Archive of Our Own

(one)

Their room is small.

This is something Wonyoung has irrationally come to be grateful for – how their beds are close enough that she can hear Gaeul breathe at night, the desks that share a wall so their elbows almost touch when they sit.

The way there's nowhere to go that isn't also where Gaeul is. 

In the hours where the dorm is quiet but nobody's sleeping yet, that grey window of time, Gaeul is on her bed, propped against the headboard, scrolling her phone with her reading glasses on. The ones that make her look like a librarian, the exact ones Wonyoung has a mortifying weakness for.

Gaeul laughs at something under her breath, and it makes Wonyoung turn for a slight instant to locate the source of the sound. It makes her want to ask, to be shown. To know.

Wonyoung is at her desk, notebook open and pen in hand.

She's supposed to be writing lyrics for a demo that's due for an upcoming project, and she is, technically, except the lyrics keep coming out wrong.

Or rather, they keep coming out right, which is worse. 

The problem is that Wonyoung's lyrics have recently come from a specific place – the same room in her chest that has Kim Gaeul's name scribbled all over it. She can't really write about anything else.

The problem is not that Wonyoung has not tried, she has.

She writes about longing, and she realizes she means the woman sitting a few feet away. She tries writing about laughter, about joy, and she means the expanse of it on Gaeul's face. She tries about comfort, habits and love–

She's trying very hard actually.

In the mornings, the sunlight hits Gaeul's face when Wonyoung wakes up first and allows herself a singular glance, a few milliseconds – of just looking. She also knows how insane that is.

Wonyoung stares at the page in the dusk of a nightlight. The pen has been moving without her.

She reads back the latest line. 

I'm so obvious about my habits.

Her cheeks are already burning. This, is the humiliation of writing confessions into her lyrics – she can dress it up in metaphor, in melody, in whatever cinematic 'distance' she wants, but her body knows.

The heat starts creeping down the sides of her neck, and it makes her bite the insides of her cheek to stop smiling. 

She sighs.

"What are you writing?"

There's something in how Gaeul asks – open, genuinely curious, that makes Wonyoung's walls dissolve on contact. Like Gaeul has a key Wonyoung didn't know she'd given her.

Wonyoung doesn't hide from Gaeul.

Or, she has never wanted to hide anything from Gaeul, not the crush, which she is certain is very obvious. She is fully aware that everyone except Gaeul can see, which is slightly infuriating, but she is not hiding anything on purpose, in which cases she catches herself performing in the third person like a character in a drama.

She can almost hear the narrator go 'And then Jang Wonyoung, hopelessly head over heels, proceeded to act like a fool for everyone to see'.

"It's nothing, unnie. Just some lines for a song."

Gaeul looks up. Her glasses are slightly crooked. Wonyoung doesn't know why it makes her want to reach out and straighten them.

"Hm?"

"Still a bit rough. I'm working on the bridge."

"Can I see?" Gaeul stares, head tilted. 

"It's too embarrassing to show." But Wonyoung has already fully turned toward her, pages slightly lifted off the desk, as if in invitation, eyes darting between them.

Gaeul smiles. "Show me anyway." She locks her phone and shifts to the edge of the bed, waiting.

Wonyoung is already getting up from the desk, loose pages and notebook in hand, and the few steps between the desk and Gaeul's bed feel like crossing a weary road.

She sits beside her and the mattress dips. Their thighs press together.

Wonyoung's legs have always extended further, and this is another thing she thinks about too much. How she has to fold herself slightly to fit beside Gaeul, and how Gaeul never seems to mind that.

Never seems to mind when they touch accidentally, never pulls away.

She hands over the notebook. Open to the page, right there in her terribly childish handwriting that somehow Gaeul has always read through fluently.

Gaeul tilts the notebook toward the lamplight. Her brow furrows slightly as she parses the handwriting. She reads slow, aloud, under her breath, and Wonyoung hears her own words come out of Gaeul's mouth like it's a hymn, and wants to evaporate.

She pauses, and looks at Wonyoung. "Okay, this is good."

"Yeah?" Wonyoung's voice is doing something it shouldn't. "You mean it?"

Gaeul reads the line again, like she's tasting it. "Wonyoung-ah. I always mean it."

And Wonyoung's face – her whole face, the strip of skin above the collar of her t-shirt, goes slightly pink. Like she's been caught. The kind of blush that announces itself with a loudspeaker and makes her want to press her palms to her own cheeks and physically push the heat back in.

"You think so?" 

"Seriously." Gaeul is beaming now – proud, like how she gets when one of the younger members does something well, that glow in her eyes that Wonyoung has confused for love so many times, and now she's lost count.

She puts a hand on Wonyoungs thigh.

It's such a small movement.

It nearly turns Wonyoung to jelly right there.

"You're so talented, you know that? Like genuinely."

You're reading a love letter, Wonyoung thinks, heart hammering so loud she's sure it's audible, that it's practically an electric guitar's solo section on full volume. You're, quite literally, grading my confession and giving it an A. You are the most stupid, most clueless, most adorable person I have ever met. 

"Thanks, unnie," she says. Her voice cracks slightly. She pretends it doesn't. "It's- it's not a big deal. Just messing around."

Gaeul gives her a look, serious and devoid of playful. The look she uses when she's about to say something sincere, and it makes Wonyoung's chest ache in a way she can't explain.

"Stop saying it's nothing. It's good. Okay?"

She puts her hand over Wonyoung's, casual, in the sense of how you'd touch a table, a railing, something you trust to hold.

As she passes the book back, Wonyoung looks down at their hands. Gaeul's fingers are smaller, but it fits in the crooks between her knuckles perfectly. Pastel pink nails, paint very slightly chipped and soft skin. 

"Okay," Wonyoung says, content with the words. "It's something."

"I'm looking forward to the full thing." Gaeul squeezes her hand once, smiles and goes back to scrolling her phone, perfectly happy with sharing the space they currently are sharing.

The moment dissolves like sugar in water. Sweet, and invisible.

Wonyoung sits beside her for a long time after that, staring at the lines, forming images in her head, not writing nor moving. Existing in the warmth of someone who doesn't know she's the center of it.

She writes later, once she's moved back to her desk, in the margins - in handwriting so small it's just a whisper.

you are so blind aren't you, unnie?

Wonyoung smiles at it and closes the notebook.

This is her devotion. Kneeling at an altar that doesn't know it's holy. 

(two)

Tokyo in the summer, they're recording a fanclub message, a shoot that has already stretched into its third hour.

Gaeul is at a table with a small glass terrarium, the ones they've been decorating (struggling to, at the very least) and she's finally at the part where she gets to title it directly on the bottle.

She's trying to write 'I love you' in Japanese, checking with staff past the camera to correct her stroke order. 

"Ai," Gaeul says. "That's love, right?"

The translator nods.

Wonyoung sits there with the answer in her hands and watches Gaeul struggle toward it, and finds even this unbearable in a way she enjoys.

She wants to help.

Gaeul draws the kanji in the air with her finger, checking the strokes. "Like that?"

Wonyoung shifts, waiting for the right moment. Her chair is already as close to Gaeul's as it can be without her practically being in Gaeul's lap. She leans in anyway, and reaches up to trace an invisible line in the air just above Gaeul's hand.

"You forgot something," she says.

Gaeul redoes the character on the table with her finger, thinking she's missed a stroke.

"What about me?"

Gaeul turns, half in a startled laugh. "What about you?"

"The word for love." Wonyoung keeps her voice light, teasing, the voice she uses when she's about to say something daring and she knows it. "You should be writing my name-"

Gaeul freezes for a second, then looks at the camera and scoffs in jest.

"I'm just saying." Wonyoung leans back, fiddling with her glass bottle, smiling her most innocent smile. "If you're writing love, I should be in it."

"You're unbelievably clingy, you know that?" Gaeul says, though she has a fond look in her eyes.

"Only with you," Wonyoung replies.

It comes out damning and honest. She hears how it sounds the moment it leaves her mouth, and her face spreads into a smile like a tipped over glass of wine.

Gaeul is looking at Wonyoung, still holding the marker.

The moment stretches for a quarter of a second longer, the smallest possible instant, before they both laugh.

Then Gaeul rolls her eyes, affectionate and oblivious, and turns back to the glass bottle.

She says, "I'm writing it normally."

"Boring," Wonyoung replies.

Her voice doesn't wobble and she is very proud about that.

They go back to explaining their creations, about the colors and decorations they've chosen, and Wonyoung does everything she can not to look to her side the entire time and calculate if Gaeul has any idea how she actually meant it. 

The recording ends. The rest of the day goes by in a blink.

Wonyoung lies awake in the hotel room later and replays it in her head. Simultaneously everything she wanted to say and nowhere near enough.

It has to be enough.

She's been trying to keep love by collecting how it moves in between Gaeul’s fingers, the way it pauses on her tongue - how it chooses Gaeul's attention and only hers and then lets Wonyoung drown in it anyway.

This is her devotion, want dressed up as play. Building worship out of stolen moments.

(three)

It keeps happening.

Because Wonyoung knows self control in almost everything except this.

But when Gaeul sits close enough sometimes that their sleeves brush when either of them moves, she forgets every lesson she has ever taught herself.

Close enough that Wonyoung can feel the itch to reach out and take her hand, almost unbearably, close enough that she touches the edges of Gaeul's hair, close enough that she plays with the hem of her clothes and close enough that it feels like a sin.

Wonyoung looks at her too much, and she knows that it's way too much.

She wants to take her hand the way other people breathe without thinking, like how she reaches for water after performing.

Attention, is the first language Wonyoung ever learned how to love in. Maybe that is the problem. She has always understood being chosen out of a room, being remembered in the small details. She knows what it means when someone keeps track of her preferences, when someone notices the change in the lilt of her voice and hears the half-second change in her voice and asks if she is tired.

And Gaeul is always noticing. Carelessly. As if it costs her nothing. 

But she also does that with everyone else.

So, Wonyoung decides against restraint. Confessions are a hobby for people with a lot less to lose.

It is a blessing and a curse all the same.

It is permission, maybe, or close enough to permission that Wonyoung can pretend not to know the difference.

She does not tone it down.

She gets braver, and worse at the same time.

Because until Gaeul stops her, Wonyoung is not sure she knows how to stop herself.

Her heart does not behave.

.

.

.

They won.

The award is lighter than it looks, a green hollow cuboid made of acrylic and chrome that photographs well under stage lights and looks very much like a prop.

Wonyoung is holding it in both hands like it contains something fragile, as if she's going to drop it.

Even years into their career, all of this still feels too heavy for her chest. And when she's standing on stage with the rest of her group, merging into a recognition for their hard work, the adrenaline makes everything feel like it's happening to someone else. It still isn't something they're used to.

A few minutes later, the six of them are back in their seats.

Gaeul has been beaming since they walked off stage. It radiates outward, that makes Wonyoung feel like she's sitting next to a small sun. Gaeul's eyes are bright and her cheeks are flushed, a single tear that she wipes.

She keeps looking at the award on the Wonyoung's lap, like she can't believe it's real.

"Stop staring at it," Wonyoung whispers to her. "You're going to burn a hole through it."

"I can't believe we won. Or I can believe it. I just-" Gaeul shakes her head, laughing, and her hand come up to her lips. "I'm having a moment."

Wonyoung smiles. She can't help it. Gaeul's joy does something to her - something that starts in her chest like an ember that turns into flame, it has always been contagious in a way that bypasses any logic.

You look like you won the lottery, Wonyoung thinks. For a similar reason, I think so do I.

She doesn't finish the thought. She knows how it ends. It's always the same way.

The fancam finds them.

Or, rather Wonyoung finds the camera.

Wonyoung notices the one positioned three rows back in the crowd of fans, pointed directly at their seats. She straightens her back and pulls one of Gaeul's cold hands into a tight hold, pointing. She creates a half heart and waits.

Beside her, Gaeul notices too.

She shifts closer, the way she always does on instinct.  She turns toward the camera, lifts her hand into the heart, does a small wave, a smile.

The standard gestures.

Then, without thinking - or maybe with the kind of too much thinking that happens in the space between one heartbeat and the next - Wonyoung turns toward Gaeul.

She tilts her head, closing one eye, and blows a kiss, directed at Gaeul.

In the time it takes to inhale and exhale and feel the air leave her lungs, she squeezes Gaeul's hand.

Gaeul takes a second, a short beat. Then, she blows back a kiss at Wonyoung with the same softness in her eyes.

Wonyoung flinches.

A full physical recoil, an oh god.

She pulls back. Her head turns away too fast, the movement of someone just barely making it past a speeding vehicle.

Their hands remain linked, both her hands feel like they could start clawing into Gaeul's forearm if she keeps this up.

She doesn't look at Gaeul.

She stares at the stage. The announcers on stage are explaining categories, announcing nominees - she doesn't know what, she can't process anything else right now because all of her power has been redirected to the single burning image.

Gaeul pokes her.

One finger, that chases. Light and precise, pressed into the soft part of Wonyoung's shoulder, where it meets skin.

A single, deliberate poke.

Wonyoung doesn't move. She doesn't look. She keeps her eyes on the stage and her jaw tight and keeps her grip on Gaeul tighter, her entire body arranged in the posture of someone who is absolutely not affected by the fact that Gaeul is poking her with her finger like a child poking a window.

Poke.

This time closer to her neck. A different angle, like Gaeul is trying to find the spot that will make her crack.

"Look at me," Gaeul says. The voice she uses when she's amused and trying not to show it before it's reached a proper crescendo. "Wonyoungie." 

Wonyoung just thinks that she needs to stop saying her name like that.

Poke, this one is gentle. Almost tender. It drags slightly across her skin, laced with a question. Are you going to look at me or are you going to pretend this isn't happening?

Wonyoung looks.

She's never been able to help it. Gaeul's pull has always been too strong.

She turns her head.

Gaeul is right there. Inches away.

Closer than expected, than reasonable, close enough that Wonyoung can see the shine on her lips, the curl of the eyelash that frames Gaeul's eyes, the exact shade of brown of her irises, the small smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

Gaeul does the kiss pose again, right in Wonyoung's face. Eyes dark with something that might be amusement that she can't name.

Wonyoung looks away again.

She turns her head back to the stage with the speed of someone who has just touched a burning surface, and she arranges her face into the expression of someone who was always planning to look at the stage, who was never looking at Gaeul, who was simply turning her head in that direction for entirely unrelated reasons.

Casual. You need to look casual. 

Her ears are on fire. She can feel them. She'll be wearing this blush for the rest of the show, and Gaeul will be sitting next to her for the rest of the show, which means-

Gaeul laughs.

She barely makes a sound, just the shake of her shoulders and the crinkle at the corners of her eyes. She leans back in her seat, and turns her attention to the stage like the last thirty seconds didn't just happen, as if she didn't just chase Wonyoung with a playful cruelty.

Wonyoung watches her from the peripherals of her vision.

She watches Gaeul smile at the stage, relaxed, unbothered, like she didn't just set off a bomb in the middle of Wonyoung's chest.

She's completely fine. She was being cute for the fancam. None of it meant anything.

Wonyoung's heart is doing something violent.

She keeps her eyes on the stage. Her face is turned away from Gaeul so that when she blushes again, red as a tomato, it will hopefully be hidden in the shadows.

The thoughts come without warning, bearing a want she has kept long undisturbed and sealed away. 

If they were different people - if they were not idols, not watched, not here of all places.

Would she turn and say it?

Would she tilt Gaeul's chin up and press the words into her mouth?

But they are who they are. And Wonyoung has found that there is a strange, aching contentment in this fact. To ask her for more would be to risk everything.

The next thought makes her slightly happier.

This private, disarming tangle of their hands under a pretense of platonic, is enough.

It will just have to do.

She thinks it's better this way.

Wonyoung lifts her own hand.

She doesn't let herself calculate it. Her body moves before her brain can intervene, before the logic kicks in, before the voice in her head that says don't, can stop her.

Her hand comes to her lips, and she blows it toward Gaeul's cheek. 

She wants to tilt closer. She wants to put her forehead against Gaeul's shoulder and breathe. She wants to feel the warmth bleeding from Gaeul skin, disperse into her own.

She wants, and wants, and wants.

Gaeul returns it. Her hand comes up - fast, instinctive.

They laugh, and Wonyoung reminds herself not to be so obvious.

Friendships can stay gentle. Habits can stay harmless.

This has teeth.

Still, her devotion lies in being unable to choose which hunger to feed, so she has learned instead, to feed them all.

(four)

Concerts feel like the weather. In the way they're suddenly overwhelming, gone into the next pattern before you've understood or gotten used to it.

One moment they are rehearsing, doing a soundcheck and the next, they're in the waiting room, and the next, they are on stage, then backstage changing for the performance to come, and what feels like an instant later - they're rushing into an encore.

Wonyoung is good at being on stage.

She is good at smiling while her eyes sting from the lights, good at finding the camera, good at being the center even when she feels off balance.

What she is not good at, apparently, is removing a piece of silver confetti when it lands on her lower lip.

She feels it the moment they start singing - a tickle, a foreign weight of disturbance, something that shouldn't be there. She's tried to reach up and brush it away multiple times, her fingernail grazing but never quite catching it.

She looks across the stage.

Gaeul is at the far end, waving at the crowd, mouthing the words. She looks loose. Happy.

Wonyoung's feet move before her brain catches up.

She walks past Liz, who is busy singing her heart out. Past Rei, who is waving at another part of the audience. Past Yujin, who turns to her quickly, concerned. Past Leeseo, who blinks at her in confusion. The distance feels massive, a grand canyon of noise, and Wonyoung crosses it with her heart hammering so hard she's sure it'll fall out of her chest.

Gaeul doesn't see her coming. Her back is turned.

When Wonyoung stops behind her and gently touches her, she turns and the expression on her face shifts to concern and furrowed eyebrows.

"Here." Wonyoung points to her lip. "Is something stuck here?"

Gaeul's eyes drop to her mouth. The thought of that shoots through Wonyoung like lightning finding ground. 

Wonyoung just presents her face like this is some solemn ritual.

The stage is still live. There's still a huge audience, listening to the music thumping from the speakers. But Gaeul looks at Wonyoung's lip with the seriousness of a thousand suns, like the rest of the world has been muted and this tiny, ridiculous thing, is the only task that matters.

Then Gaeul's fingers touch her. She looks at Wonyoung like she is not a dangerous thing at all.

Wonyoung thinks, wildly, that this is exactly the problem.

Gaeul reaches up with her right hand and gently, gently moves Wonyoung's hand from where it had been pointing.  It is thumb and forefinger, a careful pressure on Wonyoung’s chin, and then the cool press of the nail into skin. She carefully attempts to pluck the confetti from Wonyoung's bottom lip. Her fingertips brush the wet of it.

Wonyoung stops breathing.

The contact is so light that it should not count as anything. It is over before Wonyoung can even lean into something so defying.

Gaeul's brow is furrowed in concentration. She doesn't seem to notice that Wonyoung has gone rigid for a second, that she is staring at Gaeul and memorizing the exact feeling of what it's like to stand in front of everyone and still choose her a million times over.

"There," Gaeul says softly. She holds up the confetti, small, silver and crushed, between her fingers and smiles wide. 

Wonyoung whispers, "Thanks." Her eyes seem to close for a second and she is a bit relieved to find that there is distance between them again.

Gaeul drops her hand. She laughs, confused but fond, and turns back to the crowd. 

Wonyoung stumbles back to her spot.

She thinks of the brush of Gaeul's fingers on her lip, and knows the petrifying, electric thoughts that came right after, will be etched into her brain.

Later, when they're away from the fervor and dramatics of performances, she will press her own fingers to her lip and feel the ghost of Gaeul's touch, and she will think.

I hope you never figure it out. I hope you never know.

Wonyoung prays about this, specifically, in the sense of people who are not religious, pray. By bargaining, at night, to no one.

By holding wishes in her hands and closing her eyes tight.

Let her find out. I hope she knows what she does to me.

The prayer itself changes depending on how brave she feels.

It is always about the same thing.

The terrible truth, the one Wonyoung keeps in the lowest drawer of herself, is that she doesn't want to be cured. If someone offered her a life without the wanting, she'd refuse it.

It would be like removing her purpose, that hunger, that feels seeped into the bricks of a home. Remove it and the things that feel like herself, collapse.

This is also a devotion. Choosing the wound and tending to it like a garden.

(five)

In mid November of the year, the award season starts again.

The KGMA stage is cooling down, trophies clustered on the tables, the roar of the audience settling into that specific post show daze - where everyone is smiling for cameras but their bodies are already calculating the ride home.

Wonyoung loves this part.

The after. The part where the script ends and their close vicinity becomes a choice she can make without having to explain it.

Wonyoung doesn’t walk.

She drifts.

Her long legs eating the distance between them like she’s been waiting for this cue all evening.

She slides into the space beside Gaeul before anyone else can, her hand finding Gaeul’s forearm instinctively, checking temperature.

“You’re okay?” Wonyoung asks, loud enough that only Gaeul hears.

Gaeul turns, face pale but eyes bright. “Just a bit tired.”

Her hand rests on Gaeul's waist, boxing her in. Protective or possessive, whatever you want to call it.

Gaeul leans into it anyway. Just enough that Wonyoung’s heart aches.

As they wait for all the attendees to fill the stage for the ending shot, Gaeul then goes without thinking, walks toward Rei and Yujin where they’re clustered laughing about something.

She tilts her chin up, lets Yujin dab at her lip, lets Rei inspect the edge of it with her fingers.

Wonyoung shuffles closer, then away.

Weight shifted, body fully turned, trying to embody the picture of being unbothered.

Her eyes track the whole exchange with absolute laser precision.

The seconds in which Yujin’s fingers linger on her a second too long, how Rei gets impossibly closer to find the source of smudges that they're trying to erase from Gaeul's lip tint.

Something ugly and quiet whispers in Wonyoung’s chest.

She stops the thought. There is something clarifying about wanting this much. It strips her down to the truest thing in her, and she isn't sure she wants to know that version yet.

“Come here,” she mouths at the three of them, beckoning with her hands.

Wonyoung grabs Gaeul’s wrist and tugs her into the empty spot beside her. Right here. This is your spot.

The stage handlers and background staff usher the idols, a hefty camera on one of their shoulders - they pose, but the massive group is asked to move back so the shot is wider to fit everyone.

This is always your spot.

“You’re hovering, you know?" Gaeul murmurs, settling into place. Her voice is raspy and tired.

“Only because you’re sick,” Wonyoung quips. “Don’t faint on live TV.”

Gaeul coughs into a smile.

Wonyoung's eyes flicker to her in worry, and don’t look away.

They stay fixed on the flush high emitting from her cheekbones, the pink hair falling to the sides, the necklace catching sparkles in the light, the tiny moles on her cheek and near her mouth.

Rei is a step ahead of them in an absurdly fluffy jacket, turning movement into its own spectacle, and Gaeul reaches out without thinking and catches a handful of it between her fingers for the warmth.

She laughs that breathy little laugh she gets when something strikes her as genuinely cute, and Wonyoung melts.

Rei throws up a peace sign toward one of the cameras, and Gaeul, still holding onto the edge of the fluffy sleeve like she’s been enchanted by texture, copies her with a grin.

Wonyoung is there already, moving before the thought has formed.

She slides into Gaeul’s space with the ease of someone who has never once mistaken desire, and lifts her own hand into the same peace sign. A bit late on purpose, just enough to make it clear she’s following Gaeul, not Rei.

Gaeul sees it immediately.

The laugh that leaves her this time is brighter, fuller. It crinkles her eyes. 

“You’re copying me,” Gaeul says.

“You copied Rei first,” Wonyoung refutes, shameless.

“That’s different.”

“How exactly?”

Gaeul smiles like she knows there is no answer she can give that won’t make Wonyoung more insufferable.

Wonyoung’s grin widens. She keeps the peace sign up a second too long, waving it into Gaeul's space, keeps herself angled in too close, the side of her arm nearly flush with Gaeul’s.

There is plenty of room on the stage. She ignores all of it.

This is another thing she does too naturally now - choosing to do this with such confidence, that it passes for playfulness.

Gaeul is still smiling when she looks away.

The cue still hasn’t come. Around them, people are shifting into rough formation, glancing toward staff, adjusting hair, smoothing jackets, waving and waiting to become orderly.

Wonyoung scans the crowd of bodies, the corners of the stage, the moving cameras, pretending to look for direction.

Then she looks back at Gaeul as if tugged by a magnet.

Only for a second.

Gaeul is still half-turned toward Rei and Yujin, muttering something, one hand dropped now at her side after letting go of the fluffy sleeve. Her smile hasn’t fully faded. It lingers at the corner of her mouth, unguarded, like Wonyoung has caught her in the soft aftermath of amusement.

And Wonyoung, because she is deeply unwell, in ways that have long since stopped feeling curable, feels something dark and sweet unspool in her chest.

Something that says there you are.

The satisfaction she gets from standing too close and getting away with it because everyone will call it cute, if they notice at all. In her mind, the claws close around the image at once - Gaeul smiling, pink hair lit up at the edges.

She smirks before she can stop herself.

The feeling remains warm as a secret, held under tongue.

She turns back toward the stage front just as the cue finally comes that everyone's ready.

Gaeul looks at her and murmurs, "This is taking forever, I should have brought the hot pack."

“I told you, you should’ve stayed warmer,” Wonyoung mutters, sounding almost like a scolding.

Gaeul laughs under her breath. “What was I supposed to do, come on stage wrapped in a blanket?”

Wonyoung steps in even closer, under the excuse of the crowd, the excuse of everything being public enough to make care look innocent.

Her hand finds Gaeul’s wrist first, then slips down until their fingers catch. Wonyoung tightens her hold by instinct like she can force warmth into her.

Gaeul’s skin is cool. She looks at Wonyoung then, like she's adoring something cute, seeming a little tired, and doesn’t take her hand back.

Which is the problem, always. Gaeul never takes it back.

They pose.

The cameras finally takes the shot. The staff politely show them the exits.

Wonyoung’s hand loosens. She lets go before the moment becomes a question she can’t survive. This is how it ends, she thinks, strangely calm beneath the frenzy. With me consuming every crumb until there's nothing left of me that isn't shaped like her.

“Let’s go,” Wonyoung chokes out and tries to exit as fast as she can.

This is devotion restrained, swallowed at the last syllable - her hands almost proving it before her mouth can.

(+1)

The thing about being in love with your best friend is that it turns you into a liar. About where you're looking, about why you're laughing, about why you ordered two pistachio cake slices before anyone had decided.

Every innocent, ordinary thing starts to need a cover story.

Wonyoung has become very good at this kind of lying. 

They are at a cafe between schedules, and Gaeul is describing a book's plot with both hands, animatedly, something about the mystery and thrill of it all.

Her drink is sweating cold beads onto the table. 

She looks entirely unaware that Wonyoung hasn't heard a single word she's said in the last minute. 

"You're not listening," Gaeul says, as if reading her mind.

"I am," Wonyoung lies.

"What was the last thing I said?"

Wonyoung scans her memory, comes up with nothing. She was too busy noticing that Gaeul hasn't hid her moles under makeup today, which is absurd, because she's already seen it about a thousand times.

Yet...

"About that background character, from the first scene," she tries. "He ends up being the killer?"

"That was five minutes ago." Gaeul squints at her.

Then she laughs, shaking her head, and reaches across the table to steal a sip of Wonyoung's iced americano.

Her mouth touches the straw.

Wonyoung's brain short circuits while she watches, so completely that she forgets to breathe.

"This is so bitter," Gaeul says, making a face. "I really don't know how you drink this."

"Habit," Wonyoung manages to get out, strangled.

"You should get something sweeter. You'd be happier. And then I would be too, whenever I steal a sip."

I'm good with this actually, Wonyoung thinks. Her face is doing something of a betrayal, she can feel it, heat creeping up her neck. She ducks her head, all but suspicious, and she looks across at something past, three tables away, and pretends to adjust her straw. Like she isn't thinking about the exact time she should take her next sip.

"Are you feeling warm?" Gaeul asks.

"No."

Wonyoung's ears, traitorously, get red.

Gaeul is looking at her with an expression of mild, affectionate confusion. Her eyes get smaller, like Wonyoung is a puzzle she hasn't bothered to solve because she assumes the pieces will assemble themselves eventually.

Wonyoung adjusts her collar, clears her throat in a cough and shakes her head, a bit too enthusiastic. "It's nothing."

"You're weird sometimes," Gaeul says, and smiles, and goes back to her iced chocolate.

Wonyoung exhales. Her heart is beating somewhere in her throat.

Gaeul has already moved on, scrolling through her phone, showing Wonyoung a video of a viral challenge they should try filming later.

She watches the video, watches Gaeul's thumb on the screen, and watches Gaeul's mouth curl up at the corner, the way she laughs at something and then brings her hand up to her lips in a small fist. That harmless habit.

Wonyoung stares at the straw for a second, back up to Gaeul's lips, and drinks.

.

.

.

There are two ways to repent for not listening when Kim Gaeul talks about a book.

The first is a simple apology. The second is something a lot more delusional.

Wonyoung chooses the one that requires more work and less emotional honesty.

Weeks after the cafe, long after Gaeul has stopped talking about the mystery novel, the memory still sits in Wonyoung’s chest like a pebble in a shoe, a disjointed presence and an underwhelming disturbance.

It is ridiculous.

Gaeul has probably forgotten the whole conversation, or at least the part where Wonyoung failed at the simplest job in the world. Listening to someone she loves talk about something they love.

She tries to find the book.

This is harder than it should be because she cannot remember the title, she was too busy staring. She only remembers that the cover was dark blue and Gaeul had said something about the detective being “a loose cannon, annoying but right" and that the twist “sounds cheap, actually clever,” which is apparently not enough information for the internet to identify one specific mystery novel.

She spends three days searching.

She scrolls through lists, types awful descriptions into search bars.

Then, she messages Gaeul once, carefully trying to be casual, and asking as if it meant nothing.

Gaeul replies two minutes later.

gel: 'ㅋㅋㅋㅋ you werent listening at all were you'

Wonyoung stares at her phone, almost wounded by the accuracy.

Then another message arrives.

gel: 'ill send it wait'

And then there's a link that pops up, and three more messages explaining why the second half is better than the first half, why Wonyoung should focus on all the characters and why the film adaptation ruined the ending.

She buys the book immediately and realizes she has no sense of moderation wherever Gaeul is concerned.

The copy lives in Wonyoung’s bag for two weeks.

She reads it in her free time, on her flights, during hair and makeup when her stylist tells her to stop moving her face because she keeps reacting to plot twists. She reads while eating, fork paused halfway to her mouth, eyes darting to the next paragraph before she can stop it. 

Gaeul is right about the detective, the twist and the character who seems irrelevant until he isn't. 

Wonyoung hates this, because every time the book is good, she thinks of Gaeul being right.

And every time she thinks of that, she thinks of Gaeul smiling, all smug. And every time that happens... she loses another piece of her dignity to a woman who falls over in tug-of-war like a piece of paper.

Wonyoung buys new pastel tabs, a fancy bookmark, and a calligraphy marker that does not bleed through. She sits in their room late at night while Gaeul sleeps in the bed behind her, and annotates like she is preparing a thesis on the subject of Kim Gaeul’s happiness.

Yellow tabs for questions Wonyoung wants to ask her.

Pink tabs for lines Gaeul's mentioned, because that's her favorite color.

She almost marks another color for parts that reminded her of Gaeul, but this is dangerous because the whole book has already become a glaring confession with page numbers.

Wonyoung knows this at least, that Gaeul will be able to read it even if she thinks that her penmanship is that of a third graders'.

On page sixty-four, she writes, you were right, he's an intriguing character. 

On a later page, after a paragraph about someone recognizing another person by the sound of their footsteps, Wonyoung pauses for a long time.

Then she writes, i think i understand.

She tries to cross it out, but the line remains visible beneath the ink, stubborn as a burn scar.

Wonyoung groans lightly into her hands.

From the bed, Gaeul mumbles, “What are you up to?”

Wonyoung flinches so hard her pen nearly flies out of her hands.

“Nothing.”

Gaeul shifts under the blanket. Her voice is thick with sleep.

“You always say you're doing nothing at suspicious hours. I'm beginning to think you're living a second life as an author.”

Wonyoung laughs lightly. “Well, I am writing.”

“Lyrics again?”

“Something like that.”

“Okay. Don’t stay up too late or you'll complain that your face is puffy.”

“You too.”

Gaeul makes a soft sound that might be a laugh and rolls over. “I’m already asleep.”

Wonyoung looks back at the page, shakes her head in a smile.

.

.

.

It is not a birthday gift.

Wonyoung knows that makes it sound worse. She almost waits for a better reason and considers inventing one. It currently feels like saying, 'Congratulations on making me act like I jumped out of a cliche romance.'

She definitely has given gifts for the sake of it, before, to all their members.

So, it is not... weird, she convinces herself. 

In the end, she simply places the wrapped book on her bed while Gaeul is showering and then panics so badly that she leaves the room.

It lasts approximately three minutes. Then she comes back.

Gaeul is sitting cross-legged on her bed, wearing pajamas and Wonyoung’s grey hoodie. Wonyoung notices because she is extremely calm and has a completely normal relationship to clothing.

“That’s mine,” she says.

Gaeul looks down as if surprised to discover she has a body. “Oh. It was on my chair.”

“So... you stole it?” Wonyoung narrows her eyes.

Gaeul smiles, and makes no attempt to give it back. She lifts the wrapped book. 

“What’s this?”

“Nothing, just a gift.”

“Again with the nothings.”

“It’s just-” Wonyoung hovers near the desk, unsure what to do with her hands, and leans on the table. “It’s for you.”

Gaeul pulls out her thinking face. “For me? What's the occasion?”

Wonyoung looks away first. She licks her lips in nervousness and decides giving any reasons would invite more of an interrogation.

"Too many questions, it's not that serious. Just open it? Please?"

Gaeul unwraps it carefully. This is one of the things Wonyoung loves about her, the way she opens gifts slowly, not because she lacks excitement but because she refuses to rush being given something and treats it with care. She peels the tape back with her nail, smooths the paper instead of tearing it, and probably will store it safely too.

She treats the act of receiving with utmost respect and that makes Wonyoung adore her more.

“Oh,” Gaeul says. “You read it?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“All of it? You didn’t have to.”

Wonyoung laughs once, silently. “I know. It was a good book.”

Gaeul opens the book, turns the pages and sees Wonyoung’s handwriting in the margin.

Her face changes.

Surprise first, then into confusion before she reads it. Then, into something so soft, that it makes Wonyoung’s stomach twist and turn in equal measure.

There is a long, thin second where Wonyoung almost ruins her life by saying things that have lived in her mind for too long.

“Did you... annotate it?”

“Only a little.” Wonyoung’s whole body is a held breath.

Gaeul flips through the book. The tabs fan out in pastel colors, a damning contradiction.

“A little,” she repeats in a playfully mocking tone. “You wrote me a whole second book.”

Her’s cheeks go hot. “I had... comments. Sincere ones,” Wonyoung says, which is true and incomplete.

Gaeul looks back down at the pages. She reads one of the notes and laughs under her breath.

Wonyoung’s heart lurches toward the sound, like it has somewhere else to be.

“You didn’t have to do all this because you missed one conversation.” Gaeul says, her voice small. She stops turning the pages.

Wonyoung looks at her then and thinks, helplessly, I would do worse things than that for you.

Gaeul studies her face.

Wonyoung can feel her body concede information. It has no loyalty or discretion, and has been trying to confess on her behalf for months.

Then Gaeul laughs, sets the book aside and opens her arms and when Wonyoung approaches, it feels like the floor might disappear.

She reaches for Wonyoung's wrist and tugs her down onto the bed, and Wonyoung goes because she has never once won a battle against Gaeul wanting something from her.

Wonyoung is folded strangely, one knee on the mattress, one foot still on the floor. Then Gaeul shifts, arms around her waist, cheek against her shoulder, and Wonyoung’s body figures out where to go with devastating speed.

She hugs back.

Gaeul smells like flowers. The hoodie between them is Wonyoung’s, which means Gaeul also smells faintly like her, and this detail is so intimate Wonyoung has to close her eyes.

“Thank you,” Gaeul says, muffled. “For listening to me talk.”

Wonyoung holds her tighter for one dangerous second before loosening her arms. She thinks, I have been leaving my love everywhere like fingerprints and I don’t know how to stop.

She says, “Anytime.”

Gaeul pulls back enough to look at her.

And still, somehow, does not understand.

.

.

.

The thing about Kim Gaeul is that she has never considered herself that oblivious.

Oblivious people forget birthdays, they don’t notice when someone’s voice gets thinner from exhaustion.

They wouldn't notice when Rei is homesick, or when Liz pretends she isn’t upset because she doesn’t want everyone to worry.

Gaeul notices these things. She knows Yujin goes quiet, and how she recovers from it, like she has an infinite supply to keep up the room's energy. She knows Leeseo needs praise every once in a while or she’ll carry loneliness in her heart for days. She knows Wonyoung holds words she's heard to herself like knives, and says she's fine in three different tones, when only one of them is honest.

Gaeul notices.

She pays attention.

This is why it is deeply inconvenient to realize, all at once, that she has been missing the elephant in the room.

Gaeul has to put the book down and cover her face with both hands.

She almost gets a headache.

Wonyoung is clingy with her sometimes, she likes attention. Gaeul knows this.

Wonyoung likes being complimented, likes being noticed, likes pretending nothing affects her at all.

Gaeul knows this too.

It had been simple to file every strange, sweet, massively intense thing under Wonyoung being herself.

This is the problem. Gaeul had mistaken Wonyoung's consistency with her, for her personality.

She had mistaken it just for habit.

The book lives in the bag she carries to schedules now, within easy reach, and whenever a room is busy enough with other things, she opens it to a random page and reads whatever Wonyoung wrote there and enjoys it immensely.

Some notes are funny.

if you tell me you suspected him from chapter two i’m going to be so mad.

Some notes are carefully longer.

this reminds me of what you said about lying to protect someone. i still think people do it because they’re scared.

Some notes make Gaeul’s chest hurt for reasons she does not want to name.

i wanted to ask you about this part. do you think they could have made it if they did things differently?

One is beside a paragraph about recognizing someone by their footsteps, scribbled out and somehow feels left there on purpose.

Gaeul stares at it for a long time.

Then she thinks about Wonyoung looking up before Gaeul enters rooms.

Often enough, Wonyoung will be on her phone, or writing, or speaking to someone else, and then she’ll look toward the door a second before Gaeul appears. Gaeul had thought it was coincidence. Or maybe that Wonyoung was just sensitive to movement.

Gaeul lowers the book.

The room is dim, the only illumination, from an orange light on Gaeul's desk.

Wonyoung is asleep in the bed across from hers. 

Gaeul watching Wonyoung is not new.

Her heart shifts uncomfortably.

That is the first alarming thought. 

She watches when Wonyoung is laughing too hard at something Liz said in a funny accent, she watches her try to be the kind of elder sister Leeseo needs, she watches her talk to a camera with a captured ease, she watches Wonyoung rub her hands together when she's cold and wants to pull her to warm them up. She watches Wonyoung onstage and thinks of her, every time, with a pride so sharp it feels like a million different things.

Gaeul had thought this was friendship.

Maybe friendship has always been the foundation, the easy ground under everything else.

But the thing growing out of it is, all of a sudden, impossible to ignore.

Gaeul takes a loud, deep breath.

Wonyoung makes a small sound in her sleep and shifts. Half of her blanket slips down, off the bed and pools onto the floor.

Gaeul gets up without thinking and crosses the room.

She pulls the blanket back over Wonyoung.

Wonyoung’s eyes flutter open.

For one suspended second, she looks at Gaeul without any of her usual defences. Wonyoung, unguarded, looking at Gaeul like she is the first thing Wonyoung wanted to see.

Then she blinks, wakes up more fully.

Gaeul feels the entire universe tilt.

“Unnie? What is it?” Wonyoung whispers.

“Your blanket. It fell.”

“Oh.” Wonyoung’s voice is rough with sleep. “Thanks.”

Gaeul should go back to bed.

She stands there like an idiot, looking down at Wonyoung while her mind reassembles the last several months into a shape she can no longer unsee.

The way Wonyoung says it’s nothing like a prayer.

Like if she makes herself small enough, no one will notice she has handed over something enormous from her heart, in the form of small utterances.

“Wonyoung-ah,” Gaeul says softly.

Wonyoung’s eyes widen a little. “Hm?”

Gaeul almost asks then.

Are you... in love with me?

The question forms so clearly it scares her.

What scares her more is the second question, arriving right behind it, low and patient, like it has been waiting in line for a very long time.

How much? Show me the whole thing. I want to see.

She should be ashamed of that one. She checks, briefly, for the shame to follow. It doesn't.

Wonyoung built every confession with an exit attached. Every offering deniable. Wonyoung has spent years engineering Gaeul's cluelessness like it was an act of love.

And it probably was, Gaeul realizes. Wonyoung loved her so much she constructed a world where Gaeul would never have to know, she has been careful not to demand, careful not to make Gaeul responsible for feelings she hadn’t asked for.

To confess only in ways Gaeul could ignore if she needed to.

Wonyoung studies her for a second, confusion on her face.

Gaeul looks down at her, sleepy, soft and trusting, and feels the knowledge settle into her with tremendous weight. 

"Nothing," Gaeul says, because apparently lying is contagious, "nevermind."

But she takes the word with her back to bed, switches off the lamp.

She turns it over in the dark, and finds she likes the taste of it. Nothing.

The same word Wonyoung has been using as a hiding place.

Gaeul holds it between her teeth and thinks, I know where you live now, and the prayer changes hands.

A vow pointed now in the other direction.

She lies awake, staring into the darkness, for a very long time.

.

.

.

The next day, she tests it.

It sounds cruel. But Gaeul is not trying to trap her. She is trying to be sure, trying to understand whether she has truly been blind or whether she is inventing romance out of tenderness because the book made her emotional at one in the morning.

So she pays attention on purpose.

This is different from just noticing, Gaeul learns that quick.

Noticing comes naturally, passive.

What she's doing now, is like turning a light toward something and watching what shines back.

Wonyoung shines everywhere.

Oh, Gaeul thinks.

It is not at all that Wonyoung had hidden between the lines, but it is that Gaeul has been reading her in the wrong language.

Friends, the thought almost makes her wince. 'Friendship' has fewer consequences.

She's had quite enough of watching from five feet away.

She keeps going anyway. Says Wonyoung-ah and Wonyoungie in the soft register just to watch her turn the word in her mind with eyes like crescents, and enjoys the smile she's brought out. A hand that goes to the back of Wonyoung's neck, that she stares at.

Gaeul lets her fingers brush Wonyoung's when they talk. She stands next to her like they're chained, and then counts the seconds it takes to visibly ruin her composure.

By evening she is drunk on knowing.

That is the strangest part. It feels sudden, and overwhelming, yes, like standing too close to a fire and realizing you've been warm without knowing why.

It does not feel like a burden.

Someone has been starving in the bed next to her for years. The correct response here, would be guilt. What Gaeul feels instead; is the thing she has never dreamt of in daylight, after she'd kept something hidden so deep she never had to learn its name.

It feels like being chosen.

It feels like power. Like something to be sated, and only she is capable of it.

Eventually, it feels, like wanting to be worthy of the appetite.

This is Gaeul's response - she has learned the repetition of prayer by heart, and now she intends to be the kind of god who answers.

.

.

.

They're attending meetings, voting to finalize the concepts and song tracks, to record for the upcoming album.

Unfortunately, they barely have time between the rest of their schedules and performances.

It's somewhere when the night is about to turn to the witching houre, where they get an hour of relaxing before the next setup.

A break gets called and the room slackens with people drifting toward snacks, their phones - their team conferring near the presentation monitors and compounding the feedback.

Gaeul is standing near the door, halfway ready to be bolting down the halls.

Gaeul has also, been trying to catch Wonyoung alone for three days.

It has become silly to the point where it feels like divine intervention.

Thrice she's opened her mouth and one of the members walked in.

She has sat beside Wonyoung the entire ride, to the shooting set for their merchandise set, two days ago, with the question burning a hole through her composure, and said nothing, because there were other people around and the timing wasn't right.

She has sat, in the ride to the company building that morning, and said absolutely nothing. 

Now Wonyoung is already drifting toward the others.

If Gaeul lets her go now, there will be countless others, a hundred opportunities to be cautious and call this timing. 

She is very tired of timing.

“Wonyoung-ah.”

There is always a moment, Gaeul has realized, right after she says Wonyoung’s name like that. A tiny pause where Wonyoung gives her everything. Caution, desire, all of it lifting toward Gaeul at once.

“Yeah?”

She says softly, “Come here for a second.”

Wonyoung blinks, then crosses back toward her without hesitation.

Because this is important for reasons she cannot explain, without making Wonyoung combust in public, she drags her by the hand, a little while away from everyone.

"I was getting a bit hungry. Wanna come with me and get something to eat?"

Wonyoung’s smile is like a fault turning to a rupture, small and then all-encompassing. Gaeul watches it happen this time with full understanding.

She enjoys being chosen by Gaeul.

How had she seen this a hundred times and not known? How had she watched Wonyoung’s body answer for her again and again and still believed nothing was being said?

"I'm not hungry, but sure. Let's go." Wonyoung matches her stride.

They walk toward the company cafe.

It's the one on the floor below, near the front entrance, and it seems quiet enough - stocked with just one cashier who looks bored.

Gaeul buys a cup of ramyun and their two drinks, the same order they always get.

They sit at a corner table by the window, far away from any other living being. For a conversation that can pretend to be casual until it's not.

Gaeul feels very gentle. Careful, with what she's been trusted with, without knowing.

Wonyoung sits across her, the drink, more of a companion than something she intends to drink.

"Did you eat lunch?" Gaeul asks. "And I mean actually eat, not just 'I had a banana.'"

Wonyoung makes a face. “I had eggs. And half a sandwich.”

“When?”

“This morning," she mumbles.

Gaeul stares at her.

Wonyoung’s mouth twitches. “We were busy.”

"Then eat now."

She takes a sip. "I shouldn't have too much. We still have to record early tomorrow."

"Okay," Gaeul says.

She peels back the lid of the ramyun cup. Wonyoung steals a bite.

The conversation follows familiar paths at first.

Comeback concepts they liked, recording sessions that they need to plan, songs still being revised.

It isn't until they land on the subject of lyrics, that Gaeul finally gathers the courage to ask what she really wants to know.

"Actually, there's something else I wanted to talk about, too."

Wonyoung's eyes lift, searching. "That sounds very serious."

Gaeul ponders for a moment.

Her expression is stoic as she begins.

“I was reading the book again. Compared a few things to the draft lyrics you gave the A&R team,” She says. “That song? Can we talk?”

For a second, Wonyoung looks almost frightened.  Then the color comes rushing back to her cheeks, her neck, the visible line of her collarbone.

"Is it... about me?" Gaeul asks, apprehensive.

For all it's worth, Wonyoung quickly refutes.

"The song's about a character I made up."

She looks down, her fingers curls around the cup, grounding herself in the cold plastic. 

“And the book, I wrote so many stupid things in there," Wonyoung says. "Those don't always mean anything. Really. It's nothing."

“Don’t do that.” Gaeul says, reaching for her hand around the cup.

Wonyoung gulps and her expression does something complicated. She looks at their fingers like she's been put behind bars.

“Don’t make it smaller,” Gaeul finishes softly. “Not for me.”

Wonyoung’s lips part, barely. The look in her eyes change, almost jaded with relief that she no longer has to hide.

Gaeul might have missed it a few days ago.

“I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable,” Wonyoung exhales as her shoulders droop. She closes her eyes like it's the last line of defence.

“You didn’t.” Gaeul says and waits.

This is the least she can do. After all the months Wonyoung waited in plain sight, after every nothing that was something, every disguise.

When Wonyoung opens them again, her eyes are shining like she doesn't know what to do with a world arranged in this direction.

Gaeul breathes in. “Okay,” she says. “How long have you...?”

“I don’t know,” Wonyoung admits, looking away then back. “Long enough that I can’t find the beginning anymore.”

There is nowhere to hide now, and Gaeul watches her realize it, and - there it is again, the satisfaction that blooms under everything, the pleasure of having someone cornered by their own honesty.

“Was it awful?” she asks.

Wonyoung blinks. “What?”

“Loving me alone.”

“Oh,” Wonyoung says. Her face relaxes but her heart breaks. “No.”

Gaeul does not understand how such a small word can hurt so much. How it can be so humbling.

Wonyoung looks down at their hands again, she squeezes and tries to let go.

Gaeul pulls them back like she's waiting for the real answer.

Wonyoung's throat visibly bobs. Her voice is softer when she continues.

“A little, sometimes. But not because of you. Just... because I didn’t know where to put it. Then it spilled into everything, and I didn't want to stop myself even though I probably should have." Wonyoung laughs weakly. “That sounds stupid.”

She presses her lips shut together before she reveals anything else.

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” Gaeul says after a moment. "I should have known. I'm sorry, Wonyoung-ah."

She shakes her head immediately. "You don’t have to apologize. I didn't put any distance between us, or even explain." She sighs. "I could have said something.”

“You said it constantly.”

Wonyoung looks at her, startled.

Gaeul smiles a little. “I just didn’t know how to listen.”

Something in Wonyoung’s expression folds inward and she laughs, small and disbelieving, and pretends something is in her eye as she wipes at it, inconspicuously, like scratching at an itch.

“Don’t cry,” Gaeul says, alarmed.

“I hate this,” Wonyoung says, though she is smiling sadly now. “I hate that you know me.”

“No, you don’t.”

Wonyoung’s simmering joy breaks it open, helpless and bright. “No. I don’t.”

Gaeul feels her heart do something incandescent.

She had thought realization would feel like a door slamming open, thunder in its wake.

Rather, it feels like this - Wonyoung looking at her with all the fear of someone who has finally been seen and all the hope of someone who still wants to be.

The next feeling arrives simply.

Gaeul loves her.

Maybe she has for a while, and has been calling it other things. Fondness. Maybe love can hide inside the knowing until one day it becomes too tender to be anything else.

She takes a breath. 

“I think,” Gaeul says, “I was doing it too.”

Wonyoung goes very still. “What?”

“Loving you back. Although, badly.”

Wonyoung stares at her, her eyes widening.

Gaeul laughs under her breath, nervous now.

“Okay, not badly. Just… without knowing that’s what it was. I thought I was taking care of you because we're... we're just like that. Because I know you and I like knowing you. But I've been keeping you, Wonyoung-ah. Your feelings, your tells, the sound of you.”

She looks down at their hands and feels the ridges of Wonyoung's palm that she knows as if it were her own.

“Though I don’t think I know anyone else like this.”

Wonyoung’s jaw slightly drops open.

Gaeul looks back up. “I don’t think I even want to.”

For once, Wonyoung has no words. This is satisfying enough that Gaeul almost smiles.

Gaeul’s heart twists. “I love you.”

Wonyoung’s face crumples enough that Gaeul sees how hard she is trying to stay composed, and how deeply impossible that has become.

It takes her a moment to reel in the desire, the relief and the burst of a heart that wants to jump out of her chest.

"Oh, thank god." Then Wonyoung says, very softly, like she had prayed and expected it all the same. “I love you too.” 

Gaeul smiles. Wide, and embarassed. She adds, “And I'm still sorry.” 

“No, don’t be sorry. This is-” Wonyoung stops and look at their conjoined hands and breathes. "This is the happiest I’ve ever been." She furrows her eyebrows after. "But don’t say things like that out of nowhere,” she says.

“Why?”

“Because I’ll cry and my eyes will look all baggy for the photo shoots.” Wonyoung laughs loudly, shakily, and Gaeul realizes she wants to hear that sound every day with the knowledge that she is allowed to want it.

Across the floor, Yujin and Rei pick a wonderfully perfect time to come find them.

The two call from a distance.

"They want to finish the meeting, Gaeul unnie. If you eat this slow, we'll all be waiting another hour."

Wonyoung's eyes meets Gaeul's and they panic, slightly.

Yujin glances over mid-teasing. Her eyes drop for a second, to their joined hands and their expressions of something akin to being flustered.

Then she raises both eyebrows, in a look that is so smug and utterly unsurprised. When she smacks at Rei's shoulder, muttering something about losing a bet and having to treat the whole group, Gaeul immediately decides she will be ignoring them for the entirety of next week.

Gaeul gives a curt nod.

They leave, giggling to each other.

She waits for them to turn back around, past the wall, while Wonyoung heats into a pink flush.

At least they still give her and Wonyoung one final minute. 

Gaeul quickly takes a fleeting look at the cashier at the stall, behind Wonyoung, the one who's currently staring intently into his phone, watching a compilation.

She lifts Wonyoung’s hand to her mouth, thumb across skin, and presses a small kiss to it, soft and brief.

"Unnie."

Wonyoung immediately makes a sound like her soul has left her body.

"You know that means something now. You can't start doing that on purpose."

Gaeul blinks. "Ah." She lowers their hands, trying not to laugh. “I barely did anything.”

“Barely,” Wonyoung repeats, offended. “That was- god.” 

Gaeul does laugh then. Wonyoung looks at her like the sound is a gift.

And maybe this is what Gaeul missed before. She receives it like proof. Like every look, every remembered detail, and every small act of care tells her she is real and wanted and her love is safe with Gaeul.

Gaeul has been telling her that for months by accident. Now she wants to do it and record the effect it has.

She reaches, bravely, for Wonyoung’s americano and takes a sip nice and slow.

Gaeul makes an emotionless face that entirely conveys her disdain.

Wonyoung looks at her with a disapproving smile. “Still too bitter?”

“Definitely. I think I'll stick to the sweeter ones, thanks.”

“You don’t have to drink it, you know?”

Gaeul pushes the cup back toward her. “I know.”

Wonyoung’s smile softens.

Gaeul looks at her ears. Red, and giving her all away. This time, Gaeul does not miss it. She stares and makes a habit of pointing.

“You’re cute,” she says.

Wonyoung covers both ears with her hands. “Don’t do that. You’re abusing your power.”

“I have power?” Gaeul’s eyes drop to Wonyoung’s lips, then rise back to her face, as if she’s memorizing the exact shape of the confession.

“So much.” Wonyoung looks embarrassed and radiant and entirely, hopelessly, in love.

Gaeul leans back in her chair, smiling. "I’m allowed to pay attention aren't I?"

She thinks of all the times that Wonyoung confessed and it passed over her head.

With a settled sigh, deep and sure, Gaeul hopes that she has time now to answer all of them.

.

.

.

Nothing changes much, at least not immediately.

Gaeul still doesn't bother moving away when they touch, she still calls her name like it's something divine, still sleeps on the bed beside her, close enough to turn the room into a test.

She just looks at her with the calm certainty of someone who has made up her mind about Wonyoung's offerings and has no intention of leaving her empty-handed.

But she doesn't do anything.

Her fingers linger longer on Wonyoung's wrist, her eyes track Wonyoung across rooms with new purpose, her laughter is different now, and best of all - it feels earned.

A week or two of this, and it drives Wonyoung up the wall and insane.

She finds reasons to touch Gaeul every few minutes. A hand around her arm. Fingers hooking into the folds of her sleeves. Tugging her closer when there is already nowhere closer to go.

She reaches for Gaeul without thinking. 

She steals half of Gaeul's attention, all of her personal space, and at one point casually takes Gaeul's hand and starts playing with her fingers while continuing a completely unrelated conversation.

Wonyoung hoped that would deliver the message.

It hasn't. Or so, she thinks.

At night, Gaeul laughs at something on her phone and doesn't share it, and Wonyoung feels the exclusion like a hand around her throat. She wants every second they can get. Every joke, every half-thought. Every dream Gaeul forgets by morning.

It tips her over the edge.

The appetite is enormous, and humiliating.

This is her hunger, reflected into Wonyoung’s own body every time Gaeul withholds a joke, a thought, a breath that she doesn’t hand over politely.

Wonyoung is calm enough tonight to be dangerous. 

She reaches across the space between beds.

To take control, to place her hand on Gaeul’s wrists pushed above her head, where her phone falls to the pillow - a decision already made - to see Gaeul's eyes, her expression, change viciously.

Like she's just been waiting for Wonyoung to crack.

Devotion, Wonyoung thinks, feels like this, and the thought arrives late and ravenous.

Wanting to be seen, patient, eternal. Until the person staring back recognizes what it is.