Across The Stars

YEJI

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 hardwood 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.