Wonho's POV

I try to stay silent with her while the horde of people rush by us. They followed me all the way to this building, no matter what I did, the girls wouldn't give up. It's getting worse by the day. That's why I like meeting up with her at night. But she needs to sleep too. And I need to sleep too. 

"Wonho, please, I can't breathe", she tries desperately to get away from underneath me. I let her go and she sinks to the ground, hugging her knees desperately. 

"What's going on? Are you okay? SeolHyun?" I ask while dropping with her. She seems to be hyperventilating. 

"Just... give... me... time..." she says in between breaths. It seems to be very serious, but I can't do anything about it. 

I sit down beside her and put one hand on her back to console her. She doesn't even seem to notice. "It's going to be fine Seollie", I try to comfort her and she seems to be calming down to hearing her nickname. I used to love calling her that. I wipe her hair out of her face a little and her top shifts. I see some red strings on her skin on the back. She notices me as I see them and pulls away instantly. "What are those?" 

"Nothing. Why the hell did you pull me into this alley?!" she seems to be very furious. 

Her breathing has evened out a little more while she stands up, I join her. 

"Because I was being chased by a horde of teenage girls. I was trying to protect you", I'm curious as to why she is so mad at me and because of those markings on her back. 

"Oh, well thank you, I guess?" she calms down a little more while leaning against the wall behind her. "I don't like enclosed spaces." It takes a lot to admit it, I can tell by looking at her face. 

"I'm sorry. I didn't know that", I genuinely didn't know. She didn't used to have this kind of fear. What exactly did they do to her at home? 

"I know. It's not your fault", she sighs and dusts off her pants before looking at me. 

"What about your back?" I try and she shakes her head. 

"Forget about that", she whispers and suddenly she seems kind of fragile. Like the little girl I used to know. 

I nod and she moves out of the alley to watch if the girls were gone. She didn't see anyone and motioned for me to follow her. "Where do you want to go?" 

"Maybe somewhere not this public? What about your dorms?" I ask her, desperate to see how she lives nowadays. Is her room still plastered with Super Junior posters or has she matured too much? 

"There'll be some of the girls there since we all have the day off. The rappers of our group are writing and my roommate will be sitting in her room reading books", she tells me and lifts her eyes to meet mine. "What about yours?" 

It takes me by surprise. She's not usually this bold with me, not that I would know these days, but still. I nod without thinking it through and soon we're in a cab, on our way to my dorms. All of the boys will be out practicing and singing their lines. Since I only have like 7 lines in the comeback song, they don't need me now. 

I open the door and welcome her into our pretty smelly dorms. That's what you get for putting 7 boys into one dormitory without a cleaning lady. Clothes are littering the floor and the shoes make it almost impossible for us to enter. Hyungwon has grown tired of cleaning up after us, so he just cleans the kitchen and his room. 

"Sorry about the mess", I say, a little shyly before clearing a path to my room. "I think it's best if we go into my room?" 

She nods, a blush creeping onto her cheeks. I pretend not to see, so she isn't uncomfortable. Okay she is already, but I'm not trying to make it more awkward than it already is. My room is pretty okay, since I'm hardly ever in it these days. I have a few clothes on a chair and Jooheon's side is pretty fine as well. Except for his desk, where he sits most of his nights. 

"Who's your roomie?" she asks while sitting down on my bed. 

"Jooheon", I smile and she smiles back at me. 

"I met him once", she states and I remember him telling me so too. 

"So weird that I didn't recognise you back then", I sigh and sit down beside her, legs crossed and not too close. 

"Your dorms are so used. I mean, in a good way. It's been lived in. Ours is still so new", her sigh makes me think she doesn't like it all too much. 

"We use it a little too much", I joke and she laughs with me. Her teeth show while she laughs and her eyes pinch closed. 

"Better this way than my dorms, believe me", she opens her eyes again and evens out her breaths from laughing. The sound of her laugh still resonates through my whole body. 

"So how has it all been?" I ask casually while playing with the hem of my pants. 

"It's been... hard? We practice until dawn, go to sleep and get up a few hours later to repeat the process. To top it all off, I'm meeting you almost every night", she looks at me directly now. 

"I'm sorry. I kind of have bad timing..." But she shakes her head to interrupt me. 

"I don't mind meeting you. It kind of relaxes me from time to time", her voice misses an octave as she says so. 

"Well it's the same for me. We've been practicing for the past month and it's been tough for all of us. It's already taking its toll and we haven't even started promoting it yet!" I groan and fall back on the bed. 

"I'm sure the fans will love it", she touches my foot a little and I jolt back up. 

"Are you a fan?" I squint my eyes at her and she gives me a polite smile.

"Maybe", she lifts her shoulders as if it's nothing and it kind of challenges me. 

"Maybe, huh?" I inch over and move my hands to her sides. If I remember correctly she can't stand to be tickled. I know the exact spot where she's most sensitive. My hands reach her skin and start tickling her. She cries out and falls back into the mattress while pleading for me to stop. Her legs are swinging all around while her arms grip mine. 

"FINE!" she yells out and I let go of her, still hovering over her. "I'm a Monbebe", she admits defeat. 

"That's better", I smile down at her and her eyes grow big. It's kind of a very wrong position to be in while being in my room and on my bed. I clear my throat and pull back to sit next to her again. We both sit like that for quite some time, it's awkward as hell if you ask me. In the end she shifts and faces me. 

"You never told me how your training went", she inquired and I smile a little. This SeolHyun I know, the one who is interested in the things I do and did. She used to always ask me how things were going over the phone. 

"It was hard", I admit to her and she nods knowingly. "I was nowhere near as good as the guys who were here already. My singing , the only thing I was good at was dancing. Then we had to do this program to debut, 'No Mercy'. And they weren't kidding when they said no mercy."

"I actually saw all of it..." she says and looks down at her hands. "The girls in the dorms always wanted to see it." She quickly recovers. 

"Yeah well, it was worse than what they showed. It tore all of us apart to watch friends leave..." I think back to those days, it has been little over a year. It still hurts that some of them didn't even get a chance. "And in the end they threw in I.M., that was harsh. We might've seemed really cold on TV, but we just didn't know how to act. Especially Jooheon. His best friend was still in the race and he wanted Gun to be with him when we debuted. Of course everything is okay now, but it was so hard at first." Jooheon really was the one who took it the hardest, along with Hyungwon. 

"I can't even imagine how it must've been for you guys... All that uncertainty all the time. And sharing that pain and pleasure with the rest of South Korea", she takes my hand in hers to give it a light squeeze. 

"I'm sure your trainee days weren't all roses and sunshine all of the time either?" I'm truly interested in how they actually recruited her. "How did they even recruit you?"

"Simple, like I told you. I came to Seoul, to find something, a woman saw me and she asked me if I wanted to be an idol. I told her yes and she took me to the auditions. There they tested me and I got in because of my dancing skills. My singing improved a lot too. There were 6 of us when I started, 5 of them left in the end and I am the only one remaining of the original group. They haven't debuted yet either..." She is so at ease when she tells about her life. 

"Wow, that must be hard?" 

"I'm the oldest one in the trainee group. That's why this was a now or never. I'm already 19..." I know what she means. I'm 23 and happy to have debuted too. The older you get, the less chance you make. 

"But here you are, about to debut. How does it feel?" our hands are still joined together. 

"Surreal?" she scoffs a little and then looks into my eyes. "Like it's a dream I'll wake up from." 

She's had nightmares all through her life. She used to tell me how she wished she could wake up from the nightmare that was her life. The only thing I could say was that things were going to get better for her. Now it's the complete opposite. She used to want to wake up, now she wants the dream to keep lasting. For as long as she can make it last. How things change... 

"I know exactly what it's like. But it'll be fine in the end, you know that right?" It earns me a nod and I squeeze her hand. SeolHyun notices we're still holding hands and blushes a little bit. "So how are the boys from Seventeen?" 

"Stupid", she laughs while thinking of them. "No seriously, they are dorks. I've trained with most of them for a very long time. They're around my age anyway. Now that they've debuted I get to see them way less, but it's fine. They try to visit when they can", her smile doesn't fade while talking about them. It seems like she's very fond of them. 

"It's fun to see them joke and play around, isn't it?" I say in a hushed voice. 

"Yeah it is. They're pretty fun to be around." 

We sit there in silence again as our fingers intertwine. We used to do this a lot, but something in this dynamic has changed a little. Getting to know each other like this is good. It's like her wall is slowly crumbling underneath my touch and every piece I get to see makes me stare in awe. She is without a doubt the strongest girl I know. 

"Wonho! Do I hear talking?" I hear Jooheon yell and the door to my room opens up. Jooheon looks from SeolHyun to me and then to our hands. SeolHyun pulls back immediately. "Well, hello there." He smirks.