The Seoul streets were deserted. She drove too fast, heart in her throat, hands clenching the wheel hard enough to ache. Every red light felt unbearable, every empty crosswalk too long. Her phone buzzed once on the passenger seat. Jennie again, but Y/N couldn't look, couldn't stop .
She whispered to the silence instead, words Jennie couldn't hear. Hold on. Just hold on. I'm coming.
The dorm was silent when Y/N let herself in, the keypad beeping softly under her fingers. Alison had given her the code months ago for practical reasons, pickups, drop-offs, but tonight it felt like trespassing.
The air inside was warm, heavy with the faint smell of detergent and perfume. Doors lined the hall, each one closed. For a moment Y/N thought she might have made a mistake, until she saw it.
Light, spilling dim under one door.
Jennie's.
Her chest tightened. She padded forward on quiet steps, heart hammering. When she eased the door open, the sight inside nearly unraveled her.
Jennie was curled small on the edge of her bed, hair a dark tangle around her face, drowning in an oversized sweatshirt that made her look younger, smaller. Her knees were drawn to her chest, hands clutching the blanket like it was the only thing keeping her tethered.
Her eyes flicked up at the sound. Surprise flared first, sharp and instinctive. But then it melted, fast, unguarded, into something else.
Raw. Pure. Relief.
It knocked the air from Y/N's lungs.
She didn't speak. Words felt useless, too clumsy for what hung between them. Instead, she crossed the room slowly and slid down onto the floor, back against the side of Jennie's bed. Close, but not too close. Just there. Solid.
Jennie's hand twitched on the blanket, like she might reach down, like the instinct was there, but she didn't. Instead she exhaled, long and shaky, and tipped her head back against the wall, eyes closing for the first time all night. Silence settled, but it wasn't empty. It was alive. Fragile. Y/N sat with it, letting the carpet bite into her legs, the wood press against her spine. Every so often Jennie's breath would hitch, a sharp break in the quiet. Each time Y/N's throat tightened, but she said nothing. She just stayed. And slowly, the hitches grew farther apart.
At some point, Jennie shifted, her weight leaning sideways, lashes fluttering until they finally stilled. Her breathing evened into the deep rhythm of sleep. For the first time in hours, her face smoothed.
Y/N stayed long after that, the dawn creeping pale at the edges of the blinds. She stayed because Jennie had let her. Because this? The unspoken choice to not push her away, meant more than any thank you coffee or polite nod ever could.
When the sun began to edge higher, she finally stood, careful not to wake her. The blanket had slipped low, so Y/N pulled it higher, tucking it over Jennie's shoulder, fingers lingering a moment longer than necessary.
She slipped out the door as quietly as she'd come.
For days after, Jennie didn't mention it. Not the phone call, not Y/N showing up in the middle of the night, not the silent hours she'd spent curled just out of reach. But something shifted. Small. Invisible to anyone else. A nod in the hallway where there hadn't been one before. A text reply punctuated with a rare smiley face. A silence that no longer felt like a wall, but like a door left ajar.
By summer, restrictions had loosened enough for the girls to return to the studio. Work resumed with the force of everything they'd missed, producers, deadlines, pressure to deliver a comeback big enough to silence the world. For Jennie, that meant "How You Like That." For Y/N, it meant watching the cracks widen.
The studio was stripped down, quieter than usual. Just Jennie in the booth, a single producer hunched over his laptop, one sound engineer adjusting dials with tired precision, and Y/N, sitting off to the side with her tablet, since Alison was caught in a meeting. A constant murmur of critique and technical jargon filled the room, sharp as static.
Jennie stood in the booth, framed by the glass like a specimen under observation. Headphones pressed tight, mic angled to catch every syllable. Her hair clung to her temples with sweat, her chest rising and falling faster with each take. She launched into the verse again, voice cutting clean, rhythm sharp. To Y/N, it sounded flawless. But the talkback button clicked, and another voice filtered in.
"Too flat."
Jennie blinked, reset, started again. A harder edge this time, fire lacing the words.
"Punchier, Jennie. It needs more bite."
Her jaw flexed. She nodded once, sharp, and tried again.
Y/N watched from the corner, invisible. She could see it, the shift in Jennie's shoulders, the way her stance tightened with each note of disapproval. Every comment landed like a weight dropped on top of the last, stacking higher, heavier.
"Again."
Jennie's knuckles whitened around the lyric sheet. She sang, pushed harder, almost snarled the lines. But even before the producers responded, she knew. Y/N could see it in the flicker of her eyes, that creeping certainty that nothing she did would be enough.
"Still not there. Try it again."