Lola Lee-James or Lola is the only female and 8th member of Co-Ed group ENHYPEN, working under BE:LIFT Labels. Raking last on I-Land but later being chosen as a producers pick she oficially made her debut with the group on November 30th, 2020 with their Mini Album Border: Day One.
She later debuted as a Solo Artist on January 22nd, 2023, with her debut album Waiting Room.
Ladies and Gentlemen; Lola ♡
★ profile ★ aesthetics ★ family ★ viral moments ★ song covers ★ discography ★ what's in her bag ★ interviews ★
Connections & Interactions ♡
★ relationship with the members ★ idol friends ★ international friends ★ interactions ★ dating ★ staff ★ l+h ★
Social Media ♡
★ weverse ★ instagram ★ youtube ★ tik tok ★ twitter ★ spotify ★ letterboxd ★
Idol Career ♡
★ Dark Moon ★ I-LAND ★ Border: Day One ★ Border: Carnival ★ Dimension: Dilemma ★ Dimension: Answer ★ Manifesto: Day 1 ★ Dark Blood ★ Orange Blood ★ Romance: Untold ★ Romance: Untold - Daydream ★ Desire: Unleashed ★ The Sin: Vanish ★
Other ♡
★ writings ★ taglist ★ credits ★ Lola's 12 Days of Ficmas ★ Lola's Birthday Dump ★
Enhypens-lola; all work on this blog is created and owned by me. please don't copy, translate, transfer, or claim any of my work without my permission.
Thank you for checking in angel this is the sweetest thing!! 🥺🫶🏻
But yes I'm good just been working very hard 😭 I'm currently job hunting and that has taken over my whole life lmao. And I have some family and friends visiting so I've been catching up with them. Plus being an Engene rn has definitely been difficult so I've just been taking some time to process everything 💔. But I'm still here ☺️ and doing well!!
AND of course working on some exciting things for you guys teehee 🤭. I'm planning on uploading the final part of Lola's birthday story next week 😍 finally haha. And then I have some ideas but I'll have to fine tune them and figure some details out but yeah I'm excited!!
As always thank you so much for your patience and if you have any recs for what uploads you want always let me know I love hearing from you guys ❤️
Hope you all are well and I'll try and upload soon 😚
𐙚 A/N I really really hope that this post doesn't come across as insensitive. But honestly I wrote this more for myself and I literally sobbed while writing it. It's why theres so many horrific spelling mistakes so apologies in advance for that! I just feel like I needed closure and honestly writing this has helped me come to terms with how I'm feeling about the situation and my future with Enhypen as a fan. And I really hope that it can do the same for you guys or at lease give you some sort of comfort and knowledge that no matter what your feeling. Your valid and safe here. But if you do feel like this is thoughless then PLEASE let me know and I'll take it down.
𐙚 A/N Oh my goodness I swaer this series has consumed my life lol. In the best way ofc but ugh this one was so hard for me to write idk why. I also chnaged the plot a little coz originally she was supposed to be speaking to Phuwin but after thinking about it it just made so much more sense to have the conversation be with the members instead. But some parts of this were driving me crazy because they just read awkwardly or are kinda boring but no matter what I did I just couldn't fix it... so I hope you guys still enjoy!!
Timeline: 2026
Now Playing: 22 (OVER SOON) by Bon Iver, We Hug Now by Sydney Rose, The Night We Met by Lord Huron, hapiness by Taylor Swift.
Word Count: 17.1K
"It might be over soon, two two."
The last three months pass through Lola’s mind in pieces - not full memories, not full days, just fragments. Moments. Flashes. A life she’s been moving through without ever really touching.
March bleeds into April, April dissolves into May, and she can’t tell where one ends and the next begins. Time has stopped feeling linear. It’s just… happening around her, dragging her along whether she’s ready or not.
She remembers the first week after Heeseung walked out with a clarity that still stings. The shock. The ringing silence. The way the dorm felt too big and too small at the same time. The way she kept listening for footsteps that never came.
Every night she left her door unlocked. Every morning she woke up disappointed.
She remembers waking up with her heart racing, reaching for her phone before she was even fully conscious - muscle memory, instinct, hope she didn’t want to admit she still had. Her thumb would swipe the screen, eyes blurry, breath held tight in her chest.
Nothing. No message. No missed call. No “I’m sorry.” No “How are you?" No “I miss you.”
Just silence.
A silence that grew heavier each day, settling into her bones like cold.
She learned how to function without feeling. How to laugh without meaning it. How to sleep without dreaming.
But she never learned how to stop missing him.
Then rehearsals started.
Not gently. Not gradually. Not in a way that gave her time to breathe or process or even understand what had happened.
Two days after she arrived back in Seoul - just forty‑eight hours after Heseung left - she was back in the practice room. Same mirrors. Same speakers. Same choreography.
Except it wasn't the same and everything felt wrong.
His absence was everywhere. In the empty spot he used to stretch in. In the harmonies that sounded thinner without him. In the jokes the boys didn’t make anymore. In the way no one said his name, even though they were all thinking it.
Schedules tightened immediately, like the company was determined to fill every second of her day so she wouldn’t have time to fall apart. Tour prep swallowed her whole - hours of choreography, vocal warm‑ups, fittings, meetings, interviews, content shoots.
She learned how to move without thinking. Her body hit every beat, every count, every formation, because it had to. Because muscle memory didn’t care that her heart was broken.
She learned how to smile without feeling. For staff. For cameras. For fans. For the boys, who watched her with quiet worry but didn’t push.
She learned how to speak without letting her voice shake. During practice. During meetings. During fancalls - which started just three days after the breakup.
She sat in front of a ring light, makeup perfect, hair styled, smile soft and sweet, while fans told her they loved her, missed her, were proud of her. She nodded. She laughed. She waved.
And every time a fan asked about the group, about the boys, about how rehearsals were going, she felt something inside her twist - because she knew they were asking about him too, even if they didn’t say it.
Five days after the breakup, she was on a plane to Australia.
Their first time there as a group. Jake's first time being back since he left. A milestone she can understand. A milestone they once imagined sharing with him.
Instead, she stared out the airplane window, numb, exhausted, watching clouds drift by like days she couldn’t feel.
Australia was loud. Crowded. Bright. Fans screaming her name, lights flashing, music vibrating through her chest.
But she felt nothing felt right.
She performed like a ghost - flawless, precise, empty. The boys kept close, forming a quiet shield around her backstage, guiding her through the chaos without making it obvious.
Rehearsals. Stages. Makeup. Meeting rooms. Repeat. Work filled every inch of the space Heeseung left behind - not because it healed her, but because it didn’t give her time to feel the wound.
She kept moving because stopping meant remembering. Stopping meant hurting. Stopping meant facing the truth she wasn’t ready to touch.
So she didn’t stop.
She learned how to live on autopilot. How to exist without existing. How to keep going even when she felt like she’d been hollowed out from the inside.
The boys watched her quietly - not hovering, not smothering, just… present. They moved around her like they were afraid to disturb something fragile. They didn’t ask about him. They didn’t say his name. They didn’t need to.
Heeseung's absence lived in the room with them, heavy and unspoken, like a ghost they all pretended not to see.
Some days she felt like she was floating above her own body - watching herself rehearse, watching herself laugh at jokes she didn’t hear, watching herself sign posters and pose for photos and bow onstage like she wasn’t hollow inside.
She’d see herself in the mirror during choreography and barely recognise the girl staring back. Her movements were perfect. Sharp. Clean. Professional.
But her eyes were empty.
Other days she felt nothing at all. No sadness. No anger. No longing.
Just… blankness. A quiet, heavy fog that wrapped around her and muted everything - sound, colour, emotion.
Nights were the worst.
She’d lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the hum of the air conditioner or the distant traffic or the boys whispering in the hallway - anything to fill the silence he left behind.
Sometimes she’d reach for her phone without thinking, thumb hovering over the screen, waiting for a notification that wasn’t coming.
She stopped checking after a while. Stopped waiting. Stopped hoping. Or maybe she didn’t stop - maybe she just got better at pretending she had. Maybe she learned how to tuck the ache somewhere deep, somewhere quiet, somewhere she could ignore as long as she kept moving. Maybe she learned how to live with the silence instead of fighting it.
Tour began in April.
Stage after stage they all blurred together. Cities changed. Hotels changed. Crowds changed.
But she didn’t.
Every night, the lights hit her like a wave - blinding, hot, overwhelming - and the roar of the crowd shook the floor beneath her feet. Fans screamed her name, held up signs, cried when she waved at them. The adrenaline should’ve lit her up from the inside.
Instead, it pushed her forward even when her heart wasn’t in it - like a current dragging her along.
She hit every mark. Every note. Every cue.
Her body moved flawlessly, muscle memory guiding her through choreography she’d practiced a thousand times. Her voice never cracked. Her smile never slipped. Her timing never faltered.
To anyone watching, she looked perfect. Professional. Powerful. Alive.
But she didn’t feel any of it.
Not the music vibrating through her chest. Not the cheers echoing in her ears. Not the heat of the stage lights. Not the rush of performing in front of thousands.
It all washed over her like water over stone - touching her, surrounding her, but never sinking in.
Some nights, she’d stand in the wings before going onstage, staring at the crowd, feeling absolutely nothing. No nerves. No excitement. No joy.
Just a quiet, heavy numbness that sat in her chest like a rock.
And when the music started, she’d step into the light anyway - because that’s what she was supposed to do. Because the world kept spinning even when she didn’t.
But despite everything... it wasn’t all bad.
She wasn’t sixteen anymore. She wasn’t the girl who let numbness swallow her whole. She’d been through too much, learned too much, grown too much.
She knew how to manage the emptiness now - not perfectly, not gracefully, but intentionally.
Therapy helped. Talking helped. Letting herself feel nothing without judging it helped.
So she focused on the good - the small, fleeting, unexpected moments that reminded her she was still here, still alive, still capable of feeling something.
A member making her laugh so hard she snorted during practice. A late‑night convenience store run with the boys where they argued over ramen flavours. A quiet afternoon in the dorm where they all piled onto the couch to watch a movie and she fell asleep on someone’s shoulder without realising.
They adjusted without discussing it.
Someone always stood beside her during formations. Someone always handed her water before she asked. Someone always cracked a joke a little softer, a little gentler, watching her out of the corner of their eye to see if she’d smile.
Sometimes she did. Sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she didn’t even notice they were trying - not because she didn’t appreciate it, but because she was too deep in her own head to register anything outside of it.
Most of her time she spent writing. Making music. Producing. Composing. It’s the only place she's ever truly been honest with herself - her diary, her journal, the one space where she doesn't lie or soften anything. So she poured everything into it. Hours and hours of writing, bleeding, trying to understand herself through sound because she couldn’t do it any other way.
And she put time into herself when she could. She went to the cinema alone, letting the darkness and the sound swallow her for two hours. Played video games until her fingers cramped, losing herself in worlds where she didn’t have to think. Saw her friends whenever schedules allowed - coffee dates, quick dinners, stolen hours that reminded her she wasn’t alone.
She had sleepovers with the members when the nights felt too heavy. They’d drag blankets into the living room, order too much food, and fall asleep to some terrible movie none of them were actually watching.
Jay’s birthday arrived, and for the first time in weeks, Lola felt something loosen in her chest. The room was warm, loud, full of the kind of chaotic affection only they could create. And when Jay accidentally smashed the cake into his own face - frosting streaked across his cheek, eyes wide with startled betrayal. She laughed. For what felt like the first time in weeks.
Not a polite laugh. Not a forced one. A real one. Bright, unrestrained, bubbling up before she could stop it. For a moment, she looked like herself again.
Then there was St. Paddy’s Day in Australia. The streets buzzed with music and strangers and neon lights. She let herself be pulled into it, into the noise and the colour and the movement. She danced without thinking, drank just enough to feel the warmth settle into her bones, and allowed herself to have fun.
For a few hours, she wasn’t grieving. She wasn’t drowning. She wasn’t trying to survive anything.
She was simply there - present, alive, letting the world hold her up instead of crush her.
There were always these little pockets of hope - tiny, bright moments that cracked through the numbness like sunlight through blinds. Moments that made her feel human again, even if only for a heartbeat.
But the sadness never fully left.
It sat quietly in the background, a soft ache she carried with her everywhere. Not overwhelming. Not consuming. Just… present.
A reminder of what she’d lost. A reminder of who she still missed.
She was living. She was trying. She was growing.
But she was also grieving.
And both things were true at the same time.
And now it’s May.
Thailand. A new city. A new hotel. Another stop on a tour she’s been sleepwalking through.
The elevator ride feels lighter than it has in weeks.
Lola leans against the cool metal wall, eyes still a little puffy, cheeks still warm from crying, but her chest… her chest feels different. Looser. Unknotted. Like something inside her finally unclenched.
Seeing Phuwin - someone completely outside the group, outside the company, outside the breakup - was exactly what she needed. She didn’t have to pretend. She didn’t have to be careful. She didn’t have to worry about being a burden or making things awkward.
She just talked. And cried. And breathed.
And for the first time in sixty‑one days, she felt like herself again - even if only for a few hours.
He listened without flinching. Held her hand. Made her laugh. Reminded her she wasn’t alone. Reminded her she wasn’t broken. Reminded her she was allowed to feel everything she’d been avoiding. It's one of the many things she loves about him.
By the time she stepped out of the warmth of his house, something in her had shifted. Her shoulders felt lighter. Not in a way she could point to, but in that subtle, unmistakable way that comes after finally exhaling a breath you didn’t realise you’d been holding for months. It was as if she’d been carrying a weight so familiar she no longer recognised it as heavy, and only now, after sitting with someone who listened without rushing her, had she finally set it down.
The night air didn’t feel as sharp. Her chest didn’t feel as tight. Her thoughts didn’t feel as loud.
Now, walking down the hotel hallway, she feels tired in a good way. The kind of tired that comes after a long cry and a long talk and a long overdue release.
She’s excited to get into bed. Excited to sleep properly for once. Excited to wake up tomorrow without the ache sitting so close to her ribs.
She swipes her keycard, pushes open the door-
And freezes.
All of the boys are inside.
Not lounging. Not talking. Not on their phones.
Just sitting. Waiting.
Her room is dimly lit, the bedside lamp casting a soft glow over all of them - Jay on the edge of the bed, Sunoo cross‑legged on the floor, Jungwon leaning against the desk, Niki perched on the windowsill, and Jake and Sunghoon standing near the wardrobe like they aren't sure whether to sit or stay alert.
For a second, nobody says anything.
Lola blinks, confused, her hand still on the door handle. She looks from one face to the next, trying to understand why they’re here, why they’re all so quiet, why they’re all looking at her like she’s made of glass.
The silence stretches - not tense, not heavy, just… full. Full of concern. Full of questions. Full of something they don’t know how to say yet.
She steps inside slowly, closing the door behind her.
Her heart picks up. Not in fear. Not in panic.
Just in surprise and a little bit of confusion. She wipes under her eyes instinctively, even though the redness is obvious.
Still, none of them speak.
Jay’s knee bounces restlessly. Sunoo’s fingers twist in his sleeves. Jungwon’s jaw is tight. Jake’s arms are crossed. Sunghoon looks like he’s trying not to pace. Niki’s eyes are wide, darting between everyone.
No one speaks.
So she does.
“Uhh... What’s going on?” letting out an awkward laugh. "What are you all doing here... How did you even get in?"
Jungwon exhales sharply - not angry, but absolutely not calm. “We didn’t know where you were.”
Lola frowns. “I told you I was seeing Win.”
Jay’s voice comes out sharper than he means it. “You weren’t answering your phone.”
“I didn’t hear it,” she says, defensive without meaning to. “Sorry. it must have been on silent.”
Jake runs a hand through his hair, frustrated. “We called you. A lot.”
Sunoo’s voice cracks. “You were gone for hours.”
Lola blinks, momentarily stunned. The sight in front of her knocks the breath out of her chest. All of them gathered, all of them waiting, all of them watching her with a tension she wasn’t prepared to face. She hadn’t expected this. She hadn’t expected every single one of them to show up. And she certainly hadn’t expected the strange mix of emotions simmering beneath their concern.
It isn’t just worry in their eyes. It’s something sharper. Something heavier. Something that feels like frustration threaded through fear - the kind that comes from loving someone so fiercely that the thought of her hurting alone makes them ache.
She can feel it radiating off them: the confusion, the protectiveness, the quiet anger at the idea that she’s been carrying something this big without them. It hits her all at once, leaving her disoriented, breathless, overwhelmed by the intensity of their presence.
“I mean… you knew where I was,” she says, trying to understand. “You know where he lives. If you were really worried, you could’ve just messaged him or gone over.”
The reaction is immediate.
Jake’s head snaps up. Jay’s eyes widen. Sunoo flinches. Jungwon’s expression hardens. Sunghoon's shoulders tense. Niki looks like she just said something dangerous.
Jake speaks first, voice tight. “Lola… we’re not going to show up at someone’s house because you couldn't answer your damn phone.”
Jungwon adds, sharper, “And we’re not even close with him.. he's you're friend not ours.”
Sunghoon steps forward, eyes tired. "It doesn't even matter you were supposed to be back an hour ago."
Jay cuts in, voice cracking. “We just- We thought something happened.”
Niki whispers, “We didn’t know if you were okay.”
Lola’s defensiveness falters. Because she finally sees it - really sees it.
This isn’t just about tonight. This is about everything. Two months of watching her go numb. Two months of not knowing how to help. Two months of being scared to push too hard or not enough. Two months of insecurity and worry piling up until it finally bubbled over.
She looked at all of them - the tense shoulders, the tired eyes, the clenched jaws - and it hit her that they weren’t just worried.
They were terrified. Not of her breaking. Not of her running. But of losing her in the silence the same way they’d lost Heeseung.
Her voice softened instinctively. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” Another apology slipped out, quieter this time. “I’m really sorry. I honestly didn’t mean to worry you.”
But the words didn’t land.
Jay let out a frustrated breath, rubbing his face. “You keep saying that, but you don’t seem to get it.”
Lola blinked, thrown off by the sharpness in his tone. “I do get it. I just said I understand that you were worried.”
Jake’s voice came out harsher than he intended. “We weren’t just worried. We were scared for you LJ.”
Sunoo added, voice trembling, “And you’re acting like it’s not a big deal.”
Lola’s shoulders tensed. “What? I’m not acting like anything. I just… This has just escelated so fast... I don't even really know what's going on right now.”
And she meant it. She genuinely meant it.
Because from her perspective, this was coming out of nowhere. She understood why they were upset - of course she did - but the intensity felt dramatic, overwhelming, too much for a day where she was already exhausted and emotionally wrung out.
She had just walked through the door five minutes ago. Five minutes. And suddenly she was being confronted, cornered, hounded by six people she loved, all demanding explanations for something she hadn’t even realised was happening.
Her confusion twisted into frustration.
They haven’t even let me process anything. I haven’t had a second to breathe. And now they’re upset that I’m not reacting the way they want me to?
She felt her jaw tighten.
It wasn’t that she didn’t care. It wasn’t that she didn’t take their concerns seriously. It was that she hadn’t been given the chance to understand them yet.
For the boys, this had clearly been building quietly for weeks - whispered worries, shared glances, unspoken fears. But for Lola, it was sudden. Abrupt. A tidal wave she hadn’t seen coming.
And now they were upset that she wasn’t immediately matching their emotional intensity.
Her annoyance flickered again - small but sharp.
I just walked in the door. I didn’t even know this was a problem. And now I’m being made to feel like I did something wrong?
She swallowed hard, trying to keep her voice steady, trying not to snap, trying not to let the exhaustion of her day bleed into the moment.
But the truth was simple:
She was tired. She was overwhelmed. And she didn’t understand why they were blaming her for something she hadn’t even known existed.
Before Lola can get a word out, Sunghoon speaks first - his jaw tightening, voice already strained.
“You can't just not answer your phone tiny.”
Lola’s brows pull together, defensive without meaning to be. “What! Why are you guys acting like I've made this concious decscision to ignore you... I just didn’t hear it,” she repeats. “I was talking. I wasn’t checking my phone every five minutes.”
Jay drags a hand through his hair, pacing now, agitation rolling off him in waves. His movements are sharp, restless, like he’s trying to outrun the feeling clawing at his chest. His breath comes uneven, his jaw tight, his shoulders tense with the kind of fear that disguises itself as anger when it gets too big to hold quietly.
“And yet you're standing there acting like we're overreacting? Like we shouldn’t be worried? That hurts.”
The words burst out of him - not loud, not cruel, but raw. Raw in the way someone sounds when they’re finally admitting how scared they were.
He isn’t angry at her. He’s angry at the idea of her suffering alone. He’s angry at the thought that she didn’t think she could come to them.
His pacing isn’t frustration with her. It’s frustration with himself. With all of them. With the situation. With the fact that she stood there trying to act fine while her world was cracking open.
She stares at him, stunned. The words hit her harder than she expects, knocking her off balance in a way she can’t hide. Jay’s frustration, the pacing, the sharpness in his voice. It all crashes into her at once, leaving her blinking, breath caught somewhere between her ribs and her throat.
“Bro, what? I’m not saying any of that. I’m sorry I didn’t answer my phone and I made you all worry.”
Her voice comes out softer than she intends, shaky around the edges. She takes a moment - a long, deliberate inhale - trying to calm herself, trying to steady the rising panic in her chest. She forces her shoulders to drop, forces her breath to slow, forces herself to listen instead of react.
Because something else is happening here. She can feel it. The tension beneath their words, the hurt beneath their panic, the way their emotions are spilling out sideways because they don’t know how to express what they’re actually afraid of.
She swallows, grounding herself before she speaks again.
“Okay, I feel like something else is going on here and you’re taking it out on me.”
The words are gentle, not defensive - an attempt to understand, not accuse. She’s trying to reach past the panic, past the frustration, past the sharp edges of their fear. She’s trying to see what’s underneath it all.
The room goes still.
No one says anything for a moment - some of them realising she’s right, others fighting it, clinging to their anger because it feels safer than admitting what’s underneath.
Lola exhales, long and tired.
“Does someone want to explain to me… calmly… what’s going on? Because I don’t think this is as simple as me not replying for a few hours.”
Even through her frustration, even through the exhaustion of her day, she can see it - the cracks in their voices, the panic behind their anger, the way their fear is sitting just under the surface.
They’re not mad about the phone. They’re mad about what the phone symbolises. They’re mad because they’ve been scared for weeks and never said anything.
And Lola, despite the sting of how they jumped down her throat the second she walked in, still feels that familiar pull inside her. The instinct to help, to soothe, to fix. Even hurt, even overwhelmed, even shaken by their reaction, her first impulse is to ease their minds.
It’s who she is.
It’s who she has always been.
She has spent years being the emotional buffer in the group - the one who absorbs tension, the one who smooths over conflict, the one who senses distress before anyone else notices it. She has always been the one who steps forward when someone is scared, the one who reaches out when someone is hurting, the one who tries to carry the weight so no one else has to.
Even now, even after their voices rose too quickly, even after their fear rushed out and cut her deeper than they meant to, she still wants to understand them. She still wants to make it better. She still wants to fix whatever this is.
It’s not weakness. It’s not submission. It’s not her avoiding conflict.
It’s love.
A fierce, loyal, selfless kind of love. The kind that makes her want to protect them even when she’s the one who needs protecting. The kind that makes her want to soothe their panic even when she’s shaking herself. The kind that makes her want to reach for them even when they’ve hurt her first.
She has always been the one who tries to hold the group together. She has always been the one who tries to keep everyone safe. She has always been the one who tries to fix the cracks before they become fractures.
And this moment is no different.
Even with her heart pounding, even with her throat tight, even with her emotions raw and exposed, she still leans toward them - not physically, but emotionally. She still tries to listen past the panic. She still tries to hear what they’re really saying. She still tries to understand the fear beneath their frustration.
The boys look at each other. Waiting for someone to speak.
The argument is small, but it’s sharp - frustration layered over fear, fear layered over love. Voices aren’t raised, but they’re tight. Edges aren’t cruel, but they’re jagged.
Lola stands there, waiting patiently, waiting for someone to explain why they’re all reacting like this.
And then Jungwon steps forward.
Not loudly. Not aggressively. Just with the quiet authority he’s always had - the kind that settles a room without needing volume.
“Okay,” he says, steady but firm. "You're right."
The words cut through the tension like a clean breath.
Jay stops pacing. Jake’s shoulders drop. Sunoo’s eyes flick to the floor. Sunghoon exhales. Niki uncurls his hands.
Lola freezes, unsure if she should speak or stay silent.
Jungwon looks around the room first - checking each member, grounding them - before turning back to her.
His voice softens, but the seriousness stays.
“We’re not mad at you,” he says, voice steady in a way that makes her chest tighten. “None of us are.”
Lola swallows, unsure whether to believe him, unsure whether she deserves to.
“We’re sorry for snapping at you,” he continues. “But… we’re upset.”
Her brows pull together. “Upset?”
He nods, slow and honest. “Because you’re not talking to us.”
The words land heavier than she expects - like something placed gently in her hands but still too heavy to hold.
Jay shifts on the edge of the bed, rubbing the back of his neck. “We’ve been waiting... Giving you space hoping you would come to us... But you never do we've just watched you pull back for months. Not completely. Not like before. But enough that we feel it.”
Jake's voice is quieter, almost careful. “You’ve been retreating into yourself again. Not like dramatically or anything. Just… slipping away in small pieces.”
Sunoo's voice is small, almost fragile. “And we don’t want to lose you like that. Not again. Not in that way.”
Sunghoon steps closer, expression gentle but tired, the kind of tired that comes from caring too much for too long. “We know you’re not spiralling. We know you’re handling things better this time. We see the work you’re doing. We’re proud of you for it.”
Niki nods, eyes wide and earnest. “But you’re still hurting. Even if you think you’re hiding it well.”
Jungwon's voice is steady and calm, the anchor in the room. “And we want you to lean on us. The way we lean on you. The way we always have. That’s what we’re asking for.”
Lola’s breath catches.
Because she hadn’t realised. She truly hadn’t. She hadn’t noticed the distance forming, hadn’t seen the quiet spaces she was leaving behind. She hadn’t been consciously avoiding them - she’d just been busy, overwhelmed, numb, trying to keep herself afloat in ways that felt private and necessary.
In her mind, they’d had moments. Small conversations, shared exhaustion, quiet nods of understanding. Moments she thought counted as connection, as proof they were all navigating the same storm together. But clearly… that hadn’t translated. Not to them. Not in the way she assumed.
“I… I wasn’t trying to shut you out,” she says, voice barely above a whisper. Shock sits heavy in her chest, thick and disorienting. “I swear. I just… haven’t had time to process anything myself. Never mind talk about it.”
She looks at them, really looks, and realises how much she’s missed - the worry in their eyes, the tension in their shoulders, the way they’ve been watching her slip away in ways she didn’t feel from the inside. She should have known. She should have seen it. But she didn’t. And the guilt settles like a weight she didn’t expect.
Jay’s expression softens, the tension in his shoulders easing. “We know.”
Jake's nods, quiet but certain. “We do.”
Sunoo wipes under his eye, the gesture small and aching. “But it still felt like you were slipping away.”
Sunhoon adds, voice low and steady, “We just didn’t want to wait until it got worse... Not again.”
Jungwon finishes, placing a gentle hand on her back. “We’re your family. We want to be part of your healing, not just the people watching from the outside.”
Lola stands there, stunned. Because clearly… those moments hadn’t reached them the way she believed. What felt like connection to her had felt like absence to them.
Her voice comes out small, almost childlike. “I didn’t know.”
Jungwon nods, steady and warm. “You do now.”
And the room falls into a quiet that isn’t tense anymore - just full, honest, human. But underneath that honesty sits something new: an awkwardness none of them quite know how to navigate.
The air feels different now. Not sharp. Not dangerous. Just… uncertain.
The room has finally settled - quiet, heavy, but calmer. Jungwon’s intervention pulled everyone back from the edge, and now they’re all sitting, breathing, processing, trying to figure out what comes after a truth that big.
Lola sits on the bed, hands folded in her lap, still stunned by everything they’ve said. She can feel all of them around her - close, present, wanting to stay - but the argument has left a thin layer of awkwardness between them, like a film no one knows how to wipe away.
The silence stretches, not hostile, just hesitant. They want to speak. They want to reach for each other. They want to return to the ease they usually have. But no one knows what the first step should be.
Jay keeps glancing at her, opening his mouth like he might say something, then closing it again. Sunoo fiddles with the hem of his sleeve. Niki shifts his weight, foot tapping lightly against the floor. Sunghoon exhales slowly, as if trying to steady the atmosphere. Jake looks at the ceiling, then at Lola, then at the floor. Jungwon watches her with soft eyes, waiting for the moment the tension breaks.
They’re all here. They’re all staying. They just don’t know how to move forward yet.
And Lola feels that - the awkwardness, the care, the wanting - all of it pressing gently around her.
Then Jake clears his throat, trying to fill it.
“So… what did you do at Win's place?”
It’s innocent. It’s awkward. It’s meant to ease the tension - a small question offered gently, hoping to bridge the gap between them.
But Lola hesitates.
Not because she wants to lie. Not because she wants to hide anything. But because she’s suddenly terrified of saying the wrong thing, of accidentally reopening wounds they’ve only just managed to close. She doesn’t want to make things worse. She doesn’t want to misstep again.
And yet… she knows honesty is the only way forward now.
Her throat tightens, but she forces herself to speak.
“I… talked to him,” she says quietly. “About how I’ve been feeling.”
The words feel fragile leaving her mouth, like she’s placing something delicate in the middle of the room and hoping they handle it gently.
But the reaction is instant.
Jay’s head snaps up. Sunoo's mouth falls open. Niki flinches like someone's tapped on his bruise. Sunghoon's shoulders tense, the calm he’d just found slipping. Jake's expression twists, hurt folding into frustration. Jungwon closes his eyes for a moment, steadying himself before he speaks.
The frustration that had only just settled flares right back up - not explosive, not cruel, but sharp enough to sting.
Jay speaks first, voice tight. “Lola, come on.”
She blinks, startled. “What?”
Jake's tone is sharper now - a tone he almost never uses with her. “This is exactly what we’re talking about.”
Niki’s voice cracks. “You’re talking to other people about our issues instead of talking to us.”
Lola’s brows knit, confusion and guilt tangling together. “It’s not- I wasn’t trying to-”
Sunghoon cuts in, not angry but undeniably upset. “We’re right here. We’ve been right here for months.”
The room shifts again. Not hostile, but wounded. The air feels heavier, quieter, thick with the kind of hurt that doesn’t lash out but sinks inward. They’re not yelling. They’re not attacking. They’re hurting.
And Lola feels that hurt hit her all at once - sharp, sudden, overwhelming. It lands in her chest like a weight she didn’t see coming.
She thought she was giving herself space. They thought she was slipping away.
She thought she was handling things privately. They thought she was shutting them out.
Two different realities collide in the middle of the room - hers and theirs - crashing together with the force of everything they’ve never said aloud.
And Lola stands in the middle of it, finally understanding the truth she missed
Jungwon's voice is low and controlled, the kind of calm that comes from trying very hard not to let emotion spill over. “We’re not saying you can’t talk to your other friends. But you’re telling him things you haven’t told us.”
Jay runs a hand through his hair, pacing again, agitation returning like muscle memory. “We’re the ones who see you every day. We’re the ones who’ve been worried sick. We’re the ones who’ve been trying to help.”
Jake adds, sharper than before, “And you’re telling him instead of us.”
Sunoo wipes under his face, frustrated and hurt. “It feels like you don’t trust us.”
Lola’s breath catches. “That’s not true at all... Of course I trust you!”
Sunghoon steps forward, eyes tired in a way that makes her chest ache. “Then why didn’t you talk to us?”
She opens her mouth, closes it, tries again - because she can feel the weight of their disappointment pressing against her ribs.
“I… I don't think it's that simple.”
Jay stops pacing, staring at her. “Erm... Yeah, it is that simple. actually. You just open your mouth, and you talk.”
“No, actually,” Lola says, voice small but firm. “It’s not.”
The boys freeze - not in anger, but in surprise. Her pushback is gentle, but it’s real. And it shifts the air again.
She swallows, trying to explain without making it worse, trying to untangle the knot inside her chest long enough to show them what she means. Because she didn’t choose someone else over them. She didn’t trust him more. She didn’t shut them out on purpose.
And now she’s standing in the middle of their hurt, trying to find the right words to bridge the gap she never meant to create.
“You’re all part of this,” she says softly, voice trembling with the effort to make them understand. “The tour. The schedule. The silence. The worry. The… everything. You’re in it with me. And I didn’t want to dump more on you when you’re already dealing with your own stuff.”
She isn’t defensive. She isn’t hiding. She’s pleading - gently, quietly - for them to see her heart the way she sees theirs.
Jake's expression softens, but the frustration stays beneath it like a low hum. “God. How many times, LJ... We want you to dump it on us.”
Sunoo nods, eyes glossy, shoulders tight. “We want to help.”
Jungwon's voice is steady, grounding, the anchor she’s always relied on. “We’re not upset that you talked to him. We’re upset that you didn’t talk to us.”
Sunghoon adds, “We are your family. We’re supposed to carry this together.”
Lola’s breath shakes. She feels the weight of all their eyes, all their hurt, all their love - and she wants so badly to fix it, to reach them, to make them understand she never meant to leave them in the dark.
“I wasn’t trying to shut you out,” she says quietly. “I just… needed to talk to someone who wasn’t part of all this. Someone who wasn’t watching me every day. Someone who wasn’t scared of me slipping up.”
Jay’s expression cracks, the frustration slipping into something raw. “We’re not scared of you. We're scared for you... Because we care, dumbass.”
Niki nods, voice barely holding steady. “We already lost one person.”
The words strike her immediately. Not as cruelty, but as truth delivered with too much force for her heart to absorb all at once. They land in her chest like a sudden jolt, a shock that ripples through her before she can steady herself. It’s not the sharpness of the comment that stuns her, but the accuracy of it - the way it cuts straight to the part of her she’s been avoiding, the part she’s been afraid to name.
She looks at them - the constants in her life, the last anchors she has left in a world that has never stopped shifting beneath her feet - and something fierce rises in her chest. Not panic. Not fear. But a desperate, aching urgency. A need so sharp it almost hurts.
It isn’t desperation born from fear of losing them. It’s desperation born from wanting to grow with them. Wanting to evolve together. Wanting to step into the next chapter without leaving anyone behind.
She loves them enough to tell them the truth. She loves them enough to risk discomfort. She loves them enough to let the bond change instead of letting it break.
She needs them to understand. She needs them to stay. She needs them to see that she wasn’t choosing someone else - she was just trying to survive.
Sunoo whispers, barely holding himself together, “We don’t want to lose you too. We can’t.”
The room falls silent again - but this time it isn’t sharp or defensive. It’s honest. Raw. Human. A silence shaped by fear and love sitting right beside each other.
And Lola finally understands the gravity of what they’ve been carrying. The months of watching her withdraw, the quiet panic of seeing her slip into old patterns, the helplessness of not knowing how to reach her.
The atmosphere is still tight - not explosive, but fragile, stretched thin by emotion that’s been building for months. The boys are upset again, voices edged with fear disguised as frustration, because they think she still doesn’t understand why they’re hurting. They’re not angry at her. They’re scared for her.
Lola sits there, stunned, overwhelmed, her mind scrambling for the right words - something that will soothe, something that will explain, something that will show them she does care, that she does see them, that she never meant to make them feel shut out.
And then she exhales - slow, shaky - gathering every ounce of courage she has left.
Finally, she speaks.
“Guys…” she lets out a long, uneven sigh. “This is the first time since… everything happened that I’ve actually let myself feel anything.”
The room stills.
Sunghoon's shoulders drop a little. Jake's arms uncross. Sunoo's eyes soften. Jay stops pacing mid‑step. Niki leans forward, breath held. Jungwon watches her carefully, like he’s afraid she might break if he looks away.
She continues, voice quiet but steady - the kind of steady that comes from holding herself together by the thinnest thread.
“With tour… rehearsals… meetings… travel… I haven’t had time to process anything. I haven’t had time to deal with it. I’ve been moving nonstop since the night he left. I’ve been performing, flying, smiling, working. I haven’t had a second to breathe.”
Her voice wavers.
“Even when I’m in therapy I feel like I’m going crazy because I have absolutely no idea how to describe the pain I’m in.”
She swallows hard, throat tight.
“And today was the first time I stopped long enough to feel it. It was the first time that… I felt safe enough to…” She sighs again - this one sharper, frustrated with herself. “Try. I guess.”
The boys exchange looks - not angry now, but confused, hurting, trying to understand the depth she’s finally revealing. They’re seeing her clearly for the first time in months, and it scares them. It scares her too.
Lola takes a breath, gathering herself.
“And I need you to hear this without getting upset again.”
They nod, slowly - cautious, attentive, bracing themselves.
She continues.
“You all have places you can go,” she says softly, desperation threading through every word. “People you can talk to. Partners you can stay with. Homes outside the group. You have support systems that exist beyond this room.”
She shakes her head, voice trembling. “I’m not saying your pain isn’t real. I would never compare your feelings to mine. And I’m not trying to erase anything you’ve been dealing with.”
Her voice wavers - not from fear, but from the sheer weight of what she’s about to say.
“But I didn’t just lose a friend. Or a coworker. Or a roommate.”
She meets their eyes one by one, making sure they see her, really see her.
“I lost my partner. The love of my life. I lost everything. And I’ve been trying to figure out how to live without him.”
The room goes silent - heavy, stunned, aching - as if the air itself is holding its breath.
Because it wasn’t just him she lost. It was the life she had built around him - the quiet safety of knowing where she belonged, the way her world had shape and meaning simply because he was in it. His presence had been a compass, a rhythm, a way of existing. And when he left, that entire structure collapsed.
She felt his absence constantly. Not in a dramatic way - but in the small, relentless moments that made up her days. It was like losing a limb: something that should be there, something her body still expected, something her mind still reached for. Every movement reminded her of what was missing. Every breath felt slightly off‑balance.
She was grieving someone who wasn’t dead. Someone who was still out there, living, breathing, laughing, existing - just not with her. Not for her. And that was its own kind of cruelty. Because everywhere she looked, everything she touched, every routine she tried to rebuild, was another reminder that he wasn’t hers anymore. That the life she had imagined with him had evaporated overnight.
She carried that grief like a storm trapped inside her chest. Trying to describe it felt impossible - like trying to explain the wreckage while still standing in it. There were no words big enough, no metaphors strong enough, no language capable of holding the enormity of what she had lost. Some experiences were simply too devastating to articulate, too raw to name, too sacred in their pain to speak aloud.
And she had been living with that silence for months.
The boys stare at her - not angry now, not frustrated - just hurting with her, finally understanding the depth she’s been drowning in.
Her voice cracks, thin and breaking at the edges.
“It’s so fucking stupid,” she whispers, “but sleeping alone for the first time in three years…”
Jay looks away, swallowing hard, jaw tightening like he’s trying not to show how much that hurts to hear.
“And trying to remember my inhaler or my medication,” she continues, voice trembling, “because he always packed my bag for me.”
Sunoo brings his hand to his eye, blinking fast.
“Having to make my own meals when I get home late,” she says, breath hitching, “because he always cooked.”
Jake’s breath stutters, shoulders curling inward.
“Driving myself to the studio instead of being driven.”
She shakes her head, overwhelmed by the avalanche of tiny losses.
“He was in everything,” she says. “Every routine. Every habit. Every part of my day. And I didn’t even realise how much until he wasn’t there.”
She looks at them - really looks - her voice barely above a whisper now, fragile and honest.
“So if I didn’t notice all those tiny things… why would you?”
The room goes still again, the boys staring at her with a mix of heartbreak and dawning understanding - because this isn’t just grief over a breakup. It’s grief over a life that vanished overnight. A way of existing that was ripped away. A person who is still alive but no longer hers.
The boys freeze - because she’s right. Because they didn’t see the small losses. Because they didn’t understand the depth of her grief. Because they were watching the surface while she was drowning underneath.
Jungwon's expression breaks first - soft, devastated, understanding in a way that makes Lola’s heart hurt.
Jake wipes his face, eyes red. Sunoo sniffles. Jay looks like he’s fighting tears. Sunghoon's jaw trembles, the emotion finally catching up to him. Nikki’s eyes shine, wide and hurting.
Lola finishes, voice trembling but honest, the truth spilling out of her in a way she can’t stop.
“I’m not shutting you out. I’m not choosing anyone over you. I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m just… trying to relearn how to exist. And today was the first time I let myself feel how hard that’s been.”
The room falls into a silence that isn’t tense anymore. It’s full. It’s real. It’s the truth they’ve all been avoiding - the truth she’s been carrying alone.
The quiet settles again. Not sharp, not explosive, just heavy with everything that’s been said, everything that’s been revealed, everything they didn’t know.
Lola sighs, rubbing her palms together, grounding herself before she continues. Because she’s not done, and they need to hear the rest.
“Look… I know we talk to each other,” she says softly. “I know we lean on each other when we can. But you also keep to yourselves. All of you.”
The boys shift, subtle but telling - because they know she’s right.
“And you all have partners now,” she adds gently. “People you subconsciously go to when things get hard. People you can stay with. People who distract you. People who make you feel safe.”
She lifts her shoulders slightly, not accusing - just stating a truth she’s observed quietly for months.
“I don’t hold that against you. If anyone understands what that’s like… it’s me.”
The boys soften. Because they know she isn’t wrong, and because they know she’s speaking from experience, not resentment.
“And I’m happy for you,” she continues. “Really. I’m happy you all finally have people you can lean on and open up to. As your friend, your happiness is all I can ever wish for you.”
Her voice wavers, but she keeps going, gentle but firm.
“But it’s a little unfair to be mad at me for not talking to you… when I haven’t really had the chance.”
She looks around the room, meeting each of their eyes, making sure they hear her - really hear her.
“You’re not doing anything wrong,” she says. “You’re just living your lives. You’re building relationships. You’re finding comfort. And I love that for you.”
She swallows, breath trembling.
“But I’ve been alone in a way none of you have. And I’m not blaming you for that - I’m just asking you to understand why it’s been harder for me to reach out. And a little patience while I try and figure everything out.”
Lola keeps going, gentle but firm, her voice threading through the room like something fragile and necessary.
“Most of the time, I’m the only one at the dorm,” Lola says softly. “And when you are home… you’re with your partners. Which is fine. I’m not complaining. I’m not asking you to change anything.”
She shakes her head, overwhelmed by the truth she’s finally saying out loud.
“But you’re upset that I didn’t talk to you… when you weren’t really there to talk to in the first place.”
The boys freeze - because she’s right. Because they didn’t see it. Because they didn’t realise how alone she’s been in the quiet moments, in the spaces between rehearsals, in the nights where the dorm echoed with nothing but her own breathing.
She continues, voice soft but steady, the kind of steady that comes from months of holding herself together alone.
“Everyone is dealing with this in different ways. I get that. And that’s good.”
Her eyes shine, but she doesn’t cry - she’s past crying. She’s in that numb, aching place where tears don’t even come anymore.
“I’m just… confused.”
The boys look at her and for the first time they see how tired she is. Not just physically. Emotionally. Mentally. The kind of tired that settles into your bones and makes everything feel heavier.
“I can’t even begin to understand how I’m feeling,” she admits. “I don’t have the words yet. I don’t have the clarity. I don’t have the space.”
She exhales, shoulders sinking, the weight of months pressing down on her.
“All I know is that I’m exhausted.”
The room shifts. Not with tension, but with something quieter, older, familiar. A nostalgia none of them say out loud. A yearning for the past - for when they were younger and smaller and scared, and they went to each other for everything. For the nights they slept on each other’s beds. For the mornings they shared blankets and hoodies. For the years when all they had was each other, and that was enough.
They all feel it - that ache for the version of themselves who didn’t have partners, or schedules, or separate lives. The version of themselves who clung to each other because they were all they had.
And Lola feels it too. She misses them. She misses the closeness. She misses the simplicity of loving them without the world pulling them in different directions.
She isn’t asking them to go back. She isn’t asking them to choose her over their partners. She isn’t asking them to change their lives.
She’s just asking them to understand why she’s been so alone.
She looks at them, eyes soft, voice barely above a whisper.
“I’m trying. I really am. But I’m tired. And I’m doing my best with what I have.”
The boys are quiet now. Not angry. Not defensive. Just listening, really listening.
Lola takes a slow breath, her voice soft but steady.
“I’m mourning my relationship with E,” she says. “I’m grieving the life I thought I was going to have.”
The words land heavy. No one moves. No one breathes too loudly. It’s the kind of truth that rearranges the room.
“And I’m re‑learning how to survive without the safety of this group.”
Her voice trembles, but she keeps it controlled - because she needs them to hear her clearly, not through panic or guilt.
“You guys… you have people now. You have homes outside this one. You have places to run to when things get hard.”
She swallows, eyes shining.
“But I don’t. Not anymore.”
The boys' shift - small movements, barely noticeable, but full of emotion. A shared ache. A shared nostalgia. A shared longing for the past.
Lola’s voice softens even more.
"None of this is to blame you or make you feel bad,” she says. “I’m just… trying to explain why I’ve been so quiet. Why I’ve been so distant. Why it’s been so hard to reach out.”
She exhales, shoulders sinking under the weight of months of silence.
The room absorbs her words - heavy, honest, real - and the boys finally see her clearly, not as the strong one, not as the resilient one, but as someone who has been trying to rebuild herself from the ground up with no one to lean on.
“I spent so much of my life alone,” Lola says, voice thin, trembling. “Completely alone. And when I finally had a family… I clung to it with everything I had.”
The boys don’t move. They don’t breathe. They just watch her.
“I used to lie awake at night terrified,” she continues. “Because having something meant the possibility of losing it. And after everything I’d been through, this-” she gestures gently toward all of them "was the one thing I couldn’t lose.”
Their expressions break - softening, cracking, folding inward.
“That love. That family. That safety.” Her voice wavers. “It was everything to me. For so long it was all I had.”
She swallows hard, breath shaking.
“And then all of a sudden… my worst nightmare came true.”
Silence drops over the room - thick, still, devastating. The kind of silence that feels like grief itself.
“I had absolutely no idea how to process that loneliness again,” she whispers. “Not without falling apart. Not without letting it consume me.”
Jake’s eyes shine. Sunoo wipes his cheek, giving up on hiding his tears. Jay looks away, jaw tight. Sunghoon bites down on his lip. Niki’s hands shake. Jungwon’s expression cracks - just slightly, but enough.
Lola keeps going because she has to - because once you open a wound this deep, you can’t stop halfway.
“This breakup…” she breathes, “it didn’t just hurt. It's reshaped me. It's broken pieces I didn’t know could break. It's chipped away at parts of me I thought were solid. It changed who I am. Who I thought I was.”
Her voice trembles, but she doesn’t stop.
“I didn’t just lose him. I lost the version of myself I was when he loved me. I lost the future I thought I was walking toward. I lost the safety of knowing someone was always there.”
She shakes her head, overwhelmed.
“And now I’m trying to adjust to a life that feels wrong. A life that feels too big. Too empty. Too unfamiliar.”
The boys stare at her - devastated, understanding, hurting with her.
“I’m not just grieving him,” Lola says, voice barely holding together. “I’m grieving the version of myself I was with him. The routines. The safety. The certainty.”
Her voice softens, almost breaking.
“I’m grieving the mornings when he woke me up because I always slept through my alarms. The nights where he made sure I'd eaten or had enough water throughout the day. The way he packed my bag because he knew I’d forget my medication. The stupid little jokes he made when I was stressed.”
She shakes her head, overwhelmed by the avalanche of memories.
“He was in everything. Every part of my day. Every part of my life. And I didn’t even realise how much until he wasn’t there.”
The boys look shattered - not because she’s hurting, but because they finally understand the depth of her loss. The magnitude.
“So when you ask why I didn’t talk to you,” she says softly, “it’s because I didn’t even know what I was feeling. I didn’t notice half of these things myself. So why would you?”
The room goes still - not tense, not angry, just full of the truth they’ve been missing.
“So honestly I’m not shutting you out,” she finishes. “I’m not trying to hurt you and I hate that I've made you feel like that. But I guess I’m just… trying to survive something I never thought I’d have to survive.”
She exhales, exhausted - the kind of exhaustion that comes from grief that reshapes a person, grief that chips away at who they thought they were.
“And I’m tired,” Lola whispers. “I’m so tired.”
The boys don’t speak. They don’t argue. They don’t defend themselves.
The room is still. The air feels different now - not tense, not sharp, just heavy with truth and the ache of everything they’ve missed.
Sunghoon is the first to move.
He crosses the room without hesitation - not a single pause, not a single moment of doubt. The movement is instinctive, almost urgent, like his body decides before his mind can catch up. He climbs onto the bed behind her, settling in close, close enough that she can feel the warmth of him before he even touches her.
His arms wrap around her from behind, gentle but firm, circling her in a way that feels protective rather than possessive. His chin comes to rest on the crown of her head, a familiar weight, grounding her instantly. It’s a gesture he’s done a thousand times, but tonight it carries a different kind of meaning. Softer, heavier, full of everything he hasn’t said.
“I know,” he murmurs, voice thick. “I’m sorry. We should have seen. It’s no excuse.”
The apology isn’t rushed. It isn’t defensive. It’s honest.. He presses a soft kiss to the top of her head, the kind of kiss that isn’t romantic, but deeply human. Grounding. Protective. Familiar. A promise in the form of touch.
“But we’re here now,” he says quietly. “We’ve got you.”
The words settle around her like a blanket - warm, stead and safe. His arms tighten just slightly, enough to let her know he means it. Enough to let her lean back without thinking. Enough to remind her that even though everything is changing, even though they’re all growing up, even though the bond is evolving, the love hasn’t gone anywhere.
In that moment, his presence behind her becomes more than comfort. It becomes reassurance. It becomes apology. It becomes acceptance. It becomes the quiet, unwavering truth that she is not alone - not now, not in this, not ever.
The others move too - like something old and sacred pulling them forward.
Jay sits at her side, knee touching hers. Jake settles near her feet, hand resting lightly on hers, cheek settling softly on her thigh. Niki curls in close, forehead resting on her shoulder. Sunoo and Jungwon lean in from the floor, hands resting on the blanket near her legs.
It’s messy and cramped and uncomfortable - elbows digging into ribs, knees knocking together, someone’s foot definitely in the wrong place.
But none of them care.
They need it. All of them. The closeness. The warmth. The physical touch they’ve been yearning for without even realising it.
For a moment, it feels like years ago - when they were younger and smaller and scared, and they piled onto one bed because the world felt too big and they only had each other.
Lola takes a slow breath, her voice softer now, but steadier than before.
“Sometimes I just get hit with this… horrible, devastating reality,” she murmurs, voice barely holding together. “That life goes on.”
The words land heavy - heavier than anything she’s said tonight.
“The world keeps spinning. People keep moving. Schedules keep filling. And just because my world is falling apart… doesn’t mean the rest of the world stops with me.”
She shakes her head, not bitter, just honest in a way that hurts.
“So I get up. I dust myself off. And I carry on.”
Her eyes lift, tired but clear.
“That’s the difference between me and everyone else,” she says quietly. “My inability to let something destroy me.”
She isn’t bragging. She isn’t posturing. She’s stating a truth she learned the hard way - the kind of truth carved into her bones.
“No matter what happens… I always get back up. Because I have to.”
Her voice doesn’t shake. It doesn’t break. It’s steady - painfully steady, the kind of steadiness that comes from surviving things no one should have had to.
“And trust me sometimes I want to but I will never let something get that close to killing me. Not now. Not ever again.”
The boys stop - because they know she means it. Because they’ve seen her survive things she never should have had to. Because they’ve watched her rebuild herself more times than they can count.
And without even thinking, they all inch closer. Bodies pressing in, shoulders touching, knees bumping, hands brushing against her arms and legs. Letting her feel their support through their bodies. Letting her know she isn’t alone in this moment, even if she’s been alone in so many others.
Sunghoon tightens his hold around her shoulders. Jay leans in until their foreheads almost touch. Jake gives her hand a squeeze, gently playing with her fingers as she speaks. Sunoo curls closer, cheek damp. Niki nudges her side gently. Jungwon shifts until his shoulder is pressed against her back.
They don’t speak. They don’t interrupt. They don’t try to fix it.
They just stay close - messy, tangled, imperfect - but present.
Lola takes a slow breath, her voice softer now, but steadier than before.
The boys sit in stunned silence, absorbing everything she’s said. The grief, the loneliness, the exhaustion, the survival. But Lola isn’t finished.
She takes a shaky breath, her voice quieter now, but sharper around the edges.
“And I’m angry. Jesus, I’m so fucking angry.”
The words hit the room like a shockwave.
The boys look up - startled, confused - because angry is not a word anyone has ever used for Lola. Anger has never been part of her vocabulary. She has always been gentle, patient, soft-spoken, the one who diffused tension rather than created it.
But now she continues, and the truth spills out of her in a way that feels new, unfamiliar, frightening even to herself.
There were so many words people used to describe her - calm, kind, steady, resilient - but angry was never one of them. It simply wasn’t who she was. You could count on one hand the number of times they’d seen her mad. It wasn’t in her nature. She didn’t lash out. She didn’t explode. She didn’t break things.
But this… this had changed her so deeply at her core that she was being rewritten from the inside out.
“But this… this has hurt me so much that I’m feeling things I’ve never felt before.”
She looks down at her hands - clenched around Jake's without her noticing, knuckles white, fingers trembling. Anger sits in her palms like something foreign, something she doesn’t know how to hold.
It isn’t loud. It isn’t violent. It isn’t destructive.
It’s grief wearing a different face. It’s heartbreak turned inside out. It’s the kind of anger born from devastation, from losing something that once felt like a permanent part of her life.
The boys watch her, shattered themselves. They inch closer, instinctively, letting their bodies speak where their words fail - a silent promise that they’re here, that they see her, that they won’t let her face this alone.
“It stripped me of everything valuable and left me with the ugly parts.”
Her voice trembles.
“The anger. The frustration. The exhaustion. The bitterness. The jealousy.”
She shakes her head, overwhelmed.
“I’m so angry.”
The words hit the room like a crack in the foundation - sharp, unexpected, almost foreign coming from her. The boys don’t move. They don’t speak. They just listen, finally understanding how deep this goes.
Lola’s voice stays quiet, but the truth inside it is enormous.
“I’m angry at Heeseung for leaving me,” she says. “But then I’m angry at myself for not really being angry at him.”
A few of the boys flinch - not from her words, but from the honesty in them.
“Because I understand why he did what he did. And I love him too much to ever truly hate him.”
That line breaks something in the room.
“I’m angry at the media,” she continues. “For making me and all of you feel used and violated.”
The boys react in small ways - the kind that say everything without words.
“I’m angry at the anonymous people online,” she says. “For spreading rumours and hate about me again.”
“I’m angry at this useless fucking company.”
The boys freeze - because they feel that too. Because the company has shaped them, saved them, hurt them. Because they’ve all been bruised by decisions made far above their heads. Because they know exactly what she means without her having to explain.
Jay’s eyes flicker with betrayal he never voiced. Jake's fingers curl into her own, knuckles white. Niki’s breath stutters, remembering nights he cried alone. Sunghoon's chest rises sharply, protective instinct flaring. Sunoo leans closer, needing her to feel he’s there. Jungwon's expression cracks - soft, devastated, furious on her behalf.
They don’t interrupt. They don’t try to fix it. They don’t try to soften it.
They just sit with her anger - the anger she never lets herself feel, the anger she never shows, the anger born from grief so deep it reshapes a person.
“I’m angry that they took my safe space,” she says. “That I feel like I can’t talk to my fans anymore because every time I open my mouth, I feel like I’m lying to them.”
Her voice breaks - not loudly, not dramatically, but in that small, fragile way that means she’s been holding this in for far too long.
“I’m angry because they’re demanding answers from me... answers I want nothing more than to give... but I can’t.”
The boys watch her with a kind of reverence, like she’s revealing something sacred and painful. Jay’s eyes soften, guilt flickering across his face. Jake’s breath stutters, chest tightening. Sunoo’s lashes flutter, wet again.
“I’m angry at my parents,” she whispers. “For not being here to hold my hand while I go through all of this.”
Jungwon’s expression cracks - a tiny, heartbreaking shift. Niki’s fingers curl into the blanket, protective.
She exhales, defeated.
“Fuck it… I’m just angry at the world.”
The room goes silent - not tense, not defensive, just full of the truth she’s been carrying alone. A silence that feels like a collective inhale, like they’re all bracing themselves against the weight of her honesty.
She looks up, eyes shining but steady - and the boys see it clearly now: the anger isn’t loud, or violent, or destructive. It’s new. It’s unfamiliar. It’s draining her in ways she doesn’t know how to articulate.
Lola has never been someone who lived in anger. She lived in softness. In resilience. In quiet strength.
But now she’s feeling everything at once. Grief, fear, loneliness, betrayal, heartbreak, and the anger is just the shape those emotions have taken because she doesn’t know where else to put them.
The boys sit in silence. Not defensive, not frustrated, just stunned by everything she’s said. And Lola… she’s tired. So tired she doesn’t bother softening her voice anymore.
She exhales, slow and shaky.
“Fuck... I just feel lost,” she says. “But I don’t really know what else to do except... keep going.”
The words settle over the room like dust - quiet, inevitable and impossible to ignore.
She continues, her voice thinning at the edges.
“I spend most of my time alone now. And I haven’t really spoken to anyone about what’s happened. Not properly. Just a few small chats with my therapist.”
Her voice softens - not out of gentleness, but out of exhaustion.
“And I’m starting to realise how much of the last five years I’ve spent with people.”
She looks down at her hands, studying them like they belong to someone she doesn’t recognise.
“I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t with someone.”
The boys freeze. Because they’ve never thought about it like that. Never realised how monumental this truth is for her. Never understood how deeply it ties into who she is.
For Lola, isolation wasn’t a phase. It was a childhood. A foundation. A shaping force.
She grew up alone. She learned to survive alone. She learned to protect herself alone. She learned to expect nothing from anyone because no one had ever stayed long enough to give her anything.
And then suddenly - five years ago - everything changed.
She found them. A family. A home. A constant presence. Noise in the quiet. Warmth in the cold. Hands reaching for her instead of pulling away.
For the first time in her life, loneliness wasn’t her default state. She woke up surrounded by people. She fell asleep knowing someone was in the next room. She ate meals with laughter in the background. She rehearsed with bodies pressed close. She lived in a world where she was never truly alone.
For five years, she didn’t have to face the world by herself.
And now she does.
Again. All at once. Without warning. Without preparation.
Without the emotional memory she once had - because she unlearned loneliness. She outgrew it. She replaced it with connection, routine, love, family.
And now she’s being forced to relearn isolation like a language she forgot how to speak.
They see how overwhelming it must feel - to suddenly be by yourself after five years of never being alone. To suddenly have silence where there used to be warmth. To suddenly have space where there used to be closeness. To suddenly have emptiness where there used to be love.
They see how much she’s been carrying. How much she’s been hiding. How much she’s been trying to survive without the tools she once had.
And they inch closer - instinctively, protectively - because they finally understand the depth of her struggle with isolation, and how much she needs them now, even if she didn’t know how to ask.
“I look back on every day since I debuted,” she says quietly, “and I see the faces of the people I love.”
Her voice cracks. A small, fragile sound that carries years of history.
“And now I realise just how much I despise being left alone.”
The boys don’t breathe. Because they know this isn’t just about Heeseung. It’s about her childhood. Her past. Her deepest fear.
“I found myself doing anything to make sure I never felt like that little girl again,” she says. “The one who never had any friends. The one who never felt like she belonged.”
That truth hits the room like a slow, devastating wave. She shakes her head, overwhelmed by the enormity of what she’s admitting.
“I clung to you. To this group. To the safety of never being alone. I mean we literally spent every second awake doing something together.”
It’s true. Painfully true. For years, they were inseparable. Dorms, studios, rehearsals, meals. They grew up together. They survived together. They became a family because none of them had one before.
Her voice drops to a whisper - the kind that feels like confession.
“But... I don't know... maybe now… maybe I should be alone.”
They see her and the importance of this moment for her character. Lola has spent her entire life fighting isolation. It shaped her. It hardened her. It taught her to survive without softness, without safety, without anyone to catch her when she fell.
And then the last five years happened - five years where loneliness was virtually nonexistent. Five years where she was never alone. Five years where she belonged. Five years where she was loved. Five years where she finally felt like part of something bigger than herself.
“What?” Jake whispers. He looks like the ground has tilted beneath him - like he’s hearing something impossible.
Lola continues, gentle but devastating.
“Maybe being alone isn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe it’s just something I need to learn again.”
The boys look shattered - because to them, being alone is the worst possible thing. To them, being alone means something is wrong. To them, being alone means the group is fractured, broken, unsafe.
Jay shakes his head immediately, voice tight. “Bells… no.”
Sunoo leans forward, desperate. “Being alone isn’t good for you.”
Sunghoon's voice cracks. “It’s not good for any of us.” Shifting so his cheek is now restinf on her head instead of his chin.
Jake's eyes shine. “We’ve been through everything together.”
Jungwon shuffles closer, calm but emotional. “We rely on each other. All of us.”
Nikki nods quickly, almost frantically. “Noona. We can’t go a minute without seeing each other.”
Jay adds, “We get nervous when we spend too much time apart.”
Sunoo whispers, “We hurt when one of us hurts.”
Jake's voice is soft. “We haven’t spent longer than a week apart in five years.”
Sunghoon finishes, voice low but steady. “And we wouldn’t want to.”
Their reactions come fast, overlapping and messy, Panic disguised as reassurance. They’re scrambling, tripping over their own words, trying to pull her back from a cliff they think she’s standing on. They’re terrified. Not of her being alone, but of losing her to the loneliness she survived once already.
And the idea of her repeating those cycles - of her slipping back into the isolation she grew up in - terrifies them.
But they don’t understand what she’s saying yet. Not fully. Not clearly.
They hear alone and think abandonment. They hear alone and think danger. They hear alone and think she’s slipping away from us.
Their worry blinds them. Not because they don’t care, but because they care too much. Because Lola means too much. Because she is the glue, the heart, the quiet centre of their world. Because they can’t imagine a version of their lives where she isn’t right beside them.
They’re trying - desperately - to reassure her that she isn’t alone, that she never will be again, that they’re here, that they’re staying, that they won’t let her fall back into the darkness she fought her way out of.
But they don’t yet understand that she isn’t asking to be abandoned. She isn’t asking to disappear. She isn’t asking to be cut off.
She’s trying to explain something quieter, deeper, more complicated - that she needs to relearn how to exist with herself, not without them.
And the boys, in their panic, can’t see that yet.
They only see her hurting. And they only know one response: get closer, hold tighter, speak faster, reassure harder.
Because losing Lola - even to her own loneliness - is something none of them could survive.
She looks at each of their faces closely as they speak - stunned, overwhelmed - as they keep going.
“We go through everything together,” Jungwon says. “We eat together,” Jay adds. “We sleep together,” Sunoo murmurs. “We live together,” Jake says. “We work together,” Sunghoon continues. “We survive together,” Niki whispers.
Each line hits her like a heartbeat. But Jungwons voice is the one that lands hardest.
He exhales softly, eyes warm with something ancient and tender. “We’re not just a group,” he murmurs. “We’re a single living being… each of us a heartbeat, a breath, a fragment of the same soul moving through different bodies.”
His voice carries the weight of years. The shared history, the shared wounds, the shared growing. “We’re stitched together in ways most people will never understand. You’re not separate from us. None of us are. We’re pieces of one spirit, scattered into seven forms.”
Lola’s breath catches. Because she’s never heard them say it like that. Never heard them articulate what the group means to them. Never realised how deeply they see her as part of themselves.
Of course she knows they love her. She sees it. She feels it every day - in the small moments and the big ones. In the way they check on her. In the way they tease her. In the way they protect her. In the way they show up for her without hesitation.
They have been here for her in ways no other human beings ever have. They single‑handedly restored her faith in humanity, kindness, empathy, love... and herself.
She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.
Because they’re not just scared of losing her. They’re scared of losing themselves without her.
The boys are looking at her. Waiting, hoping, needing her to say something that confirms she’s still with them, still part of them, still one of the seven.
Jay’s eyes are wide, almost pleading. Sunoo's hands shake where they rest on the blanket. Sunghoon's grip around her shoulders tightens protectively. Jake leans forward, breath held. Niki’s eyes shine, full of panic. Jungwon’s jaw trembles, trying to stay composed.
They’re all panicking. Not because they misunderstood her, but because they love her so fiercely that the idea of her stepping away, even for a moment, feels like losing a limb.
But it’s okay. They’re trying. They’re here. They’re present. They’re holding her in every way they know how.
And Lola sees it. The panic, the devotion, the love - all of it written across their faces like a language only they speak.
And she starts to cry.
Not loud. Not dramatic. Just soft, exhausted tears she didn’t want to shed tonight - the kind that slip out when your body finally realises it’s safe enough to let go.
She wipes her face, trying to breathe, trying to steady herself, trying not to fall apart in front of them. But they’re all staring at her with those wide, worried eyes, and she can’t hold it in anymore.
Because she feels safe with them. Safe enough to break. Safe enough to unravel. Safe enough to let them see the parts of her she usually hides.
She didn’t want this conversation. Not yet. Not like this.
But here they are. And here she is. And the truth is already spilling out, unstoppable now that she’s finally opened the door.
A memory flashes behind her eyes. Not even hours old.
Phuwin sitting across from her, listening quietly as she explained everything she’s just told the boys. The way he leaned back, sighed, and said one word that hit her like a punch.
She swallows, trying to find her voice - hesitant, terrified, but determined. Because they asked for honesty. Because they wanted the truth. Because she owes them the same clarity she gave her friend.
And because, deep down, she hopes they’ll see it the way she does. Not as something shameful, not as something dangerous, but as something hopeful. A chance to grow. A chance to move forward. A chance to stop repeating the same cycles and start building something healthier, stronger, more stable.
She hopes they’ll hear it as love. Not rejection. Not fear. Not distance.
She hopes they’ll understand that what she’s about to say isn’t her pulling away. It’s her trying to make sure they never lose each other again.
So she takes a slow breath, surrounded by their bodies, their warmth, their presence - all of them huddled around her like a shield.
And she speaks.
Lola takes a slow breath, eyes flicking between each of the boys as she tries to steady herself.
“But maybe… maybe it’s not good to feel like this,” she says softly.
They freeze - confused, hurt, startled, like the ground has shifted beneath them.
She lifts a hand slightly, a gentle plea. “Just hear me out… I can explain. I just need to find the right words.”
Her voice is gentle, but honest in a way that makes all of them lean in.
“It made sense to cling to each other as strongly as we did,” she says, choosing each word carefully. “We were kids. We were thrown into this surreal world at such a young age. We didn’t have anyone else.”
Her eyes soften, remembering the early years. The fear, the pressure, the way they held onto each other like lifelines.
“You were all I had,” she says. “And I was all you had.”
Her voice cracks - not dramatically, but in that small, devastating way that means she’s speaking from the deepest part of herself.
“Of course we clung to each other with everything we had. It was the only way we could get any kind of control over the world around us.”
The boys soften.
Because they remember.
They remember the fear. The uncertainty. The pressure. The nights they cried in dorm rooms. The mornings they woke up terrified. The way they slept in piles because the silence felt too big.
They remember how different they were from other kids their age. How other friendship groups had school, families, weekends, normalcy. But they had each other. Only each other.
And they clung - fiercely, desperately, instinctively - because that closeness was the only thing that kept them from falling apart.
“We were each other’s only constistence,” she says quietly. “In an environment of constant change and uncertainty.”
She looks at them taking in every face, every expression, every flicker of emotion.
“No matter what changed around us… we knew the seven of us never would.”
Her voice steadies, but the truth inside it is enormous.
“We always had us to lean on,” she says. “We were the only ones who understood. Who’d been through the same things. Who knew the same pain.”
Her voice softens, almost breaking.
“There’s so much comfort in knowing that you were the only people in the world who knew what I’d been through.”
She shakes her head, inundated by the weight of the memories.
“So of course we acted like no one else existed,” she says. “We were scared teenagers. And the only people we could rely on… were each other.”
The boys stare at her because she’s right. Because she’s naming the truth they’ve all felt but never dared to say out loud. Because she’s describing the closeness that shaped them, the closeness that saved them, the closeness that made them different from any other friendship group their age.
They held to one another like lifelines because that’s exactly what they were.
She wipes her face again, tears still falling. Jake lifts his hand to wipe them as they fall from her eyes - gentle, instinctive, terrified of letting her cry alone.
She takes a shaky breath, eyes fixed on the blanket because looking at them feels too raw.
The word Phuwin had said earlier still echoed through her chest like a bell she couldn’t silence. Codependency. It had landed with a weight she hadn’t expected, a weight she hadn’t been ready for, a weight that suddenly made everything make sense.
She knew the term. It wasn’t new to her. She had brushed against it in therapy before - lightly, cautiously, never long enough to let it settle. Every time the topic surfaced, she and her therapist had drifted toward something else, something easier, something less threatening. And outside those sessions, she had joked about it. In interviews. On livestreams. In passing comments with the boys. She had laughed about how none of them could function without each other, how they were practically glued together, how they panicked if they spent more than a few hours apart.
But she had never truly taken the time to understand what it meant. Or what it was doing to her. Or how deeply it had shaped her life.
The boys watched her closely, confusion flickering across their faces. She felt their fear, their love, their confusion, all of it swirling around her like a storm.
She wiped her cheeks again, but the tears kept falling. Soft, quiet, unstoppable. She wasn’t sobbing. She wasn’t breaking apart. She was simply letting herself feel, letting herself be seen, letting herself be held by the only people she trusted enough to fall apart in front of.
But now, sitting here with the boys, her boys, huddled around her, she felt the truth of it more clearly than ever. She felt how deeply they had all clung to one another. How fiercely they had held on. How desperately they had needed each other to survive the world they were thrown into as children.
She felt the weight of five years spent in constant closenes. The rehearsals, the meals, the shared beds, the whispered fears, the laughter, the tears, the unspoken promises. She felt the way they had become one living organism, one body, one soul, because it had been the only way to survive something that should never have been placed on their shoulders.
And she felt, for the first time, how that closeness had shaped her. How it had protected her. How it had saved her. And how it might now be holding her back from healing.
She lifted her eyes, finally meeting theirs. Six faces full of fear, love, confusion, devotion. They didn’t understand yet. They didn’t see what she saw. They didn’t know what she was trying to say. But they wanted to. They were trying. They were listening.
And she knew she had to continue. She owed them the truth. She owed herself the truth. She owed this moment the honesty it deserved.
She took another trembling breath, surrounded by their warmth, their presence, their love.
And she continues.
“I didn’t realise how much of me has changed. How much of me is lost. How much I rely on you. How much I need you.”
The boys freeze. Because hearing her say need feels different now. Heavier. More fragile. More dangerous.
She continues, her voice barely holding together.
“When I was on tour… I was miserable.”
The admission hangs in the air like a confession she never meant to make.
“Not because of the work,” she says. “Not because of the fans. Not because of the travel.”
Her voice softens, almost breaking.
“But because I was away from you.”
The boys look stunned - hurt, guilty, understanding all at once. And they remember how she looked on those calls. How tired she sounded. How she tried to smile but her eyes never matched. How she always asked what they were doing before she ever talked about herself.
She exhales, and the truth spills out of her in a way she can’t stop now.
Because this is what codependency feels like. It feels like love. It feels like safety. It feels like being cured.
It feels like someone is the medicine for every ache you’ve ever had - how someone can be the cure, the fix, the thing that makes the pain stop. It feels like you’ve finally found the antidote to loneliness, fear, insecurity, heartbreak.
It feels like you’re healing.
But you’re not.
You’re just quieting the symptoms.
The sickness - the fear of abandonment, the inability to self‑soothe, the terror of being alone - is still there, buried under the comfort of someone’s presence.
And Lola is realising that now. Realising that needing them this much isn’t the same as loving them. Realising that relying on them to breathe, to sleep, to feel okay, to feel whole. Isn’t healthy. Realising that she has built her entire sense of safety on the idea that they will always be there.
And when they weren’t - when she was on tour, when she was alone in hotel rooms, when she woke up without their voices in the next room - she didn’t just miss them.
She fell apart. She couldn’t function. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t exist without them.
And that’s what scares her.
Because codependency feels good. It feels warm. It feels like home. It feels like a good thing.
But it’s not. It’s a temporary fix that hides the wound instead of healing it.
She feels that now - the ache beneath the comfort, the emptiness beneath the closeness, the way she has lost pieces of herself because she poured everything into them.
She feels how much she has changed. How much she has disappeared. How much she has relied on them to keep her upright.
And she feels the danger in that. The danger of needing someone so much that you forget how to stand on your own.
It’s about healing. It’s about reclaiming the parts of herself she lost while trying to survive a world that demanded too much from her too young. It’s about learning how to exist without falling apart when she’s alone. It’s about loving them without needing them to keep her alive.
And she continues.
Her hands tremble in her lap, fingers curling and uncurling like she’s trying to hold onto something that keeps slipping through her grasp. She looks down at them. At the shaking, at the exhaustion, at the truth she’s finally ready to say.
“When I was talking to Wintoday… he said something that just fucked me up.”
A small laugh escapes her - thin, brittle, the kind that doesn’t reach her eyes. It’s the laugh people make when they’re trying not to cry harder.
She hesitates... because saying it out loud feels like crossing a line she’s never crossed before. A line she didn’t even know existed until a few hours ago.
“He completely called me out on my shit.”
The boys blink, confused and startled, until she explains, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Told me about the idea of losing yourself entirely in someone else.”
The words hang in the air like smoke - heavy, lingering, impossible to ignore.
“And I realised… that’s what I’ve done.”
Her voice trembles again, and she feels the truth of it in her bones.
“Not in a negative way. Not because any of you did something wrong. But because I suddenly understood that I shouldn’t fear being alone. Or being away from you. Not to the point where I feel nauseous.”
She shakes her head, overwhelmed by the realisation. By how terrifying it was, by how much it explained, by how much it hurt.
“That’s not normal.”
And it isn’t.
It’s not their fault. It’s not her fault. But it is something she wants to fix.
She wants to learn how to be alone without falling apart. She wants to learn how to exist without needing someone to keep her steady. She wants to learn how to love them without losing herself in the process.
She could feel her pulse in her throat as she continued, the air around her thick with everything she had already said and everything she still needed to say.
“But maybe now… maybe I shouldn’t be relying on you the way I used to. Maybe I need to learn how to be alone again. Not because I want to leave you. Not because I don’t love you. But because I finally understand that none of this… none of how I’ve been feeling… is good for us.”
The room went still. Not tense, not angry, just full of the truth she had finally spoken aloud. A truth that had been growing inside her for years, unnoticed, unnamed, until today.
She watches them freeze. Because they had never heard her say that. Never heard her question the closeness they had always relied on. Never heard her acknowledge the part of their bond that might not be healthy.
They had always seen their closeness as strength - as love, as loyalty, as survival. And it was all of those things. But it had also become something else. Something heavier. Something that had begun to shape her life in ways she hadn’t noticed until she was forced to stand alone.
Her anxious attachment had never felt like a problem. It had felt like comfort. Like safety. Like family.
And in a way, they were.
They had saved her. They had held her together. They had given her the love she had never received before.
But needing someone that much - needing them to feel seen, to exist, to feel okay, to feel whole - wasn’t healing. It was hiding the wound.
And that terrified her.
Because she finally understood that distance isn’t a punishment. It isn’t abandonment. It isn’t loss.
Sometimes distance is a gift.
Space is where people grow. Space is where people learn who they are. Space is where people become themselves again. Space is where people breathe.
Loneliness - real loneliness, not isolation - can be one of the greatest gifts a person can receive.
She wanted that. She needed that. Not because she wanted to leave them. But because she wanted to come back stronger. More whole. More herself.
She wanted to love them without losing herself in the process. She wanted to be part of them without depending on them to survive. She wanted to grow. And she wanted them to grow too.
She hoped they would see it. She hoped they would understand. She hoped they would hear this not as rejection, but as hope.
Hope for healing. Hope for growth. Hope for a future where they could be close without being consumed by each other.
“None of what we’ve been feeling is good,” she says. “We’re separate people. We’re not kids anymore.”
The words leave her softly, but they land with the weight of years. She can feel the boys tense. Not in anger, not in fear, but in the stunned stillness of people hearing a truth they’ve never dared to consider.
“We shouldn’t fear being away from each other,” she says softly. “It doesn’t mean we’re going to lose each other. Or that we love each other any less. Or that we’re going to change.”
Her voice steadies - not because she feels strong, but because she finally feels honest. The truth has been sitting inside her for so long that speaking it feels like exhaling after years of holding her breath.
“It just means we’re growing up.”
She sees the boys soften - shoulders lowering, eyes widening, expressions shifting - and she relaxes because they know she’s right, even if it hurts. Even if it scares them. Even if it feels like she’s touching something sacred and fragile.
“We’re not the same people we once were,” she says. “Hell, we’re definitely trauma‑bonded to the point where we don’t know where one ends and the other begins. And that’s okay. Without that I don’t think we would have survived what we have.”
Her voice softens, and the room seems to soften with it.
Because she’s naming something they’ve all felt but never spoken aloud. The way their closeness was born from fear, from pressure, from survival. The way they fused together because the world around them was too big, too fast, too demanding for children to navigate alone. The way they became one organism because it was the only way to stay alive in an industry that didn’t care if they broke.
But now… they aren’t children anymore.
And Lola is trying to help them see that.
She’s trying to help them understand that distance isn’t abandonment. That space isn’t danger. That growing separately doesn’t mean growing apart.
She isn’t blaming them. She isn’t blaming herself. She isn’t blaming the past.
She’s simply acknowledging that they all deserve more than survival. They deserve growth. They deserve independence. They deserve to become whole people - not fragments of one shared identity.
She wants them to see that space can be healing. That distance can be strengthening. That growing individually can make their bond healthier, not weaker.
She wants them to see that this is love - the kind that wants to last.
“And I think maybe it’s good that we’ve dealt with this separately. That we’ve processed away from each other. That we have lives outside of one another now.”
The words leave her softly, but they land with the weight of years.
“God I mean once upon a time,” she says, “that could never have even been an option. We wouldn't have even dreamed of it... And now look at us.”
She wipes her face again, exhausted, her fingers trembling as they brush away the tears that keep slipping free.
“We will always have a home with each other. But it’s okay that we have other homes now too.”
The boys inhale sharply.
“It doesn’t diminish our bond,” she says. “It doesn’t mean we mean any less to each other.”
Her voice drops to a whisper.
“We’re just growing up. And of course we’re not going to cope the same way we did when we were teenagers.”
Lola is still crying. Soft, exhausted tears she didn’t want to shed tonight. Tears that come from clarity, not collapse. Tears that come from finally understanding herself, not from breaking apart.
And the boys are crying too - every single one of them - because everything she’s said has cracked something open inside them. Something they’ve never touched before. Something they’ve never examined. Something they’ve never dared to acknowledge.
They cry because she’s right. They cry because they remember. They cry because they feel the truth of her words in their bones.
They cry because they’ve spent years believing that closeness meant survival - that distance meant bad - that separation meant loss.
But Lola is showing them something different. Something gentler. Something wiser. Something they never learned as children because they were too busy surviving.
She’s showing them that they don’t have to cling to each other out of fear anymore. They can choose each other out of love instead.
And as they cry. All of them, together, something shifts in the room. Something softens. Something opens. Something heals.
Because for the first time, they’re not clinging out of fear. They’re holding each other out of love.
And Lola feels it. The shift, the understanding, the beginning of something new.
She moves closer. Slow, hesitant, but determined. And the boys immediately reach for her, as if the instinct to hold her is older than any of them can remember.
Jay pulls her in first, arms wrapping around her with the kind of desperation that comes from years of loving her. Jake wraps his hands back around her tigh, like he’s anchoring himself to her. Sunoo buries his face in her shoulder, his breath shaking against her skin. Sunghoon holds the back of her head, fingers trembling against her scalpas if he’s afraid she’ll disappear if he lets go. Nikki squeezes her side, clinging to her like she’s the only thing keeping him upright. Jungwon stands and closes the circle, arms around all of them, pulling the entire group into one tight, trembling knot.
And suddenly they’re one big, shaking, crying knot of limbs and love and history.
They hold each other like they’re afraid to let go. They cry like they’ve been holding it in for years. They breathe like they finally feel safe again.
Lola sobs into Jay’s chest, her tears soaking the fabric of his shirt. Jake’s tears fall onto her leg, warm and startling. Niki’s breath trembles against her neck, his whole body shaking. Sunghoon's jaw quivers as he holds her tighter, like he’s trying to protect her from something he can’t name. Sunoo sniffles loudly, clinging to her shoulder like a lifeline. Jungwon's eyes shine as he squeezes them all closer, grounding the entire group with the steadiness he’s always carried.
They’re not seven idols. They’re not a group. They’re not a brand. They’re a family.
And families break together. Families heal together. Families grow together.
“We love you,” Jay whispers - the words barely audible, but heavy with everything he’s never said.
“We’ll always love you,” Jake adds, voice cracking as he presses his forehead to her leg.
“No matter what,” Sunoo says through his tears, his grip tightening around her shoulder.
“Nothing will ever change that,” Sunghoon murmurs, thumb brushing the back of her head in slow, soothing circles.
Jungwon voice is steady, grounding all of them. “We embrace the change together. We show up for each other. Always.”
Lola cries harde, not from pain, but from relief.
Relief that feels warm instead of sharp. Relief that feels like breath returning to her lungs. Relief that feels like the first step into a future she didn’t know she was allowed to want.
Because she needed to hear that. She needed to feel that. She needed to know that even if things are different now, the love hasn’t changed. Not even a little.
And all seven of them hold each other again - crying, shaking, breathing - finally accepting that their bond is forever, even if some things are different now.
The shift is subtle, but she feels it. They all do.
It’s the moment a childhood chapter closes. The moment an adult chapter begins.
They’re entering a era where they can become who they’re meant to be - individually, separately, fully - without breaking the bond that saved them.
Because love doesn’t shrink when people grow. It expands. It adapts. It stretches to fit the new versions of the people inside it.
Their bond isn’t dissolving. It’s evolving.
They will still show up for one another. They will still support one another. They will still love one another with the same ferocity that carried them through their darkest years.
It just might not look the same as befor. And that’s okay. That’s good. That’s healthy.
Lola feels it in her chest. The relief, the hope, the quiet joy of knowing she doesn’t have to choose between loving them and becoming herself.
The boys feel it to, the release of years of fear, the softening of old wounds, the understanding that they don’t have to cling to survive anymore.
They’re not losing anything. They’re gaining something. A future. A healthier bond. A chance to grow without growing apart.
And in that tangled knot of limbs and tears and history, they all breathe - deeply, freely - for the first time in years.
It feels like sunrise. It feels like healing. It feels like hope.
They’re stepping into a new chapter together. And they’re ready.
Okay so I'm so sorry it's taking me so long to get these uploads out 😭 but the heat in the UK rn is actually devil spawn I'm not joking 💔🥲 I fr can't even move without breaking a sweat 🥲
Plus I was actually hanging out of my arse yesterday and today after the football 🙃🫣 like this was me all of yesterday!
Bruh having a hangover in like 30° heat is something I don't think I'd wish even on my worst enemy... Girl I was going THROUGH it!!
BUT!! I promise I'll have the next part of the story up tomorrow 😍🥹🫶
I'm so sorry for the delay!! It's been such a crazy week but I'm hoping to get something out in the next few days 🤞🏻
And I feel like there's been so much happening with enhypen rn I swear every day I wake up and there's so much new lore 😭 so trying to keep up and make sense of everything has been a bit manic lol but I'm trying my very best for you all 😚❤️
As always I have plans and ideas lol it's just finding the time to actually sit down and write them 😭🥲💔🙈
I'm really trying to stay positive here but beshit really be testing me 😃
WHY the rebrand 😭 ugh I'm actually so sad like I don't hate it but it's just so unnecessary. They literally be doing anything to erase Heeseung's presence within the group 💔. And I LOVED their old logo and I know so many other fans did too... I mean it's iconic. It's literally like they're trying to fuck them over so bad till noone is left 😭
Idk if any of that makes sense but I'm just so sad :( they're literally tearing the group apart... Or at least it feels like it. And it's so hard as a fan to keep supporting the boys when the company just keeps shitting all over everyone and making it feel like we don't matter 🥲.
Ofc Ill always support all of them I love them and after everything they've done for me it's only fair I stand with them now. But my god beshit are making it hard!
hiii i’m just curious if lola would be performing at olivia’s daisy chain festival?
Omg I love it when you guys read my mind!
First! I'm so so excited for this festival... I mean the lineup is absolutely INSANE!! like hello STEVIE FRIKEN NICKS 😭. And the message behind it being created is so special... I love Olivia 🫶 I'm genuinely so sad that I can't go BCS it's in the US 🥲
But yes she would 100% be performing!! If she can :( obvs I don't know Enhypen's full schedule yet and idk what they're gonna be doing in August so I would have to double check if she could make it but I would really love for her to be there! I'm gonna try and cook something fun up for it hehe 🤭🫣
Omg I'm so sorry sorry Sunoo's birthday post is going up a day late!! I was just super busy yesterday and then I stayed up late to watch the England match last night... Absolute waste of time 🙄 but ANYWAYYY.
What did everyone think of Heeseung's comeback?? I thought it was so so good. I LOVEEE the concept he's so clever and I literally just want to kiss his brain. Plus he's super pretty 🤭
His first live in his own did make me sob tho 😭 he looked so nervous bless him... But he did so well and he should be proud of himself 🫶
Anddd apparently an enhypen comeback in August? Did I read that somewhere or am I actually just clowning 🫣🤔 if so that's super exciting! But I just want them to get some rest man 😭💔
I also heard that they renewed their contracts 👀 anyone know if that's true? AND a possible name change??? I saw that on tik tok but couldn't find anything on their official pages but maybe I'm just old and blind 💀
But yesss please let me know what you guys thought!! ❤️
i can see the depressing edits already yk engene are good at that 😭
Omg this just brought back SO many memories wth I totally forgot this song existed 😭 but it's so good and so them omggg!!
Fun fact Lola deleted social media for the first time in her life when Heeseung left. And it was because she knew the edits would actually send her to the seven pits of hell 🥲💔
If I could make edits I would but yes just know engenes make the BEST edits! 😚
𐙚 A/N Oh my goodness! I actually thought I'd never finish this... I've no joke been writing this for WEEKS! But alas, I'm free! And I'm so proud of how it's come out. I really, really hope you guys enjoy... even though it is sad. I had to pull out the big guns for this, my sad playlist and many bottles of wine lmao. Also, big thank you to Olivia Rodrigo because YSPSFAGSIL has fucked me up SO GOOD! So it was a great inspiration to cry to while writing this!! Anyway, enough from me, happy reading, and please let me know your thoughts.
Timeline: 2026
Now Playing:
Heeseung's POV - Jacob and the Stone by Emile Mosseri, Lover, You Should've Come Over by Jeff Buckley, would've been you by Sombr, Mystery of Love by Sufjan Stevens, Waiting Room by Phoebe Bridgers
Lola's POV - You're Losing Me by Taylor Swift, Guilded Lily by Cults, All I Want by Kodaline, I Want You by Mitski, Landslide by Fleetwood Mac.
Word Count: 24.1k
"How can a person know everything at 18, but nothing at 22?" PART THREE
It starts two days later.
Not with an announcement. Not with a conversation. Not with honesty.
But with logistics. With scheduling. With separation disguised as “planning.”
The company begins placing Heesseung in different rooms, different floors, different buildings - like distance is something they can enforce with a calendar invite.
Every time he walks past a practice room and hears their voices without his own woven in, something inside him twists.
He hears their laughter. Their harmonies. Their footsteps hitting the floor in sync. The familiar rhythm of their lives continuing without him.
And he feels it - the absence of his voice, the empty space where he should be, the silence shaped exactly like him.
It’s like watching his own life from the outside. Like seeing a version of the world where he doesn’t exist.
He feels like a ghost haunting his own life. A presence without a place. A member without a group. A boy being erased in real time.
It’s the first step in the company’s plan - to separate him, to isolate him, to make the distance feel normal before anyone has the chance to fight it.
They’re pulling him away piece by piece. Routine by routine. Room by room. Hour by hour. Until one day, the boys will look around and realise he hasn’t been in their schedule for weeks. Until one day, Heeseung will look at his old performances and realise he’s been replaced.
And he can’t even say anything. He can’t push back. He can’t even ask why. Because the moment he does, they’ll say he’s being emotional. Unprofessional. Difficult.
So he swallows it. He swallows the fear, the confusion, the ache of hearing his members without him. He swallows the feeling of being slowly, quietly removed.
And he keeps walking - past the rooms where his life used to be, past the people who are his family, past the sound of everything he’s terrified of losing.
Everything happens slowly. So slowly he almost misses it.
A hoodie missing from the shared closet. One he always grabbed on cold mornings, one that still smells like the dorm laundry detergent they all pretend not to hate.
A stack of notebooks moved to a box. His handwriting on the spines. Lyrics he wrote with the others sitting cross‑legged on the floor.
His guitar stand gone from the corner of the his and Lola's room. The empty space looks wrong - like a tooth pulled from a smile.
At first he thinks he’s imagining it. That he’s tired. That he’s paranoid. That he’s reading too much into things because of yesterday.
But then he sees the staff carrying out one of his suitcases.
And it hits him:
They’re moving him out. Piece by piece. Quietly. Efficiently. Like he’s being erased from the life he built with them. Like they’re removing evidence he ever lived here at all.
The boys notice too.
Jay snaps at a manager - sharp, unfiltered, the kind of anger he only shows when he’s scared.
Nikki slams a door so hard the frame rattles. He doesn’t apologise. He never does when he’s hurting.
Sunoo cries in the bathroom - quietly, trying to hide it, but Heeseung hears the muffled sobs through the thin dorm walls.
Jungwon tries to keep everyone from exploding - hands on shoulders, voice low, eyes darting between staff and members like he can hold the group together by sheer force of will.
But nothing stops it.
Not their anger. Not their fear. Not their confusion. Not their loyalty.
The worst part isn’t the missing hoodie. Or the empty corner. Or the suitcase disappearing down the hallway.
It’s the feeling that he’s watching his own life be dismantled while he’s still standing in it.
It’s the knowledge that the company planned this. That they’re doing it slowly so it feels inevitable. So it feels normal. So it feels like he’s already gone.
It’s the realisation that he’s becoming a ghost long before he’s actually left.
The first time they rehearse without him, he hears the music through the wall.
At first it’s faint - just a vibration in the floor, a muffled beat through the plaster. But then the sound sharpens, grows clearer, becomes unmistakable.
Their voices. Their harmonies. Their laughter between takes. All the sounds that used to be his daily life. His comfort. His home.
And then... His part.
The part he’s sung a thousand times. The part his body knows better than breathing. The part that always fit perfectly between Sunghoon's tone and Jake's ad‑libs.
He's silent. Imagining the gap where he should be. A space shaped exactly like him. A missing puzzle piece the company is pretending not to notice.
He presses his forehead to the wall and closes his eyes. The cold seeps into his skin. His breath stutters. His stomach twists. He feels sick. He feels temporary. He feels like he’s watching his own life continue without him.
Like he’s become an echo - something that used to be there, something the room remembers, but no longer needs. He listens to them run the chorus again. And again. And again.
Each repetition feels like a door closing. Each harmony without him feels like a goodbye he didn’t get to say. Each laugh feels like a reminder that the world keeps moving even when he’s standing still.
He wants to go in. He wants to join them. He wants to pretend nothing has changed.
But he can’t.
Because the company has already decided where he belongs - and it’s no longer in there.
So he stays pressed against the wall, listening to the sound of his own absence, feeling himself fade from the life he built with them. Feeling the distance grow in real time.
By the end of the week, they’re all exhausted.
Not just physically - though the long days and longer nights are begining to ware them down - but emotionally, in a way that sits deep in their bones.
They’re grieving something that hasn’t even happened yet. A breakup. A separation. A fracture in their family.
They can feel it coming - slowly, inevitably, like a storm they can’t outrun.
All of them carrying the same dread, the same helplessness, the same quiet heartbreak. While pretending nothing is wrong for the one person who would understand the most. They’re holding the truth like a burning coal, passing it between them, trying not to let it scorch her before it has to.
And so every time she calls, the room freezes.
Her name lights up the screen and everyone goes still - not because they don’t want to talk to her, but because they all know they’re about to lie. Again. And it kills them.
The silence after rehearsal bleeds straight into the quiet before her calls - the same heaviness, the same guilt, the same ache of pretending everything is fine when nothing is.
Jay can’t look at the phone his jaw tight, eyes burning, anger hiding the fear he doesn’t know how to voice.
Jake leaves the room. Slipping out quietly, wiping his face, because he can’t listen to Heeseung pretend.
Sunghoon mutters curses under his breath - pacing, fists clenched, furious at the situation, furious at the company, furious at himself for being powerless.
Jungwon rubs his temples like he’s carrying the weight of all of them - trying to keep the group from shattering under the pressure.
And Heeseung… Heeseung feels like he’s being split in half.
Because she’s so happy. So bright. So excited to be home. So full of stories about her family, her friends, the food she missed.
She’s glowing through the phone. She’s safe. She’s laughing. She’s alive in a way he hasn’t felt in days.
And he has to pretend everything is fine. He has to smile. He has to laugh. He has to say “I’m okay.” He has to lie.
Every time he hangs up, the room is silent.
Not because they’re judging him. Not because they’re angry at him.
But because they’re angry for her. Angry she was left out. Angry she wasn’t told. Angry she’s being kept in the dark. Angry she’s going to come home to a bomb she never saw coming.
And Heeseung feels all of it.
He feels their anger. He feels their guilt. He feels his own shame. He feels like he’s betraying her every time he opens his mouth. Every time he tells her he's fine.
Because he isn’t fine. And she deserves the truth. And he hates himself for every second he keeps it from her.
One night, after another call with Lola where Heeseung had to force a smile so hard his jaw hurt, he sits on the couch with the members.
No one speaks. No one needs to. Because they all know the truth.
This week is killing him. And it’s killing them too. And it will kill her when she finds out.
But they’re holding on - for him, for her, for each other, for the fragile hope that somehow, they’ll survive this.
That hope is the only thing keeping them upright by the time the weekend hits.
So when the next morning comes, they push through it anyway.
The practice room is hot, the mirrors fogged at the edges, Heeseung's shirt sticking to his back as he runs the choreography again - alone, in a space that used to be theirs.
His new choreographer claps once. “Good. Again, but sharper on the-”
He forces himself through another run‑through, muscles burning, breath uneven, the weight of the week sitting heavy on his chest. And he’s trying, really trying, to hold himself together.
When suddenly the door slams open so hard it ricochets off the wall.
All six members burst in at once. Breathless. Wide‑eyed. Pale.
Jungwon's is the first to speak, voice cracking. “Hyung. She’s- She's back.”
Heeseung freezes mid‑step. “What?”
Nikki steps forward, hands on his knees like he sprinted the whole way. “Noona. She’s here.”
“What do you mean? That’s impossible,” Heeseung says immediately, shaking his head. “She’s not supposed to land until 8pm tonight. I literally got permission to wait for her at the dorm.”
Sunoo swallows hard. “Well… she’s here. Martin saw her being escorted into one of the meeting rooms.. He told us on his way to practice.”
Heeseung's blood runs cold. “What meeting room?”
Sunghoon answers quietly. “The executive floor.” Heeseung's heart stops.
Jake adds, “She looked confused. Like she didn’t know why she was being taken there.”
The world tilts beneath him. “When?”
“Maybe twenty minutes ago,” Jay says. “If you run, you might still catch her.”
Heeseung's face drains of colour. His choreographer steps forward with a sharp exhale, irritation breaking through his professional mask. “Excuse me? You can't just barge in here... were in the middle of an important session!”
But the boys don’t even look at him. Their panic is too loud, too immediate, too real.
Heeseung feels sick. Actually sick. Like he might throw up right there on the polished floor. He grabs his hoodie off the chair with shaking hands.
“They’re going to tell her,” he says, voice hollow. “Those fucking arseholes are going to tell her.”
Jungwon flinches at the venom - Heeseung never swears like that.
Sunoo steps closer. “Hyung, we don’t know that-”
“Yes, we do,” Heeseung snaps, panic rising fast. “This is exactly how they operate. They tell me one thing to keep me calm, to keep me compliant - and then they do the exact fucking opposite behind my back. Every. Single. Time.”
His voice shakes, not from anger alone, but from recognition - the sickening realisation that this is the company’s final grab for control.
“They didn’t want her involved. They didn’t want her opinion. They didn’t want her anywhere near the truth. And now she’s back early, and they’re going to use it. They’re going to blindside her because it’s the only chance they have.”
He runs a trembling hand through his hair, pacing. The thoughts hit him all at once, sharp and sickening.
They’ve always hated how outspoken she is. How fearless. How impossible to silence. She has power - real, actual power - and they’ve never been able to punish her openly for it.
So they wait. They wait for moments like this. Moments where they can corner her, confuse her, humiliate her just enough to chip away at that bravery they can’t stand.
And now she’s back early. Alone. Unprepared.
They’ll use that. They’ll twist it. They’ll try to break her - and they’ll do it while he’s not there.
“She’s alone. She’s confused. She doesn’t know what’s happening. And they’re going to drop this on her without me there.” His voice breaks. “I promised I’d tell her myself.”
Jake puts a hand on his shoulder. “Then go. Now.”
Heeseung doesn’t hesitate.
He bolts for the door. His pulse is pounding in his ears. His vision is tunnelling. His breath is too fast, too shallow, too loud.
All he can think is...
She’s going to find out from them. She’s going to think I hid it on purpose. She’s going to think I didn’t trust her. She’s going to break. And I won't be there to catch her.
The thoughts hit like blows, each one sharper than the last.
He sprints down the corridor, breath burning, heart lodged somewhere in his throat. His legs move before he can think, before he can breathe, before he can even process the fear clawing up his spine.
He has to get to her. He has to get there before they ruin everything. Before they ruin her. Before they ruin them.
His choreographer shouts something behind him - “Yah Lee Heeseung! Where are you-” but the words dissolve into the air as he tears down the hallway.
He doesn’t care. He can’t care.
He barrels around a corner so fast he nearly slips, catching himself on the wall with a slap that stings his palm.
“Sorry!” he yells at a staff member he almost collides with, but he doesn’t slow down.
He takes the stairs two at a time - no, three - practically leaping down them, ignoring the startled looks from interns and managers as he flies past.
His lungs burn. His legs ache. His heart pounds so violently it hurts. But he keeps running.
Because this can’t be happening. This wasn’t how she was supposed to find out. He was supposed to tell her. They were supposed to figure it out together. He was supposed to hold her hand through it.
But now-
Now they’ve taken that from him too.
He rounds another corner, breath ragged, hair sticking to his forehead, eyes wild with panic. Reaches the executive floor, skids to a stop in front of the meeting room. His chest heaves. His hands shake. His heart slams against his ribs. He grabs the door handle-
And freezes.
The room is empty. Completely empty. Chairs pushed in. Lights off. Not a single sign of her. The kind of emptiness that feels intentional. Like someone wiped the moment clean.
His stomach drops so fast it feels like the floor disappears beneath him.
“No. No, no, no-”
He steps inside anyway, as if she might be hiding behind a chair, as if she might still be here, as if he hasn’t already lost the moment he was trying so desperately to protect.
But there’s nothing.
Not a bag. Not a jacket. Not even the warmth of someone having just been there.
Just silence.
He spins back into the hallway, breath coming too fast, eyes scanning every direction like he can force her to appear if he just looks hard enough.
“Where is she?” he whispers, voice cracking. “Where the hell is she?”
Panic rises again - sharp, dizzying, suffocating. Because if she’s not here, if she’s not in the room they dragged her to, then she’s somewhere else in this building. Somewhere alone. Somewhere confused. Somewhere vulnerable to whatever the company wants to tell her.
And then... He sees movement down the corridor. A shadow. A figure. A flash of someone turning the corner.
His heart lurches.
It isn’t Lola. It’s her manager.
Walking fast - too fast - like she’s trying to outrun the moment. Head down. Phone clutched in her hand like a shield. Shoulders tight, steps clipped, eyes fixed on the lift as if salvation waits behind its doors.
She’s trying to get away before he notices her. Before he can ask. Before she has to see what this will do to him.
He doesn’t think. He doesn’t breathe. He just moves, taking small steps toward her before she can get into the lift.
“HEY!” he shouts, voice cracking under the weight of everything he’s terrified of. “SEOL-HEE WAIT-!”
She freezes mid‑step.
Slowly - too slowly - she turns. And Heeseung sees it. The look on her face. The tight jaw. The wide, startled eyes. The way her fingers tremble around her phone. The guilt she can’t hide, no matter how hard she tries.
She looks like someone who’s already done something unforgivable and is bracing for the moment he realises it.
And in that instant, Heeseung knows.
He’s too late.
Something inside him snaps - not just panic this time, but a hot, violent surge of anger that hits him so hard it almost knocks him off balance.
Because if she’s here, moving like this, avoiding his eyes like this… Then she knows. She knows what she’s done. She's done what they’ve told her to do. She knows she helped ambush Lola.
And she now has the audacity to try and get away before he can look her in the face.
He steps in front of her, blocking the lift doors before they can close. He doesn’t even remember moving - one second he’s ten feet away, the next he’s right in front of her, breath shaking, eyes wild.
“Where is she?” he demands, voice low, rough, trembling with rage he can’t hold back anymore.
Her manager doesn’t freeze - she hardens. Her spine straightens. Her chin lifts a fraction. Her shoulders square like she’s bracing for impact, not apologising for it.
Her eyes flick everywhere except his face - not out of embarrassment, but out of refusal. She won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her guilt. She won’t let him read the truth in her expression. She won’t admit, even silently, that she knows exactly what she’s done.
“Heeseung-” she says, voice firm, controlled, almost clipped. Not cracking. Not wavering. But stretched thin with the effort of holding her ground.
Because she is guilty. And she does know this was wrong. But she’s too proud to say it. Too loyal to the company to challenge it. Too determined to protect her own position to let emotion cloud her judgment.
And beneath all of that, she wants him to take responsibility - because it’s easier to blame him than admit the company crossed a line and she helped them do it.
“Where. Is. She?” The words come out like a growl, pulled from somewhere deep and feral - the kind of anger he never lets anyone see, the kind he didn’t even know he was capable of until now.
She exhales - not shakily, but sharply, like she’s steadying herself.. Her gaze stays fixed just past his shoulder, a deliberate refusal to meet his eyes. A choice. A line she won’t cross.
“She’s gone home,” she says, voice firm, clipped, professional to the point of coldness. “She asked to take the rest of the day off.”
There’s guilt beneath the words - he can hear it, feel it - but she keeps her tone even, controlled, as if admitting anything more would be a betrayal of the company she serves.
Because in her mind, she did her job. And if Lola is hurting, if Heeseung is furious, if the truth was delivered without him - that’s on him, not her.
Heeseung's stomach drops so hard he feels dizzy. Home. Alone. After that. He feels the floor tilt beneath him.
Seol-Hee's throat works in a tight swallow - not a nervous one, but the kind that comes from holding too much inside. Her expression tightens, guilt flickering across it for a split second before she forces it back into something composed, poised, unyielding.
“Why didn’t you tell her?” she says, voice low but firm, the edge of defensiveness unmistakable. Not an apology. Not concern. A challenge.
“Everyone assumed she already knew,” she continues, tone clipped, almost rehearsed - the company line delivered with practiced precision. “That’s why they told her in the meeting. What were you thinking, keeping this from her?”
It’s blame disguised as protocol. A deflection wrapped in professionalism. A way to survive the moment without admitting the truth: that she let it happen, that she followed orders, that she didn’t protect Lola because protecting Lola has never been worth risking her own position.
And she knows it. She knows exactly what they’ve done. Exactly what they’ve taken from him. Exactly how much this will destroy Lola.
Heeseung's vision goes white around the edges.
“What was I thinking?” he repeats, but this time it’s not confusion - it’s disbelief, fury rising like a tide he can’t hold back. “You don’t get to judge me for this.”
She opens her mouth, but he steps closer, cutting her off before she can even form the excuse he knows is coming.
“I did what I thought was right,” he spits, voice shaking with the force of everything he’s been holding in. “I was trying to protect her. I talked to the executives. We agreed - I would tell her. They looked me in the eye and said that was the plan.”
His breath stutters, anger and panic colliding.
“And maybe... just maybe, if she wasn’t dragged into a meeting the second she fucking landed, we wouldn’t be here.”
Seol-Hee flinches - not because she’s scared of him, but because the truth hits too close. Because she knows he’s right. Because she knows she helped make it happen.
But Heeseung isn’t done.
“And don’t you dare try to put this on me to make yourself feel better,” he says, voice low, trembling with fury. “You knew exactly what you were doing when you let her walk into that room. You knew what they were going to say. You knew they’d gone behind my back. Again.”
His chest heaves.
“You chose convenience over her. Over us. Over the truth.”
For the first time, her composure falters. Not fully - she’s too proud for that - but enough. A tiny tightening of her jaw. A flicker of guilt she can’t quite swallow down. A crack in the armour..
Her eyes widen, not with innocence, but with the shock of being confronted so directly. “Heeseung, this is inappropriate-” she starts, tone clipped, defensive, already preparing the company‑approved explanation.
But he cuts her off before she can hide behind it. “You knew she didn’t know,” he says, pointing at her, voice shaking with fury. “You saw her face. You saw she was confused. And you let her go in anyway.”
His voice cracks - not from weakness, but from the sheer force of yet another betrayal. “You let them do that to her.”
The words hang between them. Heavy. Accusing. Undeniable.
And she doesn’t deny it. She can’t. Because they both know the truth: she chose protocol over compassion, the company over the girl she manages, convenience over humanity.
She swallows hard - not out of fear, but out of the effort it takes to hold her ground. She straightens, doubling down, clinging to delusion like armour.
“She… she said she needed space,” she says, voice firm but low, as if choosing each word with surgical precision. “You shouldn’t go after her right now. Your behaviour is becoming improper, Heeeung. You’re emotional. You could make things worse for both of you.”
It’s not cruel. It’s not dismissive. It’s the warning of someone who genuinely cares - but cares within the limits of her job, within the boundaries of what she believes is “appropriate,” within the denial she’s built to survive this industry.
Heeseung laughs - a short, sharp, humourless sound that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Space?” he repeats, incredulous. “You think I’m giving her space?”
He shakes his head, stepping back toward the lift, breath shaking with fury. “No. I’m going to her. I’m going to explain. I’m going to fix this.”
“Heeseung-” she tries again, softer this time, almost pleading, because she can see how close he is to breaking.
But he doesn’t let her finish.
He doesn’t want her excuses. He doesn’t want her warnings. He doesn’t want her guilt or her carefully‑measured concern.
He doesn’t want anything from her.
He just wants Lola.
So he turns and sprints down the hallway toward the car park, feet pounding against the floor, breath tearing out of him in ragged bursts.
He barely sees where he’s going. Everything is a blur - walls, doors, staff members stepping aside too late. His heart is beating so violently it feels like it’s trying to claw its way out of his chest.
Because she’s out there somewhere - hurt, scared, alone - and he can’t let her stay that way. Not for another second. Not because of him. Not again. The guilt chases him down the corridor like a shadow he can’t outrun.
He bursts through the exit doors into the car park, fumbling with his keys, hands shaking so badly he drops them once, twice, before finally getting the door open.
He throws himself into the driver’s seat and slams the engine on.
The drive feels endless.
Every red light is a personal attack. Every slow car in front of him feels like a wall deliberately placed in his way. Every turn, every stop, every hesitation in traffic feels like another second she’s alone, hurting, confused - because of him. Because he wasn’t there. Because they lied to him. Because he trusted them. Because she trusted him.
His grip on the steering wheel is so tight his knuckles ache. His breath keeps catching in his throat, coming out in sharp, uneven bursts.
By the time he reaches the dorm, Heeseung is shaking.
He doesn’t even close the car door properly - it swings back open behind him, forgotten.
He just runs. Runs like the ground is falling away beneath him. Runs like every second counts. Runs like she’s slipping further and further out of reach.
He bursts through the front door so hard it bangs against the wall, his voice already cracking before he’s even fully inside.
“Lola!”
Silence. A silence so heavy it feels like a punch to the chest.
He doesn’t stop. He can’t stop. He runs down the hallway, feet slamming against the floor, breath tearing out of him.
“Rosie! Please!”
Nothing.
His chest tightens painfully, a sharp, crushing pressure that makes it hard to breathe. He checks the kitchen - empty. The living room - empty. The balcony - empty. Every empty space feels like an accusation. Every quiet corner feels like another second she’s hurting because he wasn’t there.
He sprints toward the bedrooms, panic clawing up his throat. He walks toward their room.
No. Not theirs. Not anymore.
And she’s found that out in the worst possible way - alone, ambushed, thinking he didn’t trust her, thinking he didn’t choose her.
His thoughts spiral so fast they blur together. She thinks I lied. She thinks I didn’t want her to know. She thinks I didn’t fight for her. She thinks I didn’t choose her. She thinks I don’t love her enough.
His hand trembles violently as he reaches for the door. He can barely get his fingers around the handle - they’re shaking too hard.
He pushes it open.
And freezes.
She’s standing in the middle of the room. Not moving. Not speaking. Just… standing. Small. Folded in on herself. Like her body is trying to shield her from something she can’t outrun, can’t fight, can’t even fully understand yet.
Her shoulders are hunched, pulled inward as if she’s bracing for another blow. Her arms are wrapped tightly around her stomach, holding herself together because nothing else is. Her head is bowed, hair falling like a curtain around her face - hiding her expression, hiding her eyes.
She looks like she’s trying to disappear. Like she’s trying to make herself so small the world can’t reach her.
Heeseung stands frozen in the doorway, one hand still gripping the handle like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. His chest is heaving. His eyes are wide and wild, taking her in all at once - the way she’s standing, the way she’s breathing, the way she’s not looking at him.
And his heart breaks. Actually breaks.
Because she looks like someone who’s just had the ground ripped out from under her. She looks like someone who’s been hurt by the one person she trusted most.
She looks like someone who’s been told the truth by strangers instead of by him. And he knows - instantly, painfully, undeniably - that this is the moment she realised everything he was trying to protect her from.
He swallows hard, the sound thick and painful in his throat, his voice barely a whisper. “Lola…”
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t look up. Doesn’t even seem to breathe.
She stands there like a statue carved out of hurt - still, silent, unreachable. Because this - this moment, this silence, this distance - is exactly what he was trying to prevent.
And he failed. He failed her. He failed them. He failed himself.
He steps into the room slowly, cautiously, like she’s made of glass and he’s terrified that even the sound of his footsteps might shatter her completely.
“Lola,” he says again, softer this time, desperate in a way he can’t hide. “Please look at me.”
But she doesn’t. She stays curled in on herself, small and shaking, her arms wrapped tight around her body like she’s holding herself.
It tears through him with a force he can’t brace for, because this isn’t just sadness. This isn’t just fear.
This is betrayal. This is heartbreak. This is the moment she realised the world isn’t safe - not even with him.
And he can see every piece of that written in the way she won’t look at him.
“Where’s all your stuff?” Her voice is so small he almost misses it. Thin. Fragile. Barely there - like the sound of someone whose world has just tilted and hasn’t settled yet.
He opens his mouth.
“Sweetpea-” But the words evaporates. Everything he practiced. Every sentence he rehearsed. Every careful explanation he crafted on the drive over. Every version of the truth he tried to shape into something gentle.
Gone.
Because now that he’s standing in front of her - now that he sees the way her shoulders curl inward, the way her fingers tremble against her own arms, the way her voice cracks like she’s holding herself together by threads... He realises nothing he says will make this better.
Nothing can undo what she walked into today. Nothing can unhear the words they threw at her. Nothing can unbreak this moment.
He watches her - really watches her - and panic claws up his throat.
What did they tell her? How did they say it? Did they blame him? Did they make it sound like he didn’t want her to know? Did they make her think he didn’t choose her?
His mind spirals, racing through every possibility, every version of the truth she might have heard - every version that paints him as the villain.
He tries to speak again, tries to find something, anything, that might reach her. But all he can do is stand there, heart pounding, watching the girl he loves fold in on herself like she’s trying to disappear.
And he knows - with a sickening, hollow certainty - that whatever she heard, whatever they told her, whatever she thinks he did. It’s already hurting her.
“I- I don’t understand where all your stuff is.”
Her voice shakes harder this time - not just fragile, but fractured, like each word is splintering on the way out.
She moves before he can answer. Quick, jerky steps toward the wardrobe, still facingaway from him, as if she can’t bear to look at him until she finds something that makes sense. She yanks the doors open.
Empty hangers. Gaps where his clothes used to be. A space that looks wrong without him - wrong in a way that confirms every fear she’s been trying to swallow since the meeting.
Her breath stutters, catching in her throat.
“Like… where are all your clothes?” she asks, voice rising in panic. “How are you supposed to get changed if you have no clothes?”
She’s not asking about the clothes. She’s asking about him. About them. About the life she thought was still theirs.
Heeseung takes a slow step toward her. Careful. Measured. The way he always moves when she’s spiralling - soft, gentle, never too fast, like approaching a wounded animal that might bolt if he breathes wrong.
“Baby,” he says quietly.
But she doesn’t hear him. Or she can’t. Or she won’t. She’s too far inside her own head, drowning in the pieces of a reality she didn’t choose, trying to grab onto anything - a shirt, a hanger, a drawer - that might anchor her to something solid.
But everything she touches is empty.
And the emptier it is, the faster she spirals.
Her mind is racing - he can see it in the way her hands shake, in the way her breath comes too fast, in the way she keeps scanning the room like she’s searching for proof that he hasn’t abandoned her.
She’s trying to regain control. Trying to make the facts line up. Trying to force the world back into a shape she recognises. But nothing fits. She’s slipping deeper into panic with every second he doesn’t reach her.
She rushes to the desk next, movements sharp and frantic, hands shaking so badly she can barely grip anything. She digs through papers, notes, pens - anything she can touch, anything solid, anything that might anchor her to a reality that suddenly feels like it’s slipping through her fingers.
“And your notes, someone- someone has been in here, and they've moved all your stuff!” she whispers, voice thin and cracking. “Your laptop. Where is all of that? How are we supposed to work if your stuff isn’t here?”
Heeseung's heart twists painfully, a deep, sickening pull in his chest. She’s trying to make sense of the chaos.Trying to find proof that he’s still here, still hers, still choosing her.
He tries again, voice cracking under the weight of everything he’s terrified to lose.
“Lola... Baby.”
Nothing. No flicker. No pause. No sign she even heard him. It’s like he’s invisible.
Or like she’s refusing to see him - because seeing him means facing the truth, means acknowledging the hurt, means admitting that the one person she trusted most didn’t protect her from this.
She’s too far inside her own head, spiralling deeper with every empty drawer, every missing item, every confirmation that something is wrong.
She’s drowning in the pieces of a reality she didn’t choose. And Heesueng can only watch as she tries - desperately, hopelessly - to hold onto anything that might stop her from falling apart.
Then she turns. Slowly. Like she already knows she’s about to see something she can’t handle, but she can’t stop herself. Her eyes land on the photoboard.
On the small gaps where he took a few of their pictures - the ones he couldn’t leave behind, the ones he needed in his new room because he couldn’t imagine sleeping without them, the ones that meant home to him.
But to her? They look like absence. Like removal. Like goodbye.
Her face falls. Completely. It’s not a flinch. It’s not a wince. It’s a collapse - a quiet, devastating unraveling right in front of him.
“Where are our photos?” she asks. But it isn’t a question. It’s a plea. A last, trembling attempt to make this make sense, to stitch reality back together with the only thread she has left.
Her arms drop to her sides. Her voice breaks on the last word. Her whole body seems to fold inward, like she’s bracing for an impact that already hit her hours ago.
And Heeseung feels something inside him tear.
A sharp, sickening rip of guilt and panic and heartbreak - because he knows exactly what she’s thinking, exactly what she’s seeing, exactly what story the empty spaces are telling her.
A story where he left. A story where she wasn’t worth the truth.
He steps in front of her, blocking her view of the board - not to hide the truth, but to shield her from the blow she’s already taken.
Slowly he reaches out and takes the papers from her trembling hands. Her fingers resist for a second. Not out of anger. Not out of defiance. But because letting go feels like accepting something she’s not ready to face. Like releasing those papers means releasing the last thread of control she has left.
He gently places the papers back on the desk, smoothing them with a shaking hand he hopes she doesn’t notice.
Then he turns back to her.
He stands right in front of her - close enough to feel the tremors running through her body, close enough to see the tears gathering in her lashes, close enough that every instinct in him screams to pull her into his arms.
But he doesn’t. He can’t. Because she’s not in a place where touch will help. She’s not in a place where comfort will land. She’s not in a place where being held will make anything make sense. She needs to breathe. She needs to understand. She needs to hear the truth without being overwhelmed by his desperation.
So he ignores what he needs - the urge to hold her, to anchor her, to protect her - and focuses entirely on her.
And for the first time in his life, he feels uncertain.
He doesn’t know how to help her. He doesn’t know how to fix this. He doesn’t know how to reach her through the hurt he caused, the hurt she didn’t deserve, the hurt she’s drowning in.
He just knows he has to try.
His voice is barely a whisper. “Lola… please.” His hands hover uselessly at his sides - open, empty, aching.
Because he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to touch her. He doesn’t know if she wants him close. He doesn’t know if he’s the comfort or the wound.
All he knows is that she looks like she’s breaking.
And he’s the reason why.
He studies her face with the kind of focus he normally reserves for choreography corrections or live‑stage cues - precise, attentive, terrified of missing even the smallest detail.
Her breathing is too fast. Her eyebrows are pulled tight. Her top lip twitches like she’s trying not to cry. Her hands tremble violently at her sides.
And her eyes. God. Her eyes.
The eyes that usually glow with warmth, mischief, softness, love… now look wide and terrified. And underneath the terror, something worse...
Numbness.
Like she’s halfway between panic and shutting down completely. Like she’s slipping somewhere he can’t reach. He moves slowly, deliberately - the way he always does when she’s on the edge. Soft. Gentle. Measured.
He lifts one hand and gently takes hers, brushing his thumb along her knuckles. Her skin is cold. Her fingers twitch under his touch - not pulling away, not reaching back, just… reacting. His other hand rises -hesitant, trembling - and he touches her cheek.
The moment his fingertips graze her skin, her eyes snap up to his. He freezes. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t dare. He just looks at her, pouring everything he can’t say into his expression. It’s okay. You’re okay. Don’t run. I’m here. I’m not leaving you.
He watches the tension in her shoulders loosen by a fraction - barely anything, just a tiny shift beneath his fingertips. But to him, it feels monumental.
Her breathing slows - not fully, not evenly, but enough that he can feel the panic ease by a thread. Enough that her chest doesn’t shake quite as violently. Enough that she isn’t drowning quite as fast.
And her eyes soften, just a little. Not because the hurt is gone. Not because she suddenly understands everything. Not because the world has stopped spinning.
But because he’s touching her. Because his hand on her cheek, his thumb brushing her knuckles, his warmth against her skin - it doesn’t fix anything, it doesn’t make the confusion disappear, it doesn’t undo the meeting or the lies or the shock.
But it makes everything bearable. It makes it something she can survive.
Because when she feels him - really feels him - her mind stops spiralling quite so violently. Her chest loosens just enough to let air in. Her thoughts stop crashing into each other long enough for her to breathe.
She feels him.
He lets his hand slide from her cheek into her hair, fingers threading through the strands with a familiarity that’s older than either of them ever acknowledged. He moves gently, instinctively, until his palm rests at the back of her neck.
And then he squeezes - not hard, just enough to ground her. Just enough to say I’ve got you. Just enough to say you don’t have to hold yourself together alone. Just enough to say breathe.
It’s a touch they’ve done a thousand times without ever naming it. A quiet ritual woven into years of late‑night practices, backstage nerves, whispered comfort in dark hallways.
A primal pacifying gesture - one that always lowers her heart rate, always softens her shoulders, always pulls her back into her body. Because the back of the neck is an exposed place. A vulnerable place. A place you only let someone touch if you trust them completely. And Lola does.
Even now. Even shaking. Even terrified. Even hurt. Her body reacts before her mind can catch up - her breath stutters, then steadies by a fraction. Her shoulders drop a millimetre. Her spine loosens. Her pulse slows under his fingertips.
And for someone like Lola - someone who spends her whole life grasping for control because so much of it is taken from her - surrendering like this is enormous.
But she does. She leans into him. She lets the tension bleed out of her body. She gives up the fight to stay upright on her own. She lets him hold the moment for her. Until she’s just... here. With him.
Her eyes flutter shut for a moment, and he feels her exhale against his chest - a tiny, trembling release that feels like the first breath she’s taken in hours.
They stand like that - close, breathing in sync, her forehead nearly touching his, his thumb still brushing her knuckles, his other hand warm against the nape of her neck.
For a moment, the world stops. No company. No meetings. No lies. No consequences. Just them. Just this fragile, trembling peace.
He feels her calm, slowly - not all at once, not fully, but like a storm settling into a quiet drizzle.
He feels her body soften under his hands, the rigid tension in her spine easing by degrees. He feels her breathing even out, the frantic, shallow gasps smoothing into something steadier. He feels her grounding herself in him - not because the fear is gone, but because being held by him makes the fear survivable.
And it kills him. Because this tiny moment of calm is the one thing he wanted for her. And the one thing he’s about to break.
He knows he has to talk. He knows he has to explain. He knows he has to pull her out of this moment and back into the pain she’s barely holding together.
He glances at the clock on her desk.
Two and a half hours until his next meeting. Two and a half hours until he has to leave her again. Two and a half hours until the company pulls him away.
A gut‑punch reminder that even now - even in their worst moment - they’re still trapped. Still controlled. Still watched. Still owned.
He closes his eyes for a second, forehead brushing hers, wishing he could freeze time right here. Wishing he could hold her like this forever. Wishing he didn’t have to speak, didn’t have to explain, didn’t have to watch her break all over again.
But he knows he has to. He opens his eyes, voice barely above a whisper - soft, steady, terrified.
“Lola…”
His thumb keeps brushing her knuckles. His hand stays warm at her neck. He holds her steady, even as he feels himself shaking.
“Lola-”
He tries again, voice soft, pleading, terrified.
But she shakes her head immediately, eyes squeezing shut like the sound of his voice physically hurts her - like hearing him means facing something she’s not ready to survive.
He watches her bottom lip tremble before she bites down on it, hard, trying to stop the tears. He’s never felt so useless in his life.
“Please.” The word is barely a breath - a tiny, broken sound that hits him harder than any scream.
She takes a shaky inhale, chest rising unevenly, like her lungs can’t decide whether to breathe or collapse. “Please tell me they lied.” Another breath, sharper this time. “That it’s not true.” Her voice cracks. “That they got it wrong… please.”
Her eyes finally lift to his - wide, terrified, begging.
Begging him to undo the last hour of her life. Begging him to save her. Begging him to lie. And Heeseung feels his throat close.
He opens his mouth - but nothing comes out. His tongue is heavy. His chest is tight. His heart is breaking in slow motion. Because she’s asking him for the one thing he can’t give her.
When he finally speaks, it’s a whisper against her lips - soft, trembling, full of everything he wishes he could change.
“I can’t.” Her breath stutters.
“I’m sorry,” he adds, voice cracking. “But I can’t.”
He feels her slip from his hands like water.
Not suddenly. Not violently. But slowly. Quietly. Like she’s afraid she’ll shatter if she moves too fast. Her fingers loosen in his. Her weight shifts back, just enough that he feels the absence before he sees it.
She turns away from him, blinking rapidly, trying to force the tears back - trying to hold herself together with sheer willpower because falling apart feels too dangerous, too big, too final.
Her teeth catch the inside of her cheek, a desperate attempt to stay grounded. A tiny, familiar gesture he’s seen a hundred times.
But she’s slipping.
He can see it in the way her shoulders tense. He can see it in the way her breath stutters. He can see it in the way her hands hover uselessly at her sides, fingers twitching like she’s reaching for something she can’t name.
He can feel it in the space between them, in the way the air shifts, in the way her energy pulls away from his touch, even though she hasn’t stepped back.
It’s the quiet kind of breaking. The kind that doesn’t make a sound. The kind that hurts the most.
Because she’s not running. She’s not yelling. She’s not pushing him away. She’s disappearing. Retreating into herself. Folding inward. Slipping somewhere he can’t reach.
And Heeseung feels panic rise in his chest - sharp, breath‑stealing panic - because he knows this version of her. The version that shuts down. The version that goes silent. The version that tries to survive by becoming small.
And he knows how hard it is to pull her back from that place.
Her confusion spirals.
“I don’t understand,” she says, voice thin and shaking. “I just… I have no idea how this could have possibly happened.” The words tumble out of her.
She starts pacing - fast, sharp steps across the room - arms rubbing up and down her own, trying to hold herself together with her own hands because nothing else feels solid.
“I was gone for a week, E.” Her voice rises, cracking on the last word. “A fucking week.” She laughs - a broken, humourless sound that makes Heeseung's stomach twist. “And I come back, get pulled into a meeting, and they tell me, ‘You’re leaving.’”
She gestures wildly, like she’s trying to physically throw the words away, like if she moves fast enough she can shake the truth off her skin.
“And- and that it’s getting announced tomorrow. Tomorrow, Heeseung. I mean... what the actual fuck?”
Her pacing gets faster. Her breathing gets sharper. Her hands tremble harder.
She’s spiralling. Not gently. Not slowly. But in a way that feels like she’s being pulled under by a current she can’t fight. And Heeseung feels the panic rise up his throat.
Because he doesn’t know how to stop it. He doesn’t know how to help her. He doesn’t know how to reach her through the storm he caused.
He watches her move - frantic, desperate, lost - and every step she takes feels like she’s slipping further away from him.
And he hates it. He hates that she’s pacing like she’s trying to outrun her own heartbeat. He hates that her voice keeps cracking. He hates that her hands won’t stop shaking. He hates that she’s trying to make sense of something senseless.
So he watches. He watches her pace, watches her unravel - and every step she takes feels like another thread snapping inside her.
He wants to grab her. He wants to hold her. He wants to tell her everything. He wants to take it all back. He wants to scream at the company. He wants to scream at himself.
He wants with everything in him to fix it. But he doesn’t know how.
And for the first time in their entire relationship, he feels uncertain.
Not about her. Never about her. But about himself.
About whether he can help her. About whether he deserves to. About whether she’ll ever look at him the same way again - with trust, with softness, with the kind of love that used to make him feel invincible.
The moment something goes wrong, the moment there’s pain, the moment there’s even a hint of distance, they both reach for the same instinct.
It must be my fault.
He sees her pacing, sees her unraveling, sees her trying to hold herself together - and something inside him folds in on itself.
I should’ve told her sooner. I should’ve protected her better. I should’ve fought harder. I should’ve been enough.
The fear of losing her twists everything.
It makes him irrational. It makes him cruel - but only to himself. It makes him believe the worst possible version of who he is.
Because if she’s hurting, then he must be the reason. If she’s breaking, then he must have pushed her. If she’s slipping away, then he must not have held on tight enough.
He doesn’t even question it. He never has.
Because the idea of her being angry at him - truly angry - terrifies him more than anything the company could do. And the idea of losing her? Unthinkable.
So he takes the blame before she can give it. He punishes himself before she even speaks. He convinces himself he deserves her silence, her distance, her tears - even when none of this is his fault.
And the worst part? She would do the same. He knows it. He’s seen it. He’s lived it. They both bend inward at the first sign of conflict, both terrified of hurting the other, both terrified of being the reason the other walks away. So instead of talking, instead of questioning, instead of confronting the real problem, they turn the knife on themselves.
He would do anything to keep her. Even if it means tearing himself apart. Even if it means taking all the blame, even the parts that aren’t his.
So he takes it. He’ll take all of it. Even if it destroys him.
He takes a step toward her, hands trembling - not because he’s afraid of her, but because he’s afraid of himself. Afraid of what he’s done. Afraid of what he couldn’t stop. Afraid of what he might lose.
So as he moves toward her, it’s not just fear. It’s devotion. It’s desperation. It’s the instinct to fix something he doesn’t know how to fix. But he will try.
“Rosie…” he whispers.
And Heeseung realises - with a cold, hollow ache spreading through his chest - that he’s watching his worst fear come to life.
Not the fear of her yelling. Not the fear of her being angry. Not even the fear of her crying. But the fear that he is, in fact, going to lose her.
The fear that this - this moment, this truth, this hurt - might be something he can’t fix. Something he can’t save. Something he can’t make better, no matter how tightly he holds her or how softly he speaks.
He’s terrified that this is the kind of hurt she can’t forgive. The kind she can’t stay for. The kind she might have to walk away from.
And the thought guts him.
Because he’s always believed he could protect her. Always believed he could hold her together. Always believed that no matter what the world threw at them, he would be the one thing she could rely on.
But now?
He’s watching her slip through his fingers. Watching her unravel in ways he can’t reach. Watching her break in places he doesn’t know how to mend. Because she’s breaking faster than he can catch her.
And he’s standing there, helpless, watching the girl he loves disappear behind panic, confusion, and the hurt he caused.
“I’m-”
“Don’t.” Her voice slices through the air, sharp enough to make him flinch. She turns to him, eyes blazing with a pain so raw it almost knocks him backwards. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”
Her chest rises and falls too fast. Her hands shake violently. Her lip trembles before she bites down on it again, harder this time - like she’s punishing herself for feeling anything at all.
“I don’t want your apologies, Heeseung,” she says, voice cracking. “I want you to tell me what the fuck happened.” She steps closer, eyes wide, terrified, desperate - like she’s searching his face for an answer that will make the world stop spinning.
“I want you to explain why it feels like I fell asleep in one world and woke up in another,” she whispers, voice thin as paper. “Like the fucking sky split open somewhere over the ocean and I slipped through the wrong crack.” Her breath catches - a fragile, fractured sound. “Like maybe I haven't made it back at all,” she murmurs, eyes unfocused. “Like maybe the plane went down and I… I've gone down with it.”
Her throat tightens, words trembling out of her like a confession she never meant to say aloud. “Because this- this feels like the place you end up when-" Her voice softens into something almost childlike. "When you weren’t good enough to be saved.”
The words slip out before she can stop them - old language, old fear, old wounds resurfacing in the chaos.
Heeseung's heart stops. Because he knows she doesn’t talk like this unless she’s truly terrified. Unless she feels completely powerless. Unless she’s reaching for the only framework she ever had to explain suffering.
She keeps going, voice spiralling faster, sharper, more frantic - like her thoughts are outrunning her mouth.
“This- this right here... this feels like hell,” she breathes, the words trembling out of her like smoke. “My own personal hell.”
She presses a shaking hand to her chest, fingers splayed like she’s trying to keep something inside - like she’s afraid her heart might slip through her ribs and fall to the floor if she doesn’t hold it in place.
“I feel like the ground just… disappeared,” she whispers. “Like someone yanked the world out from under me and I’m still falling.” Her voice softens, breaks, reshapes itself into something almost prayer‑like. “Everything I thought was safe. Gone. Everything I thought was solid. Gone. Everything I thought I could trust has just… vanished.”
The words drift out of her in pieces, like she’s speaking through the ruins of something she hasn’t fully realised is broken yet. Her breath shivers. Her shoulders curl inward. Her eyes flicker like she’s searching for something familiar in a landscape that no longer exists. Because nothing feels real. Nothing feels steady. Nothing feels like hers.
And she’s trying - desperately - to hold herself together with metaphors and breath and trembling hands, but everything is slipping too fast.
Her voice breaks. “And I don’t understand.” She starts pacing again - fast, uneven steps - arms wrapped around herself, rubbing up and down like she’s freezing.
“I don’t understand how this happened. I don’t understand how everything could change in a week. I don’t understand why I came home, and suddenly I’m being told you're leaving.”
Her words tumble out faster and faster, like she’s trying to run faster than her own thoughts. Because her brain is moving a mile a second. Her heart is racing. Her fear is spiralling. And she’s trying so hard to keep up. She’s trying to rationalise. Trying to find a reason, any reason, even if it means turning on herself, even if it means blaming her own mind, even if it means reaching for old religious guilt she thought she’d outgrown.
But nothing is working. Nothing is slowing her down. Nothing is making this make sense.
And Heeseung watches her - helpless, terrified - as she spirals deeper into a storm he caused and doesn’t know how to pull her out of.
“And my brain-” she chokes, the words catching on something jagged inside her, “my brain is telling me this is my fault.”
Heeseung's stomach twists, a slow, sickening knot. She keeps pacing - faster, sharper - like she’s trying to out pace the thoughts clawing at her from the inside. Like if she moves quickly enough, they won’t catch her.
“That something’s been wrong with me since I was a kid,” she whispers, voice trembling like a frayed thread. “That I ruin things. That I break things. That I’m cursed or defective or-" She stops abruptly, the silence hitting the room like a dropped stone. Her voice falls to a whisper, thin and trembling. “That God has finally decided to punish me.”
The words hang in the air - fragile, ancient, familiar in a way that makes Heeseung's chest cave in. He feels the air leave his lungs.
She looks up at him then - really looks - and the numbness in her eyes is worse than the fear. It’s the look of someone going under. Someone who’s been pushed beneath the surface. Someone who’s convinced they deserve the water filling their lungs. Someone who doesn’t know how to swim anymore.
“I was gone for a week,” she says again, voice hollow, echoing like she’s speaking from somewhere far beneath the surface. “A week, E. And I come back, and- and they tell me you're leaving. Tomorrow. Like it’s nothing. Like you’re nothing.” She laughs - a sound with no colour, no warmth, no life. A sound that collapses in on itself.
“What am I supposed to do with that?” she whispers, but the whisper fractures halfway through, turning sharp, turning frantic. Her mouth moves quicker than the air can follow, words tumbling out in a breathless, tangled rush. Her chest rises and falls like she’s drowning on dry land. Her hands shake so violently, he’s afraid she might simply fold, collapse, disappear into the floor.
Her thoughts are outrunning her voice. Her voice is outrunning her breath. Her breath is outrunning her body. She’s slipping out of sync with herself - mind sprinting, lungs stumbling, heart breaking.
And Heeseung sees it. Feels it. Fears it.
“Hey- hey, Lola,” he says softly, stepping toward her like she’s a wild, frightened thing that might bolt if he moves too fast. “I need you to breathe. Please just… sit down, and I promise…” his voice cracks, “I’ll explain everything.”
But she’s already spiralling - caught in a storm she can’t slow down, caught in a moment that feels too big for her skin, caught in a truth that’s tearing through her faster than she can brace for.
She doesn’t move. She just stares at him, eyes wide and glassy, like she’s daring him to make this real - like if she holds still enough, maybe the world will freeze with her.
They stand there, suspended in a silent standoff.
Her chest heaving. His heart pounding. Both of them stretched thin, waiting to see who breaks first.
It’s her.
Her knees buckle - not dramatically, not with a cry, but with a soft, terrifying collapse, as if her legs simply forget the shape of standing. A quiet surrender. A body giving up before the mind can.
Heeseung lunges forward, instinct overriding everything else, catching her under the arms before she hits the floor.
“Got you,” he whispers, voice shaking like he’s the one falling. “I’ve got you.” She doesn’t fight him. She doesn’t cling to him either. She just… lets him. Let's him guide her. Let's him hold her. Let's him be the thing keeping her from breaking open on the floor.
He helps her sit on the edge of the bed, her fingers gripping the blanket like it’s the last solid thing in a world that’s tilting too fast.
Heeseung kneels in front of her, settling between her legs, close enough to feel the tremors running through her body. Close enough to feel his own. Close enough that their breaths tangle in the small space between them - hers sharp and uneven, his tight and trembling, both of them shaking for different reasons and the same.
“Okay,” he breathes out, rubbing both hands over his face. “Okay.”
His palms drag down his cheeks, slow and heavy, before settling over his eyes - as if darkness might buy him a few more seconds. As if not seeing her means he doesn’t have to face what comes next.
He stays like that, hidden behind his hands, because he feels like a man heading for the gallows.
He doesn’t know where to start. He doesn’t know how to shape the truth into something that won’t hurt her. He doesn’t know how to explain something he barely understands himself.
His breath shakes - a thin, trembling thread.
He feels the weight of inevitability settle on his shoulders, cold and final. He can’t run anymore. He can’t stall. He can’t pretend there’s still time. The truth is here. The moment is here. And he has to walk into it, even if it destroys him.
And still, he has to speak.
Because the time for hiding is over. Because the truth is already burning through the room. Because she deserves more than silence, even if honsety ruins him.
So he lowers his hands slowly, like a man lowering his head to the blade.
Then... A soft hand touches the top of his head.
Her fingers slip gently into his hair, slow and careful, rubbing small circles into his scalp like she’s afraid he might break if she presses too hard.
He freezes.
Not because he’s startled - but because this is the last thing he expected. Because she’s the one falling apart. Because she’s the one whose world just collapsed. Because she shouldn’t have anything left to give. And yet here she is, with her hand in his hair.
Slowly, he lifts his head.
And she’s looking at him. Still terrified. Still confused. Still shattered in ways she hasn’t even begun to understand.
But there’s something else now, too. Concern. For him. Even now. Even like this. Even after everything. Her fear hasn’t erased her instinct to care for him. Her heartbreak hasn’t stopped her from reaching for him. Her world is burning, and she still puts her hand on his head to steady him.
Because this is what they do - what they’ve always done. They put their own pain on hold to soothe the others. They shove their fear down to make space for the other’s breathing. They reach out even when they’re the ones drowning.
She should be frantic. She should be screaming. She should be shaking him off. But instead, she touches him so gently.
He swallows hard, throat tight, the sound barely audible.
Because her kindness feels like a blade. Because her touch feels like forgiveness he hasn’t earned. Because she’s comforting him when she’s the one who needs saving.
And he doesn’t know how to hold that. He doesn’t know how to deserve it. He doesn’t know how to breathe under the weight of her softness.
But he leans into her hand anyway - because he always does. Because she always offers. Because even in the ruins, they reach for each other first.
Her touch shakes, but it stays. Unsteady, but deliberate. Fragile, but refusing to let go. It’s the kind of touch that says everything she can’t form into words.
But that makes it so much harder. Because he knows she shouldn’t be comforting him. She shouldn’t be steadying him. She shouldn’t be offering him softness when she’s the one whose world just collapsed.
But this is who she is. So she keeps her hand on his head, fingers rubbing gently into his scalp.
She chooses him anyway. Because she’s giving him her last bit of strength, and he knows he’s about to throw it all right back in her face.
He lifts his head slightly, eyes meeting hers - slowly, cautiously, like he’s afraid the moment might shatter if he moves too fast.
“It’s okay,” she whispers, voice thin but steady enough to hold him together. “I just need you to tell me what happened.” Her words land softly, but they hit him like a blow.
He nods. A small, broken movement - the kind that looks less like agreement and more like surrender. “Erm… okay.”
The word trembles out of him, barely formed, barely real.
He takes a breath that doesn’t quite make it all the way in - a breath that catches halfway, a breath that feels too heavy for his lungs, a breath that tastes like fear and inevitability.
“I spoke to our managers just after our comeback,” he says, voice low and shaky, like the words are scraping their way out of him. “About… about me releasing my solo stuff.”
Her eyes flicker - a tiny, involuntary reaction - but she stays quiet, listening, holding the space open for him even as her own heart fractures.
“They said we could talk about it after promotions, so I did.” He swallows. “And they told me I still wasn’t ready. That it wasn’t the right time. That I needed more… something. I don’t even know.”
He shakes his head, a small, helpless motion.
“I didn’t understand it. I still don’t. But it was basically another no. So I dropped it. Like I always do.” His voice softens, almost ashamed. “I just… focused on the group. Waited for the next chance.”
He leans forward then, placing a hand on her thigh. He doesn’t know if he’s doing it to comfort her or because he’s the one who needs anchoring. And his hand trembles against her skin - a silent confession of how close he is to breaking.
“Then we had this meeting last week,” he continues, voice soft, almost disbelieving even now. “And suddenly they were happy for me to go solo. They said they could make it work.”
A small smile flickers across his face - brief, fragile, the ghost of a hope he barely let himself feel.
“The boys were all so excited,” he murmurs, eyes unfocused with memory. “We listened to concept ideas, sample demos… they were perfect, Rosie. Exactly the kind of music I wanted to make.”
For a heartbeat, he looks like the version of himself she knows best - the boy who loves music so much it lights him from the inside.
But the smile fades. Slowly. Inevitably. “I should’ve known it was too good to be true.” The words fall out of him like something heavy he’s been carrying alone.
He lowers his head, resting his forehead against her leg - not dramatically, not for comfort, but like gravity finally won.
And her hand moves instantly, instinctively, into his hair again. Fingers threading through the strands, rubbing slow circles into his scalp, soothing him.
He closes his eyes. He needs that touch. He needs her. And she gives it to him, even now. Even like this. Even when she’s shattered too.
“They said there were conditions,” he whispers. Her hand pauses in his hair - not pulling away, just… stilling. Like her body already knows what’s coming.
He swallows hard, blinking rapidly as tears gather, the memory scraping raw against his throat. “If- if I wanted to release solo music…”
His voice cracks on the words, splintering under the weight of what they meant. “They said I would have to leave.”
Her breath catches - a soft, wounded sound.
“The group,” he murmurs. “The dorm. Everything.” He shakes his head against her leg, voice trembling like he’s reliving it - the boardroom, the cold faces, the polite smiles that didn’t reach their eyes.
“I can't have both.” His eyes go glossy, tears clinging to his lashes, refusing to fall. “They said it was my choice. That they couldn’t force me. That it was up to me.”
He lets out a bitter, broken laugh - the kind that sounds like it’s been trapped in his chest since that meeting. “But we both know what that means.”
Because he remembers feeling small. He remembers feeling cornered. He remembers feeling like his dream had been dangled in front of him just long enough to hurt when they snatched it back.
And now he’s here, kneeling at her feet, confessing the part of the story he never wanted her to hear.
He presses his forehead harder into her leg. Not to hide, not to beg, but like he’s trying to disappear into her skin, like he’s hoping the world won’t find him if he stays small enough.
“They gave me a day to think about it,” he says, voice barely audible, as if the memory itself is too heavy to lift. “And by the next morning… we all had another meeting.”
He inhales sharply, breath shaking like it’s fighting its way out of him.
“And I told them I’d do it.”
The words fall into the room like a confession. Like a wound reopening. Like a betrayal he never meant to commit. He squeezes her thigh gently, fingers trembling, as if he’s holding on to the last real thing he has left.
“I told them I’d leave.”
And then, finally... He breaks.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just a soft, shuddering exhale that sounds like defeat. Like a man who’s been carrying too much for too long, like someone who’s reached the end of the road he never wanted to walk.
“Well. Not all.” Heesueng's head lifts immediately, brows pinching in confusion - because her tone isn’t sharp, isn’t accusing, isn’t what it should be.
“What do you mean?” he asks softly. She looks down at him, eyes still glassy, still trembling, still full of that wounded disbelief she’s trying so hard to hide.
“You said all,” she whispers. “That you were all in the meeting. But that’s not true… because I wasn’t there.” Her voice cracks on the last word - a tiny fracture, a hairline break, the only sign of the storm she’s holding back.
She keeps rubbing his hair, almost unconsciously - because even when she’s hurting, even when she’s furious, even when she feels betrayed in a way she hasn’t even begun to process, her instinct is still to comfort him.
And his instinct is still to lean into her touch.
That’s the tragedy of them... their concern for each other always overrides their own pain.
So she stops herself from getting angry. She pulls back from the edge of her own emotions. She swallows the part of her that wants to scream, that wants to demand answers, that wants to fall apart in the way she deserves to.
Because she’s terrified of hurting him. Terrified of making him feel worse. Terrified that her anger might push him away. So she lets her anxiety speak instead. Let's her fear soften the edges of her rage. Let's her need to protect him drown out her need to protect herself.
She’s not allowing herself to feel the full depth of her emotions - she’s shrinking them, folding them, tucking them away because she thinks his heart is more fragile than hers.
And he lets her. Because he doesn’t know how to stop her.
“How could they do this while I wasn’t here?” she asks, voice rising, cracking at the edges. “How- how can they decide the fate of my own group without me there?”
Heeseung's stomach twists.
“It all happened so fast,” he says quickly. “We- we wanted to wait until you were back, of course we did, but we didn’t have a choice. The decision was already made.”
Her eyes sharpen - a flash of something hot, something raw, something she rarely lets herself feel. “Yeah,” she says, standing abruptly.
She pushes him off her lap - but even then, even in her anger, her hand hovers behind his head to make sure he doesn’t hit the floor.
“By you,” she says, voice shaking. “You decided this. You decided not to tell me. You kept this from me for a whole week.” She steps back, pacing again, hands in her hair, breath coming too fast, too sharp.
She looks like she might split open - like the anger is too great for her chest, like the betrayal is too loud in her ears, like the truth is pressing against her ribs, begging to be screamed.
But she won’t scream. She never does.
Because here’s the tragedy of Lola. She understands too much. She empathises too quickly. She rationalises before she even lets herself feel.
She knows why he did it. She knows he was scared. She knows he was cornered. She knows he thought he was protecting her. And because she knows all of that, she doesn’t let herself feel the full depth of her own hurt.
So she redirects it. She softens it. She turns it toward the people who actually deserve it - the executives, the system, the machine - because it’s safer than turning it toward him.
Her anger is limited, rationed, diluted by compassion she can’t turn off. She’s furious. But she’s furious at the wrong people, because she’s terrified of what it would mean to be furious at him. She’s hurting. But she won’t let herself show it, because she’s afraid her pain might break him. She’s betrayed. But she swallows it, because she thinks loving him means protecting him from the consequences of his own choices.
She’s so conflicted she looks like she might split open - caught between the truth she feels and the truth she allows herself to express.
A million thoughts running through her head, crashing into each other, each one louder than the last.
“I know you don’t want to hear it,” he says quietly, shifting to sit cross‑legged on the floor, looking up at her. “But I am sorry.” She scoffs - a sharp, broken sound that isn’t anger so much as disbelief wearing a thin disguise.
“And I waited because I wanted to tell you myself,” he continues, voice soft, pleading. “In person. It- It was never meant to happen like this.”
She stops pacing. Stares at him like she’s seeing a stranger wearing his face. “I just don’t understand how this has happened,” she whispers. “This actually can’t be real.” Her voice is thin, frayed, barely holding together - like a thread pulled too tight, one tug away from snapping.
And suddenly it feels like they’re both walking a tightrope. One wrong word. One wrong breath. One wrong movement. And they both fall. No safety net. No soft landing. Just the drop.
Heeseung watches her chest rise and fall too fast - like she’s breathing through a panic she hasn’t named yet. And he realises. She’s not just angry. She’s not just hurt. She’s terrified. Terrified of losing him. Terrified of the future shifting without her. Terrified of being left behind again. Terrified of the world changing while she wasn’t looking.
“I- I just wanted to give you time,” he says, voice trembling as he follows her movements around the room on his knees. “I thought we would have time. But then they pushed the announcement to tomorrow. They only told me this morning. I’m so sorry, Lola.”
He’s not even sure he’s breathing properly - his chest tight, his lungs refusing to fill, his whole body pulled taut with fear.
He’s so desperate for her to understand him. To see that he never wanted this, never wanted to hurt her, never wanted to be the reason she’s shaking like this - that he feels like he might crawl out of his own skin.
He would do anything, anything, for her to understand. Because the thought of her hating him - even for a second - is unbearable.
But he doesn’t realise she never could. He doesn’t realise she never will. He doesn’t realise that even now, even when nothing else is certain, she knows her heart will always remain soft toward him.
When suddenly, she stops him. Not with anger. Not with cruelty. Not with rejection. Just with the weight of her pain - the kind she’s trying to hold together with trembling hands, the kind she’s terrified to show him, the kind she’s already minimising because she’s afraid of hurting him more.
He doesn’t even realise he’s moving until he’s already on his hands and knees, following her across the room - drawn to her like gravity, like instinct, like prayer. It’s as if his body refuses to let her drift too far away, as if distance itself is a wound he can’t survive, as if every inch between them is another thread snapping inside his chest.
He crawls to her the way a believer crawls to an altar - not out of worship, but out of desperation, out of the fear of being forsaken, out of the need to be seen, forgiven, understood. There’s something almost sacred in the way he moves toward her: head bowed, breath shaking, hands trembling against the floor.
A boy offering up his heart at her feet. A confession made with his whole body. A plea without words. Because he’s not just following her - he’s begging her. Begging her to see him. Begging her to believe him. Begging her not to turn away.
He would give anything - his pride, his dignity, his future, his dream - if it meant she wouldn’t look at him with hurt in her eyes. He would crawl forever if it meant she’d understand.
“Stop.”
The word leaves her in a whisper, but it hits him harder than a shout.
She drops to her knees in front of him again - not gracefully, not calmly, but like something inside her breaks at the sight of him on the floor. Like she can’t bear the distance for even one more second.
Her hand comes up to his face - gentle, trembling, grounding - a touch that feels like a prayer, like absolution, like she’s trying to pull him back from the edge with nothing but her fingertips. Her thumb brushes his cheek, and he leans into it instinctively, like a sinner seeking forgiveness, like a boy who has nowhere else to go.
She shakes her head, breath unsteady. “Please stop apologising,” she whispers, voice frayed and aching. “This isn’t your fault.” And the way she says it - soft, trembling, almost sacred - feels like she’s placing her hands on something fragile inside him, something he’s been trying to hold together alone.
Because even now, even shattered, even furious at the world, she still chooses to comfort him first. She still chooses to protect him from himself. She still chooses him. Her touch is a vow. Her whisper is a mercy. Her presence is a lifeline.
But then something shifts.
Something darker flickers across her expression - something so rare on her that it almost scares him. A spark of anger she usually swallows before it can burn. Her anger isn’t at him. It never is. She won’t let it be. It’s at the situation. At the system. At the way their lives are controlled by people who don’t care about them.
“It’s theirs,” she says, voice rising. “It’s this fucking place.” Her hand drops from his cheek, curling into a fist - a gesture she never allows herself. “They think they can just use us like we’re objects. Like pawns in their fucking game. And I’m sick of it... I’m so fucking sick of it.”
Her voice cracks - not from fear, but from exhaustion. From injustice. From the weight of everything she’s been carrying for years without complaint. A hint of sadness bleeds into her expression.
“It’s not fair,” she whispers, but the words feel too small for the weight behind them. “All we ever wanted was to make music. To be happy. To live the dream we worked our whole lives for.”
Her voice trembles, but she keeps going - because this is the truth she’s been swallowing for years. “We shouldn’t have to give up our dignity just to stand on a stage.”
She looks at him, eyes shining with a grief that’s bigger than either of them. “It shouldn’t cost this much to chase a dream.”
Her voice breaks again, softer this time.
“I can take it when it’s me,” she says, and there’s no pride in it - just a tired, familiar acceptance. “I can take being used. I can take being pushed around. I’ve been doing it my whole life.”
But the truth beneath her words is deeper, older, carved into her like a scar she stopped noticing years ago. She’s not saying she’s strong. She’s saying she’s accustomed to being hurt.
She’s saying she knows how to shrink herself to fit what people want. She’s saying she knows how to swallow her anger before it reaches her throat. She’s saying she knows how to survive systems that were never built to protect her. She’s saying she’s learned to endure - because no one ever taught her she didn’t have to.
She’s taken the blame. She’s taken the pressure. She’s taken the consequences of other people’s choices. She’s taken the weight of expectations that should never have been hers. And she’s done it quietly. Gracefully. Automatically.
Because that’s what her life has taught her: that her pain is manageable, that her suffering is expected, that her boundaries are optional, that her voice is negotiable.
She can take it when it’s her - because she always has.
But the tragedy is that she believes this is normal. That this is what it means to be an artist. That this is what it means to be a person. That this is what it means to love. She looks at him - really looks - and her eyes fill with something fierce and protective.
“But when it’s you? When it’s the boys? When it’s the people I care about?” She shakes her head, jaw tightening. “That’s where I draw the line.”
And he watches her, breath caught in his throat, realising that her anger isn’t a weapon - it’s a shield she’s holding in front of him.
He watches her, stunned. Because even now - even in the middle of her own heartbreak, her own confusion, her own panic - she’s fighting for him.
She’s not angry because he left her out. She’s not angry because he kept secrets. She’s not angry because he made a choice without her. She’s angry because they hurt him. Because they used him. Because they forced him into an impossible choice and expected him to survive it alone.
His throat tightens, eyes burning again. He shifts closer, still on his knees. “Rosie…” he whispers, voice cracking.
But she’s already up and pacing again - hands in her hair, breathing unevenly, spiralling into that frantic place where fear and fury blur together.
He reaches for her before she can fall any further. Both hands bringing her to his leven, hands coming up to cradle her face - gentle, steady, desperate - pulling her close until their foreheads touch. He closes his eyes, breath trembling against her skin. “I know,” he whispers. “I know, but it’s okay. I’m okay with it… I’ve made peace with it.”
And somehow, that’s the most devastating thing she’s heard all day.
Because how could he make peace with that? How could he accept something so cruel? How could he be okay with losing everything he’s worked for, everything he loves?
She pulls away like his words physically burn.
She moves abruptly, hand flying to her bottom lip, picking at it until the skin reddens. Her other hand drags through her hair, tugging at the roots as she paces - a girl trying to re-write the reality closing in around her.
Because she can’t understand how he could accept this. Because she can’t understand how he could be okay with being hurt. Because she can’t understand how he could make peace with something that should never have happened. And because she loves him so much it terrifies her.
“How is any of this okay?” she snaps, voice cracking under the pressure of everything she’s been trying to swallow. “No, I- I can’t. This can’t be happening.”
Her breathing is too fast again. Her movements too sharp. Her eyes too wild - darting, frantic, searching for something solid in a room that suddenly feels like it’s tilting.
“Why,” she chokes, “why didn’t you just tell me!”
Her pacing speeds up, her breaths coming in short, panicked bursts - the kind that don’t reach her lungs, the kind that make her chest feel too tight, the kind that mean she’s seconds away from spiralling completely.
She’s unraveling in front of him, and Heeseung... He just sits there. Watching. Because this isn’t just panic. This isn’t just anger. This is fear. Raw, overwhelming, suffocating fear, and it’s directed at the situation, at the system, at the world that keeps hurting them.
He watches her crumble, knees on the floor, hands useless in his lap, heart pounding like it’s trying to escape his ribs - knowing he caused the one thing he swore he’d never be responsible for. Her breaking.
“No. I- I can fix this.”
The words tear out of her like a reflex, like instinct, like a prayer she’s said a thousand times in a thousand different ways.
Heeseung shoots to his feet instantly. “Rosie, no-”
“No, it’s okay,” she insists, voice cracking under the weight of her own desperation. “I can- I can do this. I can bring you back. I know things. And- and they need me now.” She’s trying to find control. Trying to find stability. Trying to find anything that doesn’t feel like the ground collapsing beneath her. Because in her mind, if something is broken, it must be her job to fix it.
“Lola, please-”
“I can make this better, I don’t care-”
“Lola, stop!”
But she doesn’t. She whirls around, eyes blazing, jaw clenched so tightly it trembles. “Did you not think,” she spits, “that I wouldn’t burn this godforsaken company to the ground?”
Heeseung freezes. Because this isn’t just anger. This is devotion.
“Did you not think,” she breathes, stepping closer, “that I would fight this until the very end?” Her voice is low, trembling with a fury that isn’t wild - it’s focused, purposeful, the kind of rage born from love, not hatred. “Did you not think I would discard everything and everyone for you?”
But the words don’t come out as anger. They come out as vow, as oath, as something ancient and unbreakable. Because when Lola loves, she loves like the old stories - with the single‑minded devotion of someone who would walk into the sea if it meant saving the person standing on the shore.
There’s something almost biblical in the way she stands before him: like a silent promise, “Where you go, I will go.” Like Orpheus descending into the underworld without looking back. Like Persephone willing to walk back into the dark if it means saving the one she loves. Her eyes burn with that same mythic certainty.
Her devotion is not soft. It is not gentle. It is a blade she holds to the throat of the world. “You’re mine,” she says. “My responsibility. My cause. My battle to fight. So if the world tries to come for you. Let them... because it has to come through me first.”
Her adoration is not logical. It is instinct. It is reflex. It is scripture written into her bones. Her voice is low, slow, deliberate - each word carved out of pure rage and pure love, so intertwined they’re indistinguishable. She steps closer, eyes locked on his.
“I don’t care about anyone else. I don’t care what happens to me-”
Because here’s the truth she’ll never say out loud. She thinks this is her fault. She thinks she failed him. She thinks she should have protected him. She thinks she should have known, should have seen, should have stopped it. Because in her head, Heeseung is perfect. Heeseung is good. Heeseung is incapable of being the problem.
So she does what she always does. She takes the blame. She takes the burden. She takes the responsibility for a wound she didn’t cause. And she turns her panic into purpose - because if she can fix it, if she can fight it, if she can burn the world down for him, then maybe she won’t have to feel the truth.
Her instinct isn’t anger. It’s repentance. Her instinct isn’t blame. It’s sacrifice. Her instinct isn’t to question him. It’s to save him - even from consequences he never asked her to carry.
“WELL I DO!” The shout rips out of him before he can stop it - raw, cracked, desperate.
The room goes still. Their breaths are loud, uneven, jagged. The tension is so thick it feels combustible - like one spark could set the whole room on fire.
He takes a step toward her. “Of course I know all of that, Lola.” His voice is shaking. His hands are shaking. His whole body is shaking.
“That’s why I didn’t tell you.” She blinks, stunned - because she expected excuses, explanations, apologies. Not this.
“Because I knew,” he continues, voice cracking, “that you would sacrifice everything in order to keep me.” He looks away, blinking fast, trying to swallow the tears burning up his throat. “And I-”
He can’t finish the sentence. He can’t look at her. He can’t breathe. “Baby I don’t want that for you,” he finally forces out. “You’ve worked so hard.”
But he knows her. He knows the way she loves - recklessly, fiercely and without self-preservation. He knows the way she throws herself into the fire if it means shielding the people she loves from even a spark. He knows she would sacrifice her career, her future, her peace. He knows she would become someone ruthless, someone terrifying, someone she would hate waking up as - if it meant saving him.
And that is his worst fear. Not losing his dream. Not losing the group. Not losing the company’s approval.
Losing her.
Losing the softness in her. Losing the light in her. Losing the girl who still believes in goodness despite everything she’s endured. He didn’t tell her because he was trying to protect her - not just from the company, not just from the consequences, but also...from herself. From the version of Lola who would destroy her own life just to keep him safe.
Because she’s his too - and he refuses to let her become collateral damage in a war she didn’t start.
So he lets the first tear fall.
He tries to stop it. He tries to blink it away. He tries to swallow it back down like he always does. But it falls anyway. And once it falls, he stops fighting it - because there’s no point pretending anymore. Not with her. Not now.
“I- I can’t be the reason everything you've done goes to waste,” he whispers, voice splintering. “I can’t be the reason you sacrifice everything.” His voice breaks completely. “I won't be the thing that ruins your life.”
He stands there, chest heaving, tears slipping down his cheeks. And Lola... She looks at him like her heart is splitting in two. “So what! You’re just giving up?”
Her arms fling outward, wild and frantic, like she’s trying to physically push the reality away from her. “You’re just going to- to what? Let them win?” she cries, disbelief cracking through every word. “Let them walk all over you?” Her voice rises, not in anger at him, but in horror - because she cannot fathom a world where Heeseung doesn’t stand back up.
“You’re not even going to fight?” Her breath stutters. “To fight for the group, for everything we’ve built, for everything we’ve done...” Her voice shatters.
“For us.”
The last word leaves her like a wound, like a confession, like a plea she didn’t mean to speak aloud. She tries to wipe the tears as they fall, but they’re too fast, too hot, too relentless - the kind that come from a place deeper than fear. The kind that come from betrayal she doesn’t want to feel. The kind that come from a truth she can’t accept. Her lip trembles violently, her whole body shaking with the force of her disbelief.
Because Lola doesn’t understand giving up. She doesn’t understand surrender. She doesn’t understand choosing peace over battle - not when something precious is at stake. It’s not in her nature. She is someone who always gets back up. Someone who claws her way out of every corner she’s ever been shoved into. Someone who fights even when she’s bleeding, even when she’s exhausted, even when she’s alone.
So the idea that he wouldn’t fight, that he wouldn’t fight for himself, that he wouldn’t fight for his dream, that he wouldn’t fight for her. Is unthinkable. It breaks her in a way she doesn’t know how to hide.
Because in her world, love means fighting. Love means refusing to surrender. Love means choosing each other even when everything else is falling apart. And right now, she can’t understand why he isn’t choosing that.
“So what? You’re just giving up on me,” she whispers. So quiet he barely hears it.
But he does. He always will. Because her voice is the one thing he will never miss.
“I would never give up on you.” He puts weight on the never, forcing her to hear it, to feel it, to believe it - because it’s the one truth he needs her to hold onto.
“I just-” He drags a shaking hand over his face, trying to wipe away tears that keep coming anyway. His shoulders tremble. His breath stutters. His whole body feels like it’s collapsing.
“I’m tired, angel. Aren’t you tired?” He reaches up to wipe her tears too, but they’re replaced instantly - grief pouring out of her faster than he can catch it. “Of course I could fight this,” he says, voice cracking. “I just-”
A shaky exhale leaves him, almost a sob. “I can’t keep fighting anymore. I don’t want to.” He looks up at her, eyes red, chest heaving - and she sees it: the exhaustion, the surrender, the quiet devastation of someone who has been fighting alone for too long.
“I’m not giving up,” he whispers. “I’m just choosing to go peacefully.” He lifts a hand, brushing strands of her hair out of her face. His fingertips trace her eyebrows, her cheekbones, the bridge of her nose, then her lips - slow and reverent.
“I’m not like you.” Because Lola’s instinct is to fight - to scream, to resist, to set everything ablaze if she has to. She fights because she’s terrified of change, terrified of loss, terrified of waking up in a world where he isn’t beside her. Her love is fire - bright, consuming, relentless.
But Heeseung's instinct is the opposite.
He protects by yielding. He shields by absorbing the blow. He sacrifices himself quietly so no one else has to bleed. His love is water - soft, patient, devastating in its gentleness.
They are both trying to save each other. They are both trying to do the right thing. They are both acting out of love. But their instincts collide like opposing storms. She can’t understand why he won’t fight. He can’t understand why she won’t stop. She thinks fighting is love. He thinks stepping back is love.
Neither of them can see the other’s truth through the panic. And so this is the beginning of the end - not because they stop loving each other, but because they love each other so fiercely that it blinds them.
“What does that even mean?” Her voice is sharp, cutting, but underneath it is fear - the kind that tightens her chest, blurs her vision, makes her feel like the room is shrinking around her.
She steps closer, fists clenched at her sides, breathing too fast, like she’s preparing for a battle she refuses to lose.
And Heeseung feels it. He feels the shift in her. The way her panic hardens into something fierce. The way her heartbreak ignites into fire. The way she transforms from trembling to terrifying in a single breath.
And he sees her - really sees her - the way he always has. He sees the bravery she doesn’t recognise in herself. He sees the courage she wears like armor. He sees the fire she wields without hesitation, the fire he has never been able to summon in himself.
And he loves her for it. He admires her for it. He envies her for it. Because he could never be like that. He could never burn the way she burns. He could never fight the way she fights. He could never stand unshaken in the face of loss the way she does.
“I get it now,” Heeseung says. Soft. Heartbreaking. Like the words hurt coming out.
“What are you talking about?” Lola snaps back - sharper than she means to be, adrenaline flooding her veins, fear tightening her throat. But he doesn’t flinch.
“I know you never wanted to go solo,” he says quietly. “All those years ago.”
And he watches it happen - the exact moment her face changes. The anger drains. The fire flickers. And what replaces it is pure fear. Fear of being seen. Fear of being known. Fear of the truth she buried finally clawing its way to the surface.
“You lied, didn’t you?” he whispers. “To protect us. You said you wanted it… that it was a mutual decision. But it wasn’t, was it?”
She can’t speak. She can’t even breathe. Because she never thought he’d figure it out. She never thought he’d look that closely. She never thought he’d see the sacrifice she made so quietly, so willingly, so completely. So he continues - gently, painfully, because now that he’s started, he can’t stop.
“They forced you,” he says. “Told you you had to leave. That you had to choose. Just like me.” He steps closer with every word, like the truth is pulling him toward her.
“But you’re smarter than me,” he murmurs. “You figured it out. You found a way to do both. You sacrificed yourself - worked yourself to the bone every single day - just to stay with us.”
He’s standing right in front of her now. And for a moment, neither of them speaks. It’s just breathing. And tension. And the weight of everything they never said.
“But I’m not like you, Lola,” he says softly - not as an insult, but as a truth he needs her to understand. “I can’t do that. And it’s unfair for you to be angry at me for keeping this from you… when you’ve done the exact same thing, for the exact same reason, for years.”
She still can’t speak. The weight of it is too much. The truth is too heavy. The vulnerability is too raw. But he sees her. He sees all of her. And he isn’t angry.
So he steps even closer and lifts his hands to her face. He presses his lips to her forehead. Then her eyebrows. Then her closed eyelids. Her nose. Her cheeks. Her lips.
Every place her tears touched. Every place she tried to hide. Every place she broke for him. A quiet benediction. A wordless forgiveness. A vow he doesn’t know how to speak.
He steps back - just enough to look her in the eyes. “They’re right,” he whispers. “The company. I won’t be able to do the two schedules at once.” His voice cracks. “Baby, I don’t want to not give 100% to something,” he says, voice barely holding together. “And if my leaving means you guys get to go on and be the best without me…”
He swallows hard, the sound thick with grief. “And I get to put all of my focus into something I truly want…”
He looks away, blinking fast, trying to keep the tears from spilling - but they gather anyway, shimmering at the edges of his lashes.
“Then I have to go.” He steps closer again, slowly, like he’s approaching something fragile - like she’s made of glass, like he’s terrified of breaking her with the truth.
But he isn’t finished. “Lola…” he whispers, thumb trembling against her skin. “You did it. You lived two lives. You carried two dreams. You worked yourself raw just to keep everything together.” He shakes his head, eyes glistening. “And I watched you do it. I watched you break yourself to keep us together. I watched you pretend it was easy so we wouldn’t worry.”
He shakes his head, eyes shining.
“But I’m not you angel.” He says it gently - not as a flaw, not as a weakness, but as a truth he needs her to understand.
“You’re built to keep going. For chaos. For impossible schedules and sleepless nights and pushing past every limit until you make the world bend.” His breath shudders. “But I’m not. I can’t do what you did. I can’t split myself in half and pretend it won’t break me. I can’t give pieces of myself to two different futures and hope I don’t lose both."
His voice softens, almost pleading.
“It might be selfish, but I don’t want crazy schedules. I don’t want late nights every night. I don’t want to be committed to two things and fail both. I don’t want to pretend I can handle it when I know I can’t.”
He lifts a trembling hand and cups her cheek. “I’m not like you, Lola,” he whispers. “And that’s not a bad thing. It’s just who I am.”
“Stop saying that!” Her hands are trembling as she grabs his wrists - not to push him away, not to restrain him, but to keep him from drifting any further into that dark, self‑diminishing place.
Her eyes are wide, wet, furious, at the idea that he believes this. At the idea that he thinks he’s weaker. At the idea that he thinks he’s less.
“Stop acting like I’m this invincible force to be reckoned with,” she snaps, voice shaking. “Like I can overcome anything. Like nothing gets to me. Because that’s complete bullshit.” Her voice wavers, but it’s steady enough to cut through the air like a blade.
“You’re not like me? Good.” She leans in closer - so close their chests almost touch, so close he can feel her breath tremble against his skin. “I don’t want you to be like me. You’re not supposed to be.”
Her grip tightens on his wrists, grounding him, anchoring him. “You’re you. And you’re strong in ways I’m not. You’re steady in ways I’m not. You’re brave in ways I’m not.”
Her voice breaks, but she pushes through it. “You don’t get to decide that you’re less just because they told you so.”
She shakes her head, tears spilling freely now. “You don’t get to shrink yourself because you think I’m some kind of superhero. I’m not. I’m scared all the time. I break. I fall apart. I make stupid decisions because I’m terrified of losing the people I love.” She leans in, forehead almost touching his.
Her words hit him like a punch. He wants to believe her. He wants to let her hold him up. He wants to let her be right.
But there’s a war inside him. A war between the part of him that wants to fight and the part of him that’s exhausted. Between the part of him that wants to stay and the part of him that’s already grieving. Between the part of him that loves her and the part of him that’s terrified of ruining her life.
“You don’t understand,” she cries, voice rising, raw and breathless. “The only reason I can do any of this is because I have you and the boys.” She grabs his hand and brings it to her chest, pressing it over her heart like she’s trying to hold herself together with his touch.
“Because I have each and every one of you to come home to every night and rant when I’m stressed. Because I have a hot meal waiting for me when I get back late from the studio. Because someone packs my bags when I don’t have time because I’ve spent all day working on something for someone else.”
Her breathing stutters, her words tumbling out faster than her lungs can keep up - because she’s not just explaining. She’s confessing.
“Because someone makes me a list every morning so I don’t forget my medication or my inhaler. Because someone cleans my room after a week of meetings and rehearsals when I can’t even think straight.”
One hand tangles in her hair, tugging at the roots, nails scraping her scalp - a physical attempt to ground herself, to stop the panic from swallowing her whole.
“It’s only possible because I have someone to hold me when I cry,” she chokes out. “Someone who wakes up with me at ungodly hours when I have a lyric idea. Someone who orders my food for me because I’m too exhausted to decide.”
Her voice breaks completely. “Someone who gives me piggyback rides through the company after rehearsals because my legs ache - even though I know yours do too.”
She stops abruptly, staring at him through tears, her whole body shaking.
And Heeseung looks like he’s been struck. Like every word is a blow he never saw coming. Like he’s realising, for the first time, that he wasn’t just background support - he was the foundation she stood on.
“The only reason people get the Lola they love,” she whispers, voice trembling, “is because of you.” She presses a shaking hand over his heart. “Because you love this version of me right here.”
Her voice drops to a whisper, thick with pain, thick with truth. “So don’t you dare stand there and tell me you’re not strong. I can’t accept that.”
And in that moment, something shifts inside him. He wasn’t just someone she loved. He was someone she needed.
She didn’t survive because she’s superhuman. She survived because she had him. Because he held her together in all the quiet, invisible ways she never acknowledged out loud. Because he was her steadiness, her anchor, her soft place to land.
And suddenly the war inside him - the part that wants to leave, the part that wants to stay, the part that thinks he’s weak, the part that loves her too much, - all of it collides.
Because he’s spent all this time believing she was stronger, braver, more capable - that she could do everything he couldn’t.
So now he sees the truth. The truth that she only stood that tall because he was standing beside her. But there's a second side to that truth.
Because she’s not just listing habits. She’s not just listing comforts. She’s not just listing routines. She’s listing the ways he holds her together. The ways he keeps her steady. The ways he keeps her alive.
And he never wanted her to feel that. Never wanted her to depend on him like that. Never wanted her to think she couldn’t exist without him. Now she’s telling him that her strength was built on him.
His breath stutters. His knees nearly buckle. He feels sick with guilt, with love, with fear - a nauseating swirl of emotions that makes the room tilt.
Because if she needs him this much… if he’s been this important to her survival… then leaving isn’t just a choice. It’s a wound. A betrayal.
He steps toward her, but his legs feel unsteady, like the floor is tilting beneath him, like gravity itself is pulling him apart.
“Lola…” he whispers, voice breaking.
But she’s crying too hard to hear him - sobs shaking her whole body, breath hitching, hands trembling against her chest where she pressed his palm moments ago.
And Heeseung stands there, torn in half. Because suddenly, he has to decide whether that truth anchors him or destroys him.
They’re both sobbing now. The kind are the kind that shake their shoulders, that make their breaths stammer, that leave their hands go numb and their nails digging into their own skin because they don’t know where else to put the pain. The kind that come from fear. From love. From the terror of losing something they can’t live without.
Lola’s breaths are uneven, sharp, almost painful - like every inhale is a fight, like every exhale is a surrender.
Heeseung's chest rises and falls too fast, his hands trembling as he reaches for her but stops halfway, unsure if he’s allowed, unsure if touching her will break her more or break him completely.
They’re standing inches apart, both shaking, both breaking, both trying to figure out what comes next - and neither of them knows how to move without hurting the other.
And Heeseung fhas to face the reality that staying might break them both.
“Okay… okay. I hear you. It’s okay.” His voice is barely a whisper, but somehow it cuts through the shaking, through the panic, through the storm inside her. It’s steady enough to reach her when nothing else can.
He pulls her into his chest not gently, not carefully, but with a kind of desperate force, like he’s trying to hold her together and keep himself from falling apart at the same time.
His arms wrap around her like a shield. Like a plea. Like a surrender. He presses a soft kiss into her hair, lips lingering there as he whispers into the strands. “It’s okay. I’ve got you, baby.”
And she melts. Her forehead presses into the warm skin of his neck, her fingers clutching the back of his shirt like she’s afraid he’ll disappear if she loosens her grip even a little.
They move together - slow, exhausted, instinctive - toward the bed.
Heeseung sits with his back against the headboard, legs parted just enough for her to curl into his lap. She folds herself into him like she’s done it a thousand times, like her body knows exactly where it belongs.
Her head buries so deep into his neck she feels his pulse against her cheek - steady, human, alive. She hopes they merge into one person. She hopes they never have to separate again.
He hopes the same. His hand finds the back of her neck, thumb brushing slow, grounding circles into her skin - the same touch that always calms her, always anchors her, always reminds her she’s safe.
His lips rest against the top of her head, unmoving.
Her hand slips under his shirt, fingers resting just above his waistband. Seeking warmth. Seeking proof. Seeking him. Seeking the reassurance that he’s real, that he’s here, that he hasn’t left yet.
They stay like that for a long time. Long enough that their breathing syncs. Long enough that their tears dry on each other’s skin. Long enough that the world outside the room feels far away, unreal, unimportant. Long enough that they almost convince themselves they’re safe.
Until Lola speaks.
“How are we supposed to do this without you?” Her voice is small. Fragile. Almost childlike - like she’s asking a question she already knows the answer to, but can’t bear to accept.
She lets out a tiny laugh - the kind that doesn’t reach her eyes, the kind that sounds like it hurts to make. “The whole damn group was literally built around you.”
Heeseung's chest tightens. “That’s not true-”
But she lifts her head from his neck, turning to face him. Her eyes are swollen, lashes wet, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. And she gives him a sad, knowing smile.
“Yeah, it is.” She sniffles, tears spilling again even though she’s too tired to wipe them away. “I remember everyone being so in awe of you on I-LAND. Everyone thought you were so cool. And I did too…”
Her voice wavers, breath hitching as she tries to steady herself. “But it was so much more than that.”
She reaches up, brushing her fingers across his face - slow, reverent, tracing the curve of his cheek, the line of his jaw, the shape of his lips. Memorising him. Storing him. Keeping him.
“You were insanely talented, of course. Anyone could see that.” Her thumb strokes his cheekbone, catching a tear he didn’t realise had fallen. “But you were also kind. And selfless. And compassionate. And it was no wonder everyone thought you were going to debut.”
Her voice breaks. “You’re so special, Heeseung. Anyone with eyes could see how amazing you are.”
And he feels it - the words hitting him like a blow, like a truth he’s spent years refusing to let himself believe.
Because she’s not flattering him. She’s not comforting him. She’s not trying to make him stay, even though she really, really wants him to. Instead, she’s telling him the truth she’s carried for years. The truth, she thought, was obvious. The truth he never saw in himself.
Lola’s forehead rests against his. His hands cradle her waist. Their breaths mingle - shaky, uneven, desperate. Neither of them is okay. Not even close. But they have each other. Even if it’s just for now. Even if everything is about to change. Even if the world outside this room is falling apart. Right here, in this fragile, trembling moment, they let themselves grieve together.
And it’s the closest thing to peace they’ve had all day.
She stays curled in his lap, fingers tracing the lines of his face like she’s memorising him - like she’s afraid she’ll wake up tomorrow, and he’ll be gone.
She takes a shaky breath, swallowing down the tears gathering again. “So… I understand,” she whispers. “If you need to go.”
The words land between them like a stone dropped into still water - heavy, irreversible, rippling through both of them. Her voice cracks. “I understand why you need to leave. I’m sorry I lost my shit a second ago… I’m just really scared. I don’t think I can do this without you.”
And Heeseung senses it - the sincerity, the surrender, the love she’s trying so hard not to choke on. He feels her fear like it’s his own. He feels her shaking like it’s happening inside his own bones. He feels her grief settling into his chest like a weight he can’t lift. And his heart twists so violently he feels it in his ribs.
He gives her a sad smile - the kind that hurts to look at, the kind that fools neither of them. “That’s not true,” he murmurs. “You don’t need me. None of you do. You never did.”
But she shakes her head immediately, grabbing his hand with both of hers and bringing it to her lips. Pressing a soft kiss to his knuckles - slow, lingering, like she’s trying to breathe strength into him, like she’s trying to anchor him to the truth.
“But I want you.” Her voice is barely a breath. Barely sound at all. But it hits him harder than anything she’s said all night. "And I don't want to experience what it's like doing this with you gone."
She lifts her eyes to his - swollen, red, shining with exhaustion and devotion. “But I won’t ask you to stay if that’s not what you want.”
And that’s what destroys him. Because she’s not begging. She’s not bargaining. She’s not clinging out of fear.
She’s loving him. Loving him enough to let him choose. Loving him enough to let him go. Loving him enough to separate want from need.
She shifts in his lap, turning so she can look at him properly. Her knees bracket his hips, her hands resting on his shoulders, her forehead brushing his - a position that feels like confession, like surrender, like truth.
Her voice is quiet, but steady. “If anyone understands how hard it is to do solo work and group work at the same time… It’s me.”
Her thumb strokes the side of his neck, grounding herself in the warmth of his skin, in the reality of him. “I know the emotional toll. The physical toll. The mental toll. I know what it does to you. I know how it eats at you. I know how it makes you feel like you’re being torn in two.”
Her voice softens even more. “And I know the want to leave. Too well. I feel it every day.”
Heeseung breath catches. She’s never said that out loud before. Not to him. Not to anyone. She continues, tears slipping down her cheeks again, slow and heavy. “And just because I choose to stay doesn’t mean I get to judge you for choosing differently.”
She leans her forehead against his, breath warm and uneven. “And right now… this isn’t about me. It’s not about what I would’ve done. It’s about you. Your limits. Your heart. Your sanity.”
Her hand cups his cheek, thumb catching a tear he didn’t realise had fallen. “So no... I won’t judge you. Not for choosing differently. Not for protecting yourself. Not for wanting something else.”
She takes a shaky breath, eyes searching his like she’s trying to make sure he hears every word. Her fingers slide into his hair, holding the back of his head gently - not to control him, not to keep him still, but because she’s afraid he’ll break if she lets go.
“I love you,” she whispers - not as a confession, not as a revelation, but as a truth she’s been living inside for a long time. “And I will respect your decision. I will support you. Even if it kills me to do it.”
She understands him. She understands the exhaustion. She understands the fear. She understands the desire to run. She understands the guilt of wanting something for yourself. She understands him better than he understands himself.
And that terrifies him. And comforts him. And breaks him. And binds him to her in a way he can’t untangle.
His hands tighten around her waist, fingers digging in like he’s afraid she’ll slip through his grip. His forehead presses harder against hers, almost desperate. He closes his eyes, voice cracking as he exhales.
“Rosie…” It’s not a name. It’s a plea. It’s a confession. It’s everything he can’t say without falling apart.
His hands slide up her back, pulling her closer - closer than close - holding her like she’s the only thing keeping him upright, the only thing keeping him breathing, the only thing stopping him from collapsing completely.
He’s shaking again. She’s shaking too. Their breaths are uneven, catching on sobs they can’t swallow. Their hearts are pounding against each other’s ribs. Their tears are mixing on each other’s skin - warm, salty, shared.
They’re both grieving something that hasn’t even happened yet. A future they haven’t lived. A loss they haven’t faced. A goodbye they’re terrified to speak into existence. They’re holding each other like the world is ending. Because for them - in this room, in this moment - it is.
“So what does this mean for us?”
The words hit him like a physical blow. His entire body tenses - shoulders locking, breath catching, fingers freezing where they rest on her waist. He doesn’t even blink. It’s like his brain short‑circuits.
Because he hadn’t thought this far. Not once. He’d been so focused on the logistics - the meetings, the announcement, the group, the timing, the fallout, her reaction. That he never let himself think about the after.
The realisation slams into him so hard his stomach flips. His head spins. His throat closes. His vision blurs for a second. He genuinely thinks he might be sick.
Because the thought of breaking up with her, the thought of letting her go, the thought of not being hers anymore, makes something inside him gag. His hand instinctively presses to his mouth, like he’s trying to hold the nausea down, like he’s trying to keep himself from falling apart in front of her.
He can’t breathe. He can’t think. He can’t imagine a world where she isn’t his. Leaving the group? He could survive that. Leaving the dream? He could rebuild. Leaving her? His body rejects the idea like poison. He feels it in his ribs, in his lungs, in the back of his throat - a visceral, physical panic.
Because suddenly the choice isn’t about careers or schedules or pressure. It’s about love. It’s about them. It’s about the one thing he can’t lose.
And he realises - with terrifying clarity - that he can walk away from the stage, from the spotlight, from the company, from the dream he’s had since he was a kid.
But he cannot walk away from her. Not without breaking something inside himself that will never heal. He feels like he’s losing her before he’s even had the chance to love her properly.
But what else could they do?
They’re on two different paths now. Two different schedules. Two different futures. And the company would never support them staying together. Not that he cares what the company thinks. He doesn’t. Not even a little. He only cares about the girl sitting in his lap, looking at him with eyes that are begging him not to break her heart.
But he also has to be realistic. He has to be responsible. He has to be the one who thinks ahead when she’s too emotional to. He can’t be selfish. He can’t hold her back. He can’t be the reason she sacrifices anything. He tells himself that. Over and over. Like a mantra. Like a punishment.
And then he collapses into her arms. He lets himself break. He lets himself cry. He lets himself be held. He presses his face into her shoulder, breathing her in like she’s oxygen, like she’s the only thing keeping him alive. His voice is barely a whisper, cracked and trembling.
“I don’t know… I’m sorry, I hadn’t really thought about it.” He says it quietly - barely more than breath - but the moment the words leave his mouth, his whole body tenses. His shoulders lock. His breath catches. His fingers curl into the sheets like he’s bracing for impact.
Because it’s the truth. He hadn’t thought about it. Not because he didn’t care. Not because he didn’t love her. Not because she wasn’t important. But because he couldn’t bear to imagine a world where they weren’t together. He couldn’t let his mind go there. He couldn’t survive the thought.
All at once, his mind starts racing - not in neat categories, not in tidy options, but in a chaotic rush of futures he’s terrified to look at.
He imagines staying together, but the thought comes with a sting. What would it cost them? How long before the pressure, the imbalance starts to wear them down? How long before loving each other becomes another weight they’re both forced to carry?
Then comes the memory of keeping it a secret again - the lies, the hiding, the constant fear of being caught. Pretending they’re nothing in public while being everything in private. Living in the shadows when all they want is to exist in the light.
Or them barely seeing each other. Two people in the same city, breathing the same air, but living in different worlds. Passing each other like ghosts. Loving someone you never get to touch.
Then the slow ache of living separate lives. Not because they want to, but because life pulls them apart inch by inch. Drifting. Fading. Losing pieces of each other without even noticing until it’s too late.
And then the one future he can’t even breathe through. Losing each other completely. A clean break. A final goodbye. A world where she isn’t his and he isn’t hers. A version of life that feels so wrong his stomach twists just imagining it.
Each scenario hits him like a blow. Each one feels like its own kind of heartbreak. Each one makes his chest tighten until he can barely inhale.
And he doesn’t know which future hurts the least. Each one feels like a punch to the gut. Each one feels like a future he’s not strong enough to survive.
And even though it kills him - even though it feels like ripping out his own heart - the only option that sounds remotely rational, the only one that doesn’t risk destroying her, the only one that doesn’t make him feel selfish... is space.
“I guess… we take a break.” The words scrape out of him like glass - sharp, painful, wrong. And the moment they’re in the air, his whole body tenses.
He waits.
He waits for her to explode - for the anger, the panic, the desperation. He waits for her to scream, to cry, to grab his shirt and shake him, to tell him he’s being stupid, to tell him she loves him too much to let him go.
A part of him wants that. A part of him is praying for it. For something loud, something messy, something that proves she wants him enough to fight. Because he wants to fight too. He wants her to give him a reason, any reason, to take it all back.
But underneath that instinct - beneath the panic and the heartbreak - they both know the truth neither of them wants to say out loud.
Their time is up.
And Lola feels it hit her like a slow, sinking weight. She wants to fight. God, she wants to fight. She wants to claw at fate with her bare hands, to drag him back into a future where they still get to choose each other.
But what’s the point of fighting a battle that’s already been decided? What’s the point of screaming when the decision is made? What’s the point of begging when the world outside this room has already chosen for them?
So she doesn’t scream. She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t grab him and shake him until he changes his mind. She stays still - heartbreakingly still - curled in his lap, breathing slow and steady in a way that terrifies him more than any meltdown ever could.
Because her quiet isn’t indifference. It’s surrender. It’s understanding. It’s the acceptance that loving him sometimes means not fighting him.
So she doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t cling tighter. She doesn’t fall apart. She just waits for him to continue.
“I don’t want to sit here and promise you we’re going to be okay,” he whispers, voice thin and shaking. “Because I have no fucking idea what’s going to happen in the next ten minutes - never mind the next few months.”
His voice trembles like it’s barely holding itself together.
“And I just don’t feel like it’s fair for us to go through that. To act like nothing’s changing when the whole world is falling apart around us.” He lifts his head back, staring at the ceiling like he’s begging it for strength he doesn’t have. His throat works around a breath that hurts going in.
“I don’t want to hold you back. Or stop you from doing anything.” The words scrape out of him, raw and trembling. His chest rises in a deep, painful inhale - the kind that feels like it drags against his ribs, like his body is protesting the truth he’s about to say.
Because he wants to fight this. He wants to keep her. He wants nothing to change. He wants the world to freeze so they can stay exactly as they are, wrapped around each other, safe in a moment that feels like home. But it’s not that simple. And he knows it.
“But… but sometimes I feel like love just isn’t enough.” The words crack open inside him. His voice breaks. His whole body follows.
Because this isn’t about wanting. It’s about reality - the one they’ve both been trying not to look at. He swallows hard, forcing himself to keep going, even though every part of him wants to take it back.
“We’re going to grow in different directions,” he whispers, voice shaking. “And I hate that. I hate it so much. But pretending we won’t… pretending we can force our lives to stay aligned just because we love each other… that isn’t fair to either of us.”
His fingers tighten on her waist, like he’s trying to memorise the shape of her before he loses it.
“We used to be on the same path. Same dream. Same future. But now it’s split. And we can’t drag each other down our own roads just because we’re scared of what happens if we walk alone.”
He presses his forehead to hers, breath unsteady. “We’re not kids anymore. We don’t get to choose the easy version of this. We deserve the chance to figure out who we are without each other… even if it feels like shit. Even if it breaks us.”
His voice drops to a whisper - soft, devastated, honest. “I can’t ask you to hold onto a future that doesn’t exist yet. We need to prioritise the now… not the hope of something we can’t predict.”
“And I don’t know if I can fight this right now. I feel like I’ve been falling apart, and I don’t- I can’t take you down with me.” He kisses the top of her head, lips lingering like he’s trying to imprint the moment into his bones. “So my last act of love… the only thing I can give you that isn’t selfish… is letting you go.”
He doesn’t want to do this. Every cell in his body is screaming at him not to. His hands shake so violently he has to grip her tighter just to stay grounded, like she’s the only thing keeping him from collapsing.
His chest feels like it’s caving in. His stomach twists so hard he thinks he might be sick. Because he doesn’t want to let her go. He doesn’t want space. He doesn’t want distance. He doesn’t want a break. He wants her. He wants her so much it hurts - a deep, bone‑level ache that makes it hard to breathe.
But wanting her doesn’t change what’s coming. He can already see the future unfolding like a storm he can’t outrun. The schedules. The pressure. The loneliness. The scrutiny. The exhaustion. The emotional collapse. The identity crisis. The fear. The guilt. The spotlight. The silence. He knows what this life does to people. He knows what it’s already doing to him.
He knows he’s going to break.
And the only thing worse than breaking… is breaking while she watches. He can’t do that to her. He can’t drag her into the darkness with him. He can’t let her sacrifice herself for him - not her time, not her joy, not her future. So he chooses the one thing that destroys him.
He chooses to let her go.
Not because he wants to. Not because it’s easy. Not because he believes they’re better apart. But because he loves her too much to let her drown with him. Because he’d rather shatter alone than watch her crumble beside him. Because sometimes the cruelest choice is the kindest one.
There’s a moment of silence so thick it feels like the air has been sucked out of the room - a vacuum, a void, a stillness that makes Heeseung skin prickle.
For a second, he thinks she hasn’t heard him. He almost hopes she hasn’t. Until she moves. Slowly. Quietly. Deliberately.
She pulls away from his chest, from his arms, from the warmth of him - and sits cross‑legged in front of him on the bed. The distance between them is barely a foot, but it feels like a canyon opening beneath them.
She doesn’t look at him. Her gaze drops to her hands in her lap, fingers fidgeting, nails picking at nails - the small, familiar signs she gives when she’s trying not to fall apart, when she’s holding herself together by threads.
She takes a tiny breath before she lifts her head. And the moment he sees her face, Heeseung entire world tilts.
Because he knows that look. He knows it too well.
He’s seen it before - during the worst time of her life, when she shut down so completely she wasn’t even in her body anymore. When she retreated somewhere deep and unreachable. When she disappeared behind her own eyes.
It’s the look of someone who’s given up.
Her eyes are hollow. Her face is numb. Her expression is blank in a way that terrifies him more than any scream ever could. Because this isn’t anger. It isn’t heartbreak. It isn’t panic. It’s absence.
"Okay.” Her voice is flat. Emotionless. Empty. A single word that feels like a door closing. “If you want to leave… then I won’t stop you.”
Heeseung heart lurches so violently he feels dizzy. It’s like the floor drops out from under him.
Everything inside him is screaming to take it back - to say he didn’t mean it, to pull her into his arms, to tell her he’s not going anywhere, to undo the damage he just caused.
But his mouth stays shut.
Because he still believes - stupidly, painfully - that this is what’s best for her. That hurting her now will save her later. That breaking her heart is somehow protecting her.
“It is…” he forces out, voice barely audible. “Thank you for understanding.” He hates himself for saying it. Hates the way the words taste like ash. Hates the way they land between them like a final blow.
And for the first time since they met… they feel awkward. Two people who used to fit together effortlessly now sitting in a silence so unfamiliar it feels like wearing someone else’s skin.
Neither of them knows what to say. Neither of them knows what to do. Neither of them knows how to exist in this new, broken space. The damage is done. The words are out. The road they’ve been walking together has split beneath their feet.
And now they’re just… standing there. At the end. At the edge. At the place where love isn’t enough to keep them moving forward together.
She gives him a nod and a small smile. And he hates it. Because it’s not real. It’s not her. It’s the smile she uses when she’s cornered so tightly she can’t breathe. The smile she puts on when she’s too exhausted to fight anymore. The same smile she wore at her lowest, pretending she was fine when she was anything but.
It’s the smile of someone shutting down. Of someone slipping behind a wall he can’t reach. Of someone who’s already halfway gone.
“I-”
“Don’t.” Her voice is still flat. Still empty. Still terrifying in its calm. “Please don’t say anything else.”
She swallows, eyes fixed on the blanket between them, refusing to look at him - not out of anger, but because she knows if she does, she’ll break. “If that’s everything… please just go.”
Her words hit him like a punch to the chest - sharp, breath‑stealing, disorienting. He feels winded. He feels sick. He feels like the floor has dropped out from under him and he’s falling with nothing to grab onto. Because she’s not angry. She’s not crying. She’s not yelling.
She’s gone.
Not physically. Not literally. But emotionally - she’s slipped somewhere deep inside herself.
And he did that.
He pushed her there. He made her believe she wasn’t worth fighting for. He made her believe he didn’t choose her. His throat closes. His vision blurs. His hands shake uselessly in his lap.
He wants to reach for her. He wants to take it all back. He wants to fall at her feet and beg her to let him stay, to let him fix it, to let him try again.
But she won’t look at him.
She keeps her eyes on the blanket, on her hands, on anything that isn’t him - because looking at him would shatter her, and she’s already holding herself together by threads.
And he realises - with a kind of horror he’s never felt before - that he didn’t just break her heart. He broke something deeper. Something fragile. Something sacred. Something she may never let him touch again.
He looks at her for a moment searching her face for something, anything: A flinch. A breath. A whisper. A “don’t go.” A “please stay.” A “don’t do this.” Anything that means she still wants him. Anything that means he hasn’t completely lost her.
But she gives him nothing. Not even a glance.
Her eyes stay fixed on her lap, fingers twisting together, shoulders shifted forawrd like she’s trying to make herself smaller. Like she’s trying to disappear.
He wipes the last stray tears from his face with the back of his hand, nodding even though it feels like his neck might snap under the weight of it.
He stands slowly - painfully slowly - giving her time. Time to change her mind. Time to stop him. Time to reach for him. Time to say his name. Time to give him one last reason to stay.
But she doesn’t. She doesn’t move. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t even look up.
So he walks to the door, each step heavier than the last, like he’s dragging chains behind him. He opens it, pauses, turns back for one final look - because he can’t leave without seeing her one more time.
And what he sees destroys him.
She’s rolling onto her side, back facing him, curling into herself like she’s bracing for impact. Like she’s already grieving him. Like she’s trying to protect whatever pieces of herself she has left.
It hits him then - the awkwardness, the silence, the distance. For the first time since they met, they don’t know how to exist in the same room. They’ve reached the end of the road, and now all that’s left is the part where they walk away.
He closes the door behind him. And it feels like closing a coffin.
The dorm is silent - too silent. Just… empty. Hollow. Wrong.
Every room he passes feels like a memory he’s being forced to walk through. Every hallway feels like a goodbye he never wanted to say. The air feels heavier with each step, like the building itself knows what he’s done.
His breaths come deep and uneven, dragging through his chest like they’re scraping him from the inside. His legs feel weak, unsteady, like they might give out at any second.
By the time he reaches the front door, he’s shaking. Not from cold. Not from fear. From grief. From shock. From the unbearable weight of what he’s just lost.
He gets to his car, climbs inside, shuts the door - and the silence hits him like a punch. A silence that isn’t just quiet. A silence that feels like absence. Like something has been ripped out of him.
His hands tremble as he unlocks his phone. He types with fingers that barely work. I need the day off.
He doesn’t wait for a reply. He can’t. So he puts the phone down. He grips the steering wheel. He stares straight ahead.
He sits there, staring at nothing, and his mind betrays him.
It doesn’t give him space. It doesn’t give him silence. It doesn’t give him mercy.
Instead, it plays everything back at him - a cruel, relentless montage he can’t stop, can’t pause, can’t look away from.
He sees them on I-LAND survival show - the fear, the hunger, the hope. He sees them in the practice room at 2 a.m., whispering dreams into the dark. He sees her falling asleep on his shoulder, trusting him without even thinking about it. He hears her laugh echoing through the dorm, bright and warm and alive. He tastes her terrible cooking. All the meals he ate anyway because she made them for him. He feels the arguments, the tension, the tears that came with loving someone so deeply it scared him. He remembers the kisses - soft, desperate, grounding. He remembers the way she looked at him like he was her whole world.
And then he remembers the way she didn’t look at him at all when he walked out. Every tiny, monumental moment that led them here flashes behind his eyes - not as memories, but as wounds. Each one slicing deeper. Each one reminding him of what he just destroyed.
And something inside him snaps.
A sob tears out of him - ugly, raw, violent - the kind that doesn’t sound human, the kind that comes from somewhere deep and wounded and ancient inside him.
Tears stream down his face in hot, relentless waves. His shoulders shake uncontrollably. His breaths come short and fast, almost choking him, like his own body is rejecting the reality he just created.
His hands grip the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turn white, like he’s holding on for dear life, like letting go would mean falling apart completely.
He can’t breathe. He can’t see. His head throbs. His chest aches. Everything hurts.
He cries until his throat burns, until his eyes sting, until his body feels scraped out from the inside. He cries until he feels hollow - emptied, drained, ruined.
He cries until there’s nothing left. And when the sobs finally stop - not because he’s calm, but because his body is too exhausted to keep going - he just sits there. Staring at the dashboard. At nothing. At everything.
The silence in the car feels suffocating, like the world has shrunk to this tiny, airless space where only one sentence exists. His mind repeats it over and over, a cruel echo he can’t escape.
What have I done.
And he knows. He knows with a certainty that makes him sick. He knows with a clarity that cuts deeper than any argument, any goodbye, any heartbreak.
Timeline: 2026
Now Playing: There Is a Light That Never Goes Out by The Smiths, Killswich Lullaby (Slowed + Reverb) by The Lonely Tree & Flawed Mangoes, Are We Still Friends? by Tyler The Creator
Word Count: 8.8K
"How can a person know everything at 18, but nothing at 22?" PART TWO
The meeting ends in a blur.
Not a clean fade‑out. Not a gentle transition. A blur - smeared, distorted, like someone dragged a hand across wet paint.
One moment, the members are shouting, arguing, demanding answers - voices overlapping, chairs scraping, hearts breaking.
Next, the executives are standing. Straightening their jackets. Bowing politely. Dismissing them with the same tone someone might use to end a routine briefing.
Heeseung doesn’t remember standing. He doesn’t remember pushing his chair back. He doesn’t remember the door opening or closing behind him.
He just… appears in the hallway. Like his body walked there without him.
The fluorescent lights are too bright - sharp, clinical, buzzing faintly like they’re drilling into his skull. The air feels thin, like someone turned down the oxygen. Every sound is too loud - footsteps, distant chatter, the hum of the building.
His heartbeat is the loudest of all. He blinks, trying to anchor himself, but the world keeps tilting, slipping sideways, refusing to stay still.
And then-
His phone vibrates. Once. Twice.
The sound slices through the fog. He looks down.
Rosie 💛
I landed safe!!
Mum and dad say hi.
Also, I saw a squirrel on the drive back and thought of you lol.
Another set of messages pops up immediately.
Hope your day hasn’t been too stressful.
Miss you already.
The words hit him like a punch to the chest.
Sweet. Warm. Completely unaware.
A message from a world that still feels safe. A world that still believes he’s okay. A world that hasn’t been shattered yet.
His breath stutters - sharp, shallow, wrong. His vision blurs at the edges, colours smudging together. His throat closes like someone’s tightening a fist around it.
He can’t breathe. He can’t think. He can’t hold all of this at once.
The meeting. The announcement. The boys’ voices. The executives’ coldness. Lola's sweetness. Lola's love. Lola's unawareness.
It’s too much. All of it. Too much.
He needs space. He needs air. He needs to get away before he breaks in front of everyone.
Jay reaches for him first, instinctive, gentle, terrified. “Hyung-”
Heeseung steps back. Not harshly. Not angrily. Just… reflexively. Like one touch might shatter him.
Sunoo tries next, voice soft but urgent. “Hyung, wait-” But Heeseung shakes his head, breath catching on the movement.
“I just…” He forces the words out, barely audible. “I need… space. Please.”
The members freeze.
Because they know that tone. They know that look. They know the way his eyes unfocus when the world gets too loud, too fast, too heavy.
They know when he’s slipping somewhere they can’t follow.
Sunghoon is the first to find his voice, quiet and steady.
“Okay,” he says, nodding slowly. “We’ll give you space. Just… text us when you’re safe.”
Heeseung nods once - a tiny, shaky movement - and turns away before they can see the panic rising in his eyes.
He walks fast. Then faster. Then, almost running. Every hallway feels too narrow. Every door feels too close. Every sound feels like a threat.
The moment he disappears around the corner, the boys exhale all at once - a collective, uneven breath they didn’t realise they were holding.
Jungwon drags a hand through his hair. Jake mutters a curse under his breath. Nikki looks like he’s about to chase after him. Sunoo's hands are trembling. Sunghoon's jaw is tight with worry. Jay staring, watching him walk away.
Because they all know the truth:
When Heeseung gets like this - when he spirals, when he dissociates, when he can’t breathe, when the world spins too fast.
Lola is the one who brings him back.
She’s the one who grounds him. The one who slows his breathing. The one who talks him down. The one who holds his hands until they stop shaking. The one who knows exactly what to say, exactly how to touch him, exactly how to anchor him.
And she’s not here.
Jungwon whispers it first, voice cracking. “Lola’s the one who helps him when he’s like this.”
Jake nods, swallowing hard. “She always knows what to do.”
Sunoo's voice is barely a whisper. “What if he… what if he gets worse?”
"Should- Should we call her?" Nikki says.
Jay shakes his head. "No... you heard him. He doesn't want her to know about this."
Sunghoon closes his eyes for a moment, steadying himself.
“We trust him,” he says quietly. “We respect what he asked for. If he needs space, then we give him that.”
A beat.
“But we stay close. Let him know we're here if he needs us.”
The boys nod - reluctantly, painfully - because they know he needs room to breathe.
But they also know he’s breaking. And without Lola here to catch him…
They’re terrified he’ll fall too far.
Heeseung's phone buzzes again. A tiny vibration. Barely a sound. But it slices through him like a blade.
Rosie 💛
Send me a picture when you’re free.
I miss your pretty face.
He nearly drops the phone.
His fingers go numb. His breath catches. His vision blurs again, sharper this time, like the world is tilting off its axis.
He can’t answer.
He can’t even look at the screen.
Not when everything is collapsing. Not when he feels like he’s suffocating. Not when the future he thought he had - the one he built with her - is being ripped out from under him.
Her sweetness feels like a wound. Her warmth feels like a weight he can’t carry. Her love feels like something he’s about to lose.
He pushes out of the building, the cold air hitting him like a slap.
A shock. A jolt. A reminder that he’s still here, still breathing, still falling apart.
He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t slow down. Doesn’t look back.
He heads straight for the dorm.
His legs move on instinct - muscle memory guiding him through streets he’s walked a thousand times, though today they feel unfamiliar, hostile, wrong.
The city feels too big. The sky feels too low. The world feels too loud.
By the time he reaches the building, his chest is tight, his hands shaking so badly he can barely grip the railing.
He takes the stairs two at a time.
Up. Up. Up.
His breath is ragged. His heartbeat is frantic. His thoughts are a blur of noise, fear, and her name.
He doesn’t stop at the dorm door. He keeps going. Up to the roof.
The moment he steps outside, the wind hits him - cool, sharp, real.
It cuts through the fog just enough for him to breathe. He exhales shakily, gripping the railing as if the world might tilt again.
The city stretches out below him, alive and indifferent - lights flickering, cars moving, people living their lives completely unaware that his is falling apart.
He presses his forehead to the cold metal, eyes squeezed shut.
He doesn’t cry. Not yet. He’s too overwhelmed to even reach the part of himself that can cry.
All he can do is breathe. Or try to.
Because up here - away from the boys, away from the building, away from the executives, away from the future he didn’t choose - he can finally fall apart without anyone watching.
His phone buzzes again in his pocket.
A tiny vibration. Barely anything. But up here, in the cold, in the silence, in the aftermath - it feels like the world tapping him on the shoulder, demanding he look at something he’s not ready to face.
He just stands there on the roof.
The wind in his hair. The world too big. His body too small to hold everything inside him.
He grips the railing harder, knuckles white, trying to hold himself together long enough to figure out what the hell he’s supposed to do now.
But the wind isn’t cold enough to steady him. The rooftop isn’t high enough to clear his head. The city isn’t loud enough to drown out the panic.
His hands are still shaking when he finally pulls out his phone.
He doesn’t want to look. He knows it will hurt. He knows it will make everything worse. He knows her words will feel like a knife and a lifeline at the same time.
But he opens the messages anyway.
Rosie 💛
I landed safe!!
Mum and dad say hi.
Also I saw a squirrel and thought of you lol.
Had your big brown eyes n everything.
Hope your day isn’t too stressful. Miss you already.
Send me a picture when you’re free.
I miss your pretty face.
You better be eating properly.
I’m serious baby, you better be eating some delicious food or imma be mad!
And then...
I’m proud of you though, thank you for being such an angel and helping me pack my stuff. I know it's hard to say goodbye... but it's only a week! It will fly by and we will be back together before you know it!!
That last one breaks him. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just… quietly. Like a thread snapping inside his chest.
His breath leaves him in a shaky exhale. His knees give out before he realises he’s falling. He sinks down onto the concrete, back against the wall, phone clutched in both hands as if it’s the only thing keeping him from falling apart completely.
Her words are so soft. So warm. So full of love and trust.
Trust he doesn’t know how to hold anymore. Love, he doesn’t know how to protect. Hope he doesn’t know how to live up to.
She believes they’ll be back together in a week. She believes everything is fine. She believes he’s okay. She believes in a future he’s no longer allowed to have.
And that’s what breaks him.
Not the announcement. Not the executives. Not the future being rewritten without him.
Her hope.
Her hope is the thing that shatters him.
He presses the phone to his forehead, eyes squeezed shut, breath shaking so hard it hurts.
Because he loves her. Because she trusts him. Because she has no idea what’s coming. Because he doesn’t know how to tell her. Because he doesn’t know how to breathe without her.
And because he knows - for the first time in his life - that he might lose her.
He feels like he’s drowning. Not metaphorically. Not poetically. Physically.
Like the air is water. Like his lungs can’t expand. Like something is dragging him under by the ribs.
She has no idea what just happened. She has no idea that everything he’s built is being ripped out of his hands. She has no idea that the future she’s texting him about - the week apart, the reunion, the plans - is already gone.
He squeezes his eyes shut.
And suddenly he’s not on the rooftop anymore.
He’s sixteen again.
A trainee. Exhausted. Hungry. Terrified.
The rooftop wind becomes the stale air of the practice room. The city noise becomes the thud of bass through cheap speakers. The cold railing becomes the cold floor he used to collapse on.
His breath stutters.
He remembers the late nights - practicing until his legs shook, until his voice cracked, until he couldn’t see straight.
He remembers the mirrors... The way they reflected every flaw, every mistake, every weakness.
He remembers the criticism - sharp, relentless, echoing in his skull.
Not good enough. Try harder. Again. Again. Again.
The words hit him like blows, each one landing in the same place - the soft part of him that always believed he wasn’t enough.
His chest tightens. His hands tremble. His vision blurs.
Because he also remembers the fear - the constant looming fear - that everything he worked for could be taken away in a single decision.
And now it has.
He remembers the hunger - not just for food, but for approval, for survival, for a future.
He remembers the exhaustion - the bone‑deep kind that made him want to lie down on the practice room floor and never get up.
He remembers the loneliness - the way he used to cry in bathroom stalls so no one would hear.
He remembers the pressure - the crushing, suffocating pressure - to be perfect, to be compliant, to be grateful for every bruise, every insult, every sacrifice.
He remembers wanting this so badly it hurt.
Not the soft kind of wanting. Not the childish kind. The kind that claws at your ribs. The kind that keeps you awake at night. The kind that makes you sacrifice pieces of yourself because you believe - you need to believe - it will be worth it.
He remembers dreaming of debuting.
Of standing on stage. Of hearing fans scream his name. Of feeling the lights hit his skin and knowing he earned every second of it.
He remembers imagining the music he would make - songs that mattered, songs that healed, songs that made people feel less alone.
And he did it.
He made it.
He debuted.
He performed.
He grew.
He survived.
He succeeded.
But the memories don’t come gently.
They slam into him - sharp, bright, painful - because every triumph is tied to something he had to endure to get there.
He remembers the first time he stepped onto a real stage. How his heart nearly burst out of his chest, how his hands shook behind his back, how he thought, This is it. This is what I fought for.
He remembers the first fan chant with his name in it. How it felt like someone finally saw him, finally heard him, finally believed in him.
He remembers the first time a fan cried because of a song he helped write. How it made every bruise, every blister, every sleepless night feel worth it.
He remembers standing there, announcing their fandom name. The pride swelling in his chest, the realisation that he was the one carrying that milestone into the world, and how sacred that responsibility felt.
He remembers the members - laughing in cramped dorms, crying in practice rooms, holding each other up when the pressure got too heavy.
He remembers thinking:
We did it. We made it. We’re safe now. We’re together. This is forever.
And now-
Now that dream is being taken from him.
Not because he failed. Not because he wasn’t good enough. Not because he wanted something else.
But because someone else decided his future for him - because he was too good, too reliable, too profitable, too easy to shape into whatever they needed next.
The success he fought for - the success he nearly destroyed himself to reach - is being twisted into something he never asked for.
Because this time, it isn’t about him not being enough.
It’s about him being exactly what they wanted.
It’s about them looking at everything he gave - the late nights, the extra practices, the bruises, the exhaustion, the sacrifices, the years of pushing himself past breaking - and then deciding that made him the perfect candidate to uproot. To isolate. To separate. To use.
And for one horrible moment - a moment he hates himself for - he feels like everything was a waste.
Because the people who saw all of it, who witnessed every hour he poured into becoming someone he could be proud of, who praised him for his dedication, who told him he was special, who said he was the backbone of the group.
They saw it. They knew it. They benefited from it.
And they still chose to do this.
They still chose to break the group. They still chose to break him. They still chose to mold his dream into something unrecognisable.
Not because he was bad.
But because he was too much of what they could exploit.
And that realisation - that his excellence became the weapon used against him - cuts deeper than anything he’s ever felt.
Because back then, he was fighting toward something.
Now he’s fighting not to lose it.
And he doesn’t know how to do that.
Not alone. Not like this. Not when the one person who makes him feel safe is thousands of miles away, texting him about squirrels and missing his face.
A flood of memories crashes over him. Snapshots from childhood, trainee days, debut, heartbreak, joy. Every moment that carved him into the person he is now flashes by in rapid, dizzying succession.
And then one memory hits him so hard he goes still:
The night they won the Daesang.
Not just the moment on stage. Not just the trophy. Not just the cameras flashing.
He remembers the feeling.
The way the members clung to each other - arms wrapped tight, fingers digging in, like they were afraid the moment might vanish if they didn’t hold on hard enough.
The way they cried openly - not the pretty, controlled tears idols are trained to shed, but real, shaking sobs that came from somewhere deep and exhausted and grateful.
The way he felt something inside him finally loosen - a knot he’d carried since he was sixteen, a fear that he’d never be worth it, a voice that whispered he’d never make it.
For the first time, that voice went quiet.
He remembers thinking:
This is it. This is what all the pain was for. This is what we dreamed of. We did it. Together.
He remembers the pride, the joy, the relief.
He remembers how much it meant - not the award itself, but the recognition. The validation. The proof that they weren’t just shouting into the void.
That people heard them. Saw them. Believed in them.
He remembers the sacrifices - birthdays missed, sleep lost, injuries ignored, family far away, privacy gone.
But it’s more than that.
It’s the way those sacrifices became routine. Expected. Mandatory. The price of admission to a dream that never guaranteed anything back.
He remembers the nights they slept on practice room floors. Not because it was poetic or inspiring, but because they were too exhausted to move, too scared to waste time, too desperate to prove they deserved to stay.
He remembers the cold of the floor seeping into his bones, the hum of the fluorescent lights above them, the ache in his muscles that never fully went away.
He remembers the nights they held each other after brutal evaluations - when adults twice their age tore them apart with a smile, when their worth was reduced to a single mistake, when their futures were decided in rooms they weren’t allowed to enter.
He remembers the humiliation. The fear. The way their hands shook as they tried to comfort each other, even though they were all breaking inside.
He remembers the nights they promised they’d make it - even when none of them believed it, even when their voices were gone, even when their bodies were screaming for rest, even when the dream felt more like a punishment instead of hope.
He remembers doing it all with them - these seven people who became his family, his home, his safety.
He could stay with them forever. He could grow old with them. He could spend the rest of his life making music with them and be happy.
He knows that. He feels that.
And now-
Now the company wants to take that away.
To separate him. To isolate him. To turn him into something he never asked to be.
A soloist. A brand. A product. A puppet.
But the worst part?
They expect him to accept it. To nod. To smile. To thank them.
Because that’s what he's trained to do.
They’re expected to take whatever is thrown at them - schedule changes, concept shifts, forced narratives, manufactured scandals, career‑altering decisions made without their consent - and do it all with perfect posture and a grateful expression.
They’re expected to swallow their fear, their anger, their grief, their dreams, their boundaries, their humanity - and call it professionalism.
Everything that makes them human gets reshaped. Softened. Polished. Edited. Controlled.
Their dignity is chipped away piece by piece. Their autonomy is treated like an inconvenience. Their wellbeing is an afterthought. Their wishes are irrelevant.
And now it’s happening to him.
They’re forcing him into a role he never asked for, a path that tears him away from the people he loves.
And they expect him to be grateful for it.
They expect him to bow. To smile. To say thank you for the opportunity. To pretend this isn’t breaking him.
Because in their eyes, he isn’t a person. He’s an asset. A resource. A tool.
Someone who exists to perform, to obey, to generate profit - not someone with a life, a heart, a voice, a choice.
His breath catches, sharp and painful - like something inside him has been yanked too hard, too fast.
He looks at Lola’s messages again.
And it hurts. Not the kind of hurt that stings. The kind that hollows. The kind that makes his ribs feel too fragile to hold his heart in place.
Because she thinks he’s okay. She thinks he’s strong. She thinks he’s in control.
But he isn’t.
Not of his career. Not of his future. Not even of his own body - not when his hands won’t stop shaking, not when his breath keeps catching, not when his chest feels too tight to hold everything he’s feeling.
He presses the phone to his forehead, eyes burning.
He doesn’t cry.
He just sits there, shaking - small, folded in on himself, the weight of everything he’s ever worked for pressing down on him until he can barely breathe.
Every sacrifice. Every bruise. Every sleepless night. Every moment he told himself it would all be worth it.
It all presses down at once.
He feels like he’s slipping through his own fingers - like he’s watching his life from outside his body, like he’s drowning in a sea of decisions he didn’t make.
And the only thing keeping him tethered - the only thing keeping him from disappearing completely - is the phone in his hands.
But her words. Her voice. Her love.
Are also the very things breaking him.
So her messages sit on the screen, glowing softly, unaware of the storm inside him.
The rooftop wind cools his skin, but it doesn’t quiet his mind. It doesn’t slow his breathing. It doesn’t stop the shaking in his hands.
He stares at her messages again, thumb hovering over the screen, chest tight enough to ache.
Her words are so casual. So normal. So full of a world where nothing is falling apart.
A world where he’s still okay. Where he’s still hers. Where he’s still the boy she kissed goodbye at the airport - steady, warm, teasing, whole.
And it sends him spiralling deeper.
Because he isn’t that boy anymore. Not after today. Not after what they told him. Not after what they’re taking from him.
He feels the panic rise again - sharp, hot, dizzying - like someone is tightening a rope around his lungs.
He swallows hard, but it doesn’t go down. His throat stays tight. His chest stays heavy. His vision stays blurred at the edges.
He tries to breathe, but every inhale feels wrong - too shallow, too fast, too loud in the empty rooftop air.
Her messages glow again when the screen brightens.
A tiny light in the dark. A tiny reminder of everything he’s about to lose.
He reads them again - not because he wants to, but because he can’t stop himself.
Because even through the panic, even through the fear, another truth rises in him - one he’s been avoiding for years.
He loves this.
Not the fame. Not the cameras. Not the pressure or the expectations or the noise.
The music.
He loves music. He loves producing. He loves creating something from nothing - pulling sound out of silence, building emotion out of thin air, turning a feeling into a melody that someone else might hold onto.
He always has.
He thinks about the first time he stayed in the practice room past midnight - everyone else asleep, the building quiet, the world small and soft around him.
He remembers sitting cross‑legged on the floor with a cheap laptop, layering harmonies he didn’t know how to mix, stacking vocals he didn’t know how to tune, heart pounding with excitement because he’d made something that felt like him.
Something that wasn’t for an evaluation. Wasn’t for a monthly grade. Wasn’t for approval.
Just for him.
He thinks about the first time a producer complimented his ear - a simple “you’ve got something there,” but it lit him up from the inside, made him feel seen in a way he didn’t know he needed.
He thinks about the first time a melody came to him in the shower - how he scrambled out dripping wet to record it on his phone, laughing at himself, heart racing because it felt like magic.
He thinks about the first time he realised he didn’t just want to perform - he wanted to make.
To build. To shape. To create worlds out of sound.
He remembers the thrill of it - the way his chest warmed, the way his fingers tingled, the way he felt alive in a way nothing else ever gave him.
Because beneath all the fear, beneath all the panic, beneath all the grief, the love is still there.
Burning. Hurting. Refusing to die.
And that’s what makes this so unbearable.
Because they’re not just taking his career.
They’re taking the thing that saved him.
He thinks about how alive he feels in the studio.
How time disappears, how hours slip past without him noticing, how the sun sets and rises, and he doesn’t move, how the world outside stops mattering.
How the world quiets, how the noise in his head finally settles, how the pressure lifts just enough for him to breathe, how the music becomes the only thing that exists.
How everything makes sense - the chords, the harmonies, the layers, the feeling of building something that didn’t exist before he touched it.
And then...
He thinks of Lola.
Because she’s the only person who understands this part of him completely, one of the only people in his life who loves creating the way he does. One of the only people who knows what it feels like to be truly consumed by a song.
He’s watched her do this longer than anyone.
He’s seen her lowest lows. The stress that made her hands shake, the deadlines that stole her sleep, the burnout that left her staring blankly at her guitar, the pressure to be perfect every time, even when she was breaking.
He remembers nights she cried into her sleeves, convinced she wasn’t good enough - voice cracking, shoulders trembling, apologising for emotions she had every right to feel.
He remembers the way she’d apologise for being tired - as if exhaustion was a flaw, as if she wasn’t allowed to be human.
He remembers the way she’d push herself past breaking because she didn’t want to disappoint anyone - not her company, not her fans, not her members, not him.
He saw all of it.
Every crack. Every collapse. Every moment she tried to hide her pain behind a smile.
He saw the way she’d curl into herself on the studio couch, muttering lyrics under her breath, fighting tears because the melody wasn’t landing the way she wanted.
He saw the way she’d force herself to keep going - even when her voice was gone, even when her shoulders were tense, even when she was too tired to stand.
He saw the way she’d break… and the way she’d rebuild herself again.
And he loved her for it.
Not because she was strong - but because she kept trying even when she wasn’t.
Because she loved music the way he did. Because she understood the ache of it. Because she understood him.
And now, sitting on a rooftop with her messages glowing on his screen, he realises something that makes his chest ache:
She survived all of it. She fought through all of it. She made it through.
Because he also saw her highs.
The late‑night studio sessions where she hummed melodies under her breath, eyes shining - that soft, private glow she only had when she was creating, when the world fell away and it was just her and the music.
The way she’d tap her pencil against her notebook when a lyric clicked - a tiny, excited rhythm, like her body couldn’t contain the spark that had just ignited in her mind.
The soft smile she’d get when she played him something new, waiting for his reaction - hopeful, shy, proud, like she was offering him a piece of her heart wrapped in sound.
The joy. The pure, unfiltered joy when a song finally came together. The way she’d throw her head back and laugh, the way she’d clap her hands, the way she’d spin in her chair like a kid because the melody finally landed exactly where she wanted it.
He remembers sitting beside her, both of them hunched over a laptop at 3 a.m., bouncing ideas back and forth until something magical happened - until the room felt too small to hold the excitement between them, until they were grinning like idiots because they’d made something that didn’t exist an hour ago.
He remembers her voice, soft and sleepy, singing half‑finished lyrics just for him. Her head resting on his shoulder, her fingers absentmindedly tracing patterns on his arm, her voice cracking in the cutest way when she was too tired to hit the notes.
He remembers thinking:
I want this. I want to create like this. I want to feel this free.
Not just free on stage. Free in the studio. Free in the process. Free in the way she was - fearless, intuitive, messy, brilliant.
He remembers watching her fall in love with music over and over again - and realising he was falling in love with her in the exact same rhythm.
Because she wasn’t just talented. She wasn’t just hardworking. She wasn’t just gifted.
She was alive when she created.
And he wanted that. He wanted to feel that alive. He wanted to make things that mattered.
And now, sitting alone on a rooftop with her messages glowing on his screen, he realises something that makes his chest ache:
She is the reason he remembered he loved music. She is the reason he kept going. She is the reason he believed he could make something beautiful.
And he’s terrified he’s about to lose her.
And now, sitting on the rooftop with the world closing in on him, he realises something painfully honest:
He selfishly wants that too.
He wants the freedom to make his own art. Not the polished, pre‑approved versions of himself the company signs off on, but the messy, raw, instinctive things that live in his chest.
He wants the space to experiment - to fail, to try again, to chase sounds that don’t make sense until they suddenly do.
He wants the late nights, the messy drafts, the breakthroughs, the chaos of creation, the thrill of discovery, the quiet satisfaction of building something that feels like truth.
He wants to grow. He wants to learn. He wants to create something that feels like him.
And admitting that feels like betrayal. Because he doesn’t want it like this.
Not by being ripped away from the people he loves. Not by being forced into a path he didn’t want. Not by losing the group that built him, held him, shaped him.
He presses a hand to his chest, breath trembling, as if he’s trying to hold his heart in place before it cracks open.
He thinks about those seven people and feels nothing but gratitude. For the years beside them, the memories they built, the music they created together.
Being with them has already given him a lifetime’s worth of joy.
He knows that. He feels that. It’s carved into him.
But he also doesn’t want to lose the part of himself that loves creating.
That small, stubborn spark inside him, the one that survived the trainee years, the one that survived the pressure, the one that survived the industry. It’s still there.
And that contradiction tears him open.
It doesn’t tear loudly. It doesn’t tear cleanly. It tears like fabric stretched too far, slow, painful, inevitable.
He feels split in two - the boy who dreamed of standing on stage with his family, who clung to them in practice rooms, who believed they’d rise or fall together. And the artist who wants to make something that is entirely his, who wants to explore, who wants to grow, who wants to create without limits.
He doesn’t know how to choose.
He doesn’t know if he can choose.
He doesn’t know if he’s even allowed to choose. Not in this industry, not under this company, not when every decision about his life has always been made for him.
The guilt twists in his stomach. The longing tightens in his chest. The fear crawls up his spine.
He curls forward, elbows on his knees, phone clutched to his chest - as if holding it closer might keep him from falling apart, as if pressing it to his heart might keep the pieces from splitting further.
Because he wants both. Because he wants everything. Because he wants the group that raised him and the freedom to create. Because he wants the life he built and the life he dreams of having. Because he wants to stay and he wants to grow. Because he wants to be loyal, but he has to be honest.
Lola’s messages glow softly against his shirt.
“I’m proud of you, you know.”
He lets out a shaky breath - thin, uneven, like his lungs can’t decide whether to hold the air or let it go.
He wishes he could believe that right now. He wishes he could let her words settle in his chest the way they usually do - warm, grounding, steadying.
He wishes he could tell her everything about the meeting, the decision, the fear.
He wishes he could tell himself everything will be okay. That he’ll figure it out, that he won’t lose everything, that he won’t lose her.
But all he feels is the world closing in - the pressure, the fear, the love, the longing, the loss, the dream, the grief.
Each one presses against him from a different angle, squeezing, tightening, stacking on top of each other until he can barely breathe.
And he sits there on the rooftop, caught between everything he wants and everything he’s terrified of losing.
The wind moves around him, but he feels trapped. The sky stretches wide above him, but he feels small. Her words glow softly on his screen, but he feels like he’s breaking.
Because she’s proud of him. Because she believes in him. Because she loves him without knowing what’s happening.
And he doesn’t know how to hold that.
He doesn’t know how to hold any of this.
Because in this moment - with the city below him, the sky above him, and her love glowing against his heart - he has never felt more lost.
How is he supposed to tell her any of this? How does he even start that conversation? How do you say my entire life just changed without my consent to the person you love?
She’s not even here.
She wasn’t in the meeting. She didn’t hear the words. She didn’t see the executives’ faces. She didn’t feel the floor drop out from under them.
They made the decision without her. Without him. Without them.
And suddenly the question he’s been avoiding rises like a wave:
What does that even mean for them? Would they stay together?
Of course they would. Why would he even question that?
But the thought doesn’t leave.
It lingers. It digs deeper. It twists.
Because this is going to break her. And he doesn’t think he can be the reason she breaks.
He can handle the pressure. He can handle the fear. He can handle the loss. He can handle the grief.
But hurting her? Hurting her?
That’s the one thing he can’t survive.
He loves her enough to want to protect her from everything... even from himself.
That’s the part that hurts the most. Because loving her isn’t always soft. It isn’t always easy. It isn’t always gentle.
Sometimes it’s fierce. It’s consuming. It’s terrifying. It’s wanting to shield her from every sharp edge in the world - even when the sharpest edge is the truth he’s holding in his chest.
This is a lose‑lose situation.
There’s no version of this conversation where she doesn’t get hurt. No version where he can soften the blow enough. No version where he can protect her from the fallout.
No matter what he says, no matter how gently he tries, no matter how much they care about each other…
She’s going to be hurt.
And he’s the one who has to do it.
The thought hits him like a punch - low, deep, twisting.
His stomach knots painfully, a tight, nauseating pull that makes him fold forward slightly, as if the weight of it is too much for his body to hold upright.
Because he’s never been the reason she hurts. Not once. Not ever.
He’s been her comfort. Her softness. Her safe place. Her calm.
He’s been the person she runs to - not the person she runs from.
And now he’s about to become the source of her pain.
Not because he wants to. Not because he chose this. Not because he failed.
But because someone else made a decision that will shatter both of them.
And now he’s angry because everything was going so well.
Last year had been so perfect. Their careers rising, their relationship deepening, their lives finally aligning in a way that felt safe, steady, and hopeful.
They had achieved so much. Together. Separately. As a group. As individuals.
He had finally felt like he could breathe - like the ground beneath him was solid, like the future wasn’t a threat but a promise.
And that’s what makes the anger burn.
Because the company didn’t ask. They didn’t discuss. They didn’t consider.
They didn’t think about the group. They didn’t think about the fans. They didn’t think about the years of sacrifice. They didn’t think about the relationships built in the shadows of practice rooms.
They didn’t think about him.
Not as a person. Not as an artist. Not as someone with a life outside the stage.
To them, he’s a resource. Something to be moved. Not someone to be asked.
They didn’t care that he had a life he loved.
They cared about profit. About optics. About control.
Because they didn’t just disrupt his career. They detonated his entire life.
They didn’t just change his schedule. They changed his future.
They didn’t just separate him from the group. They separated him from the version of himself he fought to become.
And now he’s the one who has to deal with the fallout. He’s the one who has to break the news. He’s the one who has to hurt the people he loves.
All because a room full of executives decided they knew what was best for him - without ever asking what he wanted.
He squeezes his eyes shut, jaw trembling.
He can already imagine her face when he tells her.
The confusion. Her brows pulling together, her lips parting just slightly, that soft, startled inhale she always makes when something doesn’t make sense.
The hurt. The way her eyes would shine, not with tears yet, but with that first crack of pain she tries so hard to hide.
The fear. The kind she never shows anyone else, the kind she only lets slip when she’s with him, the kind that makes her voice go small and quiet.
The betrayal. Not of him, never of him, but of the system they’re both trapped in. The system that chewed her up. The system that’s now coming for him.
He can imagine her trying to be strong for him. Straightening her shoulders, forcing a smile, saying something gentle like “We’ll figure it out, okay?” even though he’ll hear the tremor beneath it.
He can imagine her trying to say it’s okay - trying to soothe him, trying to protect him, trying to hold him together even as she’s falling apart inside.
And he knows it won’t be. Not for her. Not for him. Not for them.
Because this isn’t a small change. This isn’t a temporary setback.
This is a fracture. A fault line. A decision that will ripple through every part of their lives.
His breath shakes. His fingers tighten. His chest aches.
Because he loves her. Because he knows her. Because he can already see the exact moment her heart breaks - and he doesn’t know how to survive being the one who causes it.
But he knows he can’t stay like this forever.
He has to answer her.
He stares at her messages again, thumb hovering over the screen, chest tight enough to ache.
And it sends him spiralling deeper.
Because all he wants - all he’s ever wanted - is to keep the normalcy she gives him. The safety. The security. The quiet steadiness of being loved by her. The way she makes everything feel manageable, breathable, human.
With her, life feels simple.
With her, he feels grounded.
With her, he feels like himself.
But today shattered that.
The place she’s texting him from - soft, warm, safe - isn’t the place he’s standing in anymore.
And the distance between who he was this morning and who he is now terrifies him.
He starts typing.
Hey.
He stares at it.
It looks wrong. Too small. Too empty. Too normal for the way his world is collapsing.
Delete.
He types again.
I’m glad you landed safe.
He reads it once. Twice. Three times.
It feels like a script. Like something he’d say on autopilot. Like something a version of him - a calmer, steadier, whole version - would send.
Delete.
He tries again.
I miss you too.
His throat tightens.
Because he does. He misses her so much it hurts. But saying it now feels like a confession he isn’t allowed to make.
Delete.
He types again.
Today was… a lot.
He freezes.
That one feels too close. Too honest. Too dangerous.
It’s the kind of message that invites questions. The kind of message that opens doors. The kind of message that could unravel him if she asks even one gentle thing.
He deletes it immediately... almost violently - thumb shaking as he hits the backspace.
His fingers hover over the keyboard, trembling.
He tries again.
He exhales shakily, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his palm. His skin is warm, his pulse too fast, his breath uneven.
Every message feels wrong. Every version feels like a lie or a confession. There is no middle ground, no safe place between truth and silence - only choices that hurt in different ways.
His mind is racing, spiralling, looping through possibilities so fast it makes his chest ache. If he says too much, she’ll worry. If he says too little, she’ll worry. If he sounds off, she’ll hear it instantly. If he sounds normal, he’ll feel like he’s betraying her.
He can’t tell her the truth - not now, not like this - but he also can’t sound cold or strange or distant. He can’t let her feel even a flicker of worry.
Because protecting her is instinct. Automatic. Reflexive.
But it’s also more than that.
A part of him - a selfish, desperate, exhausted part - wants to protect himself too.
He wants to stay in the world she gives him. The world where he’s still okay. Where he’s still hers. Where nothing has changed yet.
He wants to live in that lie with her. Just for a little while. Just for a few days. Just long enough to pretend he isn’t drowning.
He wants to indulge in her comfort, her normalcy, her warmth, her steadiness - to let her be the place where reality can’t reach him.
Because the truth is too heavy. Too sharp. Too final.
So he overthinks every word. Every punctuation mark. Every tone. Every implication.
He’s trying to craft a message that keeps her safe, keeps him safe, keeps their world intact for just a little longer.
Even if it’s a lie. Even if it’s denial. Even if it’s temporary.
Because right now, the only thing holding him together is the illusion that nothing has changed.
And he’s not ready to let that go.
He scrolls up to her last message.
“I’m proud of you, you know.”
His throat tightens - painfully, sharply - like the words hit a bruise he didn’t know he had.
He types slowly this time, carefully, deliberately.
I’m glad you landed safe sweetheart.
I miss you too.
Soooo much!!
But I’m okay... just a long day. Tell everyone I said hi.
He reads it over.
It’s safe. It’s normal. It’s the version of him she expects - steady, warm, teasing, fine.
It’s nothing like the truth.
But it won’t scare her.
And that’s the only thing that matters right now.
He hesitates for a long moment, thumb hovering over the send button. His heart aches a - deep, twisting ache - because this is the first time he’s ever hidden something this big from her. The first time he’s ever chosen to protect her by lying through omission.
He hates it.
He hates himself for it. He hates the company for forcing him into this position. He hates the world for making honesty dangerous.
But he presses send anyway.
The message goes through instantly.
A tiny, harmless blue bubble.
A lie wrapped in softness. A lie wrapped in love. A lie wrapped in fear.
And it sits there on the screen - gentle, warm, normal - while he sits on the rooftop, shaking, feeling like he’s just carved out a piece of himself to keep her safe.
He lowers the phone, leans his head back against the rooftop wall, and closes his eyes.
He’s not okay.
He’s nowhere near okay.
The truth sits in his chest like a stone - heavy, unmoving, impossible to swallow.
But she doesn’t need to know that.
Not when she’s finally out of the chaos, finally wrapped in the comfort of her own space, finally able to exhale without the weight of the world on her back.
He won’t take that from her.
He won’t let his panic reach her before it has to. He won’t let his fear bleed into her peace. He won’t let the storm inside him touch the one place in his life that still feels welcoming.
Because Lola is his calm. His soft landing. His reminder that life can be gentle.
And he refuses to stain that with the truth.
He just hopes - desperately, quietly - that when the truth finally comes out, she’ll still look at him the same way she does now.
With care. With trust. With pride. With love.
He hopes she won’t flinch. He hopes she won’t pull away. He hopes she won’t see him differently. Not as a burden, not as a problem, not as someone who failed to protect what they built.
Because her gaze is the one place he’s always felt whole. The one place he’s always felt enough. The one place he’s always felt like Heeseung - not the idol, not the product, not the company’s asset.
Just him.
And the thought of losing that - losing her version of him -terrifies him more than anything the company could ever do.
He’s scared she’ll see someone he doesn’t want to be.
He’s scared she’ll look at him differently - not with love, but with pity.
He’s scared she’ll see him as someone broken. Someone unstable. Someone she has to tiptoe around.
He’s scared she’ll think he hid this because he didn’t trust her. He’s scared she’ll think he’s slipping away. He’s scared she’ll think he’s choosing this future - when he’s being dragged into it.
But the deepest fear - the one that sits like a stone in his stomach — is simpler than all of that.
He’s scared she won’t stay.
He’s scared she’ll decide this new version of him - the one shaped by decisions he never made, the one carrying a future he never wanted - isn’t the boy she fell in love with.
He’s scared she’ll walk away before he even has the chance to fight for them.
But more than anything, he’s scared she’ll stop seeing the boy she loves.
So he holds onto this hope - fragile, trembling, desperate - that when the truth finally comes out, her eyes won’t change.
That she’ll still look at him with the same warmth, the same certainty, the same quiet devotion that has kept him afloat more times than she’ll ever know.
Because if he loses that - if he loses her - he doesn’t know what will be left of him.
And that single thought - fragile, terrifying, impossible to escape -
nearly shatters him all over again.
Because he’s never been afraid of losing her before.
So this fear is different. Sharper. Crueller. It feels like standing on the edge of a cliff, he didn’t know he was walking toward.
And that fear - soft, choking, impossible to escape - hurts him more than any contract, any meeting, any manipulation the company could ever inflict.
𐙚 A/N Apologies for the 100th time for it being so long since my last update. This was meant to go up on Monday because I've just spent the last few days with my friend, so I knew I wouldn't have time. But when I went to post on the train, it wouldn't work! So today it is... Thank you so much for your patience. I hope it's worth the wait, and you enjoy!!
Timeline: 2026
Now Playing: Dark Red by Steve Lacey, Getting Older by Billie Eilish, Exit Music (For A Film) by Radiohead.
Word Count: 8.5K
"How can a person know everything at 18, but nothing at 22?" PART ONE
The room feels too bright.
Not warm, not welcoming - just bright in that clinical, uncomfortable way that makes everything look harsher than it should. The overhead lights hum faintly, a sound that somehow makes the silence feel louder.
Heeseung sits stiffly in one of the long conference chairs, back straight, hands folded tightly in his lap. His fingers keep brushing over the seam of his trousers, a nervous habit he’s trying to hide. He keeps his eyes down, refusing to meet the gaze of the executives lined up across the table.
They’re all sitting too still. Too composed. Too unreadable.
And that’s what makes his stomach twist.
The members are scattered around him, each one wearing a different version of the same expression - confusion, tension, unease.
Jake is bouncing his knee so fast the chair shakes. Sunghoon is chewing the inside of his cheek, jaw tight. Jungwon keeps turning his water bottle in his hands, pretending to read the label for the tenth time. Sunoo is staring at the ceiling like he’s searching for divine intervention.
No one knows why they’re here.
And that’s the worst part.
The air is thick with uncertainty - the kind that makes everyone breathe a little too quietly, like they’re afraid to disturb whatever invisible thing is hanging over them.
Heeseung can feel the tension crawling up his spine, settling between his shoulder blades. His heartbeat is too loud in his ears. His throat feels tight.
He glances at the clock.
The second hand ticks forward with a sharp, metallic click that echoes in the silence.
They’ve been waiting for twelve minutes.
Twelve minutes of nothing. Twelve minutes of executives whispering to each other behind closed folders. Twelve minutes of the boys exchanging confused glances. Twelve minutes of Heeseung's mind spiraling through every possible scenario - none of them good.
He shifts slightly in his seat, trying to ease the pressure building in his chest.
Lola should be at her parents’ house by now.
Probably unpacking. Probably sending the girls a chaotic vlog update about her plane journey. Probably laughing at something her mum said. Probably breathing easier than she has in weeks.
He tries to picture it - her curled up on her childhood bed, hair tied up messily, phone propped against a pillow as she rambles about turbulence and plane food.
The image should comfort him.
But it doesn’t.
Because she’s not here.
And his body feels that absence before his mind does.
His knee bounces. His fingers twitch. His shoulders tighten. His breath shortens.
And without thinking, his hand drifts toward the pocket where his phone should be - the same pocket he always keeps it in, the same pocket he reaches for whenever he needs her voice to steady him.
He wishes he could check it.
He wishes he could see her name light up the screen. He wishes he could hear her voice, even if it’s just her complaining about the weather or the flight or the fact that she forgot her charger again.
He wishes he could text her:
What is this meeting? Do you know anything? I’m freaking out.
Because that’s what he always does.
Whenever he’s stressed, confused, overwhelmed - he goes to her.
He doesn’t even realise he’s doing it half the time. His body just… moves. Reaches. Searches. For her. For the one person who can pull him out of his head with a single look.
But she’s not here.
And the room feels wrong without her.
He shifts in his seat, trying to shake the feeling, but it only gets worse. The executives across the table are whispering to each other, flipping through papers, and avoiding eye contact.
The uncertainty. The silence. The way the air feels heavy, like something is about to break.
He wishes he could lean over and whisper, “What do you think this is?” He wishes she could nudge his knee under the table, grounding him. He wishes he could feel her hand slip into his, hidden beneath the table. He wishes he could hear her say, “It’s okay. I’m right here.”
But she’s not. And for the first time in a long time, he realises just how much of his courage comes from her.
An executive opens a folder. A soft click of paper shifting. And Heeseung's pulse jumps like someone tugged a wire inside his chest.
He straightens instinctively - back rigid, shoulders tense, breath catching halfway up his throat. He can feel the members around him doing the same, a ripple of unease moving through them like a shared heartbeat.
He tries to steady himself.
He tries to breathe the way Lola always reminds him to - in for four, hold for two, out for six - but without her voice guiding him, the rhythm feels off. Shallow. Uneven.
His fingers twitch in his lap. He presses his thumb into the centre of his palm - a grounding trick she taught him when she had helped him through his first panic attack - but it doesn’t work the same without her hand covering his.
He swallows hard.
Whatever this is, we’ll handle it. We always do. We’re together.
He repeats the words in his head like a mantra, but they don’t land the way they usually do. They feel thin. Fragile. Like paper trying to hold back a storm.
Because the truth is, he’s nervous. Not panicked. Not scared. Just… bracing. Like he’s standing on the edge of something he can’t see yet, waiting for the ground to shift beneath him.
He glances at the empty chair where Lola would normally sit during group meetings - legs crossed, pen tapping against her notebook, giving him that tiny reassuring smile she thinks no one notices.
He feels the absence like a bruise. So he forces himself to look away.
The pen clicks. The paper shuffles. The microphone crackles. The air conditioner hums.
He tries to rationalise, but every sound feels too loud.
Maybe it’s a schedule update. Maybe it’s a comeback adjustment. Maybe it’s nothing.
But his chest feels tight.
He rubs his thumb over the inside of his wrist, but his skin feels too warm, too sensitive, like his nerves are on the surface.
He’s trying - really trying - to regulate himself without her.
But it’s harder than he expected. His breath stutters. His shoulders tighten. His jaw clenches. He sits perfectly still, staring at the folder like it might explode.
The silence stretches too long. Too heavy. Too sharp. Too unnatural for a group that has lived shoulder‑to‑shoulder for years. And the members - predictably, beautifully - can't handle it either.
Jake leans in first, lowering his voice like he’s in a spy movie, eyes darting around the room as if the executives might have hidden microphones.
“Okay, theory one,” he whispers out of the corner of his mouth. “We’re getting a new schedule. Like… a scary one.”
Heeseung feels the corner of his mouth twitch - not a smile, but the ghost of one. Jake always does this. Always tries to break the tension before it swallows them whole.
Nikki snorts softly, arms crossed, foot tapping against the leg of the table.
“Hyung, that’s not a theory. That’s just our life.”
A few shoulders shake with silent laughter. Even that tiny sound makes the room feel less suffocating.
Sunoo, who has been staring at the ceiling like it personally offended him, finally lowers his head.
“What if it’s a collab?” he says, eyes wide. “Like a big one. Like… Beyoncé big.”
Heeseung turns slowly, giving him a look so flat it could iron clothes.
Sunoo shrugs, dead serious. “I’m manifesting.”
Nikki snorts. Jake hides a grin behind his hand. Sunghoon's shoulders relax by a millimetre.
It’s stupid. It’s ridiculous. It’s perfect.
Because this is how they survive things - together, loudly, badly, with jokes that make no sense, stitching their nerves back together one ridiculous comment at a time.
Sunghoon leans forward, voice barely audible.
“But... What if someone’s in trouble?”
The room goes still.
Everyone freezes.
Because that’s the one theory no one wants to say out loud.
Then Jay whispers, “Okay, but who? Because it’s not me. I’ve been good. I’ve been so good.”
Nikki raises an eyebrow without even looking up.
“You literally set off the fire alarm in the dorm last week.”
“That was ONE TIME.”
Heeseung tries not to smile. He really does. But the bickering is familiar. Grounding. A tiny thread of normalcy in a room that feels anything but.
It's the way their voices soften the edges of his fear. The way their shared anxiety makes his own feel less isolating. The way their presence keeps him from spiralling.
He’s still tense. Still bracing. Still trying to breathe through the pressure in his chest.
But he’s not alone. And that's what matters.
Still, the knot in his stomach doesn’t loosen. Not even a little. Because even surrounded by the people he trusts most, even with their jokes and their whispers and their nervous laughter…
Jungwon nudges him gently, pulling him out of the spiral.
“What do you think it is?”
He glances at the executives again. Still preparing. Still silent. Still too serious.
And something in his chest tightens - sharp, irrational, immediate.
Heeseung hesitates.
He doesn’t want to say the first thing that came to mind - the fear that something’s wrong with Lola, the fear that distance means danger, the fear that he’s losing control.
Just because that’s where his anxiety goes.
Straight to her. Straight to the worst‑case scenario.
It’s ridiculous. He knows it’s ridiculous. She’s fine. She’s safe. She’s with her parents.
But his brain doesn’t care about logic.
His brain cares about her.
And when he’s stressed, when he’s overwhelmed, when he feels the ground shifting beneath him - his instinct is to reach for her.
So he just shakes his head.
“No idea,” he whispers. “But it’s something big.”
The others nod, their expressions shifting - less joking now, more alert, more protective in that unspoken way they all share.
And then Jake leans back in his chair, whispering:
“Okay, theory four: we’re debuting in space. Like Katy Perry.”
Jungwon elbows him. “Shut up.”
Nikki snorts. Jay hides a grin. Sunoo rolls his eyes dramatically. Sunghoon mutters something about “please don’t give the company ideas.”
And the humour helps.
It cuts through the tension just enough for Heseung to breathe again.
His chest loosens by a fraction. His shoulders drop a little. His breath evens out.
Because even when his anxiety tries to drag him into the darkest corners of his mind - the boys pull him back without even realising they’re doing it.
Still, he can’t shake the feeling.
Something is coming. Something that will change things.
He sits up straighter, hands clasped together under the table. Waiting. Bracing.
And then-
The executive finally closes the folder. A soft, deliberate thud against the table. He looks up. Clears his throat. And the room freezes.
Not figuratively - literally. Every movement stops. Every breath pauses. Even the air feels like it’s holding itself still, waiting for impact.
Heeseung feels his spine straighten without permission, like a string has been pulled tight from the top of his head. His hands clasp together under the table, knuckles whitening, tendons straining.
His pulse thuds in his ears - slow, heavy, too loud.
Across the table, the executive clears his throat again.
The sound slices through the silence.
The members go rigid.
Jake’s foot, which had been tapping nonstop, stops mid‑bounce. Sunghoon's jaw tightens once again, the muscle twitching once. Sunoo leans forward, elbows on the table, brows furrowed in that way he gets when he’s trying to read danger before it arrives. Jungwon's fingers curl around his water bottle, grip tightening. Jay's eyes narrow, scanning the executives like he’s trying to predict the blow.
A ripple of unease moves through them - subtle, instinctive, shared. They’ve been through enough together to recognise when something is wrong.
Heeseung swallows hard. His throat feels dry. His chest feels tight. His breath feels shallow.
He tries to regulate again - in for four, hold for two, out for six - but the rhythm stutters, uneven, like his lungs are refusing to cooperate.
“Thank you for coming,” the executive begins, voice too calm, too formal. “We’ll get straight to the point.”
The boys shift - barely, but enough. A shared inhale. A shared dread. A shared instinct to protect each other.
Heeseung's pulse spikes.
“We’ve been reviewing the group’s long‑term direction,” he begins, his voice steady in a way that feels rehearsed. “Over the past several months, our management teams have been assessing performance data, market trends, and the overall trajectory of your activities.”
He pauses, letting the words settle - not dramatically, but deliberately, the way someone does when they know what they’re about to say will land heavily.
“As part of this process, we’ve held multiple internal meetings and consulted with our planning and promotional departments to evaluate how best to position the group moving forward.”
The boys shift subtly.
The executive continues, tone still formal but now edged with something firmer.
“After reviewing all relevant factors - including individual strengths, group dynamics, and upcoming industry opportunities - we’ve reached a decision regarding the next phase of your activities.”
Another pause. Not long. Just long enough for the tension to thicken.
“This decision reflects our long‑term strategy for growth, stability, and continued success for everyone involved.”
The words hang in the air like a blade suspended above them.
Heeseung's stomach drops. His fingers dig into his palms. His breath catches. Because whatever is coming next - whatever “decision” they’ve made - he can feel it in his bones:
It’s going to change everything.
The executive’s gaze shifts across the table, scanning each member with a neutral, unreadable expression.
Then his eyes land on Heeseung.
And stay there.
Just a fraction too long. A fraction too direct. A fraction too intentional.
And Heeseung knows.
He doesn’t know how he knows - but something inside him drops, sharp and cold, like the floor has shifted beneath his chair.
A silent moment of dread blooms in his chest. His breath stutters. His fingers tighten under the table. His pulse thuds once, hard, like a warning.
Before the words even come, he knows.
The executive inhales slowly, folds his hands, and speaks with the calm, measured tone of someone delivering a decision that has already been finalised.
“As of next week,” he says, “we will be transitioning Heeseung into a solo career. This means he will be stepping away from group activities entirely.”
A beat.
No reaction from him. All reactions from the boys. The executive continues, voice steady, almost bored:
“He will complete a small number of pre‑scheduled events as a member of the group, but once the public announcement is made, he will no longer be recognised as part of Enhypen. All future promotions, performances, and branding will be conducted independently and separately from the group... The rest of you will proceed as seven.”
The words land like a blade. Clean. Cold. Final. No room for negotiation. No room for emotion.
Just a decision. A transition. A removal.
And the boys feel it - the way the sentence cuts him out of his own life, the way it erases years of work, the way it turns him from their member into their former member in a single breath.
Heeseung feels it too. Not as a shock. Not as a blow. But as a quiet, sinking certainty that something inside him has just been taken - and he wasn’t even asked.
So he just sits there in silence. Not shocked silence. Not dramatic silence. Just… empty. Like the world forgot how to move.
But the executive continues, voice steady, almost detached, as if he’s reading from a prepared statement. Which he definitley is.
“The company believes Heeseung's individual potential is strong enough to sustain an independent brand identity. Based on recent evaluations, we see a significant opportunity for him to expand into solo activities.”
The words hit him like cold water.
He can’t breathe.
The executive flips to another page.
“We’ve already begun preliminary planning with the A&R and content strategy teams. This includes early discussions around concept development, vocal direction, and potential release timelines.”
Heeseung's stomach twists.
His hands go numb.
He feels the members around him react - Sunghoon's sharp inhale, Jake’s eyes widening, Sunoo's head snapping toward him - but it all sounds distant, muffled, like he’s underwater.
The executive turns another page, eyes scanning briefly before he continues.
“The group will remain active,” he says, tone steady. “However, during this transition period, we will begin restructuring certain elements of your operations to account for Heeseung's absence.”
The executive keeps going, matter‑of‑fact:
“This includes revising choreography formations, redistributing vocal and rap lines, and adjusting stage blocking for upcoming performances. The performance team will begin drafting new layouts immediately.”
A quiet shift moves through the members.
The executive continues, still formal, still clinical:
“Your schedules will also be reorganised. Group activities will proceed as planned, but with modified rehearsal blocks and additional sessions to accommodate the updated arrangements.”
Heeseung feels the words hit him one by one.
Choreography without him. Lines without him. Schedules without him.
The executive flips to the final page.
“Details of the revised promotional schedule will be released to you within the next few days. Please be prepared for an accelerated adjustment period.”
He closes the folder with a soft, final click.
And Heeseung feels the sound in his bones.
Because this isn’t temporary. This isn’t experimental. This isn’t optional.
This is the beginning of a future where the group moves forward without him - and he moves forward alone.
Another pause.
“We expect each of you to support the restructuring period and uphold group performance standards while these adjustments are implemented.”
Heeseung's heartbeat is loud, too loud, drowning out everything else.
Because this isn’t an opportunity. This isn’t a discussion. This isn’t a choice. This is a decision made without him. A future chosen for him. A path he never asked to walk.
And he has no idea how to breathe, how to speak, how to exist in the space between the life he knows and the one they’ve just handed him.
For a heartbeat, no one moves.
Then the room detonates.
Jungown jerks upright so fast his chair squeaks. “Wait- what?”
Nikki’s chair scrapes violently against the floor as he twists toward the executives. “You’re joking. You have to be joking.”
Sunghoon looks between Heeseung and Jungwon like he’s trying to read both of their minds at once. “Did you know about this?”
Heeseung shakes his head.
It’s barely a movement - more like his body remembering how to respond before his brain catches up.
He can’t speak. He can barely breathe. His tongue feels heavy. His throat feels tight. His chest feels like someone is pressing a fist into it.
The boys keep talking, voices overlapping, rising, cracking.
“What do you mean next week?” “How long has this been planned?” “Why didn’t anyone tell us?” “Is this a joke? Tell me this is a joke.”
But the executive continues, completely unfazed by the shock spreading across the table.
His voice is steady. Calm. Detached. Like he’s reading a weather report. Like, he hasn’t just ripped the floor out from under them.
Heeseung's heartbeat is loud - too loud - drowning out everything else.
Solo. The word echoes in his skull, sharp and cold. Solo. Leave the group.
Leave them.
Leave the life he’s built with them - the routines, the laughter, the inside jokes, the shared exhaustion, the shared dreams. Leave the stage they stand on together. Leave the practice room where they’ve bled and cried and grown. Leave the dorm where they learned how to be a family.
Leave the one place where he finally felt like he belonged.
His stomach twists. His vision blurs. His hands go numb under the table.
The executive’s voice cuts back through the fog in Heeseung's ears - steady, composed, completely untouched by the shock sitting across the table.
“We understand this announcement may be unexpected and, for some of you, distressing,” he says.
The words sound like they were pulled from a script. A line he is required to say. Not something he feels.
He doesn’t pause long enough for anyone to respond.
“That said,” he continues, tone firming, “we expect all members to maintain professionalism throughout this transition. As idols representing the company, you are held to a high standard of conduct, regardless of internal changes.”
A quiet, suffocating weight settles over the table.
He keeps going.
“We ask that each of you remain focused, cooperative, and aligned with the expectations placed upon you. This includes supporting the restructuring process and adapting quickly to the adjustments that will follow.”
The words land like a verdict. Not comforting. Not reassuring. Just final.
Heeseung feels them hit his chest like stones.
Because the message beneath the politeness is clear:
This is happening. You will accept it. You will not make trouble.
And he sits there, frozen, while the world he knows tilts beneath him. The words wash over him like cold water. He can’t process them. He can’t process anything. His throat tightens.
Jungwon speaks again, voice sharper than before, the edge of panic bleeding through.
“You can’t just... decide that without talking to us. Or him.”
The words hit the table like a slap.
The executive exhales slowly, the kind of sigh that isn’t tired but inconvenienced.
“This is not a discussion,” he says. “It is an announcement of direction.”
Nikki mutters something under his breath. Sunoo's jaw drops again. Jake looks like he’s about to stand up.
But Heeseung... Heeseung feels something inside him crack.
Not loudly. Not visibly. Just a small, quiet fracture deep in his chest. A hairline split in the place where certainty used to live.
He swallows hard, forcing his voice to work even though it feels like his throat is closing. “What if I don’t want this?” he asks softly.
The room freezes.
The members stare at him - wide‑eyed, horrified, protective. The executives stare at him - unreadable, unmoved.
The lead executive meets his eyes, posture perfectly composed.
“You are not being forced into anything,” he says, tone smooth, almost gentle. “This is an opportunity. You have the right to make your own decision.”
But Heeseung hears what isn’t being said. He hears the subtext. He hears the warning. He hears the lie. Because the executive continues, voice tightening just slightly:
“However, the planning process has already begun. Teams have been briefed. Timelines are in place. We are prepared to move forward as scheduled.”
A cold wave rolls through Heeseung's body.
There it is.
The truth beneath the politeness. The illusion of choice. The company says he can choose - but everything is already in motion. Everything is already decided. Everything is already built around him saying yes.
He realises, slowly, painfully:
He doesn’t have control. Not over this. Not over his future. Not over anything.
Words that sound like freedom but feel like chains.
The executive folds his hands again, posture perfectly composed, voice smooth in a way that feels practiced - like he’s said this line before, many times, to many artists who also didn’t have a choice.
“We will, of course, respect your input,” he says.
The words are soft. Measured. Almost gentle. But they land like a lock clicking shut. He continues before anyone can speak.
“That said, we strongly advise you to align with the direction we’ve outlined - not only for your own sake, but for the stability of the group as a whole.”
A subtle shift. A warning wrapped in courtesy.
Jake stiffens. Jay's eyes narrow. Heeseung’s fingers curl back into fists under the table.
The executive keeps going, tone still calm, still polite, but edged with something colder.
“You are all aware of the expectations placed upon you as contracted artists. Cooperation ensures smooth operations. Resistance…” He pauses - just long enough for the implication to settle. “…creates complications none of us want.”
Heeseung's stomach drops.
Because he knows what “complications” means. He’s seen what happens to trainees who push back. He’s heard the stories. He’s watched careers disappear.
The executive flips to another page, voice steady.
“Your contract outlines your obligation to participate in company‑directed activities. While we value your perspective, the framework of your agreement gives us the authority to guide your career path.”
It’s not true. Not fully. Not legally airtight.
But it doesn’t matter.
Because the message beneath the words is unmistakable:
Say yes. Or we will make this difficult. For you. And for them.
Heeseung feels the blood drain from his face. His autonomy slipping. His choices narrowing. His future being shaped without him.
And the worst part?
He can see the boys realising it too. But none of them can stop it. None of them can protect him from this.
And Heeseung sits there, hands trembling under the table, as the truth settles like a weight on his chest:
He isn’t being offered a choice. He’s being offered a script. And he is expected to read his line.
His breath stutters. Because suddenly, painfully, he understands:
He is being positioned. Packaged. Redirected.
Not because it’s what he wants. Not because it’s what’s best for him. But because it serves something bigger - the company’s agenda, the brand strategy, the profit margins, the narrative they want to sell.
He is a piece on a board he never agreed to play on. A resource. A product. A storyline.
He can feel himself slipping into it. Not willingly - but because there is nowhere else to go.
His agency is dissolving. His voice is shrinking. His future is being written without him.
And he has no idea how to tell Lola.
How do you tell someone you love that you’re being pulled into something you can’t escape? How do you tell her you’re losing control? How do you tell her you’re scared?
His chest tightens.
He sees her in his mind - smiling into her phone, thousands of miles away, completely unaware that the ground beneath him is cracking open.
He hasn’t told her anything.
Because he didn’t know. Because he couldn’t have known. Because they’re telling him now.
Like this. In front of everyone. As if it’s nothing.
The room erupts.
Not gradually. Not politely. All at once.
Chairs scrape. Voices rise. Hands slam against the table. The boys talk over each other, anger and disbelief spilling out in every direction.
Jake’s voice cracks. Sunghoon swears under his breath. Jungwon demands answers. Jay's face is tight with fury he’s trying to contain.
But Heeseung... Heeseung doesn’t move.
He sits perfectly still, staring at nothing, the noise around him fading into a distant hum.
Because he’s not in the room anymore.
He’s somewhere else - somewhere inside himself - trying to understand how everything changed in a single sentence.
Trying to understand how he’s supposed to keep breathing when the life he built - the group, the routines, the laughter, the belonging - is being pulled out from under him.
He is being used. He is being moved. He is being shaped into something he didn’t choose.
And there is nothing he can do to stop it.
Jay slams his hands on the table so hard the pens rattle. “You can’t be serious. You can’t just take him from us.”
His voice cracks on the last word - not from fear, but from fury.
Nikki speaks suddenly, eyes blazing. “You can’t just pull him out like he’s a prop you can move around.”
Jake's voice spikes, sharp and disbelieving. “Lola has been solo for like three years! I don’t understand why he has to leave. That makes no sense!”
Sunoo shakes his head, furious, leaning forward as he stands. “Why split us up? Why him? Why now? What are you doing to us?”
Sunghoon is the calmest - but even he sounds strained, his voice tight with barely contained anger. “This isn’t logical. You’re destabilising the group for no reason.”
Arguments overlap. Voices rise. The room becomes a storm - loud, chaotic, desperate.
The executives try to maintain order, but the members are too shocked, too angry, too protective to be silenced.
The lead executive raises a hand, not to calm them, but to control them.
“Enough.”
The word slices through the noise.
“We understand your emotional response,” he says - but his tone makes it clear he doesn’t. “However, this decision aligns with contractual allowances and long‑term planning.”
Jake scoffs, incredulous. “Contractual allowances? He’s a person, not a clause!”
The executive’s jaw tightens.
“As stated in your agreements, the company retains the right to assign individual activities when deemed beneficial to the brand. This is standard procedure.”
He flips a page, irritation bleeding through the professionalism.
“And let us remind you - Lola was also transitioned into solo activities when the company determined it was the optimal move.”
The boys freeze.
Because the implication is clear:
We did it to her. We can do it to him. We can do it to any of you.
Jungwon's voice cracks with anger.
“That was different. She wanted that. She agreed to that.”
The words hit the table like a challenge - but they hit Heeseung like a brick.
Because suddenly, violently, a thought he’s never allowed himself to consider flickers through him:
What if she didn’t?
What if Lola didn’t want to go solo? What if she didn’t choose it? What if she didn’t agree - not really, not fully, not freely?
His breath stutters.
Because the executives are using her as an example. As a justification. As precedent. And that alone is enough to make something cold crawl up his spine.
A second thought follows, sharper:
What if she lied?
Not to hurt them. Not to hide anything malicious. But to protect them. To protect herself. To protect him.
What if she figured out the truth before he ever did - that fighting back only makes things worse, that resistance has consequences, that the company always wins?
What if she was smarter than him? What if she saw the trap and learned how to survive it? What if she carried that weight alone so they wouldn’t have to?
His stomach twists.
Because now he sees it - the way she smiled when she told them, the way she brushed off their questions, the way she said she was “excited” but her eyes looked tired.
He didn’t notice then. He didn’t want to notice. But now… Now suddenly he can’t unsee it.
A quiet, sickening realisation settles in his chest:
Maybe Lola didn’t choose her path any more than he’s choosing his.
Maybe she was pushed. Maybe she was cornered. Maybe she was used - just like him.
And maybe she hid it because she didn’t want him to worry. Because she didn’t want to burden him. Because she didn’t want him to feel the exact pain he's feeling right now.
He feels dizzy.
Because if she went through this alone… if she endured this same pressure, this same manipulation, this same illusion of choice…
Then he failed her without even knowing.
And the thing that terrifies him most... He understands her now in a way he never wanted to.
He understands the fear. The silence. The distance. The exhaustion she never explained.
He understands the industry’s grip - cold, quiet, suffocating.
And he doesn’t know how to tell her he’s become exactly what she feared he would.
The executive’s expression hardens.
“Regardless, the precedent exists. Solo transitions are part of industry operations. We are being more than acomodating to everyone involed... And let us remind you that your personal feelings do not override strategic decisions.”
Sunoo looks like he might explode. “So what - you’re just going to tear us apart one by one?”
The executive’s patience thins visibly.
“We expect professionalism,” he says sharply. “And we expect you to remember the requirements placed upon you as public figures. Causing disruption will only create consequences none of us want.”
A threat. Softly spoken. Perfectly phrased. But unmistakable.
Everything goes still. Their voices blur. The executives’ words distort. The edges of the room soften.
Because the company is pulling him out of the group like a thread - unravelling everything he knows, everything he loves, everything he built with them.
He feels sick. He feels hollow. He feels like he’s watching his life from outside his own body. He hears everything. He understands everything. But it all feels distant.
And then - something inside him detaches. Not dramatically. Not visibly.
Just a quiet click, like a switch being flipped somewhere deep in his chest. A survival instinct. A shutdown. A retreat inward. Because the alternative is breaking.
The members keep fighting.
“Why him?” “He didn’t agree to this!” “You can’t force this on him!” “This is insane!”
Their voices overlap, sharp and frantic, but Heeseung feels himself slipping further and further away from the table, from the room, from his own body.
He is a product. A brand. A piece of machinery in a system too big to fight.
A puppet. And someone else is holding the strings.
And the horrific part is - that’s exactly what he is.
Because that’s what this is, isn’t it? A decision made without him. A future chosen for him. But it’s also so much more than that.
It’s betrayal.
By the people who were supposed to protect him. By the system that promised to guide him. By the company that told him he was family.
They’re hurting him. They’re hurting the boys. They’re hurting the life they built together.
And they don’t care.
Not really. Not in any way that matters.
He realises - with a cold, sinking clarity - that he has no control.
Not over his work. Not over his schedule. Not over his image. Not over his body. Not over his life.
His vision blurs for a moment.
He blinks hard, trying to ground himself, but the room still feels far away - like he’s watching it through thick glass.
His body is here. His mind is not. Because if he stays present - if he lets himself feel this - he just might collapse.
So he shuts down. He dissociates. He retreats into the only place that feels safe: away from all of it.
Away from the betrayal. Away from the fear. Away from the realisation that the people he trusted are now causing irreversible harm to him and the people he loves.
He drifts. He floats. He disappears into himself.
Because forgetting - even for a moment - hurts less than remembering.
Jake's voice cuts through the noise, sharp and furious. “You can’t do this to him. He’s not- he’s not some chess piece you can move around!”
The words hit the air like a crack of thunder.
But Heeseung barely hears the rest.
Something inside him folds inward.
So he sits there.
Silent. Still. Shutting down piece by piece. While the world he knows begins to crack around him.
The members don’t notice at first - they’re too busy fighting for him, too busy trying to protect him, too busy trying to hold the world together while it falls apart.
Jungwon turns mid‑argument, ready to throw another furious line at the executives - and freezes.
Because he sees Heeseung.
He sees the empty stare. The unfocused eyes. The limp hands. The shallow breathing. The way Heeseung's shoulders have curled inward, like he’s trying to disappear into himself.
He sees the shutdown.
And Jungwon's entire expression changes.
The anger drains from his face, replaced by something sharper, colder, more controlled - fear wrapped in protectiveness.
He swallows hard, turns back to the executives, and his voice comes out low, steady, and dangerously calm.
“Is there anything left to discuss?”
The room stutters. The executives blink, thrown off by the sudden shift in tone.
Jungwon continues before they can answer, his jaw tight, his eyes never leaving Heeseung.
"Because we’re not getting anything useful out of this.”
Sunghoon looks over, follows Jugwon's gaze - and his face falls. Nikki's breath catches. Jay and Sunoo's anger evaporates into worry. Jake’s chair scrapes as he shifts closer to Heeseung.
One of the executives tries to interject. “We haven’t finished outlining-”
“No,” Jungwon says, louder now, the edge returning. “You’ve said what you came to say. We've heard you and now were done.”
The room goes still.
Jungwon's eyes flick to the members - a silent signal - and they immediately move closer to Heeseung, forming a quiet barrier around him.
Jungwon's hand is already on Heeseung's shoulder, steady and grounding, ready to pull him out of the room. The members are closing in around him, forming a protective wall.
The executives are watching with thinly veiled irritation.
And Heeseung feels all of it. Through the fog. Through the numbness. Through the dissociation.
He feels the tension. The fear. The anger. The way the boys are bracing around him like he’s something fragile. And something inside him jolts.
A flicker of panic. A spark of shame. A desperate instinct to not be the reason they’re fighting.
He blinks - slow, heavy - and forces his eyes to focus. “Jungwon-ah…” His voice is barely a whisper.
He freezes. The others turn. Heeseung swallows, throat tight, breath unsteady.
“I’m okay.”
He isn’t. He’s nowhere near okay. But he says it anyway. Because he sees the confrontation. He sees the fear in their eyes. He sees the way they’re ready to go to war for him.
And he can’t let them.
He straightens a little - not fully, not convincingly, but enough to look like he’s present. “I can finish the meeting,” he murmurs.
Jay's jaw clenches. Nikki and Jake shake their heads immediately. Sunoo mutters, “No, you can’t.” Sunghoon studies him, eyes sharp, seeing right through the lie.
But Heeseung forces a small nod. “I’m fine. Really. Let’s just… finish.”
The room goes still.
The members exchange looks - reluctant, angry, protective - but they respect him. They always have.
Jungwon exhales slowly, the fight still burning in his eyes, but he steps back half a pace.
“If you’re sure,” he says quietly, though his voice trembles with doubt.
Heeseung nods again, even though his hands are still numb and his chest still feels too tight.
He sits up straighter, pretending his body isn’t shaking. Pretending he isn’t falling apart. Pretending he isn’t terrified.
The executives, sensing the shift, immediately seize the opportunity - their irritation fading into smug professionalism.
“Very well,” the lead executive says smoothly. “Let’s continue.”
And Heeseung feels the world tilt again.
But he stays.
Because he asked to. Because he thinks he has to. Because he doesn’t want the boys to fight anymore. Because he doesn’t want to be the problem.
Because even if he doesn’t know how to protect himself, he still tries to protect everyone else.
The executives finish their final points with the same sterile professionalism they started with - as if the room isn’t full of boys barely holding themselves together, as if Heeseung isn’t sitting there disconnected and pale, as if they haven’t just detonated his entire future.
“Further details will be sent to your managers,” one of them says, closing his folder for the final time.
“Schedules will be adjusted accordingly,” another adds.
“Please prepare for the transition period,” the lead executive finishes.
It’s all so… normal. So procedural. So detached. Like they didn’t just break him.
The members stand slowly, reluctantly, forming a loose circle around Heeseung, and he’s determined to see it through.
The executives gather their papers, ready to leave.
And that’s when Heeseung speaks.
“Wait.”
His voice is quiet. Thin. But it stops everyone. The members turn to him instantly. The executives pause, annoyed.
Heeseung swallows, forcing the words out.
“Why wasn’t Lola here?”
A beat of silence.
He looks at them - really looks - for the first time since the announcement. His eyes are tired, unfocused, but there’s something sharp underneath.
“This is… this is a major decision,” he says softly. “She’s part of the group. She should’ve been included.”
One executive clears his throat.
“Lola’s schedule is extremely demanding. She has prior commitments she cannot adjust on short notice.”
Another adds, “Her team will brief her on the necessary information regarding your transition.”
The words feel like a slap. Cold. Dismissive. Convenient. Heeseung's jaw tightens - barely, but enough for the boys to notice. He shakes his head. “No,” he says quietly. “Don’t tell her.”
The executives blink.
Jay's eyes widen. Jake straightens, sensing the shift.
The lead executive’s expression tightens - not with concern, but with irritation. He looks genuinely confused that Heeseung is still resisting, still asking questions, still trying to hold onto something that isn’t his to keep.
“Heeseung,” he says, voice clipped, “this isn’t the time for personal requests. She needs to be informed immediately. Her schedule is already overloaded, and delaying this will only complicate matters.”
Another executive steps in, frustration bleeding through the professionalism.
“It’s essential she’s made aware as soon as possible. This is a major shift. Her team is prepared to brief her. That is the most efficient and appropriate method.”
But Heeseung doesn’t back down. Not this time. Not about her. His breath stutters, but he stands his ground.
“Please,” he says. “Let me tell her.”
The executives exchange looks - irritated, confused, impatient.
“That isn’t standard procedure,” he says, voice tightening. “And frankly, this is exactly why idols are discouraged from forming… personal entanglements.”
The room goes still. He continues, tone clipped, irritated, as if Heeseung's request is an inconvenience rather than a plea.
“Lee Heeseung,” he says, voice clipped with restrained frustration, “we are already being more than accommodating given the circumstances.”
The implication lands hard - you should be grateful. He continues, tone sharpening:
“We’ve adjusted schedules, delayed briefings, and made exceptions we don’t typically make.”
Another executive nods, adding with a sigh that borders on patronising:
“You need to acknowledge that we’re trying to be considerate here. But there are procedures in place for a reason... You have always been known for being adaptable. Amenable. Cooperative. That’s part of why you’ve been so successful in this industry.”
His tone sharpens, the condescension unmistakable.
“It’s unfortunate that you’re struggling to show that same flexibility now.”
The boys stiffen. Heeseung breath catches. But the executive isn’t finished.
“You need to consider the distress this hesitation may cause other people - her team, your team, the members, the staff preparing the transition. We’re trying to minimise disruption, and your insistence on handling this personally is creating complications we shouldn’t have to manage.”
His eyes narrow - not cruel, but dismissive, like Heeseung is a trainee making a rookie mistake.
“Your relationship with her is already blurring boundaries that are meant to stay clear. This is exactly why idols are discouraged from forming personal attachments. It interferes with efficiency. It disrupts communication channels. It makes simple processes… messy.”
Another executive steps in, tone firmer, more impatient.
“She must be informed immediately through her management. That is the protocol. That is how these matters are handled. Her team is prepared, briefed, and expected to deliver the information. Delaying that because of personal feelings is not appropriate.”
He pauses, letting the implication settle.
“You cannot let your affection for her override the needs of the business.”
The words land like a punch to the gut - a reminder that in their eyes, Heeseung's love is not a strength, not a human connection, not something worth protecting.
It’s a liability. A flaw. A complication they want him to erase.
And Heeseung feels it - the judgment, the dismissal, the cold expectation that he should detach, comply, and let them control the narrative.
For a moment - a long, fragile moment - Heeseung almost nods. Almost folds. Almost slips back into the version of himself they’ve spent years shaping:
The agreeable one. The compliant one. The idol who never pushes back, never questions, never asks for more than he’s given.
He feels the instinct rise automatically - that familiar urge to be manageable, reliable, tractable. To make things easier. To not cause trouble. To be exactly what they expect.
But then something inside him twists.
A small, sharp ache. A memory. A face.
Lola.
And suddenly the instinct to obey collides with something stronger - the one thing he refuses to surrender.
His fingers curl slightly. His breath trembles. His voice rises before he can stop it.
“It… it has to come from me.”
The words escape him soft and shaking - but they land with a weight that freezes the entire room. Because this isn’t the docile idol speaking. This isn’t the boy who always says yes. This is Heeseung choosing something for himself. For her. For them.
"I-"
His voice cracks - barely, just a fracture - but everyone hears it. The executives. The boys. The silence that follows.
He swallows, forcing himself to keep going even though his throat feels tight and his chest feels too small.
“I’ll… I’ll think everything over,” he says, each word sounding like it’s being dragged out of him. “I’ll do what you’re asking. I’ll cooperate. I’ll follow the schedule. I’ll do my best.”
The boys stare at him - stunned, heartbroken, furious on his behalf. Because they can hear what he’s not saying:
I’ll break myself to make this easier for everyone else.
But then Heeseung lifts his head - just slightly - and something shifts. A flicker of resolve. A spark of defiance. A quiet, steady line drawn in the sand.
“But my only request,” he says, voice low but unwavering, “is that you let me tell her. When she’s back. In person.”
The executives exchange looks - irritated, confused, dismissive - but Heeseung doesn’t flinch.
Because this is the one thing he won’t let them take.
He’s terrified. He’s numb. He’s dissociating so hard he can barely feel his own face.
But for Lola?
He fights.
Even if it’s small. Even if it’s quiet. Even if it’s the only thing he has left to fight for. He straightens - not much, but enough to show he means it.
“I’m agreeing to everything else,” he says, steadier now. “I’m doing what you want. I’m not arguing. I’m not resisting.”
A beat.
“But this… this is mine. She deserves to hear it from me.”
The room goes still again.
Because even in his brokenness, even in his fear, even in his separation from reality - Heeseung is showing them something they didn’t expect: A boundary. A backbone. A quiet, unwavering loyalty.
And the boys see it too.
Jake’s eyes soften. Jay's jaw unclenches. Sunoo and Nikki nod to one another, proud. Jungwon looks like he might cry. Sunghoon, standing watching intently.
Because Heeseung might be falling apart - but he’s still protecting the person he loves. And he’s not backing down. Not from this. Not from her.
Silence falls over the room. Not peaceful silence - but the heavy, suffocating kind that settles when everyone realises something irreversible has just been said.
The executives exchange looks again, but this time the calculation is different. They’re not weighing fairness. They’re not weighing empathy. They’re weighing control.
Optics. Compliance. The risk of pushing Heeseung too far when he’s already hanging by a thread.
One of them exhales sharply, annoyance flickering across his face.
Another taps his pen, jaw tight.
The lead executive finally speaks - clipped, reluctant, but forced into concession.
“…Very well.”
He doesn’t sound pleased. He doesn’t sound convinced. He sounds like a man choosing the lesser inconvenience.
“You may inform her yourself.”
Relief flickers across Heeseung's face - not joy, not comfort, just the faint loosening of a knot in his chest. The smallest breath of air in a room that’s been choking him.
The executive continues, tone firm, making it clear this is not a favour.
“But understand this: she must be informed promptly upon her return. We cannot afford any further delays.”
Another executive adds, more pointedly:
“We will instruct her team to hold the briefing until she’s back in Seoul. That is the extent of our flexibility. Do not make us regret it.”
Their hesitation reveals the real calculation: They’d rather say no. They’d rather keep control. They’d rather follow protocol. But they need him compliant more than they need to enforce every rule.
Heeseung nods - slow, steady, exhausted.
“I will.”
His voice is quiet, but there’s a thread of steel beneath it.
Because even though he’s terrified, even though he’s numb, even though he’s barely holding himself together - he fought for this.
For her.
And he won. A small victory. A fragile one. But his.
The executives exit first, their polished shoes clicking sharply against the floor as they disappear down the hall. No backward glance. No acknowledgement of the damage they’ve done. Just the cold efficiency of people who believe their job is finished.
The door swings shut behind them with a soft, final thud.
And the moment it closes - the moment their presence is gone, the moment the air stops feeling like it’s being held hostage - the boys turn to Heeseung.
Not as idols. Not as coworkers. Not as performers trained to smile through anything.
But as brothers.
Their faces shift all at once - anger melting into worry, worry melting into fear, fear melting into something raw and protective.
Jungwon steps closer first, eyes scanning Heeseung like he’s checking for injuries he already knows are there. Jay's jaw is clenched so tight it trembles. Jake and Nikki look like they're trying not to cry. Sunoo's hands hover near Heeseung's back, unsure if touching him will help or break him further. Sunghoon's breathing is uneven, like he’s trying to steady himself before he steadies Heeseung.
Because now that the meeting is over - now that the executives are gone, now that Heeseung doesn’t have to hold himself upright for anyone - they can finally see him.
Really see him.
And what they see terrifies them.
His shoulders are slumped, like the weight of the entire meeting has finally settled on top of him. His eyes are unfocused, glassy, still stuck somewhere far away. His hands hang limp at his sides, fingers trembling from the aftershocks. His breath is shallow, uneven, like he’s forgotten how to breathe properly.
He looks like he might collapse.
Not dramatically. Not loudly. But quietly - the way someone falls when they’ve been holding themselves together for too long.
The boys close in around him instinctively, forming a circle, a shield, a silent promise.
Jungwon's voice is the first to break the silence - soft, steady, shaking.
“Hyung… hey. Look at me.”
Heeseung blinks, slow and heavy, like he’s coming back from underwater.
But he doesn’t speak.
He doesn’t move.
He just stands there, small and fragile in a way none of them have ever seen.
And the boys realise - the meeting may be over, but the damage is only beginning.
