s a drawing of someone with sad eyes, mouth turned down comically. When Jiyeon starts filling in the lines of her plaid shirt, Sojung realises it’s meant to be her.
She blinks down at it. Her likeness stares back despondently. Jiyeon adds little wrinkles to the chin as an afterthought.
Sojung’s mouth twitches.
She grabs the marker from Jiyeon. kim jiyeon you know i hate it when you draw me like that.
Jiyeon blinks, wide-eyed and innocent, and snatches the marker back. why? i think i did a pretty good job. the likeness is uncanny
Sojung bats her hand away. no it’s NOT
ok ok my bad one second
Jiyeon rubs some of the portrait away and then sticks her tongue out, concentrating. Sojung squints, immediately suspicious. She can’t ask Jiyeon what she’s doing, and Jiyeon has her only mode of communication in her hands, so she settles for jabbing Jiyeon’s shoulder, trying to get her to move. Jiyeon uses her body to block her line of sight, but she isn’t exactly the tallest person around, so Sojung sticks her chin over her shoulder instead.
Whiteboard-Sojung is now pinching her nose, which seems to have grown a couple of sizes.
An indignant squeak escapes Sojung, then her hands fly belatedly to her throat.
Jiyeon is laughing at her in that oddly endearing way of hers whenever she finds something really funny, the kind where her nose scrunches and she half-squeaks, half-inhales her way through an actual laugh.
Sojung grabs the marker. kim jiyeon my doctor is going to kill you!!! and then he’s going to kill me!! i’m not supposed to talk!!!!
Jiyeon just draws a smiley face on her whiteboard. It looks like her, smiling crescent eyes and a mouth wide open in laughter. Sojung pulls a face.
i hate you, she scribbles just under it. Her cheeks feel odd, like they kind of ache. Sojung realises she’s smiling. She looks up to see Jiyeon watching her, chin in the palm of her hand. Their eyes meet, and Jiyeon sticks her tongue out at her, then snatches the marker from her again.
no you don’t ^^*
Despite Kim Jiyeon’s best efforts, Sojung survives her five days of not talking.
But she still isn’t allowed to sing, and everyone won’t stop telling her she should rest, instead of wearing her body out even more on workouts and new choreography. She can’t sing, so she overcompensates by doing more of everything else, ignoring the way her body protests.
One month of “resting” passes, then another. Sojung drags her feet back and forth between the trainee dorms and the practice room. She spends most nights with her covers drawn up over her head, earbuds stuffed in her ears, listening to music that makes her head pound. During the day, she dances until she wears out the soles of her sneakers and her muscles scream from the exertion.
She can’t use her voice to sing, so she takes the past three months of bottled-up frustration into the recording studio and lays it out verse by verse, fast and angry and raw, into tracks she’ll never show anyone.
They can stop her from singing, but they can’t keep her out of the studio.
Hyunjung finds her one day, tucked away in the recording studio, brooding over her latest track. Sojung thought she’d locked the door.
She sits wordlessly next to Sojung, listens to the mess of a song she’s been piecing together.
“This is good,” Hyunjung says, surprised. “I didn’t know you could rap like that.”
Sojung isn’t used to Hyunjung not opening without some affectionate jibe or other upon seeing her. “Is it really?” she says. “You’re not just being nice, are you?”
This slump Sojung is in hangs over her like a raincloud, thick and oppressive and dismal. She’s well aware everyone is walking over eggshells around her, doesn’t readily tease her like they normally would.
“No.” Hyunjung frowns. “It’s raw, but after some refinement I’d put it in my playlist.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Hyunjung replays the track, absentmindedly looking over the changes she’s made. Sojung watches the cursor move around the screen dully, legs drawn up to her chin.
“Unnie,” she says hoarsely. “I don’t think I can sing with you anymore.”
Back when Sojung’s voice still worked like it should, she and Hyunjung used to practise singing duets together. A new release Sojung was excited about, or a nostalgic throwback stuck in Hyunjung’s head, one so old they’d have trouble finding the right audio track to practise with.
Hyunjung pauses the track, looks at her. “It’s only been two months.”
“But what if—”
Hyunjung bops her with her mouse, lightly. “Don’t even think about it. Talk to me about this again in another four months and we’ll see whether you’re still saying the same thing.”
“But—”
Hyunjung lifts the keyboard this time. (She’s been spending far too much time around Soobin.) Sojung closes her mouth. “Okay,” she mumbles.
“Besides,” Hyunjung says, putting the keyboard down and peering at the screen. “Listen to this. Maybe you should try rapping more often.”
One muggy day in July, Sojung’s knees give way beneath her as she’s dancing. She hears more than she feels herself thud clumsily to the ground, where she stays sprawled on her belly for the next few minutes, just staring at the scuffs and scratches in the wood grain.
Somewhere behind her, the door opens and closes. Sojung is just in the middle of deciding whether or not it’s worth the bother to get up and check who it is when she hears the sound of panicked footsteps hurrying towards her. In the next second, small hands land on her shoulders and start shaking her, none-too-gently.
Jiyeon’s face appears in her vision, pale and frightened. “Sojung? Sojung-ah! Are you—” Mid-shake, she meets Sojung’s eyes.
Her fist connects with Sojung’s shoulder, hard. “Don’t scare me like that. I thought you fainted or something. Dummy.”
“Ow,” Sojung complains tonelessly, pretending to clutch at her shoulder. “You’re so mean. What if I actually fainted? You were shaking me around and hitting me—”
Jiyeon just shoves her again. “Well, you didn’t.”
Sojung heaves herself up off the floor. These days she moves slowly, lethargically, like she’s trying to walk through glue. Jiyeon watches her, her face unreadable.
“You look like shit,” she says finally. “Take it easy. You’ve been practising non-stop for weeks.”
Sojung slouches against the mirror that lines the wall of the practice room, tips her head back, lets the chill soak through her thin shirt. “I can’t.”
Jiyeon moves to sit next to her, bumping her shoulder with her own. “Why not?”
“Too much to do.” Sojung bumps her shoulder back half-heartedly. “I need to learn this routine, I can’t get it right, then I want to work in the studio a bit more. Dawon asked me to look over some lyrics for her. And Dayoung asked me to help her with her homework.” She shifts, raking a hand through her hair tiredly. "And—crap—Miyeon-ssaem asked me five days ago to go over the new choreographies we have to learn—”
“—and put everyone in groups?” Jiyeon says. “I settled it with her.”
“Yeah, the—” Sojung blinks at her. “Huh?”
“You’re not the only one who knows everyone’s dance styles, you know.” Jiyeon prods her shoulder. “I haven’t been here as long as any of you, but I pay attention.”
“Oh. Then—”
“I put Juyeon on Dayoung homework duty,” Jiyeon says. “She asked me too, but I can’t remember anything about Chemistry and I didn’t think you would either. And you told me about Dawon needing help last Thursday, so I tried helping her with some of her lyrics today and—” she pauses here, preens like a self-satisfied cat “—I think she actually liked my suggestions. Though she might ask you to look over it one more time. You’re the expert.”
Sojung stares at her, speechless.
Jiyeon just punches her shoulder. “Stop trying to do everything by yourself. Idiot.”
She has this defiant, obstinate look on her face, eyebrows drawn and lips pressed together as if to say Chu Sojung I’ll murder you in your sleep if you ever bring up the fact that I did these things for you, so Sojung (wisely) swallows past whatever she thinks she’s going to say and settles for leaning back against the mirror again. Grinning stupidly to herself, this time.
“Jiyeon-ah,” she manages, through the lump forming thickly in her throat.
“What.”
“Thank you,” she says, earnestly. She can’t look at Jiyeon right now for fear the tears that have gathered in her eyes will spill over, so she settles for nudging Jiyeon’s knee with her own.
Silence.
“Stop smiling like that,” Jiyeon sniffs. “It makes you look ugly.”
On one of the rare Saturday afternoons where their batch of trainees has a slot in a practice room, the kids revel in the free space they don’t normally have access to. Juyeon and Dayoung chase each other around, shrieking meaninglessly, while Soobin heckles them from afar. In the corner, Dawon dances with earbuds plugged into her ears, watching herself critically.
Jiyeon isn’t here today, away at some scheduled acting lesson or other. On days like these her absence is palpable, hanging thick in the air and gnawing at Sojung’s chest. There are so many trainees to take care of. So many things she has to do to get better but can’t because of her stupid throat. They’re all running out of time; none of them are getting any younger.
Miyeon-ssaem tries, without much success, to herd the girls into something resembling a formation.
“I give her five seconds tops before she starts calling for you,” Hyunjung says.
On cue, Miyeon-ssaem throws her hands up in exasperation, then turns to Sojung. “Chu Sojung, can you get over here? Help me round up the kids.”
Sojung plasters the most agreeable smile she can muster on her face and gets to her feet. “Yeah, I’m coming.”
Sojung drags a hand down her face. “Let’s try that again.”
She knows the girls are tired. Their faces are slick with sweat, eyes heavy-lidded from exhaustion; some of them are starting to drag their feet mid-dance. Sojung is pretty sure if they don’t end practice soon Dayoung is going to slump onto the floor and start sleeping then and there. She hasn’t cracked a joke in the past twenty minutes–a record achievement for her.
They have no choice. They have a group evaluation tomorrow morning. Maybe if they do well, just maybe–there’ll be at least some mention of the possibility of debuting.
But they’re not quite there yet. There’s this part in the chorus where they seem to fall out of sync with each other, and Sojung knows Miyeon-ssaem will have their necks for the way some of them are moving their hands–
“Unnie,” Juyeon says hesitantly. “Maybe we should stop for tonight. We’re all tired and I don’t think anyone is going to dance any better–”
“We can’t.” Sojung’s voice is hard. “It has to be perfect.”
A weary sort of silence falls over them as everyone shuffles into position. On the floor, Soobin pushes herself up, too spent to even banter with her.
“You heard her.” Jiyeon comes up to stand beside her, clapping her hands to get everyone’s attention. “If we dance tomorrow like this, we’ll fail. Let’s take the chorus step-by-step, I don’t like the way it looks either. Im Dayoung, ass off the floor now. ”
Too tired to articulate actual words, Sojung just grasps her arm in fervent gratitude.
They excel the evaluation the next morning, even though Miyeon-ssaem wryly asks why some of them look like death.
Sojung sits alone in the stairwell after she dismisses them, staring blankly at a spot of dirt on the opposite wall.
“You’re going to burn a hole in that wall if you stare any longer,” Jiyeon comments.
“Ah!” Sojung nearly jumps a foot in the air. “God! Don’t scare me like that.”
Jiyeon ignores her, sitting on the bottom step next to her. “We passed.”
“I don’t feel good about it,” Sojung admits. “I pushed everyone too hard yesterday. And for what? They didn’t tell us a single thing about debuting.”
Every time she asks, she gets the same response. Nothing yet. Wait a little longer. Just wait a while longer, be patient. Sojung’s been waiting in this company for the past four years, as has Hyunjung. Others like Soobin have been waiting even longer.
Jiyeon hums. “I don’t think you were too hard on them. Those hand movements were killing me every time I saw them in the mirror. It paid off, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, but–” Sojung sighs. She keeps replaying their exhausted faces over and over in her mind. Juyeon’s tired, pleading look. The curt way she’d said it has to be perfect. Their youngest practically falling asleep mid-practice. Soobin too tired to talk back.
And for what?
“Maybe I’m the reason they haven’t told us anything about debuting,” Sojung says miserably. “Since I still can’t sing.”
She lets her forehead droop despondently onto Jiyeon’s knee. For once, Jiyeon doesn’t immediately shove her off.
After a while, thin fingers comb through her hair, easing some of it out of her eyes, tucking it delicately behind her ear. Jiyeon’s nails graze her scalp lightly and Sojung shivers, letting her eyes flutter shut. Before she can second guess herself, she turns her face upwards into the touch, and Jiyeon’s hand falls onto her cheek with the motion, her pinky skimming across her cheekbone, thumb ghosting over the baby hairs at the base of her neck. Sojung fights down another shiver.
This is, as far as she knows, uncharted territory. By now, Jiyeon should have done something like push her off her lap in mock disgust or, at the very least, insult her.
Jiyeon’s thumb trails along Sojung’s jaw this time, too slow to be accidental, and Sojung’s traitorous pulse thunders so loudly in her veins she fears Jiyeon might feel it against her thigh.
But then Jiyeon’s hand falls from her face. Sojung blinks herself out of whatever daze she’d been in, clearing her throat and straightening back up.
“Guess what Hyunjung unnie gave me the other day,” Jiyeon says. Her back is to Sojung; she’d turned around to rummage in her bag.
“A headache?” Sojung says automatically. An answer borne from knowing Hyunjung for the past seven years and knowing Jiyeon for precisely one.
“Other than that.” Jiyeon dangles a thumb drive in front of her, and Sojung goes cross-eyed staring at the ratty keychain swinging from it. It’s a crudely crocheted black-and-white cat, obviously meant to resemble Yangmal.
“Um,” Sojung says, still confused.
Jiyeon doesn’t respond, fiddling with something on her phone instead. She taps the screen, and Sojung’s own voice issues from the speakers. Sojung’s eyes widen, and she squeaks, lunging for Jiyeon’s phone.
“Wait, that’s–”
Jiyeon leans back, holding her phone out of her reach. “The stuff you were working on?” Mercifully, she hits pause.
“It’s really raw,” Sojung stammers. “I haven’t had the time to perfect it, and I was just messing around in the studio–” She pauses, embarrassed. “You saved it to your phone?”
Jiyeon shrugs. “ I really liked it.” There’s no trace of teasing in her voice. Her jaw is set stubbornly, as if she’s daring Sojung to tell her otherwise about her own tracks. “And unnie did too, or she wouldn’t have showed it to me singing praises about your rapping like she did.”
“Oh. Well.” Sojung rubs the back of her neck, sheepish. “I’ve been practising. Since I can’t sing and everything. I think I might really like it.”
“You’re good at it,” Jiyeon says. Blunt and to the point. “Stop keeping it to yourself, Chu Sojung.”
“Fine, fine,” Sojung says. She’s smiling, she realises. It feels awkward, clumsy on her face, the first genuine smile she’s had this week, like her cheeks aren’t used to it.
“There’s more to debuting than singing, you know?”
“Yeah,” Sojung says. Smiles again; wider, this time. Her second one this week. “Yeah, I guess there is.”
Jiyeon pulls Sojung back into the practice room after that. Everyone is, for some reason, still there, and they perk up as the door opens. Something barrels into Sojung, and Sojung lets out a very undignified squawk, teetering off-balance.
“Unnie,” Dayoung says, plopping her chin onto her shoulder and squeezing her into a hug. “Let’s go out to celebrate. We passed, didn’t we?”
“We only passed because of you,” Juyeon says, materialising on her other side and wrapping her arms around her as well. “You know that, right?”
There’s a tug on her sleeve, and then Dawon is standing in front of her as well. “Jiyeon unnie made us all listen to your mixtape,” she says. Her eyes are wide, earnest. “It was so good, unnie. Are you going to be a rapper now?”
Before Sojung can even get a word in, Juyeon has the audacity to actually kiss her cheek. Sojung squawks again, horrified, trying to twist out of their hold, but neither Dayoung nor Juyeon lets her go. Dawon actually joins in, gripping Sojung’s shoulders to keep her in place, smiling apologetically while Sojung shoots her a look of abject betrayal. At least three more kisses are peppered wetly to her cheek while she struggles, Soobin egging them on, cackling the whole time.
Through the chaos, Sojung glimpses Jiyeon and Hyunjung laughing at her predicament, Jiyeon holding onto Hyunjung’s shoulder for support, hand pressed to her mouth. There’s a scruffy little black-and-white crochet cat dangling from Hyunjung’s shirt pocket.
“Unnie? Unnie, why are you crying?” Juyeon demands, taking her cheeks into her hands. “I’m sorry for nagging you all the time, but like I was saying–you really should drink the tea I keep leaving out for you, it could really help your throat–”
“It’s because you won’t stop kissing her, Son Juyeon,” Soobin says. “She hates it so much she’s crying, look!”
“Oh, like you weren’t the one telling me to do it before she came in,” Juyeon argues, and Sojung laughs, watery and shaky.
This is her family, she thinks. And they better all debut together, because she wouldn’t trade any of them for the world.
On the eve of the year she turns twenty, Sojung finds herself sprawled on the floor of a practice room.
The thing about being a trainee in a company in a shared building is that you’re allotted to the bottom of the hierarchical food chain when it comes to things like privileges. Equipment. Practice room slots. Which means that other than practising in odd places like the corridor or stairwell or—more often than not—the bathroom, if they want to use the practice room they’re usually only able to when actual idols aren’t. During odd hours of the night, holidays. Or both, like they’re doing today.
She heaves herself up, tells everyone to go home and spend the new year with their families. Some of them (Dayoung) react with exuberant cheer and a hug that nearly breaks her ribcage, while most of the others just sigh with relief and start pulling on their coats.
Hyunjung casts her a worried look before leaving. “You’re not staying, are you?”
“Go on, unnie.” Jiyeon, lying on her stomach beside Sojung, shoos her away. “I’ll make sure she leaves.”
As the door closes behind her, Jiyeon rolls over so that she’s face-to-face with Sojung, quirking an eyebrow and smiling.
“What,” Sojung says, ignoring the tug in her chest.
Sometimes she looks at Jiyeon and marvels at how someone like her ended up in their batch of trainees. That someone she met entirely by chance believed in her enough to follow her to a whole other company. If she hadn’t been having lunch with Namjoo that day near Cube Entertainment where Jiyeon had been practising, if she hadn’t taken the time to stop and stare through the practice room’s glass door at the strikingly pretty girl so absorbed in dancing…
“Come somewhere with me,” Jiyeon says, pulling at her arm.
“Am I allowed to ask where?”
“No,” Jiyeon says, already standing up. She hasn’t let go of Sojung’s arm, so Sojung is practically hauled up as she stands, until she relents and gets to her feet as well.
She’s always found it hard to say no to Jiyeon. (She’d perked up the moment Jiyeon opened with come, would go to the ends of the earth if Jiyeon so much as hinted she’d want the company.) But that doesn’t mean she can’t pretend to grumble a little about it.
“Be quiet, Chu Sojung,” Jiyeon says, lobbing her coat at her. Predictably, it gets caught more by Sojung’s face than her hands. When she pulls it down, disgruntled, Jiyeon is already laughing, slipping out the door and beckoning her forward.
Jiyeon brings her up three flights of stairs and through a door they both struggle to ease open. Sojung breathes in fresh, crisp air, drawing her coat more tightly around herself. Her breath comes out in little puffs.
“Why,” she asks, “are we on the rooftop?”
It isn’t a very impressive rooftop, either—speckled with overgrown plants and dry, untamed grass, otherwise bare save for a row of rusted, fading lamps. From her backpack, Jiyeon draws a white-blue striped picnic mat out and lays it on the ground. Her hand closes around Sojung’s wrist again as she all but drags her to sit down.
“Kim Jiyeon—” Sojung starts to grumble, but stops as she sees what Jiyeon’s pulling out of her bag. “Why do you have soju?”
“Don’t you know what day it is?” Jiyeon says, mock-reproachful, cracking open the first bottle.
“New year’s eve?” Sojung says. She glances at her phone. “…day?” she amends hastily.
“We just turned twenty,” Jiyeon reminds her. “We can go out and drink with Hyunjung unnie now.” She takes a sip, pushes the bottle into Sojung’s hands. “Our first drink,” she declares, faux dramatic.
Sojung’s had alcohol before. It’s impossible not to–she’s stolen sips of wine from her parents here and there, been offered various types of liquors by the older trainees in the building. But this feels different, tasting the strawberry mint of Jiyeon’s lip tint on the rim of the bottle as she tips her head back and lets the soju slide down her throat, feeling Jiyeon’s eyes on her as her throat bobs.
She takes another swig, then passes the bottle back to Jiyeon, their knees bumping as she leans over.
“Good?” Jiyeon asks. Her voice is low, her eyes on Sojung’s lips.
Sojung swallows the mouthful she has entirely too quickly. “Yeah–” she coughs, sputters. Grabs Jiyeon’s knee to anchor herself in her panic.
Jiyeon just laughs at her predicament, drinking from the bottle and playfully swatting her away. “First time?”
Sojung lets her head drop into her hands. “Something like that,” she mutters.
As it turns out, both of them can hold their alcohol pretty well.
Jiyeon sets the second bottle down on the grass. Her mouth twists wryly. “Can you believe we’re adults and we still haven’t debuted?”
Sojung glances sideways at her. She’s staring into space, toying listlessly with the empty bottle.
For both of them, this is already their second chance: Jiyeon, after being passed over for debut and leaving Cube because of it; Sojung, after Viva Girls fell through all those years ago, leaving her and Hyunjung with nothing but each other to lean on.
They’re twenty now. If they don’t debut under Starship soon, if they wait around any longer, they’ll be too old for a third chance. If they don’t debut, Jiyeon will have followed Sojung over from Cube and wasted away here for a year and a half for nothing.
“It’s not your fault,” Jiyeon murmurs, as if she knows exactly what she’s thinking. She bumps Sojung’s knee with her own.
“You’re here because of me—”
“I came here because I wanted to, okay?” Jiyeon opens the third bottle and curls Sojung’s fingers around it. “Stop thinking so highly of yourself, Chu Sojung.”
“Well,” Sojung mumbles. She takes a gulp of soju, and before she can chicken out, says, “Whatever happens, I’m glad you came here.”
I don’t know what I would do without you, she adds silently in her head.
She’s ready for Jiyeon’s fist when it lands on her shoulder.
“Ugh,” Jiyeon says emphatically, wrinkling her nose. Then, after a while, quieter, “I’m glad I met you too. Idiot.”
Sometime after they finish the fourth bottle, Sojung whines about being cold. Jiyeon climbs into Sojung’s lap and just sits there, giggling softly into her neck.
“Jiyeon-ah.” Sojung shivers as Jiyeon’s nose digs into the hollow of her collarbone. Her hand is splayed along Jiyeon’s waist, presumably to keep her from falling off, though she can’t remember when she ever put it there.
“This is how you share warmth, right?” Jiyeon says into her neck, lips grazing her skin. She giggles again, and it does horrible things to Sojung’s inebriated brain.
“Kim Jiyeon, get off me,” she mutters. Her cheeks feel like they’re on fire.
Teeth clamp down onto the skin of her neck. Sojung yelps noisily, her hand flying up.
“Don’t wanna,” Jiyeon mumbles. “I’m cold too.”
“You were the one who brought us here.” Sojung sighs, but her hand returns to Jiyeon’s waist, holding her in place. “ Fine. ”
At four in the morning, they finally make an attempt to get up and leave. They’ve mostly sobered up by now, having run out of soju after the fifth bottle. Jiyeon had fallen asleep on Sojung’s shoulder while Sojung stared unseeingly at the fraying grass, thinking about her unfinished raps and compositions and all the dance routines she hasn’t learnt and the debut she isn’t sure will come.
And, of course, about the girl fast asleep on her shoulder.
That night in the cramped trainee dorms, Sojung falls asleep over scribbled verses of warmth and soft laughter and eyes that crinkle at the corners.
No one thinks to tell them about their debut. The rest of the world hears about it first through reporters and news articles, but since Internet access is a privilege they haven’t yet attained, none of them hear about it until much later.
Sojung herself has just come back from a coffee run with Jiyeon when some of the staff stop them to congratulate them.
“Our…what?” Sojung says faintly.
Jiyeon’s fingers brush Sojung’s wrist. Her hands are shaking. Sojung sticks out a finger for her (the rest are trying very hard not to drop her coffee) and Jiyeon’s fingers close gratefully around it.
“Your debut,” the staff member repeats kindly. “Next February.”
Sojung does drop her coffee this time. Jiyeon, having recovered significantly faster, catches it deftly and thanks the staff member. Sojung catches a few more words she can’t comprehend in her current state as they continue talking, like stage names and Exy and Bona, but they’re forgotten the moment the staff member leaves and Jiyeon turns to her.
"How are you already crying,” Jiyeon says wryly. Her hand slides onto her jaw, thumb catching the tears that have pooled at the corner of her eyes.
“How are you not,” Sojung sniffles. “We made it, I can’t believe we made it, you and me and Hyunjung unnie and—and all the kids, we’ll all be in the same group—”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know. We made it.” Jiyeon thumbs her cheekbone again. The brush against her skin is casual, fleeting; Jiyeon is just wiping away a stray tear, the look on her face fondly exasperated. Sojung’s heart stutters painfully in her chest anyway.
She can’t do anything but stare dumbly back.
“You’re going to be a great leader,” Jiyeon tells her firmly, letting go of her jaw and pulling back, taking Sojung’s heart along with her.
"And you’ll be with me, right?” Sojung whispers tremulously.
Jiyeon cocks her head, smiling. “Where else would I be?”
Sojung’s voice gets better day by day.
The doctor gives her the go ahead. She can start to sing again—taking it easy, of course. Hyunjung has been wanting to cover one of the slower, mellow Urban Zakapa songs for a while—from the way she’s had it on repeat Sojung knows she’s been itching to but hasn’t voiced it aloud, hasn’t openly talked about covering any song since Sojung was diagnosed.
“Maybe if you cried a little less it would’ve healed faster,” Jiyeon tells her snarkily. But Sojung doesn’t miss the relieved smile that softens her words, the fingers that skim the inside of her wrist in a rare show of affection. “So are we going to get a new mixtape to listen to?”
Sojung feigns nonchalance, grinning. “Maybe.”
She considers the songs she’s written lately; they’re a marked change from when she’d packed the recording studio with her frustration and anxiety all those months ago. She thinks of the ones she’s fiddled clumsily with in the studio while smiling stupidly to herself, the rough, hastily sewn-together melodies in her notebook she scratched out because she was too embarrassed to look her own feelings in the eye, and wonders whether she can sneak one or two into the albums they’re going to release in the years to come.
She wonders if Jiyeon is going to know they’re about her.
"Ah, really,” Juyeon whines. She slaps a hand over her mouth and yawns, long and dramatic. “How long have you been talking for, unnie? We’ve been here for centuries.”
Hyunjung starts laughing, her cheeks flushed crimson from the alcohol. Beside her, Soobin draws a finger across her neck threateningly. “If you make me sit through one more word of your speech…”
“You guys are so mean.” Sojung pouts. “We’re going to debut in the same group—”
Next to Sojung’s empty seat, Jiyeon waves her chopsticks at her imperiously. “And I’m already regretting it.”
“I still have things I need to say—”
“You can say them while we’re eating.” Luda, this time, snickering behind her hand from where she sits at the end of the table, head resting on Dawon’s shoulder.
Sojung goes to sit in her seat, grumbling emptily the whole time. Under the table, Jiyeon’s hand finds one of her fingers, curling around it.
“Happy birthday.” Her eyes curve. “Dummy.”
Sojung blinks at her. Her hand promptly lands in their dessert.
Her own resounding shriek is followed by groans of dismay along the table. “Juyeon,” Jiyeon says, exasperated. “Help her.”
“Unnie, you’re twenty-one and I still have to take care of you, do you know how many times I’ve had to—”
A few hours later, the room they’re in has, predictably, turned into a warzone. Dayoung and Juyeon chase after Yeoreum, their fingers coated with icing, while Yeoreum shrieks ten different protests and twists away from their grabby hands. Sojung’s own cheeks are messily smeared with the remnants of her cake, stamped with the fingerprints from at least six different hands.
Jiyeon sidles up to her, swipes her finger down her cheek, then wipes it on her shirt.
Sojung feigns swatting her ass, and Jiyeon ducks easily out of her reach, giggling. She’s tipsy, even if it doesn’t show on her face. Where Hyunjung and Soobin are huddled together talking in the far corner of the room, Sojung can see Hyunjung’s cheeks are fire-engine red.
“Jiyeon-ah,” she says, after a pause, as she’s wiping the cake off her face. The soju in her system quashes any inhibitions she might’ve had. She swallows, catches hold of Jiyeon’s wrist so she quiets down. Jiyeon tilts her head, listening. “I couldn’t have done any of this without you. Debuting, handling all these kids, my voice…”
Her tongue feels clumsy, leaden in her mouth. She hesitates and stutters her way through her gratitude for a good half-minute before Jiyeon finally takes pity on her and pushes her shoulder, eyes crinkling at the corners.
“None of us could have done this without you too. Dummy.”
But that isn’t quite what Sojung wants to hear. She knows none of them could have done this without her. What she wants to hear is that Jiyeon couldn’t have done this without her. That Jiyeon knows she’s Sojung’s pillar, her crutch, no matter how often she teases Sojung or pokes fun at her when she cries. That Sojung is special to Jiyeon like Jiyeon is special to Sojung.
Sojung allows herself one fleeting moment of selfishness, lets the faint disappointment wash over her. Then she grins, ruefully. “Yeah.”
Jiyeon looks at her, then at her ruined cake. “Make a wish.”
“But I already made one,” Sojung says, confused. “We cut the cake.”
“Make one again,” Jiyeon says. “For me.”
There’s very little Sojung would say no to when Jiyeon asks her like that. Obediently, she puts her hands together and squeezes her eyes shut.
Earlier, she’d wished for their successful debut. She tries (for Jiyeon) to think about what else she wants. There’s nothing more she could ask for in this moment, really. For their group to have a distinctive sound? Creative control over their music? That won’t be difficult to accomplish; Sojung has already been recognised within the company for her skill in both composition and lyricism, Hyunjung is well on her way to be, and Dawon’s been clocking time in the studio experimenting with her own arrangements.
For their group’s longevity and success, then? To be loved and recognised, even after their contract ends seven years down the road. A wide variety of gigs for the members to choose from, together and individually. Jiyeon by her side, through it all.
While Sojung is busy puzzling it over, soft lips press to hers, then pull back as quickly as they’d come.
Sojung’s eyes fly open. “Wha—” Her fingers touch her lips in muted disbelief. They come away trembling.
Jiyeon is preoccupied with examining the cake like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. She’s smiling to herself.
“You—” Sojung is gaping. Unattractively. Her mouth opens and closes, repeatedly.
“You look like a goldfish,” Jiyeon informs her. “You were taking forever. Stop thinking so much. We’re going to be fine.”
'“Yeah,” Sojung stammers. Her voice comes out breathy; she clears her throat, gruffly. “Yeah. Um.”
Jiyeon is blatantly laughing at her now, eyes curving and cheeks bunching in mirth, gums on full display. She turns and walks away, and Sojung makes a face, catching the back of her denim jacket and pulling until she stumbles backwards into her arms.
Jiyeon is still giggling. “You should’ve seen the look on your face—”
Sojung kisses her again, swallows her surprised gasp into her mouth. Their noses bump clumsily together, but Sojung doesn’t care. Her arm winds around Jiyeon’s waist, pulling her closer, wanting to press closer, wanting to hear Jiyeon make that sound again. Jiyeon whines softly into her mouth, fisting her hands in her collar, and Sojung feels her ears turn bright red.
Across the room, one of the kids—Sojung can’t be bothered to check who—yells, “Ew! Gross!”
Reluctantly, Sojung pulls back. Jiyeon stares back up at her breathlessly, her lips parted, cheeks dusted pink. Sojung pinches herself, hard. She must be imagining it, that look of soft wonder in Jiyeon’s eyes, the way Jiyeon’s staring like at her just like how Sojung feels about her.
As if Sojung is her whole world.
“You look like you’re five seconds away from crying,” Jiyeon tells her. She drops a few centimetres, and Sojung realises she’d been standing on tiptoe to kiss her. The thought does funny things to her heart. “If you start crying, I’m walking away again.”
“I won’t,” Sojung protests. “I swear.”
“Liar.” Jiyeon rolls her eyes, swiping her cheekbone and thrusting her thumb into Sojung’s face so she can see for herself how damp it is.
She doesn’t start walking away. Sojung grins so hard it hurts. She bends down, kissing Jiyeon again, soft and slow. Jiyeon lets her, so she does it again. Then one more time, for good measure.
(Just to spite the kids, of course.)