Jun is fooling around with his group members backstage after their pre-recording when he hears a familiar sound—Mandarin, accompanied by a Taiwanese lilt—from down the hall. A girl that he doesn’t fully recognize but who looks familiar is speaking in rapid Mandarin on the phone, laughing and saying “bye mom,” as his group approaches. Her stage costume is emblazoned with Twice, a group he has heard of but hadn’t looked into with the constant chaotic schedules of his groups’ promotions.

She looks up from her phone after hanging up, eyes cutting through the crowd in front of Jun to meet his. He squeezes by his group members and approaches her.

“Hi, I’m Wen Junhui of Seventeen,” he says in Mandarin, bowing.

“Zhou Tzuyu, of Twice. I just debuted. Nice to meet you, sunbaenim,” she bows, smiling nervously at his abrupt greeting. He is handsome, wearing a white suit with his hair swept back, and he doesn’t seem the least bit nervous to approach her.

“Don’t worry. It’ll all get easier,” he says with a half-smile. She smiles brightly and bows, thanking him for the encouragement.

“Aish, Jun, come on,” Seungcheol calls after him, the rest of his group 20 metres down the hall from him now. They’re on the way to a pre-show recording segment, so he has no choice but to follow. Jun turns to Tzuyu as he walks away.

“If you ever need a Chinese-speaking friend, I’ll be around.” He says, before turning to jog and catch up with his group. Tzuyu stares after him for a minute, a little in awe.

“Tzuyu-yah, come in for a picture!” Nayeon comes out of their dressing room, leading her by the wrist back into the room.

Tzuyu smiles and thinks of Junhui later, when she hears his group’s song playing quietly over the dressing room speakers. He’s the first sunbae to approach her like that so far, and it makes the whole process seem a little less daunting.

Later on in the week, she sees Junhui again. They are both waiting side stage as the group before them performs for their pre-recording. She pulls at her costume, fidgeting in anxiety.

“Tzuyu, fighting!” Jun says, approaching her. “You nervous?”

“Ah, no, never,” she says unconvincingly. Jun smirks.

“Just look for the red light and do exactly what you practiced. You’ll make a strong impression regardless.”

“What does that mean?” she says a bit incredulously, leaning away from him.

“I only meant that you’ll turn out fine on camera, so long as you smile like the other day,” Jun replies, a little flustered. He must not have realized that she’s joking.

The other day. He’d remembered her smile? She’d heard it a hundred times from her family, her friends, her members, and the company how she looked. But it was all from an evaluative, how do we sell this?, or biased personal perspective. Jun saying it felt different. She barely knew him and had barely spoken to him at all, and here he was, acting familiar and telling her that she’d look good onstage if she just smiled.

“Seventeen, please take the stage,” a voice comes over the loudspeaker.

“That’s me,” Jun says, setting his water down.

“Seventeen fighting,” she says with a smile as he leaves. He grins back, returning the fighting gesture before running up the stairs two at a time to join his group onstage.

Later that night she is waiting in the hallway for her unnies to pack their things so that they can head to their next schedule. It has been a long day, but if these last few days are any indication then their days while promoting are going to stay tiresome. After a few minutes of waiting she leans on the wall, sinking to the floor when her tiredness get the best of her.

A pack of boys and staff passes by her, and in her exhaustion she doesn’t look up until someone crouches in front of her. It’s Jun; his t-shirt and ripped jeans juxtapose his stage outfits from earlier and the made-up face that he still wears.

“Zhou, this is Minghao,” Jun says, gesturing up towards another boy with curly blonde hair who stands next to him. He is slim and looks like he is being swallowed by his big jacket, and he waves cutely when she looks at him.

“Hello, I’m Minghao of Seventeen,” he says in Mandarin, bowing to her. “Ah you don’t need to get up!” Minghao says when she tries to stand. She ignores his polite words and gets up, bowing to him.

“Zhou Tzuyu, of Twice,” she says. “Nice to meet you, sunbae-nim.”

“We’re wrapping up promotions but us Chinese-speakers need to stick together. Do you have weibo?” Jun says, his voice dropping off quietly at the end. “We have a group chat that we can add you to.”

She does have a private weibo, but is hesitant to give it out just now. All she needs is for the security to be compromised once and she’d have to start over from scratch, adding her family and close friends from back home, and worst-case scenario the company might find out and ban her from it altogether.

“Give me yours,” she replies instead. Jun raises his eyebrows at her, but pulls out a piece of paper and jots down his username.

“Don’t go giving this out,” he replies when he hands it to her.

“Not even to the right bidder?” she quips before she can think much about it. Jun and Minghao laugh.

“Jun, let’s get going,” Minghao says, and all three look to see the boys’ group and staff halfway down the hall.

Minghao and Jun say goodbye and leave Tzuyu behind, running to catch up with their group members.

“What was that?” Jihyo says, as she exits the dressing room, staring after the two. Tzuyu slowly and surreptitiously crumples the weibo ID in her hand.

“Some new Chinese friends, I think,” she says, smiling. Finally, maybe someone she can communicate with freely, no language barrier to muddle things.

She doesn’t see Jun or Minghao backstage at their music show recording the next week. She didn’t admit it to herself, but she had been looking forward to it. Ever since coming to Korea, making friends has been hard. Her Korean was getting better, but it was still difficult to understand and make jokes, and she missed being able to communicate her full meaning without thinking so hard about what she was hearing or about to say. She had spoken to Jackson some, but his variety schedules had made it difficult to cross paths, and she hadn’t gotten any other way to communicate with him other than in person yet. She had spent some time with her sunbaes Jia and Fei, but both had activities in China often enough that she didn’t see them much. They were still intimidating to her, besides. At least she and Fei were able to keep up a little bit before, but these days Tzuyu was so busy that she didn’t know when she’d next be able to see her next.

It’s a rare moment at the dorm where Tzuyu and the rest of her members have a rest. They’ve all come home—it’s midnight now, an early night for them—and all are changing into their pajamas. She’s been considering adding Jun on weibo for a few days now, and has decided that she needs to just do it. Her roommates are occupied—Dahyun is in the shower and Chaeyoung is listening to music in bed—so she seizes the opportunity to use the groups’ computer for a few minutes.

She sends him a somewhat cryptic message that he’ll receive once he adds her, to conceal her identity so that only he will know who it is.

Weibo

Tzuyu, 12:14am: Hello, it’s Zhou who you met in the hallway the other day and told to smile before going onstage. I hope you are resting well these days~

She reads over the message, editing it a few times before it’s satisfactory enough that she presses ‘send’. This is her first friend that she’s made outside of her company in a while, and her heart is beating quickly in nervousness. She tries to squelch it down in herself thinking, it’s just making a friend; it’s not such a big deal. But still, her first friend that she’s made after debut feels like it holds some significance.

There’s a soft knock at the door before Sana opens it.

“Tzuyu-yah, when you’re done with the computer please let me know. I need to message my mom,” Sana says, her usually light and cheerful voice grainy with a cold.

Tzuyu quickly logs off and closes the browser, snapping the computer shut.

“Here, unnie. It’s all yours for the night. I should be getting to my exercise anyway,” Tzuyu stands and hands it off to her.

“Wah, Tzuyu, you’re so dedicated,” Chae says from her bed, already in her pajamas.

Maybe it seems like that to the others, but Tzuyu still feels like she doesn’t measure up yet.

Weibo—group chat

Tzuyu 2:30am: I’m featuring on the dance break today O_O :D

Jun, 2:33am: Tzuyu fighting! I know you’ll do great. Remember to smile~ ^_^

It’s late November now. They’ve messaged a bit in the past few days but the encouragement warms her heart nonetheless. Twice is headed to Jeju for Inkigayo soon, and she’s surprised that Jun is still awake to respond. She messages a friend from back home and her mom, too, but Jun is the only one to respond before she has to pack into the car with the rest of her group members. The car ride to Jeju will be a while, and they start out the trip excited but one by one everyone slips into a slumber, and Tzuyu eventually follows.

She messages Jun back and forth over the next few days outside of the group chat, mostly to ask him advice, and to tell him updates or silly anecdotes. Sometimes when they’re both online to chat a while, they talk about their hometowns, or things that have been strange since coming to Korea and their wishes for the future. Sometimes she finds herself thinking up things to message him just so she can have something to say. He always responds brightly, and tells her about the special stages that he’s working on with his group for the end of the year festivals and their concerts, or what he did that day.

In the group chat, Minghao is cute and witty, giving Tzuyu encouragement, telling funny stories, and occasionally sending hilariously embarrassing pictures of Jun. Tzuyu likes Minghao a lot, and hopes that his personality will translate well to real life since she barely got to meet with him.

It’s nearly December now. She knows she’ll get to see both Jun and Minghao at the end of the year ceremonies, which she still can’t believe she’ll be performing at. Twice has done astonishingly well over the last month—better than she ever could’ve hoped for—and they’re being called super rookies. Seventeen is too, Tzuyu thinks with a little pride; she’s happy for her friends. A month feels like a long time not to have seen them, but she hasn’t seen anyone aside from her members and staff with consistency over the last few weeks.

Jun is happy to see messages from Tzuyu, as inconsistently as they come. Sometimes its 2am, or sometimes it’s during the daytime, but now that the group is on hiatus he has some time to answer. For now, Jun is learning dance routines for their year-end stages, which consists of many long days of practice but it’s still easier than their busy promotional schedules.

It’s late on a Sunday night when his phone dings.

Weibo

Tzuyu, 2:30am: I want chinese food T_T

Jun, 2:32am: I know a good restaurant in Hongdae~

Tzuyu, 2:33am: open this late?

Jun, 2:34am: of course, it’s Seoul ㅋㅋㅋ

Jun, 2:35am: I’m hungry too. Let’s go.

Her heart beats faster at the thrilling idea of it. Going out this late? To meet a boy? She knows that fans and media sites generally leave private lives alone, and if she goes out with a mask and hat… maybe. She’s in the quiet living room, but pokes her head in to her room to see a sleeping Chae and Dahyun. They don’t have music show recordings tomorrow, just dance practice at 10am, so Tzuyu goes with her gut, grabbing a pair of jeans, a mask, hat and a nondescript black coat.

Back in the living room, she messages Jun.

Weibo

Tzuyu, 2:40am: I’m in. Where should we meet?

She’s not sure of the directions so Jun is coming to her. She goes out the back entrance of the apartment building to evade any possible stragglers waiting to take her picture, because they could still be there even at this ungodly hour.

She stands in the cold, shivering with her hands in her pockets. A tall, thin man wearing a black mask approaches her, and he’s wearing the green jacket that he said he would be over chat.

“Junhui!” she stands up, bowing to him again. As much as they’ve talked online, it’s free of the formalities of real life, and she finds herself at a loss for how to greet him, whether to do it with Korean formalities or not, and whether to treat him as a friend or use age distinctions.

He bows back, and reaches for her arm to turn her in the direction that they’re heading, which is still a mystery to her.

“Where are we going?” She asks, jogging a few steps to catch up to him.

“Just trust me, Zhou,” he says, nudging her with his shoulder.

She purses her lips, casting him a suspicious sidelong glare. But she does let him lead the way.

They walk for about 10 minutes, chatting about what they’ve done over the last few days, before stopping in front of a small shop with a red neon sign.

Jun holds the door for her, and she steps inside. The interior of the shop is decorated with ornate fabrics, screens and plants, which juxtapose the cheap yellow glow of light and dingy white tiles.

“Hello, Auntie,” Jun says, hugging the tiny older lady who greets them at the front.

“How have you been, my Junhui? Where is Minghao? It has been too long. I hope you boys have been eating well without me.” She answers in Mandarin, her voice gravelly with age.

“Minghao is resting after our long practice today. But Auntie, why are you still awake too?” Jun steps back, removing his mask. Tzuyu’s fingers raise to touch hers, but she decides against removing it just this yet. Even though it’s the middle of the night in a tiny Chinese shop, she feels like there might always be someone watching.

“Aish, you know I can get more done at night, Junhui.” The auntie waves her hand dismissively at Jun’s concern. She then turns her attention to Tzuyu, not having recognized her. Jun hurriedly introduces her.

“Auntie, this is my friend from Taiwan.” He says, and Tzuyu bows low in greeting.

She glances hesitantly at Jun, not sure she should use her real name, but he reads her worried look and says, “it’s okay, you can trust her. She protects Minghao and me well.”

“Zhou Tzuyu,” she bows again, and the auntie smiles kindly but does not seem to recognize her.

“Nice to meet you. Here, both of you, come sit,” she walks towards a booth with a sliding door, and Tzuyu notices that all of the booths on one side of the restaurant are closed off. It’s nice to have something private in a public place like this. She and Jun settle in on either side of the booth.

“I’ll bring you some tea,” the Auntie nods, and Jun smiles and bows with thanks before she shuts the sliding door on them. Jun takes off his hat, settling in.

“You can take off your disguises too, if you want,” he suggests with a grin. Tzuyu realizes that she is still completely covered, wearing her hat and mask with her hair tucked back in a braid. She takes off the mask and hat, and pulls off her hair tie to shake her hair out. She’s still getting the hang of sneaking around. It feels weird that there’s so much of her life that she feels like she has to be extremely careful about now.

She doesn’t know what to say to Jun. When she is messaging him, she can revise and plan out what she wants to say, but in person she feels nervous, like she used to and sometimes still does in front of cameras. She sits on her hands to keep from fidgeting, but thankfully Jun doesn’t seem to notice, as he is unstacking their dishes for tea.

It has barely been 30 seconds but the auntie is back in a flash, rapping at their door to deliver the tea.

“Thank you, Auntie,” Jun nods, taking the tray from her and setting it on the table. The door slides shut and he pours tea for the both of them.

“So, how do you feel about being called the next So Nyuh Shi Dae?” he asks blowing on her tea to cool it before handing it to her. She hesitates for a moment before accepting it, taken aback by the abrupt, straightforward question.

“I don’t know, how do you feel about being called the next Super Junior?” she retorts, deflecting the question.

“Truthfully?” he asks, a tiny half-smile tugging on the corner of his mouth.

“Yes, truthfully. And I don’t really mean the ‘I’m so humbled and grateful to be compared to my sunbae-nim,’ that you’d say in an interview. How do you really feel?”

“Well,” he sets down his cup, folding his hand in front of him. “I am humbled and grateful. None of that is a lie. But it’s exhilarating. I want to believe it but I try to temper it with doubt because what if it doesn’t come true? What if we fizzle out? This worry is always in the back of my mind. But all the same, it makes it feel like everything was worth it. All of the learning Korean, being away from my family for so long, and years of waiting for debut. Our debut kept getting pushed back and pushed back again, for years. It started to feel hopeless, like it would never happen.”

He fidgets with his teacup, eyes drifting down to his tea and focusing there like he’s looking for his fortune in the cup.

“I know I’m not the most popular member or anything, but my groups’ success feels like a dream. I want to believe we can go the distance, and it’s exciting but still… intimidating.”

Jun looks up shyly at her. He’s seemed so confident to her thus far that she hadn’t realized that he would feel just as daunted by success as she did.

“I know what you mean,” she says, stirring her tea aimlessly. “With success comes pressure. Being compared to these big groups creates a huge expectation to live up to. I thought I would be happy if we were successful, and I am, but with every new success I feel like I have more to prove.”

She drops the spoon, slumping back in her booth.

“And I shouldn’t be complaining about this. Really, I should not, and it’s not humble of me to say. But I am the most popular member, and it’s an immense amount of pressure.”

Jun sips from his tea, waiting for her to continue.

“I almost wasn’t added to the group. I stood on stage at the end of our survival show after JYP PD-nim announced who would be in the group, and I wasn’t in it. I had my heart prepared for that moment, but it still crushed me. And then even after he did announce me as part of the group, he said he didn’t understand why I was so popular but that it was the only reason I was being added. I think about that every day. My unnies are so much more talented than me and then here I am, stealing the spotlight from them. I feel guilty. I feel like I don’t deserve to be in the group.”

She stares at the tiny fountain embedded in the wall, water raining down over a small stone Buddha and draining in rivulets down the rocks beneath him.

Jun is quiet until he’s sure she’s finished, then speaks.

“Well, I think it goes like this. There’s often a member that attracts a lot of attention, and once they see your group they’ll stick around for everyone else. Mingyu and Wonwoo are like that for us. I don’t resent them for their popularity, because it’s not like they’re taking it away from me. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have as much attention as we do, and I wouldn’t get as many opportunities to perform for people as I do if it weren’t for them. And for you, your fans still buy your albums and come to your live shows, which helps your members. So if you think of it that way, even though you feel bad about the situation, you are really doing something good for them.”

She smiles weakly at Jun. She has tried to convince herself of the same thing, but it feels more validating and concrete to hear it from someone else, especially someone in the position opposite to hers in her group.

“Thank you,” Tzuyu says sincerely. Then there is a knock at the door, and Jun’s eyes flick away from hers. He slides it open.

“Wah, what’s this?” Tzuyu says as the auntie sets plates of food down at their table. They hadn’t ordered anything.

“Auntie knows,” Jun says, smirking knowingly at her. Realistically, the food being placed in front of her is exactly what she had been envisioning when she had messaged Jun earlier that night. Begrudgingly, she smiles at him, and then thanks the auntie for the food.

It feels like the spell from earlier was broken, and she is now shy thinking of how she had just poured out everything she was feeling to Jun. She had felt fine doing it because of his honesty, but now she thinks about how poorly it would reflect on her and the group if anyone else knew.

“Jun, what I said earlier—,” she pokes at her food with her chopsticks, picking for a bite.

“Don’t worry, Tzuyu. Your secret is safe with me,” Jun smiles, before looking down at his food to dig in. Her heart flutters a little, happy and surprised that she doesn’t have to say what she’s thinking for him to know. What were the chances that her first idol friend would understand her this well? She smiles at Jun, who is focused completely on his food at the moment, and then digs in too.