Across The Stars

HER

The stars shone bright, but they didn't sparkle.

Which was fucking annoying, because she'd just used them as her exit strategy.

Minutes ago, she'd waved her phone at the massive bonfire circle, claiming she needed pristine starlight shots to make up for her Bubble radio silence.

Every MIDZY knew she was the group's relentless photo spammer on Bubble, but she hadn't posted a single thing since they landed in Jeju. Her camera roll was basically useless right now. The golden hour sunset photos from two days ago were gorgeous, except Minho had taken them, and her face in every shot was a fucking liability.

So the Bubble update was a pretty bulletproof excuse. Nobody questioned content creation.

They'd pushed Minho to sing, then shoved her until she joined him, and the moment his voice slid effortlessly with hers, her chest dragged tight. It sounded too good, too right. She couldn't even finish the song before the panic hit her throat.

I want this. I just want to sit in the fucking sand and sing dumb songs with him for the rest of my life.

That drove her straight out of the firelight. Since when did she want anything but winning that badly?

The sky out here was nice and clear, even if the bonfire smoke kept drifting in ugly grey patches across the beach, and her phone camera had a night mode that was supposed to make this look professional. She just needed ONE clean shot to prove her alibi before Yuna started posing with Winter's failed s'mores, or Ryujin heaved an entire log into the flames just to make a spark explosion. She'd been on dangerous levels of watch this energy all night because Yunjin kept laughing.

Standing near the edge of the basalt drop, Yeji locked her shoulders back and kept her chin high. Her default response to panic - well, to everything, really - was to just brace like she was waiting for a spotlight. The Pacific beat itself white against the lava blocks below. The racer back crop top had been more than fine near the fire, but out here, the wind slid under the hem and spiked goosebumps along her ribs. She ignored the cold, tilting her head awkwardly backward to shove the phone high into the dark, and tapped the moon icon on the screen.

The first photo came out blurry.

"Ah, jinjja," she muttered. Seriously?

She wiped the lens against the cleanest part of her crop top and tried again. The second shot caught a smear of orange from the bonfire, and the third turned the stars into little white scratches like dust on a mirror. On the next try, the wind shoved her hair across her face right as the shutter opened.

Fucking amateur.

Hwang Yeji didn't do amateur. Hwang Yeji trained mistakes out of her body before debut.

Shoving the loose hair behind her ear, her fingers brushed the collar of the crop top. Her hand stopped there against her neck, pressing flat over the tender, swollen mark Minho had sucked into the side of her throat that morning.

They’d ended up on the living room couch under the duvet after absolutely demolishing their bedroom last night. Waking up in the morning light, she'd simply pulled her panties aside, guided him back inside her, too tired for a real round but needing him stretching her out. He’d slid in slow, steadying her hips with one hand while his thumb held firm against her clit to keep her quiet. Every time she rolled her hips, she had to bite his arm and let him suck her throat muffle-tight so she wouldn't make a sound as he filled her up deep, taking the greedy, shameless thrill of his hot load inside her while her members made matcha steps away.

They’d been dead quiet. He'd kept her locked down under the blanket, so they’d gotten away with it. Sure, Ryujin had aggressively slammed the fridge door twice, Lia had kicked the leg of the couch on her way to the sink, Chaeryeong had dropped three whole strawberries into the matcha, and Yuna had walked in, seen the couch, walked right back out, then returned with a much louder "Good morning!" before asking, "Unnie, are you cold?" while staring directly at the duvet until Yeji nearly bit through Minho's arm, but nobody had said a word. They DEFINITELY hadn't suspected a thing.

Focus.

She lowered the phone, annoyed with herself, then raised it again.

Was it ever just the sex?

She waited for the usual shrug to settle into her shoulders, but her skin stayed cold. The phone pulsed in and out of focus, searching and searching stars it couldn't understand, and for a split second the black screen reflected her own face back at her. Wind-raw cheeks and hair in her mouth.

She turned the screen away.

Just take the fucking picture, Hwang Yeji.

The camera struggled to find light. The screen dissolved into noisy gray static, just like that memory from Practice Room B, five years ago.

Cold linoleum pressed against her cheek. The rough edges of the crumpled vocal evaluation sheet bit into her fist. The red D on the paper glared back at her until her head spun.

When Minho had shoved the door open looking for an empty mirror to drill choreo, she hated him for catching her. Except he'd skipped the bullshit trainee platitudes, dropping his bag to sit close enough for their shoulders to touch, and rested his warm hand on the back of her neck to steady her.

She'd sobbed into his shoulder and whispered for him to stay, and minutes later they were fucking on the scuffed floor as she begged him to keep the mess inside so she wouldn't get it on her clothes.

From that night on, it became the fix. Every time the schedule choked her out, every time the pressure made her head hurt, she dragged him into locked vocal booths, empty dorms, and after he quit, his modest apartment in Seongnae-dong, minutes away from the JYP building. Obviously, she loved the sex. It didn't help that he had a stupidly good cock and knew exactly how to pound her pussy until her head shut up.

She also taught him to stop counting steps, because he'd taught her how to stay.

Just sex. Right.

The phone slipped a little in her freezing fingers. Down the beach, Yuna's loud laugh rattled through a high-pitched scream. She should probably go back before someone set a sleeve on fire on the beach.

She held her ground on the rock.

She dragged her thumb down to kill the exposure, forcing the digital sky pitch black until the stars sharpened into clean white points.

The second the stage lights died at her debut showcase, her eyes swept the aisle seats in rows six and seven. She caught nothing but a bulky staff camera and someone's eomma waving a lightstick.

Not him.

Fine. He'd quit. People quit. She didn't.

After that, there'd been more seats to search. Nine days after debut, they broke the industry record for the fastest girl group win. The M Countdown trophy hit her hands, her fingers shaking so badly she almost dropped the acrylic while floor directors shoved them toward their encore marks. DALLA DALLA kept winning. ICY kept winning. By winter, rookie awards had piled up until managers were telling her to switch arms before broadcasts caught her trembling under the bouquets and gold edges.

And every single time the confetti cannons fired, her chin snapped up. Scanning the VIP pits. The sponsor tables. The camera risers. The suffocating crush of staff clogging the wings.

Not him.

Then WANNABE blew up so hard everybody knew the shoulder move. Their practice room mirrors fogged from sweat, Ryujin's shoulders became everyone's business, and Yeji kept smiling through encore stages with tape biting under her costume because being the top girl group of their generation meant they didn't get to look tired. LOCO took them higher. Billboard screenshots appeared in the group chat at insane hours, while hotel curtains opened in foreign cities she only saw through van windows and stage entrances.

She looked there, too. Raking the balcony tiers. Hunting through the catwalks. Squinting past the lighting desks. Staring dead into the absolute black drop past the pyrotechnics.

Not him.

And the bigger the numbers got, the faster the public took their cut, until less and less of her actually belonged to her. CHECKMATE made them million-sellers while everyone argued about SNEAKERS. CHESHIRE sold anyway, but they never performed it after the initial promotions because it'd taken a toll on their vocal cords. CAKE sold anyway, but the comment sections still chewed through them, and when Lia finally stepped back, Yeji read the statement once, blamed herself by the second line, and drove her heels into the next rehearsal floor until the junior staff stopped talking. When the label screamed or the internet turned, she'd gone numb and fixed it. Sang harder. Danced harder.

The world kept handing her proof that she'd made it, but her eyes kept checking the room anyway.

Not him.

Her thumb dragged too far across the screen, and KakaoTalk opened instead of the camera roll.

Of course it did.

His name sat at the top of the list because she'd sent him a photo of Chaeryeong's terrible grilled abalone earlier, which was normal. Sharing evidence of food crimes was normal. Keeping the thread open for no reason was also normal if nobody asked.

Having him pinned was normal too. She had needs. He always answered.

A week ago, in the dorm, she'd lain on her bed with her phone face down on her stomach and typed

Yeji: come to Jeju with me 🖤

before her ears burned up and she deleted it so fast her nails slipped on the glass. The black heart had been hers for so long that MIDZY treated it like official branding, which was annoying because Minho had picked it first, years ago when she'd refused to use red hearts because they looked needy. After one practice where she'd terrorized Lia for blaming a missed count on a slippery floor, he'd texted

Minho: scary girl 🖤

like that was a compliment. When she'd demanded to know why black, he'd said,

Minho: because it's your favorite color

Which, unfortunately, was true.

How the fuck did he know that, anyway?

Then he'd added that red looked too harmless for a girl who smiled like she was about to win a knife fight.

She'd told him to shut up.

Then she'd used it once. Fans loved it. The company noticed. The stupid thing became hers.

Which meant she could send it to millions of strangers after a selfie, but not to him. Not when he knew exactly where it came from. Also, who the fuck sends hearts to their fuck buddy? Too much. Weird. Unnecessary. They weren't that.

She'd tried again the day before they went.

Yeji: I'm going to Jeju with the girls tomorrow.

Yeji: Five days.

Minho: oh

Minho: that's a long time

Yeji: We haven't fucked in three weeks.

Minho: yeah

Minho: i know

Minho: do you want me there?

Yeji: Bring sunscreen.

Minho: ok

Minho: what flight should i take?

Yeji: Figure it out.

Yeji: There's a 21:40 from Gimpo after you get off work.

Yeji: I'll ask manager-nim to pick you up.

Yeji: Aewol Beach Resort. We're renting a villa.

She let her hand drop to the mattress, ready to lock the screen and be done with it. Except not even a second later, she pulled the phone back up.

Yeji: Text me when you arrive, ok?

She tossed the device face down on the sheets and rolled onto her side, pressing the back of her hand against her mouth until her jaw stopped aching. He'd taken the demand at face value, accepting five days in Jeju alongside her members - even though he'd never met them properly since the Busan calamity - as a given and jumping straight to flight logistics, leaving her alone with a stomach churning so hard she thought she might puke.

The next evening, after his shift, he got on a plane anyway, still wearing his blue dress shirt.

He showed up with a single backpack and tired eyes, and the new bottle of sunscreen was shoved right into a side mesh pocket so she could see the label. He never actually used it, though. Yesterday, Yuna had snatched the bottle first and rubbed it all over Yeji's shoulders on the beach with both hands, frantic enough to leave white streaks along her shoulders.

Yah, that was weird.

She stared at the old Kakao messages until the screen drifted into gray, and the moment her reflection rose over his name, she clicked the lock button and turned her thumb back to the camera app. She only needed one clean photo. One aesthetic shot to prove her fake Bubble alibi, so she could walk back to the fire and pretend everything was fine.

She lifted the phone and held her breath during the three-second countdown of the lens shutter.

Fuck, still blurry.

Her hands had jumped before the first sound of footsteps even hit the basalt path behind her.

She stared out at the ocean, though her rigid shoulders finally dropped. She slid the phone into her back pocket and stepped straight to the edge of the black columns. The stars burned bright and stubborn over the Pacific. Still unsparkling. Still useless.

HIM

The bonfire had burned down to a low orange flicker on the beach behind me, leaving the wind to drag the last sounds of laughter away until the ocean swallowed the rest of the night.

Yeji had slipped away from the fire a while ago. Ryujin had noticed first, of course. She'd eventually caught my eye across the sand, giving me a look that casually promised murder before jerking her chin out toward the dark.

I found Yeji standing near the edge of the black lava columns in just that thin crop top, her shoulders tight against the cold as the coastal wind whipped across her bare arms. The basalt dropped away in broken steps beneath her sneakers, tidewater flashing white between the cracks below. A fall from this height would break bones. I kept my eyes off the freezing tide sliding into the black pockets to keep my balance steady.

I stopped a step behind her and dropped my hoodie over her shoulders to cut the chill. Without turning to check who it was, she smoothly slid her arms backward into the sleeves while I guided the heavy fabric down. She braided her arms across her middle and stared down the sharp drop beyond her sneakers, looking tiny against the Pacific now that she was swallowed by the oversized fleece. Her hair blew loose across her cheek under the Jeju stars.

We just stood there while the wind and the tide crashed below us, until her breathing finally slowed down.

"You're hovering," she murmured, barely loud enough to clear the surf. She threw a familiar dry glare at the Pacific under her feet.

"I'm making sure you don't fall off a cliff."

She stared straight out at the drop. "You wouldn't even see me hit. The ocean is pitch black, idiot."

"Wasn't looking at the water."

She let out a short breath that caught somewhere near a laugh, dropping her chin into the collar of the hoodie. "That was terrible."

"Worked, though."

Her cheek shifted. She was hiding a smile.

The way she stood now, with her chin tucked, arms crossed tight, dragged me back to all the post-evaluation nights in the mirror-lined JYP studio. Years ago, sure. But Yeji never stood still without a fight.

I stepped up right beside her on the uneven rock. The starlight caught a silver edge along her damp lashes.

"You okay?" I asked quietly.

Her shoulders dropped. "No." She turned her attention back to the black water. "But I want to be."

That worked for me.

I dropped my hand, letting my knuckles rest lightly against the back of hers to press my warm skin over her freezing joints. It was small enough for her to brush off as an accident. Her fingers twitched against mine. I braced for her to pull away, but instead, her hand turned under mine. Her palm opened upward, and our fingers slid together, catching perfectly like we'd been doing this for years instead of just since the day before on the beach.

That grip dragged me straight back to the basement studios from our first summer. Dead AC, squeaking sneakers on scuffed laminate, and Yeji hating early partner drills with her whole face. She despised holding hands with anyone. She claimed it ruined her timing, snapping at me that my hold was too loose, then too tight, then just generally annoying. But before long, she could grab my hand blind on cue while staring dead ahead into the mirror.

She squeezed my fingers once.

I dragged my thumb slowly over the sharp ridge of her knuckle in response.

"Remember the blue room?" I asked her.

Her eyes stayed anchored on the violent surf, but the tense line of her mouth softened up. "The one with the blown-out speaker?"

"And the aircon making that awful dying sound in the corner."

"You swore it was humming in B-flat."

"It definitely was."

"It was a C, you deaf bastard."

"It was B-flat," I said. "You were just mad I could hear it."

She let out a small scoffing breath, shaking her head. "You were miserable in there."

"You kept bitching at me to fix the speaker."

"You were the only one tall enough to reach the plug!"

"Being tall didn't make me your personal fucking handyman, Yeji."

"You tried anyway."

"I was trying to impress you so you'd stop yelling at me."

She finally looked at me, her sharp jaw cutting across the sky.

"You were?"

The stiff line of her mouth just vanished. "You were scary. Of course I was trying to impress you."

"I was focused," she argued, squaring her shoulders. "Not scary."

"You made that poor trainee cry because she missed the pre-chorus."

"She missed it six fucking times in a row, Minho."

"Scary."

"She needed the timing!"

"See?"

She laughed brightly, the sound whipping away into the wind.

The laugh faded into the rush of the ocean below us. Yeji looked back up at the sky, phone forgotten in her pocket, my hoodie hanging off one shoulder where the wind kept attacking it.

"You were supposed to be there," she said.

For one dumb second, my brain stayed in the blue room.

"In the studio?"

"No." Her fingers tightened around mine. "After. All of it. Debut showcase, first music show win, rookie awards, first tour. Rows six and seven at showcase. Back wall during music shows. Camera pits. The wings at award shows. Hotels. Airports. All the places you had no reason to be."

The surf hit the black rock below us hard enough to spray cold mist through the cracks. She watched the water fall back into the dark and kept her jaw locked.

"I looked for you every time," she said. "So pathetic, right? I would finish a stage, smile at the camera, bow to the staff, do all the shit I was supposed to do, and then my eyes would go searching before I could stop myself. Not him. Not him. Not him."

I couldn't move even if I'd wanted to. She had her hand locked around mine so hard my knuckles had gone pale.

"Yeji -"

"Don't." She lifted our joined hands ever so slightly, and the apology my mouth had started reaching for died right there. "If you say sorry, then I have to say it wasn't your fault. And it wasn't. So then where does it go?"

I looked down at our hands and had no answer worth giving her.

"I don't know," I said.

"Exactly." She swallowed and turned her face back to the sky. "You didn't do anything wrong. I didn't do anything wrong. You left before it killed you. I stayed because you sat on that floor with me until I could. Then I debuted, and everyone kept telling me I won."

Her thumb dragged once across my knuckle, then stopped.

"I did win," she continued. "I worked for it. My members earned it. I know that. But you were there first, before people said I was the leader, before stages, before anyone called me 'JYP's secret weapon' or whatever and meant it in public. You saw me on the floor with a D grade and talked to me like the paper was unqualified. Not me."

The old practice room came back too fast: scuffed linoleum, fluorescent glare, the red letter crushed in her fist, her shoulders shaking under my palm.

"You were never unqualified," I stated simply.

"I know that now." She wiped under one eye with the sleeve of my hoodie, hard enough to leave the skin flushed. "I didn't know it then. I thought every mistake was proof. Then you came in and acted like failing one evaluation was the dumbest reason in the world to quit, and I hated how easy you made it sound. I wanted to shove every win in your face after that - turn around and go, look. See? You were right. I did it. I fucking did it."

"You did," I said. "But don't give me too much credit. I said one true thing on a shitty floor. You built the rest."

"But you weren't there."

"No -"

"And I hated you for it," she talked over me, still looking away. "Then I missed you, and I hated that more. Then I fucked you again and told myself that solved the problem because sex has rules. You come over. Or I come over. We fuck. You leave. Easy."

She finally turned her head toward me.

"It was never easy. Obviously. Keep up."

That almost broke a laugh out of me. I held it in because she was still standing open in front of me, and I wasn't going to make her close back up just because the truth scared me.

She looked back at the sky, her grip on my hand loosening slightly.

"You know, I used to go to the JYP roof after you quit," she said softly, almost wistfully. "Above the old practice building, before we moved to the new one. Remember the door by the vending machines? The lock was broken for months. The machine made the whole stairwell blue, and I would sit by the rail after practice staring up until my neck hurt. I couldn't even see stars through the Seoul smog most nights, but just looking up at how massive and empty the sky was... it helped. It made whatever mistake I made in rehearsal feel incredibly small."

The wind pushed her dark hair across her face.

"Lia wasn't lying the other day," she murmured. "Zero light pollution. I always wanted to see what it looked like with you."

"You never told me about the roof," I said quietly.

She slowly lowered her chin to look at me, her dark eyes staring into mine. "You weren't there to tell."

Yeah, I'd earned that one.

"I - I didn't leave you," I mumbled.

She hooked her fingers into the front of my hoodie and pulled it tighter across her chest.

"I left JYP," I said. "The company. The trainee lists. The rooms with no windows. Trainers counting mistakes like they were collecting proof we didn't belong there. By the end, I hated dance. Music too. Mirrors. My own face in practice footage. I couldn't stay in it anymore."

"I know." She pressed the hoodie sleeve under her eye again, slower this time. "I knew then. You had that look. One more trainer said your name and you were going straight through the studio glass. I knew why you left."

She folded both hands around mine, trapping my fingers between her palms.

"It still felt the same."

I closed my other hand over hers.

"I think about it too," I said.

Her shoulders hitched once under the hoodie.

"The what-ifs?"

"Yeah. Bad dorm coffee. You yelling at me in stage makeup. Me pretending I wasn't staring at you in every practice clip." I watched her mouth tremble, then steady. "I thought about you on stage before you even debuted. After I quit, I couldn't listen to music for a while without feeling sick. Then your DALLA DALLA teaser dropped, and I watched it at two in the morning on my laptop with the volume low so my roommate wouldn't wake up."

She stared at me.

"Of course I watched," I said before she could ask. "I watched everything. At first because I missed you. Then because you were impossible not to watch. Then because it was easier to call it supporting an old friend than admit I was waiting for thirty seconds of fancam like a loser with a schedule."

Her mouth pulled sideways through the tears. "You never said."

"Neither did you."

"I was busy becoming famous."

"Yeah," I said, dragging my thumb over her knuckles until her grip loosened enough for blood to come back into my fingers. "You were."

She let the joke die there. For a while, there was only the ocean.

"Sometimes I pictured you in the company van," she said. "Sleeping with your mouth open, neck bent all wrong, complaining about my hairspray, stealing my heat pack. I pictured you backstage too. At awards, music shows - I pictured you beside me so many times that when it wasn't real, it pissed me off."

Below us, the waves kept time against the black rock, like it was counting down a future that had already passed.

"Do you think it would've been better?" she asked after a while.

I looked past her shoulder at the bonfire, far enough away now to be a small orange blur against the beach.

"No," I said.

Her brows drew together.

"I wanted it," I said, before she could argue. "I still want it. I... I see those backstage clips and it makes me sick how much I want to be the guy stealing your shrimp chips in the van. Or holding your jacket. Just the stupid, boring shit, you know? But if I hadn't quit, I would've dragged you down. You would've made it your project to fix my head, and I would've hated you for handling everything better than me. We would've wrecked each other."

She pulled one hand free and held it against her cheek.

"You don't know that."

I shifted closer, turning my shoulder into the wind to block a little of it from hitting her face. "I know what I was like when I left. Jealous of everyone still standing in those rooms. Even you. Especially you. You could take the hit and come back meaner. I took the hit and started flinching before anyone raised a hand."

"You were eighteen," she said.

"So were you."

"I was insane."

"Yeah." I squeezed her hand before she could turn that into a joke. "You were insane. Brilliant. You scared the shit out of me."

Her eyes stayed on mine.

"You already said that."

"I know."

She looked back up at the stars. The fight slowly went out of her shoulders.

"I don't want to keep checking rooms," she said. "I don't want to... every time we go somewhere new, I hate that my first instinct is still to look up. I get mad at myself every single time, because obviously you aren't going to be sitting in the third row of some random stadium, but I look anyway. And then I get pissed off that you aren't there."

She turned her face toward me again. The tears were drying cold against her cheeks, and this time, she let them stay.

"I want to be here," she murmured. "And know you're here."

Five years gone. The life we didn't get, gone too. But her hand was warm in mine, and the rock under us was solid.

I lifted our joined hands higher, near her neck, and used a slow pull to turn her around until she faced me.

Her eyes dropped to our hands. "Here?"

"Here."

"On a pile of cursed lava blocks."

"I've seen you dance on worse."

"It's a cliff edge, Minho."

"Scared?"

Her gaze snapped back up to my face, her dark eyes narrowing under the starlight.

"I'm going to make you look like an idiot," she warned.

"You always do."

Note: The following scene was designed and choreographed with this soundtrack in mind. I strongly recommend giving at least one read with it!

She stepped in first, finding a flat face of basalt under one sneaker while my body slid right into place. My free hand swung up to catch her narrow waist. Hers found my shoulder, resting lightly at first before pressing down the second my stance locked. We stayed still chest to chest under the stars for one long breath. Her fingers tightened hard into my shoulder, pressing right over my pulse.

I took a step forward, but her muscles were already locked down hard to drive the motion on a strict downbeat.

The most powerful hip hop dancer in Seoul didn't know how to yield a count.

So I held my ground, keeping my hand steady against her waist while I waited. She stayed rigid against my hold, her breath trapped in her throat while her body fought the violent instinct to take the choreography over. Then her shoulders dropped. Her ribs softened under my hand.

That was when I knew I wasn't holding idol Yeji anymore.

She exhaled hard, let herself settle into my grasp, and allowed me to pull her into the next step.

Her eyes flicked up to my face.

"Better," I told her.

"Keep your fucking dance critiques to yourself," she muttered, though she stayed still against my chest.

"I just praised your adjustment."

"You corrected my texture."

"Your texture corrected itself."

"Still annoying."

Her fingers were tapping a silent, desperate count against the back of my shoulder.

"You're in your head, Yeji," I shot back. "After you spent months fucking that exact habit out of me so I'd learn to feel the beat and stop counting."

Her mouth fell open in the dark because I had her pinned.

I grinned down at her.

She rolled her eyes hard, but the tapping stopped.

I yielded the lead, letting my hand drag loose across her waist while our joined fingers cut a slow arc through the freezing night air. The stars smeared white across my vision as she pulled me through the turn, the whole sky tilting over her shoulder for one dizzying swing before the black Pacific snapped back behind her.

She took the space instantly, pushing off my palm to spin outward into the cold wind with her back snapping straight. The oversized hoodie flared open against the black backdrop of the Pacific, leaving her suspended on one leg with her dominant arm stretched back taut into my grip.

I yanked my arm hard and dragged her back toward the jagged rock.

She refused to soften the catch, hitting my chest on the count with a breathless gasp and giving me every bit of the step.

I crossed my arms instantly over her waist, locking her bare hands secure against her stomach before we could tumble backward toward the drop.

The first time we'd practiced lifts, she'd kept landing wrong on a swollen ankle she swore was fine, throwing herself backward exactly like this and banking on my arms snapping shut before she hit the floor. I'd locked my grip around her then, staring at her exhausted reflection in the studio mirror.

By the time they put cameras in her face, she'd already mastered hiding it without the mirrors.

She was eighteen when they put her on The Fan, two months shy of her debut and three since I'd quit, watching exactly 197 votes flash on the board - which meant three people didn't, shoving her straight onto the chopping block. Three weeks later, her back seized up so bad during rehearsal she had to go to the hospital. Straight out of the ER, she shot "New Rules" and danced like her spine wasn't locked down tight. The tears didn't drop until 224 flashed on the screen to say she survived, and even then, she smiled right through them to thank the whole country for forgiving her mistakes. I watched that broadcast and realized the girl who used to curse at her own swollen ankles in the JYPE building was gone. She'd figured out the job.

Hurt on your own time. Win first.

She nudged her head back against my shoulder in the dark, breathing slowly against my collarbone until she started to sing.

"Thinkin' about ya, my hand in a fist," she sang softly, her fingers tightening around mine on the last word.

I locked my grip tight around her waist. From every track in an industry built to say 'don't need you,' she sang the one that begged to be held. The low, warm catch of her voice hit my throat before she even pushed the words into the cold air. I knew exactly where that breath started. I'd spent hours in a sealed practice room trying to teach her how to drop air deep into her lungs when she was eighteen, blown out, and ready to quit. I taught her how to pull that breath, and then walked away before I got to hear what she did with it.

"A night I suffered alone."

She sang the next line right into my shirt, leaving me nowhere to put my hands except tighter around her back. I'd heard that track blaring out of arena speakers for years, but none of it sounded like this.

I rotated her inside my arms to face me under the moonlight. Her voice bent when our chests slammed together, then steadied as my hand slid down her waist to brace her lower back.

"You are here," she hummed softly.

"Here by my side," I came in under her, rough and late.

She twitched her mouth into a smile before dragging in air for the next line. Of course she heard me.

"Hold me tight, hold me tight."

I pressed my palm harder into her back. "You know I'm holding up when I see you."

She steadied herself against my shoulder as we tracked every step over the uneven basalt, shoes catching on slick edges where the columns broke toward the water. Her knee brushed against mine, pulled away, and brushed back again.

I backed us blindly toward the drop, watching a spray of loose gravel slip under my heel. Her eyes flicked from my face to the sheer edge. The old Yeji would have slammed her feet wider and taken over the step to keep us safe.

She let herself fall toward me instead.

"You and I, we ain't falling," she sang, stepping back and giving our joined hands a sharp downward pull.

"We'll be each other's strength and withstand it," I replied.

She followed the cue instantly. Hip hop dancers fall into freezes by controlling their own descent and their own timing, but tonight, she broke that rule. Her spine went completely slack across my forearm to hand me the count. One hand locked tight in mine, and the other fell loose until her fingertips grazed the air above the dark water.

"Talkin' about ya, talkin' about us."

I dug my palm harder into her spine, sinking into my stance as she arched violently backward over my forearm. The oversized hoodie slid off one bare shoulder, leaving her suspended in a breathless backbend. Her throat bared to the cold wind, the rigid line of her flat stomach snapping tight the second she stopped trying to catch herself.

"You and I got the same feeling," I sang back.

She hitched a breathless laugh into the cold air, hanging reckless in my arms.

I shoved my sneakers down into the ground, locking my arm tighter around her back. The coastal wind tore at her dangling hair, dragging the loose neck of the hoodie down far enough to expose the athletic line of her collarbone.

She looked up at me from her lopsided pose in the dark, flashing the same fierce trust from those late-night practice rooms before her debut.

I dragged her back up, pulling her slowly with everything I had.

She rose in a smooth arc with her hair swinging forward, breaking on the tiniest laugh when her face snapped level with mine before grabbing hard onto the back of my neck.

I caught her bare jaw on pure reflex, my thumb sliding under the sharp ridge of her cheekbone.

"Hold me, you're doing well," she breathed.

"Hold me, please trust me," I answered against her mouth.

She gasped out a startled laugh that cracked the silence as my lungs emptied out.

I locked both hands around her waist, dug my heels in, and hoisted her clear off the stone, leaving her suspended over the edge of the Pacific while I stared up at her with the freezing surf roaring against the jagged rock somewhere way down in the dark.

She scrambled for my shoulders for a split second, but the moment she looked down into the black drop, a shaky breath broke out of her and she completely unspooled. Every rigid muscle went slack against my palms as she let go, pulling her hands away to spread her arms wide into the coastal wind instead of bracing for a fall. Her spine arched in a reckless curve over the ocean, leaving my hands the only thing keeping her from the drop.

I pushed my thumbs deep into her waist, holding her through the wind until her shaking ribs settled under my grip.

She pulled her chin back down, looking at me through the loose hair whipping across her face as she pushed the final outro into the night.

"We ain't falling like a domino."

I lowered her slowly, letting her slide down the length of my chest until the soles of her shoes hit the rock.

She stayed pressed against me, burying her face into my shoulder while the last notes hummed against my bare neck.

"Like a domino, domino."

I wrapped her up in the dark, hands gripping fistfuls of her oversized hoodie while her lungs fought for air against my chest.

"You knew the lower harmony," she mumbled into my shoulder, her voice still rough from the cold. "You caught the bridge exactly on the downbeat."

"I have good rhythm."

Her grip tightened in my shirt. "That's a tour-only B-side, Minho. And it came out three years after you quit."

"The Hulu Theater," I said quietly, pressing my palm flat against her lower back. "Madison Square Garden. November 2022. I had a work trip, remember? Took the red-eye out of L.A. and stood in the very back row."

PHOTO CREDITS: yours truly (November 13, 2022, Madison Square Garden, back row)

She went completely still against me, the brutal realization of that flight and that ticket clicking into place.

"You were in New York," she whispered.

"Always there somehow," I said, sliding my hand around the back of her neck and tangling my warm fingers into her freezing hair. "I never miss a stage."

Yeji sucked in a sharp gasp against my shoulder.

Then the world dragged us back. A massive wave shattered below, and someone, probably Yunjin, yelled from far down the beach by the bonfire. Yuna shouted something equally loud in response, followed by Chaeryeong screaming and Karina's boisterous laughter tearing up the beach.

Then Yeji exhaled a long, shuddering breath into my collarbone.

"My ass is going numb," she groaned.

A sharp, wrecked laugh tore out of my throat before I could stop myself. Yeji's shoulders started shaking against my chest, her forehead digging into my muscle as she failed to swallow down her own ridiculous giggling. We were standing on the edge of a deadly cliff drop, laughing pointlessly into each other's necks like idiots in the dark.

"So romantic," I choked out.

"It really is. Lava rock is terrible."

"I'll bring a blanket next time."

Next time.

She went quiet, and my laugh died before it could finish.

She pulled her face up from my shoulder. Tears caught the starlight in her eyes and made her look startlingly young.

"Yeah," she finally whispered, her fingers tightening at my shirt. "Next time."

I dragged my thumb under her eye and swiped the moisture away before it could slip down her cheek, letting her lean deeper into my hand.

"You weren't scared," I said quietly. "When I had you hanging over the ocean."

"Of course I was scared," she muttered.

"Didn't feel like it."

Her grip tightened at the back of my shirt. "Because you don't drop me."

The whole song-and-dance still burned through my muscles, from the heat to the tight grip to the last murmur of her singing against my skin, folding all that lost time down to the single fact that she was standing right in front of me.

"You actually sang for me," I said quietly.

Her mouth gave a weak, broken twitch. "I get paid to sing, asshole."

"You sang for me tonight."

She turned her head slowly, looking intently out toward the endless stretch of stars.

"You walked me back to it," she whispered. "I forgot how to share a count."

Somehow we ended up on the flattest shelf of basalt I could find, because Yeji was shivering through my hoodie and I sure as hell wasn't letting her freeze her ass off on a jagged pile of rock.

I sat first, planted wide, and tugged her down between my knees before she could argue.

She hit my lap with a startled yelp as my arms clamped around her waist. Grabbing my forearms, she adjusted her thighs and leaned back against my chest, tucking her bare legs between my denim.

The Pacific pounded the shoreline below in a slow, heavy rhythm. After a minute, her shoulders stopped jumping under my hands.

"It's almost too much," she murmured into the cold air.

I rested my chin near the crown of her head. "What is?"

"All those stars." She kept her hands still over mine.

I followed her gaze up. Without the Seoul smog bleeding out the sky, the galaxy stretching over us looked massive.

"Yeah," I said quietly. "Makes you feel small."

She let out a slow breath. "Small... but not alone."

I pulled my arms tighter around her waist, letting the heavy crash of the shoreline fill the dark for a minute.

"Karina whispered something to me," she said, dropping lower against my chest. "That first night at her villa."

I dragged my thumb over her knuckle. "After she hugged you?"

Her head turned slightly. "You saw that?"

"I saw her lean in. I saw you nod." I pressed my jaw against her hood. "Never heard the words."

Her hand closed harder over my forearm.

"She said, 'Without the courage to fall.'" Yeji looked back up at the stars. "'You already know, Yeji-yah - you sang it yourself.'"

The surf hit the rock below us.

"'You can never fly,'" I murmured, pressing my jaw against her head. "Best line in Bet On Me. Can't believe Karina gets your own lyrics better than you do."

Her elbow knocked lightly into my ribs. "Show-off."

Her pinky found mine and hooked around it, small and stubborn.

"I think..." She swallowed hard. "I thought if I just... opened my hand, there'd be nothing there."

I looked down at our fingers.

She squeezed once.

"But there is."

My grip tightened around her waist.

"If I had debuted..." I said under the sound of the surf. "Would we even have this?"

She finally broke her gaze away from the sky, shifting her head to look at me. "This?"

"Us. Like this." I looked down at our hands. "Maybe we would've eaten each other alive trying to survive it."

She dragged her thumb over the back of my hand. "Maybe that version of us would've been worse."

"So what do we do now?"

Her fingers tightened around mine. "We stop trying to rewrite the stars. We just... look at them."

I squeezed her fingers back in the quiet, pressing my jaw against her cool hair.

"You became Hwang Yeji because I quit," I told her to the dark. "Like I said. If I'd stayed, you would've kept focusing on fixing my head. I left, and you had to build everything yourself."

Her back went rigid against me.

"You want to know a secret?" she asked.

"Always."

"That night in the practice room. When I was falling apart, and you sat on the floor with me and told me I belonged there." She swallowed hard. "I became an idol because you made me believe I could."

I went quiet.

"Every stage I stood on," she whispered out into the ocean. "Every award I took. Every time I led the group when things went to shit... I was channeling the person you saw in me that night."

I closed my eyes, pressing my face into her hair.

"So yeah," she finished, a wet, quiet laugh slipping out. "You left. But you also gave me everything."

For once, I didn't know what to hate myself for. I buried my face into the side of her neck, pulling her flush against my chest until she let out a long, shuddering sigh.

Her body heat warmed my skin right through the fleece. The waves kept hitting the rock below us. Her hand stayed locked in mine.

We watched the stars.

I loosened my grip slightly so she could breathe.

"So why were you actually standing on a cliff edge taking shitty pictures in the dark?" I asked.

Her mouth curved into a smile against my collarbone. "I told you. I needed a photo for Bubble."

"You have six thousand photos of yourself on your phone right now."

"Of stars, idiot. A starlight shot." She twisted against my chest, retrieving the cold metal of her phone from her back pocket. "I've been dead silent online since we got to Jeju. Since you took those sunset pictures of me looking..."

"Like a liability?"

"Exactly." She sighed, staring down at the black screen. "I needed a cover story. A peace offering for the fans to cover my tracks. But my hands kept shaking the lens out of focus."

Her bare fingers trembled against the phone casing. I slid my arm around her side and offered my palm.

"Let me?"

She handed the phone over immediately.

I brought the screen up, framing the brightest cluster of the Milky Way directly over our heads. The camera static cleared instantly. I locked my elbows, leveling the shot perfectly still.

Her hand came up. Her freezing fingers slid over the back of mine, letting our knuckles overlap as we held the frame together.

"Ready?" I murmured.

"Yeah."

She dragged her thumb over mine, hitting the shutter.

The screen flashed once, burning a crisp, sharp image of the Jeju stars into the camera roll.

Yeji let out a long, shuddering exhale. Dragging her hand down, she hooked her pinky blindly into mine and rested her head back onto my shoulder. The phone slipped onto my denim. I wrapped both arms securely around her, burying my face against the fleece of her hood as we stared up into the dark.

The digital glow of the locked screen faded to black against my jeans.

NARRATOR

Two silhouettes sat tangled together on a flat shelf of dark volcanic rock. The Pacific stretched out before them, an endless expanse of black water and silver break crashing against the basalt in a mindless rhythm. Behind them, far up the sand, the bonfire had already died down to an tiny orange pinprick.

And above them: stars beyond counting.

The Milky Way swept across the black sky, a massive stretch of burning gas and dead space. The galaxy turned in the dark, holding no stake in the shoreline below or the five stolen years surviving on one ledge of stone.

Millions of fans spent their lives looking up at the girl on the rock, their own devotion illuminated by her heat.

But the sky offered no such promises, leaving the real stars to shine in the freezing vacuum of space regardless of who was watching.

All that empty space rendered the moment ephemeral.

Jeju had always been a place of exile - a stray sliver of volcanic rock separated from the real world by a small stretch of sea. The mainland's rules didn't apply out here. All the island offered was a brief suspension of time, leaving the cameras and the crushing pressure of Seoul across the water until nothing remained but the truth.

Caught between the black ocean dropping below and the silent universe expanding above, the only warmth in the coastal wind came from the embers they'd learned to keep alive in each other.

And the only meaning at the edge of the world was whatever they chose to hold in their hands.

So the stars just kept shining.

And so would they.