this time, baby

February is the shortest month and Haewon’s own. She kicks it off in open combat with some superpowered hostiles JYPe’s been tasked to take down, bullets whizzing by because a hollow point’s still deadly for these guys with their second- and third- rate powers. Not even Haewon’s teleportation can keep her head from getting blown off.

After two-thirds of the enemy agents have been dispatched, Haewon’s waiting for reinforcements against a crate in near pitch black. Her stamina’s so shot she can’t discern between her nerves and what might actually be—

—the ground dropping out from beneath her, literally, it feels, as someone lifts Haewon up from out-of-fucking-nowhere. She’s granted an instant concussion upon her homecoming to the floor.

The fuzzy, static pain is so familiar by now she grasps the nature of her injury before she can even remember where she is. Some mission—she’s representing JYPe—the tide has turned in their favor, but she is presently losing.

She wiggles her toes. Nothing broken, yet. There’s movement in the air again—she swings her lower body out of the way just as the tile near her legs cracks open with the attacker’s weight.

She has to get out of here. A distant part of her recognizes that the TV crews will arrive as soon as the final few enemy agents are dispatched, and that surge of panic is nearly enough to bring her to her feet. Except she only manages to pick her head up before the brunt of her condition crashes into her and she really has to get out of here.

Long-range teleportation back to base is her only option but fuck, she might actually blow her brains out with this effort. Two red splatters appear on the floor beneath her; her nose is bleeding like she’s a teething trainee again. And as she’s trying to drum up enough energy to not be on the receiving end of a second strike, somehow, the image that appears in her mind is of Sullyoon. The thought that this wouldn’t have happened to her. Sullyoon, who wrought light with her hands, who would've seen someone coming.

Haewon’s skin tingles as if briefly passed beneath a scalding hot shower—and she’s gone. Botched for sure, might’ve left a fingernail or two behind, but it’s indistinguishable from the overall smear of pain now that she’s landed somewhere safe, allowed to feel her injuries without adrenaline. She doesn’t know how she knows that she’s safe, just that Sullyoon’s hovering above her, her mouth moving quickly and without the appearance of panic, at once solid and trembling and aglow, as if lit from the inside.

*

Sullyoon catches Haewon mid-Irish exit from her apartment, pulling on socks and wearing the shirt Sullyoon had laid out for her. It’s inside out, the UNIQLO tag bending gently under the undulating breeze from the space heater.

She doesn’t look quite as awful as when Sullyoon’d come to investigate the thump downstairs and found her staining Sullyoon’s couch with flesh wounds festering a half-step quicker than her regenerative abilities could heal. Sullyoon did what she could with the paltry first aid supplies lying around and put her to sleep; that was that.

Still, there are two conspicuous tells that Haewon isn’t at full capacity. She hasn’t noticed Sullyoon’s presence after a full minute, and also, that she’s still here. Had she been well enough to teleport, they could have avoided the entire ordeal of encounter, but…

Sullyoon clears her throat. Haewon’s head snaps up so suddenly she winces after. “How’s cereal sound,” Sullyoon suggests; doesn’t wait for a response.

From the kitchen, Sullyoon hears Haewon slowly shuffle into a seating position. Spliced gibberish from the TV as she flips to the news channel. By the time Sullyoon’s set down two bowls of cereal on the coffee table, Haewon’s seemingly given up on escaping, wriggling bonelessly away from the rusty patch of dried blood on the cushions.

She doesn’t object as Sullyoon conducts a check of her head. Drowsy and compliant; definitely concussed. And still trying to sneak glances at the blue light of the TV screen.

The news anchors relay yesterday night’s chain of events as casually as a sports game. Heaps of praise and minimal casualties, though Sullyoon can bet Haewon herself isn’t included among the count of the injured. A few good years into her career now, Haewon being missing is more of a spectacle than it is concerning.

Haewon’s starting to put some force behind her attempts to swivel away, so Sullyoon lets go. “You must be proud of yourself,” she remarks dryly.

She’s not directly trying to scold Haewon. Nonetheless, Haewon heaps another soggy mouthful of cereal in lieu of responding. Sullyoon glances between Haewon’s headshot on the screen and the Haewon beside her and can hardly believe it.

“Thanks for breakfast,” Haewon mumbles eventually, licking the last of the milk whiskers off her upper lip. “Jiwoo, she…”

“She’s out on an assignment for a while.”

Haewon relaxes incrementally. “And she’s been doing alright?”

Sullyoon nods. Haewon nods too, squeezing her eyes shut. For a moment it seems like she might ask for details, but then she stands, taking her bowl towards the kitchen. The tap sputters open.

“Dishwasher,” Sullyoon calls out. Doesn’t seem like Haewon’s heard her, so she makes her way over. “Our dishwasher works now. You don’t have to.”

“Oh.” But she already has. “I didn’t notice.”

“It’s fine.” Sullyoon removes the bowl from Haewon’s grasp and loads it into the dishwasher. Bent at eye-level with Haewon’s waist, she watches Haewon’s arms fall limp to her side, her hand furling and unfurling the too-long material of Sullyoon’s shirt.

When she straightens up, Haewon’s glancing around the kitchen like she’s casing the place out. The table’s been swapped for dark wood. Jiwoo begged for a proper electrical system with switches for all the fixtures, since she couldn’t bring her own light at will. A rice cooker Sullyoon’s last ex gave her sits unplugged on the counter. Haewon’s searching gaze eventually revolves all the way around to Sullyoon, at which point she averts her eyes.

“I should head out,” Haewon states. Sullyoon trails her silently, but at the doorway, Haewon sways to the side; can’t even maneuver by with Sullyoon blocking half of the frame. She shouldn’t even be standing.

“Jiwoo’s out,” Sullyoon reminds her. “It’s just me until the end of the month.”

Haewon’s mouth hooks up in equal parts annoyance and amusement. The expression’s nearly amiable. “So, what. I sleep on your couch?”

“Buy me a new one, and sure.” Those blood stains aren’t coming out and Haewon’s got no shortage of money, or PTO.

Haewon squints at Sullyoon. Sullyoon shrugs. A beat, and Haewon pokes her shoulder. “Should’ve known you were after my card.”

Like she’s not the freeloader here. Sullyoon smacks Haewon’s back gently to herd her towards the living room, and somehow, she allows it. Once Sullyoon turns the TV off, she falls asleep almost instantly. She must’ve really been exhausted.

Sullyoon’s betting Haewon will be gone by the end of the day, but she’s at least taking her up on Tylenol and a nap. She is occupying the whole space in front of the TV though… Maybe Sullyoon will go game in her room. Her trigger finger’s still got some utility outside of literal combat.

But: she can’t get into it today. Her ELO’s definitely tanking and for once, she doesn’t even feel competitive after a loss. Still bored, Sullyoon logs off and takes out her phone to screw around on the Candy Crush reskin she’s spent an embarrassing amount of money on.

…Should she text Jiwoo about this? Bae, or someone. Haewon might try to kill Sullyoon if she brought it up to Lily out of the blue. The idea’s funny enough that Sullyoon almost considers it. But no. Haewon’s here, not with any of them. That’s what happens, how it is, whether it’s by accident, or something.

Haewon at her apartment, at any time of the day, always injured. It started a couple of months after Sullyoon left JYPe. She hadn’t learned to leave without a trace then and seemed altogether too unprepared for it to have been on purpose. To what end, even. They don’t have anything to do with each other anymore. Or something…

Ah. Sullyoon’s messed up the level. She’s not in the mood to sit through an ad for a second try, so she finally resigns herself to the fact that she’s preoccupied with thinking about this now.

Most recently was… Haewon popping into Sullyoon’s apartment in the middle of the day while she and Jiwoo were having lunch. It seemed like she’d been in the middle of a fight: looked around, went what the hell?, and disappeared again.

“Does that happen often?” Jiwoo asked. Not really, Sullyoon told her. But yeah. Just often enough, right when she’s about to forget.

Haewon apparently texted Jiwoo apologizing after. Sullyoon received no message of the sort. She’d been living alone all the times prior, so that was her sole hint that, at the very least, Jiwoo wasn’t expected to be used to Haewon’s random appearances.

Sullyoon had been trainees with Haewon; she knew a bit about how her teleportation worked, how during her individual training sessions, she’d sometimes snap into the gym where the rest of them were practicing. Wires crossed. Sullyoon didn’t probe, figuring that Haewon was ironing out some kinks with her power. Sure enough, her misfires became less frequent over the years.

But here she is again. Maybe Sullyoon is a little curious, mostly because it’s been a while. She’d ask Haewon why if she thought that she knew.

After the performance Yubin is gone. Just like that, without a fuss—otherwise someone would’ve noticed. But half the crew members have already left for the afterparty by the time Seoyeon calls out, “we’re missing one.” Then half of the remaining follow to let them know, leaving a mere quarter to search.

Kotone knocks on custodial closets before she even thinks to check the changing room. All the performers passed through there together, so her idea is that it’d be a weird place to get caught up. Though that gut feeling has no bearing on its likelihood. Probably. Weird things tend to happen around Kotone, and so, this is how it turns out:

Kotone shouts, “Gong Yubin?” at the perimeter. The dance team borrowed the space from the athletic teams; it’s cavernous, overlarge. She’s not keen on searching the whole place through unless she gets a response.

Which she does, right as she’s about to swing the door shut. A slightly strangled, “Uh-huh.”

“There you are.” Yubin’s voice is so distinctive. “Everyone’s at the bar already, if you still wanna come along…”

“Okay.” …She sounds strange. A little congested. Kotone’s pretty sure that if she sprung upon Yubin suddenly she’d manage to make it all worse, but she still doesn’t feel right leaving without tightening the matter up.

“I’ll meet you there?”

A few beats pass—well, Kotone’s overstayed her welcome. The hinge creaks. Yubin says, “Wait.”

Kotone waits. “I kinda.” Shaky exhale, echoing against the walls. “I can’t get the zipper unstuck. I’m in the third row of lockers—”

A request for help, as indirect as it gets. “Sure, hold on,” Kotone answers. Idly registers that Yubin must’ve missed the chance to ask when everyone was changing a half hour ago. Bad luck or bad timing.

Yubin turns away when Kotone gets there. Kotone doesn’t try to take in her face. She goes straight to work on the zipper. Balances firmness with finesse, bunches the fabric to not tear, pinch-and-inches the zipper’s head: a series of small tricks she had to learn by herself. Yubin is in roughly the same situation but Kotone is here, helping her out, because this is her teammate and she wants to, and because Yubin’s the kind of person that has no issue soaking up love.

The zipper finally glides and the teeth separate downwards. Yubin gets stiff, flinches when Kotone’s curled pinky brushes against the divot of her lower back. Kotone wonders if it’s because it’s her here that Yubin’s having this reaction. She’s so easy with physical affection with the others, usually, so what even gives…

The dress was tailored and the fabric is nice. Kotone tries to catch it as it falls and hand it over smoothly. Yubin holds it with the rest of her clothes against her chest. She doesn’t turn back around or try to change.

They’ve all changed together a million times. “Seriously, are you—”

“Didn’t you say you’d meet me there?”

Throaty, faltering, all-bark. Rationally, Kotone can surmise that Yubin doesn’t mean it, but maybe it’s because she’s frustrated too, she can’t emotionally align her response. “Is there a problem?”

“What?” Yubin’s sincerely caught off-guard. “No, why would— I literally just spaced out for a sec, why would you think that.”

“Honestly?“

“Okay, well. It’s just, like. What do you want me to say, I know you saw it too.” The defiant set of her mouth clicks. Kotone recognizes it as the face she used to make. Telling herself, I’m not gonna cry. “Onstage, my center part, right?” Sure, Yubin’d flubbed, but it wasn’t humiliating, only… clearly… very far from the best she could do. “So, you don’t have to keep me company. Really, go enjoy yourself.”

“Are you meeting me there?” Dot dot dot. “How are you getting home?”

“…I don’t know,” Yubin states, lost. “Uber?”

Before Kotone transferred, she’d been in the audience for one of the crew’s unit performances. Yubin held a plastic gun prop that spouted infinite paper money. This is not that reality. “We both dorm, so we can go back to campus together. Go wash up, and I’ll tell the others that…” Kotone hasn’t had the need for this for a while, but for better or for worse, it wouldn’t be marked as too out of character: “…I wasn’t feeling well, and you had to take care of me.”

Mistrustfully, but realizing that this is her best offer—Yubin threads her way towards the mirrors. “Thanks.”

Their shoulders brush. Kotone hears the sink start to pour. Yubin’s splashing her face, probably having one of those ego-death moments after a really shitty performance, like, who the hell are you. Yeah, Kotone’s familiar, but she hasn’t been in actual proximity to Yubin for long enough to pretend they have anything in common. She feels like she shouldn’t be in earshot, witnessing this.

The tap turns off. Kotone finishes updating the groupchat. A few moments longer. “Yubin?” she asks, and almost immediately comes Yubin, “Uh-huh.”

Kotone has to lean half her body weight on the bar and push for the front double doors to open. Yubin pauses past her. “I can seriously call an Uber, like. For us.”

“It’s a nice night. I don’t mind.” One of the first spring-feeling evenings, even overwarm without wind. Yubin doesn’t object after that.

For a little while they walk side by side, too tired to talk. Yubin’s walk-cycle implies a slight limp; Kotone’d been bothered enough by how their footsteps smacked the concrete slightly out of phase to notice. How Yubin landed on her ankle during Black Soul Dress had looked kind of awkward. Kotone’d offer an ankle brace from when she had the same issue a year or two ago, but. She doesn’t want to rub it in. She can understand how Yubin’s feeling. Stiil, at least she had the center part.

“I wasn’t crying,” Yubin announces, apropos of nothing, once they get on the bus. Kotone turns her cheek to the side. She’s leaning her head against the bus window. “I really don’t cry. It makes my face puff up.”

Kotone doesn’t offer a response, because it doesn’t seem like Yubin is waiting for one. Watching the low beams of cars streak by on the other side of the road. She puts in her earbuds until they reach their stop.

Kotone is farther out, but maybe it’s not the time to leave Yubin yet—she’s hasn’t made a move in the direction of her dorm. “Where are you heading?”

“You’re coming with?”

“I mean. Unless this is you trying to get rid of me.”

“No, what.” Yubin rubs her face, hard, exhale muffled by her palms. “Just, like, why.”

“You’re my friend. I’m worried about you?”

Yubin squints from the corner of her eye. They’re on the same dance team, and, “I’m not that weak.”

“It’s fine,” Kotone responds, through a stroke of mild irritation. “Crying once or twice doesn’t mean you’re weak.”

Not that Kotone’d been trying to call Yubin out, exactly, but Yubin hunches her shoulders up like she is preparing for a blow. “Well, I’m not so comfortable showing my weakness like that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything.” Yubin speeds up a little. Kotone matches pace. “I’m just saying. The pressure isn’t the same.”

“It’s up to the center to handle the pressure, which you…” Crap. Kotone needs to shut her mouth before she shoves her foot in there any farther. She pinches herself through her jeans. “Sorry, I don’t—”

But Yubin’s already begin to apologize, “Look, I’m really tired…”

Silence. And at the foot of Yubin’s dorm, a peace offering. “I can blow up an air mattress,” Yubin offers.

Kotone’s phone is almost out of battery. “Sure… You don’t have roommates?”

“Nah. Lucked out with a single.”

“Me too. Well, it’s a dingle.”

“Dingle.”

“Double-single. My roommate is studying abroad.”

“Ohh. You should throw sometime.”

Kotone makes a face. Yubin has to pull her arm for her to enter the dorm building before the lock resets, then she doesn’t let go. “A party at my place?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen you at parties. You’re fun.” Kotone doesn’t really recall seeing Yubin at parties. Or being fun. “Hey, why are you surprised? I go to more than you, so like, rectangles and squares. Or whatever. Don’t correct me.”

“I’m pretty sure you used the analogy right,” but Yubin doesn’t look appeased until Kotone acquiesces, “I can be fun, sure.”

“Woow.” Yubin stabs the up button on the elevator panel and swivels her torso towards Kotone. “Convincing.”

Yubin’s hand is still clenching onto Kotone’s forearm. With the force of each emphatic gesture, Kotone’s gotten reeled closer. There’s… something in the air, that Kotone’s not so inexperienced to be unable to recognize, but why would it be here, between them? And not just now; the whole evening Kotone’s been getting whiffs of it. Brushed it off as annoyance, misinterpretation, or whatever. Yubin’s so straight.

So straight she tells Kotone, “You know, I’m glad the dance team is all girls. A guy would’ve tried to make a move on me by now.”

“I’m not a guy.” Because hello, reality check.

“Then I didn’t mean you, but like… how guys don’t care about the context if you’ve just got a pretty face.”

“Sure,” Kotone agrees blandly. As if she’d have any clue. “You are pretty.” Because that’s what Yubin wants to hear. Because it’s the truth. And because she’s curious.

“…Thanks.”

“I’m not hitting on you,” Kotone clarifies, starting get a bit anxious about this whole thing.

But Yubin makes up for the differential with her forward momentum. “No?”

Yubin tugs. Kotone lurches. She has to lower her voice, or it’d be excessive for how little distance remains between them. “I said, I’m not a guy.”

“I know that.”

The elevator doors slide open. Yubin lets go of Kotone and pushes her back, into the metal unit. Kotone hits the railing and barely has time to rebound before Yubin is in front of her, bracing her in. She has about two seconds to decide if she wants to make a move on Yubin or let Yubin make a move on her, considering responsibility and fear, before taking a real good look at Yubin’s wide eyes and realizing they’re both scared. And then Yubin’s mouth is on hers. Hot and squirmy; it feels like a first kiss. For Yubin, it probably is.

The win moves Yubin a rung closer to the championships. After major matches, two weeks are carved out for cooldown practices. Chaeyeon’s in-person shifts dwindle to a couple hours a day in case Yubin suffers an injury bad enough to require her urgent attention. She keeps herself busy with a part time job and volunteer hours in the meanwhile.

At night, Yubin knocks on Chaeyeon’s door. Sterility is not an issue alongside magic, so technically, the dorms are valid work spaces. That means getting paid. Chaeyeon had been expecting her. She cleared off the mattress in anticipation.

Yubin immediately sits on the edge of Chaeyeon’s bed, picking at the fuzzy comforter. Chaeyeon crosses her arms. “Let’s see it, then?”

Yubin rolls up her sleeve. A rope burn lashes a trail from the spoke of her ulnar bone to her elbow. It’s really not that bad, though when Chaeyeon told Yubin that before, she let herself get roughed up for a while as if to prove a point. A juvenile feint on Yubin’s part, and not one Chaeyeon’s keen on repeating. She keeps her mouth shut.

“I’m gonna just,” Yubin calls out, tossing her jacket and her shirt into the corner. Her sports bra joins the pile with little hesitation. “Ready?”

Best practice is the less surface area obscured the better. Pants might be excessive here, but it’s entirely clinical, in any case. Chaeyeon mentally rewards herself for not looking away.

Yubin clears her throat. “Hey, don’t space out on me.”

“Patient as ever, our Gong Yubin,” Chaeyeon croons. She kneels in front of Yubin, ignoring her muttered rebuttal, and takes her forearm. Their veins pulse bright together as Yubin becomes fragile as anyone under Chaeyeon’s hands.

Yubin tries to trap sound behind her teeth at the start. She’s never successful. Chaeyeon’s a good fixer to take the edge off the pain of renewing skin, but there’s still the exchange of tension begging a release. Her hairline beads with sweat as she groans.

“…I can see you smiling,” Yubin grits out. “In the, like…”

She’s too winded to say mirror. Chaeyeon glances at the ovular ringlight at the bedside table; from her angle it reflects more of Yubin’s torso, lean and strained. She pokes Yubin’s stomach to watch her muscles jump. Yubin’s breath escapes in a choppy series of hiccups.

The year after Chaeyeon graduated, she worked at the ICU to get in more credit-hours. That was definitely more strenuous than being a pro fixer. Each volunteer shift reminds her that her life now is much nicer. Full of creature comforts—she languishes in that turn of phrase, so defined by domestication. Like she’s a pet at Yubin’s beck and call. But Yubin, leaning into her touch, is the one who needs her, who can’t walk away.

Yubin’s slow to retrieve her clothes. She hugs them against her stomach and lingers. Chaeyeon goes to the bathroom, washes off her hands, and comes back. Yubin’s still sitting there.


“I thought you were just gonna leave me like this,” she accuses. She’s tossed her clothes into Chaeyeon’s laundry hamper.

“Leave you? You’re in my room,” Chaeyeon points out.

“Ugh, no…” Yubin tugs at the hem of Chaeyeon’s shirt the moment she’s within range. It’s awkward and Chaeyeon stumbles, catching herself on Yubin’s shoulder. “Like, come on.”

Well. Chaeyeon had been expecting this. She straddles Yubin’s lap. Pushes her back, barely. Yubin, steady, gives with the angle but keeps her spine straight.

“Ask nicely.”

Yubin flutters her lashes. “Please,” she simpers. Laughs when Chaeyeon rolls her eyes, smiling. Whatever, good enough.

Chaeyeon stretches out as she pulls off her shirt, pleased by Yubin’s near-instant cessation of breath. Her hands skim quick and shivery up Chaeyeon’s back. Chaeyeon shifts her weight forward, discarding her shirt behind Yubin, and Yubin squirms.

Does Yubin have any idea how she’s looking at Chaeyeon right now? Would she recognize it if Chaeyeon showed her a mirror? Willing to do anything.

Yubin bares her teeth and cranes her neck, then slumps back down. “You’re too tall,” she complains. Not, kiss me. Chaeyeon gives her what she wants anyway.

“So, how did you two become friends?” Lily asks. A few drinks in, all of them are coming out of their shells for the first time since the start of the pre-season training camp: Sullyoon quiet but at attention, Jiwoo an affectionate puddle in her lap, as Kyujin walks over from the mini fridge impossibly trapping six beers between her hands, and Bae…

Bae, Haewon can sense the smile of without needing to turn her head. “You wanna go or should I?”

“You got it.” Haewon leans back and accepts the drink Kyujin gives her. By the time she’s unsealed the bottlecap, Bae’s somewhere around their junior year of high school, just before they broke into national qualifiers.

“…then I realized she was climbing just like me,” says Bae. This is the part everyone usually has a reaction to. Free soloing, cool, like Alex Honnold, the documentary legend. “We started climbing together outside of practice after that.”

“All because she was too nervous to ask for a belay partner,” Haewon chimes in. Also like Alex Honnold, the documentary legend. Bae offers her a fist bump before sliding back into the rhythm of their shared backstory. Haewon drinks.

This is the sort of thing that makes Haewon feel like she’s in college. Actual college, not virtual university at CU Boulder while she competes at various international tournaments. The further she away she gets from eighteen the more pressure there is to pull in results. Everyone here is feeling it: herself, Bae, the Australian and Korean athletes as well.

Once Bae’s caught up to the present day and the attention has shifted away from them, Haewon leans closer and whispers what she’d been thinking. “I feel like a college student.”

“We are,” Bae responds, drunk… er than Haewon? Maybe, maybe not, but enough to sag onto her, rely on her, like how she used to.

“Yeah, Zoom college… I don’t regret it, though,” Haewon states. Just to be clear.

Bae squints. “Nooo, of course not. Not you.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“Hm… Let’s get some water,” Bae suggests. Haewon stands, wobbly, ignoring Bae’s outstretched hand. She takes her wrist and leads them towards the cooler. Doesn’t work anymore at revealing Bae’s implication, because, yeah. Haewon grew up in the sport. Bae had not. That’s all.

The room has begun to reshuffle. It’s probably past midnight and they have practice in the morning, but Haewon doesn’t want to leave so soon.

Lily notices her at the cooler and smiles without her earlier nervousness. “The hotel here’s nice,” she comments in English.

Uh? Haewon has to recalibrate. “Yeah. Yes,” she replies. She thumps on the cooler with her knuckles. “We are so in the big leagues now. Do you think Janja Garnbret will sign my chalk bag?”

As Lily laughs Haewon gets the impression, that it would be very difficult for anyone not to like her. Drawn by the sound, Kyujin approaches, a little blurry-eyed from the late hour. Haewon’d guess it’s past her bedtime, having seen her expertly hit REM at no later than 11pm every night for the past couple of days, and she’s a little touched that Kyujin’s even still around. “What are we talking about?”

Haewon looks between Kyujin and Lily and makes a decision. “About if Lily can open this,” reaching into the mini fridge, “beer bottle with her teeth. Teach her, yeah?”

“What?” Lily squawks. Kyujin replaces Haewon as she departs to mill around the hotel room herself.

It only takes Haewon a few moments to recognize why the place feels too empty. Bae’s not there. Jiwoo isn’t, either. And Sullyoon, who she thought had been asleep by now, is sitting upright against the wall, looking at her. Unmoored, all of a sudden, Haewon parks herself next to Sullyoon to lay ownership to the strangeness.

Sullyoon doesn’t seem to mind. She offers her beer and Haewon takes a sip. “Bae and Jiwoo ran off on us?”

Sullyoon shrugs. “I think,” she articulates, “they went back to Jiwoo’s room.”

“Aren’t you her roommate?”

Sullyoon shrugs again. Repeats: “They went back to our room.”

Haewon takes a longer pull from the bottle. Considering. The past week that she’s known these people; Bae and Jiwoo’s coy magnetism.

In all honesty, Haewon isn’t surprised. Since they matriculated to college, since Bae cut her hair, since the Olympics started looking like a possibility—well, she and Bae have become adults, is the gist. Haewon’s had her fair share of hookups with other climbers and as Bae’s oft-sexiled roommate, it’s not like she’s oblivious to the other half of that. Still, she’s caught off-guard. She thought Sullyoon and Jiwoo had something.

She tells Sullyoon so. Too drunk to care, to make her face amiable. A beat of silence, then:

Sullyoon wonders rhetorically, but too pointedly to be random, “Like what you and Bae have?”

“Probably not like that. We’re not,” Haewon decides, “like that.” Unsure how to respond. Anyway, what? “Guess I was wrong.”

There’s nothing left in this conversation; they go still and observe Kyujin and Lily’s unintentional comedy performance for a while. “What it is like to free solo,” Sullyoon attempts eventually. Haewon jumps at the change of topic with relief.

It’s been a while since Haewon’s hit the cliffs, actually. Indoor climbing has just been her life lately. She’s grateful to be sponsored, it’s the only way she’s able to go overseas with other elite international climbers now, but she does miss the—adrenaline? Palm-sweat in the face of controlled danger is nothing like the palm-sweat at a competition.

“We should bring you sometime,” Haewon decides, can’t think of words up to the task. “It’s an experience.”

“Okay.” It sounds like they both mean it. Camaraderie is easy here, with the expectation that its continuation is contingent on their success. Another source of motivation. “Jiwoo might be scared at first.”

Again the bottle passes to Sullyoon. Haewon purses her lips and avoids thoughts of Jiwoo, Bae; the wall she’s on the other side of. Quicker than she’d anticipated, the bottle comes back, warm from the heat of their palms.

Haewon had been scared, too. But it’s supposed to feel that way. Without rope, weightless.

There’s not much liquid left. Haewon thinks she finishes it off. Her head swirls with vertigo intensifying like air circling at a peak. Sooner or later she hears the hotel door click; Bae’s returned.

Her shirt, Haewon notices, is inside-out. Short hair tousled as if the wind itself had asked her to dance.

…

Unsurprisingly, everyone’s hungover at the next morning practice. Haewon doesn’t remember how she made her way back to her room in one piece. She doesn’t remember much at all, except she’s fonder of these people for some reason, and at some point Bae had left.

“My headdd,” Jiwoo moans. She’s draped over Sullyoon’s back. Haewon grimaces sympathetically. On the other side of her, Bae’s also rubbing her temples.

“Who told you to drink so much?” Haewon rags.

“I’ll still beat you to the mat.” And Bae does—stamina isn’t Haewon’s strength, okay; her strength is her strength.

She falls back onto the mat dramatically. Bae hovers over her, genuinely worried, before Haewon yanks her down.

“Ow,” Bae mutters. Haewon pinches her bicep and sits up.

“I’m sore,” she complains. Bae begins to massage her shoulders. But it’s more difficult than usual for Haewon to lean into her yielding, unyielding, touch.

*

Whether Bae or Haewon tell the story, they start at high school, because that’s when they became friends. But they knew each other before that.

During Haewon’s last year of middle school, she’d been debating dropping secondary education for climbing: it was that serious for her. Enter Bae, a transfer from—someone had said, California? Big city girl, huh, who cried herself to sleep every night for the week they trained at a sleepaway camp in Utah.

Haewon tried inviting her into a game with herself and some other climbers once, playing route-setter pick-and-choosing holds from the new problems the gym put up. Bae caked her palms with chalk so thick she could have left handprints. Haewon thought it must’ve been a mistimed joke, but her climbing form was solid, if striated by a lack of confidence.

“Everyone else was so good. I just thought, it might help with my grip strength,” Bae confessed the time Haewon brought it up in their final year of high school. She’d bleached her hair but hadn’t cut it yet, and the flyaways from her bun held the same brittle quality of chalk.

“But now you know. We’re the best.” In the muddy dark of their hotel room, Haewon didn’t care how she sounded. They’d qualified for, and won, a host of U17, U19, championships. From open competitions to team trials. The next year, Team USA said, congrats.

Haewon got the chance to try on her jersey privately before the camera lenses. Her hair was short in the aftermath of a running joke-turned-pact about aerodynamics Bae would later adopt as her permanent aesthetic.

It wasn’t for Haewon. She didn’t really look like herself, even if she tied the loose, shaggy ends away from her face in emulation of competition form. So she turned away from the mirror and doomscrolled through a rotation of apps like there was a pot of gold waiting at the bottom of one of them.

Here was a restlessness similar to insomnia. At least Haewon’s condition wasn’t discriminatory: it didn’t matter if she was alone or with a partner, in a familiar or unfamiliar place. When she and Bae graduated from sleepaway camps to random hotel rooms in whichever city was hosting the next climbing event, it hadn’t made a difference. Haewon would be awake for at least a few hours past everyone else’s bedtime.

At night, the unembellished air made it easy to distinguish the rhythm of Bae’s breaths, each stirring closer to the dawn. It had been so still, so subtle. Haewon couldn’t have known they were already in motion.