#* | threads.

mirae picks up her step to place her next to gyujeong when she sees him in the hallway of the broadcast station. quite contrary to her aversion to him in recent times, she’s decided to start construction on a bridge across troubled waters today. a birthday seems as good an excuse as any. if he brings up the family shit, she’ll still be more than happy blow it all up and not look back, but she can’t deny it’s become a bit tiring to force bile up her throat each time she sees him.

hwang mirae doesn’t forget the hatchets she’s forged, but she can bury the ones that have gone dull. 

“a little birdy told me yesterday was someone’s birthday.”

the little birdy in question had been her phone calendar, filled to the brim with the birthdays of labelmates and important industry people.

the second weekend of coachella settles in with more familiarity than the first. the palm springs rental bungalow he’s been holed up in for the week, ordering take-out and holing himself up in the makeshift studio he’d crafted, is almost comfortable now despite the entirely unused pool. but it always comes down to one thing in the end: a battle between his cocoon of introversion and the restless pull toward less quiet and, ultimately, of course, less sobriety.

it’s nights like these he’s grateful​ he knows a few people who always seem to be around events like this. most of them are attention-addicted social climbers who think ash’s group having a number one song and a grammy nomination for the shittiest song they’ve ever put out to their name will get them in the tabloids if they’re caught partying with him, sure, but god knows he’s had worse company. besides, dimensions has anything truly compromising on lockdown pretty well these days. and if something did leak through? well, maybe it could erase his association with dynamite from the public conscience.

so he ends up at some private coachella artist party with someone he’s met a few times in passing at private booths in la clubs and lets her introduce him to people whose names he forgets as quickly as he’s told them until he’s shaken off the weight of sobriety just enough to make and excuse and step out on his own.

mirae swings the practice room door open with an unexpected ease for someone who had in no way been invited to do so. she hoists a bag on each arm and balances a drink holder in her right hand. it’s late, but gold star media practice rooms never sleep, something she knows from firsthand experience. she’d heard from a friend of a friend (read: the front desk receptionist) that catalyst was hard at work and had decided, like any good senior, that a visit for surprise refreshments was in order.

the only problem is that she walks into the practice room to see only one person instead of five. had the receptionist misunderstood? had the other four members already departed for the evening? she’s unsure, but she doesn’t let it phase her too much, instead greeting jace with a silent bow of her head, following by an attempt a wave constrained by the bulk weighing her limbs down.

butter is an empty, pointless song. it weighs heavy to go from music that, even if at times hadn’t connected with him, had some kind of meaning, to singing about being as smooth as butter. he realizes any days he’d had where he’d come anything close to a smooth-talking charmer are behind him, but even with that considered, butter is more sickly yellow-green, artificially colored sugary drink commercial than reflection of anyone’s lived human experience. if he has to hear the empty drum beat that cues him in one more time, he might lose it.

lucky for everyone involved, they’re called to break from dance practice as their too-late lunch arrives. ash moves with a speed yet unseen the duration of practice to get in line for food, but it just ends with him being asked to pass along lunch boxes to his other members. he has an inkling it has more to do with him being the youngest than the first in line, but he’s learned not to fight the tasks that get handed down to him for daring to be born last.

he turns to offer two identical lunch boxes to minhee, pretending as if he’s presenting him with a choice. “chicken, or... chicken?”

it might be the most talk ash has initiated with minhee in months, if he’s honest. some time around the turn of the year, as award shows grew increasingly tiresome and the possibility of faking some extreme freak accident to get out of performing dynamite another time grew more and more appealing, it had occurred to ash that minhee just seemed a little... happier. he’d promptly made the decision to keep his distance and not ask. it was for minhee’s sake, he swore. there are certain energies ash vibes with and certain others he doesn’t. not in some metaphysical or pseudoscientific way. he won’t cast away company because they’re an aries or because of their aura, but he gets irritated when there’s a little too much pep in someone’s step. he doesn’t want to be a party-pooper or some kind of black hole of joy just because he’s miserable nine times out of ten, so avoidance becomes his coping mechanism. 

for someone so often buried in work by her own choice, mirae hates to think of herself as someone tragically all work, no play. as cliched as the idea of work hard, play hard may be, there’s some truth in the fact that a balance is needed for anyone to keep their sanity for the decade and a half it’s been since she’d first entered the workforce. the methods she may have learned at first via the other models-in-training back in the day may not have been the healthy stress-countering options, but other than the endurance of a cigarette now and then, with maturity and expectation have come better ways to unwind.

she leans her hip against her kitchen counter across from her companion for the night, a friend she loves dearly but hasn’t been able to see enough lately, and slips her cellphone out of the pocket of her own pants. “what kind of takeout are you feeling tonight?” she asks over the screen of her phone as she navigates her way to her collection of delivery apps. on a night off, she usually prefers to cook for the sake of her own health, but for such an occasion as a sorely overdue girl’s night with hayi, some indulgence seems welcome.

there’s something about the pumping of music through the mounted speakers and the squeak of sneakers on the practice room floor that brings a familiar comfort to mirae. nearly fifteen years since she’d first stepped foot into gold star media, and practice has been a constant. it’s never changed and never faltered. in the periods when selene had had fewer releases in the same amount of time, it’d been less frequent, but it had never halted completely. to dance and sing with the other members of selene was to slot into a unit with the perfection, slick ease only the well-oiled machine of time could offer.

but as each of them grow older and their careers find more depth for their roots in avenues other than the group, it’s harder to keep up with everything that’s happening in everyone’s lives, which makes the reunion of nearly comeback season that much sweeter.

at a break point from their choreography practice, mirae settles herself down to the group’s youngest and takes a long swig from her water bottle before fondly resting her head on the other girl’s shoulder. it’s a brief gesture, as mirae knows shared body heat is the last thing they need after what must have been at least an hour of choreography rehearsal, but it’s filled with warmth that extends deeper than her literal mid-exercise body heat.

ash could swear time is moving backwards. he’s restless to take his leave and each moment is longer than the last, succeeding in making his chance to break free from one uncomfortable situation to another seem further away by the moment. 

he’s not even hungry. the thought of picking at any of the seemingly endless array of food offered to them is so entirely unappealing, he hasn’t even ventured near that part of the house, and the shots he’d done before the awards show have long ago worn off. in theory, the afterparty is supposed to be a place to unwind, but he feels more wound than ever.

there’s no rhyme or reason to why he decides to take a seat with gyujeong in a relatively uncrowded area of the ordeal they’re trying to call a party other than defeat and the belief that gyujeong is at least someone who won’t attempt to force happiness on to him like some of the vaguely familiar faces who have called out to him tonight.