Eagle and Tiger

Horangi-Chingu

The call comes in at what your phone insists is 2:47 AM, which means it's a reasonable hour somewhere, just not here. You answer because the contact name is Nayeon, and that woman has never once respected a time zone in her life.

"Can you check up on Dahyun-ya?" Her voice is grainy through the line, compressed by distance and bad signal, and yet still somehow urgent. Nayeon's urgency has its own frequency. You've learned to recognize it.

"She's not picking up properly," Momo adds from somewhere in the background, closer to the phone than you expected. So it's a joint operation. Of course it is. "Her updates have been weird. Short. She keeps saying she's fine."

"She never says she's fine," Nayeon says, like this is damning evidence, and honestly, she has a point.

You groan and roll onto your back, staring at the ceiling. "Sure. I'll go tomorrow."

"Today," Nayeon corrects.

"Nayeon, it is—"

"Today," she says again, pleasantly, in the tone she uses when she's already won.

You hang up and lie there for another three minutes resenting your own kindness. Then you set an alarm.

You show up in the early afternoon with a bag of kimbap from the place near the station and an armful of snacks you probably overthought at the convenience store — different flavors, a mix of sweet and savory, a few things you'd never tried yourself. Just in case. Dahyun has a gift for enthusiasm, and you figured food would help regardless of what you walked into.

Her apartment building is quiet when you buzz up. A pause, then a soft, slightly surprised "oh — come in" through the intercom, like she wasn't quite expecting company even though you'd texted ahead.

The door opens with the spare key she left with you months ago for emergencies, and you step inside.

It's not bad, exactly. It's lived-in in a way that reads less like neglect and more like someone who's been sitting still for too long, surrounded by the accumulation of days that all look the same. A few blankets migrated from the couch. Some dishes on the drying rack that probably should've been put away. A laptop on the coffee table next to a half-finished cup of something. You clock all of it quickly and feel your shoulders drop just slightly — fixable. All of it is fixable.

Then you hear it: the soft rubber-wheel roll of something crossing the hardwood floor, deliberate and unhurried.

Dahyun appears from the hallway on a knee scooter, her injured leg bent up behind her, her good foot pushing her forward with the calm efficiency of someone who has made peace with her current situation. Her hair is in a loose bun. She's in sweats. She looks, objectively, like she has not been performing for anyone lately, and somehow that makes her look more like herself.

"Ah — Dahyun Chingu," you say.

Her whole face lifts. "Horangi-Chingu." She rolls toward you with a small, theatrical waddling motion that makes you bite back a smile, and when she gets close enough, she pushes herself upright on one foot and opens her arms. You step in, steadying her automatically — one hand at her shoulder, one at her back — before she can tip. She holds on for a moment longer than a quick greeting, and you let her.

When you pull back, she's already looking at the bag in your arm.

"Are those for me?"

You nod, and she follows you to the kitchen counter with the focused attention of someone who has been eating alone for too many days in a row.

She insists you sit beside her, which you do, and the two of you work through the snacks with the quiet, easy rhythm of people who don't need to perform for each other. Dahyun has opinions — on everything, immediately, out loud — and she delivers them with the conviction of a professional food critic.

"This one," she says, holding up a honey butter chip, "is better than I remember. I forgot about this one."

"I almost didn't get those. I second-guessed myself in the aisle for a while."

"You shouldn't doubt yourself," she says seriously, then eats three more.

You smile. "None of them have been bad, actually. I was a little nervous."

"You did well," Dahyun says, nodding in approval, and something about receiving a snack grade from Kim Dahyun feels like a genuine accomplishment.

The easy momentum of it carries you for a while, but eventually the question has to come. You've been circling it since you walked in.

"So," you say. "Nayeon and Momo asked me to check on you. Not just bring snacks — actually check. So." You pause. "How are you doing?"

Dahyun doesn't answer immediately. She looks down at the counter, turning a piece of kimbap over in her fingers, and you watch her actually consider the question instead of deflecting it. That alone tells you something.

"Not really okay," she says finally, quiet but even. "I mean — I love being on stage. That's what I'm made for, I think. So I'm genuinely happy for the girls, and I'm proud of everything they're doing out there." She pauses. "And I'm angry that I'm not there. Both things."

You sit with that for a second. "That makes sense," you say. "That's actually a really reasonable way to feel."

She glances at you sideways. "Is it? Sometimes it feels selfish."

"It's not," you say simply.

She seems to let that land. Then she straightens up a little and says, "I'm going to make it back. For the second half of the tour." There's no uncertainty in it — just a statement of fact she's made to herself enough times that it's calcified into something she holds on to.

"Yeah?" you say. "How's the progress?"

She turns on her stool and, with visible satisfaction, begins wiggling her toes. Then her ankle, slow and deliberate, was rotating carefully in a small arc. She watches her own foot as it owes her something.

"My physical therapist said when I have a certain range of motion with no pain, I call him, and he'll clear me. Right now—" she tilts her head, assessing herself, "—I'd say about forty-five percent."

"That's nothing," you say.

"It's nothing," she agrees. She sounds like she's been reminding herself of that, too. "I do my exercises every day. Sometimes twice." She says it the way someone says I have been doing everything right, which is a different thing from boasting. It's more like testimony.

You nod. "Then you'll get there."

She smiles at you — not the big performance smile, the smaller one that sits closer to the surface when she's not thinking about how she looks. "Thank you for coming," she says. "Really."

The snacks are mostly gone by the time you glance at the time and start gathering yourself to leave. Dahyun rolls alongside you to the door, easy and unhurried, and you're already reaching for the handle when she says:

"Wait — do you have to go right now?"

You turn back. She's looking at you with an expression that isn't quite asking and isn't quite not asking.

"We could just hang out. Watch something. I have stuff on the TV I haven't started yet." A small pause. "I've been by myself a lot."

She doesn't say it like she wants you to feel sorry for her. It's just true, and she's saying it plainly, the way she does everything.

You let go of the door handle.

"Sure," you say. "What are we watching?"

Her whole face opens up, and she pivots the scooter back toward the living room with renewed purpose. "Okay, so I have options," she starts, already rolling ahead of you. "A lot of options, actually—"