The problem with being right, Kyujin had realized, was that being right meant living with the consequences.
She had been right about everything. Haewon staring at Lily like she was a sentence she couldn't read. Lily pretending to nod off so she could rest her head on Haewon's shoulder.
Obvious. So obvious.
Kyujin had been right, and now, three months later, Haewon and Lily were dating. And Kyujin had to live in a dorm with them.
It was, she felt, an unjust reward from the universe for having emotional intelligence.
The specific issue today — Thursday, 10:47 PM, the dorm settling into its pre-bedtime routines — was that Kyujin was trying very hard to practice writing lyrics and Lily had left her door open.
Three months ago, Lily did not leave her door open. Lily had books to read and movies to finish and she didn't appreciate people barging in on her when she was doing those things. But now, Lily left her door open as a matter of course, because a specific someone might want to come in, and that specific someone was currently in the dorm bathroom brushing her teeth. Which Kyujin could also hear because she had trained for a decade to hear minute changes in volume, and now that skill was betraying her.
Kyujin looked at her Muji notebook. She had written a single line tonight:
the sound doesn't stop when you leave the room
It was a good lyric. She liked the lyric. The problem was that the lyric was currently reminding her of Haewon and Lily, and it wasn't supposed to be about Haewon and Lily. It was about the way someone stayed in your head long after they were gone, like a good song, which Kyujin had noticed with someone she couldn't afford to think about at this moment.
It was not supposed to be about how she could hear Haewon shuffle through the hallway and stop before knocking on Lily's clearly open door. It was not supposed to be about how she could hear Haewon say something to Lily, in a voice that was both low and soft, which was different from her loud, broadcast leader voice, which was different from her "bibimbap" voice, which Kyujin had overheard once, causing her to nearly choke to death from secondhand embarrassment.
The line wasn't about them.
Kyujin circled the line and tried to write a second one.
"You left your book on the counter," she heard Haewon say from outside.
"Oh, thanks. I was looking for that.”
"And I was looking for you."
Kill me, Kyujin thought, face in her hands.
She tried to focus on her writing. The sound doesn't stop when you leave the room. God, what was — she'd been on a roll. She'd been writing something good and then Haewon started brushing her teeth and she couldn't find her headphones and — were they in the kitchen? She should go to the kitchen. Noise cancellation, that's what she needed, so she wouldn't need to —
"Anyway, good night," Haewon said outside.
"Good night," Lily said.
Kyujin froze, halfway to the doorframe. She needed her headphones, but the closer she got to the hallway, the more she needed to puke. It wasn't like she didn't love them. She was happy for them. But did they have to —
"You're still there," Lily said.
"I know."
"Go to bed, Haewon."
"I'm going."
"Or stay. I like looking at you."
Kyujin felt the bile rise in her throat.
She went back to her notebook and wrote a second line.
i am going to lose my mind
Not a lyric. A cry for help.
Another problem with being right was that this meant Haewon and Lily were not doing anything wrong or unexpected. They made sure to close the door if they were spending the night together, although Kyujin rushed to her headphones, just in case. They didn't hold hands in public or do anything beyond the scope of the Haely baiting they'd always done on social media. Kyujin couldn't even say anything about Haewon and Lily talking to each other in the hallway. How were they to know Kyujin could hear every word?
Which meant Haewon and Lily were merely normal. Which was worse. Because Kyujin could not complain about normal.
She could not say, for instance, "Unnie, please stop staring at Lily, you need to eat your lunch." She could not say, "Unnie, please stop smiling so big every time you see your lockscreen photo, it's scaring Jiwoo." She could not say "Unnie, I held your hand at 5 in the morning. I didn't tell anyone about how you looked at Lily. And my compensation for this service is hearing you say 'good night' in a hallway for six minutes."
She could not complain about normal because it was normal. But also because it would prove that she had been paying attention. Which she had been, because she loved them both enormously, and wanted the best for them. But she was not prepared to talk about that on a Thursday at 10:47 PM.
Kyujin needed to write lyrics. She'd harbored ambitions of writing a song, after Jinsol and Lily and Haewon had paved the way with "Different Girl" and "Reality Hurts" and "Podium." So she was practicing.
She just needed a second line. Something about persistence, maybe. About the way a song sticks in your head, even if you didn't choose it. About how sometimes, the only way to release that song was to scream it out loud.
She picked up her pen again just as she heard Haewon's door closing. Then, four seconds later, opening again. Then footsteps. Then Lily's door opening.
"I forgot my phone."
"Your phone is in your hand."
"Oh. You're right. Thanks."
A pause. Kyujin resisted the urge to scream.
"Good night, Lily."
"You said that already." She could hear Lily smiling.
"I'm saying it again."
Kyujin threw her pen across the room and picked up her phone.
KakaoTalk chat: haely monitoring unit 4
Thursday, May 7, 2026
Kyujin
they said goodnight twice
Jinsol
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