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It's maybe three days after Chaeryeong’s dating scandal dropped. Honestly time has been passing by in a blur, and every public appearance they were scheduled for had been canceled, so that made it a little hard to tell what the date was. Ryujin had left the dorm for a photoshoot and just came back with dried fruit packs and fresh bread. “For you,” she says, dropping the crinkled plastic bag on the dining table.
“Thank you,” Chaeryeong says back, from the living room sofa. Any other day Ryujin would have teased the hell out of her for her old sweats and the dark circles under her eyes. She really looks so awful.
Ryujin sits down on the other couch. “Did you get some sleep? What did you do today?”
“Disney movies,” she says. There is a box of tissues that looks half-empty and a trash can full of discarded ones next to her. “I watched all the saddest ones about trying to grow up too fast.”
“You’re a mess,” Ryujin says sympathetically. Chaeryeong starts crying again.
It was a messy scandal and the gossip rags were milking it. Not only had she gotten caught on camera outside his place, he’d just announced his breakup the month before. Speculations were rampant and his hiatus and her relatively smaller status did not mitigate any of it. Regardless of what the truth was, she’d never be able to escape the accusations of an affair.
“I was so tired of not knowing how to get what I wanted that I thought anything was better than nothing,” Chaeryeong says. Her view of romance was always so idealistic that she was bound to lose faith in it.
Ryujin hands her tissues one by one. “I’m so sorry.”
“Are you doing okay?” Chaeryeong asks.
Ryujin reaches over and brushes the hair out of Chaeryeong’s face. “Why would you ask about me right now?”
Even in the face of her own nightmare, Chaeryeong is always looking out for other people. And in her own memory, Ryujin can see every time Chaeryeong had looked at her and found what she didn’t see in herself.
Not long ago, after they’d practiced their solo stages for the upcoming concert, the two of them were laughing on the floor over Ryujin’s impromptu substitution as her main backup dancer.
“Don’t fall asleep in the practice room,” Ryujin said softly. It was getting close to 2 in the morning. Chaeryeong had rested her head on a few sweatshirts and foam cushions from the closet.
“Just a few minutes,” she said. Ryujin rolled her eyes.
“Go home.”
“I can’t,” Chaeryeong said, and Ryujin knew she wouldn’t, not when she could be spending that time making her performances better. She took so much pride in her work. But who was Ryujin to speak, really?
“You are a nice mirror image to have,” Chaeryeong said, falling into her dreams.
“And,” Ryujin said, right after their debut, in the midst of all the hate comments and insecurity, “I like you because you’re ridiculous and you act so cool, like you’re in control of everything, but you would give it all for the people you love. And I know other people will like you too. They just haven’t realized what they’re missing.”
“You like me?” Chaeryeong asked, instinctively, before she’d realized the words had left her mouth. It was in those early days where it was easy to call your group members your best friends and harder to believe it was genuine.
It was so innocent that Ryujin had to laugh. “Well— yeah— what’s not to like? I think you’d know if I didn’t like you.”
A few years in, during their limited time off, they’d decided they hadn’t had enough of each other and rented a place out in the countryside overnight. They had spent so much time together and yet it still surprised Ryujin how well Chaeryeong knew her. Chaeryeong had always been watching her. Enough to have picked out everything to her taste, the snacks that she wanted, the right amount of peace and quiet. And all Chaeryeong really said about that was that it was her way of saying thank you.
“I’m glad to have you as my friend,” Chaeryeong said, leaning on her shoulder as they sat on the vacation house dock. “I don’t know how I’d have done this without you.”
“One day you’ll have to learn to,” Ryujin said, holding her hand. That wasn’t the first time Ryujin had thought about it.
Idols had to make a lot of sacrifices over the span of their careers, but for a long time, to Ryujin, they felt like easy choices. It was not really difficult to give up on school field trips and Saturday mornings when you told yourself there was only one path to what you wanted.
It was honestly better for a girl in her circumstances not to think about those other possibilities. Any modifier you wanted to add would make it even worse. An aspiring idol in her teens who couldn’t stop thinking about another girl. A girl in her twenties who didn’t know how to stop dreaming.
And then, because she didn’t know how not to, eventually, Ryujin caved in until it all fell apart.
“Fine, get in another dating rumor because you’re careless and you couldn’t give a fuck about anyone else’s feelings!” Ryujin knew she had said something awful, but in the moment she was too stubborn to admit it.
“Projecting much?”
“You are a coward, Lee Chaeryeong,” Ryujin said.
“Cowardice can be a good thing,” she answered coldly.
When the scandal broke, Ryujin had gone to Chaeryeong’s room and held her hand for a long time.
Sometimes it turns out you are afraid you will never get something that you already have.
In real time, Chaeryeong slowly gets off the couch and stands up. “Because I love you,” she says to Ryujin, not bothering to wipe her tears anymore. “Because — no matter what you think — I always will.”