Before The Shore

Jihyo had excellent timing in the same way storms had excellent timing. They never arrived when convenient. Only when inevitable. John learned this again on the night before MISAMO had to leave for Japan, while Sana was still close enough to him that the room had not finished cooling down from her goodbye.

That was how Sana treated distance. Not with sadness first. With warmth. With possession. With a smile that said she was leaving, but not before making sure he remembered exactly who he belonged to while she was gone.

John was still trying to recover his ability to think like a normal human being when the door opened. Jihyo stood there. Sana did not look embarrassed, but John did. Only one of them had survival instinct.

Jihyo stared at them for three full seconds, then closed the door behind her. John blinked "That is not better."

Jihyo pointed at him "Don't move."
"I was not planning to."

Sana, traitor that she was, settled more comfortably against him. John looked at her "You are also not helping."

"I am helping emotionally."
"You are making the situation worse structurally."

Normally, Jihyo would have scolded them. Or sighed. Or weaponized silence until John apologized for whatever crime his existence had committed. Instead, she looked tired. Not ‘sleepy’ tired— Tired in the way leaders looked when they had been watching a crack spread through glass and finally understood it was not going to stop by itself. That made John stop joking and Sana noticed too.

"Jihyo?"
Jihyo sat near the edge of the bed "I need to talk to you."

John's first instinct was to stand. Sana's hand pressed lightly against his chest. He stayed. Jihyo saw it. Something in her face shifted. Not judgment. Recognition. That made him more nervous than judgment would have.

"What happened?" John asked.
Jihyo rubbed both hands over her face once, then lowered them "It's ITZY."

The room changed. Sana straightened. John felt his mind reorganize immediately. The warmth of her against him did not disappear, but it moved somewhere quieter, behind the part of him that knew Jihyo would not say that sentence lightly.

"Lia's hiatus?" he asked.

Jihyo nodded. Everyone knew the public version. The clean wording. The clinical announcement. The part that let fans understand enough to worry and not enough to know what had broken behind the door.

"They are functioning too well," Jihyo said.
John frowned "That sounds like something you say before explaining why it is bad."
"It is bad."

Sana's fingers curled in his shirt. Jihyo looked at her too, not excluding her from the conversation. That mattered. Sana stayed where she was, quieter now.

"Schedules. Interviews. Practice. Content. Smiling. Answering questions. Covering gaps. Protecting each other. Nobody is collapsing in public."

John waited.
Jihyo's eyes lifted to him "That is the problem."
Sana whispered, "They are holding too much."
"Yeji especially," Jihyo said.
"Leader mode?" John asked.
"Worse. She's carrying Lia's absence like she has to apologize for surviving it."

The sentence landed too cleanly. John did not like clean sentences when they involved idols breaking quietly.

Jihyo continued, "Ryujin watches everything and says nothing. Chaeryeong keeps shrinking whenever someone needs reassurance. Yuna is bright enough to look fake if you know what to look for. Lia feels guilty even when she is not there."

Sana's voice softened "And Yeji?"
Jihyo's expression changed "Yeji is useful."

John hated that word. Mostly because he knew what it could do to a person. He looked away first "Jihyo."

"You know someone."
Sana turned to him "Who?"
John opened his eyes again "A problem."
Jihyo's eyebrow lifted "A solution."
"A solution with tax implications."
"John."

He sighed. The name was already there before she said it.

Sung Benjamin.

A man whose definition of friendship usually included legal documents, emotional inconvenience, and acts of loyalty that made normal people consider changing their phone number.

Sana tilted her head "That psychology friend of yours? The one who psychoanalyzed you in ten minutes?"

"Unfortunately, yes."
"Can he help?" Jihyo asked.

John looked at her "That depends on whether he chooses to."
Sana studied him "And if you ask?"
John's mouth tightened "He'll listen."

Jihyo's expression did not change. She had already known that. Of course she had. Jihyo was dangerous too, in the way she knew exactly where to place a question so someone else had to answer honestly.

"You understand what you are asking?" John said.

Jihyo nodded "I am asking for help before a younger group breaks in a way they cannot easily come back from."

John looked away. That was unfair. Not because it was manipulative. Because it was true.

Sana's fingers brushed his wrist "Call him."

John looked at her. She gave him a small smile "If you are already thinking about it, you will call anyway. At least do it before you overthink yourself into a headache."

He hated when Sana was right. It happened often. He took out his phone. The call rang twice before Ben answered "John?"

"Hey, Ben."

There was a pause. Then Ben's voice sharpened with the kind of casual cruelty that meant he was already awake enough to be annoying.

"You usually only call this late when somebody is either dying or pregnant."

Sana made a muffled sound beside him.

John closed his eyes "Good evening to you too, jackass."
"You did not deny either possibility."
"Because neither possibility should have been your first assumption."
"That sounds like denial."
"You sound unemployed."
"I technically am unemployed."
"You own several businesses."
"Own. Passive income is not employment. I refuse to disrespect actual workers like that."

Sana laughed again. Jihyo stared at the phone like she was already regretting the entire plan. John rubbed his forehead.

"Can you be serious for five minutes?"

Ben's tone changed "Depends. Are you asking as my best friend, or as whatever the hell your job title is nowadays?"

Silence. That was enough.

Ben's voice lost the rest of the joke "What happened?"
"It's not about TWICE," John said.
"But?"

John looked at Jihyo. She nodded once.

"It's ITZY."

The line went quiet. Not empty. Processing. Ben knew enough about the industry to understand what those two words could already contain: a young group, heavy schedules, public resilience, private pressure, and a member on hiatus.

"What about them?"
John chose the cleanest answer "Burnout. The ugly kind. Private for now."
"Company aware?"
"In the way companies are aware when something is inconvenient but not yet on fire."