âź â â hii, im LEA! iâve be lesbian for like forever. i randomly wanted to start a tumble blog because it seemed fun. Plus iâve been a writer on wattpad since younger days. kinda donât wanna tell you guys that account because you know really !CRINGE! but im the oldest of three. i love sarcasm itâs genuinely my love language. a constant over thinker. i get jealous very easily which is insane. im favorite food is probably seafood boils. i currently have no tattoos but really want a sleeve. âĄ
ïŸ ïœ„ïŸÂ·:ïœĄïœ„ïŸïŸïœ„ RÍUÍLÍEÍSÍ
âź â â NO SPAM. àŒâ MEN DN!. âË⥠NO SMUT! i donât feel comfortable with smut because these people are human and arenât characters. ⯠NO HOMOPHOBIA. ÖŽ àŁȘđ€. NO RACISTS.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch âą No registration required âą HD streaming
đ before dream academy and the fame, katseye's manon, was known in the industry as the girlfriend of beyonce and jay z's eldest daughter, y/n knowles-carter, who had randomly disappeared from the face of the earth after their breakup until a new girl group debuts and starts gaining attention from the world.
genre - wlw, heavy angst, idol x idol, smau, fluff, smau, exes to lovers
featuring - katseye, le sserafim (yunjin), enhypen (jake), xg (maya and harvey), sofia wylie, boys world (queenie), and more
status - in progress
profiles: bad decisions inc. | the eyekons + friends
After sitting for a while i started to think about how could i forgive her after everything. i had to leave to protect myself from hurting so much. i had to leave the very country i just started my career in because i was heartbroken.
It wasnât just the heartbreak that drove me awayâit was the constant replay of moments that used to make me feel alive, now turned into reminders of what Iâd lost. Every corner of that city whispered her name. Every familiar street felt like a wound reopening. I told myself distance would be the cure, that if I could just get far enough away, I might be able to breathe again.
But the thing about pain is that it doesnât respect borders. I carried it with me across oceans, tucked somewhere between my passport and my pride. Some nights, I still wake up with her voice echoing in my head, and I wonder if forgiveness is something I owe herâor myself.
Because maybe forgiveness isnât about letting her back into my life. Maybe itâs about releasing the version of me that was trapped in the aftermath, the one who couldnât see beyond the ruins of what we had. Looking down onto my lap where her head laid brushing her hair out of her face. I remember how peaceful she looked then, as if the world had never touched her. The way her eyelashes fluttered when she dreamed, the faint smile that would appear without warningâit made me believe in something gentle, something safe. Back then, I thought love was supposed to look like that: quiet, unshakable, infinite.
But looking at her nowâif I couldâIâd see it differently. That moment wasnât proof of forever. It was a fragment of time, one of those rare pauses life gives you before everything shifts. I held on to that image for too long, mistaking it for permanence when it was only a glimpse of what once was.
Maybe thatâs why forgiveness feels so complicated. Itâs not about excusing what she did; itâs about untangling myself from the illusion I built around her. She wasnât my salvationâshe was my lesson.
And as much as it hurts to admit, maybe walking away wasnât the end of our storyâit was the beginning of my becoming. The silence that followed her absence was unbearable at firstâloud in its emptiness, echoing through every part of me that had once been filled with her laughter. But over time, that silence turned into something else. It became space. Space to think. To heal. To understand that love doesnât always mean staying, and letting go doesnât always mean giving up.
I started to see pieces of myself Iâd neglected while trying to hold us together. The dreams Iâd postponed, the parts of my identity Iâd dimmed just to keep the peace. Leaving her, leaving that countryâit wasnât just escape. It was reclamation.
And maybe thatâs what forgiveness truly is. Not a moment, but a slow unfolding. A quiet decision to stop bleeding from old wounds. A choice to let the memory soften instead of scar.
Because somewhere between losing her and finding myself, I realized: some goodbyes are just disguised beginnings.
And this was our second chance. Feeling her lift her head slightly off of my lap and turn to face me, I could see everything in her eyes â the fear, the regret, the longing. Her small, trembling movements reminded me of why I had left and why I had come back at the same time.
Her hands rested lightly on my thighs, gripping just enough to keep herself steady, and I could feel the warmth of her body against mine. My own hands hovered over her, uncertain where to rest, wanting to hold her but afraid of breaking what little fragile peace we had.
âI⊠I didnât think weâd get here again,â she whispered, voice so soft it almost vanished into the quiet of the room.
I let out a slow breath, my fingers brushing lightly against hers, tracing the tremor in her hands. My chest felt heavy, every heartbeat reminding me of the distance weâd traveledâthe years of absence, the nights of silence, the ache of remembering.
âI⊠Taeyeon,â I began, my voice soft but firm, âIâm going to forgive you.â
Her eyes widened, a flicker of hope mixed with disbelief. She leaned a little closer, as if afraid the words might vanish before they reached her.
âBut,â I continued, drawing a careful line between us even as her warmth pressed against me, âitâs not going to happen all at once. Forgiveness⊠itâs going to take time. Iâm not just letting go of the hurtâyou have to understand, I have to untangle myself from everything we were, everything I lost, everything I carried across oceans.â
She nodded slowly, her lips parting in a soft, almost breathless acknowledgment. âI⊠I understand,â she whispered, her voice trembling.
âIâm telling you this because I want you to know Iâm trying,â I said, my hand finally resting lightly at the curve of her back. âI want to let you back in, but I canât erase the past overnight. Some days will feel like progress, others like Iâm right back at the start. And youâll have to accept thatâthatâs the only way I can forgive without losing myself in it again.â
She swallowed hard, the fragility in her eyes softened by gratitude and the faintest trace of relief. âIâll wait,â she said, voice barely above a whisper. âIâll do whatever it takes. I just⊠I just want a chance.â
I let her rest her head back against me, exhaling slowly. âThis is your chance,â I murmured, âbut itâs ours tooâif we take it one step at a time. No rushing. No pretending weâre past it all. Just⊠learning to trust again.â
And for the first time in what felt like forever, there was a quiet space between us that wasnât defined by hurt or longing or absence. It was a space where forgiveness could growâfragile, hesitant, but real. And I was willing to see where it led, even if it took forever.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch âą No registration required âą HD streaming
âźblurb Two lives entwined by something unspoken, lingering in the spaces between memory, longing, and fleeting glimpses. âźduo Taeyeon x F!reader âźtags love, heartache, romance, yearning, hurt, longing
this is going to be the longest story Iâve every written without a follow up. so be prepared <3
âź read now âź
The practice rooms had no clocks, only mirrorsâlong, unblinking glass that reflected every stumble back at them. Fluorescent lights hummed above, a sound so constant it disappeared until silence made it obvious. That was where they grew up, in the hum and the glass, where time bent itself around repetition.Taeyeon was there from the start, small enough to vanish into the corner yet impossible to overlook once she opened her mouth to sing. She carried herself like someone who already knew the weight of promises, steady in ways the others werenât. Heavier, maybe. She laughed less often, but when she did, it had the strange quality of breaking something open in the room.
No one remembered exactly when Y/N began gravitating toward her. It could have been the night Taeyeon slid a bottle of water across the floor after noticing the tremor in Y/Nâs hands. Or the afternoon she wordlessly tore a granola bar in half and left one piece on top of Y/Nâs notebook. Small things, almost careless, until they werenât.
What happened between them didnât announce itself. It lived in the pausesâtwo sets of footsteps falling into rhythm on the way back to the dorms, shoulders brushing without comment. It was the way Y/N lingered in the hall after practice ended, pretending to tie a shoelace until Taeyeon emerged so they could walk together.Nobody would have called it love then. Not yet. But in the long hours where no one else was watching, something unnameable began to take root.
Taeyeon sat cross-legged on the floor, head tipped back against the mirror, strands of hair sticking to her temples. Y/N lingered by the speaker, pretending to scroll through playlists, though the screen hadnât changed in minutes.
âYouâre staying again?â Y/N asked finally, voice carrying in the empty space.
Taeyeon cracked one eye open. âYouâre still here too.â
âThatâs different.â
âHow?â
âIâm waiting for you.â
Her laugh came out soft, startled, like she hadnât expected it. âYou donât have to do that.â
âMaybe I want to.â
She tilted her head, studying them as if weighing whether to argue. In the end, she only said, âYouâre stubborn.â
âMaybe,â Y/N admitted, crossing the room to drop beside her. Their shoulders brushed, the contact so small it could be ignored. Neither of them moved.
For a while, the only sound was the hum of the lights. Then Y/N spoke again, quieter this time. âDo you ever think about leaving?â
âLeaving?â
âThe company. All of this.â They gestured vaguely at the mirrored walls.
Taeyeonâs answer didnât come right away. She tapped her fingers twice against her knee. âSometimes. When it gets too heavy. But then I remember why Iâm here.â She looked at them, a faint challenge in her gaze. âDonât you?â
Y/N wanted to answer honestlyâthat they stayed less for the dream and more for the way she made it bearableâbut the words jammed in their throat. Instead, they gave a half-smile.
Y/N turned to her, but she was already looking away, eyes fixed on her reflection in the mirrorâtwo figures side by side, blurred at the edges by the dim light.
âI think it is,â Y/N said finally, voice lower now. âAt least⊠right now. With you here.â
Taeyeonâs lips pressed into something between a smile and a wince. She didnât reply, but her shoulder leaned the slightest fraction closer, brushing against theirs, as if to say sheâd heard.
They left the practice room long after the building had gone quiet, their steps muffled against the narrow hallway. The air outside was sharp with winter, cold enough that Taeyeon immediately pulled her hood tight around her face. Y/N shoved their hands into their pockets, watching the way her breath curled white in the dark.
The city didnât sleep, not really. Neon signs flickered, buses hissed past, convenience stores hummed with low fluorescent light. But this hour felt gentler, as if the noise had softened just enough to give them space.
âHungry?â Y/N asked, nodding toward the corner store across the street.
Taeyeon hesitated, then shrugged. âAlways.â
Inside, the heater buzzed like a tired insect. Y/N grabbed two ramen cups off the shelf, setting one into her hands without asking. She looked down at it, lips tugging into something small, almost a smile.
âDo you do this with everyone?â she asked.
âDo what?â
âBuy them food. Wait for them after practice. Pretend youâre not tired when you are.â
Y/N ripped open the packet of seasoning a little too fast. âNo. Just you.â
That earned them a look, steady and unreadable. She didnât answer right away, only poured hot water into the cup and stirred it with the flimsy fork. Her fingers, pale from the cold, brushed against theirs when she handed it over. Neither of them pulled away.
They sat on the curb outside, the heat of the ramen warming their hands. The street was almost empty, the occasional car breaking the stillness before disappearing again.
âI donât think Iâd last here without you,â Y/N said suddenly, surprising even themself with the honesty.
Taeyeon slurped her noodles, swallowed, then tilted her head. âYou would.â
âNo,â they said. Firmer this time. âNot at all.â
She studied them in the glow of the streetlight, steam rising between them. For a moment it seemed she might reply, but instead she dropped her gaze, hiding whatever flickered there.
âEat before it gets cold,â was all she said.
But her knee, drawn close under the hem of her hoodie, shifted until it brushed against theirsâlight, fleeting, enough to feel like a secret.
The ramen cups were drained down to cloudy broth, the steam long since thinned into the night air. Taeyeon set hers on the curb with careful fingers, as though even that small motion required effort, and pressed the heel of her hand against her eyes. A faint sigh slipped out, unguarded.
âYouâre going to fall asleep right here,â Y/N said, half-teasing, half-serious.
âI might,â she murmured, voice raw with exhaustion.
âLetâs get you back to your dorm then.â Y/N said, not wanting to to have to carry her after 9 hours of practicing.
They rose slowly, stretching legs stiff from sitting too long. The cityâs hum pressed soft around them, muted by the hour. Under the pale glow of the streetlamps, their shadows trailed long and thin across the pavement.
Taeyeonâs steps were uneven, smaller than usual, her hood tugged forward until it shadowed her face. Y/N adjusted their stride without thinking, falling into her pace.
âYour dormâs another five minutes from mine, right?â Y/N asked.
Taeyeonâs reply came faint, almost a hum. âMm.â
âYouâre probably too tired for that.â
âI can manage.â
âYou can barely keep your eyes open.â Y/N glanced sidewaysâher lashes fluttered as if every blink fought to stay shut, her breath rising in fragile bursts of white against the dark. âHow about staying at mines tonight.
Her head turned at that, sharp enough to register protest, but Y/Nâs tone carried no space for refusal. âItâs closer. Just crash there.â
For a stretch of pavement, she said nothing, the silence punctuated only by their footsteps. Then, reluctant, barely above the cold:
âWonât it⊠look strange?â
âItâs late. Nobody will notice,â Y/N said, softer now, as though coaxing her into the thought. âBesides, you need sleep more than you need to worry.
A car passed at the far end of the street, headlights sweeping across them before fading back into shadow. The world felt suspended, as though even the city itself had given them permission to exist unnoticed. Y/N slowed their pace just slightlyânot enough for her to call it out, but enough to match the drag in her steps.
Taeyeonâs hands stayed buried deep in the pocket of her hoodie, shoulders hunched as though the cold might climb inside her. Y/N watched her fight against another heavy blink, the way her steps faltered just enough to betray her stubbornness.
At last, her voice slipped out, almost lost to the night air. âIâll only stay if you have an extra blanket.â
âI do.â Y/Nâs reply came too quickly, betraying how ready they had been for this moment.
Her mouth tugged, almost into a smile, but she ducked her head before it could fully form. âThen⊠just for tonight.â
They walked the rest of the way in silenceânot the hollow kind, but the kind weighted with everything neither of them dared to say. Boots scuffed against pavement, breath rose in faint clouds, and the city hushed around them as if listening in. At the corner near Y/Nâs building, the streetlight cast a soft glow across Taeyeonâs face. She looked worn down to something fragile, and the flicker of protectiveness that stirred in Y/N was so sharp it almost hurt.
Inside the dorm, the air was warmer, tinged faintly with detergent and the ghost of instant coffee. The hallway lay dim and quiet, lined with closed doors, the silence of other trainees folded deep into sleep. Y/N unlocked their room with careful fingers, easing the door open until it gave way with the softest click.
Taeyeon lingered at the threshold, her weight balanced as though crossing it meant more than just stepping into a room. The crease between her brows betrayed the thought she didnât voice.
âYouâre safe here,â Y/N whispered.
She gave a small nod, and then she followed, tugging her hood down as though finally letting herself exhale. The room wasnât muchâone beds, a desk cluttered with notebooks and half-empty water bottles, the kind of mess born from too many nights of not caring. Yet in the thin wash of light seeping through the window, it felt like its own world, tucked away from the rest of the city.
Y/N flicked on the dim desk lamp and immediately felt their stomach drop. Clothes draped over the chair, an open bag of chips slouched on the desk, notebooks scattered across the floor like fallen leaves.
âWaitââ Y/N blurted, nearly colliding with Taeyeon as she stepped forward. They darted past her, scooping up socks, shoving stray pages into a stack that only half-looked organized. The chips went into the drawer with a crunch, the chair cleared with one frantic sweep.
Taeyeon leaned on the doorframe, watching without moving. âYou always live like a storm passed through?â
âNot always,â Y/N muttered, shoving a hoodie under the bed with their foot. âJust⊠most of the time.â
Her mouth curved faintly, but she didnât press, only crossed the room and lowered herself onto the mattress. The springs creaked beneath her small weight. Y/N froze, suddenly aware of how intimate the sight wasâher sitting there, hoodie rumpled, hair slipping loose at her temples.
Taeyeon looked up, eyes half-lidded. âIâll take the floor.â
âWhat? No.â
âYou need your bed.â
âYou need it more.â The words came out sharp, too quick, like instinct.
Her brow arched, but she didnât argue. Not yet. She tucked her hands into the sleeves of her hoodie, gaze flicking to the thin blanket folded at the end of the mattress. âIâll be fine.â
âTaeyeon.â Y/Nâs tone softened, but it held. They crossed the room, pulled a blanket free from the stack, and laid it gently across her lap.âYouâre not sleeping on the floor. Not when you can barely walk straight.â
For a beat, she stared at them as if testing for cracks in their resolve. The silence stretched, broken only by the hum of the heater and the faint city noise outside the window. Then, with a sigh that sounded like a surrender she gave in.
For a beat, she stared at them as if testing for cracks in their resolve. The silence stretched, broken only by the hum of the heater and the faint city noise outside the window. Then, with a sigh that sounded almost like surrender, she gave in.
Still, she lingeredâhovering, fidgeting with the hem of her hoodie as if buying herself time. Finally, she muttered something about washing up and slipped out, the door clicking softly behind her.
The dorm bathroom smelled faintly of toothpaste and cheap soap, the kind they all bought in bulk. The fluorescent light overhead buzzed, relentless in its brightness. Taeyeon stood at the sink, sleeves shoved up, splashing water onto her face in slow, deliberate motions, like rinsing away the weight of the day required more strength than she had left.
Y/N leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, trying not to watch her too closely but failing anyway. There was something almost disarming about her like thisâhair damp and messy around her temples, hoodie hanging loose, movements stripped down to the barest essentials of exhaustion.
âYou donât have to brush your teeth like youâre in a drama,â Y/N teased softly.
Taeyeon froze mid-motion, foam clinging to the corner of her mouth. She glanced at Y/N through the mirror, eyes narrowing, though the effect cracked when a laugh slipped out, faint and unwilling. She rinsed, spat, and shook her head. âYou talk too much.â
âSomebody has to keep you awake,â Y/N murmured, the words gentler than they meant them to be.
She didnât reply. Instead, she pulled the towel from the rack and pressed it slowly to her cheeks, dragging it across her skin with weary care. When she lowered it, her eyes looked heavier, the kind of tired that had settled deep inside, past anything a towel or toothbrush could wash away.
When they returned to the room, Y/N nodded toward the bed. âGo on. Lie down.â
But Taeyeon stalled at the edge, gaze darting from the mattress to the folded blanket, then back to Y/N. Her hands tightened around the fabric of her hoodie. âI said Iâd take the floor.â
Y/N was already kneeling on the ground, dropping a pillow as if to prove the point. âAnd I said youâre not.â
Her brow creased, a flicker of resistance left in her. âThis is your bed.â
âItâs just a bed, Taeyeon. You need it more than I do.â Y/N tried for casual, but the insistence in their voice betrayed them.
The air hung thick between them. Taeyeon bit the inside of her cheek, staring at the sheets like lying down in them would cross some invisible line she wasnât sure she could. Finally, a sharp breath slipped from her, brittle around the edges.
ââŠYouâre stubborn,â she said again, though the fight in her voice had dulled.
âMaybe,â Y/N admitted, lowering onto the floor with exaggerated ease. âBut youâll thank me when you wake up without a sore back.â
This time, she didnât argue. She slid carefully beneath the blanket, curling toward the wall, her body drawn in tight like she was trying not to claim too much space.
Y/N lay flat on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Every faint creak of the mattress reminded them she was just above, close enough to reach if they stretched out their hand.
For a while, the room held its silence. Then, barely audible, her voice slipped down from the bed.
ââŠI feel guilty.â
Y/N turned their head, eyes searching the faint outline of her shoulder in the dark. âWhy?â
âBecause this is your bed,â she whispered into the blanket. âBecause youâre on the floor.â
Y/N smiled into the shadows, though she couldnât see it. âI told you. It doesnât matter. Youâre here. Thatâs what matters.â
The room held that delicate quiet again, the kind that made every small movement feel louder than it was. Y/N could hear the faint rustle of Taeyeon shifting under the blanket, and the soft sigh that followed.
ââŠI donât want you on the floor,â she murmured, voice low, almost lost in the hum of the heater. âItâs⊠not fair.â
Y/N turned slightly, peering toward the bedâs shadowed shape. âTaeyeon, I said itâs fine. Really.â
A pause. Then, so soft it barely carried: ââŠWhat if⊠we⊠justâŠ?â
Y/N blinked, waiting, unsure what she was suggesting.
ââŠWe sleep together,â she finished, voice trembling as if even saying it made it fragile. âJust⊠so weâre both comfortable. Nothing else. Iâll make sure youâre not crowded.â
Y/Nâs chest tightened. The thoughtâintimate, careful, protectiveâhung between them. Respectful as they always tried to be, they shook their head gently. âI⊠I canât. Iâm not comfortable with that. Not like that.â
Taeyeonâs shoulders slumped slightly. âRight,â she whispered, almost to herself. She sat up slowly, shoving the blanket off one shoulder, then slid carefully to the edge. âFloor, then.â
Before Y/N could protest, she eased herself down onto the carpet beside them, curling into a small, tight ball. Y/Nâs stomach twisted at the sightâher small, fragile figure there, trying to make do with the floor.
ââŠTaeyeon,â Y/N said, softer now, their voice more insistent but gentle. âYou donât belong there. I canâtâ I canât let you sleep on the floor.â
She lifted her head just slightly, dark hair falling over her eyes. ââŠI donât want to inconvenience you.â
âYouâre not an inconvenience,â Y/N said firmly, letting themselves reach out a hand but stopping just short of touching her. âI mean it. Youâre tired. You need comfort. I⊠Iâll make it work. Donât argue with me.â
With a small sigh, Taeyeon pushed herself upright. âFine,â she murmured, almost to herself, tugging the blanket free before climbing onto the mattress. She kept to the edge, cautious, leaving deliberate space between them.
Y/N watched her settle there, the gap between them sharp and unnatural. For a moment, they considered leaving her beâbut the thought of her lying there alone, exhausted and curled so tightly into herself, twisted something in their chest.
Quietly, Y/N pushed herself off the ground and eased down onto the empty side of the bed. The springs dipped beneath their weight, the blanket shifting as they settled. They kept their distance, careful not to crowd, but close enough that the mattress carried them both.
Her eyes, half-lidded, flicked toward them, a faint, weary smile tugging at her lips. ââŠYes,â she said softly. âBetter.â
The room settled around them, the hum of the heater and the distant city blending into a soft lullaby. Every breath, every subtle shift, carried the quiet intimacy of two people learning to move carefully around each otherâwithout words pressing too far.
Y/N sank into the mattress, their shoulder brushing hers as naturally as if it had always been that way. The dayâs weight, the cityâs noise, the exhaustion pressing on both of themâit all softened, absorbed by the mattress and blanket, folded into the fragile warmth they shared.
For the first time in hours, maybe days, Taeyeonâs body relaxed. She allowed herself to rest fully, trusting that Y/N was there, that they cared, that even in silence, she was safe.
Outside, the night deepened, but the small shared space of the bed held something more intimate than the world beyondâa gentle closeness, steady enough for both of them to finally exhale.
The darkness wrapped around them, rising and falling with each inhale, each tiny movement of the sheets. Faint echoes drifted from the dormâsnoring down the hall, pipes sighingâbut here, in this corner, time seemed to pause.
Taeyeonâs breathing evened firstânot quite asleep, but no longer resisting the pull of rest. Y/N stayed awake a while longer, tracing the faint outline of her face in the dim light spilling through the blinds, letting the stillness settle over them.
She looked softer like thisâfragile in ways she never allowed during practice, when her voice was sharp as glass and her eyes carried the weight of expectations none of them were old enough to bear. Here, curled toward the wall, hair spilling across her cheek, she seemed younger. Just a girl, too small for the promises already pulling her apart.
Y/N shifted slightly, careful, the mattress dipping just enough to brush their shoulder against hers again. A gesture so small it could be mistaken for an accident, yet enough to whisper: youâre not alone.
For a long moment, nothing stirred. Then Taeyeon exhaledâa shiver of soundâand, almost imperceptibly, her hand slid under the blanket, fingers brushing the edge of Y/Nâs wrist. Barely there, tentative, like she was testing if the world would allow her this closeness.
Y/N stayed still. Didnât pull away, didnât press closer. They simply let the contact exist, fragile and fleeting as it was.
The heater clicked softly, settling into its low hum. A car passed outside, headlights gliding briefly across the ceiling. The city moved on, but in this bed, time seemed to stretch and fold in on itself, the moment suspended, untouchable.
Taeyeon whispered something then, so faint Y/N almost thought they imagined it.
ââŠthank you.â
It was a thread of sound, unraveling into the dark, carrying more weight than the words themselves.
Y/Nâs throat tightened. They wanted to answer, but the words caught, too heavy, too dangerous. Instead, they let their wrist tilt, letting her fingers catch more securely against their skin, a wordless answer.
Taeyeon shifted at that, not closer, not farther, just⊠at ease. And slowly, with the quiet certainty of someone who finally trusted the ground beneath her, she slipped into sleep.
Y/N lay awake a little longer, listening to her breathing, memorizing the fragile peace of it. Because some part of them already knewânights like this didnât come often.
Not hereâthese moments werenât meant for them, and yet, somehow, they were.
The morning didnât arrive all at once. It seeped inâthin light slipping past the blinds, the quiet shuffle of the building stirring awake. A door shut somewhere down the hall, pipes groaned, a bird landed on the sill with a faint thud.
Y/Nâs eyes opened slowly, heavy with the kind of sleep that didnât feel real. For a moment, they didnât know where they were, only that something warm was pressed against them, soft and steady, with the faint rhythm of breath against their skin.
Then it registered.
Taeyeon.
Her face was tucked into the curve of Y/Nâs neck, hair spilling in ticklish strands across their jaw. Her breath fanned out warm and steady, every exhale brushing against their collarbone. One of her arms had wound itself around Y/Nâs waist sometime in the night, loose but certain, holding on without asking.
Y/N froze. Not out of fearâsomething else. A careful kind of stillness, as though moving too quickly might break whatever spell had formed overnight.
Their own hand had found its way to Taeyeonâs lower back, palm splayed across the small rise of her hoodie. They hadnât meant to, hadnât even remembered placing it there, but the weight of it now felt inevitable, like it belonged. Each slow breath Taeyeon took shifted against it, pulling Y/N deeper into the quiet rhythm of her body.
The room smelled faintly of detergent and ramen seasoning, the heater still humming low. The sheets were tangled, twisted between them, but neither moved to fix it.
Y/N tilted their head just slightly, enough to see the delicate line of her profileâthe lashes pressed to her cheek, the faint crease smoothed out from her brow. She looked⊠unburdened. Peaceful in a way Y/N had never seen in the practice rooms or under the stage lights.
Something in Y/Nâs chest clenched. They wanted to stay like this. To freeze the morning exactly as it was.
But then Taeyeon stirred, just barely, a small sigh against their neck. Her arm tightened once before loosening, like even in sleep she couldnât decide if it was safe to hold on.
Y/Nâs thumb shifted instinctively, brushing once over the fabric at her back. A silent reassurance. Itâs okay. Stay.
Her breath caught, different nowânot quite the rhythm of sleep anymore.
And that was when Y/N realized: she was awake.
Taeyeon didnât move at first. Her breath stayed shallow, carefully measured, like she thought she could trick them into believing she was still asleep. But the tiny tremor in her arm gave her awayâthe way her fingers curled tighter against Y/Nâs side before loosening again, guilty, as if sheâd been caught stealing warmth that didnât belong to her.
Y/Nâs throat went dry. The air between them felt fragile, like glass on the verge of shattering. They could have pulled back, could have shifted away and spared her the embarrassment. But something in them resisted. Instead, they kept still, hand steady at her back, thumb tracing another small arc against the fabric of her hoodie.
Taeyeon shifted then, the tiniest motion, her face turning just enough that Y/N felt the brush of her nose against their collarbone. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse from sleep, small enough that it barely carried past the space between them.
ââŠI should move.â
Y/N swallowed, heart hammering against their ribs. âDo you want to?â
Her silence was answer enough. She didnât move, didnât even lift her head. Only tightened her arm a fraction more, a reluctant kind of hold, like she was bracing herself for them to pull away instead.
Y/N let out a soft breath, lips curving before they could stop themselves. âThen donât.â
Her shoulders rose, stiff at first, then eased slowly beneath their hand. She breathed in again, longer this time, as if settling into the shape of them. For a fleeting moment, it felt like the whole world had narrowed to this single breath, this quiet corner where the city couldnât touch them.
But then Taeyeon whispered, barely audible, almost ashamed: âThis isnât fair to you.â
Y/N closed their eyes, pressing their palm firmer against her back, grounding her. âLet me decide whatâs fair.â
The heater clicked, a pipe groaned in the walls, the building reminding them both that morning was still coming. But neither moved. Taeyeonâs lashes fluttered against her cheek, her face hidden against Y/Nâs neck, her voice so small it nearly broke apart.
âJust⊠a little longer.â
And Y/Nâheart aching, body still, hand steady at her backâthought, Iâd give you forever if you asked.
Neither spoke. Neither moved. It was as though they were holding the last fragile seconds of a night they both knew couldnât last.
And then it cameâthe sharp rap of knuckles against wood. Not loud, but enough to cleave through the quiet like a stone breaking water.
âY/N?â The voice was unmistakableâSooyoung, pitched low but carrying. âYou awake? I need my charger back before practice.â
Taeyeon froze, her body tensing all at once. The careful steadiness of her breathing faltered against Y/Nâs neck. For a suspended beat, she stayed utterly still, as though if she didnât move, the knockâand the world that came with itâmight pass them by.
Y/Nâs hand remained at her back, grounding, their whisper a thread of calm. âItâs okay.â
Another knock followed, sharper this time. âY/N? Come on, I know youâre in there.â
The moment fractured. Taeyeon pulled back with reluctant motions, the warmth of her body retreating until it left nothing but cool air between them. She ducked her head, hair falling forward like a shield as she tugged her hood over her face.
Y/N pushed up on their elbows, raking a hand through sleep-tangled hair before calling out, âOne sec, Soo!â
By the time they swung their legs to the floor, Taeyeon had already slipped to the far corner of the room, crouching low, fingers fussing at her shoes as though tying invisible knots. Her posture was careful, rehearsed, as if invisibility could be willed into existence.
When Y/N cracked the door open, Sooyoung leaned against the frame, brows arched, hair sticking up like static had claimed it.
âYou sleep like the dead,â she muttered, brushing past without waiting for permission. She snagged the charger from the desk with practiced ease. âDidnât think Iâd have to wake you myself.â
Y/N forced a laugh, scratching at the back of their neck. âYeah. Long night.â
Sooyoung glanced around the room, eyes skimming past the clutter without pause, without suspicionâor maybe without caring. She hooked the charger around her wrist and gave Y/N a look that landed somewhere between teasing and warning. âDonât be late. You know how they get when you drag in tired.â
âGot it.â
She was gone a moment later, door clicking shut, leaving the room in silence again.
But it wasnât the same silence. It was heavier now, stretched taut like a thread ready to snap. Taeyeon still sat by the wall, hood shadowing her face, shoulders hunched. Her fingers twisted restlessly in her sleeves.
Y/N crossed the room and sank beside her, close enough to feel the faint tremor in her breath. Their voice came low, even, meant only for her. âYou okay?â
Taeyeon didnât answer right away. Her eyes stayed fixed on the floor, lashes lowered, shoulders tight as if she could fold herself small enough to vanish. Her hands worked restlessly inside the sleeves of her hoodie, twisting, untwisting, never still.
Y/N didnât push. They sat with her in the hush of the room, the weight of the morning pressing against both of them. When they finally spoke, their voice was barely more than a thread.
âIâm sorry I didnât know she would come over here.â
Her lips pressed together, a fleeting crease forming between her brows. âOh noâ itâs not that. Itâs just I thought about if she saw usââ She cut herself off, shaking her head like the word itself was too heavy to finish.
Y/Nâs stomach dipped. âHeyâŠâ They shifted slightly, enough so their shoulder brushed hers, trying to ground her without making it obvious. âIt wasnât like that. We werenâtââ They stopped themselves, exhaled. âI mean, itâs not like there was anything to see.â
Taeyeon gave a tiny shake of her head, hair still falling forward like a curtain. âPeople donât care about that. They see what they want to.â
âI know.â Y/Nâs voice cracked with how quickly the words left them. âI know, and Iâm sorry. I shouldâve⊠thought it through. I justââ They scrubbed a hand over their face. âI didnât want you to walk home alone. Thatâs all. Nothing else. I didnât even think about someone barging in.â
Her fingers paused mid-twist, then resumed, slower this time. âYou donât have to keep apologizing.â
âI do, though.â Y/Nâs laugh was low, a little unsteady. âBecause youâre sitting here looking like youâre about to disappear, and I hate it. I hate that Iâm part of the reason you feel like you have to hide.â
That earned them a flicker of her gazeâa quick glance from under her hood, gone as soon as it appeared. But it was enough to make their chest tighten.
âI didnât mean to make you uncomfortable,â Y/N said softer. âI just⊠I care about you, Taeyeon. Thatâs it. I didnât plan any of this, I just⊠wanted you to feel safe.â
The room stretched quiet again. The hum of the heater filled the gap where words wouldnât go. Taeyeon shifted, her knees drawing up slightly, chin dipping.
âI know you didnât mean it like that,â she murmured at last. âItâs just⊠itâs hard. Being seen. Even when nothingâs happening, it feels like it is.â
âI get that.â Y/N let their hand drop to their knee, palm up, a silent offer but not a demand. âIâll be more careful. I promise.â
Her fingers stilled completely this time. For a moment she just stared at the floor, thenâslowlyâher sleeve brushed against their palm, not quite a touch but close enough to feel.
Y/N stayed still, breathing out a faint, steadying exhale. âYou donât have to be invisible here,â they said quietly. âNot with me.â
Her hood dipped, hiding her face, but her shoulders loosened a fraction, and when she finally spoke again her voice was soft enough to almost be a sigh. âOkay.â
Her breath caught, sharp and quick, before she managed to swallow it back down. She lifted her gaze then, just enough to meet theirs, and in that look was everything she couldnât say: fear, exhaustion, the ache of wanting something she wasnât supposed to want.
The silence stretched, fragile and unbearably alive.
Y/N let their hand rest, palm up, between them on the floor. Not reaching, not askingâjust offering.
Taeyeonâs eyes flicked to it, lingered, then darted away. Her shoulders rose and fell with a slow, deliberate breath. And then, with a hesitation that made it feel like stepping over a cliff, she let her fingers slip into theirs.
Her grip was light at first, cautious, as if she might need to pull away at any second. But Y/N closed their hand gently around hers, steady, grounding, refusing to let the moment slip through the cracks.
Neither of them spoke. They didnât need to.
Because in that quiet, hand in hand, the truth of it hung between themâunspoken, undeniable, and impossible to take back.
The practice rooms swallowed the morning whole. By the time Y/N and Taeyeon arrived, the others were already mid-warm-up, the air heavy with the sound of scales and footsteps smacking the floor. Mirrors reflected a dozen tired faces, each one holding its own brand of hunger.
Y/N kept their head down, but their hand still hummed with the ghost of Taeyeonâs from earlier, the faint press of her fingers threaded through theirs. That single contact had lodged itself under their skin, stubborn and alive.
Across the room, Taeyeon moved through stretches with mechanical precision, every gesture crisp, practiced. To anyone else, she was the same as alwaysâstoic, unreadable. But Y/N had learned to watch closely. The smallest cracks showed now: the slight drag in her arms as she raised them overhead, the pause in her breath when she lowered into a split.
She wanât hiding from them anymore. Not fully.
The coach clapped his hands. âPair work today. Vocal harmonies. Taeyeon, Y/Nâyouâre up.â
The words struck like a match. Y/N glanced at her, caught the way her mouth tightened almost imperceptibly before she nodded. They stepped forward together, standing side by side before the mirror.
The piano struck its first chord. Y/N began, voice steady, but it wasnât until Taeyeon joined that the room shifted. Her tone slid against theirs like glass over waterâfragile, sharp, impossibly clear. But halfway through the run, her voice wavered, breaking at the edges.
A murmur rippled through the room. The coach frowned. âAgain.â
Taeyeonâs jaw clenched. She drew breath, ready to force it.
But Y/N reached out, barely brushing her elbow. A whisper, low enough that no one else could catch it: âDonât push. Just breathe with me.â
Her eyes flicked to theirs, startled, caught off guard by the steadiness in their voice.
The piano began again. Y/N inhaled slow, deliberate, and this time she matched them. Their voices rose togetherânot perfect, not flawless, but alive. A sound that leaned into the cracks instead of covering them.
When the last note faded, the coach nodded, already moving to correct another pair. But Y/N caught the quick look Taeyeon gave them, the faintest curve at the corner of her mouth. Not a smile, exactly. Something rarer.
Later, in the hall, the others scattered toward the cafeteria, chattering about food and aching muscles. Y/N lingered, waiting. Taeyeon emerged a beat after, hoodie tugged up, steps dragging.
âYou didnât have to cover for me,â she said quietly, without meeting their eyes.
Y/N adjusted their bag strap. âI didnât cover for you. I sang with you.â
That made her pause. She glanced up, a faint crease softening between her brows. For once, she didnât deflect, didnât laugh it off. Instead, she let the silence hang, heavy but not hostile.
And then, almost too soft to catch: âThank you.â
Y/N wanted to answer, but the words caught in their throat. So instead, they fell into step beside her, their shoulders brushing as they walked down the long fluorescent hallway. Neither pulled away.
It was small. Barely noticeable to anyone else.
But Y/N felt it.
The shift.
Taeyeon was letting them in.
By the time night came around the sky became heavy with rain, thin drops whispering against the dorm windows, a sound that made the corridors feel lonelier than usual. Practice had run lateâlater than it should haveâand Y/N slipped back into their room after washing up, damp hair sticking to their neck.
They thought the day was done.
It wasnât.
The door clicked open again, too quickly, too urgently, and Taeyeon was there. Not the careful, composed Taeyeon they knewâthe one who folded herself neatly into expectationsâbut a girl unraveling at the seams. Her hoodie was pulled half-off one shoulder, her eyes swollen and red-rimmed, and her breath came too sharp, like sheâd run all the way here.
âWhere have you been?â she blurted, voice trembling, pitched somewhere between scolding and pleading.
Y/N froze. âTaeyeonââ
âYou werenât in the practice room. You werenât in the hall. I checked the cafeteria, the roof, everywhereââ Her words broke off, catching against the tears already streaking down her face. She pressed her fists against her chest as if trying to hold herself together. âWhy werenât you there?â
The sound of her crying was jagged, unpolished. Not the silent kind of grief she tried to hide during training, but something raw, breaking through in uneven gasps.
Y/N crossed the room before they even realized they were moving. âIâI didnât know you were looking for me,â they murmured, reaching for her, but stopping just shy.
Her eyes snapped up, shining and furious in their vulnerability. âI needed you.â
The words landed like a confession. Not careful, not rehearsed. Just the truth, spilled bare.
And then she folded. The fight drained out of her all at once as she crumpled forward into Y/Nâs chest. Her forehead pressed against them, hot with tears, her hands clutching weakly at their hoodie like she couldnât decide if she wanted to push them away or pull them closer.
âI canâtââ Her voice broke, muffled against the fabric. âItâs too much. They keep saying Iâm ready, but Iâm not, Y/N. Iâm not. I mess up, I forget, I canât sing the way they want and Iââ Her words dissolved into sobs, shoulders shaking under Y/Nâs hands.
Y/N gathered her up, steady arms wrapping tight around her, one hand cradling the back of her head. âShh, itâs okay,â they murmured, gentle but certain. âYou donât have to be ready tonight. You donât have to prove anything to anyone right this second.â
Taeyeon shook her head against them, hiccuping through tears. âThatâs not enough. Itâs notââ
âIt is enough,â Y/N said firmly, brushing their thumb along her damp hairline. âTaeyeon, youâre enough. Even when you stumble, even when you think youâve failedânone of that changes whatâs in you. Youâre allowed to be scared. Youâre allowed to not be perfect.â
Her sobs didnât stopânot at first. But slowly, the frantic edge softened. Her fists loosened in the fabric of their hoodie, her body melting heavier against them as though her strength had finally run out. Each tear that struck their chest was warm, searing, as if carving itself into memory.
And Y/N thought, holding her close in the dim light of the room, that this was the moment everything shiftedâwhen Taeyeon stopped hiding the parts of herself she thought no one should see, and gave them to Y/N instead.
âIâll hold you through it,â Y/N whispered, their own voice tight with feeling. âAs long as it takes. Just breathe with me. Thatâs all you have to do right now. Nothing else matters.â
Her breathing slowed first.
Not steadyânever steadyâbut enough that Y/N could feel the shudder of it ease against their chest, like the storm in her ribs had finally burned itself out. She was still trembling, damp lashes clinging to her cheeks, but her weight had settled into them fully now, no longer half-held back.
Y/N stroked a hand through her hair, careful, almost reverent. âYou donât have to do this alone anymore,â they murmured.
Taeyeonâs voice was hoarse, muffled into the fabric of their hoodie. âBut Iâm supposed to. Thatâs what they expect.â
âMaybe.â Y/Nâs tone carried quiet defiance, the kind that didnât need to be loud to feel unshakable. âBut I donât. Iâd rather you fall apart with me than carry it all by yourself.â
Her breath caughtâsharp, fragile, like she didnât know what to do with words that soft. She pressed closer, as though hiding her face deeper might protect her from the weight of being seen.
The room was dim, the rain outside tapping against the window like it had nowhere else to go. Y/N shifted them slowly toward the bed, guiding her down until she sat on the edge. Her hands clutched at theirs immediately, desperate, as if letting go meant the ground would give way beneath her.
Y/N knelt in front of her, their knees pressing into the carpet, holding her hands firmly between theirs. âLook at me.â
It took effort. She lifted her face inch by inch, eyes red, lips bitten raw. For once, the walls she carried werenât thereâonly the fragile truth of a girl breaking under weight she shouldnât have had to bear.
Y/Nâs chest tightened. âYou donât have to be perfect for me, or for anyone for that matter Taeyeon.â
The words seemed to split her open all over again. Her hands shook harder, her mouth trembled like she wanted to argue but couldnât form the words. Instead, she leaned forward, collapsing into Y/Nâs shoulder this time, arms wrapping tight around their neck.
âDonât let go,â she whispered, voice wrecked, the plea breaking somewhere deep.
âNever,â Y/N whispered back. The promise left their lips before they could think, but they didnât regret it. Not when she clung to them like this, not when her entire body begged for someone to believe in her.
Minutes passed. The rain thickened outside, drumming harder against the glass, a rhythm that filled the silence. Y/N stayed kneeling on the floor, arms locked tight around her waist, holding her as though anchoring them both.
Eventually, her sobs dimmed into shaky breaths. Her grip loosened, but she didnât pull away. Her head rested heavy against their shoulder, her hair damp against their skin.
ââŠyou make it feel less impossible,â she whispered, almost too soft to hear.
Y/N closed their eyes, pressing their cheek against her temple. âThatâs all I want. To make it bearable for you.â
She exhaled, trembling but steadier now, her breath fanning warm against their collarbone. Her voice came again, quieter, frayed around the edges:
ââŠthen donât go anywhere.â
Y/Nâs arms tightened, grounding them both. âI wonât.â
The storm outside raged on, but in that little room, with her curled into their chest, Y/N knew the shift had already begun.
This wasnât just about survival anymore.
This was trust.
This was the beginning of something neither of them had a name for at that time.
At some point, the quiet between them grew comfortable. Y/N shifted slightly, tilting their head so their forehead rested gently against hers, careful not to startle her. Her lashes brushed their skin, and she exhaled, a small puff of warmth mingling with theirs.
âI canât believe you let it get this bad,â Y/N said softly, voice low enough that only she could hear. âWhy didnât you tell me sooner?â
âYou donât have to carry all of this alone,â Y/N murmured, âNot with me here.â
Her lips pressed together, trembling faintly. ââŠI didnât think youâd want to see me like this.â
Y/Nâs fingers brushed slow along her arm, grounding her. âIâd rather see you like this than not see you at all. You donât have to hide, not from me.â
Her fingers tightened around theirs. âI donât⊠I donât want to hide from you anymore.â
âDonât,â Y/N replied, a faint smile tugging at their lips. âIâm not going anywhere, not for a second.â
She let out a shaky breath and leaned further into them, folding against their chest in a way that felt both desperate and deliberate. The room smelled faintly of rain and detergent, and Y/N felt the pull deep in their chestâsomething fiercer than care, stronger than responsibility. Connection, raw and alive.
âYou make it easier,â she whispered, voice barely audible. âEven the stuff I hate about myself.â
âLet me,â Y/N said, pressing a hand to her back. âLet me carry some of it for you. Iâm not saying itâs permanent, Iâm not saying itâs simple⊠but Iâll be here.â
Her lips parted slightly, breath hitching, leaning closer until their foreheads touched. ââŠI want that,â she murmured. ââŠI really do.â
Y/N shifted a little, brushing damp hair from her cheek. âSo weâll figure it out. Together.â
She let herself relax against them, trembling slightly but anchored. Minutes passed with the soft rhythm of her breathing, the rain against the window, their hands entwined.
âYou promise me something?â she said after a while, voice fragile.
âAnything,â Y/N said immediately.
âDonât let me forget that itâs okay to need someone,â she murmured.
âI wonât,â Y/N replied, brushing their thumb over hers. âIâll remind you every time you forget.â
Her head lifted slightly, eyes glimmering with unshed tears but calmer now. âAnd⊠can I stay over tonight?â
âOf course,â Y/N said, letting a teasing warmth edge their tone. âI mean, unless youâve got a secret plan to kick me out of my own dorm room , in which case Iâll negotiate my terms.â
She let out a small, shaky laugh, resting her head back against their chest. âNo kicking out,â she whispered. âJust⊠stay.â
âThen Iâll stay,â Y/N said, adjusting slightly so she could settle comfortably.
She breathed in again, longer this time, and Y/N dragged her hand across the top of her head calmly. âI mean it,â they said. âIâm not going anywhere. Not now, not ever.â
And for the first time since sheâd arrived in their world, Taeyeon let herself believe it. Not fully, not entirelyâbut enough to stay. Enough to let the beginning stretch out before them, uncertain but real.
The rain outside softened, tapping faintly against the glass, and inside, the storm felt like something they could weather together.
Days blurred into each other, but Y/N started noticing the little patterns that made Taeyeon hersâthe soft sighs when she settled against the bed, the way her fingers always found theirs, the tilt of her head when she leaned into a shoulder. They spent evenings in quiet corners of the dorm, talking just enough to fill the space without shattering the fragile calm that had begun to settle between them.
Sometimes it was reading together, Y/N perched on the edge of the bed while Taeyeon sprawled against the pillows, a book open but forgotten as her gaze drifted toward them. Sometimes it was sitting on the floor, backs pressed together, letting the rain fall outside while the dorm felt entirely their own.
Y/N began to realize they didnât just want her closeâthey needed her. Not in a fleeting comfort sense, but in a way that wrapped around the chest and pulled tight, a kind of ache that wouldnât ease even in sleep. When she laughed softly at some small thing, the sound lodged in their chest. When she sighed, exhaling worries that had nothing to do with them, Y/N felt hollowed out in all the wrong ways, wanting to fix it, to shield her from every impossible expectation.
One night, Taeyeon fell asleep with her head resting on Y/Nâs shoulder, hair damp from the shower. Y/N stayed awake, tracing idle patterns on the back of her hand, heart thudding. The weight of her trust, of her body leaning against theirs, pressed down in a way that was tender and terrifying all at once.
I love her.
The thought struck like lightning, sudden and impossible to ignore. Y/N froze, staring at the curve of her jaw, the way her lashes fanned against her cheeks. Their hand twitched slightly, itching to touch her hair, to brush a damp strand away from her temple. But more than desire, more than touch, there was fearâthe fear of what it meant to admit it, even to themselves.
Because it wasnât just affection anymore. It wasnât the quiet comfort of being near her. It was the realization that without her, without this connection, they wouldnât know how to navigate the rest of their life.
And yet, the thought of telling herâof confessing and risking it allâwas terrifying. Y/Nâs chest tightened. If she doesnât feel the same⊠if I lose this⊠The mere idea made the nights suddenly colder, the rain tapping sharper against the windows.
Still, every small laugh, every brush of fingers, every hesitant smile Taeyeon offered wove the impossibility of denial tighter around Y/Nâs heart. They found themselves watching her in practice, noticing the way her jaw clenched during a difficult note, how her shoulders slumped when she was tired, how the faintest spark of frustration passed over her features before she smoothed it out. All of it made Y/N ache.
And slowly, almost painfully, they understood the truth: it wasnât enough to just be there for her. They wanted more. They wanted to be the one she leaned on, the one she trusted completely, the one she lovedânot just in fleeting moments of comfort, but fully, openly, without reservation.
It was terrifying. And exhilarating. And entirely unavoidable.
Y/N could feel it in the small seconds, the in-between moments, the quiet spaces of dorm rooms and practice halls: if they didnât have Taeyeon as more than this⊠if she wasnât theirs in the way their heart ached for⊠they wouldnât know what to do.
Because love wasnât always about declarations, or fireworks, or perfectly timed confessions. Sometimes it was thisâhours spent in shared silences, hands brushing, hearts pressing close, and the slow, steady realization that someone had become your entire gravity.
And Taeyeon was theirs. In every breath, in every touch, in every moment that stretched into the night.
Y/N just had to figure out how to admit itâwithout breaking what they already had. And having that gravity pull them into a sinking black hole.
The realization didnât leave Y/Nâit lingered, heavy as breath in their lungs, seared into their ribs like a secret they couldnât set down. Even when they tried to throw themselves into drills, pounding the floor with every beat, it pulsed steady beneath the surface. Even when they strained their voice on endless runs, chasing perfection that never felt close enough, it hummed like a second rhythm.
Taeyeon.
It wasnât love in the simple way people whispered about. It was sharper, heavier, something that pressed into Y/Nâs bones and made every ordinary moment glow with dangerous clarity.
They told themselves it was fine to wait. That patience was safer. Taeyeon didnât need their confessionsâshe needed their steadiness, their quiet consistency, their ability to stand firm while the world demanded she bend herself into something unrecognizable. And yet, every passing day pulled Y/N deeper into a gravity that felt impossible to escape.
And Taeyeon noticed.
Not with wordsâshe was too careful for thatâbut in the tiny, deliberate shifts of her body, her presence. She started drifting closer when they sat together, shoulder brushing theirs until it became a silent habit. She hummed absentmindedly when they were near, little threads of melody slipping past her lips like her body needed to fill the air for them. She held their gaze longer than she should, until the tether between them felt like it might snap if either of them moved.
The first real break in the pattern came late one night.
The dorms were quiet, lights dimmed, the kind of silence that only fell after the exhaustion of practice had claimed everyone. Y/N sat cross-legged on the floor, notebook open, phone casting faint blue light over the scribbled training notes theyâd written earlier. The air was damp from rain, the smell of wet concrete drifting through the half-open window.
On the bed, Taeyeon sat curled against the wall, knees pulled to her chest, her gaze fixed on the streaks of water trailing down the glass. Her expression was too heavy for someone her age, eyes shadowed with something she couldnât name.
âY/N,â she said suddenly, voice soft, thin around the edges.
They looked up. âYeah?â
She hesitated, fingers worrying the hem of her hoodie like she was unraveling it one thread at a time. ââŠWhat if I fail?â
The words were so small, so unguarded, they didnât sound like hers at all.
âYou wonât,â Y/N said, the answer instinctive, immediate.
But she turned then, and in the dim light, her eyes caught them. Glossy, fragile, breaking at the seams. âBut what if I do?â
The notebook slid closed as Y/N moved, settling on the edge of the bed. Close enough for her to feel the warmth, not close enough to overwhelm. âThen you fail,â they said gently. âAnd then you get back up. And Iâll still be here.â
Her lips parted in a tiny, disbelieving curve, as if she hadnât expected reassurance without conditions. âYou make it sound so simple.â
âBecause it is.â Y/Nâs voice was calm, steady, a tether. âYouâre the one making it heavier than it needs to be. You donât have to carry all of it alone.â
For a long moment, the only sound was rain tapping against the glass. Then she shiftedâbarely, but enoughâher head leaning until it brushed Y/Nâs shoulder. The contact was feather-light, tentative, but deliberate.
ââŠYou really mean that?â Her voice was barely a whisper.
âIâve never meant anything more,â Y/N answered, their chest tightening with the truth of it.
Her breath escaped in a shaky exhale, the tension in her frame unspooling bit by bit, like sheâd been waiting for permission to release it. She didnât move away. Didnât disguise the way she leaned. Instead, she stayed, letting her body rest where it wanted to.
Y/N stayed perfectly still, every nerve burning with her nearness, heart pounding hard enough to hurt.
The night didnât end in confessions. It didnât need to.
But something shifted.
After that, Taeyeonâs quiet seeking became more deliberate. She began showing up at Y/Nâs room without knocking, slipping inside and settling on the floor like she belonged there. Sometimes she talkedâabout the endless repetitions, the weight of expectations, the bone-deep fear that she wasnât enough. Sometimes she said nothing at all, just sat with her knees pulled tight, humming under her breath while Y/N worked on lyrics or stretched sore muscles. But always, she stayed.
And Y/N noticed the truth beneath it all: she was choosing them.
With every unguarded sigh, every unspoken admission, every night she ended in their presence instead of hiding alone, she was choosing them.
The more she let them seeâthe cracks in her armor, the exhaustion etched into her shoulders, the laughter that slipped free when she forgot to hold it backâthe harder it became for Y/N to keep the secret caged inside.
For a few breathless, golden days, it felt like the world had tilted just enough for them to catch each other. Taeyeon was smug and tender in equal measuresâteasing about croissants, stealing the warm-up space, curling into Y/Nâs shoulder like it was the place she belonged. Y/N answered with small, careful demonstrations: little breakfasts shared, hands finding each other without thinking, private smiles traded in the mirrored practice rooms. It was clumsy and fragile and perfect.
And then, as quietly as the first tremor of a storm, something inside Y/N shifted.
They didnât notice it at first. It began as tiny omissionsâa delayed reply to Taeyeonâs text, a distracted âsorryâ when she leaned in to tell a joke, a shrug that sounded like indifference and tasted like avoidance. Y/N told themself they were tired, that the schedule was brutal, that this nervousness was simply the aftershock of finally admitting something so true out loud. Those reasons were partly true. The rest of it was older, harder to name.
Fear had a way of taking shape inside them: the fear of being the one who clings, the fear of being the one who gets left when the lights go on; the fear that if they asked for moreâcommitment, permanence, unbearable tendernessâthey would scare away the safety theyâd built. So, without deciding to, Y/N started to sabotage.
At first the sabotage was small enough to pass as accident. They scheduled extra practice blocks and accepted late-night runs that left them too exhausted to text back. They ducked out of group hangouts with an âI have to work on linesâ that felt like a legitimate rehearsal excuse and nothing more. When Taeyeon reached for their hand in the hallway, Y/Nâs fingers would unconsciously tighten, then pull away a half-second too soonâan almost-imperceptible recoil that landed between them like a stone.
Where there had been teasing warmth, Y/Nâs replies grew clipped. A playful touch became a corrective one, meant to deflect attention rather than invite it. If Taeyeon asked about a lyric or a line, Y/N answered with practicalityânotes, breath, timingânever with the softness that had come naturally before. The steady, grounding presence theyâd promised started feeling like a weight Y/N was terrified of sinking beneath.
Taeyeon noticedâbecause she noticed everythingâbut she didnât name it at first. Instead she tried to meet it with more of herself: an extra cup of coffee in the morning, a text with a stupid meme, an affectionate squeeze when they passed in the corridor. Those gestures landed with diminishing returns. The more she reached, the more Y/N retreated.
One evening after grueling vocal runs, Taeyeon found Y/N packing to head to the roof alone. The sky was bruised with dusk and the city lights were just coming upâexactly the kind of stupid-romantic moment theyâd once laughed about sharing. Taeyeon paused at the door and said, quiet and small, âYou okay? Youâve been⊠quiet.â
Y/Nâs hands froze in a stack of sweaters. âYeah,â they lied, voice flat, already sliding the backpack higher. âJustâneed to clear my head. Donât wait up.â
She watched them go. The way Y/Nâs shoulders hunched as they walked away turned a thin ribbon of worry into a rope she couldnât ignore. Later that night she lay awake counting the spaces between their texts like stars in a sky that was going out.
Confrontationâwhen it cameâwas not cinematic. It arrived as a bruise in the day. At breakfast, Taeyeon nudged a piece of toast toward Y/N and said, softer than sheâd meant to be, âYouâve been leaving. A lot.â
Y/N stared at the toast like it had become a small, explosive thing. âYeah,â they said. âBusy. Lots of⊠stuff.â
She studied their face, searched for the calm anchor she used to find there. What she found instead was a jittering, caged lookâeyes that darted away when she tried to hold them. âIs it me?â she asked, voice unadorned. âDid I do something?â
Y/N wanted to say yesâbecause being around her lit up every dark corner in their head, because each time her eyes found theirs, it made them want to drop everything and never look back. But the weight in their chest followed its familiar pattern of self-betrayal: better to push her away than risk being left behind. So they reached for the easier lie.
âNo,â they said quickly. âItâs not you.â
She watched them, mouth folding, the question unasked filling the air between them. âIf you want some space, say it,â she said finally. âIâll understand.â
The words were laced with an offer and a plea both. Y/N heard them and, in their fear of being needy, did the thing they had always done when a relationship tilted toward intimacy: they stepped back farther than necessary.
âIââ they began, then stopped, the truth lodged behind a throat suddenly dry. âNo. I donât want space,â they lied again, but the apology that followed was for themselves. âI just have a lot on my mind.â
Taeyeonâs gaze softened and hardened at once. She believed themâbecause she wanted toâbut even belief canât rearrange the small details of a relationship: the timing of replies, the ease of touch, the way attention is given. Over the next week, the distance Y/N put between them became a pattern.
There were sharper incidents. A rehearsal where Y/N, exhausted and brittle, snapped at Taeyeon for missing a cue. They meant it to be a one-offâstress talking, nerves frayingâbut Taeyeon flinched like pain had found its map. Another night, when Taeyeon reached for their hand across the table, Y/N pulled away and made an excuse about emails, eyes busy on their phone. Each avoidance achewed little notches into Taeyeonâs patience.
At first she met it with questions: âDid I mess up?â âAre you tired?â âDo you want me toââ Each question folded into silence when the answer didnât come. Then, increasingly, she met it with hurt: a tightening at the corners of her mouth, a tone that was polite but guarded, the kind of small, quiet defense people build when theyâre tired of being the only one trying.
Jealousy, too, found its way into the edges. Taeyeon noticed how Y/Nâs posture changed when someone elseâanother trainee, a visiting songwriterâlaughed at their jokes, how their smile softened, how their absent-handed compliments landed different. It stung in a way that confused and frightened her. She had to remind herself theyâd chosen each other. She had to remind herself she hadnât been dreaming. But then Y/N would pull away again, and the reminders felt like talismans against a hurricane.
In private, Y/N tried to figure out the why. They watched themselves in the mirror and saw patterns inherited from a past where wanting more meant asking to be left behind. They catalogued old woundsâparents who left in stages, friends who burned out, a history of adoring and then being abandonedâand realized that the terror of being the one whose needs drove someone else away was wired into their bones.
The paradox was cruel: the deeper their love grew, the more certain they became that love would cost them everything, so they undermined it to protect themselves.
The first time Taeyeon said the word âweâ in a way that assumed permanenceââWe should take that afternoon off together next weekââY/N paused and felt sick. The future, even in small doses, felt like an invitation to vulnerability they werenât sure how to accept.
They hugged themselves in a bathroom stall after practice and wished for a reset button they didnât have.
Taeyeon, intuiting something but not knowing the shape of it, stopped teasing as often. Her jokes became quieter, edged with an anxiety she didnât always mask. When she did pressâgently, carefullyâY/N deflected. The deflections were like slow erosion to her.
Finally, one night, while the dorm hummed with low conversation and the rain kept time on the windows, Taeyeon sat on the edge of their bed and said, all at once, âWhy are you pulling away?â
Y/Nâs stomach dropped. Their first instinct was to reach for the ready-made answersâworkload, stress, being tired. But even those felt too close to the bone, too much like admitting something was wrong.
So they forced a small shrug, eyes darting anywhere but her. âIâm not,â they said lightly, too quickly. âYouâre imagining it.â
Taeyeon didnât move, didnât buy it. Her gaze stayed fixed, searching.
Y/N felt the pressure of it and laughed once, brittle and thin. âReally, itâs nothing. Just a lot on my mind. Donât worry.â
But the tightness in their chest only grew, because every word felt like paper covering a fault line. And they knewâif Taeyeon kept pressing, if she saw too muchâthe whole thing might break open.
Taeyeonâs silence stretched, heavier than the rain outside. She didnât look away, and that steadiness made Y/Nâs skin prickle.
âYou think I donât notice?â she said finally, her voice soft but edged. âYou disappear in the middle of practice. You wonât meet my eyes half the time. You laugh when I know youâre not laughing. How is that nothing?â
Y/N shifted, pulling their knees up, curling into themselves as if the right posture might shield them from her gaze. âYouâre reading too much into it.â
âIâm not.â The firmness in her tone was quiet, but it pinned Y/N in place.
Y/N pressed their lips together, refusing to answer. Anything they said could be the wrong thingâcould snap the fragile thread they were both pretending not to see. So they kept their eyes fixed on the floor, heart racing, and hoped silence would be enough to make the question fade.
But Taeyeon leaned closer, close enough that Y/N could feel the warmth of her presence. âThen tell me what it really is,â she whispered.
Y/Nâs throat worked, but no sound came. The truth pressed at the edges of their ribs, clawing to get out, and stillâthey swallowed it down.
âI canât,â they said at last, barely audible. âNot right now.â
Taeyeon drew back just enough to look at them, her expression crumpling at the edges. For a moment she seemed to steady herself, but then the words came out low, uneven.
âDo you know what it feels like?â she asked. âEvery time you pull away, I replay everything Iâve said, everything Iâve done. I keep asking myself what I missed, what I did wrong. I tell myself itâs meâthat I mustâve hurt you somehow and you just wonât say it.â
Her voice thinned, fragile in a way Y/N had rarely heard. âI donât even know what I did. But I still blame myself.â
The air punched out of Y/Nâs chest. âNoâno, Tae.â The words tumbled fast, too sharp in their urgency. They lifted their head, finally meeting her eyes. âYou didnât do anything. You havenât hurt me. Not once.â
Taeyeonâs lips pressed tight, like she didnât quite believe it.
Y/N reached out before they could second-guess themselves, fingers brushing against hers, grounding. âListen to me. This is mine to untangle, not yours. Donât carry it. Donât think for a second that youâre the reason I⊠struggle sometimes. Youâre not.â
Taeyeon blinked, her breath hitching. âThen whyââ
Y/N shook their head quickly, cutting her off with a small, pleading smile. âJust know it isnât you. Please. Thatâs the one thing I need you to believe.â
Taeyeonâs fingers curled tighter around Y/Nâs, her eyes glistening in the dim light. âThatâs not enough,â she whispered, the tremor in her voice cutting straight through. âUnless you tell me whatâs wrong, Iâm going to keep blaming myself. I canât stop. Every time you shut me out, it feels like Iâve done something to lose you.â
Her words pressed close, raw and unguarded.
Y/Nâs chest seized. They wanted to spill everythingâthe fear, the want, the way being near her felt like balancing on the edge of something that could change their entire world. But the weight of it, the risk of shattering what they had, locked the truth behind their teeth.
âI donât want you blaming yourself,â they said instead, voice low, pained. âYou donât deserve that. Youâre the last person who should.â
Taeyeonâs gaze didnât waver. âThen trust me enough to let me in.â
Y/N swallowed hard, their pulse racing. The silence that followed felt like standing at the edge of a cliff, the ground uncertain under their feet.
Y/Nâs hands tightened in their lap, nails digging crescent moons into their skin. The words pressed hot against the back of their throat, fighting to stay hidden, but Taeyeonâs faceâso open, so sure she was the one at faultâbroke something in them.
âI didnât want to tell you,â Y/N said at last, halting, their voice barely audible. âNot because you did anything wrong. You didnât. Itâs me. Itâs⊠how I get.â
Taeyeonâs brows drew together, confusion flickering through her worry.
âI mess things up,â Y/N went on, the admission ragged. âI pull back before people can leave me, because they always do. Itâs easier to make the cut myself than wait for it to come. Thatâs why I⊠disappear. Joke around. Walk away. Itâs not youâitâs me trying to protect myself.â
Taeyeonâs breath caught, sharp, but she didnât speak.
Y/N risked a glance at her, eyes burning. âI didnât tell you because I thoughtâif you knew how messed up I amâyouâd leave too. Just like everyone else.â
The silence that followed was heavy, but not empty. Taeyeonâs gaze stayed locked on them, fierce and unflinching, like she was holding the weight of every word without letting it crush them.
âDo you think Iâd leave?â she asked, voice small.
Y/Nâs laugh was a hollow thing. âI donât know. Iâve been left before. I know how it starts.â
Taeyeonâs expression shifted, tired and fierce. âYou think I donât know how scary this is for me, too?â Her voice steadied. âYou think I havenât been awake planning for the worst-case, the what-ifs, the things that could go wrong? I have. But I chose you. I chose to stay.â
âI donât deserveââ Y/N began, but failed. Shame pricked at them; the instinct to explain, to make reparations, flooded their mouth. They swallowed it down.
âDonât say that,â she interrupted, softer, almost a command. âDonât tell me what you deserve or donât. You belong here as much as anyone. You donât get to punish yourself by running.â
Y/Nâs hands trembled in their lap. They wanted to be held, to be told they were forgiven for the ways they had already hurt her. They also wanted to be untouched, to shrink into the safety of not-existing enough to cause any damage.
âWhat if I break everything by staying?â they whispered. âWhat if wanting you is the thing that ruins it? I donât think I can handle losing you. So I push, and maybeââ
âMaybe you hurt me now?â Taeyeon finished for them, voice fracturing. âYeah. It hurts. It confuses me. But Iâd rather deal with that than with the idea of you being someone who leaves before they even tried. If we want thisâif this is realâthen we have to try. And trying means screwing up and apologizing and trying again.â
Her honesty was a kind of mercy. It also put the responsibility squarely back in Y/Nâs chest, where it both belonged and was terrifying.
They wanted to leap across the bed then and collapse into her arms, to promise and to mend and to be braver than their history allowed. Instead, fatigue and fear and a deep, reflexive need to protect themselves turned their limbs to stone.
âI donât know if I can stop doing this,â Y/N confessed, voice barely there. âItâs automatic. I didnât even mean to hurt you. I justâwhen I picture asking for more, I canât help but see you walking away.â
Taeyeonâs face crumpled with something like grief and fierce tenderness. She reached out, and this time Y/N didnât recoil. Her hand covered theirs, warm and sure.
âThen let me help you learn,â she said. âNot by forcing you, but by staying. Tell me when you need space. Tell me when youâre scared. Tell me when youâreâmessy. Iâll remind you youâre allowed to want things. Iâll be clumsy too. But if you keep running, I donât know how long I can keep running after you.â
The last line landed with the weight of truth: not an ultimatum so much as a boundary. Y/N felt their stomach drop and a raw shame flareâthis was the consequence of their pushing: the person they wanted more from was asking for reciprocity, not unlimited forgiveness.
That night Y/N went to the roof for the solitude they thought they craved. The city below glittered, indifferent. They sat with their knees drawn up, thinking of every small act of pulling away theyâd committed, cataloguing the cuts theyâd made on someone they loved. The logic that had kept them safe now felt like a prison: they could keep themselves small to avoid pain, but in doing so they erased the possibility of the very thing their heart ached for.
Alone, knees pressed to their chest, Y/N finally let themselves cryâquietly, without performance. The tears were not only for the fear of loss but for the cruelty of protecting oneself by hurting another. They saw, painfully, how much of themselves they were willing to sacrifice to prevent being abandoned, and wondered how to stop.
5 minutes away, in her room, the lamp was left on. Taeyeon laid awake, turning the conversation over again, missing the easy answers and wanting to find the patient ones. She believed in themâbelieved in Y/Nâs goodness, in their honesty when it came, in the promise theyâd made. But believing didnât make her immune to the ache of being pushed.
The next morning was tentative. They exchanged messages with a new kind of caution: honest, imperfect, vulnerable. Y/N texted firstâan apology, clumsy and precise. Taeyeon answered with a gif and then, after a pause, a single sentence: âIâll stay if youâll try.â
It was the most dangerous thing Y/N had ever been offered: not a guarantee, but a choice.
They accepted. Not perfectly. Not cleanly. They accepted with guilt and fear and a fierce resolve to unlearn the reflexes that had once kept them safe. Taeyeon met them in the hallway later that day and squeezed their handâa small, physical promiseâand Y/N squeezed back, feeling the warmth of the grip as both comfort and covenant.
The path forward would not be neat. There would be nights when Y/N would fail and push and be small, and there would be apologies, and there would be Taeyeon, sometimes patient, sometimes hurt, sometimes daring them to be better. But for the first time in a long while, Y/N could imagine a future in which they didnât have to choose between safety and love.
They could imagine learning how to be wanted instead of fearing it.
And when Taeyeon hummed under her breath that evening while they worked through harmonies togetherâclose enough that their shoulders brushed and neither flinchedâY/N realized that the gravity pulling them toward each other was not a trap. It was a force. One they still had to respect, but also one they could choose to inhabit together.
It wouldnât be easy. It would require breaking old patterns with fierce, clumsy tenderness. But Y/N felt, for the first time in a very long time, willing to try. Try to let go of her destructive tendencies and let in the unsure of what this may bring.
The weeks that followed were easy in ways neither of them had anticipated. Easy, but deliberateâdeliberate in the way you fold into a rhythm with someone, learning the shape of their hands, the pitch of their laughter, the small tics that made them human and undeniable.
And with each moment, trust deepened. It wasnât flashyâit wasnât proclamations of love in grand gesturesâbut in the way Taeyeon let Y/N hold her hand across a crowded street, the way Y/N stopped mid-sentence to make sure Taeyeonâs shoulder was covered in her hoodie on chilly evenings, the quiet assumption that if one fell, the other would be there.
It was a gravity neither had ever felt before. A trust so absolute that they could be messy, clumsy, unsure, and still exist together without fear of rejection.
Until the news came.
The announcement hit quietly, a whisper in the dorms before it became official: Taeyeon was going to debut.
The excitement should have been electric. Everyone congratulated her, everyone smiled, everyone anticipated the music, the choreography, the first stage. But for Y/N, the words felt like a knife sliding against their chest.
They found her later that night, sprawled on the bed with her phone glowing in the dark, scrolling through the teaser images that had started circulating online. Her lips were tight, and for the first time, she didnât turn to smile at them when they entered the room.
âHey,â Y/N said softly, perching on the edge of the bed.
Taeyeon didnât look up. âIâm debuting,â she said, voice flat but brittle. âEverything changes. Everything.â
Y/Nâs heart ached. âI know.â
âI mean⊠everything,â she whispered, finally letting the weight of it hit. Her hands curled in her lap, shaking slightly. âI wonât be able to⊠you know. Have anyone. Not publicly. Not at all. If anyone knewââ Her voice broke off, swallowed by fear she hadnât fully acknowledged before.
Y/N moved closer, dropping to the floor so their shoulders pressed against hers. âHey. Hey,â they murmured. âLook at me.â Slowly, she lifted her head, eyes brimming. Y/N cupped her face, thumbs brushing over damp lashes. âIt wonât change what we have. Not what weâve built. We trust each other, right?â
Her lips quivered. ââŠMore than Iâve ever trusted anyone,â she admitted.
âExactly,â Y/N said, voice low and steady. âThen that doesnât go away just because the world gets loud. Weâll figure out the restâhow to survive it, how to be us in the cracks of the chaos.â
She exhaled, small but full of relief. âI donât⊠I donât want to lose this. Lose us.â
Y/N shook their head firmly, pressing their forehead to hers. âYou wonât. Youâll debut, weâll be careful, but this? This stays. Iâll make sure it does.â
Taeyeonâs hand crept into theirs, fingers tangling without hesitation, a lifeline neither wanted to let go of. âEven if itâs secret?â
âEven if itâs secret,â Y/N confirmed. Their thumb brushed along the back of her hand, anchoring her to this moment. âBecause what we have⊠itâs ours. Nobody can take that. Not schedules, not cameras, not expectations. Not even the world.â
A shaky smile, fleeting but genuine, curved across Taeyeonâs lips. ââŠThen weâll do it. Weâll make it work.â
âYes,â Y/N whispered. âTogether.â
For that night, at least, the weight of debut, contracts, and the world outside the dorm didnât exist. There was only the quiet gravity of two people who had learned to trust each other, who had found something rare enough to fight for, even in secret.
The first weeks after the debut announcement passed in a blur. Schedules filled every waking momentâearly morning rehearsals, fittings, recording sessions, endless meetings with managers. The dorm felt less like a home and more like a revolving door of stylists, trainers, and exhausted girls clutching takeaway cups.
Through it all, Taeyeon still found her way back to Y/N.
The night before her official debut stage, she called at nearly 2 a.m., voice hushed and trembling with nerves.
âAre you awake?â she whispered.
Y/N, half-asleep but alert the second they heard her, smiled into the dark. âFor you? Always.â
She exhaled, shaky. âIâm scared.â
Y/N shifted onto their back, pressing the phone closer. âYouâre ready. Youâve been ready. Just breathe, Taeyeon. Youâll be brilliant.â
There was a pause, then the faintest laugh. âSay it again.â
âYouâll be brilliant.â
It became a kind of ritualâlate-night calls squeezed into the cracks of her schedule. Sometimes they lasted ten minutes, sometimes only two. Taeyeonâs voice would drift through static on the line, telling Y/N about the new choreographer who never smiled, or how the stylists kept trying to dye her hair a shade she hated. Y/N listened, offered small reassurances, stored every detail like a secret diary.
When she debuted, Y/N sat in front of the TV with the other trainees, heart thundering as the lights hit Taeyeon on stage. She looked untouchable in that momentâbright, flawless, every line of her performance sharp as a blade. But Y/N also saw the girl behind it, the one who hummed when nervous, who leaned into their shoulder at night, who whispered fears only in the dark.
That night, Taeyeon called again, voice buzzing with adrenaline. âDid you see?â
âI saw,â Y/N said, grinning. âYou set the whole stage on fire.â
Taeyeon giggled, a sound so small and unguarded it broke the image of the idol flashing across news headlines. âYou really think so?â
âI know so.â
The calls kept coming, though gradually, the time between them stretched. At first, it was easy to explain. A missed call because she had a variety shoot that ran late. A text delayed because her manager confiscated phones before interviews. Y/N understoodâreally, she did. This was the life Taeyeon had worked for, the dream sheâd bled into every practice room.
So Y/N didnât sweat it. They answered when she called, and when she didnât, they filled the silence with workâwriting lyrics, pushing through drills, convincing themselves this was just what it meant to love someone in the spotlight.
Weeks turned into months, and the rhythm shifted almost imperceptibly.
Where once Taeyeon called nightly, it became every other night. Then every few days. Then sometimes a week would pass, her name lighting up Y/Nâs phone just when the ache of missing her started to set in.
When she did call, it was often between shoots, her voice quick, rushed. âI only have a second, butâhow are you? Did you eat? I miss you.â
Y/N clung to those scraps, smiling through the sting of the clock. âIâm good. Yes, I ate. Donât worry about meâfocus on your stage. Iâm proud of you.â
And Taeyeon would breathe relief into the line, âThank you,â before she was whisked away again
Y/N told themselves it was enough. That love didnât have to mean constant presenceâthat it could be built in glimpses, in the knowledge that when the world calmed, sheâd still come back.
But late at night, lying in a bed that felt too big, Y/N would scroll through old messages, hear her laughter in their head, and wonder how long they could live on echoes.
The distance wasnât sharp. It was gradual. A gentle erosion. Like the tide pulling slowly at the edges of something once solid.
And Y/Nâsteady, patient, understandingâkept waiting. Kept believing.
Because she had promised: Even if itâs secret. Even if itâs hard.
And Y/N had promised back: Together.
The erosion continued, steady as the tide.
Y/N noticed it most in the details. The calls that used to come with laughter, with playful teasing, now came clipped, squeezed between managersâ voices in the background. Her goodnight whispers, once warm and lingering, grew shorter, rushedâsometimes replaced with a single text that came hours too late: Sleep well. Iâll call tomorrow.
Tomorrow sometimes didnât come.
Still, Y/N didnât break. They convinced themselves this was what it meant to love someone like herâsomeone who belonged to the world before she belonged to herself. They made excuses on her behalf, stacked justifications like bricks around their own heart. Sheâs tired. Sheâs busy. Sheâll come back when it slows down.
But the ache grew sharper, harder to disguise.
One evening, the dorm was buzzingâtrainees sprawled across the common room, gossiping about Taeyeonâs variety show appearance that had just aired. Y/N watched from the corner, pretending to laugh along, but their chest tightened as the others replayed clips on their phones. Taeyeon was radiant, all sharp wit and dazzling smiles, the kind of presence that filled a screen so completely it left no room for shadows.
It felt like a version of her Y/N barely recognized.
Later, when the noise died down, Y/N retreated to the practice room, the mirrors catching their reflection under the harsh fluorescent lights. They dropped onto the floor, stretching until their muscles burned, but nothing quieted the storm inside. Not until their phone buzzed, Taeyeonâs name flashing across the screen.
They answered too quickly. âHey.â
Her voice was tired, thin. âYouâre still awake?â
âYeah. Practicing.â Y/N hesitated. âHow was filming?â
âLong,â she sighed, a faint rustle of fabric in the background. âI just got back. My feet are killing me.â
âThen lie down. You should rest.â
There was a pause, a silence filled with something unsaid. âI miss you,â she admitted quietly. âBut⊠I donât know when Iâll see you.â
The words stabbed, but Y/N forced steadiness into their tone. âYou donât have to know when. Just⊠donât stop calling, okay? Even if itâs short. Even if youâre tired. Let me be here, even if itâs just through a phone.â
Another pause. Then, softer: âOkay.â
But even promises fray under pressure.
Over the next few weeks, her calls dwindled further, replaced with hurried texts. Sorry, scheduleâs insane. Iâll call soon. Next time, promise. Miss you.
Y/N reread those words until the screen blurred, trying to convince themselves they held the same weight as hearing her voice.
Until one night, when the silence stretched too long, Y/N typed out a message they hadnât meant to send:
Do you still want this?
Their thumb hovered over the screen, heart hammering, before they locked the phone and shoved it under their pillow.
The question lingered anyway, burning through every rehearsal, every sleepless night.
And for the first time since Taeyeon leaned her head against their shoulder and whispered her fears into their skin, Y/N wasnât sure they knew the answer.
On the other side of the city, Taeyeon had told herself from the beginning that it wouldnât be easy. That chasing the spotlight meant sacrificesâprivacy, rest, pieces of herself sheâd never get back. She had braced for the exhaustion, the criticism, the endless comparisons.
What she hadnât braced for was how much it would hurt to feel Y/N slipping through her fingers, not because they were leaving, but because she didnât have the time to hold on.
At first, she told herself Y/N understood. The late-night calls, the stolen minutes between rehearsals, the rushed I miss youâs whispered in hotel roomsâall of it was proof they were still trying. But the longer it went on, the more Taeyeon began to notice the cracks.
Y/Nâs voice on the phone had changed. Still warm, still steady, but there was something beneath it now, like a tiredness that didnât come from practice. When Taeyeon would laugh, sometimes it didnât echo back the way it used to. When she promised, Iâll call tomorrow, she could almost hear the quiet hesitation in Y/Nâs reply: Okay.
She hated herself for it.
Because Taeyeon knew this was the life she had wantedâhad fought tooth and nail to haveâand Y/N had been there for every stumble, every doubt. The thought of them debuting next should have been a shared dream, something to celebrate. But instead, Taeyeon felt dread curling in her chest. If she could barely hold onto them now, when they still had evenings free sometimes, what would it be like when Y/N was the one disappearing into endless schedules?
It wasnât jealousy. Not really. It was fear.
Fear that the two of them would become ships passing in the night, waving across oceans of rehearsals and cameras, surviving on the memory of what they had built in stolen hours.
The night Y/N didnât answer her call, Taeyeon sat alone in her dorm room, staring at the ceiling with the phone clutched against her chest. The rest of the girls were asleep, the manager had long since checked in, and the silence pressed down on her harder than any stage light ever had.
Her thumb hovered over Y/Nâs name again and again, but she couldnât bring herself to dial. Because she realized it wasnât just about missing themâit was about what that distance was doing to them both.
The next morning, she watched herself in the mirror as a stylist pinned her hair into place, foundation smoothing over the exhaustion carved under her eyes. She looked every bit the idol they wanted her to beâpolished, perfect, untouchable. But all she could think about was Y/Nâs hand against hers, the quiet promise theyâd made: Together.
And for the first time, Taeyeon wasnât sure if she was keeping her side of it.
When the stylist stepped away, she pulled her phone from her lap, unlocking it with trembling fingers. Her screen lit with old messagesâsome long, some short, some silly, some aching. She scrolled through until her eyes blurred, until the ache inside her sharpened into resolve.
She couldnât let this be the way it unraveled. Not with Y/N.
But how could she ask them to wait, to bear this silence, when she could barely bear it herself?
That night, after her schedule ended, Taeyeon sat in the van with her manager scrolling through emails on the phone beside her. The city lights flickered against the tinted glass. Her hand shook as she typed out a message, one she deleted and rewrote three times before sending:
I know Iâve been distant. I donât want us to lose what we have. Tell me what you need, and Iâll find a way. Please.
She hit send and locked the phone before she could second-guess it.
The van sped on, her reflection caught faintly in the window. For the first time in weeks, her chest hurt in a way that wasnât just exhaustionâit was hope, fragile and terrifying.
Because she realized she wasnât afraid of loving Y/N in secret. She was afraid of losing them before she even had the chance to fight for them.
Y/Nâs phone buzzed on the nightstand. They had been lying awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, the question they never sent still burning behind their ribs: Do you still want this?
When the screen lit up, their first instinct was to brace themselves for another apology wrapped in excuses. But when they opened it, the words were different this time.
I know Iâve been distant. I donât want us to lose what we have. Tell me what you need, and Iâll find a way. Please.
For a moment, Y/N just stared, the sting of tears pricking their eyes. It wasnât perfect. It didnât erase the ache of weeks, the missed calls, the quiet doubts. But it was something they hadnât felt in too longâTaeyeon reaching back.
They typed, erased, typed again. Everything felt too small for the weight sitting in their chest. Finally, they sent:
I just need you to let me in. Even if itâs messy. Even if youâre tired. Donât shut me out, Tae. Thatâs all I want.
The reply came faster than they expected.
Then come see me tomorrow. After practice. Please. Iâll wait.
âž»
The next day stretched endlessly. Rehearsals dragged, voices of trainers and other trainees blurring together until Y/N was moving on autopilot. Their mind was elsewhereâon the text, on the fact that Taeyeon had asked them to come.
When practice ended, Y/N barely bothered showering. They tugged a hoodie over their head, shoved essentials into a bag, and slipped out. The walk to the building where Taeyeon stayed felt longer than usual, nerves tangling in their stomach.
They knocked once.
The door cracked open almost immediately, like she had been standing there, waiting. Taeyeonâs eyes were rimmed redânot from makeup, not from exhaustion alone, but from crying.
âY/N,â she whispered, like the word itself was a relief.
They stepped inside without hesitation. The dorm was quiet, the other members out. Taeyeon closed the door, then leaned against it as if her body couldnât hold itself upright anymore.
Y/N crossed the space between them and cupped her face gently, forcing her to look up. âOh honey, I missed youâ they said, voice steady despite the tightness in their chest.
Taeyeon pressed her forehead against Y/Nâs chest, letting herself be carried by the steady rhythm of their heartbeat. She exhaled shakily, the tension in her shoulders slowly loosening.
Y/Nâs hands moved over her back in slow, deliberate circles, grounding her without needing to speak. The silence wasnât emptyâit was a tether, a place where she could be exhausted, scared, and still held.
âI hate that Iâm like this,â Taeyeon murmured, voice muffled. âThat I canât just⊠handle it all. That I canâtââ
âShh,â Y/N interrupted gently, tilting her head so her lips hovered near Taeyeonâs ear. âYouâre allowed to feel it. You just donât have to fix it alone.â
Her fingers twined in Y/Nâs hoodie strings, clinging to something real, tangible. âItâs just⊠every day Iâm on stage, smiling at everyone, I keep thinking about you. About what Iâm leaving behind. And Iâm scared that one day⊠youâll give up on me.â
Y/N tightened their hold, tilting her chin up just slightly. They didnât answer immediatelyâwords werenât necessary. Instead, they brushed a strand of hair from her face, lingering long enough for her to see the patience in their eyes.
Taeyeon closed her eyes, resting against their chest again, and let herself absorb it. The exhaustion, the fear, the longingâit all pooled there, held without judgment.
Finally, her voice came, quieter, steadier: âI donât want this to destroy us. I donât know how to⊠balance everything.â
Y/N wanted to be that voice of reassurance and say âitâs fine, weâll have our time together in no time. We will spend the rest of our lives together.â But she knew it wasnât true. She knew that the time they have now would be the only moment they would have together in a very long time.
She wanted to say she would always be here, but when will she get the time to be there for Taeyeon. This would be the most logical thing she could say, âAnd it wonât, but..â she cautiously replied.
Taeyeon eyes lift to her scared of the next words to come from her lips. âWhat if we took a pause on us , just so that you can only focus on your goals and leave us for later ?â
Taeyeon froze, her forehead still resting against Y/Nâs chest, heart hammering at the words. She could feel the hesitation in Y/Nâs tone, the careful way she framed itânot as a rejection, but as a shield.
âA⊠pause?â Her voice was barely audible, trembling with something between fear and disbelief. âYou mean⊠you want me to just⊠wait? To put us on hold?â
Y/Nâs hands lingered on her back, warm but trembling slightly. âNot because I donât want you. Not because Iâm giving up,â she said carefully. âI just⊠I know how much youâre giving right now, Tae. And I canât ask you to split yourselfâI canât ask you to choose between your dream and us. I⊠I thought maybe if we paused, I could survive this distance without letting either of us get hurt.â
Taeyeon lifted her head slowly, eyes wide, wet from unshed tears. âPause⊠us?â she repeated, voice breaking. âYou want to put what we have on hold⊠for me? For me?â
Y/N swallowed hard, gaze dropping for a moment. âFor both of us. Because I donât know if I can do thisâsee you disappear into the world while Iâm left holding pieces of you. I canât⊠I donât want to resent you for chasing your dream. And I donât want you to feel guilty for needing it.â
Taeyeonâs hands found Y/Nâs, gripping them tightly, knuckles white. âYou think Iâd ever resent you? That Iâd let this⊠us⊠slip because Iâm scared of the distance?â Her voice cracked further, the raw emotion slipping past her usual control. âDo you know how many nights Iâve stared at my phone, just praying youâd call? Wondering if youâd be there when I needed you?â
Y/Nâs lips pressed into a thin line, guilt and love twisting together. âIâm here, Tae. Iâll always be here. I will wait for you for however long. But I donât know if I can survive the slow erosion⊠the waiting and the missing and the silence. I thought maybeâjust maybeâpausing could protect us both.â
Taeyeon blinked, her chest tightening as she tried to swallow the lump in her throat. The words were logical, reasonable evenâbut they felt like a knife pressed softly against the pulse of her heart. She could feel the ache in her bones, the echo of Y/Nâs caution reverberating in her chest, and yet⊠she didnât want it. She couldnât want it.
âI⊠I donât know if I can do a pause,â she whispered, voice trembling, raw. âEven if itâs supposed to protect us⊠it just feels like letting go a little, doesnât it? Like youâre trying to save me from something I donât want saved.â
Y/Nâs hands tightened slightly on hers, nails pressing into palmsânot as a warning, but as a tether, a lifeline in the storm of emotion between them. âIâm not letting go,â she said softly. âIâm⊠trying to survive with you in a way that doesnât destroy us. Iâm trying to be honest with you, Tae. I love you too much to pretend the distance wonât hurt me.â
Taeyeonâs head sank back against Y/Nâs chest, tears slipping freely now. âI hate that you feel like you have to protect me from my own life,â she murmured, the words muffled by the fabric of Y/Nâs hoodie. âI hate that weâre even at this point where love feels like⊠like it needs a pause.â
âItâs not because I donât want you,â Y/N whispered, thumb brushing against the back of her hand. âItâs because I do. Too much. And I canât let the erosion⊠the slow fade⊠take something Iâve fought for just by loving you.
Taeyeon pressed herself closer, letting the tears fall unchecked, her body trembling with the raw, unfiltered ache that had been accumulating for months. Every hug, every late-night call, every stolen moment now felt fragileâprecious, and terrifyingly impermanent. She buried her face against Y/Nâs chest and whispered, almost to herself, âI donât know if I can survive the thought of losing this⊠losing you.â
Y/Nâs hands cupped her face again, thumbs tracing the lines of her jaw, grounding her. âYou wonât lose me,â they said, voice steady, even as their own heart thudded painfully against their ribs. âIâll wait. Iâll fight. Iâll be here. But I canât promise Iâll be okay if we keep trying to live in the cracks, Tae. Thatâs all Iâm saying. Thatâs why⊠this pause⊠itâs not giving up. Itâs surviving. So that when we come back, we can really be together.â
Her arms tightened around Y/N instinctively, the weight of the words settling between them. âSurvive⊠with me?â she repeated, voice small, brittle. âEven if it hurts? Even if itâs lonely?â
âYes,â Y/N whispered, pressing their forehead against hers. âEven then. We endure. We wait. We hold onto the promise that matters: that we come back to each other.â
Taeyeon lifted her head slightly, eyes glassy but bright, searching Y/Nâs face for some unspoken truth. She could feel the honesty in those steady eyes, in the careful way Y/N had chosen their words, in the way they hadnât pulled away despite the fear and the tears. And somewhere deep in her chest, where panic had been clawing for months, a small ember of hope flickered.
âSo⊠this pause,â she said slowly, testing the word on her tongue. âItâs not⊠the end?â
âNo,â Y/N said firmly, brushing hair from her damp forehead. âNot the end. Itâs survival. So that we can come back, stronger, intact. So that we donât break under all the pieces we canât control.â
Taeyeonâs lips quivered, a small, shaky smile tugging at the corners. âAnd you⊠youâll wait? Really wait?â
âAlways,â Y/N murmured, holding her gaze, feeling the warmth of her pulse, the quiet gravity of her presence. âIâll wait. And Iâll come back to you. No matter how long it takes.â
They stayed wrapped in each others arms for a while. Hoping to have all the time in the world to just stop. So that the feeling of holding each other could stretch indefinitelyâso that the world outside, with its schedules, expectations, and relentless pace, could be paused too. They didnât speak anymore, not because words werenât there, but because silence had become their language. A language of presence, of grounding, of reassurance without pretense.
Eventually, Taeyeon lifted her head just slightly, resting her forehead against Y/Nâs collarbone. Her voice was soft, almost a whisper: âI hate that this feels like⊠surviving instead of living.â
Y/N pressed their lips to her temple. âItâs not living without loveâitâs living with love in the way we can manage right now. We carry it with us. Thatâs still ours.â
A small laugh, choked and wet, escaped Taeyeon. âYou make it sound⊠noble.â
âMaybe it is,â Y/N replied, their hands cradling her head. âOr maybe itâs just love being stubborn.â
She closed her eyes again, letting the tension of weeks slip from her body. âStubborn⊠I like that,â she murmured.
And for that night, they let themselves stay there. Time didnât matter. Schedules didnât matter. The world outside didnât exist. There was only the slow rise and fall of each otherâs breath, the warmth pressed against skin, and the promise that this pause wasnât the endâit was a holding pattern, a waiting room for the moment they could fully return to each other.
Y/N rested their cheek on hers and whispered, âNo matter how long this takes, we come back. You and me.â
Taeyeonâs fingers curled into their hoodie, anchoring herself. âYou really mean that?â
âEvery word,â Y/N said, voice low but unshakable.
She let herself believe it, letting the quiet gravity of trust and love seep back into her chest. And in that small, sacred space, the ache softenedânot gone, but tempered by certainty. They had survived this far. And as long as they both held on, they could survive the rest.
And they did until Y/N debuted.
The night Y/N debuted with F(x) was electric, the kind of night where every second feels heavier than a heartbeat and lighter than air. Months of waiting, of silent endurance, of stolen late-night calls and whispered promises, had led to this. The lights, cameras, and roaring crowd were overwhelmingâbut none of it mattered as much as the quiet tether they had kept with Taeyeon.
Backstage, amidst the whirl of makeup artists and stylists fussing with costumes, Y/Nâs fingers trembled slightly as they checked their earpiece and adjusted the mic. They could feel the familiar pulse of adrenaline threading through their veins. But the thought that grounded them wasnât the debut, wasnât the screaming fans, wasnât the flashing lightsâit was Taeyeon, somewhere out of sight, waiting, keeping her promise.
The music hit, the stage lights flaring across the arena, and Y/N moved like a living rhythm, each step precise, each note hitting exactly as it should. The audience was a sea of glowing phones and waving hands, but Y/Nâs eyes found nothing in that blur except for the image of Taeyeon in their mind: her laugh, her hum, the tiny quirks they had memorized over countless nights together. Every breath became a reminder of why they had endured the waiting, the silences, the longing.
After the performance, as the adrenaline settled and the cheers still vibrated in their chest, Y/N retreated to the quiet of their dressing room. Their phone buzzed almost immediately. It was a message from Taeyeon:
You were brilliant. I saw everything I knew you could be, and more. Proud doesnât even cover it.
Y/Nâs lips curved in a tired, exhausted smile. The message carried weightânot just praise, but the quiet presence of the person they loved, the one who had waited, the one who had anchored them through months of absence.
They typed back, fingers slightly shaking:
I couldnât have done it without knowing you were waiting.
The reply came quickly:
Always. Now⊠we survive the rest together, yes?
Y/N stared at the screen for a long moment, the lights of the dressing room flickering across their reflection. Then, with a quiet certainty that only came from months of shared patience and sacrifice, they typed:
Yes. Together.
And for the first time since Taeyeonâs debut, the distance that had seemed so insurmountable felt manageableânot because the world had slowed, not because schedules had bent, but because the gravity between them had not wavered.
Later that night, after the crowd had dispersed and the echoes of cheers had faded, the girls and the management decided to get drinks to celebrate. When a text came through from Taeyeon:
âAre you guys at âbar and wineâ ?â
Y/Nâs lips curved into a tired, rueful smile as she glanced at the message. Bar and Wine. Of course. Theyâd been planning a small post-debut celebration, and the thought of Taeyeon joiningâeven brieflyâmade her chest tighten. She typed back:
âYeah. Weâre here. Come?â
Minutes passed. Then the familiar buzz. On my way.
The air in Bar and Wine was thick with warmthâlaughter spilling, glasses raised, congratulations echoing in waves. Y/N let herself smile when the girls teased her about nearly tripping during choreography, even rolled her eyes when one insisted it made her look âendearing.â
But beneath the laughter, her chest held something quieter. A steady hum of anticipation that pulsed louder with every tick of the clock.
Taeyeon was coming.
After a while, Y/N excused herself, slipping into the dim press of bodies and chatter until she found the bathroom. The noise dulled as the door closed behind her. For a moment she leaned against the sink, staring at her reflection.
Her cheeks were still flushed, her eyes bright with leftover adrenaline from the stageâand with something else. The thought of Taeyeon walking in. The thought of her being here, close enough to touch.
She splashed water on her hands, shook them off slowly, exhaled. She needed to breathe. Needed to look less like sheâd been waiting all night for this. But when she pushed the door open again, her heart was still buzzing.
At that same moment, Taeyeon stepped inside the bar.
Her coat was still buttoned, her shoulders held tight. She stopped just past the entrance, eyes scanning the room. The place was livelyâsmall groups huddled over bottles, bursts of laughter breaking through the low humâbut she didnât see Y/N. She didnât see anyone familiar at all.
Her chest pinched. Was this even the right place? Had she misunderstood?
She lingered, her teeth tugging at her lip, uncertainty flickering across her face. Just a second moreâthen she turned, slipping back out before anyone could notice.
And the door swung shut.
Y/N stepped back into the bar, smile poised, heartbeat quickening as her eyes swept the room. She caught the faintest trace of perfume on the air. Familiar. Too familiar.
Her breath stuttered.
She wove toward the entrance, dodging waiters balancing trays, but by the time she reached the door and pulled it open, the sidewalk outside was bare. Streetlamps glowed against empty pavement. A car passed. That was all.
She lingered longer than she should have, framed in the doorway with the muffled cheer of the bar behind her and the night air pressing cold against her skin. That scent still clung faintly to the doorframe. That shadow she thought sheâd glimpsedâit couldnât have been anyone else. Taeyeon had been here.
But she hadnât stayed. She hadnât called.
By the time Y/N returned to the table, the celebration had shifted slightly, her own smile thinner, her laugh forced. She placed her phone face-down beside her glass and didnât touch it again. If Taeyeon wanted her, she would have said so.
Somewhere across the city, Taeyeon walked briskly down the block, her coat pulled tight. Every step seemed heavier than the last, torn between turning back and keeping on. She wanted to go back. God, she wanted to. But shame gnawed at her ribs. Sheâd gone in, and Y/N hadnât been there. What if sheâd been wrong?
Her phone buzzed suddenly in her pocket. She snatched at it too fast, her grip slipping. The device hit pavement with a sharp crack.
Taeyeon froze, crouched, picked it up. The screen was a spiderweb of black, nothing responding no matter how hard she pressed. The tether to Y/Nâtheir calls, their quiet textsâshattered in her hands.
By morning she was at a phone shop, exhaustion clinging to her. She powered on the new device the second it was handed to her, her thumb flying through setup, searching for comfort. One by one, her contacts reappeared. Family. Members. Managers.
But not Y/N.
Not in recents. Not in favorites. Not anywhere.
Taeyeonâs hand hovered over the screen, scrolling and rescrolling as though her eyes might have missed it. They hadnât. The truth sat there in its absenceâY/Nâs name nowhere, their number gone like it had never existed at all.
Her breath snagged in her throat. For a moment she just sat in the plastic chair of the shop, people moving around her in muffled shapes, the hum of fluorescent lights filling her ears. She pressed her palm over the phone, as if touch alone could conjure the missing name back into existence.
Nothing.
When the clerk asked if everything was alright, she only nodded, too quickly, and slipped the device into her coat pocket. Out on the street, the morning was washed pale with thin sunlight, the air damp with last nightâs rain. Every corner of the city looked sharper, lonelier, as if sheâd been nudged half a step outside of it.
Her hands itched to type out a message, to hear Y/Nâs laugh through the receiver, even just to see the little typing dots appear on her screen. Instead, her pockets felt empty. Unmoored.
Across town, Y/N sat curled on the dorm couch, the TV flashing highlights of their debut stage. The others shouted playfully at the screen, nudging each other, teasing about expressions or dance mistakes. Y/N forced a grin when they were teased again, but their gaze kept sliding to the phone on the table.
It hadnât moved all morning. No buzz. No message. No sign.
She told herself not to look, but every few minutes her hand twitched toward it anyway, flipping it over, finding only a black screen reflecting her own tired face.
Her chest tightened with a thought she refused to voiceânot yet. Maybe Taeyeon had seen the message too late. Maybe sheâd been busy. Maybe.
But beneath the excuses, a darker whisper dug in: maybe sheâd come and left. Maybe sheâd changed her mind.
The city moved around them both, hours slipping into one another. Taeyeon walked with her phone clenched in her hand, trying and failing to recall the digits she had dialed a hundred times. Y/N laughed when the others laughed, nodded when they planned for the next stage, but her ears buzzed with the silence of her phone.
Days bled into each other, the same way stage lights bled into shadows.
Schedules filled Y/Nâs hoursâpractice, fittings, interviewsâbut in the cracks between all that noise, the silence grew louder. Every morning she woke with her hand reaching for the phone, every night she set it down facedown on the nightstand, telling herself she didnât care. That if Taeyeon wanted her, sheâd be here.
But the absence kept cutting deeper.
One week passed. Then another. Taeyeonâs name never lit her screen. Not a single message, not a single call.
Y/Nâs excuses wore thin, peeling like paper in her hands. She knew what the others sawâa bright smile, a debuting idol lost in the rush of everything new. But what they couldnât see was the way her stomach dropped every time her phone vibrated, only to find it was a manager or a spam alert.
By the tenth day, she couldnât stand it anymore.
She curled up in bed long after the dorm had gone quiet, the glow of the city seeping weak through the curtains. Her thumb hovered over her phone, trembling, before she finally tapped the number she had memorized long ago.
The line clicked, a soft hum of static filling her ear. Y/Nâs breath hitched, hope prickling sharp and urgent in her chest.
But thenâ
The caller you are trying to reach is unavailable.
The voice was flat, mechanical, final.
Her heart plunged, fingers tightening around the device as though holding harder could will the connection back to life. She ended the call, waited, tried again. The same cold voice answered her. Again. And again.
By the fourth attempt, her eyes were burning.
She dropped the phone against her chest, staring up at the ceiling where shadows moved like water. The thought pressed heavy and relentless: maybe this was her answer. Maybe Taeyeon wasnât coming backânot to the bar, not to her, not at all.
Still, her thumb twitched, and before she could stop herself, she pressed call one more time.
The same voice. The same silence.
Her breath cracked as she whispered into the empty line, âPlease⊠just pick up.â
But there was no one there.
Taeyeonâs nights stretched long too, though they looked different from Y/Nâs. No shared dorm laughter, no teasing over variety clipsâjust the echo of her own footsteps in an apartment that felt too big, too hollow.
She tried not to pace, but her body betrayed her. Every evening she found herself by the window, staring at the city lights below as if they might arrange themselves into an answer. Her new phone sat heavy in her palm, her thumb brushing over the smooth glass where Y/Nâs name should have been.
She had tried. God, she had tried.
The first time, she asked a stylist quietly after a shoot if she still had the traineesâ numbers. The woman blinked, hesitated, then shook her head with an apologetic smile. âWe donât really keep those. Privacy, you know.â
Taeyeon smiled back, too polite, but inside something twisted.
The next chance came at a rehearsal. She lingered near one of the younger managers, rehearsing the words in her headâjust a simple, casual question. Do you have Y/Nâs number? But before the words left her mouth, another staff member called the manager away, dragging him into a flurry of schedules and phone calls. When she turned again, the moment was gone.
A few days later, she tried with another memberâsomeone who might have had it saved, someone she trusted. She opened her mouth, but the words snagged in her throat when she saw the cameras rolling nearby. One wrong question caught on film, one slip of her mask, and speculation would spread like fire. She swallowed it down. The opportunity slipped away again.
Every attempt ended like that. A voice interrupting, a door opening, someone watching too closely. It was as if the world itself conspired to keep her from dialing that number, to keep her and Y/N just out of reach.
But the need didnât ease.
At night, when the world finally quieted, Taeyeon sat at the edge of her bed with the phone pressed to her forehead. She tried to reconstruct Y/Nâs number from memoryâdigits blurred with time and repetitionâbut no matter how many times she typed them out, the calls never connected. Wrong number. Error tone. Dead ends.
One night, she broke and whispered into the unyielding dial tone, âPlease⊠just let me hear her voice.â
The silence on the other end mocked her.
And so the days mirrored Y/Nâsâboth of them reaching, both of them failing. Both convinced the other had chosen to disappear.
Promises had been made once, whispered in the quiet safety of a dorm room when the future still felt theirs to shape. No matter what happens, we wonât leave each other. It had been simple thenâeasy to believe, easier still to cling to.
But as weeks stretched into months, the silence between them hardened into something heavier. Taeyeon told herself Y/N could have found a way to reach her if they really wanted to. A letter, a message passed through someoneâthey werenât powerless. They had chosen the silence. That thought festered like a bruise, tender and bitter all at once.
Y/N, on the other hand, replayed the same tape in their head every night: if Taeyeon had truly wanted to stay, she would have. She had the connections, the pull, the access Y/N never did. Yet no knock had come, no call, no word. The ache of missing her soured into anger, sharper because of the promise broken.
Neither of them knew how hard the other had tried. Neither could see the near-misses, the almosts, the invisible walls that had kept them apart. All they knew was the empty space, and it grew harder to forgive.
So when word finally reached themâcasual, almost cruel in its simplicityâthat they would both be attending the same award show, their first thought wasnât relief. It wasnât hope.
It was why now?
For Taeyeon, it was a twisting in her stomach, part dread, part yearning. She rehearsed what she might say, then scrapped it all, because what could possibly explain months of silence?
For Y/N, it was fire under the ribs, the kind that burned hot with resentment. Seeing her again meant seeing the one person who swore never to leaveâand then did.
And so the stage was set. The same red carpet, the same flashing cameras, the same gilded room heavy with applause and polite laughter.
But beneath the surface, two people moved through the night with matching ghosts in their chestsâboth bracing for the moment their eyes would inevitably meet.
The award show glittered around them like a world designed to dazzle and distract. Taeyeon moved through it with measured poise, every smile at every camera calculated, but her eyes kept flicking to the crowd, scanning, searching for a flash of familiarity. Somewhere in the sea of gowns and tailored suits, Y/N had to be.
She caught herself pausing mid-step whenever a performer passed her table, or a friend waved hello, only to remind herself that maybeâjust maybeâY/N hadnât arrived yet. Or worse, maybe Y/N was here and deliberately avoiding her. The thought made her chest tighten.
Y/N, seated across the room in her own cluster of peers, was doing the same. Her gaze swept over faces she knew well enough to recognize from magazine spreads and backstage chats, but she wasnât seeing any of them. She was looking for Taeyeon. The memory of the last time sheâd reached for her, only to find silence, pressed heavy on her shoulders. And now, seeing Taeyeon somewhere in the crowdâalive, smiling, glowingâit only made the absence feel sharper.
When SNSDâs name was called, the collective buzz around the room surged like electricity. Taeyeonâs heart thumped, caught in a strange rhythm between dread and anticipation. She rose gracefully, letting herself be swept forward with her group toward the stage. Cameras flashed, applause roared, and she kept one half of her mind alert for any sign of Y/N.
But Y/Nâs seat was empty.
Not surprising, Taeyeon reasoned, forcing herself to focus. F(x) was next. That meant Y/N was backstage, preparing, waitingâor maybe pacing. Taeyeon felt the familiar tug of disappointment, a gnawing emptiness that had nothing to do with the applause around her. She wanted to call her name, to reach for her, to collapse all the months of silence into one desperate hugâbut the stage demanded her attention, and there were millions of eyes expecting perfection.
The music swelled, lights painting the stage in waves of gold and violet. Taeyeon sang, moved, smiled on cueâbut beneath the practiced poise, her gaze kept darting toward the audience. Every time she turned her head, her eyes swept the front rows, her heart thudding with the stubborn hope that sheâd catch even a flicker of Y/Nâs face in the sea of strangers.
But there was nothing. Just rows of unfamiliar expressions, cameras flashing, heads turned toward her and her group.
Her chest tightened with every verse, with every step that carried her across the stage. Maybe Y/N was avoiding her after all. Maybe the empty seat wasnât chanceâit was choice. âEvery word,â Y/N said, voice low but unshakable.
Still, she kept looking. Kept stealing fragments of seconds in between choreography, as if she might trick fate into giving her the glimpse she craved. But the more she searched, the more certain it became: Y/N wasnât there to see her.
The performance ended in thunderous applause, the kind that should have filled her with pride. Instead, as Taeyeon bowed with the rest of her group, the ache in her chest pulsed louder than the ovation. She lingered a beat too long, scanning one last time before the lights dimmed and the curtains began to close.
And stillâno Y/N.
The disappointment was sharp, enough to make her steps falter as she followed the others offstage. She kept her head high, smile intact, but inside it felt like the silence between them had stretched wider, heavier.
She told herself it was foolish to expect otherwise. And yet, walking into the wings, her throat tightened with the quiet, impossible wish that sheâd been wrongâthat maybe, just once, their eyes might have found each other across the distance.
Backstage, at that exact moment, Y/N was fighting her own war.
She had been in her seatâready, waitingâwhen the call had come. A stylistâs whisper sharp with urgency, the sudden tug at her wrist, the breathless words: âWe need you nowâzipperâs broken.â Before she could protest, she was swept into a whirlwind of fabric and hands pulling her in every direction. âEvery word,â Y/N said, voice low but unshakable. âEvery word,â Y/N said, voice low but unshakable. âEvery word,â Y/N said, voice low but unshakable.
She had been in her seatâready, waitingâher eyes fixed on the stage as the lights shifted for SNSDâs set. Her pulse quickened, every fiber of her bracing for the moment Taeyeon would step into view.
But when she rose to adjust her dress, a sharp rip broke the air. The zipper at her side gave way, fabric tugging loose against her ribs. Her stomach dropped.
âShit,â she hissed under her breath, fumbling to pull the fabric together. Panic flared hot in her chestâshe was supposed to be on right after.
Before she could even think of Taeyeon, hands were suddenly at her shoulders. A stylist whoâd been watching from the aisle swooped in, whispering fast and sharp. âWe need to fix this nowâcome on.â
Y/N tried to glance back at the stage, desperate for one glimpse, but the stylist was already ushering her out, half-running toward the dressing area. The roar of the crowd swelled behind her, the first notes of SNSDâs performance vibrating through the walls.
Her heart twisted. Taeyeon was out there. Right now. She had waited months for this moment, just to see her againâand instead, she was being pulled away, trapped in the chaos of pins, zippers, and frantic adjustments.
She sat rigid in front of the mirror, stylists swarming her, fabric biting at her skin as they stitched her back into place. Through the muffled speakers she could hear the faint thread of Taeyeonâs voice soaring, achingly familiar, and it made her chest ache.
She wanted nothing more than to break free, to run to the wings and catch even a second of her. But the mirror reflected only her own tense face, framed by frantic hands.
By the time the music swelled toward its end, Y/N knew she had lost the chance.
Her hands curled into fists at her sides. She had wanted so badly to see her. Just once.
But by the time Y/N was releasedâdress secured, hair smoothed, smile practicedâTaeyeon had already disappeared into the wings, her disappointment heavy as silence.
By the time Y/N stepped onto the stage with her members, her heartbeat was a roar in her ears. The lights hit her, hot and blinding, and the screams of the crowd rolled over her like a tide. She slipped into formation, the rehearsed choreography kicking in automatically, but beneath the flawless smile and sharp moves, her eyes kept flicking to the audience.
She told herself she just needed one second. One look. Just to see Taeyeonâproof she was really here, proof that the silence hadnât erased everything.
Her gaze swept the crowd, past familiar faces, label staff, industry peers. Her chest leapt when she found SNSDâs table. The girls were thereâclapping, cheering, bright-eyed with support.
But not Taeyeon.
Y/Nâs step nearly faltered before she caught herself. The spotlight was ruthless; she couldnât let it show. Still, the absence carved into her, sharper than the ache in her lungs from singing.
Where was she?
Y/N forced her voice steady, her movements sharp, but the question beat in time with the music. She had wanted this moment to be differentâto sing knowing Taeyeon was watching, to feel the pull of her eyes in the crowd. Instead, she found only the hollow space where Taeyeon should have been.
Between spins and steps, she kept searching, scanning every row within sight. Maybe Taeyeon had just shifted seats. Maybe she was watching from the shadows, hidden behind the glare of the lights. Maybeâ
But each pass of her gaze ended the same: SNSD was there, but Taeyeon was missing.
The song swelled toward its chorus, and Y/N poured herself into it, the ache twisting into fuel. If Taeyeon wasnât there to see her, then maybe the song itself could carry across the space between them. Maybe her voice could find its way to her, wherever she had gone.
Still, with every note, the emptiness pressed heavier, the realization setting in: just as Taeyeon hadnât found her, she wasnât going to find Taeyeon either.
Two stages, two chances, both missed.
But why
The question burned in Y/Nâs chest long after the award ceremony ended, when the bright lights dimmed and the cheers faded into a blur. She smiled for cameras, posed with her group, bowed where she was supposed toâbut inside, she was restless, raw.
How could the universe be so cruel?
For weeks she had clung to this night, told herself it would be the bridge across the silence. Just one shared glance, one undeniable moment to prove that all those months hadnât been for nothing. Instead, she had been stitched into her dress while Taeyeonâs voice bled through the walls, and then she had sung her heart out to an empty space at SNSDâs table.
By the time the event wound down, the ache in her chest had settled into something heavierâan exhaustion that wasnât just physical.
Her members filed into the van, laughter rising and falling around her, but Y/N sat pressed against the window, eyes searching the parking lot as if Taeyeon might still appear. She saw staff hurrying with garment bags, fans gathered at the gates, cameras flashingâbut no familiar silhouette.
Not surprising, she told herself, echoing Taeyeonâs earlier reasoning without knowing it. And yet the disappointment carved deeper.
Because it wasnât just bad luck. It couldnât be. It was starting to feel like fate itself was conspiring against them.
She tried to make sense of it, tried to believe there had to be a reason. Maybe they werenât supposed to meet yet. Maybe the distance was protecting them somehow. Maybeâ
But how could she think of reasons when her body still ached to hold Taeyeon again? When every cell of her being screamed to close the distance, to collapse the silence into touch?
Her reflection in the window blurred with the city lights, her own face staring back at her as if daring her to admit the truth: no excuse would ever be enough. No reason could ever soften the raw want gnawing at her chest.
Still, the van pulled forward, carrying her farther into the night, and Taeyeon remained just out of reach.
Time moved differently after that night.
Days blurred into rehearsals, flights, stages. Both of them kept moving, kept smiling for cameras and fans, kept performing as if their hearts werenât pulling in opposite directions. But beneath the surface, the silence between them had hardened into something sharper. Not just distanceâloss.
At first, Y/N clung to hope. She told herself the missed moment was just thatâa miss. That someday, somehow, their paths would cross again. But weeks stretched into months, and nothing changed. Every award show, every festival, every whispered rumor of âSNSD will be there tooâ ended the same: a glimpse too far away, or no glimpse at all.
Taeyeon told herself the same lies. That fate wasnât finished with them yet. That the silence didnât mean endingâit just meant waiting. But the longer she carried that hope, the heavier it became. The longing turned sour, and the ache that had once been sharp dulled into something that simply hurt to live with.
They had been supposed to be forever. Or so they thought.
But forever, it turned out, wasnât theirs to claim.
When the first song came, it felt like a confession dressed in melody. Taeyeonâs voice trembled through the airwaves, soft and aching, wrapped in lyrics about distance, about someone she could no longer touch but couldnât let go of either. Fans called it a love song, a sad oneâbut those who knew her best saw the fracture beneath the performance.
Months later, Y/N released hers. Different genre, different toneâmore fire than sorrowâbut the words carried the same ghost. A love that once felt like destiny, now smothered by silence. A promise broken not by choice, but by life itself.
And though neither of them said a name, the echoes were clear.
The world devoured those songs, attached their own meanings, but neither Y/N nor Taeyeon ever spoke of the truth. They couldnât.
Time didnât healâit reshaped. The jagged wound became scar, the ache became memory. They learned to live with it, to perform, to laugh, to smile as though their worlds hadnât been tied together once so tightly that the unraveling nearly destroyed them.
And maybe that was the cruelest lesson of all: that love could be real, soul-deep, undeniableâand still not enough.
Because sometimes forever is only a season. And when it ends, you donât get to go back.
You just learn how to move on, carrying the echo of what might have been.
And somewhere, buried beneath all the noise of stages and years, lay the truth neither dared speak aloud: their last meeting had been their final one. They hadnât known it thenâhadnât felt the clock running out, hadnât realized the weight of goodbye hiding inside ordinary words and touches.
If they had, they would have held on a little tighter. Stayed a little longer. Let silence fall away, let the world wait.
But they hadnât.
So their forever ended quietly, without fanfare. Two people walking away, believing theyâd see each other again.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch âą No registration required âą HD streaming
âźblurb A quiet, unspoken love unravels over tea, silence, and rain, as Y/N realizes being someoneâs safe place isnât the same as being chosen. âźduo Irene x F!reader âźtags love, heartache, romance, yearning, hurt
loosely based on the song "what can i do" by renee rap
â read now â
The rain had been falling all day.
Not the kind that screamed against windows or came with thunder and lightning â nothing dramatic or cinematic. Just a steady, quiet drizzle that made the city feel heavier. It slid down rooftops, gathered in gutters, and turned streetlights into gold smudges through the windows. Outside looked blurred, distant, like a world that had softened at the edges.
Inside the apartment, it was warm and still. The only movement came from her voice â soft, tired, and too familiar in its ache.
She was curled up on the couch like sheâd been there forever. Legs tucked under herself, sleeves pulled over her hands, a mug resting loosely between her fingers. She smelled like rain and something floral â the shampoo she always used. Her hair was damp, sticking to her cheeks in loose strands she didnât bother to fix. Her eyes were rimmed with exhaustion, not loud or dramatic, just⊠worn. The kind of tired only visible to people who looked too closely.
Y/N looked too closely all the time.
âI donât know why it got to me,â Irene said after a pause. Her voice was small, the kind you use when youâre not sure whether youâre asking someone to listen or trying not to cry. âHe wasnât even being that harsh. Iâve heard worse. But it just⊠it stuck.â
She smiled, barely. The kind of smile that was meant to hide something but didnât quite succeed.
âI just⊠I didnât know what to say to him,â she continued. âYou ever get that? Like your throat just closes? And you know exactly what you should say, but it gets lost on the way up, so you just sit there pretending it doesnât matter?â
Y/N nodded.
Not because theyâd lived that exact moment, but because they understood. They always did. That was their role. The listener. The person who stayed. The person who made things feel a little less heavy â at least for her.
Irene took a sip of the tea theyâd made for her â the same way every time. Sweet, no lemon. Sheâd mentioned it once in passing, and Y/N had remembered like it was a secret. She never said thank you anymore. She didnât have to. It had become a ritual. Something Y/N just did â like breathing around her.
And then she looked up.
That was when it happened. That same thing she always did â unknowingly, effortlessly â that left Y/N feeling like they were standing too close to a cliffâs edge.
Her gaze met theirs, and the room seemed to go still. Her eyes were soft, full of something like trust â like warmth, like comfort. She looked at Y/N like they were the only steady thing left in the world. And God, it hurt. Because she didnât know what she was doing. She didnât know what it cost Y/N to be that for her.
She saw someone solid. Someone calm and unshaken. She didnât see the way Y/Nâs hands trembled after she looked away. She didnât hear how their voice always caught when they told her sheâd be okay. She didnât feel the way Y/Nâs chest ached every time she said their name like it meant nothing more than friend.
She didnât know any of it.
And they couldnât tell her.
Because if they did â if they started talking, really talking â they wouldnât be able to stop. And then sheâd know.
Sheâd know how Y/N watched her laugh like it was the first light theyâd seen in years. Sheâd know that every time she leaned her head on their shoulder, every time she reached out to touch their arm, it took every ounce of strength not to lean in just a little closer. Sheâd know that they loved her â deeply, hopelessly â in a way that made everything else feel dim by comparison.
And if she knew, sheâd leave.
So Y/N just smiled. They nodded. They said, âYou handled it better than I would have,â in a voice that sounded steady even though it was anything but. They didnât care about the man who made her feel small. They barely registered what she said. All they cared about was the way she was looking at them â like they were something gentle. Like they were something good.
Because they didnât know how to say the truth. That they were the one breaking. That they needed saving too. That they needed her.
But instead of saying any of it, Y/N reached forward and took her empty mug from her hands, letting their fingers linger just a little too long against hers.
âWant a refill?â they asked, quietly.
Irene blinked, like sheâd just come back to the room. Her fingers were still warm against Y/Nâs when they pulled the mug away, but she didnât seem to notice the way the touch lingered.
âYeah,â she said, offering a tired smile. âIf you donât mind.â
Y/N nodded again â always nodding, always agreeable â and walked toward the kitchen.
Behind them, the apartment stayed quiet. The hum of the kettle, the faint tap of rain against glass, the soft creak of the couch as Irene shifted. It was too easy to imagine her sitting there the way she always did â curled into herself, holding her knees, eyes scanning the floor like maybe the answers she never said out loud would appear in the cracks.
Y/N set the mug down gently on the counter. Their hands moved on autopilot â open the cabinet, reach for the tea, fill the kettle. All the while, their heartbeat was too loud in their chest, too close to their throat. They focused on the small things. The sound of water. The way the steam curled up like smoke. Anything but the memory of her gaze.
You always know what I need.
She had said that so easily. Like it was fact. Like it didnât undo something inside them every time.
Because the truth was, Y/N didnât know what she needed â not really. If they did, theyâd be enough. Sheâd reach for them with purpose, not convenience. Sheâd stay, maybe. In the ways that mattered.
But instead, they just kept being the place she landed when the world got too loud. The silence she ran to when she didnât want to explain.
And Y/N kept letting her.
Because it was better than nothing.
Even if it wasnât enough.
They stirred in the honey slowly, carefully, like it mattered. And maybe it did. Small things were all they had with her. The kind of love that lived in quiet gestures. Remembered preferences. Refilled mugs.
When they returned, Irene hadnât moved much. Sheâd pulled her sleeves further over her hands, and her head was tilted back now, eyes closed, like she was trying to breathe herself back together. Y/N hated how beautiful she looked like that. Fragile. Real. Somewhere between exhausted and honest.
They set the mug down in front of her and sat back on the other end of the couch. The distance was small, but tonight it felt like an ocean.
âThanks,â Irene murmured after a while, her voice rougher now. Barely there.
Y/N looked at her, and for a second, they almost said it.
Almost said, Donât thank me. Just stay.
Almost said, Youâre breaking me, and you donât even see it.
Almost said, I love you.
But they didnât.
Instead, they leaned back against the cushion, eyes fixed on the space between them.
âLong day?â they asked.
She nodded, pulling the mug close.
There was a pause â the kind that stretched and softened between two people whoâd filled a hundred silences together.
Then Irene spoke again, quieter this time. âI think Iâm tired of pretending Iâm fine.â
The words hung in the air like fog. Heavy. Still.
Y/N swallowed hard. Their fingers curled against the cushion, nails digging into the fabric.
Youâre not fine. I know.
I see it in your eyes. I feel it in your voice.
I feel it, and I wish I didnât.
But what they said was, âYou donât have to pretend with me.â
Irene didnât answer right away.
She turned slightly, looking at them â really looking. Her brows drew together in the smallest furrow. There was something about the way she studied their face, like she was about to say something, maybe even ask something. Something important.
Y/N held their breath.
But then she blinked and looked away, reaching for her tea again.
âI know,â she said, softly.
Y/N didnât breathe until she looked away.
Didnât realize theyâd been holding on to that moment like it could change something.
But it hadnât.
And maybe that was the most painful part â how easy it was for Irene to turn her eyes elsewhere, like nothing had passed between them. Like she hadnât just looked at Y/N like she was about to say something that couldâve cracked the room open.
The mug was warm between her hands now, cradled close to her chest like a shield. She stared down into it, eyes distant, shoulders curved inward. Quiet again.
They used to think her silence was peaceful. Now, it just made it harder to breathe.
âYou ever think,â Y/N started, unsure why the words were coming out now, âthat maybe youâre not supposed to be fine?â
Irene looked up, caught off guard. âWhat do you mean?â
Y/N kept their eyes on the wall, somewhere past the bookshelf, past the fogged-up window. âI donât know. I just think we try too hard sometimes. To act like nothing touches us. Like weâre not allowed to fall apart unless weâre alone.â
A soft exhale. âIâm not good at falling apart.â
âI know.â
That made her smile â not a happy one. A broken thing, crooked and small. âYou always know.â
Y/N didnât answer. They wanted to.
They wanted to say, I know because Iâve made you my world. Because I watch you more closely than Iâve ever watched anything. Because even when you think Iâm not looking, I am.
But they just sat there. Still. Quiet. Distant in the way people are when theyâre trying not to drown in their own feelings.
Ireneâs smile faded. She looked down again.
âIâm sorry I dump this stuff on you,â she said softly. âI donât know who else to talk to sometimes.â
That one cut.
Y/N swallowed it down. Let it settle where all the other things they never said lived. âItâs okay.â
âI donât want to be a burden.â
âYouâre not.â
âI justâŠâ she trailed off, shaking her head. âI donât know. Itâs easier with you. You make it easier.â
God, Y/N thought, you make it harder.
But they didnât say that either.
They just forced a smile and said, âThatâs what Iâm here for.â
Irene looked at them again. Her eyes were soft â so soft â and full of something Y/N couldnât name. Or maybe they could. But it was too dangerous to.
âSeriously,â she whispered. âI donât know what Iâd do without you.â
Y/N almost broke.
It wouldâve been so easy.
Just three words. Thatâs all it wouldâve taken.
âI love you.â
But they didnât.
Because the words felt like fire in their throat â warm and deadly.
And she was still looking at them like they were her peace, her calm, her constant.
Not her heartbreak.
Not her undoing.
So Y/N looked away again. Let the silence swallow the moment whole.
Eventually, Irene shifted, curling deeper into the couch. The tea rested against her knee now, cooling slowly. She closed her eyes.
Y/N watched her like they always did. Memorized the curve of her mouth, the flutter of her lashes, the way her breath evened out when she thought no one was watching.
But inside, something splintered.
Because she didnât realize what she was really saying.
That Y/N was the shelter, not the storm. The one she ran to after the damage was done â not the one she ever burned for.
And the worst part?
She didnât mean it cruelly. She never had.
That was what made it unbearable.
She saw them as steady. As someone she could always return to, even if she never stayed. And Y/N had let her â time and time again â hoping that if they held the door open long enough, maybe one day, sheâd walk through it and choose to remain.
But now it just felt cruel.
Not on her part â but on Y/Nâs.
Cruel to themselves.
They looked down at their hands, resting useless in their lap. The same hands that had held her coat when she cried too hard to stand. That had buttoned her jacket, picked hair from her lashes, poured tea like it was an apology for everything they couldnât say.
And suddenly, all of it felt like pretending.
So when it became too much â the closeness, the quiet, the ache of almost â Y/N stood.
âI should head out,â they said, voice barely above a whisper.
Irene opened her eyes, blinking slowly. âAlready?â
âItâs late.â
âOh.â She paused. âYou can stay, if you want.â
God, Y/N thought again. Donât do that. Donât make this harder.
They smiled like they hadnât just lied to her with every breath they took.
âMaybe next time.â
Irene didnât fight it. She just nodded, fingers tightening around the mug as if that might keep them there a little longer.
Y/N grabbed their coat, pulling it over their shoulders slowly, carefully â like dragging weight back onto their body.
At the door, they paused. Looked back.
Irene was still watching them, eyes tired, lips parted like she might say something else. But she didnât.
And Y/N didnât wait for her to.
They stepped into the hallway. The rain was still falling outside.
Still soft. Still endless.
And for the first time in a long time, they let it hit them full in the face.
The door clicked shut behind them with a softness that somehow felt louder than it should have.
Irene sat still for a long time.
The mug in her hands had gone cold. She hadnât taken a sip since she â since Y/N left. It just sat there, untouched, like a metaphor she didnât have the heart to face.
The apartment was quiet now. Too quiet. The kind of silence that doesnât soothe. It pressed in around her, settled into the cushions beside her like a shadow she hadnât invited.
Something felt wrong.
Not wrong in the way that demanded panic. JustâŠÂ off. A shift she couldnât quite name. A door closing somewhere she didnât know existed until now.
She set the mug down and leaned back, head tilting against the couch. The ceiling didnât offer much in return, just dim lighting and the faint hum of the rain against glass.
They always left eventually. That wasnât new. But tonight â tonight had felt different.
She replayed it in her head. The small things.
The silence between his words.
The way she hadnât quite looked at her the same.
Not cold, exactly. Not distant in a way that was cruel.
But restrained. Heavy.
Like she was holding something so tightly inside that she might shatter if she let go.
Irene pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. She shouldâve asked her to stay.
No â she had asked. But not like she meant it. Not like she needed her to. Just casually. Just the way she always did.
Maybe thatâs why she didnât.
A thought stirred somewhere in her gut â unsettling and quiet.
Had she taken too much without realizing?
It was easy to lean on Y/N. Too easy. She never made her feel like she was asking for too much. Never made her feel like she needed to explain the weight she carried, or apologize for it.
But nowâŠ
Now that she was sitting in the hollow space she left behind, she couldnât shake the feeling that sheâd missed something.
That maybe, she had needed her, too â and she hadnât seen it.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Thought about the look on his face before she walked out.
Not angry.
Not sad, exactly.
But tired. The kind of tired that doesnât come from long days, but long silences. The kind of tired that builds in places you donât talk about.
She stood up slowly, walking over to the kitchen without really thinking. She picked up his mug from the counter. Still warm. The tea heâd poured for himself, but never drank.
Her hand hovered over it.
Then, gently, she poured it down the sink.
The rain didnât stop.
Y/N didnât either.
She walked, head down, soaked through, the cityâs dull orange glow bleeding into the puddles around her feet. She didnât know where she was going â just that every step away from that apartment made it harder to breathe, and somehow, that felt fair.
She could still feel Ireneâs eyes on her. Still feel her voice echoing in the hollow places.
âSeriously. I donât know what Iâd do without you.â
God, she wished she hadnât said that.
Not because she didnât mean it â but because she did.
And because Irene didnât understand what it meant to Y/N. How deep it cut. How cruel it was, without even trying to be. Because she said it like Y/N was furniture. A fixture. A part of the atmosphere sheâd grown used to leaning on â soft, dependable, unchanging.
But Y/N was not unchanging.
She had changed. Quietly. Gradually. Line by line, minute by minute â until every piece of her belonged to Irene, and she hadnât even noticed it happening until it was far, far too late.
She ended up at the bridge.
The one that overlooked the river, just a few blocks from the bookstore they used to visit. The water below was dark, rippling under the soft light of traffic and storm clouds. She leaned over the railing, arms folded tight to her chest, letting the rain run down her cheeks like it belonged there.
She didnât cry.
Not because she didnât want to.
But because she couldnât.
There was nothing left to spill.
Just the ache. Just the knowing. Just the hollow silence sheâd earned for loving someone too quietly.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
She didnât check it right away. She didnât want to hope.
When she finally did, it was a message from Irene.
IRENE:
Let me know when you get home.
That was it.
Just a simple check-in. Warm. Polite.
Safe.
And Y/N wanted to throw the phone into the river.
Not because the message was wrong â but because it was exactly what Irene always did.
Carefully caring. Close enough to be kind, but never close enough to see her.
She typed back, fingers shaking more from emotion than cold.
Paused.
Deleted.
Typed again.
Then she locked the phone without sending anything at all.Â
Her fingers stayed wrapped around the phone a moment longer, knuckles white, breath uneven. The screen had gone dark, but the message she didnât send still echoed in her chest.
âI canât do this anymore.â
But she couldnât send that. Because it would mean pulling the thread that unraveled everything. And even now â even here, alone in the rain, with Irene miles away and still somehow everywhere â she didnât want to lose her. Not completely.
Instead, she slid the phone back into her coat pocket and pressed her palms to the cold metal of the railing. The rain had soaked through everything now â her coat, her hair, the soles of her shoes. She couldnât tell where her skin ended and the cold began.
And still, she stayed.
Below, the river moved steadily, uncaring.
Above, the city kept glowing â not bright, but consistent. Traffic hummed in the distance. A siren wailed faintly. Somewhere behind her, someone laughed.
The world was still turning.
And she was still stuck.
She let her eyes close. Just for a second. Just to imagine what it would be like to forget. To not feel the weight of every unspoken thing between them. To stop being the version of herself that held space for Irene and start being the version that asked for something in return.
But she couldnât. Because that version of her didnât exist. Not with Irene. Not anymore. Maybe not ever.
A gust of wind swept across the bridge, slicing through her soaked clothes, and she shivered.
She should go home.
Should.
But even the thought of her apartment â the silence, the leftover tea bags, the sweater she kept of Ireneâs because she said she forgot it but never asked for it back â made her feel hollow.
The rain was lighter now. Less a downpour and more of a mist. The kind of weather that clings. Stays. Lingers longer than it should.
Just like everything else.
She pushed herself off the railing and started walking again. No direction. Just motion.
Feet on pavement. Hands in pockets. Head down.
Her phone buzzed again.
Another message.
This time, she didnât ignore it. She didnât look, either. She just pulled the phone out and held it loosely in her hand as she walked â like maybe if she carried it long enough, the answer would come.
But it didnât.
Because she already knew what it would say.
Probably something simple.
âAre you okay?â
âDid you make it home?â
âLet me know.â
And she hated that even those small messages hurt. Not because they were cruel â but because they werenât. Because Irene cared. She really did. But not in the way that mattered. Not in the way Y/N needed her to.
She reached a bench near the edge of a park and sat down hard, the kind of tired that lived in your bones. Water pooled beneath her, but she didnât flinch. She just sat. Breathing. Feeling.
Waiting for the ache to soften.
It didnât.
But something else did.
A new thought, small but loud enough to hear this time:
Maybe itâs not her fault.
Maybe Irene never meant to hurt her. Maybe she really didnât see it â the weight of her presence. The way her trust had become a kind of currency Y/N couldnât spend without going bankrupt.
But if she didnât know⊠whose fault was it, really?
A whisper of an answer came then, quiet as the rain:Â Mine.
Because Y/N had let it happen. Had let the silence stretch between them. Had made it her job to read every need, meet every feeling, hold every piece of Irene that the world had broken â without ever asking her to carry anything in return.
Because deep down, sheâd believed it would be enough.
To be near her. To be needed. To be wanted â even if it wasnât in the way she wanted back.
But it wasnât.
And sitting here now, soaked and shaking on a park bench under a gray August sky, she realized something sheâd been afraid to admit for a long time:
She couldnât keep doing this.
Couldnât keep being the one who always stayed, always listened, always poured and poured until she was empty.
She needed to stop.
Not because she didnât love Irene.
But because she did.
Too much.
Too quietly.
Too completely.
And Irene didnât see it.
Or maybe she did, and she just couldnât give it back.
And either way, Y/N finally knew: that had to be enough of a reason to let go.
Not all at once. Not dramatically. Not like in the movies where someone slams a door and walks away into something new.
But slowly. Honestly. With intention.
With grace.
She reached into her coat, pulled out her phone again, and opened the unread message.
IRENE:
You okay? I know I talk too much when Iâm tired. I hope I didnât make things worse.
Y/N stared at it for a long time.
Then she typed back.
There it was â Irene doing what she always did. Soft concern. Gentle guilt. Just enough to show she cared, not enough to see what was breaking.
Y/N read it twice. Then a third time. Her thumb hovered over the keyboard.
And finally, she typed:
Y/N:
You didnât do anything wrong.
Just tired. Long day. Iâll text when Iâm home.
Short. Warm. Safe.
A lie that didnât feel like a lie â just another kind of kindness.
She hit send before she could second guess it.
No cracks. No confrontation. No chance for Irene to worry or ask too many questions. Just enough to keep the illusion intact â that nothing was wrong. That Y/N wasnât the one unraveling.
Then she turned off her phone.
Not on silent. Off.
Because she couldnât risk another message. Couldnât bear a âthank youâ or an âIâm glad youâre hereâ or a âsleep well.â
Not tonight.
Not when sheâd spent the whole walk trying to convince herself that being needed was enough â and realizing, finally, that it wasnât.
The quiet around her deepened.
Not peaceful. Not gentle. Just⊠final.
She stayed on the bench a little longer, watching the way the streetlights flickered in puddles. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. A siren moaned.
The city kept moving.
And Y/N didnât.
She sat still, wrapped in rain and silence, hoping that Irene would forget to miss her.
Because the truth was
She wasnât ready to be seen.
Not like this.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
She didnât know how long she stayed like that.
Long enough for the rain to become a mist. Long enough for the streetlights to buzz and blink, one by one, flickering tired like they were ready to give out. Long enough for the cold to settle so deep into her that it didnât sting anymore â just⊠existed.
Y/N didnât move.
She let the hours pass.
The cityâs sounds blurred into a low, breathing hum: cars rolling over wet pavement, distant music from a bar closing its doors, someoneâs muffled laughter cutting through the stillness like a memory. The world kept spinning â unbothered, unaware â while she stayed motionless on a soaked wooden bench, trying to forget the shape of someone elseâs name in her mouth.
When her body finally started to ache â shoulders stiff, fingers numb â she stood.
Not with purpose. Not with clarity.
Just with the knowledge that she couldnât stay here forever.
Her steps were slow. Heavy. She walked like her heart had weight. And maybe it did. Maybe it always had, and sheâd just been too busy carrying everyone elseâs to notice.
By the time she got home, it was nearly three.
The building was quiet â that too-still kind of quiet that only ever existed at this hour. She let herself in, tossed her keys on the counter, peeled her wet coat off like she was shedding skin.
Everything looked the same.
The mug on the table where sheâd left it yesterday.
The scarf still draped over the back of the chair from the last time Irene had borrowed it.
The ghost of a memory that hovered somewhere near the doorway â Ireneâs laughter, barefoot and wide-eyed, saying something dumb about soup and poetry.
It hurt.
Not the memory itself â but the knowing that it meant something different to her than it had to Irene. That they had lived in the same space, shared the same air, and somehow still managed to be miles apart.
Y/N stepped into the bathroom. Turned on the light.
She didnât look at the mirror.
She didnât want to see it â the damp hair, the tired eyes, the face that looked too much like someone who gave too much away.
Instead, she stripped out of her clothes, piece by piece, and stepped into the shower. The water was hot, almost scalding, and it shocked her system back into something like feeling.
She leaned her forehead against the tile.
Breathed.
Waited for the ache to loosen its grip.
It didnât.
But the warmth helped. A little.
When she got out, the fog on the mirror had settled in thick. She ran her fingers through it â not to clear it, just to make a mark. Just to leave something behind.
She changed into dry clothes. Sat on the edge of the bed. Reached for her phone, powered it back on.
The message lit up instantly.
Irene had responded again.
IRENE:
Okay. Just text when youâre safe.
And heyâŠ
Youâd tell me if something was wrong, right?
Y/N stared at it for a long time.
Longer than she should have.
She didnât answer right away.
The cursor blinked in the message box, like it was daring her. Asking.
Would you tell me if something was wrong?
It shouldnât have been a hard question.
But it was.
Because yes wouldâve been a lie.
And no wouldâve been a truth too sharp to carry.
So instead, Y/N set the phone down.
She sat there in the low hush of early morning, surrounded by soft shadows and the faint drip of water from the shower still echoing through the pipes. The room smelled like rain and lavender shampoo. Her skin felt raw, like sheâd been scrubbed down to something too thin.
She thought about answering. She thought about pretending again.
Yeah, of course.
Iâm fine.
Just tired.
But something in her â something quiet and exhausted and done â refused to type it.
Not this time.
So she turned the phone face-down on the nightstand and pulled the blanket over her shoulders. Not to sleep. Not yet. Just to feel covered. Grounded. Held by something, even if it was only fabric and silence.
Maybe tomorrow sheâd answer.
Maybe tomorrow sheâd say something real.
Or maybe she wouldnât.
Maybe this was the beginning of a different kind of silence â not the one she filled for Irene, but the one she chose for herself.
A silence with boundaries.
A silence that healed.
Outside, the city exhaled under the soft hush of rain.
Inside, Irene sat awake in her apartment, phone still in hand, unread message thread open, eyes scanning a screen that stayed unchanged.
She bit her lip.
Waited a little longer.
But no reply came.
And somewhere in the stillness between their rooms, between two tired hearts too full of unsaid things, something shifted.
The walls were quiet. Almost too quiet for how loud her phone was vibrating in her hands.
She stared down at the message.
âYeah⊠it was me. I didnât know how else to say it.â
Her thumb hovered. Her breathing wasnât shallow, but it wasnât steady either. The teddy bear sat slumped on the edge of her desk â too soft, too sweet, now too obvious.
She hadnât touched it since she brought it inside two nights ago. She left it by the window, thinking it was from a fan. The idea had made her stomach twist but not enough to panic.
But now?
Now it made sense why no one posted about it. Why it didnât come with a username or a tag.
Because it wasnât a fan.
It was her.
Thenâ
BANG.
The door slammed open.
âYOUâRE KIDDING ME.â
Y/N blinked as Eunchae burst in, phone in one hand, eyes wide.
âShe texted you?! It was really her?!â
Before Y/N could answer, Chungha and Natty barreled in behind her, followed by Jisun with a blanket still wrapped around her waist like a towel.
âNo way,â Nat breathed, staring at the bear like it was radioactive. âShe left that? Like at the door?â
Y/N blinked again, slowly.
âI literally said âwhat if it was herââ Jisun surprised that her suspicions were confirmed.
âOkay but hold on,â Chungha said, catching her breath and sitting cross-legged on the floor. âReal question what did she say when she explained everything?â
That calmed the room for a second.
All eyes turned to Y/N, who now sat on the edge of her bed, hands folded in her lap like she was being interviewed on live TV.
âI stayed back after practice,â she said quietly. Not wanting to tell the whole truth on why Taeyeon bursted out why she had to agree to a PR relationship.
âAnd?â
âShe told me the relationship wasnât real. That it was for press. That the company forced her into it to distract from some drama last month andââ Y/Nâs voice caught for half a beat. ââand that it was to protect me.â
The silence that followed was almost deafening.
Then Nat, in a whisper âDo you believe her?â
Y/N didnât answer right away.
She glanced toward the bear like it had been placed with care and regret at the same time.
âI believe she hated doing it,â Y/N said finally. âI believe it hurt her, too. ButâŠâ
She looked down at her hands. Picked at her sleeve.
âI donât know if that matters when I still canât forget how it felt. Seeing those pictures. Knowing the world thought she was in love with someone who wasnât me. And the worst part was, I couldnât even be mad publicly.â
Her voice cracked at the end. Just a little.
Everyone went quiet again.
âThatâs not fair,â Eunchae said, softer now. âNone of thatâs fair to you.â
âI know.â
Y/Nâs fingers tightened in the hem of her sleeve. She wasnât crying â not really â but her eyes stung the way they did when youâd been holding your breath too long without realizing it.
âShe said she didnât want to lose me,â she added, voice smaller this time. âBut it already felt like she did.â
The bear sat there, unmoving, almost accusing in its stillness.
Jisun lowered herself onto the edge of the bed, blanket still wrapped around her like armor. âThat doesnât mean she didnât mean it.â
âI know,â Y/N murmured.
There was no anger left in her voice. Just that dull ache that never quite settled.
Chungha rested her chin on her knees from the floor. âYou donât have to forgive her right now. Or at all.â
Nat nodded. âBut you also donât have to shut down either. Youâre allowed to feel all of it â confused, pissed, sad, relieved. All of itâs real.â
Y/N let out a slow breath, her eyes drifting back to the unread text.
âI didnât know how else to say it.â
Like a whisper that still echoed.
Eunchae shifted closer, pressing her knee lightly against Y/Nâs. âSo what are you gonna do?â
Y/N didnât answer right away.
Then, finally, she reached over and pulled the bear into her lap.
She didnât hug it.
Didnât cry into it.
Just held it there, like she was trying to decide whether it was a reminder of what broke her â or what still might fix her.
âI donât know,â she said again.
But her voice wasnât flat this time.
It was honest.
The girls didnât press her. They just stayed â a soft silence settling over the room, filled only by the occasional buzz of someoneâs phone and the hum of the AC unit kicking on. Jisun leaned her head against Y/Nâs shoulder, her blanket trailing over both of them. Chungha was still on the floor, scrolling through her phone mindlessly, but staying close. Eunchae reached over and adjusted the ribbon on the bear, smoothing it out like it meant something more now. Nat turned off the overhead light and clicked on Y/Nâs desk lamp instead â just a warm glow filling the space.
No one said anything for a while.
Because what could they say?
There werenât any right answers â not yet.
Y/N just sat with the weight of the bear in her lap, the weight of everyoneâs quiet support, and the heavier weight of a love she never got to claim out loud. She wanted to hate Taeyeon. Sometimes she thought she did. But then something would remind her of the way Taeyeon used to look at her when no one was watching. Or how she always remembered to bring her green tea after rehearsals. Or how she said I love you once, like it slipped out and meant everything.
And now, she had a teddy bear and a text message trying to say what Taeyeon couldnât back then.
Still holding the bear, Y/N slowly leaned back against the headboard. Her phone buzzed again â not another message from Taeyeon, just one of the girls reacting to a meme someone sent in the group chat. Normal stuff.
Y/N looked down at her screen. The message was still open.
Still waiting.
Her thumb hovered again, but this time, not out of shock.
More like hesitation.
She didnât reply.
She just closed her phone, set it facedown on the nightstand, and pulled her blanket up to her chest, bear still tucked in her lap.
Tomorrow would come.
And maybe then⊠sheâd know what to say.
âââââ
It was cloudy again. The kind of weather that didnât commit â not to rain, not to sun â just a thick grey hanging over everything like the week never started right.
Y/N stood just outside the training room, arms crossed, hoodie sleeves pulled down over her hands. She hadnât meant to see Taeyeon today. Sheâd actually timed her arrival late on purpose, long after vocal warmups had ended. But there she was, a few feet down the hallway, talking to a manager. Her voice low, but unmistakable.
Taeyeon glanced over as if she felt it. That tightening in the air.
Y/N immediately looked away.
She turned, walked toward the vending machine around the corner, pretending to check her phone. But the sound of steps followed her. Steady. Hesitant. Stopping a few feet behind.
âY/NâŠâ
Y/N didnât answer. Her finger hovered over the drink selection before pressing the water button.
âI know you said you donât want to talk to me. I meant it when I said Iâd leave you alone,â Taeyeon said quietly. âI justâ Did you get the dog?â
Y/Nâs hands tightened slightly on the bottle as it dropped.
âYeah,â Y/N said. One word. Cool.
Taeyeon stepped a little closer. âI didnât know if youâd keep it or toss it. I know I messed up, Y/N. I just didnât know what else to do. I needed to protect youââ
âDidnât feel like protection.â Three words, flat.
Taeyeonâs expression faltered. She nodded, slowly. âI know.â
Silence. The hallway stretched with it.
Y/N took a sip of the water. Bitter plastic taste.
âYou couldâve told me,â she said after a beat.Â
âI wanted to,â Taeyeon whispered. âI was going to. But they gave me hours to decide and said if I told you, we still would have that chemistry that they needed to go away.â
âSo you made the deal anyway.â
Taeyeon looked like she wanted to step forward. Like she wanted to do a lot of things. But all she said was, âI thought I could handle it if it meant youâd be safe.â
Y/N looked at her then. Finally. The quiet burn behind her eyes made her chest feel heavy.
âYou donât get to decide what hurts me.â
Taeyeonâs breath caught in her throat. âI know.â
Another long pause. Y/N went to move past her, not trusting herself to stay another second. But just thenâ
The elevator dinged.
Out stepped a man. Broad-shouldered, clean-cut, sunglasses perched in his hair. The PR boyfriend. The one from the dispatch photos.
He spotted them and raised a hand in casual greeting. âHey, Tae.â
Y/N froze mid-step.
Taeyeon visibly flinched.
The man slowed a few feet from them, taking in the silence, the stiffness in the air. His hand dropped to his side.
âIââ Taeyeon started, but her voice caught.
He looked between them, uncertain. âManager said youâd be downstairs already.â
Taeyeon just nodded, barely.
And in that stillness, Y/N smiled â not kindly. The kind of smile that masked a wound still bleeding.
âDonât let me hold you up,â she said, voice cool and quiet. âYour boyfriendâs waiting.â
She just stood there â shoulder blades tense, throat tight â watching the girl she still loved disappear around the corner like smoke she couldnât catch.
âPlease,â she whispered.
But Y/N was already gone.
The hallway was still for a long time after that.
The PR boyfriend said something else â awkward, meaningless â but Taeyeon didnât respond. She barely registered the sound of his voice. Didnât nod. Didnât look.
She was staring at the empty space where Y/N had just been.
As if she could still see her there.
As if standing still long enough might somehow rewind the moment â pull Y/N back around the corner, before the smile, before the silence, before everything they couldnât undo.
But time didnât do that.
So she swallowed hard, turned to the wall, and exhaled like sheâd been holding the breath in her chest for months.
The man shifted, clearly uncomfortable. âUh⊠I can reschedule theââ
âDonât,â Taeyeon said softly.
He blinked. âDonât⊠reschedule?â
âDonât speak.â
His mouth opened slightly. Closed again. âRight.â
He left after that â steps quiet, as if even he knew what heâd walked into wasnât his to fix.
Taeyeon didnât move for a long time.
Taeyeonâs hands curled loosely at her sides, fingers brushing the seam of her jeans like she needed something to hold onto and didnât dare. The hallway felt colder now, the hum of the vending machine around the corner the only sound filling the gap Y/Nâs absence had left.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket â probably the manager, maybe even the boyfriend again â but she didnât look. Couldnât.
Instead, she stepped back toward the wall, pressing her shoulder into it until the edge dug in, grounding her in a way nothing else could. Her eyes fixed on the far end of the hall, on the place Y/N had vanished.
It was stupid, maybe, but she thought she could still hear her. That cool, cutting tone. That quiet finality.
Her throat ached. She swallowed it down.
âNot here,â she whispered to herself. Not now.
Still, the words Y/N had thrown at her refused to fade. You donât get to decide what hurts me.
It was the kind of truth you couldnât fight without proving it right.
Footsteps approached from the other side â not Y/Nâs, lighter, quicker. A trainee she didnât know passed her without a glance, phone pressed to their ear, voice low and distracted. The world kept moving, even when hers felt paused.
Taeyeon pushed off the wall finally, walking toward the stairwell instead of the elevator. She didnât want to risk crossing paths again â not when her chest was still tight and her hands still felt like theyâd shake if she tried to use them.
By the time she reached the empty rehearsal studio two floors up, the air was heavier, warmer. She shut the door behind her, leaned against it for a moment, then crossed to the corner where her bag sat.
Across the room, the mirrors reflected her back at herself â small in the empty space, posture pulled too tight, jaw set.
She stayed there until her manager texted again, this time more insistent.
But she didnât leave right away.
Because walking out meant moving forward.
And moving forward meant walking farther away from the last place sheâd seen Y/N.
The next few days blurred together in the way training weeks sometimes did â long, heavy, and repetitive. The hours stretched, yet somehow vanished all at once. But even inside that blur, Taeyeon noticed things.
She noticed how Y/N never arrived early anymore. No lingering stretches, no casual chatter before warmups â just slipping in at the exact moment the choreographer clapped his hands to start, hair still damp from a rushed shower, hoodie sleeves pushed up like sheâd barely had time to pull it on.
She noticed how Y/N was always the first to leave, grabbing her bag before the music even stopped echoing off the walls, disappearing before anyone could suggest staying to run formations again.
She noticed the way Y/N threw herself into the choreography with a kind of intensity that didnât feel like passion â sharper, faster, more forceful, like she was chasing something just out of reach. Even when her breath turned ragged halfway through a set, she didnât slow down.
And she noticed â most of all â the way Y/Nâs hands trembled when she thought no one was looking. Small, almost imperceptible shakes when she reached for her water bottle, or adjusted her hair tie, or scrolled through her phone between runs.
On the fourth day, the air in the studio was heavy, humid from the accumulated heat of too many bodies moving in sync. The choreographer called for another run-through.
Y/Nâs hair was sticking to the back of her neck now, her hoodie long abandoned in the corner. She didnât just hit the moves â she attacked them, each pop and step sharper than the last. But Taeyeon could see the fatigue building in her shoulders, the slight delay in her spins, the way her balance wavered for half a beat before she forced it back.
By the time they reached the last chorus, Y/Nâs jaw was tight, her breathing shallow and uneven.
The moment the music cut, she didnât wait for feedback. She gave a single, curt nod, grabbed her water bottle, and slipped out the side door of the studio.
It wasnât the way she usually left â no half-smile to the others, no quick stretch before heading out. Just⊠gone.
Not a normal break.
Taeyeon stayed by the mirror, pretending to check her shoelaces, eyes flicking toward the door. She waited until the choreographer bent over his notepad, until the rest of the members were distracted fixing their formations. Then she moved.
The hallway outside was dimmer, the fluorescent lights buzzing faintly overhead. The bass from the studio was still thudding through the floor, muffled but constant, like a heartbeat just beneath her feet.
Y/Nâs bag was still inside the room â Taeyeon had checked before she left â which meant she hadnât gone far.
She moved quietly, sneakers barely scuffing against the polished tile. Turning the corner, she caught sight of the bathroom door swinging shut with a hollow clack.
Her chest tightened.
She hesitated only for a breath â long enough to debate if she was about to cross a line â before stepping forward.
Then she heard it.
The sharp, uneven cough of someone trying to catch their breath after their body had just emptied itself. The sound of retching, echoing faintly against the tiled walls inside.
It hit her harder than she expected, a low twist in her stomach that left her palms suddenly cold.
She stepped up to the door and rested her hand against the cool metal, not pushing it open. âY/Nââ
Silence, except for the faint rush of running water inside.
A beat later, the hoarse reply came âGo away.â
Taeyeon didnât leave.
She pressed her hand flat against the door like she could steady herself through it. The cold of it bled into her palm.
âY/N,â she said again, quieter this time. âPlease. Just open the door.â
Nothing for a few seconds.
Then, âYou donât get to do that.â
Taeyeon flinched. Her forehead pressed lightly against the door.
âIâm not here to fix everything,â she said. âI know I canât. But Iâm not leaving you like this.â
Inside, Y/N didnât reply.
Just more running water. Maybe the tap. Maybe the kind of silence that comes when someoneâs holding themselves together by their fingernails.
Then the lock clicked.
The door opened only an inch.
And there she was â Y/N, hoodie back on, sleeves pulled down again, eyes red-rimmed and unfocused. Her face was pale. A little too pale.
âGo away, Taeyeon,â she said, voice raw. âYou did what you had to do, right? Iâm fine. Everyoneâs fine. Just leave me alone.â
Taeyeon stared at her for a second. Her gaze didnât waver, but her heart was beating too fast, too loud in her chest.
âYouâre not fine.â
âI donât care.â
âWell, I do.â
Y/Nâs jaw clenched. âWhy? So you can feel less guilty? Is this part of the script too?â
That hurt. The words landed sharp.
But Taeyeon didnât move. She didnât lash back. She just swallowed and stepped closer.
âThereâs no script now,â she said. âJust me.â
Y/N shook her head once, short and bitter. âToo late.â
And she tried to shut the door again.
Taeyeon caught it.
Her hand came up fast, stopping it from closing with a quiet thud against the frame.
Y/N blinked at her, startled â not because of the grip, but because of the look in Taeyeonâs eyes.
That look again.
The one she used to give her before all of this â when it was just them. Unspoken, steady, like sheâd die before letting Y/N walk away without being heard.
âYouâre not okay,â Taeyeon said, her voice tight. âIâm not pretending I didnât hurt you. I know I did. But Iâm not going to watch you fall apart and pretend I donât see it.â
Y/Nâs mouth opened like she had something to say â some brutal comeback, some sharp retort â but nothing came out. Her throat worked silently. Her eyes darted away.
âI donât want your pity,â she whispered.
Taeyeon shook her head once. âItâs not pity.â
âThen what is it?â
Taeyeonâs voice cracked just slightly. âItâs love.â
Silence.
Y/Nâs shoulders twitched like she might laugh, or cry, or both. Instead, she turned away, retreating back into the bathroom with weak steps.
But Taeyeon didnât let the distance grow.
She stepped inside â not all the way, not enough to trap her, but enough to close the gap.
Y/N leaned against the edge of the sink, one hand braced against the tile. She was trembling again. Barely standing.
Taeyeon took another step.
âCome with me,â she said gently.
Y/N didnât answer.
âPlease.â
Still no answer.
Then, as if on instinct â or defiance â Y/N reached for the paper towels, wiping at her face like that would erase the breakdown, the exhaustion, the damage.
Taeyeon moved before she could finish.
She grabbed Y/Nâs wrist. Not hard. Not forceful. But firm. Grounding.
âStop,â she said quietly. âYou donât have to pretend with me anymore.â
Y/N yanked her hand back, but not fully.
Her breath hitched.
And in the same breath, her knees buckled slightly â not from emotion, but exhaustion. A quiet stumble.
Taeyeon caught her.
Really caught her.
Both arms around her now, pulling her up, pulling her close.
Y/N struggled, hands pressing against her chest â not pushing, not fully, just resisting on instinct. But her body betrayed her.
She sagged.
Her face pressed against Taeyeonâs shoulder before she could stop it.
âIâm fine,â she said again, muffled and shaky.
âYouâre not,â Taeyeon said. âAnd Iâm not letting you lie to yourself anymore.â
There wasnât a grand declaration. No dramatic reconciliation. No swelling music in the background.
Just two girls in a bathroom that smelled faintly like bleach, both trying to figure out how to breathe around the damage.
Taeyeon held her.
Tighter now.
Not the kind of tight that clings â but the kind that anchors.
âYou donât have to come because you forgive me,â she murmured. âYou can still hate me. Iâll still take you.
Y/Nâs fingers curled into the fabric of her shirt â barely. But it was something.
âWhere?â she whispered.
Taeyeon didnât even hesitate.
âSomewhere safe.â
Y/N didnât respond.
Didnât move.
But she didnât pull away either.
And when Taeyeon gently, carefully started to guide her out of the bathroom â one arm still around her, the other grabbing both their bags â Y/N let her.Â
They didnât speak on the drive.
The city lights blurred past the windows like ghosts â red, gold, flickering blue. Neon signs reflected against the windshield in soft pulses, catching across Y/Nâs face as she leaned into the glass, cheek pressed to the cool pane like she needed it to anchor her.
Taeyeon gripped the wheel a little tighter.
Not because of traffic.
Not because of nerves.
But because she could feel Y/Nâs silence like a second heartbeat in the car â steady, cold, and full of everything left unsaid. And she didnât dare break it. Not yet.
They drove in that quiet for twenty-two minutes, past the edges of Seoul, into where the sky started to breathe again and the buildings fell away. The road narrowed. Trees thickened. And eventually, the world felt smaller â quieter â like it had been stripped down to just two people and the weight they carried between them.
When Taeyeon pulled into the gravel lot at the edge of the private studio grounds, the engine clicked once as it cooled.
Y/N didnât move.
She sat with her fingers curled into the sleeves of her hoodie, knuckles white, eyes fixed on a point somewhere past the windshield.
âThis isnât your apartment,â she murmured after a moment, her voice rough around the edges.
Taeyeon nodded once. âToo many people know that one.â
The cabin wasnât much. A converted rehearsal studio turned private retreat â tucked behind two rows of trees, low windows, a sliding door made of thick, matte glass. There was no name on the front. No buzzer. Just stillness.
Inside, the air was clean and cool. Pale wood floors stretched beneath soft lighting, and a single large window cracked open to let the wind breathe through. A folded mattress sat in one corner with a slate-gray blanket tossed neatly across it. The scent of green tea lingered faintly in the air â something familiar, unplaceable, like a memory.
Y/N stepped inside, slow, unsure. She looked around the space like it might fall apart if she breathed too hard.
Taeyeon closed the door behind them without a sound.
âYou can sit,â she said gently, setting their bags by the entryway. âOr rest. Or scream. I wonât stop you.â
Y/N didnât respond.
But she moved â not far, not fast â and sat on the edge of the couch like she didnât quite trust the cushions not to swallow her whole. Her hands folded in her lap. Tense. Contained.
Taeyeon crossed to the kitchenette and poured a glass of water â her movements methodical, careful, like the act itself might shatter if she did it too quickly. No ice. Just cold tap. She set the glass in front of Y/N on the coffee table and sank onto the opposite end of the couch.
A beat passed.
Then another.
And thenâ
âYou think one safe house fixes all of it?â
Y/Nâs voice was soft. Not cruel â just honest. Tired.
Taeyeon turned toward her slightly, expression unreadable in the dim light.
âNo,â she said. âBut itâs a start.â
Y/N didnât look at her.
She just stared down at the glass of water like it was some kind of test. Like touching it would mean something.
âI hate that I still want this,â she said, more to herself than to anyone else. Her voice frayed at the edges. She blinked slowly, lashes damp â not from crying, not yet, just from holding too much for too long.
Taeyeonâs throat tightened. She looked away, jaw flexing once.
âI hate that I gave you a reason not to.â
The air between them shifted. Thickened.
And thenâ
âI didnât throw the dog away.â
Taeyeon looked up.
Y/Nâs eyes were distant, fixed somewhere behind her own reflection on the blank TV screen.
âI put it in my closet. Couldnât look at it. Couldnât⊠toss it either.â
Taeyeon exhaled, barely. A thread of breath that mightâve broken if she tried to speak.
âI named him,â Y/N added, quieter still.
Taeyeonâs brows lifted. âYou did?â
A small nod. Just once.
âStupid name.â
âWhat is it?â
Y/N hesitated, lips twitching just slightly. âDumpling.â
And that cracked something open. Taeyeon let out a breath of laughter â not loud, not even full â but real. It came out jagged. Surprised. It was the sound of someone remembering how to laugh after forgetting they could.
She caught herself. Went quiet again.
And in the lull that followed, the weight of everything theyâd survived still hung thick between them â but it didnât feel suffocating anymore.
Just⊠honest.
âYou can stay here,â Taeyeon said after a beat. Her voice was low, steady. âAs long as you need. You donât owe me anything.â
Y/Nâs eyes flicked to her. Finally. Something unspoken passed between them â not forgiveness, not even closure. Just⊠clarity.
âIâm not ready to forgive you,â Y/N said.
Taeyeon nodded once. âI know.â
âI donât trust you.â
âI get that.â
âBut Iâm tired of pretending I donât want to.â
Taeyeon didnât answer right away.
She just sat there â hands resting on her thighs, spine straight, like even breathing too deeply might tip the moment out of balance.
Outside, the wind brushed past the windows, soft and steady. The trees whispered in a language neither of them could name.
Finallyâ
âWhat can I do?â
Her voice wasnât pleading.
It wasnât desperate.
It was soft. Honest. Bare.
And Y/N felt the question settle into her chest like something warm she didnât know how to hold.
She looked at her â really looked this time.
Taeyeon looked smaller here. Not physically, but emotionally. Stripped of all the things that used to make her seem untouchable the spotlight, the makeup, the guarded posture she wore like armor in public. In this quiet cabin, under yellowed lamplight, she was just a girl in a faded sweatshirt and tired eyes, trying to find her way back to someone sheâd already lost.
âI donât know,â Y/N admitted, voice fragile. âI think I want you to take it back.â
Taeyeonâs brow furrowed, like the words physically stung. âIf I could, I would. All of it.â
âNo,â Y/N said quickly, shaking her head. âThatâs not what I mean. I donât want you to erase what happened. I want you to undo it. Make it so I never had to stand there, watching the world fall in love with you for all the wrong reasons.â
Her voice cracked again, just once, before she forced it still.
Taeyeon leaned forward, forearms on her knees now. Her posture mirrored Y/Nâs â both of them pulled inward, as if the only safe way to sit was small.
âI wanted to tell you,â she said again, quieter now. âI didnât sleep the night before those pictures dropped. I kept rehearsing how to say it. But every version felt like Iâd already betrayed you.â
âYou had already betrayed me,â Y/N said, not cruelly. Just fact.
Taeyeon nodded. Took it. Let it land.
Then âI kept hoping it would all blow over in a week. That I could fix it after. That maybe if I waited, the world would move on and Iâd be able to explain without dragging you into it. But it didnât work that way.â
âNo. It didnât.â
Y/N turned the water glass in slow, absent-minded circles on the table. Condensation pooled underneath, a quiet ring bleeding into the wood.
âYou donât just get to explain things later and expect the hurt to un-happen.â
âI know.â
âI wasnât your secret, Taeyeon. At least, I didnât feel like one. Not before.â
Taeyeonâs throat worked around the ache rising up again. âYou never were.â
âBut the world saw it different.â
Silence settled again. Heavy. Familiar.
The kind that holds a mirror up.
Y/N glanced down at her lap. The ends of her sleeves were fraying. Threads pulled loose. She picked at one slowly, winding it around her finger.
âI donât know how to trust you again,â she whispered. âNot yet. Maybe not ever.â
Taeyeon didnât flinch this time.
She just nodded again. âThen Iâll stay here anyway. Iâll earn it back. Even if it takes forever.â
âThatâs not a promise you get to make.â
âIâm not asking for anything,â Taeyeon said. âI just want to give you the space you need to find out if thereâs still an us buried under everything I ruined.â
Y/N swallowed, throat thick.
The phrase hung between them like an open door.
âUs.â
She hadnât said that word aloud in weeks. It tasted different now. Like something cracked but not broken.
She looked at Taeyeon again, eyes red but steady. âItâs not just about what happened. Itâs about who I had to become after.â
Taeyeonâs jaw tightened. âWho did you become?â
Y/Nâs voice was almost a whisper. âSomeone who flinched every time her name trended. Someone who watched her phone like it was a loaded gun. Someone who learned how to smile when people asked if I was rooting for you and your new relationship. I hated that girl.â
Taeyeonâs eyes stung, but she didnât cry.
She didnât have the right.
âThen letâs kill her,â she said softly.
Y/N blinked.
âWhat?â
Taeyeonâs eyes didnât waver. âThat version of you. The one the world forced you to become. The one I made necessary. Letâs bury her here. Tonight. In this place. And maybe tomorrow⊠maybe we can start figuring out who you are without her.â
Y/N stared at her, stunned.
And for a moment, she couldnât breathe.
Thenâslowly, carefullyâshe leaned back again. Not away, but inward. Her arms crossed over her chest, her chin tilted slightly toward the ceiling like she was trying not to cry.
She didnât speak.
But her body softened.
Only slightly. Barely there.
Taeyeon didnât push.
She reached for the blanket folded over the back of the couch and handed it to her without a word. Then she turned away â not coldly, but with the kind of reverence people reserve for sacred things â and went to sit across the room.
The space between them grew.
But the silence⊠it wasnât empty.
âŠIt was full. Of breath. Of presence. Of two people existing in the same room without asking for anything more than that. For now.
Y/N pulled the blanket around herself, movements slow, deliberate â like she was building a barrier and a bridge at the same time. Her fingers toyed with the edge, rubbing it between her knuckles, grounding herself.
Taeyeon stayed where she was, cross-legged on the floor near the studioâs wide window, her back to the wall, one knee tucked up, chin resting on it. Outside, the trees swayed gently. Moonlight poured in soft ribbons across the floor.
They didnât look at each other.
Didnât speak.
And yet, something had shifted.
Trust wasnât restored â not even close.
But something else had been born in its place.
Not forgiveness. Not yet.
Maybe just⊠permission.
Permission to stay broken a little longer. Permission to be angry and scared and uncertain. Permission to be in the same room without having to perform something neither of them believed in anymore.
Taeyeon looked over then â not directly, not fully â just enough to see Y/Nâs profile in the moonlight. Fragile, still, but not closed off.
Y/N felt the look. Didnât meet it. But didnât move away either.
âI donât want you to fix it,â Y/N said after a moment, voice rough. âI want you to understand what you broke. And I want you to be willing to sit in that with me until I decide if I can forgive you.â
Taeyeon didnât move.
Didnât blink.
She just said, âOkay.â
Simple.
No conditions. No expectations.
Just that.
Y/N pulled the blanket tighter. Not defensively â but like she was giving herself permission to feel safe for a minute.
âIâll probably hate you again in the morning.â
âIâll still be here.â
âYou donât get to make promises like that.â
Taeyeon looked up â not smiling, not hopeful â just steady.
âIâm not making a promise,â she said. âIâm making a choice.â
Y/Nâs throat tightened.
This time, the tears didnât come in a rush. They welled slowly, collecting at the corners, glassing over her eyes as she blinked against them.
Taeyeon didnât rush toward her.
Didnât reach out.
Just stayed where she was â a silent offer of presence, of patience.
Y/N wiped at her face.
And for the first time in what felt like weeks, her breath didnât shake.
She didnât say thank you. Didnât have to.
She just looked out the window, toward the darkness past the trees, and whispered.
synopsis. ⣠having being at gmmtv for more than 3years Prae is loved by everyone. hereâs a site into gmmtv and the life she lives.
notes. ⣠i donât know if people will like this insert type of story and or character. but i wanted to try something, and give the thai gl fandom a little something. hope you bbys love this <3
Face claim. Lin Xiang | @lin.lxx on instagram
tags. ⣠smau. character insert. mutual interest. thai gl.
gmmtv
âȘâȘâ€ïžâŹ liked by fr.racha and june_nannirin
gmmtv Happy Birthday to Prae đ Thank you for always making every scene shine just a little brighter. #GMMTV
view comments.
babynamchaayut june didnât comment but she liked it in 0.3 seconds okay
viewmee ms. film girl what are we doing here? đ
sapphicgmmtv when the GL girls go quiet itâs because theyâre trying not to fall in love again
praefiles Prae waking up to 99 likes from her own co-stars and not a single comment is sooo powerful of her
fangirlforyou Denied Love girls denying their feelings again I see đ
softpraeeditz imagine being liked by Film and June and not fainting immediately
namtaeclub caption said âevery co-star blushesâ and suddenly all the GL cast disappeared đ
aesthetic. â
â§ PRAE (àčàžàžŁ) | she/her | GMMTV
born. Natcha Namchaiyut | nickname. Nam | stage name. Prae
libra sun âïž velvet voice âïž smile that makes girls forget what they were saying
meet the p. â§ the kind of girl who always knows where the light is. doesnât speak unless she has something worth saying, but when she does, people stop what theyâre doing to listen. not shy, just intentional. she holds her emotions like glass in her palmsâcarefully, never recklessly.
meet the p. â§ her laugh is rare, soft, like itâs just for you. she has this calm that makes others feel safe, but sheâs not easy to know. smiles with her mouth, but not always with her eyes. answers questions in interviews like sheâs choosing each word by hand.
meet the p. â§ girls gravitate toward her. not because she flirts, but because she doesnât. she listens like you matter. touches your elbow when she walks past. asks if youâve eaten, and actually cares about the answer. on set, she blends inâuntil the cameraâs on. then sheâs undeniable.
meet the p. â§ never confirms rumors, never corrects them either. wears long sleeves in summer. keeps her hair down like a curtain. her IG captions are always lowercase and never too long. thereâs always someone looking at her in the background of fan cams.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch âą No registration required âą HD streaming
âźblurb A quiet new member of Red Velvet hides behind perfectionâuntil Irene sees through her silence with a kindness that feels dangerously close to understanding. pt. 2 pt. 1 âźduo Irene x F!reader âźtags soft slowburn, hurt-comfort , yearning, promise breaking
read now.
The kitchen was dimly lit, the only light coming from the stovetop as the kettle began to hum.
You sat at the table, shoulders hunched forward, elbows resting on your thighs. Not collapsed, exactly. But folded. Like a tent that hadnât quite fallen in, but was no longer standing tall either.
Irene didnât say anything at first.
She just moved around the kitchen quietly. Familiar. Efficient. Two mugs. One teabag each. Honey, not sugar. No questions.
The silence wasnât tense. It wasnât heavy. It was just⊠there. Like a soft ceiling over your head. Enough to remind you you were safe. That someone else had the wheel, at least for a moment.
She placed the mug in front of you. Sat down across the table.
You didnât say thank you. Not because you werenât grateful. Just because you were too tired to find the words.
Steam curled upward between you.
And then, without preamble, Irene said:
âWe need to agree on something.â
You blinked. Lifted your eyes slowly. ââŠOkay.â
Her fingers curled around her mug, calm and deliberate.
âIf I notice youâre burning yourself outâreally burning outâyou have to let me take care of you. No pretending. No brushing it off. You let me in. Deal?â
You stared at her. Not surprised by the offerâshe had always been like this. Quietly present. Steady. Kind in a way that didnât ask to be seen.
But something about hearing it put into wordsâyou have to let me take care of youâfelt like someone had reached inside your chest and wrapped their hand around something fragile.
You hesitated. Swallowed.
âYou donât have to do that.â
Ireneâs expression didnât change.
âI know.â
You looked down at your mug. Watched the steam rise. Your voice came quieter.
âWhat if I donât know how?â
A pause.
Then her hand reached across the table. Stopped just short of yours.
âThen Iâll remind you. Every time.â
The air felt still again, but this time it wasnât isolating. It was⊠close.
Careful, you turned your hand so your fingers brushed hers. Just barely.
Not a promise.
But close enough.
You nodded once. Small. Honest.
And with the music video shoot so close ahead. Could you get the promise she so desperately wanted.
Two Days Later â MV Shoot, Day One
The soundstage was cavernousâhigh ceilings, thick cables underfoot, ringed with staff and flashing monitors. The set glowed under LED rigs, every corner painted in dreamlike neon.
You had danced this routine so many times it was muscle memory.
But muscle memory didnât stop the tightness in your chest.
The choreography director called, âReset! One more for tempo!â
The music cut. Your body slowed to a halt, but your breathing didnât. It came in short, uneven pulls, sharp against the collar of your outfit.
You didnât sit.
You didnât rest.
You walked straight to the playback monitor and crouched beside the screen like you were studying surveillance footage. Eyes narrowed. Jaw set.
The others laughed softly behind youâJoy cracking a joke, Yeri teasing her back. Seulgi stretched her arms. Wendy crouched beside a stylist to fix her mic.
You didnât hear any of it.
All you could hear was the thud of your own heartbeat in your ears as the playback rolled again.
You watched yourself miss the tiniest beatâhalf a second of hesitation in your left arm during the transition into the chorus.
There.
You caught it. No one else had said anything. No one probably noticed.
But you did.
Your fingers curled into the fabric of your pants. You rewound the clip again, breath uneven.
From behind you, Ireneâs voice came, quiet:
âThat was take eleven.â
You blinked. Didnât look back.
âIt wasnât clean,â you murmured.
She didnât respond.
You played it again. Slower. Watched your shoulders. Watched the slight stutter in your step on beat four.
You felt her before you saw herâher shadow stretching just beside yours, arms crossed lightly, eyes scanning the screen with you.
âYouâre pushing too hard,â she said softly.
You stood up abruptly. Brushed imaginary dust from your thighs.
âIâm fine.â
Irene didnât argue. Not at first.
She looked at you. Long enough for the words you didnât say to start piling up between you.
Then:
âYouâre breathless. You havenât taken a full break since we started. Youâve barely blinked during playback.â
âI just want it to be right.â
âIt is right.â
You didnât answer. Your jaw locked tighter.
Thatâs when she stepped in front of youâgently, deliberatelyâand lowered her voice.
âYou remember what we said. In the kitchen.â
Your stomach clenched.
She didnât wait for you to respond. She just said it again, quieter this time.
âYouâre burning out. Let me take care of you.â
You opened your mouth. Closed it.
The words were right thereââIâm okayâ, âI just need one more runâ, âI can handle it.â
All rehearsed.
But none of them made it out.
Instead, you looked downâreally looked. And saw your hands trembling again, just slightly.
Not from fear.
From depletion.
You swallowed hard.
You didnât have time to rest.
You knew you needed it but what about the pity that came along with it.
So you did the most rational thing you could think of in that momentâŠ. break the promise.
âNo, iâll just do one more and then i can rest.â you try to reason with her after just breaking something she held onto.
âNo, Iâll just do one more and then I can rest.â
You said it fast. Like if you got it out quickly enough, it wouldnât count as betrayal.
But Irene didnât flinch. She didnât argue, either. Just looked at youâfor a beat too longâand stepped aside.
She didnât say, âFine.â
She didnât say anything.
Which somehow felt worse.
You turned back toward the set before your hands could betray you again. Before she could see how much they were shaking now.
âFinal reset,â the director called.
You nodded. Didnât look at Irene.
You didnât need to. You could feel the weight of her watching you as you took your mark.
Then the music started.
And just like thatâyou disappeared again.
It wasnât grace. It wasnât flow. It was force. You drove yourself through every move. Nailed every beat. Your expression locked in place, sharp and camera-ready.
You didnât breathe between counts. You didnât allow a single doubt in.
You hit the chorus with everything you had left, forcing your body to move like it was someone elseâs. You pushed your chest higher. Your limbs cut cleaner. You danced like someone was holding a stop-watch to your worth.
And when the final note rang out and you dropped into that last poseâ
The silence after was louder than the music.
No one said anything for a full second.
Then applause. Loud. Immediate.
âThatâs the one!â the choreographer called. âCleanest take all day.â
âYou killed that,â Joy shouted from off-camera, half-laughing, half-awed.
Yeri whooped. Wendy clapped with both hands above her head. Seulgi gave a sharp whistle.
You stayed in place for a moment, chest rising hard, arms burning, sweat clinging to your jawline like armor.
There it was.
Exactly what you needed.
Perfect.
That wordâunspoken, but clear in their faces. In the playback monitor. In the crewâs nods and quick notes.
You felt your body go still. Just for a breath.
This was supposed to feel good.
It did, in a way. Youâd done it. You proved it. You proved you belonged.
So why didnât it feel like enough?
Why did the back of your throat still sting like you were holding something in?
Why did your legs feel like they were seconds from giving out?
And then you turned, slowly.
Found Irene.
She wasnât clapping.
She wasnât smiling.
She was just watching you.
And thatâthatâwas what caught you off guard.
Her expression wasnât cold. Wasnât disappointed. But it was⊠unreadable.
Not admiration.
Not even concern.
It was something else.
Something closer to hurt.
You blinked. Your body caught up to the moment all at onceâyour knees wobbling slightly, your breath cutting short.
Your mind screamed: You did it. You got it perfect. So whyâ
But her eyes.
There was something in them that didnât match everyone elseâs praise.
Not resentment.
Not pity.
It was understanding.
And it looked almost like grief.
You dropped your gaze first.
For the rest of the day, no one said a word about your performance other than that it was âthe one.â
You said thank you. Smiled where you were supposed to. Took your notes during wrap-up like a professional.
But Ireneâs silence clung to you like a second skin.
And later, when the cameras were packed and the makeup was wiped and you were sitting alone in the back of the van with your hands finally stillâyou let yourself think back to what her eyes had said.
They didnât say, âYou failed.â
They said, âI saw you break yourself trying not to.â
And somehow⊠that stung more.
Youâd gotten what you needed.
Youâd been perfect.
But at what cost?
You shifted in your seat, pulled your hoodie tighter, and leaned your forehead against the window.
And maybe thatâs when it startedâ
Not the collapse. But the quiet undoing.
Because for the first time, perfection hadnât fixed it.
For the first time, it hadnât been a balm. It had been a mirror.
And all you could see in it was how much it took.
How much of yourself youâd traded in for a nod.
The window was cold against your temple, the outside world sliding past in muted colors. But inside the van, everything was still.
You glanced down at your hands again. Still. Finally.
And for once, they werenât trembling because they were holding something in.
They were trembling because they werenât holding anything.
Not tension. Not focus.
Not purpose.
Just⊠air.
You didnât notice Irene had moved until the seat across from you dipped slightly.
She didnât speak.
Not yet.
Just opened a small paper bag and set it beside you on the seat. You recognized the bakeryâs logo. The one she always stopped by when things were too much, even if she never said so out loud.
You didnât reach for it.
But you looked up.
She met your gaze, soft and certain, like sheâd already had the entire conversation without words.
Then she said, low:
âYou did it.â
You swallowed. That shouldâve been enough.
But she wasnât done.
âAnd Iâm proud of you.â
Your jaw tensed.
There it was. The kind of phrase that was meant to heal. That shouldâve made you feel seen, validated, held.
But your chest burned with something closer to guilt.
âI broke the promise.â
Irene didnât deny it. She didnât try to soften it with excuses.
She just nodded, once. âYou did.â
And for some reason, that honesty was more comforting than anything else couldâve been.
You blinked. âWhy are you still here, then?â
Her answer came without hesitation.
âBecause promises break sometimes. People donât.â
You stared at her. That old ache returningâsome mix of shame and longing.
âEven when they choose to break it?â
âEspecially then,â she said. âThatâs when people need someone to stay.â
You looked down again. Your hands were still in your lap, fingers loose.
You didnât reach for her.
But you didnât pull away, either, when she leaned in just enough that her knee touched yours.
It wasnât forgiveness.
It didnât have to be.
It was⊠presence.
It was the offer to stay.
Your hands, still trembling slightly, found the hem of her sleeve. You held itânot tightly, just enough to feel something solid beneath your fingers.
âIâm trying,â you whispered.
And you were.
Trying to believe in safety.
Trying to believe in her.
In this.
The van rocked slightly as it turned another corner, the streetlights outside casting slow-moving shadows across your face.
Irene still hadnât moved.
Her hand rested on her knee now, not reaching. Just there. Open. Like she wasnât waiting for you to say anything, but sheâd hear you if you did.
You shifted, just enough that your thigh pressed against the warm paper bag.
âYou always know,â you said quietly.
Irene tilted her head.
âKnow what?â
âWhen itâs not just tired.â
You traced the edge of the bag with one finger. âWhen itâs not just me trying to do better. When itâs me⊠disappearing into it.â
She didnât answer right away. Then:
âBecause Iâve done it.â
You looked up.
She wasnât dramatic about it. Just matter-of-fact. Like a truth she carried in her pocket with the same familiarity as her keys.
âIâve pushed myself to the point of breaking. Smiled through it. Danced through it. Thought it was the only way to deserve what I had.â
Her eyes met yours, steady.
âBut itâs not.â
You opened your mouth. Closed it. The question wasnât newâbut it hurt every time.
âThen what is?â
âDeserving it?â
You nodded once.
Her gaze didnât waver.
âBeing here. Thatâs all.â
You let out a slow, shaky breath. âThat doesnât feel like enough.â
âI know,â she said gently. âBut it is.â
The van rolled to a stop. Red light. Brief pause in motion.
Outside, the world kept moving. But in here, everything felt paused againâjust long enough for honesty to exist.
You turned your body slightly, shoulders angling toward her for the first time all day.
âI meant it, you know. When I said Iâd try.â
Ireneâs expression softened.
âI know.â
âAnd I broke it anyway.â
âYou didnât break it,â she said, after a beat. âYou bent it. Because you were scared. Because habit is loud. That doesnât erase trying.â
Your throat tightened again.
Not from shame.
From relief.
From the way she worded thingsâgently, without blame. Like the version of you that didnât quite succeed was still welcome. Still worthy.
âI think I justâŠâ You trailed off, searching for the right shape. âI think I just wanted to feel like I had control. Even if it meant burning out.â
Irene nodded. âThatâs okay.â
âNo, itâs not,â you said. But there was no fire behind it. Just quiet fatigue. âNot when it hurts you, too.â
Her gaze flickeredâjust slightly. Like the words had landed somewhere close to bone.
Then she said, softer: âIt doesnât hurt me to care. It only hurts when you wonât let me.â
You looked down at the space between you. Just a few inches. But filled with every unsaid thing from the past few weeks.
Then you reached for the bag. Pulled it into your lap. Slowly opened the fold.
Two small pastries inside. Your favorite. The kind she always remembered, even if you never said it out loud.
You broke one in half. Handed her the bigger piece.
She raised an eyebrow.
You shrugged, just a little. âI didnât earn the other half today.â
Her voice came quiet, but firm.
âYou donât have to earn softness.â
You held her gaze. This time, you didnât drop it.
âIâm scared,â you admitted.
âMe too,â she said.
You blinked.
âIâm scared that one day, youâll forget how to reach for me. That youâll get so good at pretending you donât need anyone, youâll forget you ever needed me at all.â
The van started moving again.
But inside, something stilled.
You leaned your head against the window again. But this time, after a pause, you shifted your handâslowly, tentativelyâuntil it found hers again.
This time, you laced your fingers through hers without shaking.
âI wonât forget,â you said.
Irene didnât reply.
She just squeezed your hand once.
Then again.
You ate the pastry in silence.
Not a hollow silence.
Not a performance.
Just two people. Side by side. Holding on.
Not perfect.
But present.
MV Shoot, Day Two
The next day you arrived before call time.
Not to impress anyone. Not to get ahead.
You just couldnât sleep again.
The sun hadnât fully risen when the car dropped you off at the lot. The set was still quietâhalf-assembled, cameras in sleep mode, crew sipping early coffee and murmuring over clipboards.
You liked it this way.
Before the noise. Before the lights.
Before you had to put the version of yourself back on.
You walked through the maze of cables and scaffolding until you found the small tent marked Wardrobe. The stylists werenât even in yet. Just neatly organized racks of sequined stage outfits and shoes lined in order. You stood there a moment, not touching anything. Just breathing.
âCouldnât sleep again?â
You didnât jump. You knew that voice now.
You turned. Irene stood a few feet behind you, coat draped loosely over her shoulders, coffee in one hand. Her hair was still tucked under a hoodie, face bare, quiet.
You shrugged. âHabit.â
She walked closer.
No makeup, no lights, no expectation between you. Just Irene, soft in the quiet, her gaze steady as the low morning light filtered through the fabric of the tent.
She handed you the coffee without asking if you wanted it. She already knew.
You took it, fingers brushing hers. The warmth seeped into your skin like something older than comfort. Like memory.
She didnât ask if you were okay.
You didnât lie and say you were.
You both just stood there. Breathing in the morning silence like it might buy you a few extra seconds of stillness before the world started asking for things again.
âYouâre not here to prove anything,â Irene said quietly.
You didnât answer right away.
The wardrobe tent was still, filled with color and costuming and versions of yourselves the world had fallen in love with.
And yet here you wereâsweats, hoodie, undressed, unmade.
âI know,â you said finally, voice low. âI just⊠needed to be somewhere before the noise started.â
She nodded. Like she understood. Like sheâd been doing the same thing for years.
You stared down at the coffee in your hands. The sleeve had a little heart drawn on it in black pen. It wasnât yours.
âDid youâ?â
She nodded again, this time with the faintest tug at the corner of her mouth. âThe barista knows my order. I told her to write it this time.â
You blinked. âWhy?â
Ireneâs gaze softened. âBecause I knew youâd get here before I did.â
You laughed onceâquiet, surprised. Not joy, exactly. But not sadness either. Something in between.
âWhat if I hadnât?â
âI still wouldâve brought it,â she said. âYou just wouldâve gotten it later.â
Something about that stuck in your ribs. The patience of it. The trust.
You sipped slowly, letting the heat press into your chest. It didnât fix anything. But it stayed with you, quietly. Like her.
Then, after a beat: âIâm still scared, you know.â
Irene looked at you. Didnât interrupt.
âIâm scared that if I stop trying so hard, Iâll disappear.â
âYou wonât.â
âI feel like all I have is what I do. The work. The performance. The part of me that gets praised.â
Irene took a small step forward.
âAnd what about the part of you that breaks?â
You met her eyes.
âThatâs the part Iâm scared people will leave.â
She shook her head, just once.
âThatâs the part I stay for.â
You didnât know what to say. So you didnât say anything. Just⊠stood there with her. Let her words settle. Let them wrap around the part of you that never learned how to rest.
After a moment, she reached forward and fixed the edge of your hoodie where it had slipped off your shoulder.
âIâm proud of you,â she said again, voice like silk over a bruise.
You nodded slowly. âEven when I mess up?â
âEspecially then.â
You exhaled, long and quiet.
There were hours to go still. Makeup to sit through. Choreography to run. Takes to perfect.
During the first take, you did as you normally did. You moved with precision, every limb calibrated, every expression perfected.
The choreography flowed from you, sharp and unyielding.
The tightness in your chest was a familiar companion, a dull ache that fueled your every move. You didn't allow yourself to feel tired, or slow, or anything less than perfectly in sync with the pulsing beat.
You hit the final pose, sweat tracing paths down your temple, and held it.
The silence stretched for a beat, just like the day before, before the choreographer's voice boomed, "Great! Let's get one more, just to be safe!"
You felt a familiar pull to dissect the playback, to find the imperceptible flaw, to push for an even more flawless take. Your jaw tightened, your eyes darting towards the monitor. But before you could take a step, Irene's hand was on your arm, light but firm.
You looked at her. Her expression was calm, unwavering. "Take a breath," she said, her voice a low murmur.
The words were simple, yet they felt like a sudden gust of wind, scattering the intense focus that had consumed you. Your shoulders, without conscious thought, dropped an inch. You realized you were holding your breath.
"Just one minute," she continued, her gaze gentle. "Come sit."
The practiced "I'm fine" rose to your lips, but something in her eyes, that knowing, understanding gaze, stopped it. It wasn't pity. It was just⊠an invitation.
You hesitated, caught between the ingrained need to push and the quiet pull of her presence.
The rest of the members were already heading for the water bottles or stretching. For the first time, you didn't feel the urgent need to keep up.
You nodded, small. "Okay."
Irene led you to a quiet corner of the side stage, away from the immediate buzz of the crew. She didn't ask if you were tired, or if you needed anything. She simply sat beside you on an overturned crate, offering you a bottle of water.
You took a long, deep drink, the cool liquid a welcome shock to your parched throat. The frantic rhythm in your chest began to slow, replaced by a dull throb in your calves.
You exhaled again, slower this time, letting the tension seep out with the breath.
Irene didnât say anything else, just sat with youâquiet, steady, like a lighthouse in a storm.
The noise of the set buzzed in the distance but felt somehow muted here, in this small pocket away from the chaos.
You glanced at her, finally. âThank you,â you whispered.
She shrugged lightly, but her eyes softened.
âNo need.â
You wanted to say more. To explain that it was hard, harder than anyone else could see. That this kind of pause felt like weakness, a crack in the armor youâd spent years building.
But you didnât have to.
She already knew.
After a moment, you let your head fall back against the wall behind you, closing your eyes.
Not asleep. Not quite.
Just⊠still.
For once, not running.
Not chasing perfection.
Just breathing.
The music was still playing somewhere far away, but hereânowâit was just silence.
And that was enough.
After the rest you needed you moved differently.
Not less. Not slower.
But softer.
The sharp edges of your movements softened without losing their power.
The routine still demanded everything.
But you gave yourself permission to be human within it.
To falter and to recover.
Irene watched from the sidelines, a small smile touching her lips when your eyes met.
You nodded once, quiet but full of meaning.
Youâd kept the promise, not perfectly, but honestly.