Sometimes, Tiffany would dream of the way they’d meet again.

Sometimes, these dreams would bleed into her days and it’d leave her with a hand clutched to her chest, crumpling whichever expensive sponsored shirt she had on for the day, tears kept at bay with the sheer force of will, teeth clenched and lips thin. Sometimes, the tears escaped and she’d be left a crying, broken mess in the car, black tinted glass giving her a sense of privacy that doesn’t come easy these days, her manager determinedly looking ahead and pretending that Tiffany from Girl’s Generation wasn’t falling apart like dominoes.

(That’s all they do these days.

They hold onto the seams that threaten to stretch beyond belief, filling the gaps with work and more work now that the promise of forever had been broken by the greed of those who thought they could be controlled.

It was the only thing keeping them afloat.)

On these days, she would plug her earphones into her ear, volume to her usual eardrum shattering loudness (no one to remind her about the mortality of her hearing anymore, no one who’d she’d actually listen to instead of brushing off), playing songs she pretended she didn’t own on a loop, over and over again, until the tune of angels soothed her to sleep.

And then, Tiffany would just dream of her.

Her smiles, her laugh, the way their eyes would meet and hers would just light up in that way that always reminded Tiffany of the stars she was aiming for, the familiar curl of warmth around her fingers, instinctively enveloping like vines against a tree, familiar and supportive despite the flashing hate thrown at them.

And Tiffany didn’t know which was worse.

Dreaming of her or dreaming of how they’d meet.

When both weren’t going to happen any time soon in reality.

(And when she wakes, it’s to fingers too cold and cheeks wet from tears shed, her side feeling as though it has been torn out.)

***

Her fingers pressed the keypad, the pin code punched in using muscle memory rather than actual memory, her eyes nearly slipping shut from the sheer exhaustion of it all. The door whirred with a click and she pushed it open, aware of the single hallway light that greeted her to a home that was constantly quiet, walls filled with memories of laughter and tears.

(These days, more tears than laughter, the condominium feel almost too large for four people now that five had gone away.

One further than the others.)

Tiffany toed off her shoes and kicked them aside, blindly making her way to the kitchen for a bottle of water.

(And missing an unfamiliar pair of shoes placed neatly by the curb of their entrance hall.)

Her fingers curled around the fridge’s door handle, the appliance groaning and creaking from years of use, still running despite being long past its use by date. She tried not to agitate it too much, not wanting to feel the wrath of HyoYeon who would once again have to call the repairman because they had shut the door too hard or left it open for too long. Closing it gently, she cracked the bottle open, wondering just for the nth time when they would change the refrigerator, when they would finally put it out of its misery.

(They had halfheartedly voted to change the fridge to something better, a newer model with more compartments and an ice dispenser but the stickers and pictures stuck to the door overwhelmed the need for function and the old thing stayed, complaining and requiring more maintenance than a millionaire with six mistresses.

But it stayed, with its fraying sticker photos and the taste of before saturating its very presence.)

She chugged down half the bottle as she walked to her room, door half open before she realised that the light was on, casting the shadow of the intruder on her bed across the walls, painting black against pale pink, long and distorted.

And real.

“Welcome home.”

The bottle slipped from her fingers, water splattering everywhere and wetting the cuff of her pants but Tiffany could care less when the voice she missed rang in her ears like Christmas bells and the smile she dreamt of and woke up wanting to see was right in front of her. Her vision blurred but she continued to stare at Jessica, dark haired and nervous and right here, tears slipping down the contours of her face and dripping off her chin.

“Welcome home, Steph.”

Her feet crossed the distance within seconds and then warmth enveloped all her senses, the hole in her heart sealed up tight and she could barely stop her voice from shaking as she replied, falling and falling deeper into the gentle press of fingers into the notches of her back.

“I’m home, Jessi.”

***

But dreams remained dreams and Tiffany would wake up with a smile on her face that would fade quicker than the fleeting flash of a shooting star in the skies.

And she would shake and shake under the covers, mourning and mourning for the loss of someone she could never hold on to.

***

She made promises to the world that they would come back whole and new, with fresh changes and better future for all of them because that was the only thing she could do, eyes squinting against the light that used to soothe rather than burn, fingers tight around a microphone she doesn’t want to hold anymore. Her lips pulled up into that smile that everyone loved her for, learning finally how to smile with her eyes like she was happy, forced to learn after happiness had walked out the door and away from them, their lives torn apart from outside forces bigger and stronger than them.

But the world was relentless.

The words she never had a problem filtering out (but this was then, when a familiar weight was pressed into her side, with lips that pressed against her skin like a prayer) chipped at the hastily constructed armour without rest, pushing her, them, to their breaking point, to a place where all of them had to smile and pretend they mean it, like they never shed tears over what had happened. The world didn’t care about the powers that be, intent of being team them and team her, jostling and belittling a bond that they had painstakingly tried to keep whole.

But she still made promises, still sang with her heart on her sleeve and smiled like she meant it because that was all she could do to not fall apart.

(But this was now and that meant that she would always be looking at her side for someone who will never be there again, no shy smiles and stupid jokes, no random changes in choreography or blatant flirting on stage.

This was now and it was all Tiffany could do to keep promising because she could never give back a then.)

*

It was the first night since Jessica had been removed from her life.

(Always removed, never walking away because there would never be a world where Jessica would walk away from them, from her willingly.)

And already Tiffany had learnt never to speak of it.

There was no conceivable way to speak of it.

Because when it came to Jessica, who smiled softly and loved deeply, of the things she felt - feel, there was no past tense.

Jessica is part of her life, will always be part of her life, for her to love and cherish, to kiss the smile on her lips and memorise the taste of her skin, always in the cover of the night because they weren’t allowed to love but they do.

She had yet to change out of her clothes, the smell of recycled air from the aeroplane clinging to her like blood to walls, wanting instinctively to hold on to the one thing she had interacted with before this happened.

(Was it just this morning that Tiffany had taken a picture of her outfit for the day before that statement was released?)

She clutched at the hem of her shirt and inhaled sharply, feeling as though she had been ripped into half.

And knowing that the pieces can never be put back together the same way again.

*

There were times when Tiffany felt like missing Jessica was drowning her, dragging her underwater and overwhelming her till her chest would burn from the sheer ache of missing Jessica. When the others tried asking her about it because she was the only one stubbornly keeping silent about things and she clenched her teeth in retaliation because the ache drilled a bigger hole into her chest and words can never be enough to encompass everything Jessica meant to you.

(Selfish.

That was what Tiffany was.

Selfish.)

She meant a lot to the others as well but Jessica - no- SooYeon was hers alone and there were no words big enough, no language that would ever be enough to weave a story that would help the others understand the pain, the love, everything about Jessica-

Her touch, her taste, her smiles, the light behind her eyes when she looked at Tiffany, brown eyes that felt like molten gold and the whisper of her name that sounded more like the breath of a song the sea would sing under the rays of the sun.

She would keep drowning if it mean