Ditto

[DAY 3 - AEWOL BEACH RESORT, JEJU ISLAND]
[KARINA’S POV]

Can a night get more perfect than one surrounded by everyone you need?

A week ago, Karina would’ve rolled her eyes at that line. But leaning back onto her palms in the cold sand, shielded by the black lava rock, she caught herself believing it anyway.

Seoul never actually got dark like this; it just gave up and went grey. But out here, past the resort, where the black lava rock dropped off into the ocean, the darkness wiped the horizon clean. Overhead, the Milky Way painted a violent smear of white across pitch black. For once, something actually looked better in reality than it had on the curated Instagram accounts Karina had exhaustively scrolled through when booking the trip, looking less like a postcard and more like a direct act of God.

Yesterday morning, when Yeji jumped into her DMs with paragraphs about Chaeryeong’s desperate need for an American beach fire and Lia’s promise of zero light pollution, Karina had read the texts flat on her back. Mostly because her body was still thoroughly wrecked from what Yeji and Minho had done to her the night before. She’d been too busy tracing a ring of faint, finger-shaped bruises on her left breast to care about roasting marshmallows.

But sitting in the sand now, freezing in the coastal wind while the Pacific crashed somewhere in the dark, she had to admit Lia was, in fact, totally right. The stars kept multiplying every time Karina looked up, white and shameless over the water, and her neck started to ache before she made herself look away. Annoyingly, inconveniently, she wanted to pray about it.

By the time the sun fully dropped behind the water, ITZY had essentially relocated their Seoul dormitory and dropped it directly onto the beach. They’d claimed their patch of sand long enough for their belongings to scatter into that comfortable chaos they somehow lived in every day without falling apart. On the sand sat a cracked-open cooler bleeding condensation onto a discarded million-won hoodie, half-kicked-off slides sinking near the driftwood, and Lia’s phone tripod jammed into the dirt to record the impending disaster unfolding by the unlit fire.

Karina watched as her own members wasted no time getting comfortable.

Over on the main blanket, Winter had already fished out the honey butter chips meant for later and declared them chips for right now, hugging the bag to her chest while Ningning and Giselle successfully stole bites anytime Winter looked away. Winter had her knees tucked up inside a Doraemon blanket and her cheeks puffed full of chips, chewing with solemn focus. With Winter, snacks always demanded discipline and respect.

Yeji sat off to the side with one knee drawn up to her chin, silently watching Minho fail, while Yuna tucked her legs under herself and accepted a chip from Ningning, holding it suspended in the air for a long time before finally taking a bite.

Karina glanced over and watched as the boys struggled with fond cynicism. Delegating the fire to them had been an unspoken group consensus, the sort of primitive task men were supposed to handle when they weren’t busy being horny and useless. Although right now, they were just being useless.

Out by the driftwood, Sunwoo was trapped in a miserable loop of polite intervention. He kept taking an eager half-step forward with his mouth open to help, then immediately second-guessing himself and shoving his hands violently back into his pockets out of sheer politeness. It was agonizing to watch.

Down in the sand, Minho crouched beside a questionable pyramid of sticks, repeatedly striking a lighter into the sea breeze while Minjun nodded along as if the effort looked promising.

“You look like a sad YouTuber,” Giselle called from the blanket, clutching a bottle of soju. “Like ‘Man survives one day without wifi’.”

“It’s called airflow,” Minho said, shielding the tiny spark with his palm.

“More like arson cosplay,” Lia chimed in, tapping her screen to take a video.

Minjun nudged a stick with his toe. “No, because if we just -”

“Not like that,” Sunwoo finally interjected.

Ningning popped up on her knees, chewing a stolen honey butter chip. “Wait, I know this! You put the tiny ones under the big ones.”

Winter, still bundled in the blanket, lifted one hand like a student answering in class. “Maybe the small sticks are babies. They need protection.”

Giselle stared at her. “Minjeong-ya, we’re burning them.”

Winter’s face folded into immediate distress. “Unnie, then why did you call it kindling? That sounds gentle.”

Ningning patted the top of her head while still observing Minho’s collapsing stick pyramid with unfettered amusement. “Don’t worry, unnie. They’re brave babies.”

“Oh.” Winter accepted this at once and shoved another chip into her mouth.

When Minho brought the lighter too close to his thumb again, Yeji inhaled sharply enough to be heard over the surf. She folded her arms immediately, squaring her jaw, and Karina watched the tension lock into Yeji’s shoulders.

Giselle sighed loudly over the rim of her cup. “Dude, just use lighter fluid. You’re not winning any prizes for doing things the hard way.”

“I know how to do it naturally.” Minho adjusted the smallest sticks with two careful fingers.

“Bruh,” Giselle scoffed, staring at him. “The natural part is fucking failing right now.”

He clicked the lighter again, caught empty air, clicked it once more, and singed his knuckle with a sharp hiss, shaking his hand out fast.

Before he could try again, Sunwoo stepped in, nudged two bits of driftwood apart, crouched, and lit one twist of paper. The kindling finally caught and sent a bright flame crawling up through the center of the pile.

As the wood popped and caught, Chaeryeong clapped loudly, then tucked both hands under her chin in a tiny victory pose.

“See? This is why I brought him,” she beamed, claiming total victory for a fire she hadn’t touched. “You’re all very welcome.”

Sunwoo gave her an appreciative glance across the rising heat.

Chaeryeong smiled sweetly, ambled over, and snuggled into his side. “Baby, you looked cold doing all that.”

Orange light spilled across the blankets, catching Winter’s cheek when she turned to ask Ningning for her charger, and flashing off Lia’s rings as she lowered her phone. Karina sat back on her hands, digging her fingers into the cool sand, letting the fire warm her knees.

Phone flashlights swept the beach path, throwing long, distorted shadows down the sand dunes before Ryujin’s voice even reached them.

“I told you, this is the right one. Why would I kidnap you to the wrong fire?”

“Bro, what the fuck are you being so mysterious for then?!” Another voice cut loudly over the crashing surf. “You literally dragged me past three empty beaches!”

LE SSERAFIM’s Yunjin emerged from the dark path wearing an oversized flannel peeling off a tight brown crop top and black denim cutoffs so frayed they put the ‘short’ in shorts. Karina watched her from the sand, her aesthetic eye taking in the unapologetic power of Yunjin’s build. Legs for days, thighs with actual power to them, and good bones under all that muscle, the whole package looking like it had told standard idol thinness to fuck off the New York way. She’d always enjoyed casually swatting Winter’s ass onstage, but this was on another planet.

While the rest of the circle clutched maekju and soju bottles, or in Winter’s case - juice boxes, Yunjin bounced on the balls of her feet, carelessly swinging a massive iced americano. Stopping right where the firelight thinned out, she took in the sprawled blankets, the half-buried coolers, the dark stretch of ocean beyond, and finally lifted her cup in approval.

“Damn, okay.” Yunjin laughed. “Fuck. This is kinda cute.”

Ryujin ambled in right behind her wearing a sleeveless hoodie over torn denim shorts and sandals, both hands shoved in her pockets like she owned the fucking place. She’d clearly forgotten to turn off her phone’s flashlight, leaving one side of her hoodie glowing a bright, oblivious white from the inside out. Seeing her, Karina let out a slow, quiet breath into the sea breeze.

“JENNIFER!”

Ningning kicked her blanket off in a flurry of limbs. Chaeryeong shrieked loudly enough to make Minho flinch, nearly flinging her drink into the sand as both hands flew up.

“Wait, is that - “ Yuna scrambled up, dropping her phone in the sand.

Giselle raised her bottle. “Oh my gosh. Jennifer Huh.”

Yunjin swung her iced americano back in a lazy, sarcastic toast. “Aeri Uchinaga. Still drinking on a Tuesday.”

“It’s a vacation Tuesday, so technically it doesn’t -”

Giselle didn’t even get to finish her retort before Yunjin’s attention snapped past the firelight, her face breaking into a delighted beam as she spotted Ningning and Winter. “MY DORMIES!”

Ningning scrambled past the snacks, grabbing Winter by the hood to drag her into the fray.

“Wait, no -,” Winter protested, refusing to pull her hands out of the chip bag. She got crushed into the three-way hug anyway, letting out a startled, high-pitched yelp before abandoning the chip bag and squeezing Yunjin back tightly.

Yunjin practically bounced on her heels, managing to keep her massive iced americano perfectly level with impressive wrist control. She pulled back just far enough to grab Winter by both shoulders. “MINJEONG, YOU GOT HOT! THE WORLD IS YOUR OYSTER, BESTIE,” she screamed, loud enough that Winter’s bangs literally blew back from the force of it.

“You got louder,” Winter gasped, blinking rapidly.

“Y’all are gorgeous, I’m tight,” Yunjin was cracking with sudden sentimentality. “I missed you guys so much!”

Yeji stayed seated, resting her chin on her knee, staring at the three-way hug. “Where are your members, Yunjin? You didn’t leave them unattended near open water, did you?”

Yunjin straightened so fast her iced americano sloshed against the lid. “Bro, don’t even. They’re dead to me. Deadass. They’re at that samgyupsal place down in Seogwipo.”

“That place is so good.” Winter nodded earnestly from inside the throng of overexcited female energy.

“Told you to go.” Ningning stole another chip.

“I sent you the Naver pin,” Giselle called over the fire.

“Okay, I GET IT.” Yunjin locked her fingers around her plastic cup. “I got spammed by the three of you about pork belly, alright?! But I’m literally on my vegetarian comeback-prep bullshit right now! Chewing on leaves! Surviving on water and vibes!”

Yeji spoke from across the fire. “Right, isn’t your comeback at the end of the month?”

“Literally the thirtieth! This is our pre-release getaway, and shit’s CRAZY right now. Actually crazy.” Yunjin rattled the ice in her cup hard enough to underline every word. “Anyway, I had to bounce because they went feral in the restaurant while I had to breathe fumes.”

“Tragic,” Ryujin muttered, dropping onto the sand beside Lia.

“Feral,” Yunjin repeated, gesturing wildly with her free hand. “Chaewon-unnie defected from leadership the moment she got off the plane. She thinks she’s five again or some shit. Giggling and making the staff take four hundred photos of her by the ocean all fucking day -”

Yuna lifted her head from the blanket, her voice devoid of its usual bounce. “Wait. Yunjin-unnie... did you seriously just, like, abandon Eunchae? Why would you do that to me?”

“Zuha has her,” Yunjin clarified, taking a massive, rattling drag of her iced americano. “Actually, knowing Zuha, Manchae’s probably drowning in a koi pond right now while Zuha maintains unbroken eye contact with some local gym bro’s biceps at the next table.”

Lia blinked slowly across the fire, taking an impossibly tiny sip of her drink. “So you did abandon them and decided to follow Ryujin into the dark instead. Valid choice.”

“Ryujin straight-up kidnapped me! We literally just landed! I’m trying to live, yo!” Yunjin threw her free hand in the air, spinning to address the circle. “Wait, how long have you guys been here? What did I miss?”

Yuna crossed her arms and collapsed back onto her blanket, sounding instantly miserable. “Literally everything. Like, you actually missed BLACKPINK at the pop-up concert. Just like me. Which is fine! I’m completely fine! My life is just a tragedy, it’s totally fine.”

“Wait, BLACKPINK was here?!” Yunjin exclaimed, ignoring her woes. “You deadass?!?”

Karina hugged her knees, laughing at the sheer volume of the intrusion. “Yeah, a few nights ago. We’ve been here almost four days. Leaving tomorrow morning.”

“We’ve got three more,” Yeji added, evidently unbothered by all the screaming.

“No way, you guys are leaving?” Yunjin stared at Karina, then whipped around to glare at Giselle. “Are you kidding? I just got here!”

Before Yunjin could demand answers, Ningning grabbed her by the wrist. “Unnie, come here. No, here. Sit here. Wait, why are you drinking coffee?”

“At night,” Lia pointed out, looking directly at the iced cup. “On a beach.”

“Yeah, and?” Yunjin challenged. “Digestion is a sacred process, okay? Some of us didn’t eat the meat and need energy! Gotta keep the fire in the belly going, you know!”

“You texted me at 2 AM asking if the resort had room service bagels.” Giselle watched her over the fire.

Yunjin whipped around, clutching her americano to her chest. “See? This is what I mean. Aggressively West Coast. Smug on contact.”

Giselle smirked. “And you came in shouting. So New York of you.”

“I AM from New York! You went to an international school in Tokyo! You’re the opposite of a California girl, Aeri!”

Ningning looked back and forth between them, utterly delighted by the chaos. Winter leaned close to her, tugging on the hem of Ningning’s sundress twice in a tiny, urgent rhythm, her brow furrowing in concern.

“Are they fighting?”

“No,” Ningning corrected, patting Winter’s knee with solemn authority. “They’re bonding.”

Yunjin dropped onto the edge of the blanket, while Ryujin landed beside her with a quiet thud, and within seconds they’d taken over the group dynamic. Yunjin loudly interrogated everybody about their drink choices, yelled at Sunwoo for laughing at her coffee, demanded to know who failed to start the fire, and claimed immediate territory over the disputed honey butter chips. She reached across the blanket to steal one, pausing just as her hand hovered over the bag, her eyes dropping immediately to the movement beside it.

Minho had just blindly passed Yeji a fresh can of Pepsi - one of the new IVE Summer Festa promos with Wonyoung’s face dominating the aluminum. Yeji took it silently, cracked it open with her thumb, tipped it against her knee, and kept listening to whatever Chaeryeong was saying.

Yunjin’s hand froze over the chips. She pulled it back, squinting at Minho over the rim of her iced americano.

“Wait,” Yunjin said, squinting aggressively through the firelight. “Who the fuck are you?”

Minho just blinked at the plastic cup aimed at his nose. “I’m Minho. Yunjin, right?”

“Yeah, but why do I know your face?” She kept squinting at him, the ice rattling as she studied him. “You look SO familiar. Are you staff?”

“I helped run the boards when you tracked Fearless,” Minho answered, giving her a polite little nod.

Yunjin’s eyes went wide. “Oh shit! Studio monitor guy! Yeah!” Yunjin brightened on the spot, then squinted harder like that only made the situation worse. “Wait. So what are you doing on a dark beach with ITZY?”

“He’s a friend,” Yeji answered, fast enough to trip over the words.

Minho let out a slow, visible exhale. “I’m Yeji’s friend.”

“From when we were trainees,” Yeji added, layering on a desperate, aggressive casualness that only made it worse.

Sitting in the sand, Karina closed her eyes. Slowly, with profound spiritual exhaustion, she tilted her head back and made direct, metaphorical eye contact with God.

When she finally brought her gaze back down to earth, Ryujin was staring at the sky like she’d found enlightenment, Chaeryeong had both hands pressed to her temples, and Giselle was taking the slowest drink Karina had ever witnessed. Around the blanket, the same verdict passed from face to face: terrible lie.

Yunjin’s hand froze over the chips. The americano dropped to her lap, forgotten for one precarious second. “Wait. Wait, wait.”

She looked at Ryujin, then at Yeji and Minho, then back to the group, dropping into a conspiratorial whisper that cleanly overpowered the Pacific Ocean. “Are they together?”

The only sound was the snapping wood. Yeji blinked, Minho stared at the sand, and Karina wondered if anyone else was praying for divine intervention or just her.

Chaeryeong scrambled onto her knees so fast the blanket hitched under half the circle. “THANK you! Finally. Okay, because if you watch the way he hands her things, it’s very - I mean, SO not casual. And yesterday morning he rescued her eggs, which unfortunately you weren’t there for, which sounds normal until you understand she was in his shirt, glued to his arm, and then at breakfast her hand kept ending up in places that were very much not friend-coded -”

“Chaeryeong,” Sunwoo interrupted mildly.

“- and there’s a look he does when she’s ignoring him which is textbook drama male lead, except he’s also carrying coolers and fixing drinks which means he’s already full-blown husband-coded -”

“Baby.”

“I have NOTES! Wait, baby, give me my PHONE -”

Chaeryeong stopped mid-reach. She lowered her hands and turned to look at the one person on the blanket who wasn’t looking at her.

“Wait!” Chaeryeong tucked one hand against her mouth. “Ryujin-unnie -”

Ryujin slouched further back on her elbows and stared at the flames. “Nope.”

“Nope?” Chaeryeong echoed.

“No trial by bonfire.” Ryujin crushed an empty chip bag into a tight ball and tossed it toward the cooler. “If Yeji wants to be weird about her trainee friend with nice forearms, she can be weird in peace.”

“I’m not being weird,” Yeji said instantly.

Ryujin let her head tip sideways. “You introduced him like a hostage statement.”

Yeji’s mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

“Yeddeong,” Ryujin muttered, turning back to the fire. “Fix your face.”

Yeji stared at her for too long, then looked down at her Pepsi.

Chaeryeong froze.

Yesterday morning, Ryujin had seen Yeji holding onto Minho-oppa in the kitchen and walked out before anyone finished breakfast. Clean plate, dishes dumped in the sink, posture stiff enough to instantly launch a side plot in Chaeryeong’s head.

Then that massive living room fight later that night never actually made sense anyway. Ryujin had tried to make Yeji rate Minho like some cheap hookup the way they always used to, called him a golden retriever, and pushed until Yeji pulled rank just to shut it down. Then she had lost her mind over it, backing Yeji into a corner to force her to admit he was her boyfriend. But Chaeryeong knew Ryujin didn’t even do boyfriends. She hadn’t been jealous over the guy. She seemed more devastated that Yeji refused to play their old game anymore.

There was a massive hole in the plot. Whoever wrote their scripts was taking the whole ‘show, not tell’ thing a little TOO far. Because right now, Chaeryeong could really use a lot of telling.

Instead, Yeji was sitting in the firelight with that same soft mouth, and Ryujin just... stayed.

Chaeryeong sank back onto the blanket and blinked. “I missed an episode.”

Yunjin dragged her iced americano closer to her chest like she needed it for protection. “Girl, I missed the whole season.”

Ningning let out a scandalised shriek, and Winter made a soft ‘ohhhhh‘ of comprehension despite grasping almost none of the actual context. The noise bounced around the circle, everyone talking over each other. In the blur, Karina caught Yuna laughing. The sound hit a note too sharp. Her mouth was thrown wide, but her eyes were already darting away before anyone could meet them.

Through the chaos, Yeji finally looked away from the fire. She shifted her gaze down the sand to find Minho. He was already watching her. He let out a slow, visible exhale, his shoulders dropping in resignation.

Ningning chose that moment to poke the fire with a driftwood twig. The end caught at once, flaring violently. She pulled it out and held the tiny torch up in triumph.

“See? You just have to be aggressive with it.”

“You’re waving it too close to the chips!” Winter shrieked, hugging the bag tight against her chest. “If the chips burn, we’ve got nothing!”

“The chips are safe, unnie, calm down.” Ningning never shied away from any opportunity to be a menace.

The circle shifted after that, the group relaxing their postures as drinks changed hands and people readjusted their spots. Someone mentioned their flight time for tomorrow, prompting Giselle to groan loudly into the sleeve of her sweater. Winter asked the group for the fourth time where her charger had gone, openly accusing the beach itself of theft. Over by the driftwood, Sunwoo and Minjun fell into an easy, low-voiced conversation with Minho. Chaeryeong successfully stole Sunwoo’s sleeve again, pulling it over her knees, while Lia leaned back to snap a photo of Winter digging for a snack right as Yeji lunged across the blanket to rescue a tipping beer can.

Karina watched Yuna from across the fire.

ITZY’s maknae sat bracketed by Ningning and Giselle, staring straight through the flames. She had drowned herself in an oversized hoodie pulled past her hips, the sleeves bunched tight over her knuckles, gray sweatpants swallowing the legs she usually treated like a public service. Yuna lived in crop tops, bikini bottoms, and whatever gave her legs the most mileage. Tonight she was a ghost in thick cotton.

Her phone lay blank in the sand. Every few minutes, she picked it up, stared at the black reflection, and dropped it back into the dirt like it’d been poisoned. Between checks, she tipped soju into her mouth in sharp, impatient sips, forcing the liquid down her throat like she was trying to erase the taste of something else.

Karina pushed up from her blanket and crossed to Yeji. “Your maknae’s unusually quiet,” she said, dropping down beside her friend.

“Yeah.” Yeji tracked Karina’s gaze. “She’s been off since yesterday. Told me she had a beach hookup while we were out the day before, and that it went bad.” Yeji dragged a thumbnail along the rim of her Pepsi can. Condensation wept down the aluminum, running straight through Jang Wonyoung’s printed summer-festa smile. “She shut down when I asked for details, but I saw the bruise on her chest. Right here.” Yeji tapped high on her own breast. “A dark one. She tried to hide it from me. I think whoever she brought back hurt her, and she’s too embarrassed to admit it.”

Karina watched Yuna force a wide, loud smile at whatever Ningning was saying. The muscles around her mouth worked hard, but her face sank right back into a flat stare the second Ningning looked away.

“You want me to talk to her?” Karina offered.

Yeji exhaled, her shoulders sinking. “Would you? I tried again this morning, and she just ran away. Better if it comes from someone else.”

Karina stood and navigated the minefield of blankets and kicked-off sandals, before stopping at Yuna’s shoulder. The girl was dissecting the label on her soju bottle, peeling the paper back in thin, violent strips.

Karina folded her legs and sat, pressing her shoulder against Yuna’s. The ocean wind whipped sand over their shoes. Yuna stiffened. Her thumbnail locked against a scrap of paper.

“Unnie,” Yuna chirped, pitching her voice high and loud. “What’s up?”

A massive, practiced smile snapped onto her face. It looked like hard work.

Karina let out a slow breath, slumping her shoulders to tip her head sideways and drop her cheek heavy against Yuna’s shoulder. Yuna’s breath hitched at the sudden contact, but Karina just stayed there, pressing in until the muscles holding up Yuna’s fake smile started to shake, twitching at the corners before her whole face dropped.

Yuna’s hands dropped back to the bottle, shredding the remaining label into a pile of green confetti.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to perform for me,” Karina murmured into her sleeve.

Yuna’s jaw clicked shut. She stared at the scraped glass of her bottle, her thumb pinned against the sticky glue residue.

“I’m fine, really,” Yuna said.

Karina leaned sideways, sealing the gap between their arms. Behind them, Giselle shrieked over whatever Yunjin had just claimed. The fire popped, throwing hot sap onto the sand.

Yuna dragged in a hitched, uneven breath. She bit the inside of her cheek until the skin went white. Her spine bowed inward, collapsing her tall frame, and she dropped the glass bottle into the dirt.

“I’m not -” Yuna whispered. “I’m not fine.”

Karina shifted deeper into the sand, letting her arm stay heavy against Yuna’s to block the wind.

“Keep the reason,” Karina said. “Just sit here with me.”

Yuna blinked. Thick, glassy wetness gathered along her lower lashes. She swallowed a hard knot in her throat and snapped her gaze back to the wood smoke.

“Does it get easier?” Yuna asked, the words scraping her throat. “Feeling like you... totally wrecked everything?”

Karina watched the orange sparks spiral upward into the black. “Eventually. Once you admit you’re the one who actually got cut on the glass.”

Yuna took that in with a slow nod. She pulled her knees to her chest, caging her sweatpant-covered shins with both arms, and dropped her forehead onto the soft cotton over her knees. Karina kept her shoulder pressed into Yuna’s arm while the fire burned down. They stayed side by side in the dirt, letting Yunjin’s screaming and the crashing surf handle the noise.

“I’ve made a decision,” Chaeryeong announced, dropping Sunwoo’s sleeve and projecting clearly over the crashing surf. “I need an actual s’more. Properly roasted.”

“Seconded!” Ningning agreed immediately from across the fire.

Winter froze, her hand buried deep in the massive canvas snack tote sitting by her knees. Her eyes went round above her puffed cheeks. She peered down into its depths and started digging, both hands tossing a box of Pepero and a stray pack of gummies onto the sand in a frantic scramble.

She stopped. She looked up at Karina, blinking sheepishly.

“Ummm. Unnie -”

Everyone looked over.

Winter pulled a crumpled, completely empty plastic bag out of the tote and held it up by the corner.

“There’s no more marshmallows...”

“How many did she eat?” Giselle asked, already knowing the answer.

“It’s not my fault,” Winter protested, clutching the empty wrapper. “You guys stole all my sour candy the other night!”

“I was helping you,” Giselle said nonchalantly, licking chip dust off her thumb. “You were hoarding. Besides, someone needs to go get more s’mores.”

“And chips,” Ningning added, casually chewing on the last piece she’d snuck from the bag.

Winter shot a cutting side-eye at Giselle across the fire.

Ningning loudly took Winter’s side, arguing that honey butter chips were a cultural imperative, while Chaeryeong betrayed that side at once purely because she wanted her s’mores fantasy to be perfect. Karina got to her feet while the argument was still rising into the night air.

“I’ll go.”

Winter brightened instantly, tugging on the hem of Karina’s dress. “Honey butter chips, unnie. Please. Only the yellow ones.”

Yuna looked up from the sand.

Karina dusted off her shorts and scooped up the empty canvas shopping tote by the straps. “Yuna-ya, come help me carry stuff, will you? We’ll take the golf cart.”

Yuna blinked, startled by the direct order, but nodded quickly and scrambled up. Karina caught her hand mid-step, lacing their fingers together with a firm grip and pulling her forward. Yuna’s shoulders hitched at the sudden contact, her hand staying stiff until she finally forced her knuckles to relax against Karina’s palm.

Ducking her chin into her hoodie, she let herself be towed up the dark beach path toward the road, leaving Yeji watching their retreat until the dunes swallowed them.

[YUNA’S POV]

At the top of the dune, the golf cart coughed to life on the second try. Yuna climbed into the passenger seat and tucked her knees up to her chest, the baggy gray sweatpants bunching around her ankles while the narrow road out past the resort ran dark beside the water, the cart’s single working headlight throwing a shaky, pathetic yellow path through the night.

Normally, she lived for this midnight aesthetic. Riding shotgun in the dark with her hair whipping around should’ve given immense main character energy, but tonight her brain refused to enjoy the fun part. The Levitating soundtrack from two days ago when she’d walked down to the beach thinking she was hot shit? Yeah, that was dead. Now it was just the same bruising facts spinning on loop until she wanted to unzip her own skin and climb out, leaving those perfectly manicured nails behind.

“You’ve been quiet all night,” Karina said over the rattle of the engine, keeping her eyes on the road.

“I’m fine,” Yuna shot back on pure instinct, hating how the lie came out coated in that automatic idol-trained gloss she saved for Cosmopolitan. Great, even her denial sounded media-trained. She bit her lip and stared at the dark tangerine trees whipping past while Karina kept driving in silence, giving Yuna way too much time to obsess over the glowing green numbers on the dashboard clock.

Minutes later, the GS25 sliding doors parted in a blast of freezing AC and offensive lighting. Yuna caught her reflection in the door glass and actively flinched. The overhead fluorescents were violently anti-woman, blowing out her features until she just looked exhausted and pore-heavy. The whole store was just dead-silent aisles of ramen and lighting totally optimized to ruin your self-esteem.

Karina stepped through the automatic doors a second later, the entry sensor chiming loudly in the empty store. She caught Yuna rigidly staring at the glass and immediately let her gaze slide past her to the aisles, offering the easiest out possible. “I’ll go hunt down the marshmallows,” Karina quipped, cutting right through the hum of the freezers. She nodded toward the back wall. “You grab the rest.”

They split up, leaving Yuna to speed-walk down the chip aisle, desperate to grab the honey butter chips and make this whole mini-trip strictly about sodium because carbs were safe and junk food didn’t judge you for hooking up with your leader’s terrifyingly competent non-boyfriend. Just a normal midnight snack run. Very casual. SO fine.

She made it three steps before the drink fridge stopped her.

Blue Pepsi cans sat stacked in clean rows behind the glass, each label turned forward for the 2024 summer promo - IVE Summer Festa. The same one Yeji had been holding back on the beach. Wonyoung smiled from the aluminum at eye level, glossy and too perfect under the fridge light, her printed face repeating down the shelf until the whole fucking display looked like a creepy fan account with a beverage license.

Yuna stopped with one hand on the door handle.

The dark bedroom came back in phone light and twisted sheets. The article she’d already read twice. The comments scrolling under her thumb while her body lay there refusing to cooperate.

Face and body-wise, she and Jang Wonyoung are the top two.

Her fingers slipped through the gap before she decided to move. She touched the can with Wonyoung’s face on it, one fingertip resting against the printed cheek.

“Nice to look at...” she whispered.

“Yuna-ya,” Karina called from the next aisle. “Did you find it?”

Yuna snatched her hand back so fast the cans clinked together. She grabbed the nearest box of plain crackers off the shelf and hugged it to her oversized hoodie.

The Wonyoung can kept smiling at her from behind the glass. Yuna grabbed two cold cans of maekju from the next row and pinned them against the crackers.

“Yep!” She answered, trying to force some bouncy, maknae-line charm into the suggestion that fell flat against the hum of the freezers. “Found crackers. Very chips-adjacent. Honestly, genius.”

She tracked down Karina leaning one shoulder against the freezer glass with her thumb glowing over her phone screen.

“Wait, what if we just - like - give Minjeong-unnie these?” Yuna asked, holding up the crackers.

Karina looked up with half a smile, but Yuna’s eyes had already caught the screen.

It was a photo of Karina at twenty in a sheer purple stage outfit, face rounder but expression blank, that porcelain-doll stare she’d perfected in rehearsal rooms, scrubbing out every trace of the actual human until only the weaponized avatar remained.

Yuna frowned as a weird spike of annoyance hit her. “Jimin-unnie. Who is that?”

Karina’s thumb twitched like she was going to snap the phone against her thigh, but she stopped and left it face-up under the harsh store lights.

“Me. When I was twenty. Black Mamba era, the year I debuted.”

Yuna stared at the screen. “Unnie, you look so...” She couldn’t find the right word. ‘Empty’ didn’t cover the sheer amount of effort it took to look that devoid of life. “...CG.”

“I was trying so hard, you’ve got no idea,” Karina cut in, bereft of her usual smoky polish. “I thought that was everything I wanted... if I could just get that sexy look right, then I’d be happy.”

“Always thought that was the goal, you know? To train my face out of the picture until there was nothing left but the brand. I thought if I just became the perfect blank slate for SM, then people couldn’t hurt the real me.”

Yuna lowered the crackers onto the top of the freezer case, the cardboard hitting the glass with a quiet, hollow tap. Why did Karina look so vacant under all that pretty, and why did that vacancy look so horribly familiar? That was supposed to be the dream version - twenty, pretty, famous, wanted. So why did the girl in the photo look like a completely empty shell?

Karina dragged her thumb across the glass to reveal a waiting room selfie featuring heavily styled hair. “Music Bank. I think I’d been awake forty straight hours at that point. Somebody told me to fix my face right before they took this.”

She swiped again, bringing up a bulletproof smile flashing beneath Seoul streetlights. “Dispatch. Didn’t even know they were following me.” She stared at the phone. “Saw it online the next day and that’s when I realized... my face just does that now. Smiles before I even know someone’s there.”

Yuna stared hard through the glass at the girl in the picture while her own brain traitorously fired off a rapid highlight reel of her own broadcast habits. The chin tilt. The breathy laugh. The hip angle that said hot but not desperate. The pout that tested well with male fans but didn’t alienate female ones. She’d practiced all of it until her face knew the drill better than she did, and suddenly, the daily grind of being the visual felt less like a flex and more like a burden.

Karina locked the phone, shutting down the screen. “You can get very, very good at being what people think they want.”

Yuna’s posture caved inward, her face flushing so hot that wearing that massive hoodie and sweats suddenly felt like the most honest choice she’d made all week. She swallowed, the movement catching awkwardly in her throat.

“Does it help?” Yuna asked timidly.

Karina laughed once under her breath. “It helps them, until they’ve taken everything they can and you don’t even remember your name anymore.”

The freezer’s hum buzzed loudly in Yuna’s ears as she reached for the crackers again, her fingers hovering over the box before gripping the cardboard and pulling it tight against her ribs.

Up at the front of the store, a NewJeans track trickled through the cheap ceiling speakers. The sad one, of course, because even after two days unhinged idol disaster, the universe never relented with its impeccable sense of comedic timing. It was the one with the girl filming the girls like they were her actual friends, then boom - surprise, bestie - your emotional support idols were a coping mechanism with great styling. Parasocial damage, director’s cut. Yuna knew the lore because nobody survived fourth gen without studying every competitor’s cinematic universe like it was the CSAT. Though, hearing that song over the ramen aisle while she was having a face-and-body crisis in a GS25 felt weirdly personal.

They carried their items up to the counter, dumping marshmallows, cracker boxes, chocolate, and Yuna’s two beers onto the counter. Yuna slapped two Melonas on top because the freezer glass had given her the shakes.

Behind the counter, the cashier kept his eyes glued to his lap. A guy in his late twenties rotting in a rumpled uniform vest, he locked his thousand-yard stare on his phone, mashing his thumbs through some mobile game.

She draped herself over the counter, leaning forward to deploy her best, most desperate variety-show pout to get his attention. “Sir. SIR?? Do you have honey butter chips too?”

Her reflection stared back from the black acrylic security screen bolted to the counter, locking Yuna in place. She’d instinctively snapped into that broadcast-approved pout, rolling her shoulder forward and widening her eyes for a guy who clearly wasn’t giving a shit about her. The cringe hit her muscles before her brain caught up. She abandoned the posture instantly, shrinking her spine down against the counter and yanking her hoodie strings tight to hide her blazing cheeks.

Karina took a step back.

“Honey butter?” he droned, as he blindly dragged the marshmallows across the scanner. “A young lady came in the other night and cleared out the whole shelf.”

“Sold out?” Yuna gripped the edge of the counter, her cute act dissolving into actual horror.

“You heard me.” The cashier hauled his gaze over his phone, squinting at the two of them under the buzzing lights. His eyes passed from Karina’s face to Yuna’s and back again. “Actually, she looked a lot like Winter from aespa. Are you two -”

“Nice of you to think that,” Karina cut him off, flashing a hollow smile. “But no.”

He shrugged, dragging the crackers across the scanner and dropping his eyes right back to his screen. “Whatever. You girls all look the same with the plastic surgery you get on the mainland anyway.”

Yuna dropped her forehead against the edge of the counter, breaking into a messy laugh. A copy-paste job sitting on the same mainland shelf. Karina called it thirty seconds ago and here was the universe proving her right in real time. Yuna slapped a hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking. If she let the laugh stop, she was going to have to exist in a world where some random GS25 guy reduced her entire life to a joke. Karina’s face softened, the diamond edge melting off and leaving the cashier standing there holding a box of crackers like a malfunctioning NPC.

The drive back was slower.

Karina tore open one of the Melonas and passed it to Yuna before unwrapping her own, steering the cart with her knees while she peeled back the paper. The wind dropped to a steady push off the water, rattling the plastic bag between their knees while the cart’s single working headlight threw its sad yellow cone over the asphalt.

Yuna bit into the green ice, neon syrup running down to the corner of her mouth. She didn’t notice until Karina pulled a tissue from her pocket and handed it over while keeping her eyes on the road. Yuna took it and scrubbed at her face, the sticky residue smearing before it came clean.

Karina kept one hand on the wheel. Yuna held the Melona wrapper in her fist, green syrup drying sticky on her thumb, and stared at the dark tangerine groves passing on the left.

The cashier’s voice was still in her ears. You girls all look the same.

Same shelf, same idol face under a fluorescent tube. Yuna wanted to be mad about it. Instead, she kept hearing her own laugh from the store, too loud and too sharp. She’d bully herself for if it ever aired on a variety show.

“Boys are fun, aren’t they?” Karina said, her eyes on the road.

Yuna’s head snapped sideways. Karina kept her eyes on the road, mouth flat, dark hair whipping across her jaw.

“Yeah,” Yuna said, and the answer came out in the bright broadcast tone she’d used on every variety show since debut, breathy and cute with the vocal fry that tested well. She bit the inside of her cheek the second it left her mouth. Great. Even this had a rehearsal room stink on it.

“Fun,” Yuna repeated, quieter, trying to mean it this time. “Like - yeah.”

Karina glanced over. “What fun?”

The pool flashed back. Yeji’s cum still glossy on his cock the second the towel hit the tile, and Yuna’s brain locking onto it like an exclusive drop unnie had been gatekeeping. That’s why she keeps him around. Her personal premium subscription. She’d thought if she could just get him to beg for her instead - if she could make him pick her, even for thirty seconds going feral underwater in the deep end - she’d unlock the cheat code that made Yeji-unnie untouchable. She’d climbed out of that pool confident she’d secured the ultimate flex. But the thing unnie actually had with him didn’t live in his cock or his cum or getting chosen; it was the part Yuna couldn’t just serve face and fuck her way into. The way he held unnie’s face like she was a literal human being and not a 4K fancam. When she’d overheard him telling her “they’re perfect” through the wall after she’d complained about her tits being small.

“People thinking I’m hot,” Yuna finally said. “That’s the fun part. Knowing they want me.”

She’d never said it that plainly before. It sounded worse out loud than it did in her head, which was REALLY saying something because it hadn’t sounded great in her head either.

Karina nodded once, watching the road. “I used to think that too.”

“Used to?”

“Mhm.” Karina shifted the cart around a curve, the headlight sweeping across a low stone wall. “Being wanted was the best feeling I knew. For a long time.”

Yuna turned the sticky Melona wrapper between her fingers, pressing the green residue into thin lines on her skin. “So what happened?”

“I got everything I wanted.” Karina rubbed the back of her neck, her fingers digging under her dark hair. “But they only wanted Karina from the magazines. The girl who skips carbs and finds the right smile for every room.”

Karina let out a short, dry laugh. “Three nights ago. After the BLACKPINK set. Ryujin wanted to run through some Yonsei frat boys she found in the mosh pit. Dragged me along for bait.”

Yuna’s head snapped around, completely forgetting the sticky Melona wrapper. “Wait. FIVE? Unnie. You didn’t.”

“I tried.” Karina slouched forward, bracing her forearm against the steering wheel. “I literally stripped naked on their shitty leather couch, spread my legs wide open so they had a perfect view, and waited. You know what they did?”

Yuna didn’t answer. She couldn’t.

“They fucking gawked.” Karina shook her head, an ugly smile twisting her mouth. “Stood there with their jaws slacked, drooling over my tits like I was a hallucination.”

Yuna swallowed, the sweet taste of the Melona suddenly completely gone.

“I was lying there wet and desperate for someone to just fuck me hard like a normal girl,” Karina said. She steered the cart around a pothole with the heel of her hand. “Which - you know what I mean. We’re young. We’re allowed to just want good sex.”

Yuna nodded once, scraping her sticky thumb against the soft cotton over her knee. She definitely knew what she meant.

“Except half of them busted the second they pushed inside,” Karina snorted. “The rest just used me like a human fleshlight. Hammering away without giving a single shit if I actually got off.” She glanced over, her eyes catching the dashboard light. “They didn’t want me, Yuna-ya. They just wanted to stick their useless dicks in the poster so they could brag about unlocking a trophy.”

The cart rattled over an uneven patch and Yuna grabbed the oh-shit bar, her sweatpants brushing against the plastic bag.

“And the thing is,” Karina continued, “you can give them that forever. Skin, performance, the girl they showed up for. You can keep handing it out, and they’ll keep taking it, and everyone keeps calling it love.”

Yuna’s throat went dry.

“Until one day you want one single thing for yourself,” Karina finished, “and they tell you it’s a betrayal.”

The wind filled the cart. Tangerine groves blurred past. Yuna opened her mouth, then closed it again.

She thought about her own Instagram, the comments she scrolled through at 2 AM calling her the hottest fourth-gen idol alive, the DMs from industry guys opening with compliments about her waist and closing with hotel names, the fancam numbers she tracked like a stock portfolio. She’d treated all of it like proof she mattered. Karina had collected the prize and ended up writing an apology for having a life.

Yuna swallowed.

The question had been poking at her since before Jeju, since the group chat, since the BLACKPINK tickets Ryujin gave to Karina because Karina was still apparently a mess three months after a relationship that lasted five weeks. But also because Yuna was too busy fucking some random guy to return Ryujin’s calls, and later ranted about it to herself on the beach like the entitled brat she was.

“Jimin-unnie. What actually happened with him?” She asked quietly.

Karina didn’t flinch. She kept her eyes on the road and her hand steady on the wheel.

“We met in Milan,” she said carefully. “At the Prada show. He was smart and handsome, and he looked at me like I was real.” She took the cart around a bend in the road. “Rare enough that I thought it meant something.”

“Did it?”

“For about a month.” Karina adjusted her grip on the wheel. “We went on walks late at night near his apartment. He’d buy me iced coffee from the GS25 near his building, and we’d talk about dumb things, like what dramas were good and whether cats or dogs were better. Normal things.”

She went quiet long enough that Yuna thought she was done.

“Then Dispatch got it,” Karina said. “And everything became content.”

Yuna looked down at the Melona wrapper in her fist. Content. The same word she used for her Instagram grid. The same word her manager used when reviewing her fancam numbers.

“They sent a truck to my company,” Karina sighed. “With a billboard on it. Asking if I didn’t feel loved enough by my fans. Asking why I’d betrayed them.”

Yuna’s hand froze on the Melona wrapper.

“I wrote an apology,” Karina continued, her shoulders dipping as the cart rolled over cracked asphalt. “On paper. By hand. Posted it to Instagram. I told fourteen million people I was sorry for having a boyfriend.” She took the next curve. “He told his agency he wanted to focus on his drama. That was it for him. Clean exit.”

He went back to work. She wrote sorry by hand and posted it where everyone could zoom in. Same relationship, same breakup, different cost.

“Five weeks, Yuna-ya,” Karina said. “We were public for five weeks. I apologized for longer than I dated him.”

Yuna remembered her own rant from the beach, the bitter little monologue she’d delivered to her shadow about Karina moping over a guy she’d barely been with and costing Yuna her BLACKPINK tickets. Her toes curled against the cart floor.

“I had every version of what you think you want,” Karina said, her fingers tightening once on the wheel. “The face. The fame. The beautiful man. The feeling of being chosen.” The road bent left and Karina followed it. “And I still couldn’t tell you the last time any of them knew who was actually in the room with them.”

“The sex was easy. They wanted it, I gave it, everyone left happy.” Karina adjusted her grip on the wheel. “Took me a while to realize they weren’t fucking me. They were fucking the girl from the magazine. I was just the one who had to show up for it.”

Yuna sat still with green Melona syrup on her thumb and the plastic bag crinkling against her sweatpants. Karina kept her hand steady on the wheel while the dark road unspooled ahead of them.

She’d thought Karina was weak for hurting that long over something that short. Now the timing made sense. Five weeks of having someone see her, then the industry stole it away with a press release, and Karina was still walking around with the handprint.

The worst part was that Minho had wanted her. Her body made that impossible to deny, which was the whole reason she’d treated it like a win. But even then, between every wet little victory lap her brain had turned into content, his eyes kept cutting back toward the bedroom like Yeji had a hand on him from afar.

“Unnie,” Yuna said, very quietly.

“Mm?”

“I was such a bitch about the BLACKPINK tickets.”

Karina let out one breath through her nose.

“I did wonder why Head Blink wasn’t there,” she said, and one corner of her mouth lifted wryly. “You don’t seem like someone who misses BLACKPINK by accident.”

Yuna pressed her sticky thumb harder into the vinyl seat. Yeah. Funny story. Hilarious, actually. Five stars. No notes. She kept all of that inside her mouth and stared at the headlight shaking over the road.

They drove the rest of the way in the dark, the resort lights growing brighter through the trees. Yuna pressed her sticky thumb against the vinyl seat and watched Karina in the passing headlights of an oncoming car.

Karina looked beautiful, because of course she did. The annoying part was that Yuna could see the dark smudges under her eyes now too, and they made the beautiful harder to lie about.

Yuna thought she might want to learn that too. Eventually. Not tonight. Tonight she just had to carry a bag of marshmallows back to a bonfire and figure out how to fix the thing she broke without cutting herself again.

The resort gate opened. The headlights found the beach path.

“You good?” Karina asked.

Yuna wiped the green syrup off her thumb with the napkin Karina had given her earlier.

“Yeah,” she said. “Better.”

They rolled back into the firelight moments later, the plastic shopping bag resting loudly against Yuna’s sweatpants as she climbed out. Winter spotted the marshmallows from the blankets and let out a high squeal while brandishing a wooden skewer, prompting Ningning to snatch the bag from Yuna with both hands and instantly assign jobs nobody had requested.

Yeji looked up from the fire the second Karina stepped back into the circle, and when their eyes met across the sand, Karina gave a small nod that Yeji reciprocated.

Before Yuna even sat down, Ningning shoved a half-assembled s’more directly into her hand, declaring she looked like she needed chocolate before going straight back to nearly setting another marshmallow actively on fire. Karina lowered herself back onto the sand where Ningning immediately slumped against her shoulder as if she’d never left. Across the roaring fire, Ryujin threw her head back, laughing loudly at something Yunjin had just said while Yuna looked down at the chocolate melting into the cracker in her hand, letting the noise of the beach wash over her.

[MINHO’S POV]

By the time the second round of marshmallows got underway, the fire had burned down into that nice, competent middle stage, impressive enough to validate the effort and dangerous enough to keep Ningning interested. Sunwoo and Minjun were on the other side, half committed to a long story about a manager in Osaka who’d somehow locked himself in a hotel bathroom, while I stood behind Yeji with my thumbs pressed into the tight muscles at the base of her neck.

Finding her took no effort anymore.

She had her chin tipped forward, one knee drawn up, both hands wrapped loosely around a Pepsi can while I worked my fingers over her shoulders. Moving firelight caught the sharp edge of her cheekbone and the bridge of her nose, then slid away. Every now and then she’d smile at something Chaeryeong or Lia said, and my fingers stopped against her hoodie until I remembered to move them.

I kept swallowing the same thought over and over.

I almost lost all of this.

Yuna came out of the dark with a cold beer in each hand, and Minjun stopped talking mid-sentence.

She crossed the last stretch of sand with her eyes down, oversized hoodie swallowing her hands, gray sweatpants dragging low over her heels. I thought she was coming to give Yeji the drink until she stepped around Yeji’s shoulder, set both cans carefully in the sand by my foot, wrapped her arms around my middle, and pressed her face into the front of my zip hoodie hard enough for one rough breath to catch against the zipper.

My hands stayed useless in the cold air while everyone watched.

Yeji looked up first, her head turning beneath my arm. Her eyebrows pulled together, confused, then her face softened when Yuna’s fingers clenched in my jacket.

“Yuna-ya?” she asked. “What happened?”

Yuna shook her head once against me and turned her face until her mouth brushed my ear.

“I thought being wanted meant I was worth something,” she whispered. Her fingers tightened once in my jacket. “You saw me anyway. So stop feeling bad for being decent to me. Yeji-unnie chose you, so... don’t make her regret being brave.”

I shut my eyes. For days, I’d been carrying that pool like evidence against myself, replaying it every time I looked at Yeji or Yuna went quiet until my jaw hurt.

Yuna stood there in her huge hoodie, crying into my jacket, and told me to stop.

I lowered one hand to the back of her head, keeping my palm light and my body still, close enough to comfort her and careful enough for Yeji to see exactly what I meant.

“You’re worth plenty.” I said quietly, keeping my hand still against her hair. “You don’t have to prove it like that.”

Her shoulders hitched once, and Yeji was on her feet before anyone else moved. She stepped close, one hand landing on Yuna’s back, her attention narrowing the way it did when one of her members came offstage pale and pretending not to be hurt.

“Yuna.” Yeji’s hand moved once between Yuna’s shoulder blades. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”

Yuna lifted her face from my jacket. Her lashes were wet, cheeks blotchy, nose pink from the wind, and when she tried to smile, her mouth shook out of it.

“I messed up.” Yuna rubbed her sleeve under her nose and looked at the sand between Yeji’s feet. “And Minho-oppa helped me after. That’s all. He was... he was nice to me when I didn’t really deserve nice.”

Yeji looked at me, and I held still until her shoulders dropped. She nodded once, then pulled Yuna out of my arms and straight into hers.

Yuna went with a choked little sound, folding into Yeji so fast my hand was left hanging there. Yeji wrapped both arms around her and tucked her chin against Yuna’s temple, rocking once in the sand.

“You’re our maknae. You always deserve nice,” Yeji murmured, rubbing the back of Yuna’s hoodie with her thumb.

Karina sat near the blankets with her drink held loose between both hands, watching Yuna over the rim. When Yuna finally peeled herself off Yeji and wiped both cheeks with her sleeves, Karina gave her a small nod of approval, and Yuna’s eyes immediately found the ground again.

Yuna’s mouth trembled before she bent, picked up one of the maekju she’d brought, and pressed it into my hand.

“For you.” Yuna cleared her throat, grabbed the other bottle, and shoved it toward Yeji. “And for unnie. Because apparently I’m mature now.”

“Apparently,” Yeji said, taking it.

Minjun waited until Yuna had shuffled back toward the blankets and collapsed between Karina and Ningning before leaning over.

“Did I miss a whole redemption arc?”

I cracked open the maekju Yuna had given me. The hiss cut clean through the fire crackle.

“Yeah,” I said, watching Yeji turn the can once in her hands before she looked back at Yuna. “You really did.”

Behind us, Yunjin and Giselle had sought each other out again and were currently deep into their third or fourth argument of the night. Except this one had drastically pivoted to anime. Ryujin had made the fatal mistake of trying to contribute and was already looking for a way out.

“Gojo Satoru is the best character ever written in any medium,” Yunjin announced, projecting her voice over the fire. “I will die on this hill and I’ll look hot doing it.”

“He’s a thirst trap with a backstory.” Giselle tucked her hands deeper into her oversized sleeves.

Yunjin slapped her thigh in outrage. “Okay, a thirst trap can also be a genius! Why does it have to be one or the other with you, it’s exhausting.”

“Shinji Ikari. Better written. It’s not close.”

Yunjin stared at her in pure horror. “I don’t care about better written, I care about iconic. Shinji is iconic at having one breakdown in a robot.”

“That’s still writing.”

“Crying in a giant robot isn’t automatic literature, Aeri.”

Ryujin leaned in between them, committed and doomed. “Okay but Zoro would clap both of these guys, so -”

Both of them turned on her with lethal synchronization.

“How much have you actually seen?” Giselle asked.

Ryujin hesitated, sensing the trap. “Like... the first three arcs?”

Yunjin dramatically clutched her own chest. “That’s the trailer, babe.”

“You haven’t watched One Piece, you waved at it from across the room.” Giselle waved a hand to dismiss her.

Ryujin looked betrayed.

From the main blanket, Winter leaned toward Ningning again, holding her half-burnt marshmallow upright like a tiny ruined microphone. “Are they still bonding?”

“Yep.” Ningning nodded solemnly, critically examining the charcoal side of her marshmallow. “Still bonding.”

That was how the rest of the night went. People pairing off, arguing, and drifting back again. Chaeryeong kept stealing bites directly from Sunwoo’s s’more, claiming it was strictly quality control. Lia snapped photos across the fire, timing them for when people stopped posing. Karina laughed with her head bent, one hand over her mouth, while Yunjin switched seamlessly into English to complain. Yeji leaned close to Ryujin for a quick, quiet exchange that ended with Ryujin rolling her eyes dramatically but handing over her drink anyway.

Then Winter’s phone lit up and rang loudly from the sand, and she practically scrambled over Ningning to grab it, knees slipping in the blanket and one socked foot kicking free.

She looked at the screen, her face splitting into an instant grin. “Wait. Wait, everybody. Say hi.”

She answered the FaceTime already smiling, aiming the camera out at the fire.

“HI!” the entire beach circle yelled in unison, hands waving at the lens.

A deep voice rumbled a laugh through the phone speaker. A massive dog shoved its face briefly into the frame underneath a tattooed hand, prompting Winter to shriek in sheer delight and clap both hands over her mouth, trapping the phone between her palms for one dangerous second.

“Unnie.” Ningning rescued the bottom edge before the screen tipped toward the sand.

“Puppy,” Winter whispered back, reverent and useless as an explanation.

Within seconds, she turned the phone right back around to hoard the screen to herself, tucking her chin down and curling around it. Giselle let Winter burrow against her shoulder and lazily patted her hair, keeping her drink steady.

Yeji had drifted back to my side at some point during the call, settling into the sand close enough that her shoulder brushed my knee. I tipped my chin toward Winter, who was curled around the phone whispering at the screen.

“That dog’s huge,” I said.

“Mhm.”

“And that hand had a lot of ink on it.”

Yeji took a slow sip of her maekju. “He’s a sunbae.” She tucked her chin against her knee, the smallest curl at the corner of her mouth. “Friend of ours. He’s good to her.”

“That’s all I get?”

“That’s all anyone gets.” She bumped her shoulder against my thigh gently. “That’s how she keeps it.”

The fire started to burn low, the orange flames retreating back into the wood. I pulled the collar of my jacket up against the ocean chill as somebody tossed another thick piece of driftwood into the center. Propped back on one hand in the sand, I just sat and watched everybody find comfortable, tangled shapes around each other to block the wind. aespa had tucked in a little closer together, apparently bracing for their flight out tomorrow. ITZY sprawled across their blankets like they’d owned this beach for a week.

Yunjin had fully abandoned her flannel jacket, sprawling back on her elbows in the sand, and was currently delivering a loud, tipsy state-of-the-union address on the Seoul dating pool.

“I opened Tinder before the plane even got to the gate,” Yunjin announced, waving her phone at the fire. “Mapo-gu is a fucking wasteland. I needed to see if the island roster was carrying.”

“Is it that bad?” Chaeryeong asked, leaning forward over her knees.

“It’s bleak, bro,” Yunjin ranted, letting her head drop back. Her throat caught the firelight. “Do you know what comeback prep does to a bitch? I’ve been doing six hours of choreo a day on iced americanos and spite. I even fully shaved for this trip. Do you know how exhausting that is on two hours of sleep? I’m down so astronomically bad I could walk into the ocean. PLEASE get me a guy who can rail me so hard I forget my own name.”

Ryujin laughed into her beer can. “Girl, just hook up with one of your backup dancers like a normal person.”

“HUH-larious. But nah.” Yunjin slashed a hand through the air. “They get weird. The second you try to choke them with your thighs, they panic about HR. You open your legs for some Gangnam industry fuckboy and half the time he’s trying to network mid-stroke or asking about Spotify streams. I don’t want a fan, I want a menace. I want some dude who can actually fold me like a lawn chair and shut me the fuck up.”

Beside me, Yeji let out a soft snort of agreement, taking a slow sip of her drink.

“I thought a Jeju local might actually have some stamina,” Yunjin sighed, scrolling aggressively with her thumb. “Fishermen. Surfers. Dudes who don’t own a twelve-step skincare routine and can actually rearrange my guts. Give me calluses or give me death.”

“Or crypto bros,” Yuna muttered darkly from inside her hoodie.

On the other blanket, Ningning stopped chewing on the end of her wooden skewer. She turned her head, very slowly, and stared dead at Giselle.

Winter caught the look. Her head snapped toward Giselle too, her eyes widening.

Giselle took a maddeningly slow sip of her drink, the ice clinking loudly in the plastic cup. She lowered it, maintaining a completely blank expression as her members zeroed in on her.

Yunjin sat up fast, sensing blood in the water. “Wait, why are you all looking at her?”

Giselle adjusted the heavy blanket over her legs. “I commit vibes.”

“Aeri.” Yunjin started. “AERI. Did you get your back blown out while I was stuck in a recording studio?”

Lia put her phone face down in the sand and crossed her arms. Even Karina went still, attention snapping in.

Giselle picked a piece of lint off her sleeve, looking thoroughly unbothered by the sudden interrogation. “Dude, if it helps your thesis, he wasn’t local. He’s a cinematographer I knew from high school. Lives in Gangnam. So your Seoul facts are off.”

“That’s a full confession,” Yunjin gasped, already way too invested. “Spill. Right now.”

Winter paused mid-chew, looking between them with wide, sincere eyes. “Wait, so how did your networking go, unnie? You never told us.”

The fire popped sharply, throwing a sudden burst of bright orange sparks up into the dark space between us.

I looked across it.

Yeji was already watching me. She raised one eyebrow, her chin still propped on her knee, and waited me out. I broke eye contact first, conceding the point, and I caught the corner of her mouth twitching up into a smirk right before I faced the water.

Across the circle, Giselle took one last long drink and finally started.

“So we were at that really hyped samgyupsal place in Seogwipo, right?” she began, channeling that thoroughly pseudo-West Coast energy. “And that place was so smoky I couldn’t see a fucking thing. Anyway, we were meeting this cinematographer guy I knew from high school...”

Author’s Note

I know this chapter is a little heavier than the title suggests, but I hope it was worth the wait. Honestly, this was probably my least favorite chapter to work on - not because it didn’t matter, but because the subject matter is dark and philosophically complex in a way that’s far from the smut and romance I actually enjoy writing most. But alongside “Nobody Like You,” this might be the most emotionally deep chapter in the series. This story wouldn’t be complete without it, and I think it stands on its own.

If you’ve made it this far into the series, there’s a good chance you’re not just here for the smut anymore. One of the unintended consequences of using bodies to tell emotional truth is that you inevitably hit the philosophical questions underneath - specifically, what it actually costs to live in that body professionally.

I wanted to explore that parasocial damage in a way that felt real and personal. Karina’s history was the best way to close off Yuna’s arc, because Yuna had to learn that being desired as a product isn’t the same thing as being seen as a person.

Quick housekeeping before I get into it - I renamed this chapter. It started life as “Dynamite and Drama,” which was a clean little ensemble title (Dynamite is ITZY, Drama is aespa, two groups colliding on a beach, very tidy, right?) But by the time the final draft was done, it was obvious the bonfire wasn’t actually the heart of the chapter - the golf cart and convenience store was. So Ditto it is.

And honestly, the more I sat with it, the more “Ditto” earned its keep on three separate levels at once, which is an absurd amount of layering for one word:

1. The NewJeans song. Parasocial damage, the thematic spine I was building toward the whole time (more on that in a sec).

2. The literal meaning. “Same thing.” Karina IS Yuna’s ditto - the older mirror, the same girl three years and eight months down the road who chased exactly what Yuna’s chasing now and ended up writing an apology for having a life. The GS25 cashier flattening them with “you girls all look the same with the plastic surgery you get on the mainland” is the universe twisting the knife on the exact same idea: interchangeable products on the same shelf.

3. The Spirited Away nod (see below). Once you let the industry rename you, you become a copy of yourself. Ditto.

Which brings me to that first point.

This chapter is heavily based on the themes from NewJeans’ “Ditto,” which, deep down, is about how parasocial love is a one-way mirror. The idol performs and gives so much of themselves, but gets nothing real back. The fan loves and supports unconditionally, but never actually connects with the person, and both end up alone.

It’s also why Karina’s line about forgetting your name is a direct nod to Spirited Away. Just like Yubaba steals Chihiro’s real name to bind her to the bathhouse, the idol industry demands the human (“Jimin”) give up her identity to the persona (“Karina”). They exist just to serve the masses, trapped in the performance until they forget who they really are.

Rather than leaving you with another long-ass note this time, I’ll assign some homework. I think this video is a really interesting deep dive on the MV that thematically inspired this chapter and the core of Yuna and Karina’s arcs. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

I also think this article is a really good breakdown on the subject!